Layered operations of Toutiao users’ life cycle!

In user operations , user segmentation is a necessary condition for achieving refined product operations. This article takes Toutiao as an example, combines relevant data indicators to carry out user life cycle stratification method, and formulates specific operation strategies for users at different levels. It considers the formulation of operation strategies from different aspects, and analyzes the strategy priorities to ensure the feasibility of the strategy.

1. Product Analysis

1.1 Product Status

(Data source: iResearch, Baidu Index)

Combining the above data from Toutiao, we can find that:

• The monthly number of independent devices has increased by 0-2% from July 2018 to date, and the product has entered a mature stage;
• The monthly active users exceed 250 million, and the daily active time of users is 76 minutes, with huge traffic data;
• The proportion of males is 63%, which is greater than that of females;
• The user group of the product is relatively young;
• The products are mainly used in first- and second-tier cities.

1.2 Product Core Value

Product positioning: Personalized recommendation of information you are interested in through intelligent algorithms, user-centric, providing services that connect people and information.

Core value of the product: Combined with intelligent recommendation algorithms, providing information that users are interested in

1.3 User Requirements

As an information content APP, Toutiao targets user needs.

Analyze user needs based on the KANO model:

• Basic needs: check current news, share/download/collect/like, short videos, small videos, account management;
• Expected needs: segmented industry information, Q&A, and interaction with other users;
• Charming needs: personalized intelligent recommendations, Wei Toutiao-everyone is an original author.

1.4 User Profile

(1) Xiao A, 22 years old, is a college student. He usually has a lot of free time and pays attention to hot news/entertainment gossip. In his spare time, he likes to learn about current affairs on Toutiao and pay attention to some postgraduate entrance examination and professional information.

(2) Xiao B, 25 years old, has been working for two or three years. He is very busy and confused about his career development. He gets some information about his career development through Toutiao. He also reads some current affairs news or watches funny videos to relieve stress during his commute.

(3) Xiao C, 20 years old, works in a factory in a third- or fourth-tier city. When he gets off work, he goes to Toutiao to read his favorite novels and short videos, because Toutiao always recommends his favorite content to him.

2. Business Logic Diagram

Toutiao users are mainly divided into: content producers (Toutiao account creators) and content consumers. The main behaviors of the two types of users are as follows:

2.1 Main Behaviors of Content Consumers

(1) Information: reading news, watching videos, and watching advertisements

(2) Social aspects: follow other users, participate in topic comments, interact and chat, ask questions, etc.

(3) E-commerce: Purchase products through e-commerce traffic links

2.2 Main Behaviors of Content Producers

(1) Content production: producing high-quality content to attract users to click and consume

(2) Advertising traffic: Earn advertising revenue by posting advertising messages for other brands or products

(3) E-commerce: Sell products through Toutiao’s store function and monetize fan traffic.

2.3 Product Business Logic Diagram

It can be found that Toutiao users can be roughly divided into production users and consumption users, and the two types of users can be further divided into their own more detailed levels. In this analysis, due to limited space, we will conduct stratification and formulate operational strategies for consumer users with a large user base.

3. Building the User Lifecycle

As a traffic-generating APP, Toutiao has the following features:

• Business needs are diverse, different types of users have different needs, and products need to meet the needs of most people.
• There is a strong connection between users. Users can follow other users, like, comment, and share other people’s content. At the same time, there is a “Follow” channel on the Toutiao homepage, which strengthens the connection between users.

This analysis will stratify users through a relatively simplified product user life cycle, and conduct stratified operations on the user life cycle for consumer users. The value of consumer users is reflected in the high traffic brought by high-frequency and long-term visits to products. There are few scenarios where users pay directly. Therefore, the user value of Toutiao is in the fourth quadrant in the figure below.

Here, we break down Toutiao’s user value into active retention indicators:

• Basic data indicators
• Key behavioral tags

3.1 Basic data indicators

From the perspective of basic data indicators, we need to pay attention to the basic access time and frequency data of users to the product . Specific indicators are:

• User access frequency
• Average online time of users
• The last time the user was online

3.2 Key Behavior Tags

The core value of Toutiao: combining intelligent recommendation algorithms to provide users with information that interests them. Key behavioral indicators will be analyzed from the perspectives of functionality, content, and social interaction.

For new users, when they enter the product, they lack some basic information about the user. Therefore, in order to allow users to experience the core value of the product more quickly, users need to be allowed to choose the type of information they prefer , such as: "History", "Military", "Beauty", etc.

For old users, the accuracy of information push is fed back through the number of likes, favorites, shares or comments .

3.3 Building the User Lifecycle

(1) Description of users at each stage

Introduction users: Users download Toutiao just to read recent hot news or even search for something, without experiencing the core value of Toutiao such as personalized recommendations.

Growth stage users: By selecting information types and completing relevant user information, the product can push information to users relatively accurately, and users are more receptive to the information pushed by the product.

Mature users: Users habitually pay attention to product content information, and are keen to collect, comment, like and interact with news and other content, and often pay attention to information about their favorite creators.

Dormant users: Users who were once mature users of the product, but have not logged into the product for several consecutive days due to various reasons. Recall is required through the recall mechanism.

Churn users: users no longer use the product.

(2) User-specific life cycle construction

Through the above analysis of indicators and tags, as well as user descriptions, the user life cycle is broken down as follows:

(PS: Since there is no specific data for data screening, the specific numbers in the model are virtual values.)

4. Development of Operational Strategies for Consumer Users

Based on the user life cycle, operational strategies are formulated for consumer users.

From the operational perspective:

• We hope that users can ensure the stability of operational data indicators and the normal achievement of various product indicators.
• We also hope that users can complete certain important behaviors and then convert them into higher-value users.

Therefore, the formulation of operation strategy can be considered from the following two aspects:

• Expect users to perform stable, periodic operations
• Guide users to complete key actions that can improve their rank

4.1 Formulation of overall strategic direction

The overall consideration is to allow users to complete certain behaviors in order to ensure the stability of relevant activity and retention indicators, while allowing users to trigger specific behaviors to complete the conversion of user classes.

The overall strategy is formulated as follows:

• Allow users to complete a one-time key action
• Expect users to maintain some minimum contribution
• Keep users engaged in a behavior for a long time
• Allow users to complete the advancement of identity and value level
• Let users have a higher emotional identification with the product

The above aspects include the two strategic directions we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter: stable and periodic user behavior; and advanced user behavior. Next, examples of specific behaviors and purposes are shown below:

For Toutiao, it needs to guide the introduction-stage users to develop into growth-stage users, and the growth-stage users to develop into mature-stage users. As for mature-stage users, on the one hand, they can ensure user retention through membership mechanisms, title certification, and regular push of content related to their interests, and on the other hand, they can be guided to use Wei Toutiao to develop into content producers.

The overall strategic direction is formulated as follows:

4.2 Formulation of specific operational strategies

After the overall strategic direction is determined, specific operational strategies are formulated for each level of users.

(1) Users in the introduction period

• Design corresponding online reward activities for users to keep users in the product.
• Guide users to complete the selection of information preference types, channels or creators (advanced behavior).

(2) Growth stage users

• Regularly push new updates (articles, videos, etc.) from people you follow, and combine big data to show users more relevant content.
• Design activities with rewards for sharing and commenting, guide users to collect, like, comment, share, etc., conduct more interactions, and allow users to increase sunk costs (advanced behavior) through interaction.

(3) Mature users

• Regularly push information content that users like;
• Membership mechanism and points mechanism can be used to authenticate user identities and increase the emotional connection between users and products.
• Plan activities and attract users to create micro headlines through rewards and other means, allowing users to advance to content producers (advanced behavior).

(4) Dormant users and lost users

• Design a recall mechanism to awaken users through content that users care about, updates from their friends, etc., to attract users back to the product.

4.3 Thinking about strategy priorities

After the hierarchical model and strategy are formulated, the strategy priorities need to be sorted. Combined with the ICE principle, the strategy priorities need to take into account:

• The impact of strategy
• Confidence in strategy
• Simplicity of strategy

Here, we can create an evaluation model based on the above three factors to determine the priority of the strategy:

1. The influence of the strategy, that is, the breadth of the impact of the operational strategy and the size of the impact, is scored out of 10 points. The greater the influence, the higher the score.
2. Confidence in the strategy refers to the operator's confidence in the effectiveness of the strategy. The full score is 10 points, and the higher the confidence, the higher the score.
3. The simplicity of the strategy, that is, the difficulty for operators to complete the strategy, is scored out of 10 points, and the easier the strategy, the higher the score.

The specific form is as follows:

Since table comments are highly subjective, the average score can be calculated by combining the scores of multiple people to ultimately demonstrate the priority of the strategy.

V. Conclusion

This article uses Toutiao to stratify users based on the product’s user life cycle. It focuses on analyzing the relevant behaviors that users at different levels need to complete from two operational perspectives, formulating specific strategies, and finally using the ICE principle to think about strategy priorities to ensure the feasibility of the strategy. The user life cycle stratification method is applicable to most products. For other products, you can also use the relevant methods in the article to formulate operation strategies to achieve refined operations.

Related reading:

1. APP promotion and operation: How to maximize the effect of your activities?

2. APP promotion planning: 60,000 paying users increased within 7 days of beta testing!

3. APP promotion activities: How to plan a screen-sweeping event?

4. A complete list of APP promotion methods in 2019, take it and don’t thank me!

5. How to carry out APP promotion and marketing? What are the common methods?

6. APP promotion case: How to go from 0 to millions of users?

Author: Xie Zexian

Source: Xie Zexian