The dream of every starting company is to see their SaaS product grow quickly and reach a number of users in a short period of time. This boom in growth can also be understood as a viralization caused by users within social networks.

Going a SaaS product takes years of work to build a solid and stable marketing strategy focused on cost containment due to having limited capital and makes it possible to raise enough money to promote growth based on strategies similar to those of the big techs that exist today such as Google or Microsoft.

The problem is that it's not an easy task to viralize a SaaS product like a skincare product in which many influencers simply buy the product to test and attract new followers every day.

Understand in this article what it is to go viral for a SaaS product, how it is possible to accomplish this feat, and if there is any such product that has gone viral on social networks.

What is viral?

Going viral for a SaaS product is basically having a spike in user adherence who come in contact with the tool in an abrupt and often unexpected way. In one week your product has 20,000 users, the following week it has 25 million consumers using your app and many become buyers.

After this huge peak, the product continues to be used by a large number of users and the growth in the adhesion of new consumers starts to be slow, as it loses strength. In fact, a viral used to be interesting for a few weeks, nowadays, the viral loses strength in a matter of days, if you are unlucky, in a matter of hours.

It is important to point out that there is no magic and secret formula to make a SaaS product viral, a good part is luck and variables that your marketing team cannot control, such as world phenomena that can force a viralization “out of nowhere” by necessity as in the case of the Zoom product, which became globally used at a peak after the various lockdowns introduced around the world.

An example: Canva

The SaaS product Canva is a great example of a viral product that has seen very strong growth in the last year. To analyze how this viralization took place, it is necessary to understand that its peak was never absurd, with the advancement of the digital market, and mainly of digital marketing due to the need of the last 2 years, many users who were specializing in the area sought more alternatives accessible and with a shorter learning curve to start as soon as possible in the area of expertise.

This market demand has made many users share their experiences and Canva has become the main tool for creating art for social media, especially on Instagram. Videos and digital marketing courses have also focused on teaching people how to use Canva for its ease of use and affordable cost.

Today, its growth is stable and small, close to the peaks of user gain at the beginning of the year, its spending on paid advertising is small compared to its competitors since its name was established after its virality on social networks and teaching courses in digital marketing.

How to viralize a SaaS product?

Understanding your product

There are SaaS products with different purposes that change the strategies of how to work on a possible viral of your tool, products that require collaboration usually gain reach within the internet much more easily than single player.

Another important factor is the target audience, if it is for entertainment, the language can be relaxed and less formal, in the case of a tool that aims to increase productivity similar to Canva, the ideas that your marketing team used can be aimed at exploring a desire to reduce the time and difficulty of the task at hand.

Encourage users to commend your product

The best way to start going viral for a SaaS product is to encourage your loyal users to praise and post on social media about how your product is making a difference in their lives. Whether it's making a task easier or bringing new and attractive entertainment to new people.

Word-of-mouth in these cases increases the effectiveness of a SaaS tool going viral, as the users themselves are talking about it, taking “the word” of the promise of your product forward. Users do not usually believe what companies and marketing and sales teams say, because they know that the purpose is just to sell and sell, in other users' trust is high, other users will not gain directly from the use of the tools, but rather, earn the trust deposited back by their followers for having somehow improved some aspect of their life “with nothing in return”.

Encourage this speech of praise in your users, and understand that even with capital, the power of your marketing team's reach is limited by the number of people in it and the maximum amount of money you can invest. Users would be like new employees of yours, who don't need to be paid and can raise the power of reach to a level your company doesn't know, going viral.

Build a community

The connection between consumers who use your SaaS product is extremely important, as one of the ways to engage users to talk about your product is simply the proximity they have to other people who also use it. Using any tool or app on its own is not as attractive as a platform where there is a community.

Just think about social media, if they were something single-player, without the existence of other users to share their experiences and create new content every day, no social platform would have the reach and power it has.

Create a discussion forum, with tutorials, Q&A, and videos with examples of what you can do, and respond to your community encouraging the participation of each user, the more active a community is, the greater the chances of it growing and going viral at any moment.

Don't miss the opportunity

The worst mistake your company can make is seeing your SaaS product go viral on social media and not taking advantage of this moment in the right way, missing an opportunity that may not happen again.

Don't expect to understand 100% of the reaction of users, all exposure is exposure, put your team to work with the aim of converting all those users who are talking about your platform into loyal followers of your social networks, constant users, and finally, convert every new user into a prospective buyer.

Invite, one by one if necessary, to learn about the new tools of your product, post success stories in a row, post as much as you can, and comment on as many publications as you can during this period. Answer all the questions and solve all the problems that happen at that moment, I didn't let a second go by, it can make a difference when the viral ends.

Now that you know how to create an environment conducive to virality and how not to let this opportunity pass you by without benefiting from it, time to get to work!