Viral coefficient: Your 2020 guide for viral marketing – Spiceworks
Walking viral can give your brand and your product a huge advertising, generate brand awareness and purchase new customers. But how does viral marketing work? What is the viral coefficient and the time of the viral cycle? Let’s find out.
Before we start, let’s first understand what viral marketing is.
Allow me to attract parallel with the recent coronavirus outbreak. The virus spreads rapidly from person to person and grows exponentially (if not controlled) in a short period. And if something becomes viral, many people are exposed to it (and spread further).
Similarly, in the digital world, especially in the age of social networks, content such as videos, memes, images, music, advertising campaigns, open letters, etc. It becomes viral when it spreads to many online users in a short period. And a lot of people talk about it and share it whether they are the target audience.
Therefore, viral marketing is the science and art of creating campaigns that obtain a viral growth in a short time. It helps to accelerate the brand awareness and also increase the brand image for a long time.
Find out more: Top 3 examples of viral mobile marketing campaign to inspire you
The viral coefficient
David Skok series entrepreneur
suggests two models for viral growth in the world of marketing in his article in the current . It suggests two parameters for calculating viral growth.Suppose you want to get a viral growth for your specialized children’s products through a new marketing campaign. You have created a promotional video that focuses on the real life challenges of mothers and the way they exceed them, connecting them with the values of your brand.
Because your target audience is new or waiting for mothers, you share this video with them. And, in turn, I share it with others and go far and wide.
Let’s call the initial set of customers (target audience): Custs (0)
Number of invitations sent by each set of customers: and
Percentage of invitations converted into customers: Seizure
Coefficient Viral (K) is the number of customers each existing customer can convert successfully, given by K = i * convo%.
During each cycle of infection, customers infect a percentage of guests who become customers, who affect others in subsequent cycles.
In this model, SKOK also suggests that only the new set of customers (add) send invitations (or actions). “This is because it is very unlikely that the entire population will continue to send invitations to each cycle. Each time I looked at other blog or viral growth formula, it seems to have achieved this part of the wrong calculation. “Skok notes that the viral coefficient must be greater than 1 to achieve a viral growth.
The time of the viral cycle
The time of the viral cycle is the time required for your first audience set to look at your message first, share it with friends, who in turn decides to take a look. Ideally, viral cycle time should be low to achieve explosive growth.
Skok, along with partner Stan Reiss
derived a formula to calculate the effect of viral cycle time on viral growth.CUSTS (T) = CUSTS (0) * K (t/ct + 1) – 1 / k – 1
where K is the viral coefficient
t It’s time
Ct is the time of viral cycle

Viral Marketing Science – Forentrepreneurs
Viral coefficient and viral cycle time – impact on viral growth
The key lessons in the two formulas above to get viral growth are:
- The viral coefficient must be greater than 1.
- Decreased viral cycle time (CT) will have a dramatic impact on viral growth.
- The viral coefficient will increase if you increase the number of invitations and the conversion rate.
So this was the science behind viral marketing. But, as I said earlier, viral marketing is also an art.
We know that we need to improve the viral coefficient, send as many invitations as possible, make sure that they turn and lower the cycle. And we know that not everyone can do it.
There is the art of viral marketing. Let’s look at some tips that can help you go viral.
Tips for viral marketing
First of all, let’s look at the types of virality. Techcrunch
Defines eight types of virality:- Inherent – a person receives a value from a product only if I use other people. Think Skype.
- Collaboration – the person receives a certain value from a product, but receives more value if more people use it. Think about online collaboration tools like Google Drive.
- Communication – the product (and message) is sent to remind the receivers of its importance. For example, “sent from my iPhone”.
- Stimulated – the person will receive additional benefits for sharing. Example: Credit Uber.
- Embeddable – when the content can be incorporated anywhere on the web. Example: share buttons at WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
- Signature – When users of your product features incorporate your brand name. For example, a survey fed by Surveymonkey.
- Social – when companies integrate with social networks to spread the word. Think Spotify.
- The word of mouth – there is no exact way to measure this, but if you have an excellent product and offer bright features, you have a viral product. Netflix someone?
Here are some acting tips to get viral growth:
1. Content that resonates
Marketers must design content that resonates well with the target audience, but a truly viral message will evoke the right emotion for everyone. Focus on creating content that humanizes your product or marketing message and hit an emotional rope.
For example, more crazy about Nike 2019 Women’s Day
2019 Nike campaign for Dream Women’s Day
2. Social Du -Te
Social Media can help you achieve an explosive growth in terms of users’ appreciation, actions and views. Make sure your content is suitable for sharing, ie it is well integrated with social media, and your content is partially with a single click.
For example, Sphero
has launched a Snapchat marketing campaign to launch its BB-8 Droid product. For the Forcefriday-Star Wars event, they invited Snapchatters to five of Disney’s emblematic shops around the world. The creators created Hype and emotion in the fan colleagues and took the new Droid in an adventure in the respective cities. The video was watched for over 69.1 m seconds and obtained 10 m views and social involvement 411K .