Viral is one of the best app marketing methods. Especially today, reaching great virality is not easy as before. There are some reasons for this, like an ever-growing competition within the mobile market and changing share habits of users. Plenty of apps break out every day and users are selective regarding downloading – they try these applications first and mention about it to others. In other words, Viral is still necessary for app marketing, but reaching success isn’t as easy as it was before.
Under these circumstances, understanding one of the best app marketing dynamics – Viral Marketing – and using them to leverage mobile app marketing activities is getting increasingly important. First and foremost, Viral expresses a “loop”. This loop occurs when one user enters the app and invites new users. This effect is represented in the picture; these new users will attract other new users to the app as well, perpetuating a continued process, also named ‘loop’. To attain success in Viral marketing, that kind of circuit is an absolute must. In mobile marketing and regarding apps, we define this loop as a Growth Mechanism.
In fact, being Viral doesn’t require any mathematics. The important point is that users must believe in your app. If and only in that case will they share it on their own networks. If you follow the tips to make your app go viral, you can succeed.
[Tweet “Viral expresses a “loop”. This loop occurs when one user enters the app and invites new users. “]
Creating Value: Understanding the needs of the audience is essential for creating value. You may think that your app is outstandingly suited to your target audience’s critical needs. However, something is interestingly out of sync. This occurs because you should have conducted Consumer Testing! The logic is simple; at every stage of app development, testing and integrating feedback should be part of progress. Don’t suppose that it is time to stop testing when you release your app. The main aim is to addict your audience to your app by creating value towards their needs and wants.
Intuitivism: We can define this concept as discoverability of UI functions. If you want to possess an intuitive design, first of all, you must make sure your sign up and share functions are intuitive. Social media accounts can be automatically accessible. Likewise, sharing functions should be naturally engrained, not hidden. We can define this attribute as simplicity.
Rewarding: To encourage your users to share your app in their network and invite friends to join, you should use a reward system supported by incentives and promotions.
Uniqueness: There are plenty of apps similar to yours. With this kind of competition, you should segment your apps with some unique features. Today, users are getting more refined, and so apps should be preferable in that case.
Likability: From the beginning, we’ve emphasized the role of using user’s needs and wants to develop great apps. When you publish a perfect app, you will be only getting closer to attain shares and invitations. People have a greater tendency of telling others about dissatisfaction rather than satisfaction. That’s why “likability” is an intangible concept, but one you should not ignore. Updating your data about your audiences’ habits, needs and sometimes potentials for liking your app will certainly be a great bonus.
We think that there is no person in the world who doesn’t know about Candy Crush Saga, even if that person doesn’t play it. Therefore, Candy Crush is a remarkable example to understand virality and all the above tips.
To make its attributes clear, Candy Crush Saga is a match-three puzzle video game released by King on April 12, 2012 for Facebook. In it, players spent an incredible sum of $790.1 million within the first six months of 2014. The game was supported by iOS, Android, Fire OS, Windows Phone, and Windows 10 at the time.
We should stress this fact; Candy Crush is probably one of the best viral apps. First of all, we all heard about this game and got notifications from friends when they are playing it; this is actually a form of Viral Loop. This viral loop consists on sharing your experience with your friends in exchange for in-game value.
You can easily recognize that this game uses really Intuitive Design. All the rules, screens and required actions are clear and its guidances work very well. This simplicity makes it easy for users to get hooked.
The Reward mechanism is well thought. In a successful app, rewards should be linked to the inherent objective of the app, like in Candy Crush Saga. In this game, rewards are awarded to you as soon as you learn to use them. Even so, in the next stages, you have to buy to use them. Recently, a game featured a section where you have to pass 5 sections with just one life. If you can do it, you will be at the throne, and obtain gold and other gifts while remaining there.
In fact, Candy Crush is a very simple and old game, but with a new interface, created specifically for it. In this newer version, there are some unique sagas as well, empowering the Uniqueness factor of this game. The main goal is not getting the highest score. The main goal is scoring the first place among friends, surpassing all sections, and going all the way with the game characters. These are unique facets of this simple game. It is really objective-driven, isn’t it?
[Tweet “Candy Crush is probably one of the best viral apps up to the present. “]
All these fictionalized fun factors market the game’s message as being more attractive and empowering the game’s viral potential. Users want to share their success and invite others to the game to remain seated at the throne. This is recognizing exactly what the users’ habits and needs are, Creating Value for them with a game with high Likeability.
Consequently, Candy Crush Saga deserves this viral success, as it is useful and enjoyable at the same time. As we said before, in digital times, going viral is not as easy as before, but understanding audiences and defining smart fiction can drive to a successful conclusion.
1 Comment. Leave new
Hey, thank you for sharing this article. It was indeed very helpful. I came across this brilliant blog, you may be interested in reading. http://bit.ly/2cE8Iji