Uncover the secrets of Tik Tok’s explosive growth and addiction!

In the past six months, especially during the epidemic, my circle of friends has been almost flooded with TikTok, and even my parents are addicted to TikTok every day. Although I am not a Tik Tok user, I am very curious about what kind of magic this product has that makes my friends around me tremble non-stop.

Judging from the data in the figure below, Douyin's development can be divided into three stages: the product polishing period (September 2016 to February 2017, with downloads in the thousands), the operation-driven rapid growth period (March 2017 to January 2018, rapid growth from thousands to tens of millions), and the stable period of product self-growth (2018 to present).

Source: Qimai Data

This article will focus on analyzing how Douyin made users addicted through product design in the first two periods, and how it achieved explosive growth in the operation stage.

1. Product polishing period

Douyin’s product polishing period lasted nearly 6 months. During this stage, Douyin did not acquire users on a large scale, but focused more on studying user needs and the core gameplay of the product to verify the feasibility of the MVP product. By constantly adjusting product strategies, we verify effective means of activating users to ensure that users do not easily leave after they come, that is, to cultivate user habits and make users addicted.

(1) User group and demand analysis

Tik Tok's initial target user group was mainly college students born in the 1990s and 1995s and young people just entering the society in first- and second-tier cities. They pursue individuality, are unconventional, and like to express themselves. At the same time, they live in an era of fast pace and fragmented time, and their minds are often in a tense state, which requires effective release and relief. There is one characteristic among this group of people: no matter what the scenario, subway, bus, walking, most of them wear headphones, and music is a necessity in their lives .

Tik Tok took music as its entry point and began to innovate products in the niche field of music short videos, fully meeting the needs of young people in pursuit of trends and freshness, and creating a music creative short video social software for young people .

Image source: "TikTok Marketing Practical Guide" e-book

(2) Addictive product design

We have become accustomed to opening WeChat on our phones as soon as we open our eyes in the morning, checking our friends’ Moments and the headlines, and watching TikTok or other entertainment apps after get off work in the evening to relieve fatigue from a day’s work. This unconscious behavioral habit is an addiction. When a product enters the user's "habit zone", the product gains lasting vitality.

How to design a closed-loop product logic that promotes users to develop habits and dependence? The book "Addicted" mentions a concise hook addiction model, which is divided into four stages: trigger, behavior, variable rewards, and investment. We will use TikTok to analyze how it completes the logical loop of product design based on the addiction model.

Image source: Addicted e-book

a) Trigger Trigger is the inducement that prompts a certain behavior, which can be divided into external trigger and internal trigger. External triggering: Tik Tok’s app icon design is very cool. It triggers target users externally through visual stimulation and guides them to use the product. At the same time, using music short videos to express oneself also meets the spiritual needs of young people. This is an internal trigger. b) Action

Behavior, after being triggered, is action. Behavior must have both motivation and ability, that is, driven by motivation, the user must have sufficient ability to complete the action. For content production users, Douyin provides templates for making short videos and space for secondary video creation, which increases user motivation while reducing user usage costs. For ordinary users, full-screen 15-second short videos of surprises, funny stories, plot twists, etc. are played one after another like slides, making people unable to stop watching .

c) Variable rewards

After the action, users will be given various rewards, including social rewards, prey rewards, and self-rewards. Users can get likes, comments, and attention from others by posting short videos they have shot, which is a social reward; during the use process, they can obtain more short video content, which is a prey reward. These varied rewards encourage users to open and use TikTok constantly.

d) Input

The last stage of the addiction model is when the user provides his personal data, time, energy, money, etc. to a product. When users encounter short videos they like on TikTok, they will collect them, comment on them, and follow them. These investments will have an impact on the first three stages of the addiction model. TikTok will recommend more content, making triggers and behaviors more likely to occur, and the rewards will be more attractive .

Based on a model with four continuous cycles of trigger, action, variable rewards and investment, we design products to cultivate users' habit of using TikTok products and even make them addicted.

2. Operation-driven high-speed growth period

In terms of product design, Douyin has completed the exploration of core gameplay that makes users addicted and the ultimate product experience, laying a good foundation for subsequent user retention. From 2017 to 2018, within just one year, we achieved explosive growth from the thousands to tens of millions. In June 2018, the daily active users exceeded 150 million and the monthly active users exceeded 300 million, achieving PMF (product market fit). What kind of operational promotion strategies and growth methods are behind this?

According to the classic user growth model AAARR: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, and Referral, let us analyze the operational methods behind each step of this growth.

Image source: Baidu

(1) Attract new customers

Attracting new users means acquiring new users. During this stage, Douyin supported KOLs by cooperating with MCN agencies, shooting videos in collaboration with MCN agencies or traffic stars, and publishing them on mainstream video platforms for publicity and traffic. On March 13, 2017, Yue Yunpeng reposted a short video with the Douyin watermark, which was reposted 5,083 times and received 83,175 likes. At the same time, it sponsored popular variety shows with similar product tones, such as Happy Camp, The Rap of China, Street Dance of China, etc., which greatly increased the brand's exposure and achieved large-scale user acquisition.

(2) Promote activation

Activation promotion means how to turn users into active users. Douyin has hired a large number of professional dancers or music experts to shoot videos and launched various topic challenge activities. Users follow suit and imitate the trends based on the topic posts, using elements in the videos to create their own style, which has greatly increased the user activity of Douyin. For example, the topic #Welcome to Lilliput# had 81,386 participants and the video playback volume reached 930 million times.

(3) Retention

Retention means enhancing user stickiness to the product and improving retention rate. In this regard, Douyin, with the help of Toutiao's technical background, continuously improves its recommendation algorithm, grasps user preferences, and does a good job in user reach and refined content push. Allow users to keep watching their favorite videos or easily shoot satisfactory works.

(4) Conversion

Conversion means monetization. With the continuous increase in the number of Douyin users, more and more brands and advertisers choose to carry out application activities on Douyin, so Douyin’s main monetization method is advertising. There are three main forms of advertising placement channels for Douyin: APP splash screen ads, creative video ads in collaboration with Douyin influencers, and challenges initiated by brands. For TikTok, based on the underlying advertising technology support (ad sorting, user tag algorithm, etc.), the right ads are shown to the right people . Advertisers use indicators such as exposure, clicks, playbacks, and interactions to comprehensively evaluate the marketing communication effect and conversion rate.

(5) Dissemination

Viral communication based on social networks, including social software such as WeChat, QQ, and Weibo, has become an effective way to acquire customers. Douyin itself has achieved the ultimate in product design and experience during the product polishing period. It is deeply loved by users and has a good reputation. Users spontaneously share it with friends or Moments.

From the self-propagation of the product to the acquisition of new customers, a virtuous cycle is formed, continuously expanding the user base of the product.

3. Summary and reflections

Overall, Douyin’s development model is somewhat different from the “speed is invincible” rule of many previous Internet products. It first focuses on polishing products that make users addicted and exploring the core gameplay of the product. Only when product-market fit is achieved can a multi-party operation strategy be used to achieve scale expansion of the product . This approach is very worthy of our study and learning.

Since the author is in the mobile Internet security industry, when doing product experience and analysis, he also considered it from a security perspective:

Privacy and security, suggestions for users. As a music short video social product, Douyin can increase product stickiness by searching for friends in the address book in its product function design, so it will apply for permission to read the user's address book. Once this permission is granted, it means that Douyin can obtain your mobile phone address book data. Whether it only serves the social function of the product needs to be questioned. If you are not an avid user of TikTok, it is recommended that you grant address book permissions with caution.

Content safety, product recommendations. The threshold for Douyin users to post videos is not high, and as the number of users increases, the content will become more complex. We hope to be able to do better screening, security testing and positive guidance in content review . For example, when I search for the keyword "beauty", terms such as "beauty bikini", "beauty sexy", "beauty hot dance" will appear, and the content of the video will also cause some discomfort.

If the water is too clear, there will be no fish. How to strike a balance between user experience and commercial value is also a question worth pondering...

Author: Xiaotan

Source: Xiaotan