Virality is an activity performed by a referral source or partner, which leads your potential clients become aware about your product or service.

Any stakeholder in your business model could knowingly or unknowingly become a referral source. Our research into this topic led us to identify 5 types of virality. While we believe each business can and should leverage multiple types of virality, some types of businesses are better suited for certain virality types.

Let’s take a closer look at each virality type and evaluate which type might make sense for your business to focus on.

1. Word of Mouth Virality

We refer to WoM virality when a promoter voluntarily refers your product or service to potential clients, without any kind of incentive or reward from your side. It’s part of our nature as human to help each other out. When we see people struggle with something we have solved in the past, we tend to suggest an appropriate solution.

To leverage this type of virality for your business and make people talk about your products, you have to offer exceptional customers experience with unique or innovative elements. People are not talking about boring products. Create and design innovative features or elements of customer experience which make people talk.

The talkable difference can be very subtle. For example when I see people struggle with their project management software, I tend to recommend them Asana. The talkable differences to other work management software I tend to show are for example the fast handling and mass editing of tasks, the ability to add the same task to multiple projects or the creation of tasks from anywhere using a Chrome/Gmail plugin.

2. Demonstration Virality

We refer to demonstration virality when people show your product to your potential clients simply by using it. This type of virality is very often used with cloud based software products. For example widgets for websites like chatbots, forms or meetings booking tools are often branded with the tool provider logo. As a website visitor you can quickly recognize which software tool is used for certain type of functionality.

To leverage this type of virality you need to design experiences which are performed publicly while making your branding visible or make the experiences look unique so that people ask the performer “how have you done this”.

3. Network Virality

We refer to network virality when people start to actively invite other people to use your product because it makes the product better for them.

Coming back to a project management software such as Asana. With Asana you are able to invite an unlimited amount of guests. That led me to invite more than 500 people into Asana during the last few years. I tend to invite my customers or service providers because it makes it easier for me to collaborate with them on projects in Asana as opposed to sending them emails.

To leverage this type of virality you need to design and develop experiences which lead people to interact with other people and which make the interaction more attractive compared to their current way of interaction.

4. Outbreak Virality

We refer to outbreak virality when people start to share something because it is fun or they simply want to look cool by sharing it. This is the type of virality most people understand as viral. This type of virality is often related to online content for example videos or posts which become viral.

Activities for this virality type might be a little harder to plan and predict in terms of impact. They are often short lived and tend to come and go quickly. In spite of short outbreak duration initiatives in this type of varality, it can have a huge and long term effect on the brand awareness.

The youtube image video from DollarShavedClub.com - Our blades are f***ing great published in 2012 went viral, has today around 27 mio views and is often used as the example of top viral marketing initiatives. 

5. Incentivized Virality

We refer to incentivized virality when a company offers certain type of incentives people should share with companies potential clients and rewards them for doing so. This is the type of virality is very often used for Software as a Service products, E-commerce stores, but also in retail and many other business types.

Many sorts of incentive driven campaigns and programs fall into this category. They are known as affiliate marketing, referral programs, influencer marketing, reseller programs, loyalty programs, commission based selling and others. While they vary in details of execution, all of them use certain type of incentives and rewards to make people spread the word about a product or service.

We believe any business can greatly leverage this type of virality. It can become the key cornerstone of growth for a business and it has many indirect benefits. One of them is positive influence on all the other marketing channels a company uses. For example when your partners share a referral link pointed to your website, they not only send traffic to you, but also contribute to your SEO ranking. 

To make this channel work, you need to design attractive incentives, enable your partners to share them easily and have a good attribution tracking in place, so that you can reward your partners, after their sharing leads to new clients for your company. We have seen companies to struggle and to do simple mistakes, when trying to execute this simple process. That's why we have decide to create GrowthDrive and reimagined how incentivization campaigns can be designed and managed.

Which type of virality should you leverage?

We believe the answer to this question greatly depends on your imagination. Any company can leverage the word-of-mouth virality to some extend by designing great customer experience.

Demonstration virality and network virality are more dependent on your product type, but with little imagination many companies could leverage them. Often the first step is to identify new stakeholders or user roles in your business model and to design more visible ways of interaction between them.

Outbreak virality requires lot of creativity and also a bit of luck to make your content go viral. It is often a temporary push to your growth and can have long term effect on your brand awareness.

Incentivized virality can be leveraged by any type of business and when you observe some of the most succesful companies out there, you will recognize that many of them made this virality type to one of the cornerstones of their growth strategy.