The Essential Ingredients for a Viral App
The best achievement in iTunes and Google Play is a viral app. Customers are eager to spread this software via social networks, email, chat, and word-of-mouth on the Internet. Because word-of-mouth marketing is significantly more effective than any form of paid advertising, it is like rocket fuel and represents the best possible outcome for an app developer. People simply disregard the ubiquitous advertising clutter.
Ads are useless, and they are also too expensive for developers. However, since mankind began using rocks as tools, people have been exchanging stories. We were made to share content online.
However, gaining greater traction for your app than celebrity rumours require much more than simply adding Twitter and Facebook buttons. It necessitates developing a social interaction strategy for your software.
Viral: What Is It?
Interacting with people and encouraging them to participate are key components of virality. Viralness is not a marketing tactic that can be put into practise after launch. It must be planned out and included from the start of your software.
Your programme must satisfy these four tests in order to succeed:
- It must possess something worthwhile to impart.
- It must make it simple for users to join and share with others.
- Users must be rewarded for sharing and given incentives to return.
- The software must offer users additional value when they use it more frequently.
Your app must, first and foremost, include a gem—something worthwhile to share. It may be a five-mile run, a wonderful wine, a turn-based game, a piece of writing, a playlist, or an image. It needs to be transferable because it is your customer’s tiny source of pride.
Users get a pleasant fuzzy sensation when they share their tiny treasure, which keeps them coming back to the app. They will enjoy and receive more appreciation from the app as they use it more frequently. The value only increases as the app’s user base expands.
Asking yourself a few questions will help you determine whether your app contains any gems:
- Does my app have a useful contribution to make?
- Does it merit spreading?
- How will users be compensated for sharing?
- How come users would desire to share?
- Why would they want to share with their friends?
- How will my app encourage users to continue sharing over time?
Viral App Models
When a user develops something and publishes it, the traditional viral flow begins, which encourages friends to find the hidden treasure and download the app so they may participate:
Using this strategy, adding buttons so that users may share their works on Twitter, Facebook, email, and SMS is the most obvious way to promote social engagement in your app. For instance, the Faces app allows users to create amusing portraits of friends that can be sent via email, Facebook, and Twitter.
Unfortunately, this strategy wastes a lot of potential because few users choose to share content, and even fewer of their friends actually view it, let alone click the link and download the app.
You must actively involve your audience if you want to go viral. For them to obtain greater value from your software, each time they use it, the experience should build on the one before. And that value ought to increase as the audience grows.
Think about Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook. The first time someone uses one of these apps, nobody realises their true worth. However, you gain more from Twitter the more you put into it.
Strategy Principles
Before you come across something called the viral coefficient, you don’t need to delve too deeply into viral principles. According to him, exponential growth results from viral coefficients above 1 and little to no growth from viral coefficients below 1.
The time it takes a client to download the app, use it, and recommend it to their friends is a crucial component that is lacking from this method. The secret is to encourage people to send invitations to their friends as quickly as you can. How do you go about that?
Simply using their address book to spam their pals is a quick and dirty solution. However, this would go against your stated philosophy of treating your consumers with respect and would ultimately backfire. Try the five guidelines listed below as an alternative.