Author: Stella L (stella@footprint.network)
As projects expand globally, many projects are starting to think about how to break through the growth bottleneck caused by regional cultural differences. The social viral model that has repeatedly proven successful in the Asian market has frequently encountered setbacks in the European and American markets. This phenomenon reflects the more complex cultural differences and user psychology.
Pinduoduo Model: The Secret of Social Viral Success in Asia
The success of Pinduoduo has brought the marketing method of "social viral" to a peak in the Asian market. From its establishment in 2015 to 2020, Pinduoduo achieved the amazing growth of reaching 788 million annual active buyers in just 5 years (according to Pinduoduo's financial report), becoming the second largest e-commerce platform in China.
The reason for this is, first of all, it is based on the deep-rooted collectivist culture in Asia. Here, interpersonal networks are deeply intertwined, and people have a strong sense of group identity. Sharing discount information not only does not bring social pressure, but is also seen as a way to maintain relationships. This cultural foundation provides a natural soil for social viral growth.
Secondly, the highly digitized social environment in Asia is indispensable. The combination of a well-developed mobile payment system and the habit of frequent use of social media has given birth to a mature digital social culture. People are accustomed to sharing all aspects of their lives on social platforms, including consumption experiences and shopping discounts.
More importantly, Pinduoduo's precise grasp of user psychology. They successfully transformed the individual behavior of "saving money" into a social topic, and through carefully designed gamification mechanisms, they reduced the traces of marketing and cleverly utilized the power of communities to create a strong sense of participation. This approach not only makes users actively participate, but also maintains continuous activity.
It is worth noting that Pinduoduo's success not only relies on the social viral mechanism itself, but more importantly, on the deep understanding of local user behavior patterns. They perfectly combined the concepts of "saving money" and "social" to create a unique "social + business" model. This precise understanding of local user psychology provides important inspiration for us to think about how to promote social viral growth in other markets.
This successful model has subsequently been tried in the Southeast Asian market. Multiple local social e-commerce platforms have adopted similar mechanisms, and have shown strong vitality in markets such as Vietnam and Thailand, fully demonstrating the high compatibility of this model with Asian culture.
European and American Markets: Fertile or Barren Land for Social Viral?
As the overseas version of Pinduoduo, Temu cleverly transformed the social viral model when entering the US market. Its "Referral Bonus" program has simple rules but significant effects: users can receive a $20 cash reward by inviting 5 new users to register through platforms like WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook, and the more invitations, the higher the reward. Although this mechanism cannot fully replicate Pinduoduo's "slash one knife" model due to local legal restrictions, it still successfully triggered viral spread.
Data confirms the effectiveness of this strategy: in the first month of 2023, Temu ranked first in the free download list of the US iOS App Store for 28 consecutive days. By the end of 2023, its monthly active users (MAU) ranked second only to Amazon, and it achieved about $16 billion in GMV within a year, surpassing SHEIN, which has been deeply cultivating the market for a longer time.
It is worth noting that even in the case of Temu's success, its social viral strategy has undergone multiple adjustments. From the initial five-person invitation to get $20, to the later adjustment to seven-person invitation to get the same reward, this flexible strategy adjustment shows the continuous observation and response to market feedback. This iterative optimization approach provides important practical reference for projects.
But this may be one of the few successful cases of social viral in Europe and the United States so far. The many failed cases in the past decade are worth deep reflection. Facebook once launched the "Refer-a-Friend" program, but had to adjust its strategy in the end due to user aversion to this "spam-like" invitation. The case of Groupon is even more warning. This former group buying giant had a market value of $16 billion at the time of its IPO in 2011, but its model of over-relying on high discounts and social pressure ultimately led to user churn, with a market value of only about $320 million as of November 2024. This cliff-like decline highlights the fragility of the social marketing model driven solely by discounts in the European and American markets. Snapchat's referral program has also encountered bottlenecks. Although the platform is extremely popular among young users, its social viral program has not performed well due to user concerns about privacy and the fatigue of continuous marketing messages.
These cases reveal the uniqueness of the European and American markets: users have a strong sense of privacy, maintain a high degree of vigilance against commercial promotion behaviors, and the tradition of individualism makes users unwilling to be labeled as "marketers". More importantly, these markets have a lower tolerance for marketing methods, and users are more inclined to make decisions based on personal judgment rather than social pressure.
However, recent data shows that the European and American markets are not completely rejecting social viral. Take Telegram as an example, its user base has exceeded 950 million, with more than 10 million paid users, a large portion of which are from Europe and Russia. In 2024, getting users through the Telegram ecosystem has become an obvious trend for projects. This indicates that European and American users also have the willingness to accept innovative social forms.
The European and American markets do have huge opportunities. First of all, the user base advantage, the huge active user base of social media provides sufficient growth space for projects. These users have a high degree of digital acceptance and are accustomed to freely switching between multiple platforms, providing good dissemination channels for social viral.
More importantly, the current competition among projects in the European and American markets is relatively low, and the user acquisition cost still has room for optimization. The market's acceptance of innovative marketing models is relatively high, which provides a rare opportunity window to redefine social viral.
Dilemma: Why is it Difficult to Replicate Traditional Social Viral?
At the cultural level, the deep-rooted individualism tradition in European and American societies is in stark contrast to the collectivism in Asia. European and American users generally have a stronger sense of personal boundaries, maintain natural vigilance against marketing information, and attach great importance to personal privacy protection. This cultural characteristic often makes traditional social viral means ineffective.
Social pressure is particularly prominent in the European and American markets. Users are generally concerned that commercial promotion behaviors will affect real social relationships, and are unwilling to be labeled as "marketers". This psychological burden seriously constrains the natural spread of social viral.
Building trust mechanisms faces greater challenges in the European and American markets. Cryptocurrency-related projects generally have low trust in these regions, and users maintain a cautious attitude towards emerging technologies. Establishing trust requires a longer process and more effort. At the same time, European and American users have higher requirements for marketing methods, and direct incentives are often ineffective, requiring more refined value delivery methods.
Breakthrough: Redefining Social Viral in the European and American Markets
To achieve a breakthrough in the European and American markets, the primary task is to achieve a strategic transformation. The traditional "pressure marketing" model needs to be transformed into a "value sharing" model. This means that when designing growth strategies, more emphasis should be placed on personal benefits rather than group pressure, emphasizing users' autonomy in decision-making, and focusing on building positive sharing motives. When users feel real value and can autonomously decide whether to share, the dissemination effect is often better.
Gamification design also needs localization and transformation. For European and American users, the interaction mechanism should focus more on personal experience, reduce obvious marketing traces, and provide users with personalized participation methods. This transformation not only needs to consider the functional level, but also needs to delve into the user's psychological level. The new growth paradigm should explore the optimal user incentive mechanism within the allowed rules, and find a balance point that can effectively achieve viral growth without making users feel averse.
For Web3 projects, social viral growth also has a unique advantage: the automated reward distribution mechanism realized through smart contracts can ensure the fairness and transparency of the entire process. This not only can reduce users' doubts about marketing activities, but also can establish trust through the verifiability of blockchain technology. For example, the project can put the invitation records and the reward distribution process on the chain, so that each participant can verify the fairness of the activity.
When it comes to specific implementation, the following key points need to be emphasized:
- Transparency: Clearly display the rules and reward mechanism to build trust.
- Autonomy: Give users sufficient choice and avoid compulsion.
- Value orientation: Highlight personal benefits rather than social pressure. The "benefits" in the Web3 field can be set as Waitlist whitelist qualifications, points, tokens, or Non-Fungible Tokens according to the industry characteristics.
- Privacy protection: Strictly abide by local regulations and respect user privacy preferences. The social viral growth activities in the Web3 field can make good use of blockchain technology to protect the sensitive information of participants such as wallet addresses.
At the tool level, technological innovation will play a key role. The emergence of no-code tools has greatly reduced the usage threshold, allowing the operations team to quickly adjust strategies. Powerful data analysis capabilities provide support for decision optimization, helping projects to grasp user needs more accurately. At the same time, native product integration, simplified participation process, and transparent reward mechanism will all become important factors in improving the user experience.
In addition, in addition to social viral growth, other marketing means can also be combined to work together. The success of Temu is not solely dependent on social viral growth. It has also invested heavily in social media advertising and traditional advertising (such as the Super Bowl). In summary, on average, each American user has been exposed to 60-70 Temu ads on various platforms. Most Web3 projects may not have the huge advertising budget of Temu, but they can combine industry characteristics, use Key Opinion Leader or Influencer social media content dissemination, and match it with social viral growth to achieve better results.
Future: New Paradigm of Social Growth for Web3 Projects
As Web3 projects develop globally, how to achieve effective user growth in different cultural backgrounds will become a key issue. In the European and American markets, social viral growth is not impossible to achieve, but it needs deeper localization transformation and innovation. Especially in the Web3 field, with the development of the new generation of social protocols and decentralized identity solutions, social viral growth may usher in new opportunities. These technological innovations can not only better protect user privacy, but also provide more diversified value delivery methods for social viral growth. Project parties need to continue to pay attention to these technological developments and integrate them into the design of their growth strategies.
Through appropriate tools and strategies, combined with a deep understanding of the psychology of local users, Web3 projects can definitely find a new paradigm of social growth suitable for the European and American markets. In this process, flexibility, transparency and user experience will be the key factors for success.
In this global Web3 growth race, the real winners are not the imitators who simply copy successful experiences, but the pioneers who can innovate and break through according to local conditions. Only by truly understanding and respecting market differences can we seize the initiative in the tide of globalization.
Author's Statement: The content of this article is for industry research and exchange only and does not constitute any investment advice. The market has risks, and investment requires caution.
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About Footprint Analytics
Footprint Analytics is a comprehensive blockchain data analysis platform that simplifies complex analysis for enterprises and projects in the Web3 ecosystem. It provides customized solutions, eliminating the need for extensive professional knowledge and infrastructure maintenance. The platform provides tools aimed at helping gradually build and manage long-term community growth, emphasizing sustainable growth and user loyalty. By combining powerful analytics tools and community management tools, Footprint Analytics enables projects to effectively utilize blockchain data for decision-making and growth strategies, covering areas such as GameFi, Non-Fungible Tokens and DeFi.
