Keep operation strategy and gain 170 million users in 4 years!

Recently, keep became popular again with its new short advertising video #It’s right to be afraid# . Subsequently, the number of downloads of keep reached its peak this year. Keep has been in development for 4 years and has accumulated 170 million users. Today I would like to discuss its operating strategy with you.

Logic of this article: Product Overview → Product Analysis → Operation Strategy Analysis

1. Product Overview

The iOS version was launched in February 2015, and the Android version was launched in April. After the launch, Keep quickly grew its user base to millions and received a US$5 million Series A investment from Intime Capital and BAI (Bertelsmann Asia Investments).

In July 2018, the number of users reached 140 million and it received Series D financing. It has been 4 years since its development, with a total of 170 million users and 35 million monthly active users.

Keep's cumulative Android downloads:

2. Product Analysis

PMF stands for Product-market fit, which refers to the matching degree between product and market. In short, it means whether your product can meet the needs of the established market.

1. Keep’s target users

On the surface, keep users have demands for fat loss and body shaping, but if you dig deeper, human needs will surface. When users become thinner and more beautiful, it means they can gain more recognition and praise.

Simply put, Keep is a tool product with social attributes. Users can make use of fragmented time to choose suitable video fitness courses for synchronous training anytime and anywhere, and share the results with the community after completion.

2. User profile of keep

The user profile of keep is as follows:

1. There are more women than men, with 58% of female users and 42% of male users.
2. Most of them are young people, 80% are under 30 years old
3. Most of the users have bachelor's degrees, with 76% of them having bachelor's degrees.
4. Most users are from first- and second-tier cities, accounting for 60%

Data source: iResearch

The users of keep are a group of young people in first- and second-tier cities. They are under great pressure from work and have irregular living habits. They are more susceptible to obesity and sub-health and have a strong desire to exercise. However, the fitness knowledge on the Internet is mixed, and they have only a vague understanding of how to exercise scientifically. At the same time, they have little free time and it is difficult for them to stick to long-term exercise.

3. Product positioning

The product positioning of Keep is to provide a set of tool-based and standardized fitness methods for fitness novices. Therefore, the main functions of keep include training courses and exercise plans.

4. Business Model

5. Product life cycle

Keep APP was launched on the App Store in February 2015, and officially started to be downloaded on August 1, 2016. Before March 2018, the average daily download volume was less than 100,000.

Starting from the first half of 2018, the product's growth curve began to become steeper, indicating that the product has entered a growth stage in terms of user acquisition.

There were two peaks in March and August 2018, with the highest number of downloads reaching 164,523, after which the growth rate slowed down. Since March 2019, the number of downloads has started to grow intensively again, which shows that Keep still has considerable potential in user acquisition.

Data source: Qimai.com

3. Keep operation strategy

Next, we will analyze the operating strategy of keep based on the "AARRR model" mentioned by Fan Bing in "Growth Hacker". AARRR refers to Acquisition (acquiring users), Activation (increasing activity), Retention (increasing retention rate), Revenue (obtaining revenue), and Refer (self-propagation) .

1. Get users

1) New media promotion

Keep started development in November 2014 and was officially launched in February 2015. During the launch period, Keep began to build user awareness.

At this time, Keep opened Weibo and official accounts, updating content on fitness, fat loss, etc., which accumulated the first batch of followers for Keep.

In addition, keep also launched a minesweeper-like promotion, finding a group of target KOLs, focusing on Zhihu, Douban, and Tieba, and publishing articles on fitness and weight loss. Among them, the most popular are cases of successful weight loss, accompanied by photos before and after weight loss, which are very convincing.

Although Keep's products had not yet been launched at that time, it had expanded the pool of potential users. In this way, Keep continued to deepen the awareness of fitness. Once Keep products were launched, users naturally accepted Keep's recommendations and downloaded the APP one after another.

2) Seed user recruitment

Before the Keep product was officially released, Keep began looking for beta users.

Keep's target seed users are novices who want to exercise but lack professional fitness knowledge. On January 22, 2015, Keep began recruiting "Chief Experience Officers" on Weibo. One could sign up by following and reposting the Weibo post.

According to the official announcement, the first recruitment attracted thousands of people's attention and more than 700 people forwarded it. According to online data, there were more than 4,000 internal beta test users in total.

This means that before Keep went online, there were already more than 4,000 registered users. They not only improved the product experience and reported bugs, but this group of initial users who had a strong interest in fitness also determined the initial atmosphere and operational direction of the product, and promoted the rapid explosion of Keep.

3) Celebrity promotion

Through promotion by entertainment stars, on October 31, 2015, Zhu Yawen introduced Keep to the national audience on the Happy Camp program. The traffic from both Happy Camp and Zhu Yawen made Keep's Baidu Index soar. The day after the program was broadcast, Keep's Baidu Index reached 10731.

4) Invite well-known IP to cooperate

Keep invited well-known IPs Marvel and Victoria's Secret Angels to cooperate, and developed Victoria's Secret Angel waist and abdomen training courses based on the characteristics of Victoria's Secret Angels. The course of supermodel Karlie Kloss has attracted 2.25 million participants to date, and opened a topic discussion area for Victoria's Secret Angels. By participating in course training + topic check-ins, a large number of precise users who are pursuing a good figure have been introduced.

In cooperation with Marvel, in order to realize users' heroic dreams, corresponding training courses have been developed for each hero. After completing each course, you can get a hero badge. After collecting a set , you can light up the Marvel family badge. The gamification setting has attracted a large number of Marvel fans to Keep.

5) ASO

In terms of ASO, keep has also done a lot of work. There are 10,864 keywords for iOS 12 alone, 2,107 of which are ranked in the top three search results, and 4,629 are ranked in the top ten search results. It was launched on the App Store in February 2015 and topped the App Store’s health and fitness chart for several days.

In addition, Keep has received 27 App Store Featured Recommendations and was selected as one of the 2015 Best Apps. "App Store Best Apps of the Year" is the most prestigious award in the Apple App Store.

2. Increase activity

According to data from iResearch Consulting, in 2019, Keep's monthly active users reached 35 million, and it has been occupying the top three positions on the health and fitness list for nearly a year.

1) Distinctive content

Keep's content has very distinctive features. In addition to general training courses, Keep also provides "targeted solutions" to meet the needs of user segments.

Through the data, we found that the usage data of Keep fluctuated greatly before and after the start of school. Students used it frequently during the winter and summer vacations, but stopped practicing when school started.

Through research, Keep discovered that students used Keep mostly at night, but the course movements were too intense and would affect other people in the dormitory, so they simply stopped practicing. In response to this demand, Keep developed a zero-noise series of content, and more than 18 million users have participated in the training since it went online.

2) Rich activities

Keep has a wealth of activities, with 11 activities in June this year alone, including online and offline activities. Keep’s event operations are divided into three categories. One is holiday activities, such as the “Keep Marathon | Tribute to Fatherly Love” on Father’s Day.

The second type is hot activities. For example, summer is here and the demand for weight loss is increasing. In response to this hot topic, Keep launched the #Fat Loss Challenge#.

The third type is an activity jointly launched with brands. On June 7, Keep launched an activity jointly launched with Volvo. As long as you check in for relevant training, you will have the opportunity to become Volvo’s chief test driver, achieving a win-win situation for Keep and the brand.

3) Incentive system

Everyone knows that exercise and fitness are beneficial, but for most people the exercise process is painful and difficult to stick to.

According to the latest report from the World Health Organization, only 22.8% of Chinese adults aged 20 to 59 have enough leisure time to exercise, which means that 71.2% of Chinese people aged 20 to 59 do not get enough exercise.

According to data released by Keep, there are 110 million registered users online who want to lose weight, but in fact only 13% of users can lose weight successfully, precisely because of this gap between ideal and reality. Keep’s product design needs to enable users to persist and complete their fitness goals, so there is a reward system .

When users persist in completing a task, they can obtain the corresponding badge, just like the Raccoon instant noodles that were popular in our childhood. Countless children were crazy about it, not because it was delicious, but for the Water Margin 108 Heroes collectible cards in the noodles. The same logic applies to collecting badges.

3. Improve retention rate

1) Product value driven

What product would you uninstall without hesitation? I think most of the time it’s because this APP is not of much value to you, and keeping it just takes up memory.

Therefore, the value you can bring to users is the original driving force that prompts them to continue using the product. Therefore , improving product design and polishing product value are the cornerstones of retaining users.

Looking back at Keep, the value it brings to users is very clear. Keep wants to convey the correct exercise concepts to everyone through exercise guidance and achieve effective fitness.

Value 1: I have all the training you want, professional and authoritative, and free

Keep’s training courses include six major categories: fitness, running, yoga, aerobics, walking, and ball games, and each major category has many sub-projects. These courses are evaluated based on several aspects including professionalism, ease of use, and users' actual training experience. They can only be put online after passing the review.

These training courses are not simply integrated, but are recorded by invited fitness coaches, so your professionalism can be imagined. You may not be able to learn these courses even if you pay to go to the gym, but you can use them for free on Keep.

Value 2: Simple and easy to operate, no time and location restrictions

It was mentioned above that Keep’s training courses are very professional. Since professional courses definitely have certain learning costs, how can we lower the threshold for users to use them?

Keep breaks down complex training into individual movements. For example, upper arm training is divided into 24 movements. You just need to follow the video to practice. Another advantage of this is that you are not restricted by location or time and can practice whenever you want.

In this way, Keep has established its own moat by providing users with a clear and value-for-money experience and ensuring the professionalism and practicality of the content.

2) Social Drive

Social drive, in short, is about building social chains so that users can invest more time and emotion, making them reluctant to leave the platform.

Everyone is familiar with the magic of social networking. In the past, Alipay was committed to social networking and launched "Campus Diary" and "White-collar Diary". Now Sohu has once again entered the social field by pushing Huyou.

Keep has social genes. After all, exercising alone is hard, and it is more interesting to communicate with others. Besides, it would be a waste if no one witnesses the good figure you have worked so hard to get.

Keep relies on UGC to build community and reputation, and promotes users to share fitness tips and experiences through rich topics. These high-quality contents attract users to like, comment, and follow. As users start to interact, a relationship chain is established. With the establishment of a relationship chain, the cost for users to leave the platform will also increase.

In order to encourage users to share more, the product has made a lot of experience optimizations around publishing. First, we have added topics to give users sharing directions. Second, we have added filters, data, and sticker functions to beautify pictures.

3) User growth system

The growth system, through gamification settings, allows users to upgrade and fight monsters step by step, with timely feedback and rare privileges to satisfy their vanity.

Keep's user growth system is divided into 20 levels from KG1 to KG20, and each level corresponds to different privileges.

The setting of the growth system needs to meet the following conditions: 1) The threshold can be broken 2) The rewards are timely 3) The level can be expected

• Threshold can be broken

A breakable threshold means that the initial level of the product is easy to enter. The first level of keep requires 800 growth points, which can basically be obtained after 3-4 trainings. If the entry threshold is set too high, users will easily be discouraged.

• Timely rewards

When you complete a training session, Keep will immediately remind you of the growth value and level upgrade you have gained, provide timely rewards, and generate an honor card to encourage you to forward it to your friends, deepening your perception of the rewards.

• Level can be expected

Keep indicates the privileges that can be obtained at each level. The higher the level, the more scarce the privileges are, allowing users to continue exploring.

4. Earn income

1) E-commerce revenue

Keep launched an e-commerce module in version 3.0 released in April 2016. The mall currently has five categories: light meal replacements, sports equipment, men's clothing, women's clothing, and sports life. These products are sold under Keep's own brand.

2) Course income

Paying for knowledge is accepted by more and more people. Keep has developed private courses and invited celebrities and grassroots influencers to record private courses via video. Compared with the fitness courses of Qianliao and Lizhi Micro Class, Keep's fitness is more targeted and the unit price is not high, ranging from 16.9 yuan to 99 yuan, so many users are willing to pay for it.

3) Membership income

Keep connects various paid sections through membership. By becoming a member, you can enjoy free course lectures, private class coupons, etc. The most attractive payment point for users is the exclusive training plan . After evaluating your personal physical condition, an intelligent training plan will be developed for you.

4) Advertising revenue

Keep's current monthly active users have reached 35 million, and its advertising value is self-evident. Keep now has advertising formats such as splash screen, information flow, and brand events, and has established cooperation with many brands such as Volvo, Skechers, and Adidas.

5. Self-propagation

1) Spreading among friends

When you finish exercising, keep will generate an exclusive picture to remind you to share your exercise records with your friends.

2) Marketing Communications

After having 30 million users, Keep's founder Wang Ning decided to shoot the first commercial for Keep - "Self-discipline gives me freedom". In this advertisement, Keep broke through the constraints of fitness apps and conveyed a healthy, youthful and self-disciplined lifestyle to young people. After the commercial was released, the number of Keep users increased from 30 million to 50 million.

Not long ago, keep launched its latest advertisement "It's OK to Be Afraid", which uses the camera to directly face everyone's fear in sports, and uses real stories of champion riders, fitness fanatics, visually impaired runners and others to show the courage to overcome "fear". It also set up corresponding topics on keep, calling on users to challenge "fear" and check in to grow.

Keep marketing has a deep insight into the psychology of users, awakens the stronger and more self-disciplined side of everyone, and encourages self-propagation among users.

IV. Conclusion

Keep has grown from a "mobile coach" APP to a trendy lifestyle for young people. There is a lot we can learn from it. I hope we can build an effective operation system as soon as possible to help our products shine.

Author: Momo

Source: Momo