【Original】Salute to the product manager!

Author: Zhou Paopi

You think this is an article about the product and has nothing to do with your operations ! But I tell you responsibly that you are too young, too simple, and sometimes naïve! How many product operations managers do I know? Do you know Mr. Liu? I don’t know how much better he is than you guys, I can chat and laugh with him!

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Currently I am in charge of marketing operations at Owhat. Owhat is an interesting place and our mission is to be “the number one platform for China’s entertainment consumption market” . I have come into contact with many product managers recently and many PMs have said that as a product of a startup team, you must understand operations: without operations, you cannot even be sure that the product is heading in the right direction and making the right investments. So let me talk about my understanding of operations from the perspective of a product manager based on our conversation:

1) Let target users use the product for the first time (new users)

Where are the target users? （User portrait）

How many times of exposure can trigger a new user to use it? (Conversion Funnel Model)

Exposure - What obstacles need to be overcome during use? (How to optimize conversion rate )

2) Make target users active users and keep them in the product

What triggers product uninstalls? How to overcome? (User Churn Model)
How can I increase the frequency of use? (Make user demand a high frequency)

3) Make target users believers in the product and spread the word about it

When others ask, I will recommend products. (Word of mouth)
It’s so cool to use that I recommend it to everyone I meet. (Sense of Mission)

1) Mentality

In fact, there was no distinction between product design and product operation at the beginning. There is an old saying, "Build a car behind closed doors and make it fit when it goes out." In my opinion, the current distinction between product and operation is a one-sided understanding of this old saying: people only know that they build a car behind closed doors, but they don't know that the car must "fit when it goes out."

When the product is launched, it becomes a child with independent will and begins to grow uncontrollably. It is a comprehensive product of the user environment, competitive environment, team resources, etc. Taking our product evolution module as an example, I planned several versions between 1.0 and 2.0 at the beginning. Later I found that except for 1.0 and 1.1 which were basically in compliance, the rest were just a joke. These changes can only be achieved by investing in users and operating.

Our process is currently as follows:

Quickly make a demo of basic functions –> Put it into operation among target users, observe and evaluate the three points mentioned above –> Determine how to make the next adjustments based on the feedback from target users, and make an optimization modification list (sorted by importance to the main business) –> Quickly optimize the product based on the optimization list –> Continue the cycle.

Therefore, as an operator, if you want to be the real owner of the product, you must analyze the operation of the product from the product perspective and regard it as an integral part of your job.

II) Theory

I would like to highly recommend a few books, which are very helpful for you to establish your own product operation perspective.

1. The Tipping Point:

1. Identify and find your experts, connectors, and sellers;

2. Polish your product and give it unique charm so that users will be fascinated by you and willing to share and recommend it.

3. Environmental factors: You cannot control the outbreaks brought about by the environment artificially. What you can do is to be prepared to discover and make full use of the opportunity when it comes.
Or to put it more simply, bring products that KOLs will appreciate to your KOLs, and then spread the word to the target user group through KOLs.

2. The Crowd

1. Find a leader or become a leader.

2. Simplify and abstract your product.

3. Keep emphasizing repetition among the target population. (Think of the famous saying: "Give Melatonin as a gift")

3. Growth Hacking

In my opinion, the highest level of operations for a PM is to design a product that can self-detonate and then wait for the opportunity to come. This is commonly known as "Product/Market match", such as Facebook, Twitter , the early days of Weibo, WeChat, etc.

III) Action

Let’s first look at it from the perspective of attracting new customers. As a product, how should we plan our product operations?

1. Find channels: Go to where your target customers gather to expose your products

Take Owhat as an example. Our target users are divided into B-end (fan support groups, film and television companies, and artist companies) and C-end (excellent star fans). So we naturally have to go to where these people are:

Media: Mango TV, NetEase Entertainment, Youku, Sina Entertainment, Damai Ticketing, Enlight Media, etc.

Community: Sina Weibo , Tieba, WeChat groups of major fan groups, QQ groups, etc.

2. Prepare ammunition for different channels and different users :

Products that have been launched and can be used normally are put into display on new product display platforms such as Zuimei App, Next, and Demo8. Generally speaking, you can release each major update once, and don't release minor updates too frequently.

User-oriented content and activities: used to invest in target user communities and media to increase product exposure and even bring about secondary dissemination.

User-oriented incentive design: used to encourage existing users to recommend new users.

3. Next, let’s talk about an example .<br />Talk about how the founding team ( programmers + product) tinkered with operations and acquired new users when we didn’t have an operations specialist yet.

Since it is a platform for celebrity fans to gather, the first step is naturally to gather an excellent fan team.

We mainly did the following things to get real programmer registration (link added):

1) Invite the first batch of most curious users:

1. Friends around me: Probably the first dozen or so came about this way.
   b. Publish information about our product launch and registration benefits in communities where fans gather, and invite the first batch of the most curious users to use it and give feedback. (At this time, the product is still relatively rough and not suitable for submission to next and other websites for exposure)

2) The initial method of increasing the amount:

Send an email to invite celebrity fan clubs to register on Owhat. 10% of them will register, and you will also receive some polite rejection emails. This is the most effective method in the early stages. (We basically searched all Weibo and Tieba at that time)

3) The method with the highest hit rate:

Starting from the fan support group, providing platform support and certification to the support team, and then attracting the fans under the support group, these are the users with the highest conversion rate.

However, these are not the most amazing things. The most amazing thing, as I wrote above, is to make a product that can self-detonate. There is a term called P/M match, which means that the product hits the market and will generate explosive growth. For example, the hotmail example often mentioned in "Growth Hacker". Every time you send an email to your friend using your Hotmail email address, he can see such an advertisement at the bottom of your email: Get a hotmail account for free, and then achieve explosive growth.

This product needs to have viral growth characteristics:

1) Basics:

The basic features of the product are good enough that users are willing to use it a second time after their first experience, or even to replace existing similar products.

2) Transmissibility:

Best: The product itself is frequently used in daily life (chatting, email, photo sharing, etc.), so it has a higher chance of being mentioned among the target audience. Think about how Hotmail’s high frequency of daily usage was the key reason for its explosion; think about how WeChat first spread, and how many times a day you would hear your friends mention WeChat before you installed it; think about Momo, ahem, how frequently it is a topic of conversation for boys, and so on.

The next best thing is that the product demonstrates some quality of the user, so he/she is willing to share it. (Think about the 100 words that often appear in the circle of friends, fitness sharing, and running sharing)

3) Human nature:

Many times, we emphasize that products must hit human nature, and both the good and evil sides of human nature may be exploited, which will lead to explosive growth of products, such as "Wumi" and "faceu". Such growth will make people jealous in the short term, but disgusting in the long term and cannot be sustained.

This will be a very interesting topic, but our own products have not yet achieved this, and we still need to explore how to achieve P/M match. Therefore, we will have the opportunity to open another topic to discuss which products can achieve viral growth.

This is the end of my experience summary. You are welcome to come to me for criticism.

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This article was contributed by @周扒皮 and published by (APP Top Promotion). Reprinting this article requires the consent of Top Promotion , and please attach the link to this article!