User operation strategy of “Get” App!

In the knowledge payment industry, Dedao has always been a mysterious existence.

On the one hand, knowledge payment is an operation-intensive industry, but Duoduo is sufficiently restrained in its operations. All knowledge-based paid products are playing the fission game, but Duoduo has never played it before. Duoduo also disdains the concept of private traffic pool that is so popular in the operation circle.

But on the other hand, despite being so restrained, it has become the undisputed leader in the industry, both in terms of operating data and public opinion. After three years of launch, it has gained more than 20 million users and a valuation of 7 billion.

So, what is the operating system that has supported its development to date? This article attempts to break down the operating system on which it relies, hoping to give you some inspiration.

Table of contents:

1. Key user behaviors obtained

2. Obtained User Operation Strategy

1. New Member Gift Pack

2. Free courses

3. Course trial based on algorithm recommendation

4. Knowledge City

3. The resulting growth strategy

1. The resulting product growth strategy

2. Obtained external growth strategy

IV. Conclusion

Before we begin, let me first state that the methodology for deconstructing the operating system can be found in this article: How to build an operating system? 》

The article is quite long. If you don’t have time to read it in detail, I will briefly summarize the key points of the article.

The operation system of a product covers three elements: key user behaviors, user operation strategies and growth strategies.

1. Key user behaviors

For any product, there are key user behaviors. This behavior is a turning point in the user's growth process. Its occurrence marks the user's growth from a new user to an active user, or from an active user to a paying user.

User key behaviors determine the direction of building the operation system. Once this behavior is defined, it is necessary to ensure that this behavior occurs to the greatest extent possible in subsequent user operation strategies.

2. User operation strategy

The goal is to ensure that key user behaviors occur, and through this strategy, encourage users to deeply experience the value of the product and become loyal users.

For most products (especially knowledge-based paid products), key user behaviors are often user payment and secondary sharing, so user operation strategies often also assume the responsibility of sales conversion.

3. Growth Strategy

Solve the problem of how to obtain traffic. Growth strategies are divided into productized growth strategies and external growth strategies. A productized growth strategy refers to a growth strategy that is integrated into the product. External growth strategies refer to various marketing activities outside of products, such as channel placement, etc.

The interactive relationship between user key behaviors, user operation strategies and growth strategies is actually very simple. To summarize it in one sentence: growth strategies obtain traffic for products, user operation strategies are responsible for converting this traffic, and user key behaviors determine the direction of conversion.

If we use a diagram to represent the interactive relationship between the three, it should be like this:

Next, we will use the methodology mentioned above to disassemble the obtained operating system. First of all, we need to define: What are the key behaviors of users for Get?

1. Key user behaviors obtained

Generally speaking, key user behaviors vary significantly depending on the industry the product is in. For products in the same industry, key user behaviors often do not differ much.

For example: for community products, such as Zhihu and Weibo, the key user behavior is the first status posted by the user in the community; for an education and training company, the key user behavior is the user paying to participate in training. So, how do we define the key behaviors of knowledge-based paid products?

As mentioned above, for an industry like paid knowledge where the price per course is low and which relies on volume to achieve scale profitability, there are often two key user behaviors: payment and secondary sharing. This is no exception for Get, but in addition to this, when it comes to the product itself, there is another point that cannot be ignored, and that is taking notes .

Duoduo encourages users to take course notes, which will be automatically synchronized to the Duoduo community. Community is a very important part of user operation strategy. An active community plays an important role in improving user stickiness. Therefore, for Get, taking notes should also be considered one of the key user behaviors.

From this point of view, there are three key user behaviors: user payment, secondary sharing and note-taking. Defining the key behaviors of users is the starting point for deconstructing the operating system. The user operation strategy that will be disassembled next is only used to ensure the occurrence of these three key user behaviors.

2. Obtained User Operation Strategy

Many knowledge-based paid products will direct users to personal WeChat accounts, and then reach users by continuously posting to Moments and sending group messages, ultimately completing the entire operational conversion process for users on the WeChat side. As for the product side, it is more about completing the knowledge delivery process for users.

But Duoduo has never done this. Duoduo's user operation conversion and final knowledge delivery are all completed within the product, reflecting the extremely high product completeness of Duoduo App, as well as its strong product centripetal force and user stickiness.

The resulting user operation strategy consists of the following five functions:

1. Newcomer Gift Pack
2. Free Courses
3. Recommendation Algorithm
4. Knowledge City
5. Honor System

1. New Member Gift Pack

“Newcomer gift pack” is standard feature of almost all knowledge payment platforms. Giving certain preferential benefits to new users when they open the APP for the first time can promote retention and conversion. Almost all institutions on the market use this approach, so I will not elaborate on it here.

2. Free courses

There are currently 135 courses online, and only two of them are free: "Logical Thinking" and "Shao Heng Headlines".

From an operational perspective, these two free courses give users a reason to open the app every day, promoting user retention and activity.

In addition, the role of "logical thinking" in user conversion cannot be ignored.

"Logical Thinking" can be regarded as an audio shopping guide program. Although the audio content is of high quality, a large amount of content comes from paid courses and e-books. Promote user conversion by continuously recommending acquired knowledge (paid courses) to users. Currently, the on-demand volume for each lecture of "Logical Thinking" is around 800,000, which can be said to be a powerful means of conversion payment.

3. Recommendation Algorithm

When you open the Get APP, the content at the end of the homepage is generated by the recommendation algorithm based on user behavior trajectories.

For such a content product, the use of recommendation algorithms has two meanings:

1. Personalizing content based on user interests can reduce user churn and promote user conversion;
2. The recommendation algorithm will recommend some courses that have low sales but decent quality, so that these courses can also get sufficient exposure and thus increase sales. Effectively reduce the Matthew effect brought about by the enrichment of courses.

Almost all content products will use recommendation algorithms after the platform content becomes increasingly rich. This is almost a consensus in the Internet industry. Recommendation algorithms can not only effectively improve user retention, but are also an effective means to promote user conversion and payment.

4. Knowledge City

Knowledge City is equivalent to a community. The course notes written by users when studying courses will be synchronized to Knowledge City, thus enabling communication and sharing with other users.

Knowledge City-State is also an effective means of retaining and activating users. People who like to share can get social rewards such as comments, likes, and attention through this channel, which further motivates them to contribute high-quality content.

In addition, Knowledge City can also promote user conversion.

The course notes shared by users in Knowledge City will arouse the interest of other users in the corresponding paid courses, thereby expanding the dissemination of paid courses within the platform and attracting users to purchase. Moreover, the advertising effect brought about by this form of note sharing is not so blunt, and it can be regarded as a clever means of user conversion.

5. Honor System

The user growth system obtained is its honor system. The honor system is composed of two parts: medals and credits .

The medals obtained are divided into two categories: upgrade medals and special achievement medals.

There are 9 upgrade medals in total, each of which is divided into 9 levels. The medal is based on five operational indicators: app opening frequency, user usage time, payment, sharing, and note-taking. The greater the user's contribution to these five indicators, the higher the medal level will be.

Obtained "Upgrade Medal" and "Special Achievement Medal"

Special achievement medals require users to do some fixed tasks, such as: getting up early to study on Duoduo for 7 consecutive days, logging in to Duoduo continuously on Saturdays and Sundays, etc.

Interestingly, there is also a mysterious medal in the special achievement medal. There is no clear method for obtaining the mysterious medal, nor is there an indication of the number of people who have received it. My personal guess is that the mysterious medal may not be obtained, and it is a suspense left for users.

From an operational perspective, leaving users with a suspense will give them a sense of psychological loss. This sense of loss can prevent users from losing interest in the product after obtaining all the badges, thereby further extending the user's life cycle in the product.

The resulting credit system quantifies the user's behavior trajectory within the product into a specific number. User credits are updated every week, and with the incentive of credit rankings, users are encouraged to continuously and deeply experience the product value in order to increase their credits.

The obtained "credit composition" and "credit ranking"

The resulting user growth system is a breath of fresh air. Compared with other knowledge-based paid products that focus more on using material things to motivate user growth, Duoduo focuses more on giving spiritual rewards to users, and in terms of material things, it only gives users some small coupons at most.

It can be said that the type of user growth system depends on the type of product and the type of user. Behind this difference lies the difference in product tone and user groups.

Get is one of the few products with its own unique tone, which is rooted in its community attributes. Get's mission is to "serve the 2% of lifelong learners in the population." Users have a strong sense of identification and centripetal force toward the product, so setting up medals and credits within the product can effectively drive these users.

Moreover, the purpose of these users' use is more to gain cognitive improvement, and they focus on spiritual gains rather than material gains. If too much emphasis is placed on material incentives in the user growth system, the data may look good in the short term, but in the long run, it will inevitably break the tacit understanding and unity between the product and the users.

3. The resulting growth strategy

After talking about key user behaviors and user operation strategies, let’s finally talk about the growth strategy, that is: how does one acquire traffic?

The first thing I have to say is that in terms of traffic, Duoduo is truly a "rich second generation".

Before getting it, the Logical Thinking team had already produced a successful video talk show - "Logical Thinking". Each episode of this program has been viewed millions of times and has a large number of loyal fans who are so-called "lovers of wisdom and truth." This provides a unique innate advantage for the birth of this product.

However, as a product that has firmly established itself at the top of the knowledge payment industry, its rapid development is also inseparable from the fact that it quickly found a growth strategy that suits itself.

1. The resulting product growth strategy

The resulting product growth strategy can be simply summarized as “one center, two basic points”.

One center is " content drives users to share spontaneously ", which is the basic principle that we have always adhered to in terms of user growth.

Paid knowledge products like these naturally have certain advantages in driving user sharing. On the one hand, users have a low psychological threshold for sharing knowledge; on the other hand, sharing knowledge is more conducive to users creating a good personal image in their circle of friends.

Focusing on the core of "driving users to share spontaneously", Duoduo has established two "basic points" to facilitate users to share their knowledge. These are also Duoduo's two strategies for bringing in new users: " ask friends to read" and "recommend Duoduo to friends".

"Ask a friend to read" is embedded in the course content. During the course learning process, if the user thinks the content is good, he can click the "Ask a friend to read" button to share this course to his friends circle. Friends can click in and learn this course for free.

"Recommend to friends" is a common strategy for old customers to bring in new customers, and other products are also using it. Provide old users with a very stylish poster and guide them to share it with friends. After the friends register, both parties can get a 20 yuan coupon.

2. Resulting external growth strategy

The resulting external growth strategy has different focuses as the product life cycle iterates.

In the early stage of product launch, the traffic growth of the App was completely dependent on the diversion of "logical thinking". There were two key operation nodes:

1. Before and after the product was launched, the Logical Thinking public account, which has tens of millions of fans, promoted the App many times to divert fans.
2. In March 2017, the "Logical Thinking" program was exclusively broadcast on the Get App.

During the product growth stage, the external growth strategy obtained focuses more on BD-related activities. Among them, there are two typical BD activities:

1. In March 2018, we sponsored "The Brain". During the broadcast of "The Brain", viewers could get "Liu Jia's 30 Lectures on the Basics of Psychology" for free by opening the "Shake TV" function in WeChat.
2. On July 27, 2018, Luo Zhenyu cooperated with Jiangsu Satellite TV's talk show "Knowledge is Power", which will be broadcast every Friday at 21:20 in the prime time.

In addition, Duoduo will also carry out some relatively fixed activities, including both online and offline activities.

Most of the online activities are live broadcasts. For example, Get broadcasts the company's regular meeting every Tuesday live and makes it a fixed live broadcast program. Every opening ceremony of Get University will also be broadcast live on the Get App. For example, lecturers are invited to do live broadcasts from time to time to share knowledge or opinions in a certain field, and the purpose of attracting traffic can be achieved by leveraging the lecturer's popularity.

Offline activities include the annual "Knowledge Release Conference" and the "Friends of Time" New Year's Eve speech. Knowledge conferences are mainly used to launch new products, while the "Friends of Time" New Year's Eve speech has been built into a New Year's Eve event for lifelong learners. Almost every New Year's Eve speech will receive widespread attention from the industry and the media.

It is worth mentioning that in every New Year’s Eve speech, Luo Pang can package some mysterious but refreshing words and highly circulated golden sentences.

Luo Pang is well versed in the principles of communication. The familiar "super users", "small trends", "You like the peaceful years, but the reality is the rushing river", "You have your plans, the world has other plans", etc., all come from his New Year's Eve speech "Friends of Time".

These words have gradually become common language in daily communication through self-media hype and word of mouth among users, and the resulting brands have also been widely spread.

Conclusion

The above is the full text of the analysis of the operation system from three aspects: key user behaviors, user operation strategies and growth strategies.

Personal opinion: The most valuable thing is the product tone that is slightly different from other products. This tone is difficult to describe clearly in specific words. It may come from the persistence of the Get team represented by Luo Pang in the original intention of building a community of lifelong learners.

At the same time, this product tone also makes the operating system unique. For example: in terms of user operation strategy, more emphasis is placed on giving users a sense of honor; in terms of growth strategy, it is very Buddhist and relies heavily on users' spontaneous sharing. The operational restraint mentioned at the beginning of the article is actually determined by the tonality of this product.

This product tonality attracts users with the same tonality to join and become loyal users. But there is no doubt that this tonality will also limit further growth. Because in order to maintain this tone, it is impossible for Dedao to lower its profile and engage in marketing and revenue in a big way.

However, capital seems to be able to change everything, and Zhihu has perfectly proved this to us, so let us wait and see how it will evolve in the future.

*At the end of the article, a diagram of the operating system is attached:

The interactive relationship between the three elements of the "Get App" operating system

User operation strategy of "Get App"

Growth strategy of Dedao App

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Author: Su Tanbin

Source: Su Tanbin