What’s The Deal With Viral Apps?
And How Do Apps Go Viral?
Ever since the ALS Association started their awareness campaign for medical purposes with the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, the term “going viral” has become a widely used concept to describe a rapidly spreading social phenomenon on the Internet. Because of the massive chain reactions that virality can trigger, marketers have also reappropriated it into viral marketing to make their marketing message “spread quickly and widely across its audience”. As we are transitioning into a mobile-first society, the lines between viral marketing and mobile app marketing are often blurred. In fact, certain apps have gained success so colossal after going viral that it has become a norm in mobile marketing strategies.
What happens when apps go viral?
Perhaps the most memorable cases to exemplify the impact of virality are Candy Crush Saga, TikTok, and, most recently, the FaceApp. For Candy Crush, going viral helped the app increase revenue by 1,150% in one year and pull its category ranking position up significantly in 24 hours. For TikTok, the app is said to have snowballed in popularity in 2018, achieved 275% growth in revenue over the next year, and become “the world’s second-most downloaded app in 2019” — all after going viral. In late 2019, the FaceApp app took the app stores by storm with an AI-driven photo editing feature that, despite having multiple filters to choose from, went viral for making users’ faces “appear older or younger”. Often associated with a trend known as “the Age Challenge”, this feature of the app generated 12.7 million downloads in just over a week in July 2019, more than the total number of downloads it had acquired in the previous 6 months combined! All of this is evident to the gigantic impact of going viral.
How do apps go viral?
While viral marketing is a “deliberate enterprise”, it can’t freely initiate or control a “viral outbreak”. An “organic” way of distributing a widespread marketing message is required, such as users’ word-of-mouth (MoM). When analyzing viral campaigns in the past, experts have noticed a pattern in which this mass organic distribution occurs — in a loop. They call it the viral loop, where words about an app keep spreading over and over in a loop until they quickly reach millions of people. However, the official, unified definition of a viral loop is still in debate because different people describe it differently.
For one, Tapdaq and Apptamin introduced in a blogpost a four-stage viral loop that follows a user’s journey: They see an app, install it, have a desire to share it, then eventually share it with others.
For another, we have Josh Jeffryes’ viral loop, where the marketer’s role is more apparent: They attract users, then capture them (as in user acquisition), then make them spread the word, and finally let all of them grow into a larger user base.
Finally, marketing agency Kobayashi Online developed an AIDA-inspired viral loop where the traditional funnel is turned into a circle with the addition of the 5th stage: Recommendation. As such, a viral app first gains awareness from users, then stimulates their interest to drive their decision & action to install it, and ultimately triggers them to recommend it to others.
Even though different approaches explain viral marketing differently, they all seem to highlight on 2 conditions that get virality to trigger:
- App users are delegated to do the marketing work themselves
- They participate in the delegated marketing work voluntarily
For instance, TikTok users kept sharing videos of themselves using the app on social media. They did so deliberately and, in doing so, became the very curiosity that got others to install and use the app — and so it repeated and repeated autonomously, saving marketers a fortune in marketing in the end. But that’s TikTok’s viral loop, what’s yours?
How to make a viral loop work
My observations of viral marketing trace all the way back to the glorious days of Flappy Bird. They also include non-app products and content, such as Harlem Shake and the Bottle Flip challenge. In general, all these viral “Internet phenomena” share 4 things in common:
1. They have extremely high short-term relevance
Whoever these viral campaigns target, either on purpose or by accident, they could establish a strong, immediate connection with them. However, this connection is often short-lived. The affected people usually have an urge to participate in a viral movement or try out a viral app straight away to satisfy their curiosity or to cope with a fear of missing out (FOMO). The key lies in the clear and intensified sense of urgency, scarcity, exclusivity, trendiness, and so on, which makes everybody want to be a part of it.
Examples of this form of relevance are plenty, such as Gmail’s exclusive invite-only initial launch, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge’s roster of celebrities who made dumping a bucket of iced water on yourself look cooler than its medical implications, or the urgent need to win that encouraged Candy Crush Saga players to keep asking their friends to install the game to help them. All of these have made people restless — they couldn’t wait to be a part of the trend.
2. They provide emotional and/or physical stimulation
Even if a viral trend seems interesting, people still often need to see what’s in it for them before actively participating in it. If an app can “make them feel good”, they will like it, share it, then it becomes contagious so other people will (want to) feel good as well — and the loop goes on. More importantly, not any kind of “feel good” is good enough — they need to be a “guilty pleasure”. This is why using the 7 deadly sins to trigger app virality is one of the most comprehensive ways to stimulate mobile users.
For example, TikTok created a platform where everyone receives “an equal chance at fame” then went viral after stimulating the “feel good” sin of Pride. Accordingly, users can easily become famous simply by making and sharing their TikTok videos on social media. Next, Candy Crush (again) went viral with the sin of Greed by incentivizing existing users with in-app rewards. All they needed to do was invite their friends to install & play the game, who’d then get hooked by those rewards again. Finally, the Lust sin, which has become a standard in the marketing industry under the “sex sells” philosophy, paved the way for Tinder’s viral status. The app then started the modern “Hookup Culture”, which has become a norm simply by stimulating people’s desire for sex. All in all, whatever the “sin” is, it provides the motivation for users to chase after your app.
3. They are incredibly shareable
This one is arguably the most important of all, despite being very straightforward. An app simply can’t go viral if its users have no means of sharing (or recommending) it to others. The easier it is shared around, the more likely it could go viral. Generally, an app can be shared by 2 means:
- Directly in the app, with a sharing or invitation mechanism
- Indirectly on social media, with either an auto-generated or a manually-curated post, also known as social sharing
For an in-app viral mechanism, you’ll need a feature that allows users to directly send an invite to others to install the app. Snapchat can illustrate this case very well. The once-viral social networking app could become an Internet phenomenon because it let users easily mass-invite the contacts on their devices to use it.
For a social media campaign, the viral trigger requires the content or message to be simple, challenging yet replicable, and communicable. A confused user won’t share or repost social media content about your app. Keeping it simple is the best way to prevent such confusion. Next, the “challenge” must be visibly difficult for online audience so they are intrigued to try it. On the other hand, it must also be doable enough for them to replicate it. If they want to try it but can’t, then they have nothing to share on social media — your app can’t go viral with nothing. Finally, speaking of having something to share on the Internet, users need to be able to publicly talk about what they do with or think about your app. Be it a brag, a challenge, a personal story or a hashtag (#) declaration, they need to make sure it is known to everyone around them in the net. This is why it’s vital that they can easily and quickly communicate the viral content.
To exemplify, the FaceApp started off as a simple filter-based photo editing app but quickly escalated into a “viral sensation” thanks to the user-driven #AgeChallenge movement on Twitter. The app became so popular on social media that it was expected to “break the Internet”, partly thanks to the support from celebrities as well.
The app’s success came from the simplicity of applying a filter to your own photo, the challenging requirement of looking good at the (fake) age of 60+, which is easily replicated by the gorgeous celebrities, and the use of fast, convenient Tweets to communicate the results.
4. They send out a mass call-to-action
A call-to-action (CTA) is a well-known marketing technique to ask the audience to make a change or a decision. In most viral loops, it’s usually utilized to motivate Internet users to spread or share an app or a piece of content about it. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is a classic example of this. Every time a celebrity completed the challenge they would name their successors and pass it on to them in a public CTA on social media. This made both the targets, who are also celebrities or influencers, and their followers feel relevant and motivated to support it. What happened next is history.
For an app, a great example is Timberman. The mobile game allows users to publish a Tweet to challenge everyone in their Twitter network to beat their in-game high scores. Together with the curiosity and the difficulty to get really high scores, this challenger CTA message has made the game viral with a very simple gameplay mechanism.
While it seems to answer a “what” question, the CTA actually gives the answer to “Who” should be triggered by a viral app. More specifically, who should spread the words about it, and who they should spread it to. Ordinary people could share it within their circles, marketing influencers primarily share it to a narrow niche of audience, and A-list celebrities most likely have the power to bring it to millions in an instance. Choose your desired leverage wisely!
Final thoughts
Viral marketing is perhaps the most unpredictable sub-section of mobile marketing. Whatever your strategy is, it will always come down to the end users to willingly and naturally kick-start the viral engine. You’ll never know what’s on their minds or what will really make them share your app around. You can’t force them either.
With a viral loop, certain key aspects can be optimized to encourage and aide them. They include a sense of relevance, a form of stimulation, a flawless state of shareability, and a prompting call-to-action. Their encouragement and aid can help you set the stage for virality, but the primary driving forces will always be the product (your app) and the users. Interpret them with a grain of salt, and use them wisely.
