Users no longer like to buy your product? Try these 3 strategies

A product may be very popular at the beginning, but after a while no one is interested in it. This involves the problem of "product aging". Based on this, the author of this article shares 3 product strategies that can make users like your product again or continue to like using it.

Readers often leave messages or private chat with me and ask me these questions:

"I run a clothing brand , which used to be among the top sellers on Taobao , but now fewer and fewer people buy our clothes";

"We developed a game app before, which was very popular, but now not many people use it;"

"I run a restaurant business. In the past, our store was always the most popular in this commercial street, but now it is deserted and facing bankruptcy and transfer..."

(Many of the above issues involve management and operations . I will only write an article from the marketing perspective to summarize and analyze my personal views on these issues and share some proven effective solutions.)

The above questions bring up the issue of "product aging" that many of us marketers or product people often pay attention to - that is, although users once liked your product, they no longer like to use your product. Just like the person who once loved you doesn’t want to love you anymore.

(Forgive me for using this metaphor～-～)

If you want to solve a problem, you must first analyze the cause of the problem - why do users no longer like to use your product?

Maybe you will say, "Because my product price is not as cheap as others" - this is the most common answer I receive, and there is no right or wrong answer to this. It is really one-sided to simply attribute the reasons why products are outdated and cannot be sold to price. As I said in my previous article, price reduction is not the only way to solve product marketing problems .

Let me tell you a brief entrepreneurial story. Mr. Monster knew someone before, who started a business making professional clothing. This guy was very motivated. At the beginning, due to the lack of competition and his strong initiative, it quickly became a well-known clothing store in the area. But as more and more competitors entered the market, users gradually "abandoned" his products and went to other stores to buy clothes.

Later he felt that something was not right, so he slashed prices every day, but in the end still no one patronized his store. He even pulled the customer and said, "Come back soon," but it was of no avail.

(I was young and ignorant at the time, and I didn’t understand marketing, so I didn’t understand why.)

Now that I think about it, the main reason is that many people have this misunderstanding when making products or building brands - "they must make users loyal to their brand."

This was a concept that was taken for granted in China's business society in the past. Because when China's economic development was just taking off in the past, there were not many brands that were known to the public. Many companies that were the first to enter a certain category quickly became well-known brands and captured the minds of users.

With limited choices, users will naturally fall in love with a brand quickly, creating what we often call "brand loyalty." For example, the Nokia mobile phone and Kodak film that we are all familiar with.

But later, as product homogeneity became more and more serious, there were more and more better brands, which meant that our users had more choices (no longer just the few brands in the past). Nokia is no longer the only mobile phone option, as Apple and other smartphones with better experience have emerged; Kodak has also been replaced by digital technology.

At this time, where has the user loyalty gone? How could the user who once loved you deeply abandon you? !

Therefore, the needs and "loyalty" of most users are not constant. On the contrary, when we are making products or brands now, we have to be "loyal" to users - constantly iterating products or marketing according to changes in user needs and market consumption trends (I know that there are definitely some users who will always stick to a certain brand, for example, some people still miss Nokia's 5800 Symbian system phone).

“Don’t expect consumers to be loyal to our brand.”

This is a sentence said by Mr. Hua Shan (one of the founders of HUA & HUA), which personally inspired me a lot.

In short, the main reason why your product is outdated or users no longer like your product is that your product is not continuously iterated. Many people just adjust the price, which only treats the symptoms but not the root cause.

Therefore, you should constantly find ways to solve users' needs, and they will naturally continue to like and be "loyal" to your products.

Okay, now that we have spent so much space to address this conceptual problem, we can now talk about the solution to the problem.

If you want users to like your products again and be loyal to them, you need to consider aspects such as product price, promotion , and channels at the same time. But I think the most important thing is to talk about the product first. Once the product is well done, everything else will be easy.

Due to space constraints, I will share several product strategies from a product perspective to see how to make users like your product again or continue to like using it.

(Specific problems require specific analysis, the following methods can only be used as a reference)

1. Product optimization strategy

An extreme product strategy means that your product performs very well in a certain aspect, surpassing most of its peers. Many users may be attracted by the extreme aspect of your product.

For example, in terms of service: Haidilao ’s service is known as “abnormal” service in the industry, because Haidilao takes the service to the extreme. This alone has attracted a lot of users.

For example, in terms of cost-effectiveness: when it comes to cost-effectiveness, many people will think of Lei Jun’s Xiaomi brand first. In fact, there is another product that is even more cost-effective, called "Necessary": this is a C2M (consumer-factory) online shopping platform. The product claims to allow consumers to communicate directly with factories, cut out all circulation and price-marking links, produce according to demand, and cooperate with well-known brands. Production starts when there are orders, and stops when there are no orders - this achieves the ultimate in cost-effectiveness and attracts many users.

For example, there are also aspects such as product design and packaging that you can think about. Many professional drinkers complain about the taste and workmanship of liquor like Jiang Xiaobai , but Jiang Xiaobai has achieved perfection in packaging and promotion, coupled with its differentiated positioning, and is loved by a large number of young users.

2. Product Addition Strategy

What is the product addition strategy? This is the strategy proposed by Harvard Business School professor Yanmi Moon: the product adds more relevant demands to make users feel comfortable, happy and thoughtful.

For example, many public kindergartens do not provide after-school care services, and parents need to pick up and drop off their children to and from school. However, many parents are often too busy with work to pick up their children on time, so they worry about their children's safety after school (fearing that they might be abducted by others).

As a result, many private kindergartens began to add child care services to help parents who were unable to pick up their children from school in time to look after their children. They even provided dinner and played with the children until the parents came to pick them up after get off work. Such kindergartens combine the service needs of teaching and care and are loved by many parents.

Let’s take another example of a bookstore: We all know that many bookstores only provide the service of selling books, but many people buy books and want to read them, which gives rise to the related demand for “reading books”. Some bookstores combine the two related needs of buying books and reading books. Not only do they allow you to buy books, they also provide you with a reading environment, prompting you to complete the reading process. When I was in Guangzhou, I often liked to go to a bookstore called 1200 book store, which created a good reading environment - you could read after buying or buy again after reading, and it was loved by many people.

3. Product Multiplication Strategy

This product strategy is more difficult to implement than the two strategies introduced above, but if it is mastered well, the product marketing effect will be better. So the introduction to this strategy is a bit long.

Anyone who has studied mathematics knows that the causal span of multiplication is very large, unlike addition. For example, nine plus nine equals eighteen, but nine times nine suddenly becomes 81 - the same numerical basis, but the result changes from 18 to 81, a span of several times.

This gap in mathematical multiplication still exists in the products we commonly see.

Water is originally used to quench thirst, and at most provides energy replenishment, such as Pulse drinks. But suddenly a water product came out saying that it could also be an auxiliary beverage for diabetic patients and had certain "curative" functions. This has transformed the function of this water from thirst quenching to medical treatment.

If you can combine the effects of these two multiplication spans, it is also one of the ways to solve product aging.

For example, the products of a pastry shop can not only meet the functional needs of "delicious and tasty", but also provide social needs - for example, adding a unique and thoughtful design to a birthday cake, which does not increase the cost much, but can increase the user's social needs such as taking photos and forwarding, and feeling moved. Users will naturally like your products more.

(From a case shared by Teacher Liu Run on Get )

Seeing this, some people may ask: How do we know which aspects can be combined? We can't just combine two aspects randomly, right?

Yes, a random combination is what we often call a self-congratulatory product, just like a self-congratulatory copywriting - you think it is good, but users don’t feel anything.

Here is an idea I recommend: Only by discovering the irrationalities that have always existed in this product in the market and resolving the conflicts between users’ reality and ideals can you continue to gain users’ favor.

Let’s take an example mentioned by Mr. Ye Maozhong in the book “Conflict”: Friends who work out know that if you want to really get the effect of eight-pack abs, you have to sweat and work out in the gym, and this is a very boring and painful process. At most, you can get a brief moment of pleasure when you post to your Moments or when someone touches your abdominal muscles and says, "You look so strong." In the end, very few people can persist and see the results, because this process is too boring and painful.

It is human nature for us to be lazy and enjoy comfort, but we also want to have a good figure. A good figure comes from boring and painful exercise, which conflicts with people's characteristic of "liking comfort". This is an unreasonable aspect of current fitness.

A sports and entertainment center called Asphalt Green in New York, USA, solved this unreasonable conflict problem. How did they do it?

It combines fitness exercises with enjoyable games, and has been very popular among users. The gym is designed to be like a game field, with various lights and numbers around. People start squats, weightlifting, one-arm rowing and other fitness exercises according to the lights. Every time they do an action correctly, it is like leveling up and fighting monsters, and the lights and sounds tell you that you have "passed the level". Then all kinds of timely feedback and rewards stimulate you to fight harder and harder, using a gamified way to alleviate the various painful feelings of fitness in the past.

Are there any unreasonable aspects or conflicts in fitness?

For example, regarding fitness time and annual membership cards, some people bought annual membership cards but didn't go a few times a year, feeling that they were losing out, so a large number of gyms that charge a pay-per-visit fee emerged; working hours are not fixed, and people want to go to the gym late at night but find that the gym is closed, so 24-hour gyms have also appeared, allowing you to exercise at any time.

Anyway, your product may have unreasonable conflicts. If you can discover and solve them in advance, it will increase users' love for your product.

Maybe you will say, I am not that good, what should I do if I can’t discover it in advance?

At least you can follow up in time after it happens, right? Just like Haier ’s products, although they are an old company, they keep discovering unreasonable things. Even if you are not the first person to discover something unreasonable, you will make timely adjustments based on your actual situation.

I believe that after writing this, many people will still have various questions. Because an article cannot solve all the problems of a brand or product, it can only give you some inspiration. After all, the success of a product is not only due to the product itself, but also due to factors such as channels, promotion, pricing, etc., or more complicatedly, product positioning.

The above is just a summary based on recent readers’ questions for your consideration.

This article was compiled and published by @怪兽先森 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games