Product operation and promotion | 5 underlying ideas for traffic growth!

Today I would like to share with you five important ideas about traffic growth.

The first is dividend thinking, the second is focus thinking, the third is system thinking, the fourth is word-of-mouth thinking, and the fifth is extreme thinking. I will share what we have done in the past regarding these five points, some of our theories, some of our thoughts, and some stories, hoping that it will be helpful to everyone.

01. What is the essence of traffic?

We believe that traffic is the source of all business , so from a business perspective, if traffic cannot serve the business, it is hooliganism.

02. Bonus thinking

Our team must ensure that we have 20% of our energy to think about and explore traffic dividends. There are two levels: one is the channel dividend , and the other is the model dividend .

I will not go into details about the cases and stories regarding channel dividends, but will simply state the conclusion. In the PC Internet era, our channel dividend might be 5-10 years, but in the Internet era it might be 3-5 years, or even shorter, such as Douyin.

For example, when WeChat Moments began to be commercialized in 2016 and 2017, everyone started to put ads in Moments. The cost of investing 10 million yuan in Moments was very low, and it was a very good channel. However, in 2018, the cost suddenly increased. This was because the effects of everyone's advertising were very good at the beginning, so everyone actively put in ads here and spent money on advertising, causing the benefits of this channel to disappear.

Douyin is even more ruthless. It basically started commercial advertising in April 2018. It was okay in the first month, but advertisers quickly followed suit. In April, Douyin's daily revenue was said to have reached 32 million yuan. The speed was very fast because the pressure on companies was also very high and no one wanted to miss out on the dividends of a channel.

Let me talk about the dividends of the model. For example, in 2016 and 2017, some institutions began to recruit students by offering low-priced courses at 5 or 10 yuan, and found that this model was very effective. After the course price was lowered, the customer experience threshold was greatly reduced. Although the price was lowered, the service experience was still the same as the full-priced courses of several hundred yuan. The customer experience was very good, and this model innovation produced dividends.

Because this model is very effective, many institutions began to learn it. In 2018 and 2019, a large number of such enrollment models appeared, and the benefits of the model disappeared.

The cycle of model dividends will be longer because its competitors will follow up relatively slowly. For companies that are running fast, sometimes they can get market dividends through model innovation and have a good chance of staying ahead of their competitors by one or two years. These one or two years can create a considerable gap.

For thoughts on the traffic dividend cycle, you can refer to the trend in this graph. In the future, at the traffic dividend level, the life cycle of channel dividends will become shorter and shorter.

Then let me share with you our thoughts on dividends.

First of all, we believe that there are dividends at any time. For example, we are currently doing ASO. Android actually still has a lot of dividends, but the cycle of channel dividends is getting shorter and shorter, because when our news is released, everyone will definitely actively participate in the test until the effect is not good;

In addition, from the perspective of our team, on the one hand, we need to spend more time thinking about and exploring channel dividends, and on the other hand, we need to spend more time thinking about model dividends, which will have a longer life cycle.

Finally, we believe that based on so many years of experience, the real long-term bonus is the team's ability to grow rapidly and adapt to the rapid pace of change and the pace of change in the industry. This is a long-term bonus that we believe belongs to us. We can constantly embrace change and discover bonus opportunities.

03. Focused thinking

No matter how small the channel is, we still need to spend the same amount of energy to operate it well. At different stages, we will focus on different channels.

Take me as an example. At the beginning in 2014, we focused on search engine promotion. At that time, the search engine traffic could meet our enrollment needs.

By 2016, we started to promote ASO and some APPs to further supplement the channels.

By 2017, the ceilings of these channels further restricted the achievement of our goals, so we further expanded information flow channels with higher ceilings.

But even in 2018, the channels we focus on are the fewest in the industry. This is related to our focused thinking. We focus on using the best channels to influence our potential users multiple times, and the final effect will be very good.

The focus is different at different stages. We try to focus on things that we are confident and capable of doing . This is our logic.

04. Systems thinking

System thinking is about whether we can build a growth system of our own and how to build a traffic growth system of our own.

This is our own case, this is the traffic growth model, which is based on our own understanding of our own organization or our own brand.

Can we build a platform of our own with our team, or with everyone in our company, or design something that belongs to our own company or team?

When we talk about traffic operation, it is not just about expanding channels, but more importantly, it is about improving marketization and how to achieve fission.

This model actually looks more like an organization or a team. It can provide a relatively complete system capability and construction capability. Every company is different, so just take a general look at the logic.

05. Growth system

What we will do next is to build our own growth system . What is a growth system?

Everything we do is centered around the growth of our business.

In a relatively mature environment, we can generally set up a growth project team with a two-way reporting system .

In the entire funnel model, there are corresponding responsible persons, and each role is actually relatively independent. This organizational structure has gradually developed a trend in recent years. It reports to both its original department and the growth project team, so this is called a two-way reporting system.

The next step is to build a complete indicator operation system for our team and our organization.

For example, the various models we talked about earlier, our general exposure clicks, conversion rates, the dozen or so indicators we are involved in, and how many indicators there are from registration to purchase, form a very complete delivery model.

If we break down this indicator into very detailed parts, the next thing we need to do is to iterate efficiently.

What we talked about before was the strategy itself, which is to achieve this goal. We will look at the efficiency in the middle, such as the efficiency of delivery, the efficiency of iteration, the efficiency of early warning, etc. These all depend on the team's execution ability. Many small problems do not actually require high professional capabilities. The key is to discover and iterate in time.

06. Word of mouth thinking

The core is still fission , building our own fission system. What I am sharing today is more about the thinking level.

For many companies, especially Internet companies, we need to look at these three mechanisms. The first is the regular sharing mechanism.

For example, poster check-ins and personalized reports are more common in the learning and education industries. What each user needs is different, so we can implement regular distribution mechanisms based on each user's data, including referral mechanisms and invitation mechanisms.

Next is the regular activity mechanism , which is open classes and exchange meetings.

There is another point of view, especially for the sales team. When we are doing sales, we have a saying: service is marketing and trust is growth. The cultivation of values ​​is still very important, so we summed it up in this sentence: if we provide good service and marketing, and our customers trust us, we will naturally grow.

07. Compound interest thinking

Einstein said, "Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world." The idea of ​​compound interest is very valuable to us.

Here is a case.

There are two brands, which are highly homogeneous competitors. Their target users, services provided, etc. are basically the same, and the front-end customer acquisition costs are also the same. However, there is one data that is very different between Brand One and Brand Two, which is the repurchase rate .

The repurchase rate of Brand 1 is 80%, and that of Brand 2 is 70%. You may feel that there is not much difference between the two repurchase rates, but in fact, for a user, the LTV of Brand 1 is 49% higher than that of Brand 2. This 10% difference in repurchase rate is a frequently appearing indicator.

what does that mean? This means that under the same circumstances, Brand One can spend nearly 50% more on advertising than Brand Two. Everyone has placed advertisements before, so what does this cost difference mean? It means that Brand Two has basically no chance of winning and can easily be defeated by Brand One.

Customers come to us many times to buy this product, this is the repurchase rate. Repeat purchase efficiency can be very helpful in driving brand revenue growth and will also help the growth of new users . Why? Because we can spend more money on advertising.

To help brands grow, we can not only do so through marketing efforts, but also establish relevant marketing mechanisms and concepts in the middle and back ends of the entire enterprise.

For example, when designing our marketing activities, do we really have a sense of service? Are we just selling things and inducing users to register? A large number of new users actually have a very bad experience in this process. Do we really optimize the activity experience from the user's perspective?

In addition, during the sales process, what kind of mentality do we have when communicating with customers? Should we get them to buy quickly, or should we first try to explore and listen to the users' needs to see if we can truly solve their problems? Then the users will naturally buy. Should we use less tricks and more sincerity?

If we want everyone to be aware of this, our philosophy is very important, such as what we say: service is marketing and trust is growth.

Whether it is the front end or the back end, all our links are compound interest indicators. If we can do our best one by one, our growth efficiency will increase exponentially.

Compound interest thinking is one of the most valuable growth thinking. The strategy of compound interest is actually to focus on the long term, the continuity of the process, and the extreme of the process. For example, if we can achieve the repurchase rate data of Brand 2 every season, then this is continuity. The continuity of the process is very important.

08. Share a recent story:

The first story: Why did the price increase by 60% after a plan was revised 15 times?

Last week we made a plan, and I said that we should strive for perfection today. We started from the most basic, including a typo. After checking everything, we checked all the layouts to see what kind of value we could output, and then checked and formed a behavioral logic. After we made the changes, it was almost 11 o'clock, and we increased the price by 60%.

After the increase, the customer came to our company two weeks later. Based on this plan, they adjusted the price slightly to a better level, making the price more favorable to us. We followed this value system, and our original income doubled compared to our previous quotation.

The core logic here is: in the process of service, what kind of short-term value can we create for our customers, and what kind of long-term value can we create for our customers? If you think about and optimize the solution with such questions in mind, the value of the solution will be completely different.

The second story is why the target was adjusted from 5,000 to 150,000?

A colleague came to our company and said he hoped we could help him. He said he had set a traffic target of 5,000, but his confusion was that the company did not give him a budget or resources. What should he do at this time?

We first gave him some advice based on his goal of 5,000, with no budget or company resources. For a large company, 5,000 traffic is meaningless. I hope you raise your goal to 150,000. We have the resources and the opportunity to do so.

What is the significance of the adjustment, and why do we need to adjust the target from 5,000 to 150,000?

You have put a lot of pressure on yourself. I have sorted out the logic of doing things with him. First of all, don't think about staying in a big company for many years. Under this premise, if you are still a basic employee, what will you do at this time?

You either do it well or don't do it at all. Only when you get more resources and budget from your boss can you create greater value.

Therefore, it is recommended to push yourself by setting aggressive goals , and then ask the company to give you a year. If you fail, you can leave. If you succeed, you will be promoted and get a raise. Moreover, even if you fail, the growth and experience you gain in this process will be different. The company also hopes that all its employees have such courage.

The third story: Why do you need to get up at five o’clock every morning to check your account?

I know a friend's company. Their team is very hardworking. Almost all channel managers get up at 5 o'clock every morning to optimize accounts with agents. We said that if we put in advertising, the bonus has disappeared, so what should we do?

This year's strategy is to compete on efficiency . If you iterate once an hour, I will iterate once every half an hour. If you get up at 5:30, we will get up at 5:00.

That’s all, share.

Related reading:

1. Product operation and promotion: How to compete for traffic?

2. Community Operation丨The essence and gameplay of "private domain traffic" in 2019!

3. Product operation: 2 major ways to get started to accurately capture private domain traffic!

4. Promotion and marketing: A brief discussion on vlog’s brand marketing and traffic monetization!

5. User operation: user growth in the post-traffic era!

6. Online marketing promotion: How to spend big money? Fine-tuned operation of large traffic!

Author: Yao Jingang

Source: Yao Jingang