It's every marketer's dream to create a viral sensation with a website, produce or service, generating an enormous amount of positive word-of-mouth and a slew of new customers. What most people don't understand is that viral marketing is more
math than art. As a marketing person I've found myself using my math minor more and more (not to mention my IT background) as the business becomes more about numbers and less about copy. Here's a quick primer on how marketers use K-factor to chase virality.
In marketing, K-factor is the formula by which we can calculate the growth rate of just about anything. Roughly, it goes:
k = i * c
...where
k (K-Factor, or virality) equals the number of invites to a product, website, etc. (
i) sent by customers resulting in conversion (
c is the percentage rate of the invites' conversion).
