Smartphones have become an extension of our body. Many people cannot live without them (me included). That’s why creating your own mobile app can be a great move. Instagram, Snapchat, Uber and WhatsApp are all great examples. The question is how to make your own app go viral? How can you attract 10 000, 100 000 or even 1 000 000 users on a low budget?

There is no bullet-proof process but this one has the highest chance of success. This article will show you a step-by-step plan on how to make your mobile app viral without almost any money.

However, you must first meet several requirements before you even attempt doing it.

Requirement 1: Determine product/market fit

An important first step would be to determine whether you have product/market fit. Marc Andreessen defines the term as follows: “Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.”

Does your target group really like your app? Is it what they are looking for? Does it solve a problem? If not, it would be extremely difficult to go viral.

The simplest way to answer those questions is to measure the number of Retained Active Users (RAU). This is the % of users who download your app and stay active. Let’s say 1000 people downloaded your app today. Statistics show that 40–50% of them would uninstall the app immediately and over time other users will do the same.

Your goal is to flatten out the curve and keep at least 20% of the users active. Some of the best apps have 40–50% retention.

Source: Brian Balfour’s presentation at WMD 2015 — video

As soon as you have solved the Product/Market Fit issue, it’s time to get prepared.

Requirement 2: Are you ready to be viral? Can your systems handle it?

An acquaintance of mine (who uses the same platform as me) had the task to get 500 new users on a mobile app. He had set the marketing campaign in a very proficient way and attracted 50 000 new users instead of 500. You might be thinking to yourself “Wow, that’s awesome. The company must have been really happy.”

Well, surprise, surprise, this unexpected sudden increase of users caused a complete disaster. The team wanted to check a few of the core functionalities of the app. It was still in development and they didn’t even have a monetization strategy.

Unfortunately, the company had to spend thousands of dollars to get the additional capacity and handle the wave of new people. In the end, they had a ton of users who were unsatisfied, huge bills to pay and no way to get revenue in the near future. Going viral too soon can be even worse than not going viral at all.

That’s why you should ask yourself whether you are ready for it or not? If you are, you can move to the next part.

Requirement 3: App Store Optimization (ASO)

In order to get more downloads and go viral, you need to make sure you have proper app store optimization. To put it simply ASO is the process of optimizing apps to rank higher in the search results of app stores.

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One could divide the ranking factors into 2 groups - Pre-Release ASO and Post-Release ASO. The image below shows a detailed break down of each of them.

The better you make those factors, the easier will going viral be. If you want to examine further the topic of ASO, here are some suggested further readings:
- https://medium.com/@swarooptvm/a-simple-guide-to-aso-app-store-optimization-basics-in-play-store-99aa34c62585
- https://growthbug.com/kpis-for-measuring-the-success-of-app-store-optimization-fa4c86a95332

Make your app easy to share

Having met all the requirements, you can focus on virality. The main goal of viral marketing is to make people share a piece of information with one another. It should spread like a virus - from person to person. Your app should do exactly the same.

For this purpose, you should include social sharing functions. Once users achieve a certain milestone, prompt them to share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

For example, if you have a gaming app - “Congratulations! You reached level 10 😱 . Make your friends proud and share it on Facebook!”. It’s applicable for business apps, too. If you have a business planning app, it could be “Congratulations! You just created your first business plan. Click to share this achievement on LinkedIn!”.

Another option would be to give in-app rewards to people who share the app. Depending on the type of your app, users usually collect some kind of points. In gaming apps, it’s “coins” for items and in business apps, it’s “points” that help you unlock premium features. For instance, “Share this app with a friend and get 500 points for free”. Then he can use the 500 points to unlock free access for 1 week.

Here is the place to be creative and think outside of the box. Brainstorm the different opportunities for such viral functions and make them flow naturally with the user experience. This leads us to the final and most important part.

Create a Viral Marketing Campaign

In most cases, you don’t have money for paid ads, nor do you have enough time to master SEO. Content marketing can take a ton of time, too. You have to be creative and use a better alternative.

I would strongly recommend creating a viral giveaway or contest. It’s like word of mouth on steroids.

Here are the steps you should follow for a viral campaign:

  1. Create a viral contest or giveaway. For example, you can create a landing page where you describe what reward people are going to get. If I enter my email, I get the chance to participate in your contest/giveaway. Keep the reward relevant to your target audience. If you have a business planning app, don’t give away a vacuum cleaner…
  2. People opt-in to your viral giveaway or contest. Then you give them the option to increase their chances of winning the contest by sharing it with friends or by downloading your app. For instance, “You get 50 more entries to win the contest if you share this with 5 friends”. or “You get 100 more entries if you download our mobile app.”
  3. Shares are automatically tracked (if you use this app), giving you the power to create contests, sweepstakes, and giveaways that reward visitors the more they spread the word. You will know exactly where your contest is shared. Now you are probably asking yourself “But how I can verify that the person really downloaded my app?”. It’s simpler than you think. On the contest page you created, just ask them a verification question “What is the first message you see when you open the app?” or “What colour is the Login button in the app?” or something similar. You get the general point.
  4. To make it as effective as possible you should have an email autoresponder system to guide your visitors. You could email remainders, setting goals for the contest/giveaway, and provide ongoing incentives to ensure they stay on track and deliver.
  5. If everything is done correctly, the system takes off on its own and becomes a perpetual source of traffic — 20 users become 100, those 100 become 500 and so on. Before you know it, you will be viral.

The benefit of this kind of strategy is that you don’t have to spend almost any money and can get a ton of leads and traffic. My acquaintance (who got 50 000 instead of 500) did exactly that. He used a software called UpViral. (this is a link to a webinar because it shows how it works). It handles the whole giveaway/ contest process for you.

Thank you for reading this article! Hope you found the answers you were looking for.

If you want to generate traffic and leads, viral marketing can be a perfect option for you. It’s fast, cheap and helps you grow your business (but in a clever way). Get your free book to get you started: stoyanv.com