The pain points of user growth and 4 strategies!

This article mainly wants to talk about user growth strategy .

User growth, although seemingly four simple words, is a headache for many people engaged in operations. Because if you understand it literally, it means to increase the number of users, so that more people will use our products and more people will buy our products. But once it comes to putting it into practice, people feel confused or don’t know where to start.

Whether in the early, middle or late stages of a product, we will encounter the problem of user growth.

At the same time, we also face pressure from leadership authority and soul-searching, as follows:

"Xiao Wang, our product is about to be launched, let's do a big user growth campaign"

"The number of users this month has decreased compared to last month. Do we need to adjust the growth method?"

"This company launched this new customer acquisition campaign, and the number of users increased by 2 times. We can also do one more campaign."

…

Workplace conversations like this about user growth are commonplace for operations.

Ok, let's get back to the topic. Next, I will talk about the pain points of user growth, how to correctly understand user growth, the "small and beautiful" user growth strategy, and how to choose the right strategy.

I would like to make it clear that this article will not discuss specific user growth methods. After all, there are often great inconsistencies due to differences in products, users, companies, etc. If you have any additions, please point them out at the end of the article. I’ll be happy to ask for your advice.

1. Pain points of user growth

The pain points of user growth can be summed up in two words: "expensive and difficult."

It’s expensive. Traffic is expensive, conversion is expensive, and the cost per user is expensive.

As for the "expensive" reason, firstly, the price of traffic entrances continues to hit new highs, and more and more traffic is concentrated in a few leading platforms. In addition, due to the serious product homogeneity, they have to be kidnapped by traffic distributors. For example, there are nearly 20 to 30 brokerage account opening entrances in Tonghuashun, but the annual advertising space fee of nearly 500,000 is really not something that an average small company can afford.

Second, the company’s promotion funds may be rather tight. In fact, if your company is a wealthy company with plenty of advertising and marketing funds, you basically don’t have to worry too much about user growth. With a wave of "brand marketing" and "360-degree full coverage marketing", the user growth problem will be solved. All you may need to do is the subsequent conversion and maintenance work.

However, after all, the market is divided into 20% and 80%, with 80% of small companies facing 20% ​​of huge traffic distributors, and have to face the problem of expensive traffic.

Speaking of this, let me mention "private domain traffic" by the way. Regardless of whether it is new or not, it is indeed a helpless choice and attempt for corporate users to increase traffic under the background of expensive traffic.

It is difficult. There are many difficulties. It is difficult to acquire users, it is difficult to convert users, it is difficult to blindly pursue new marketing methods, and it is easy to fool the boss but difficult to actually achieve results.

People who work in operations often have this question: why do they fail to find many marketing methods or promotion points, but others find them easily and produce good results after some promotion? If I move here forcefully, I always feel that there will be some big waves so that I can perform well in front of my boss, but the result is often a slap in the face. Why are others ok but I am not?

Or maybe you see your competitor doing hot marketing today, and you want to join in regardless. Or maybe everyone has started to study private domain traffic recently, and you also start to promote the benefits of private domain traffic. Maybe you succeed in fooling your boss in the early stage, but the final result is a mess.

What's the difficulty? They just follow the crowd and do not have their own independent, unified, long-term executable user growth strategy.

Remember, don't just click on the part you don't understand.

2. Understand user growth

Before understanding user growth, we must first understand that what is growing is users. There are four layers of relationships between them and products or platforms:

Why are you here? =What can you offer?

How to come? =What channels and traffic entrances do you have?

What are you here for? =Your core function, get the user's needs

Leave and come back later? =What value do you have that can make users interested in you again

The article is limited, so I won’t expand on these points here.

When it comes to user growth, you need to understand:

A. User growth is a complete set of methodologies

In fact, user growth is not just about increasing users. Indeed, this is the main core value, but if you only focus on this point, you will end up losing more than you gain.

User growth is a complete set of methodologies. After preliminary market research, user profiling, establishing promotion methods and channels, online promotion, etc., you may have driven the effective growth of product users, but the growth steps never stop there. Often, later user path conversion, consumption, and old users bringing in new users to stimulate growth are all within its scope.

Therefore, user growth is not just a step, but a whole set of methodologies, or a system, in which growth is only a key point.

User growth is the full-link operation of users, which is not only user growth, but also user growth.

B. User growth is not a separate position

We often see recruitment information for user growth on recruitment websites, but when we take a closer look at the job descriptions, either the name does not live up to the reality, with the so-called user growth being product operations, event operations, content operations, copywriting planning, etc., or it is too exaggerated, with one person taking on the responsibility of the entire operations department.

In fact, user growth is not a single position. As mentioned above, since user growth is a system, there is naturally a division of labor within this system, which leads to different positions. The relatively ok user growth job setup I have seen is the user growth department, where the head of the department is titled user growth manager or user growth director, and there are many types of operational positions under the department.

C. User growth is a sustainable virtuous cycle

From the above examples, we can see that many operators or companies often "go wherever the market goes" when they are doing operational growth, but they don't realize that even if they get a piece of the pie, it is really the leftovers, and many times they are in the dilemma of "others find it easy, but they can't even try their best".

User growth is a sustainable virtuous cycle.

The so-called sustainability means that your user growth strategy is in line with your product positioning and market trends. You can rely on established operating strategies to bring you a steady stream of user growth, rather than blindly following the crowd. Of course, in the early stages of a product, there is a process of trial and error. Mistakes are not scary, but you have to learn to find means or methods that can bring sustainable and stable growth to your product.

D. User growth concept: “eliminating the virtual and retaining the real”

This is actually more of a friendly reminder to the majority of operators.

User growth is a real thing. As long as you have clear goals, break down tasks appropriately, adopt appropriate methods and means, promote through appropriate channels, provide timely follow-up services, and implement them in a real way, all you have to do is to be clear about your goals.

The North Star Indicator, the Aha Moment, the examples of high-sounding rankings and ending up in a mess, we can all see them around me and even around you. Don’t talk about the slaps in the face, just do the real work.

In this age of excess IQ, being sincere is the only skill.

3. User growth strategy

I have said above that user growth is a means or method to provide sustainable and stable growth for your products. It is a complete set of methodologies.

It is both a methodology and a strategy.

In fact, generally speaking, every company and every product has a user growth strategy simulated and set up in the plan at the beginning of the launch, including who the users are, where they are, how to attract them, etc., and the strategies of different companies often vary greatly.

For example, big brand strategies, large-scale investment in the advertising channel market, and gaining a large amount of user attention in a short period of time, such as Luckin Coffee, Platinum Travel Photography, Boss Direct Recruitment, etc., all belong to this category.

Of course, these companies are often wealthy companies, or they are rich themselves or their "fathers" are rich, and they don't care about the amount of funding. They aim to increase brand awareness in the short term through a large amount of advertising and brand coverage. However, while these companies are often pursuing user growth, they are more concerned about the performance of the capital market.

Some of the more common user growth strategies I’m going to talk about today may be more suitable for start-ups or small and beautiful companies. Let’s call them “small and beautiful strategies”.

Of course, this is a vertical strategy distinction, and it can also be horizontal, such as content strategy, activity strategy, channel strategy, etc. Here we mainly discuss several options for vertical strategies.

A. Profit-driven

Attract or guide users to complete corresponding behaviors through benefits.

As far as profit-driven is concerned, almost every industry has relatively successful cases, and from the perspective of the user growth chain, user registration, real-name card binding, purchase and use, invitation and dissemination, etc. can all be marked with the mark of profit-driven.

For example, the once-popular Internet financial platforms basically rely on profits to drive user growth. However, this is also a point that finance itself can utilize very well, because users come for profit. Such as free cash for registration, free traffic, free red envelopes, free interest rate coupons, vouchers, experience money, free gifts for real-name card binding, free gifts for first and second investments, and free gifts for inviting and spreading the word.

It can be said that the profit-driven formula is: User growth = profit-driven + user path + user behavior

As long as reasonable interests are attracted to the corresponding user behaviors, the goal of user growth can be basically achieved. This is basically the case in all industries and it works every time.

This type of strategy is relatively simple and will not be described in detail.

B. Resource Integration

Resource integration can be said to be a more widespread user growth strategy besides profit-driven ones.

Why do I say so?

Because even though we may not have done this ourselves, we may have participated in it.

For example, there are 500 research reports from authoritative institutions, 600 essential document templates for HR, 600 collections of operational information, 100 classic cases of advertising copywriting, 200 copywriting skills, a 10G summary of large-capacity promotion methods, and so on.

When was it that in order to get 10G of operations learning materials for free, you had to share the learning materials collection link to your circle of friends? When was it that in order to join a great god’s operation exchange group, you had to send the great god’s promotional posters to your good friends? When was it that you had to quietly take out your mobile phone to register an account in order to get the latest reports on the development prospects of major industries?

These are all common cases of resource integration.

For example, a third-party private equity sales platform attracted tens of thousands of registered users in just one week through a 100-page free asset allocation plan (some of whom may be competitors who want to get this plan). However, it must be admitted that through the integration of resources, something valuable to users can be created, which naturally leads to rapid user growth.

Furthermore, these resources are merely consolidated, not scarce. You will find that many of the 10G operation learning materials you may have obtained are outdated and repetitive. You may have even read some of them, but simply because of the scale of integration, you have become a fish that is easily fooled and willing to take the bait.

C. Distribution fission

Distribution and fission are actually two methods, but distribution is often accompanied by the effect of fission, so let’s put them together here.

Distribution, which can be said to have been widely used and proven to be very powerful, has been regarded as one of the main means of fission in the business environment. It has also become one of the few effective ways for many companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, to obtain large amounts of traffic and users, and it has worked every time. Moreover, this approach has a somewhat bottom-up development trend, and many large and small companies are also flocking to give it a try.

In fact, the distribution fission game is not only limited to social e-commerce. Education, finance, etc. are also good at the distribution fission game.

For example, a financial product company I know of is building a financial + social e-commerce gameplay. Its main product is the credit cards of major banks. The platform itself introduces credit card processing services from multiple banks through supply chain management, and then empowers credit card brokers to obtain income and commissions by issuing cards for C-end users. At the same time, a secondary distribution mechanism is introduced, and credit card brokers can receive additional bonuses if C-end users invite them again.

For example, there are a few apps like Mobu, a few treasures, and many more, so I won’t list them all.

You may be a little dismissive of the distribution fission method, but it is undeniable that more and more companies are moving towards this model, and more and more products are reaching consumers through this model.

However, the author has also consulted relevant lawyers. This method, especially the invitation process from B to C, often involves more legal risks, which you need to discern for yourself.

D. Service extension

The so-called service extension may seem a bit like "selling dog meat under the guise of mutton" to outsiders, but it has to be said that the service extension method has a very good contribution rate to user growth to a certain extent.

This strategy often involves extending related product recommendations based on services.

For example, a third-party data service company for APP operation optimization adopts the following process in seeking users for app construction and optimization:

A large number of app optimization courses, lectures and other activities were held, and app operation managers and product managers from some well-known companies were invited to teach and answer questions. Because they were free, they attracted a large number of staff with app operation needs. Then, by digging deep into this group of people, we sought opportunities for cooperation. A set of agency operation plans and a one-year agency operation plan were so easily converted.

Or some social e-commerce platforms and insurance sales platforms that are targeting the group of mothers often do not directly promote a one-time deal to mothers, but start with marginal services, achieve centralized management of potential users through parenting classes for mothers, and then stimulate mothers to convert in a reasonable way.

It can be said that service extension is a relatively covert way to increase users, which to some extent effectively lowers the threshold and psychological resistance of users.

In summary, almost all common user growth strategies on the market are included in big brand strategies such as large-scale advertising channel market deployment, or small and beautiful strategies such as profit-driven, resource integration, distribution fission, and service extension, either single or in combination.

4. How to choose a user growth strategy?

At this point, you may be thinking about what strategy you should choose for your product?

Big brand strategy or small and beautiful strategy?

Obviously, this depends on the conditions of the product itself, such as product positioning, user attributes, product features, company strength and other factors.

From the perspective of product positioning, for example, if your product is education and training, integrating resources is relatively a major advantage for you; if your product tends to be a tool type, integrating related content is also an option;

From the perspective of user attributes, for example, if your product’s target users are in the financial sector, profit-driven marketing can often lead to good user growth. If your product is aimed at lower-tier users, you can also consider focusing on profit-driven marketing.

From the perspective of product features, financial products often use a profit-driven approach to attract users; social e-commerce S2B2C, distribution fission can allow you to quickly open up a certain market;

From the perspective of company strength, if the company is big and strong enough, it may choose a big brand strategy; if you consider continuous capital output, profit-driven development can help the continuous influx of users, and distribution fission can enhance brand reputation.

Therefore, how to choose a user growth strategy should also be comprehensively evaluated based on the above four points.

In addition, it is important to note that strategies are often not adopted in a single way, but rather in a combination of ways.

At the same time, the adoption of strategic combinations often also pays attention to the distinction between primary and secondary.

For example, the above-mentioned financial products are mainly profit-driven, but secondly, they can also join the form of distribution fission to expand new customers; for example, social e-commerce S2B2C is mainly distribution fission, but it cannot do without the assistance of profit-driven.

Finally, the selection of user growth strategies may involve a trial-and-error process in the early stages, but it often needs to be solidified and become a workflow. Don’t click on things you don’t know and don’t change your mind frequently.

To put it simply: find the right point and move forward in the direction of your own strategy.

(over)

Author: Bi Xiaosheng, an Internet operator

Source: Pen Xiaosheng