3 Steps to User Growth Strategy

User growth strategies need to be changed according to different industries. Of course, the marketing system remains unchanged, but the content carrier changes.

During the process of product iteration, product managers are always accompanied by the question of "how to achieve user growth after the version is launched". But do you know that there are five types of growth: "activity", "new customers", "retention", "monetization" and "recommendation", so every time you vow to set a demand target, what kind of growth can it actually bring?

When talking about user growth, we have to talk about one company - Pinduoduo. What kind of growth strategy has allowed this company to reach 400 million active users (DAU is about 130 million) in just four years, and in the near-monopoly industry of "e-commerce"?

Looking back at these e-commerce platforms, especially Pinduoduo, it seems that the logic of doing e-commerce is to "add a shopping scene to the game." Group buying, flash sales, bargaining, support, and lucky draws for users are all a game. What users get is the money-saving experience brought by group buying, the social experience brought by invitations, the entertainment experience brought by assistance, and the surprise experience brought by lucky draws.

Pinduoduo jokingly calls it a gamified shopping experience , which seems to be true. In essence, it is also a marketing service that is direct enough to users (group buying, support, bargaining, lucky draws, etc.). Don’t forget that marketing is only the basis for user growth and acquisition. Behind it, there are also operational results of retention, activity, and recall, as well as operational management among new users, active users, and churned users.

Product managers all know that growth strategy is essentially a content carrier plus a marketing system method . Marketing methods are nothing more than how to give users excitement through rewards and incentives, but the content carriers may be high-quality courses, fun games, efficient tools, etc. If we count the content carriers, the most widely used is still gamification scenario design.

So, I want to use a case to illustrate how a business can be gamified. In fact, through this example, the carriers for other contents later are just reskinned.

• Case: The company’s core business is K12 online education products. Live classes are the current core product, and the service model is to connect teachers and students.
• Goal: Increase user base by 20%. (The product is currently in the growth stage).
• Strategy: The core of educational products is the high quality of content. How to get a piece of the pie from industry giants? While producing high-quality content, think about acquiring customers through the Internet. For example, the user operation model is a relatively weak part of the giants, so the product strategy can also be considered from the user operation level. The bottom layer of user operation is product customer acquisition and user activation.
• Positioning considerations: There are two ways to acquire customers: advertising and content. The essence of advertising is to spend money to buy users, which is mainly a matter of funding and user stickiness, so we position ourselves as "content acquisition."

Another thing to think about is that active learning is always anti-human for K12 students, so where does "content acquisition" start? What kind of content do students like? Will you take the initiative to participate?

Let’s talk about it from three levels: product thinking strategy, product content (gamification) strategy, and product growth strategy:

1. Product thinking strategy

The users of the product are K12 students (the core users are 6-15 years old), and the paying group is parents (average age is 30-42 years old).

In the past, parents would take the initiative to enroll their children in classes, but these were mainly offline courses, and online education enrollment was relatively weak. The user conversion cost is high, so this is the main reason why the customer acquisition cost of online education is high.

The best way to create a scenario where children want to learn is through a gamified experience. It can be understood as gamification experience + high-quality courses. For example, similar to Jiliwawa, Xiaoxiang Programming, etc.

2. Product Content (Gamification) Strategy

For products that provide gamification experience for children, most of them focus on a map-unlocking level-breaking mode. Players unlock new maps by breaking through levels until they piece together a complete map. The corresponding game interactions include reward systems, team systems, etc. Then integrate it into the course, that is, add the task mode.

The game as a whole is organized through a virtual medium using a mind map:

3. Product Growth Strategy

1. Active growth strategy

• Establish a virtual medium, such as the growth value mentioned above, obtain growth value through tasks, consume growth value through the mall and unlocking new maps, and match different values ​​accordingly (common ones are divided into regular tasks and limited tasks).
• By intervening in the lottery system, different numbers of draws can be given based on multiple dimensions such as active time and check-in time.

The purpose of daily active users is to allow users to complete tasks every day, develop a strong awareness and preference for our products, content, and brand, and become active users and paying users after a certain period of time. In terms of game psychology, we use a stable sense of gain, a sense of random surprise, and the fear of loss to stimulate users to participate every day.

2. New customer growth strategy

• Invite users. When you invite a new user, both parties can gain M growth points.
• For users who sign up for courses, they can ask their friends to help them sign up with low thresholds and prices.

The overall marketing system is built on the basis of rewards for both parties, and acquiring new users through old users and task settings is the core strategy for attracting new users. This is the key to reducing customer acquisition costs. In game design, we have increased the weight of new users.

3. Retention growth strategy

• Rankings, such as the highest growth value, the most unlocked maps, and other multi-dimensional rankings, and establish corresponding reward mechanisms.
• Random rewards: a corresponding reward mechanism is provided according to the different lengths of time users are active in the product and the courses they have studied.

The strategy for retention growth is mainly based on a sense of showing off and a sense of gain. Especially for K12 students, they can gain knowledge while also showing off.

4. Monetization strategy

• Course monetization, in essence, online education platforms monetize through courses.
• Marketing monetization, marketing monetization is essentially course monetization, which is achieved by purchasing courses at low prices through marketing means.

The key to improving monetization conversion rate is "logical and relevant", which is the greatest value of gamification design. Without a gamification scenario, the entire conversion model can only be advertising (traffic) - conversion (sales), and the consequence is high traffic costs and inefficient conversion rates.

The following are some of the cases we have done in the past:

Of course, user growth strategies for products vary from industry to industry. However, the surface marketing system will not change, what will change is the way of content carrier.

While we are thinking about product structure, we also need to prepare for user growth.

Author: John

WeChat public account: Product Dog Gathering Place