The most effective user growth methodology!

Isn’t the value of the product what makes users buy it? Isn’t the final factor that influences purchases the discount promotion? Is color so metaphysical?

After Facebook’s sign-up page was revamped, the sign-up rate increased. Do you believe it?

Isn’t the purpose of users going to the registration page to register? Will registration be abandoned due to layout? And due to the existence of social networks, registration is a necessity. Should we also promote conversions for such a necessity?

Now, when talking about growth, we have to talk about PMF, North Star Indicator, and AAARR. I feel that if you don’t know these words, you will fall behind the times. It's just like the elegant conversation of the Wei and Jin dynasties, with a little bit of Wu Shi San added.

Growth is not that mysterious or metaphysical. Growth is actually what we have been doing.

Think about your own KPIs and OKRs. Which one does not focus on attracting new customers, promoting activation, retention, conversion, and dissemination? The goal of each iteration of the product manager is to improve these indicators. Isn’t this growth?

We have been working on growth all the time. The emergence of growth hackers has made the concept of growth full of mystery. It seems that there are thousands of routines leading to thousands of Pandora's boxes of growth.

So, forget about the empty tricks, what is the most effective growth methodology? In my opinion, there are two points.

First point: benefits

If there is no benefit, don't mess around. It’s already 2012, and the era of scanning a QR code to follow and receive a doll is over.

Before you start growing, consider what’s attractive from the user’s perspective. Why should users +1 a product’s data? There is no love without reason. Users will not take action unless they see tangible benefits. At this time, users are not novices or fools.

So, how many resources can a company give to promote growth? The first thing to do to achieve growth is to try to obtain considerable resources for the project. The task of a product manager is to maximize the use of resources and improve ROI, not to get something for nothing.

Routines are the embodiment of interests and packaging. The core of the routine is still interest. Why can Pinduoduo’s bargaining technique quickly attract new users in its circle of friends, while the effects of thousands of imitators on the market are hard to describe?

Pinduoduo is real and you can bargain down the price to 0 yuan without much effort. At least it is relatively easy in the early stages. Why would friends who help you bargain also start bargaining when they see a product that you can get for free through bargaining? Because it's attractive. Combined with the near-completeness of completion and the sunk cost strategy, Pinduoduo is so attractive that people both love and hate it.

Second point: scene

Only benefits may be too blunt, and appropriate scenarios are needed to give users a decent reason. After all, people are in trouble and cannot be demoted. Give users 9.9 yuan and let them use our products? Users may ignore us. The scene is to let everything go naturally.

The process of growth for a product manager is to find the right scenario and use certain benefits to achieve the desired results.

Provide user scenarios. In the early days of PayPal's promotion, the cost of acquiring a customer was $10 (a $10 gift was given for registration), but the effect was not very good. Until they flirtatiously buy all the items on eBay that are priced below $10, and then tell the sellers that they can only pay via PayPal. Do you accept that? Most certainly accept it. PayPal gave away the small items to charities for free and gained some fame.

A scenario for users to share. Airbnb, you can get travel vouchers by inviting friends to register. The invitation copy was changed from "Invite friends to get coupons" to "Send travel coupons to friends", and the click rate of the button increased by 50%. Changing the copy here is just superficial. What is important is the change of scene, from a scene of making a profit for oneself to a scene of bringing warmth to friends. A legitimate reason to help users express love and positive energy.

The scenario is where the value of a product manager is reflected. A suitable scenario can achieve great results with minimal effort. Therefore, the core of growth is not the color of the button or the layout of the page, but the benefits and scenarios. In the right situation, use the right benefits to guide users to do what they want. Let nature take its course and rule by doing nothing.

But the above two points alone are not enough. Before growth, two prerequisites need to be met: one determines the effect of growth, and the other determines the value of growth.

Prerequisites for growth

Products must have a tendency to spread themselves in order to achieve growth.

A usable product is a prerequisite for self-propagation. Only products whose value has been verified can gain a foothold in the market.

PMF is about validation of value, not growth. PMF is a prerequisite for product establishment, not a prerequisite for growth. How can we talk about growth if the product is not established? Therefore, the correct approach to talking about PMF is product, not growth.

Create a trend of self-propagation. If there is no premise of self-propagation for growth, you can only take medicine and cannot stop.

Once the medication is stopped, the data will stagnate and will not be able to reach the state of growth flywheel. The more realistic growth is from 1 to 10, rather than from 0 to 1.

The product must have a retention mechanism to make growth valuable.

There are so many products that were once popular, who still remembers Face Meng and Footprints? Without retention, growth is meaningless.

User retention does not rely on routines, but on sincerity. Although Pinduoduo’s group buying and bargaining are full of tricks, its hundreds of billions of subsidies are real retention. Sincere subsidies allow users to buy affordable goods. It delivers value in subsequent contacts, so Pinduoduo is really good.

Summarize

Growth is a simple thing. It’s not that mysterious and complicated.

By leveraging the product's self-propagation and retention, and delivering benefits in the right scenarios, growth will come naturally. So, forget all the formulas and routines. Just be kind.

Author: Wang Hai

Source: Wang Hai