User operation, how to achieve a breakthrough from 0 to 1?

Users, as one of the most important factors in products and operations , have always been a topic that Internet practitioners must talk about. Many people even believe that the essence of the Internet is user thinking. So how should an operations staff do a good job of user operations ? Below I would like to share with you my personal understanding, which is suitable for product and operation personnel of -1 to 3 years old. You are also welcome to leave a message for discussion.

1. What is user operation?

First of all, it is customary to do a conceptual analysis. What is user operation? Operation refers to all the means and methods of connecting and maintaining the connection between products and users. User operation is to put users in the highest position among these means and methods. Activity operation and content operation can be said to be subordinate to user operation. So what does user operation include? All user operations are centered around three core goals:

User scale, that is, to maximize the target users of the product;

Active user scale, that is, keep your users active at a suitable frequency (it is not the case that the more active the better, the key is to make users think of you first when they need you);

User commercialization means realizing product revenue through users, regardless of whether it is front-end charging or back-end charging.

Although different products may have different focuses on user operations, they can almost all be divided into these three core goals. Because any commercial Internet product must commercialize users to achieve profitability, and commercialization must ensure the active scale of users. Products without activity will find it difficult to find sources of revenue, and the active scale of users is limited by the scale of your registered users.

2. User Operation Stage

Here we need to understand a concept. Just as products have a life cycle, user operations also have obvious stages. This is because the requirements for user operations in different product life cycles are definitely different. For example, it is almost impossible to achieve large-scale user growth for a product in its decline. The product life cycle determines the stage of operation. In this article, we divide it into three stages based on the three core goals of user operation:

(1) User from 0-1 stage

This stage corresponds to the product exploration period. During this period, the primary goal of product and operation is to determine who my users are? How should I satisfy my target users? As for user operations, this can be broken down into: finding the right target group - matching the needs of target users - cultivating the loyalty of target users - bundling core users.

To put it simply, we need to find our target group based on the positioning of the product. The positioning of the product may change at any time during this process. Then we need to screen and match our users in the target group, because not all users in the target group will use our products at this stage (users are also classified, such as innovative adopters, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and lagging adopters). After matching the target users, it is natural to cultivate user loyalty and slowly form word of mouth. This is a routine that everyone is familiar with, and many people stop at this step. But in fact, there is another very important step - bundling core users. What are core users? For example, the big Vs on Weibo or Zhihu. This group of people is related to whether the entire user group can grow and retain on a large scale. After completing these four steps, the user operation ecosystem can enter a self-circulating process, and the product exploration period has completed the verification and can be promoted on a large scale.

(2) Users from stage 1 to n

This stage corresponds to the growth and maturity stage of the product. The issues to be solved are the growth model and user activity. The focus of user operation is very clear: increase revenue, reduce costs, and maintain activity. Open source means finding ways to open up channels and acquire more users; saving money means preventing user loss and keeping users; maintaining activity means making users active on the product and keeping them active on a sustained basis. This stage is relatively easy to understand, but it is also a difficult process because the practices of different products vary greatly, and there are also some limitations in resources, timing and market environment.

(3) User commercialization stage

User commercialization usually takes place during the maturity stage of a product. Of course, some consumer products will also begin some commercialization based on core values ​​during the growth stage. In terms of commercialization, it can be divided into two directions: front-end and back-end. The front end can be said to be the charges directly to consumers, which generally include value-added services and user payments, such as QQ membership; the back end is the charges from the platform, such as advertising, commissions, service fees, etc. The point about commercialization is a natural extension of the product, so I won’t explain it in detail here. Our focus is still on the first two points.

3. How to carry out user operations well?

Having introduced the previous concepts, let’s talk about how to do user operations in detail. It is divided into two stages according to 0-1 and 1-1-n:

(1) Achieving a 0-1 Breakthrough

From 0 to 1 is the most important stage for a product. This stage determines whether the product needs to continue to survive. So how should we do this? Let's analyze it in 4 parts:

① Find the right target group

Regardless of whether it is a product or an operation, the most important thing at this time is to find your target users. Products should be designed and developed based on identifying target users. Operations should find out where the target users are, let the target users use their products, and then provide feedback on their opinions. This may also involve changes in target users. So what kind of target users should we look for?

The first thing we need to do here is to choose the right market. Our Mr. Lei Jun said it very well - don't use tactical diligence to cover up strategic laziness. Choosing the right market can make your future life easier. So what is a good market like? I will not go into details, but I think there are at least two key points to a good market. First, the market should be neither too big nor too small. If it is too big, it will be difficult to beat the giants in the early stage, or you will face a large wave of competitors. If it is too small, you may not be able to support yourself. Second, the market must be undergoing major changes, whether it is technological changes, changes in government supervision, or changes in business models. In short, if it is not undergoing major changes, it will be difficult for you to compete with the old players who have been in this market for a long time. For example, Didi took advantage of the changes in mobile Internet and became a platform with more than 10 million drivers in just a few years. If there was no mobile Internet, Didi would have needed a lot of manpower, material resources and time to reach its current scale.

After finding the market, the next step is to define your users and scenarios. This topic is a long-standing one and is the main responsibility of the product. I will not elaborate on it here. Let’s talk about operations. When the product has determined the target users, what operations need to do is to find the correct user group. Everyone knows that users are just an abstract concept, or a collection of certain needs, but back to the real world, who are the users? How many users are there? Where are the users? These are all things we should consider. After thinking about this question, given the stage we are in, another key question arises: Who will be our first users? Because the product is in an exploratory stage, its functions are very imperfect or it only has one core function. Not all users can accept the product at this time. According to the previous user classification, generally innovators and early users will be happy to use our products at this time. Other users may not want to use it or will quickly leave because they are not used to it.

The first batch of users should be users with strong demand for the product, who will spend time and money trying to solve their needs. For example, the first batch of users of overseas shopping may be maternal and child consumers. In order to buy milk powder with high nutritional value for their babies, parents will spend a lot of money to ask relatives and friends to purchase foreign milk powder for them, or even spend time to buy it abroad in person. But if you can provide them with a better solution of finding a purchasing agent or going out to buy it in person at this time, will users be willing to buy it? Yes, they will even have a higher tolerance for the product. This is one of our ideas for finding the first batch of users.

②Acquire early users with low cost and accuracy

Now that we know our target users, how do we find the first batch of users? After all, products in the exploration stage are generally relatively poor at this time, and they cannot afford to spend a lot of money to acquire users. Moreover, the requirement for users at this stage is accuracy, not quantity, so when acquiring early users, what they pursue is accuracy and low cost.

Here is a reverse thinking method to deduce where our users are, such as how to find the maternal and infant consumers mentioned above:

As shown in the figure, we can divide the needs of target users into online and offline scenarios, and then find places where users gather based on the upstream and downstream scenarios of the needs. After discovering the gathering places of users, this is the channel we want to acquire users. Which channel to use depends on the resources and talent allocation of the team. For example, if I have cooperation resources with the hospital, then I will naturally choose to find target users in the prenatal examination stage of the hospital. For example, if my team is good at producing content, then I will choose to make conversions in the maternal and child community. This is also a process for each team to select, evaluate and optimize channels based on its own situation.

After finding the users, another factor comes into play - scenario. What actions do we want users to complete in what scenario? What kind of behavior is consistent with the core values ​​of our product? This is also what operations need to think about and guide users to complete.

③ Cultivate the loyalty of target users

After going through the previous steps, we gradually have users using our products. At this point, as our first batch of seed users, we need to cultivate these users into our loyal users. Because if these users cannot become our loyal users, or we are not the users' first choice, then it means that there is a problem with our product, and we need to keep modifying it to meet the needs of users, or even start over.

At the same time, we also need to establish a complete mechanism to cultivate loyal users in this process. This is the most important thing. We must be prepared for large-scale new users in the future. If we don’t do a good job of retention at this time, the more new users we attract in the future, the more users will be lost. Isn’t it a waste of resources and harmful to the product (the impact of offending a user is far greater than gaining a user’s reputation).

To gain a user's loyalty, we need to go through these 5 stages:

No loyalty - habit - satisfaction - with emotion - loyalty.

When a user uses your product for the first time, you need to get the user accustomed to using your product. This requires the product to be easy to use, available, and useful. You also need operations to establish the user's mindset that I am your first choice, so that the user will think of your product first when they need it. For example, for previous overseas shopping products, you need to convey to users in channel delivery, landing pages, startup pages and other related copy: Using our product, you can buy imported milk powder safely, affordably, conveniently and quickly. The premise of habit is to provide users with matching content and services. By grasping the strong demands of users, guiding them, conducting differentiated marketing , and establishing user minds, it is generally not too difficult to cultivate habits.

Satisfaction means making users feel satisfied with your service, which is the basis of loyalty. If users are dissatisfied, it is impossible to cultivate usage habits. How to satisfy users specifically is a test of your understanding of the business and user experience . Many experiences are built on tiny details. You can draw out the core behaviors of users at each step of the product, and then think about what users need at each stage, whether what you provide can satisfy users, and how to satisfy users based on their expectations to achieve the best results?

Let’s take the example of overseas shopping. The steps a maternal and infant consumer goes through when entering a website are: register—log in—view products—purchase products—pay for the order—receive the products—confirm the order.

In this process, for example, when registering, consumers don’t want to waste time on registration. Do you want to provide third-party login or password-free login using a mobile phone number? For another example, when viewing products, how do you let users find the products as quickly as possible? Do you recommend or classify the products? If the product is out of stock, do we need to send a text message to notify the user when it arrives? Although these processes are designed by the product, the control of details still needs to be done by the operations team, because they are the people who deal with users the most and are the ones who should understand users the best.

Having emotion means making users feel emotional about your products and services, which means you have to humanize your products. This is quite rare and is something that most people in China do not do well. So how do we personalize our products? The key is to interact and communicate with users, so that users can feel that you are not a cold machine, but that you have emotions and you will express your emotions to users. So how do you do this? Different products have different focuses. Social products need to combine users' social chains with product emotions. For example, Momo is a stranger social network, so the operation must guide social behaviors such as various groups and nearby people to give users the feeling that you are introducing them to new friends they want. When users can realize that friends are good through groups, etc., their emotions for friends will naturally extend to the product. Let’s talk about overseas shopping and e-commerce products. What users want is to buy the products they want at an affordable price. So you have to understand what users want and save their time. For example, operations can organize theme promotions for maternal and infant consumers to let users know what they should buy for their babies and buy them at a better price. Some emotions are not only established online, but also offline. For example, JD.com has nearly 100,000 couriers. When they deliver the goods to your door, you see the familiar red work clothes. The speed is the same as always, which gives people a convenient and fast experience. In short, having emotions means that you have to give users an identity, and then communicate with users based on your own positioning, allowing users to have more valuable interactions with your products. Of course, emotions also require investment of manpower and material resources to sustain operations. I am not very familiar with this point. If you have different ideas, please leave a message to communicate.

Once users have feelings, it will be easy for them to be loyal to the product, because once they have feelings, you are likely to be the only choice of the users. However, you also need to design means to maintain user loyalty. Have you found that this routine is like the process of falling in love? . . .

④Bundle core users

The core users mentioned here refer to users who will have a great impact on the core business of the product, such as KOLs of community products, active comment buyers of e-commerce products, and big spenders of game products. When we proceed to the first three steps, we have a certain stickiness with the target users. However, to maintain the loyalty of all users, it requires a huge investment. For a startup company, resources are limited in all aspects. All we can do is to keep the core users active and prepare for the subsequent 1-n. For example, when shopping overseas, which one is more important, a buyer who likes to leave comments or a buyer who just wants to shop? You can judge for yourself.

So how should we bind our core users? This is when we talk about user incentives. The so-called user incentives are essentially taking advantage of human desires, such as greed, vanity, laziness, etc., and combining them with the core business of the product to reward user behaviors that are in line with the value of the product. Commonly used methods include points, user levels, gift giving, exclusive functions, reputation building, etc. Different types of products have different incentives for user behavior. Community products will incentivize users to produce content, and e-commerce products will incentivize users to purchase products and leave comments. The purpose is to incentivize users to take beneficial actions.

The difficulty of user motivation lies in what kind of incentives should users enjoy? This tests an operator's understanding of human nature. After a target user performs a behavior that he thinks is natural, he can get the desired incentive. This is a surprise for the user, and this surprise will continue to motivate the user to continue the previous behavior. Regarding human nature, I think many games do a very good job, especially in taking advantage of user vanity, such as Honor of Kings. In the games from the first ten years, no one would have thought that skins could make money, but Honor of Kings can make users feel extremely happy when they get a new set of skins. I suggest that everyone can discover more incentives of human nature from games.

I have finished writing about the 0-1 stage here. I will take a break and write about how to do user operations from the 1-n stage. The above views are based on my own learning and work, and I have also referred to the experience of many predecessors. If you have different opinions, you are welcome to communicate~

Author: Guan Zhuya

Source: Guan Zhuya