Understand the growth gossip model of user operations in one article!

The Growth Gossip Model can be described in one sentence as a growth methodology that uses supply and demand analysis to find growth points throughout the user's life cycle. Core: The aha moment is the point that makes people scream about the product, and it is the point that truly attracts users.

Outer circle: demand side, that is, user side. The user's life cycle is divided into eight parts: cognition, contact, usage, first order, repeat purchase, habit, sharing and churn.

Inner circle: The supply side, that is, the product operator, is about how to solve the growth problems encountered in this link.

1. Cognition - How to make the marketing department go from spending money to making money

What is cognition? It means letting users know about the product before they come into contact with it. Generally, user awareness is achieved through branding.

1. Purpose of the brand

Core question: What is the purpose of branding? What to serve? In the logic of growth, the purpose of the brand is to serve the core logic of growth, and the core logic of growth is the North Star indicator. In other words, when doing brand work, you must do it around the North Star indicator.

2. Brand positioning

Positioning theory is a very important way to build a brand. Positioning theory is roughly equivalent to category theory. If a company can roughly equate its brand to a certain category, then positioning is almost successful. When we are doing positioning, we must achieve one of the three bans (banning categories, banning characteristics, and banning scenarios).

Gree has, to some extent, banned the air-conditioning category. In the scenario of drinking beverages while driving long distances, it has basically been banned by Red Bull. When girls need to consider safety when taking a taxi at night, they think of Shenzhou. This is called a banning feature. When we choose a sub-category, we must comply with the principles of segmentation, focus and narrowness, because the cost will be lower and the cost of user awareness will also be lower.

2. Contact-fission, what is more important behind group buying?

Contact is the encounter between the product and the user. The methodology used in this link is called traffic operation.

1. Three traffic modes

(1) Winning traffic: refers to ways to obtain traffic at little or no cost: fission, distribution, free, group buying, bargaining, distribution, SEO, etc.

(2) Purchasing traffic: There are many channels for purchasing traffic, such as large platforms such as Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, and many network alliances. When purchasing traffic, one standard must be met, that is, the profit created by the user's entire life cycle (LTV) must be greater than the user acquisition cost (CAC). The larger the better.

Generally, businesses need to meet the requirement of LTV being greater than three times of CAC. When purchasing traffic, four dimensions need to be considered: cost, efficiency, scale, and accuracy.

(3) Private domain traffic: How to operate your own traffic pool after obtaining traffic is called private domain traffic operation. Private domain traffic does not require payment and can be used freely. It refers to users deposited in private channels such as own apps, public accounts, WeChat groups, personal WeChat accounts, etc.

Compared with public domain traffic platforms such as Taobao, JD.com, Baidu, and Weibo, it belongs to the merchants' "privatized assets."

2. How to obtain traffic through fission

(1) The most important factor driving growth

What is the most important factor driving growth? Two words: dividends. The most common way of growth - fission, comes from the social dividend of WeChat.

(2) Four elements of fission

Participation motivation: To analyze who will be motivated to participate in this event, it must be a specific group of people.

Incentive bait: What can be used to stimulate this specific group of people? Is it money, honor, or some other factor that can motivate him?

Seed users: Which group of people will be driven first to help initiate activities during a cold start?

Logical closed loop: The logical closed loop can achieve one goal, that is, new users can become old users, re-initiate activities and invite new users.

(3) Fission tools

3. Usage - How to lower the user's usage threshold

1. User Behavior Triangle Model

If a user has a strong motivation for a behavior and is capable of completing it, and there is a trigger that can stimulate him, then this user is very likely to use the product.

2. Seven ways to enhance user motivation

In most cases, the problem is not with the user’s ability but with their motivation. For example, if the product is not a necessity for users and it doesn’t matter whether they use it or not, what we need to do at this time is to enhance the user’s motivation.

(1) Contrast effect : For example, if you want to lose weight but lack motivation, after watching a video online of a person’s transformation from before to after losing weight, your motivation is immediately strengthened. This is called the contrast effect.

(2) Environmental pressure : This is based on a psychological effect called the bandwagon effect. For example, Didi has an advertising slogan "Three out of four friends have Didi", which creates an environmental pressure for users and makes people feel that "more people are using us, so come and use us too."

(3) Benchmark effect : The benchmark effect refers to using super users, KOLs or celebrities to attract users. For example, a business school tweeted: "Those who have applied for this business school and successfully passed the interview include Yu Minhong, Qiu Chen, Hu Jianbiao..."

(4) Reciprocity effect : The reciprocity effect is based on a psychology that says: people are always reluctant to owe others and are always willing to give back to those who are good to them. For example, there is a trick in religious fundraising: before asking people to donate money, you often give them something first. Statistics show that the amount of money raised by giving a flower first and then getting a donation is much greater than the amount raised by directly asking the other party for donations.

(5) 59-second effect : A survey of marathon race statistics found that the number of people who finished in 3 hours and 59 minutes was far greater than the number of people who finished in 4 hours and 1 minute. Usage: Give the user a small task. This task can be accomplished with just a little effort on his part. For example, "Add 2 yuan and get a free side dish."

(6) Role stimulation : When we are a natural person, we may not have any feelings towards a certain product. However, when you are put into a certain role, you will find that your perception is different. This is where role stimulation comes into play. For example, a real estate advertisement says: "A child's childhood is only a few years long, don't you let him live better?" In this way, when users put themselves in the role of the father, their decision on the house will have an additional dimension.

(7) Creating scarcity : Creating scarcity is to take advantage of the consumer psychology of “scarcity makes things valuable” to create a phenomenon of supply exceeding demand, thereby increasing user motivation. For example: A small store bought too much sugar and couldn’t sell it, so there were eight words written on a sign: Purchase limit of sugar: two kilograms per store. As a result, the sugar was sold out in less than two days.

4. First order - how to get users to pay, should we reduce the price?

If a user is motivated by a product but doesn’t buy it, why? There is only one reason - users still have concerns.
Therefore, the underlying thinking in the first order stage is to eliminate users' concerns. Users have only two concerns: the first is price concern, and the second is trust concern.

1. Price concerns eliminated

When we address users' price concerns, in addition to price reduction promotions, we can also take advantage of some user psychological effects.
(1) Mental Accounting

Girls will care about one or two dollars when buying groceries. But when buying luxury goods, 100 or 200 yuan is not a big deal. Why? Because it is in different mental accounts. What merchants need to do is to put the products into the user’s psychological account where they are willing to spend money.

(2) Loss Aversion

When people face the same amount of gains and losses at the same time (regardless of order), the negative utility brought by the losses far exceeds the positive utility brought by the gains. Users always instinctively avoid losses. When we go to buy melon seeds, we also weigh a pound of melon seeds. The boss will give you a small amount at first, and then slowly add more. Another boss will give you more and then pick out the melon seeds.

We have a different perception of this boss. We would think that the boss who gives less and adds more melon seeds is more kind.

(3) Sunk costs

Sunk costs are costs of time, money, energy or emotion that have already been incurred and cannot be recovered. The higher the sunk cost, the harder it is for users to leave. Case: Someone went to Hainan for a trip and fell in love with a house on impulse. He paid a deposit of 2,000 yuan, but regretted it when he got home because he seldom went to Hainan and it was difficult for him to use the house. However, if I didn’t buy this house, the 2,000 yuan would have been wasted, so I spent an extra 500,000 yuan to buy this house.

(4) Proportion bias

People are more sensitive to proportions than to numbers themselves.

Discounts are suitable for products with low total value, such as clothes, books, etc., because customers will feel more sensitive to 30% or 40% off. Direct price reduction/instant discount is applicable to products with a slightly higher total value, such as mobile phones, home appliances, etc. The scope of direct discount is sometimes no different from a 10% discount.

However, customers will not feel anything if there is a discount, but will feel it more if the price is directly reduced by a certain amount. Prepayment is suitable for goods with a large total price, such as houses, luxury cars, etc. Suppose you deposit 5,000 yuan to buy a house and then exchange it for 50,000 yuan. In fact, the total value of 5,000 is not even a fraction of the house, but the customer feels it more because the price has increased tenfold.

(5) Price Anchor

It is difficult for users to judge the absolute value of a product, and they often judge the price range of the product by comparing the prices of other products. For example, when selling a medical examination product worth one thousand yuan, tell the customer: "You spend six thousand yuan a year on maintaining your car, and one thousand yuan on a medical examination for yourself."
At this time, there is an additional anchor point, and customers will feel that one thousand yuan is not that expensive.

2. Eliminate trust concerns

There are three ways to eliminate users' trust concerns:

（1）Brand Promise

Brand promise is about making a promise and then delivering on it. For example, there is the Qin State story of Shang Yang setting up a tree at the south gate.

(2) User experience

User experience is to allow users to eliminate trust concerns through effective reference information from other users or through their own personal experience. For example, Dianping.com uses user reviews to influence new user groups and promote real purchases.

(3) Third-party endorsement

Third-party endorsement means that users trust the products recommended by the third party because they trust the third party. Third-party endorsements include endorsements from acquaintances and endorsements from authorities (divided into KOL endorsements and institutional endorsements).

5. Repeat Purchase - Six Methods to Get Users to Repeat Purchase

If users buy again, there are only two possibilities: buying our product or buying a competitor's product. Therefore, in the repurchase link, the basic methodology is to increase the user's replacement cost. Here are six ways to increase user switching costs:

1. Value reservation

Value reservation is to reserve a hook for the user's second consumption. For example, some teahouses provide customers with tea storage services, and some hotels also provide wine storage services.

2. Membership Value

The way to realize the value of membership is the membership system. Generally speaking, there are two principles for establishing a membership system: first, rights and interests. The rights and interests given to members must be attractive enough. Second, in terms of returns, members must be able to bring in more sales and profits.

3. Circle satisfaction

Circle satisfaction means providing different products to meet the different types of needs of users in a certain circle. That is to sell as many products as possible to the same group of people. For example, Hupu targets straight men who like sports. It can sell football tickets, sports shoes, and a series of other related products to this group of people.

4. User Growth

User growth refers to implanting a user growth mechanism into the product system to stimulate users to have a high level of sense of ownership and make it difficult for them to leave.
For example, keep provides a good user growth system, which tells users how many consecutive days they have been exercising and what level they have reached. Such a user growth system will bind users and make it difficult for them to leave it.

5. Network Effects

WeChat is a product with network effects. The more users use it, the more valuable it becomes to other users. The more friends a person has, the harder it is to leave the product.

6. Peak-End Rule

Users' memory of an experience is determined by two factors: how they felt at its peak and how they felt at its end. Therefore, if you want to leave a good impression on users and make them more likely to experience the product again next time, you must design the part where users leave with special care. For example, IKEA applies the peak-end rule - when users leave, they can take away an ice cream for one dollar.

6. Habits - How to design habit loops to keep users buying

(1) Habit loop model

How to make users form habits? On the premise that users have a basic desire for the product, users are made to form habits through three methods: suggestion, habitual behavior and rewards.

(2) Hint

It could be a visual image or sound, a place, a time, an emotion that puts the brain into an automatic behavior mode and decides which habit to use.
(3) Habitual behavior

It can be physical, mental or emotional. It can be complex or simple.

(4) Rewards

Something that makes you happy and allows your brain to discern whether it is time to record this circuit for future use.

Case: Why are headlines addictive ?

As a news client, why do many people feel addicted to Toutiao? But why don’t you feel addicted when using Sina or Sohu?
After a user sees a piece of news, Toutiao’s mechanism is to push more news that the user likes. The mechanism of Sina and Sohu is not to push what users pay attention to, but to push what editors pay attention to.

It pushes news that editors consider important, but what editors pay attention to may not be what users like, so it is difficult for users to form a habit and become addicted. Advertisement for Toutiao: No matter what is added in front, there are five words at the end: Read Toutiao.

For example: I’m taking a break today, so I’m reading today’s headlines; there are a lot of people on the bus today, so I’m reading today’s headlines; my boyfriend is coming to see me today, so I’m reading today’s headlines; I’m so bored today, so I’m reading today’s headlines. The purpose is to make users form a habit: when something happens, read Toutiao.

7. Sharing - How to get users to share actively

Sharing means referring.

1. What is Net Promoter Score?

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) refers to how many new users a user recommends on average. If on average two users can recommend one user to us, then our NPS value is 0.5. For example: In the previous growth cycle, there were 10,000 old users in total, and in this period, 500 new paying users came from user recommendations, so the NPS value is 0.05. Note: When calculating the net recommended value, all users must be used as the base.

2. Long-term sharing mechanism

Generally speaking, users will help us with referrals in the following three situations:

(1) Active sharing

In order to encourage users to share actively, we need to prepare three steps: sorting out forwarding moments, creating forwarding content, and empowering forwarding tools.

The first moment to sort out when forwarding is the newbie moment, which is when the user first comes and is very fresh and curious about everything, making it very easy for him to forward the message.

The second glorious moment is when users will forward the message when they feel honored. Create forwarding content at the beginner's moment, create various experience products, and create various scenarios for users to forward. In the glorious moment, you can create a large amount of content that makes users feel glorious to stimulate users to forward it spontaneously.

The forwarding tool enables users to make referrals more easily through tools, and it is best to be able to forward with just one click. When forwarding, it is best to include a relevant QR code so that interested users can scan the code and come in to achieve the purpose of attracting traffic.

(2) Interest incentives

For example, on Qutoutiao, you can make money by reading articles and you can also make money by forwarding articles.

(3) Social Currency

Forwarding product links is also a form of social display in our circle of friends. Case: In Alipay’s social activity of collecting five blessings, we are actually interacting with friends, which is a social behavior.

3. Hot spot sharing mechanism

If you want an activity to quickly become a hot topic, you can use the three rules of virality.

(1) The Law of Individual Characters

There are always some big guys or super connectors around us. When they help us refer or spread an event, it can easily become a hot spot event.
(2) Adhesion law

When users refer or forward a product, it is often not because of the product function itself, but also because of some sticky factors. For example, when we talk about Jiang Xiaobai, we often don’t think of it as a pure liquor, but a sense of youth.

(3) The Law of Environmental Power

For example, the company itself is not very popular, but its products are on the hot search on Weibo, many people will think that this matter is really hot and will be affected.

8. Churn - What is the correct approach to retaining users?

1. Strengthen loss aversion

When managing user churn, how do you keep users from leaving? It is to make users feel loss aversion, remind them of your kindness, and let them remember it themselves.

2. Refresh your aha moment

The second method to prevent user churn is called refreshing aha moments, which is to let users experience new aha moments. Users love our products because they experience the aha moment of our products.

But why did he leave later? There must be many users who feel that the original ahaha moment is no longer ahaha for them, so they want to leave.
How can you make users experience your aha moment again?

One of the most commonly used methods is to capture super users. The reason why super users become super users and loyal fans is that there must be many "aha" moments that even the companies are not aware of that attract them.

After investigating these super users and finding out what attracts them, extract those moments and design push copy to reach those users who are about to churn, allowing them to experience these aha moments as much as possible, so as to retain them.