From tactics to strategy, 7 ways to get early seed users for App promotion

All startups will face the problem of how to acquire early users. At the 36Kr Open Day Hangzhou Station two days ago, we invited Yin Zhiping, founder of Mengmengda, Huang Tao, product designer of Zhihu, Xiao Peng, founder of Weekend Where to Go, Liu Yang, senior product manager of Same, and NXET Guozi to discuss how to acquire and operate this group of early users from both tactical and strategic levels.

1. At the tactical level, what are the ways to obtain seed users ?

1. Mobilize all employees of the company to attract users

Mengmengda is a social APP with exchanging photos as its core experience. As the founder, the first method that Yin Zhiping thought of was to mobilize all the employees of the company and let them attract users. His requirements were that the CEO should recruit one thousand people, partners should recruit five hundred people, and each employee should recruit one hundred people.

So how do you, as a CEO, achieve the target of 1,000 people? Yin Zhiping first mobilized all his relatives and friends, and then invited a group of "beautiful users" such as flight attendants, models, school beauties, and Taobao girls through social media such as Weibo. After all, it is a social product, and this group of "beautiful users" can bring in a large wave of early users. Then among this group of users, quite a few people thought that this APP was fun and interesting, so they shared it again. Finally, it was spread secondary by 300 people, and finally the task of attracting more than a thousand people was completed.

2. Flexibly utilize existing Internet platforms and channels

On the second day after Mengmeng went online, Yin Zhiping submitted the product to NEXT, and it became the second-ranked product on NEXT that day. As for the effect, the data Yin Zhiping saw in the background was that one user was added every minute during the day and one user was added every two minutes at night. In this way, the number of 2,000 users was reached in less than two days.

In addition, you can also use Baidu Tieba, Douban groups, Sina Weibo, and major forums to publish content in a targeted manner. Since only the iOS version is currently online, please post on platforms such as Baidu iPhone Bar and WeiPhone. In addition, you can also sign contracts for the first release on some channel platforms, which can also bring in a lot of traffic, such as various iOS jailbreak markets.

3. Perform resource replacement

For example, iPhone has a certain number of users every day, but you and others are not the same users. At this time, you can find an APP with similar traffic to promote each other, but the effect is average. Therefore, Yin Zhiping recommends exchanging the amount of advertisements: "If I have 6,000 fans, and they ask me to post an advertisement for 4,000 yuan, I will ask others to pay 2,400 yuan. I will need more than 800,000 yuan a year, but I own this account and can post advertisements without spending money. Secondly, I will find a big account with a similar number of fans to post advertisements. I don’t need to spend money because we exchange every day. I post ten advertisements every day, four of which are my own content, and I give four to others. In this way, everyone’s volume is equal. This method can be very effective without spending a penny."

4. Pay attention to current events and cleverly use popular events for promotion

One of the channels for discovering current affairs hot spots is Baidu Index, and another is Weibo hot searches. Yu Jiawen of Super Course Schedule was very popular some time ago, which directly led to “Post-90s CEO” becoming a hot term. When Yin Zhiping was interviewed by the media, he deliberately asked to include keywords such as "post-90s CEO" in the reports, which greatly increased the chances of being exposed.

2. Strategically, learn to understand and operate the value of early users

Huang Tao, product designer at Zhihu, explained from a strategic perspective the value of understanding and operating early users. The key point is that "word-of-mouth communication is the most effective way to cold-start a community product."

1. To acquire seed users, community products must answer three questions:

1) As a community, what is your user value?
2) Where are your users?
3) How to complete the product closed loop?

● As a community, what is your user value? In a broad sense, "content" refers to what is generated by users. For example, YouTube generates user feedback and suggestions, which are inputs into user value and are also part of the content. For example, user comments, user participation in public editing, and answering questions are not contributed to the system in the same clear way as articles, but these things increase the overall value of your system, and that is content.

For other products, you can also think about what your content is. For example, whether your user interaction itself is content produced by you. Users come to your place to do something together and organize activities together. These activities will not form black and white marks.

● Where are your users? In fact, as an entrepreneur, you must understand your seed user group better than others. You must know where your seed users live, what the upstream and downstream relationships of the entire activity are, and where the boundaries of activities are. If you cannot understand this better than others, you must think about whether you are more suitable for this product.

● How to complete the product closed loop? This is a very simple matter, and it is not a killer product. If this problem is solved, the product will be successful. It means that in your design, you must make sure that users will eventually come back to your product. For example, before launching their first product, many people will consider whether they need to polish the product enough before launching it, and whether they need to make the product complete enough before launching it.

In Huang Tao's opinion, it is not necessary to make a product very well, and there is no need to worry about whether the product fails after it goes online, wondering whether it is because the product was not well made or because the thing itself was wrong. At this time, the most important thing is to see whether a closed loop has been formed and whether some simple loops have been formed so that users can get timely and effective feedback when they start using it. If the feedback has been realized, it depends on whether the feedback has met expectations and whether there are some new difficulties in these feedbacks that were not foreseen in the past.

2. From 0 to 100 users

● Think clearly about what word of mouth is and what it is not;
● The founding team must be active users of the product;
● Find seed users from your own surroundings;
● Provide high rewards to each seed user.

3. From 100 to 10,000 users

● Maintain close contact with users;
● Mobilize users’ emotions;
● Expand the closed loop and design the communication channel;
● Concentrate resources and create focus;
● Exercise operational restraint.

As the user base continues to expand, word of mouth = the cold start of the community product. So going back to the starting point is how to do word-of-mouth marketing and how to cold start the community through word-of-mouth marketing.

● In the early stage, you must actually use your own products. This is very important for entrepreneurs. Do not get involved in areas you do not understand. You know who the users are better than anyone else, so only then should you get involved.

● It is important that operational behavior should eventually be replaced by user behavior. Compared with foreign companies, Chinese companies focus more on operations and less on products. There are some ways to quickly gain profits, but if you don’t exercise restraint, the user’s incentive mechanism will be plundered, and finally because of your rapid expansion, you will not be able to continue due to internal pressure.

● The communication path that exists in the closed loop of the report product must be continuously enlarged. We must find ways to expand the scope by involving fields, and then expand the scope further through larger fields. Everyone knows that Zhihu Daily is actually trying to form a closed loop, allowing user groups that the author has not originally reached to read it, and after reading, they will eventually return to the community. These users are very sensitive to feedback. They can pay attention to this point more keenly than anyone else. Once the closed loop is formed, it will be completely different.

● Take advantage of people’s fear of social isolation, because when a small circle is discussing things and you are not paying attention, a certain sense of community fear is formed, and you will pay attention. I don’t know if you have a yearbook. It’s when you graduate from junior high school and high school. There’s not much content in it. Everyone talks and writes. It’s very interesting to look through it after a long time. Why do people do this? Because everyone feels isolated if they don’t have a yearbook, this is a phenomenon that exists in any product.

Finally, how to get it back and maintain good reputation? To have a good reputation, your product details must be sufficiently carved and polished. You cannot rush to promote and market it when the product is not mature or the experience is not good enough. The tolerance for failure within the product reputation is also very high, because each expansion is within a circle, and it is repeatedly exposed in this small circle, so there is no need to worry if it does not do well at the beginning.

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