How to obtain seed users during cold start?

In my previous company, I was involved in product design related to the "sharing economy". Since the project was built from 0 to 1 and the product was about to be launched without any operators, I developed a cold start method to acquire seed users. I hope to communicate with you and grow together! For the sake of commercial confidentiality, the product I designed is called "Dingxin" in the article.

Sorting out product status

1. The product is positioned as a mutual aid platform and charity mall for mutual assistance and shared health. The content is presented in the form of personal crowdfunding, mutual assistance for serious illnesses and charity mall. The initial offline promotion will focus on hospitals, and the online promotion will mainly collect user information of competitors (such as Ai Xin Chou, Qingsong Chou, etc.) and promote them one by one by calling.
2. The first phase of the product has been initially developed, mainly including the "Dingxin" Android version of personal fundraising, joining the mutual aid plan, and the love mall function of the "Dingxin" station mini program version. The "Dingxin" station merchant and clerk mini program versions have been completed, and "Dingxin" iOS has still not passed the app store review.
3. The product team is focused on the development of the second phase, including the transfer of the Love Mall to the "Dingxin" platform, the optimization of the "Dingxin" crowdfunding and mutual aid sections, and the maintenance of the merchant/clerk side, and is no longer able to provide additional human resources.
4. No one in the operations team supports cold-start online seed user expansion.

How to obtain the first batch of seed users?

The purpose of obtaining the first batch of seed users:

• Understand the concerns of the seed user group and obtain their needs
• Help us to conduct product trials, let users participate in product design, and optimize products

After determining the purpose, all subsequent work needs to be carried out based on these two points in order to find seed users who meet the requirements and to guide subsequent user operations.

First of all, we need to define seed users, that is, what kind of people are we looking for?

First of all, they are the target audience of our products, and also the main user group who need crowdfunding and major illness mutual assistance products. They are currently facing difficulties and are in urgent need of help.

From the above situation, we can see that our initial audience group is patients, and our seed users also come from this. They may be patients who are already ill, middle-aged and elderly people, potential groups who have been diagnosed with certain serious diseases in physical examination centers, and so on.

Next, how do we accurately find our seed users from these people? (In the early stage, it was mainly based on "Dingxin" crowdfunding and mutual assistance)

1. Offline promotion methods

(1) How the company recruits full-time market development personnel

We are hiring a full-time market development staff to promote the "Dingxin" platform in every local hospital's inpatient department, and explain how the "Dingxin" crowdfunding and mutual aid sections can help them, and help users in need to enter information and promote fundraising.

• Advantages: High user acquisition accuracy, high user stickiness, later users can spread word of mouth, and the number of prospective users is extremely high;
• Disadvantages: Slow user acquisition and high cost of professional full-time staff;

The initial costs include: marketing staff salaries (basic salary + performance-based salary), welfare benefits, professional training expenses, etc., with a budget of xxx yuan/month.

(2) The company’s part-time staff

To become a part-time staff in a certain position in the company, you need to contact the nursing staff in the inpatient departments of several local hospitals, communicate with the nursing staff about the Dingdong Station platform in advance, train them on simple language and platform model, confirm that the nursing staff agrees, and then discuss in detail a percentage commission for the corresponding users. Once the nursing staff finds the user who needs help in the early stage, they will notify the company's part-time promotion staff to go to the hospital to explain the platform model in detail to the person seeking help, and then help enter information and spread fundraising, etc.

• Advantages: high accuracy of user acquisition and high success rate;
• Disadvantages: It takes time and effort to train caregivers in the early stage, and the caregivers may take a long time to accept;

The initial costs include: wages for part-time marketing staff, budgeted at xxx yuan/month, and commissions for caregivers, budgeted at xxx yuan/person.

Summary: The promotion methods are mainly concentrated offline. Offline professionals need to be trained. Full-time promotion personnel are more expensive than full-time online personnel. They acquire high-quality users, have slow speed, high accuracy, and a high probability of success.

2. Online promotion methods

(1) Collecting competitor user data

Competitive products include: Shuidichou, Shuidi Huzhu, Qingsongchou, Qingsonghuzhu, Zhongtuobang, etc. When seeing users who are launching crowdfunding on competing platforms, online operators get their phone numbers and call them one by one to recommend the "Dingxin" platform, or find corresponding channels to buy some user information in need of help, and then recommend our platform to them one by one. Currently, the channels that may have this information include: physical examination centers, cancer hospitals, and hospital disease control centers, etc.

After we get the information, we can visit the user directly by phone or send some introductory information about our platform to the user in the form of text messages, mainly introducing the platform model - "Dingxin" is a mutual aid platform dedicated to mutual assistance and shared health. It is both a helper and a beneficiary. If one person gets sick, everyone shares the burden. When you are healthy, you help others, and when you are sick, everyone helps you. This is a platform.

(2) Information release and gathering platform

QQ Group:

First, search for the QQ group with the corresponding keyword, then promote the WeChat official account in a group or pull potential users to the group we created, and then send a group message to our WeChat official account. I package the information into a compressed file and put it in the background of the WeChat official account. Others only need to follow the WeChat official account and reply with a specific number to get the information. The reason why it is so troublesome is mainly to attract fans.

I made a very simple picture of the following steps and sent it to a QQ group. In just a few minutes, I attracted hundreds of fans. Why was this so? Mainly because the picture I sent was simple, direct and convenient, and everyone could see it at a glance.

Those who have needs will naturally pay attention, and it is very convenient when they pay attention. QQ group promotion seems simple, but there are also many skills. After all, there are only so many QQ groups in a specific industry. If we want to improve the effect, we must understand what these people need most and how to make them get these things easily and conveniently when they see them. Instead, just throw a link into the group and say something like our certain app is online and ask everyone to download it for me, please help me download it.

SNS community:

The user activity of this type of platform is quite high, and the user base covers a wide range, so it is easy to locate your target user group. For example, Douban has many groups. We can join some highly relevant groups and participate in discussions. We can also post some knowledge sharing articles and then repost them to the groups. We should update and maintain them regularly to maintain a certain exposure. If we persist and the volume is large enough, the effect should be good.

Forum Posting:

In the early stage, search for relevant forums and post some high-quality content in them. Later, you can set up a promotional forum for your own platform, where you can post some real cases, or invite users who have received help to post their real experiences on it. The platform will give some rewards (such as love points, products from the love point mall, etc.).

App Store Submissions:

Find some app stores without limit in the channels every day, submit the APP, and add some high-quality slogans.

Soft article:

It requires good writing skills. You can write some soft articles and then pay to put them on highly relevant platforms (such as Soft Article Street). If it is an intellectual article, you can directly submit it to some platforms, which is also a good method.

Business cooperation:

Find some cooperative promotions, such as public account recommendations. The prerequisite is to identify your target user group. When looking for resource cooperation, look for platforms with higher relevance, such as: physical examination centers, disease control centers, cancer hospitals, etc.

Summary: The promotion methods are mainly concentrated online, with high operational flexibility, fast user acquisition speed, and a wide net. The probability of success is slightly lower than offline point-to-point, and the operating cost is also low.

So, although there are many apps with hundreds of millions of users now, their early users were all obtained through hard work and hardship. They were not obtained by spending money, but through hard work. However, it is this hard work that can bring about brilliant success in the future. Of course, there are many other hard work methods that can also obtain the first batch of seed users. I think it is a good choice to combine online and offline promotion. As long as you are sincere, you will succeed. This is the sentence I believe in most whenever I encounter difficulties.

The above are some cold start methods that I thought of when doing the "Dingxin" project. Everyone is welcome to discuss. This article may inevitably seem a bit "disdainful" in the eyes of operations staff. I hope you will understand that this is Product Manager's first time to engage in operations.

Author: Tomato

Source: Tomato