Viral Loops, How to find them?

Viral loop is something that usually causes the explosive growth of a product. In essence, you encourage your current users to invite their friends to join the product.

Most people confuse the viral behaviour of their product to be a marketing or engineering issue but to the core it is actually your business design problem. So you need to design and prepare a business or a feature for viral growth.

Although there are lot of ways to classify viral loops, but I like this classification most -

1. New user viral loops - Here the existing users invite their friends and families to join the product. Example could be Dropbox, Facebook
2. Awareness viral loops - Here the existing users spread awareness about your business. Example could be Instagram where users share the same content over Facebook and whatsapp

Now the question is how to design or make certain changes in your business for viral growth?

1. First, think about giving incentives to the users if they share or refer a friend to your business. You should carefully think about your viral scheme here. Think about questions such as what incentives will motivate most of the users, how should I attract the right kind of users, how much should I incentivise and lose my profits.

Example: Dropbox said we will give you free space if your referrals successfully join them.

1. Second, think about what your existing users are sharing with their friends, how these potential users will get to know about your business. At this point define the entry point and stages of your viral loop.

Example → Truecaller asks you to send an invite to your existing contacts in your phone. It has three steps, you sign up, you provide access to your contacts to truecaller, and truecaller sends an invite to your contacts who are not on the product yet.

1. Third, think about what incentives will be given to the new users who end up joining your business.

Example → Sometimes products don’t provide any incentive, they think if your friends will be using the product that is an incentive in itself such as Instagram. But there are other businesses such as Uber which provide discounts on the rider’s first ride.

1. Lastly, analyse properly the exit points of your viral loop.

Example → In the previous example of truecaller. Analyse all stages of the viral loop.

• New Sign up → How are these new users coming to you? Think about all the entry points, lifespan of the users from each entry point.
• Sending Invites → Verbose of the invites, in-app onboarding experience, placement of the feature.
• Referred users join → What other incentives can be given to the new referrals, why few users don’t end up joining, what can be learned about the behaviour of users who do refer?

Designing viral loops for your business is an art but it will certainly differentiate market leaders with the rest.