Question
I've read a lot of different growth strategies that have worked for other companies; which makes perfect sense why they would work, for example:
Dropbox - I think they did a great job because they incentivized users to refer other users to get more space. And this worked well for them because by giving away more space this had an incremental cost of basically zero so this made sense.
Barkbox - People looooove their pets, so it's easy to see why these customers post so many images of their pets and Barkbox has such a high engagement on Facebook.
My website is an international shipping service website, so the only thing my customers care about is to get the products they are eagerly waiting for. So the only thing I see worth giving them that they would be excited about is "free shipping" to incentivize them to refer friends. However, in my situation I have a lot higher costs of giving away a "free shipment" than Dropbox had in give users 500MB more of space.
I've been trying to think of different ways that are not-forced but natural engagement to have my customers / fans be excited in sharing and telling friends but I can't seem to visualize an exciting angle like Dropbox and Barkbox had to work with.
Answer
Hi, great question! got my brain working over here!
FYI, I'm a growth hacker so I'll try to actually be of use to you here.
First thing that comes to mind is that you might be going about this wrong. Is common for most of us to have a biased researched online to solve a problem we are having, our search is biased because of something we might have heard of in the past so we start with that. When we find the answers we were looking for regarding that biased search we stick to that and get stuck trying to figure out how it applies to us and make it work. In business this is very very common, that’s why a lot of us are here, and a lot of startups need to pivot once they realize that they got pulled into thinking their prior focus what the right one.
You start off asking how to engage more consumers, then quickly moved to a specific strategy that worked for other companies. The truth is that for these companies these tactics were only 1 thing from a variety of efforts. Which is why I think you might be focusing on the wrong one.
Giving away freebies works, but that’s just traditional marketing coupled with their growth hacking techniques. It doesn't work for you, fine.
The reason why your consumers are not sharing as much as they are, or raving to their friends is because they are simply users – what you need is hardcore aficionados in something that you provide.
How? Improve your business development and marketing by super targeting your demographic. Find a subset of your clients who are hard core about what they buy, possibly hard core about international purchases, or a large group who buys the most popular item through your site.
How? Build a persona. You have probably heard this, but is extremely important. {I have continued my response to you through my blog, due to length... please continue reading here: http://UnthinkEverything.blogspot.com }
I have some examples and stuff I hope you enjoy and find useful.
