Everybody in business wants to “go viral.” If you create a funny YouTube video, or tweet cleverly, or create a web service that people invite their friends to join, then you will spread like a flu pandemic, generating massive growth in users without massive marketing expenditures. Whether you are Old Spice or Dollar Shave Club or Instagram, growth without marketing expense is a good thing. And I agree: it IS a good thing. Going viral is awesome for a business, of course. Achieving growth without buying it is clearly good.
But companies are also learning that growth itself is not enough. A user base is not a business. If you can’t make money off those users – both revenue and profits – then all your viral growth is kind of a waste. We saw this last week with Facebook, which has had huge viral growth over its lifetime, and now has a billion users, but is having problems turning those users into money, leading to a stock chart that looks like this:
Ouch!
Or take the Dollar Shave Club. Their video is definitely hilarious and it went viral, which allowed them to sign up lots of users. But if their razor isn’t good enough to keep customers ordering more, or if they can’t sell the razor for more than it costs to make, no amount of viral growth will help them be a successful business. I haven’t heard anything about their razor quality, or their margins; they could totally succeed, and I hope they do. My point is that a clever viral video is only a means to an end. The end is a profitable business.
In the social bubble we have seen this year, people have been losing sight of what really matters in business: profits. User growth and virality are to 2012 what eyeballs were to 1999. Having lots of users is good, and your user base is an important metric to track, but at the end of the day, you need to make money. Not making money is what pops bubbles.
Thoughtbasket 