The dumb way to promote App online, the qualitative change from 0 to 1 million users

There are some stupid ways to promote apps online, which are often overlooked, but they are indeed low-cost and effective methods. Today we will talk about these stupid ways to promote apps online. For example, posting on forums, chatting in QQ groups, and attracting registrations are quite laborious. You attract a user to register on our website and use our APP, which is a relatively slow method. There is also social sharing, such as sharing on Weibo, Renren, WeChat, etc. These are relatively stupid methods of app promotion.

There are also some quick methods, such as placing TV ads, appearing on "Day Day Up", ads on satellite TV, cars , buses, subways, celebrity endorsements, and event marketing . Another way is to spend money like crazy, like Didi Taxi. Of course, there are many faster ways, but the budgets are generally larger, for example, several million or tens of millions. I can do whatever I want because I have money. That's the quick way.

From the above, we can see the difference between the stupid method, the slow method and the stupid method. The stupid method is slow, time-consuming, and labor-intensive, and its effect is slow to take effect. There are still many details to consider. The stupid method will encounter various problems in the process, which requires us to spend a lot of energy to solve, but at the same time it has more irreplaceable advantages.

High-quality users and a stable source

Of course, when the amount of results achieved by all stupid methods reaches a certain level, it will trigger a qualitative change and bring a lot of quantity. Once you have established a certain degree of popularity, it will bring you continuous volume, and the source is particularly stable and the quality of users is particularly high.

For example, the QR code questions I answered on Baidu Knows are very professional. If users search by keyword, most of the displayed answers are my answers. In this way, no matter when and where, as long as users search for this keyword every day, they will know us. Then through my answers they will understand our business, know our products, and download our App. Then this promotion channel will be established, and in the future this channel will be able to bring in a steady stream of traffic. I don’t need to pay attention to it every day, its coverage is already very high, so the amount it brings every day will be very large. At the same time, the professional knowledge I answer will teach more people. They will put my answers in their QQ space, personal blog or web page, or copy them to answer other people's questions, and then our company's business will be spread further. This is actually the qualitative change caused by the accumulation of quantity in the early stage after reaching a certain level.

Through these stupid methods, the quality of users from these channels is very high. Users will search because they have this need, or they will read a post because of a certain issue and pay attention to the APP below. The needs of these users are very clear. They will pay attention to you because they have this need, so the quality is very high. These are users with rigid needs. These users with rigid needs have several characteristics. One is the high retention rate, and the other is the high user loyalty and quality, which is very effective for the later promotion of the product.

The promotion cost is relatively low, and the subsequent growth is fast

Xiaomi has 500,000 loyal users, which serves as a foundation. Its subsequent growth is very large. From these 500,000 users, it gradually spread to 5 million, and then to 50 million. These are all user-based word-of-mouth diffusion effects. Once you have 100,000 loyal, high-quality users, as long as you do a good job in operation , your users will bring you a continuous diffusion effect.

And as this spreads, the number of users will grow. If 100,000 users each spread 6 users, that's 600,000 users according to the six degrees of separation theory. 600,000 users will spread 3.6 million users... Of course, in the process of promotion, there are also new users added, plus the word-of-mouth spread of old users, the number of users will grow exponentially in the later period.

Before, we spent three months posting on forums to become seed users , and then we had 10,000 users. Then, through our product operations and event operations, these 10,000 users spread to 100,000 users, and then in less than a year, we reached 1 million users. In fact, we mainly relied on various stupid methods, such as posting, building word-of-mouth on Weibo, and participating in forum activities. These are all basic work.

So the stupid way of promotion has low cost and is more time-consuming, but the incremental growth in the later stage is very large, and it grows exponentially. In fact, the most difficult part is to reach 10,000 users or 100,000 users, which are the hurdles in the initial promotion.

The stupid way will bring a steady flow of

The starting point of the stupid method is relatively low, and it may be harder, more tiring, and more time-consuming at the beginning. For example, when a product is just released, you post a message, answer a question on Zhihu, and many other stupid methods will have very poor effects. You may post ten messages, but the effect will still be the same. These are the characteristics of stupid methods, and the starting point is very low.

Because they require accumulation of quantity, but after persisting for a year, you will find the difference. Because promotion is very delayed, such as posting and Weibo... I persisted for a year, and then a year later, looking back, I found that the daily traffic from the forum was similar to that of a medium-sized channel. At the beginning, there were only a few, and then it gradually increased. What does this mean? It’s the accumulation of quantity.

In the later period, my main job was to maintain the channels, occasionally check them out and reply, and the daily volume was very stable. These were the results of stupid methods. Later, I stopped promoting them, but to this day I can still see those posts, and some people still reply to them and like them. The replies may have been only a few pages before, but a few days ago, I went to check and searched for the posts I posted, and found that the replies were dozens of pages. These can all bring downloads, because the higher the number of replies to a post, the greater the chance of it being on the homepage and the more downloads it will get. These are the results brought about by doing the stupid method well.

The quick way is that I invest money today and there will be volume immediately. Tomorrow when I have no money, there will be no volume. The day after tomorrow when I get money, I can do it again and the volume will go up again. But this thing is related to money. If you have no money, you will have no users. The stupid method starts relatively late, but when it reaches a certain level, the volume will continue to grow.

Case Study 1: Using Weibo for Brand Communication

Based on this distinction, I will talk about my own previous cases. The first one is Weibo. I used to be the maintainer of the company’s official Weibo and would maintain Weibo in my spare time.

At that time, I was working on the keyword "QR code". I would regularly screen relevant keywords through Weibo and answer their questions. After screening, I found that most of the users who sent these keywords were big Vs, company founders, and middle and high-end people. They would ask some questions about QR codes, and I would reply to them. I used to work in product development, so I’m an expert in this area. My answers were quite professional and I was able to convince them, but there were also experts. After the debate, I learned a lot.

These are all my jobs. I spend one hour every day replying to them. How do I find the time? It is squeezed out of my working hours. Also, when I’m on the subway, I open the customer forum and interact with those who post QR codes on Weibo. Later, after constant interaction with them, they became more familiar with our company, and then formed a better relationship. When they mention QR codes, they will think of our company.

I have been doing this for more than a year, and later our company's brand became very well-known among all middle and high-end people. No one knew us before, but after doing this for a year, our results were good. Gradually people knew us, introduced their businesses to us, interviewed us, and sought business cooperation with us. Weibo brought us a lot of business. Whenever I attend conferences or participate in activities on Weibo, I can see others mentioning our company. These are the results I’ve seen after a year of persistence. So this is the effect of the stupid method, and I can feel it myself.

Case Study 2: Using Forums to Drain Traffic to Apps

Now let’s talk about the second one, forum screening. My first batch of seed users came through the forum. At that time, the APP had just been launched. As for promotion, our team was relatively small, with only three or four people: I was in charge of product development, two were in charge of technology, and one was in charge of business. I didn’t know much about business either. So in the early stage, part of the work I did in terms of promotion was posting. At that time, there were mobile phone forums such as Android Forum, Jifeng.com, and Mobile China.

At that time, we targeted QR codes and studied some users to see what kind of users would use our product. We thought about and summarized some user characteristics, such as those aged 18 to 35, and those who might be proficient with mobile phones. Because the App is a tool, it requires users to be proficient with mobile phones. The requirements for users are relatively high, so we chose the Android forum. We searched on Baidu and found many Android forums. Look at this ranking. According to the Baidu search ranking, some websites with large traffic and high weight are ranked. This is the premise, which is to find some forums with large traffic.

The second is through some navigation websites, such as hao123. How do we judge whether its quality is higher? Since hao123 puts it in the top few software, it means that its traffic is very large, or it means that it has spent money, and the money spent will also form a large amount.

So we screen these on the forum. In addition to Android, we have many other forums. We will screen out the ones that come to us and post in corresponding sections based on the nature of these software. When the effect was the best, I posted a message and it brought in two to three thousand activations in one day, which was a huge amount. Later I went to talk to the moderator again, because I understand his rules. Every forum has its own rules for posting, and different groups have different rules for posting. The moderator helped us add a color, and then the volume would be larger, but the post would sink. Then I would push the post up for no reason, just to make sure the post would keep appearing on the homepage and ensure that our traffic did not decrease. This post alone brought us tens of thousands of users. It seems a bit painful now, but it is indeed effective.

In addition, regarding posting, I studied the format, rules, and moderators. When I asked my colleagues to do it before, they deleted all our posts because they did not meet the requirements of the section or were poorly written. Later, I wrote a very standardized post myself and asked them to post it. Then it was marked in red and pinned to the top of many forums, which brought us a lot of downloads and users for nearly a month.

These are the stupid methods I used in App promotion. The reason was that there was not enough budget in the early stage of the project, so I could only follow these stupid methods. These stupid methods not only brought a lot of users to the App, but also allowed me to grow more in doing this. So I am very grateful for the previous opportunities, which allowed me to learn a lot. At the same time, it can also be seen that the stupid method has a very good effect. Although the effect is poor in the early stage, once it reaches a certain level, it will form a qualitative effect.

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