APP promotion and operation: How did the first batch of users come?

When developing an APP, we must first understand the positioning of this APP and what kind of users it is aimed at. This way, when acquiring the first batch of seed users, we can be more accurate. As an APP promotion and operation, how do your first batch of seed users come from? Today, let’s take a look with Qingguajun to see how QQ, WeChat, Taobao, etc. are done!

Every successful company has a "hard" past, and every successful app has a process from 0 to 1. It is precisely because it can successfully achieve a breakthrough from zero that there are thousands and millions of users fissioning afterwards. How did those successful apps achieve the breakthrough from 0 to 1 users, and how did they acquire their first batch of users?

QQ

As the oldest software in China and one of the two major social pillars of the Penguin Empire, QQ was once commented on by someone as follows: "Tencent relied on QQ in the first half and WeChat in the second half." It can be seen that the role of QQ in the Tencent Empire is unquestionable. It was precisely because of the huge success of QQ that a series of subsequent Tencent products were able to "easily" gain their first batch of users and "shine" by relying on the huge number of QQ users. As Tencent’s former “user output base”, where did QQ’s first batch of users come from?

Back to the ancient era of China's Internet - 1999, computers were expensive and not widely used at that time, and dial-up Internet access was also expensive, so most people went to Internet cafes to surf the Internet. At that time, the most popular thing to do online was not to play games, but to chat with different people in the same city chat room. A famous one was the "Bi Hai Yin Sha" chat room. A big disadvantage of this kind of public chat room in the same city is that it is impossible to establish point-to-point personal connections, and the netizens are all people living in the local area, which greatly limits the "enthusiasm" of netizens.

So when suddenly one day someone asked in the chat room "Do you have an Internet pager?", add me *****? "That's right, the "Internet pager" is QQ, which was called QICQ at the time. In this way, QQ successfully "intercepted" some users in the chat rooms in the same city.

In addition, QICQ introductions and download instructions were available in computer software magazines and newspapers at the time, which also attracted some users to QICQ. In addition, pre-installation in Internet cafes was also an important source of users. At that time, there was a QICQ icon on the desktop of almost every Internet cafe. If you didn’t know how to use it, the boss would come over and teach you how to use it, and would intimately hint: "Look, this can also chat, and it’s private chat. In addition to searching for people in the same city, you can also search for people from other places. You know, hehe."

Baidu

Baidu initially provided search services for portal websites such as Sohu and Sina. When the Internet bubble burst in 2000, major technology companies were in mourning and began to reduce various unnecessary expenses, including search services within their websites. Later, when Baidu started to do its own search, some of the Sohu and Sina users who had already experienced it naturally followed suit.

Taobao

Alibaba's earliest business was the promotion of online yellow pages. The first batch of users were negotiated one by one through telephone yellow pages and door-to-door visits. This should be regarded as the earliest "telemarketing" on the Internet. Of course, this also trained Alibaba to have a "China Supply Iron Army" that can fight hard battles and win.

Taobao's initial batch of users came from cooperation with large, medium and small webmasters at the time, with large, medium and small websites directing traffic to Taobao.

WeChat

The first batch of WeChat users were directed from QQ Mail. At that time, WeChat was not favored within Tencent and was under pressure from mobile QQ, so it received almost no traffic support. In desperation, Zhang Xiaolong put the download address of WeChat on the homepage of QQ Mail, which he was in charge of at the time, and attracted the first batch of users to WeChat through the traffic diversion of QQ Mail.

Xiaomi mobile phone

Xiaomi’s operations for “Mi Fans” have always been imitated and learned by major Internet companies.

The first batch of "Mi fans" of Xiaomi mobile phones actually developed from the MIUI forum. When he was working on the mobile phone system (MIUI), Li Wanqiang spent almost every day on the forum to post spam discussions, and required his engineers to reply to 150 posts every day. Each post would be followed by a corresponding status to display the ID of the engineer who solved the problem and the extent to which the suggestions were adopted.

In addition to the "personal efforts" of the boss and employees, Xiaomi also organizes some offline "Mi Fans City Meeting" activities from time to time, inviting some users to the site to communicate face-to-face with engineers and participate in the design, development, and feedback of MIUI.

These greatly increased user participation and stickiness, so when the first generation of Xiaomi mobile phone M1 was released, Mi fans who "heard the news" from MIUI snapped up the M1 and formed user fission.

Keep

During the project launch phase, Keep successfully pushed Keep to the peak by “laying mines”.

On the one hand, Wang Ning, the founder of Keep, led several operators to post, reply and discuss on almost all available channels such as Zhihu, Douban, Tieba, WeChat groups and QQ groups. Due to the high quality of the content, it attracted the attention of many sports and weight loss enthusiasts, and gradually became the "opinion leader" in these channels, with a certain voice and influence. When keep went online, all these opinion leaders and posts recommended "keep" at the same time, and Keep became popular among the target user groups.

In addition to "laying mines", Wang Ning and his team recruited a group of more than 4,000 internal test users. Wang Ning once said: "These more than 4,000 registered users, like nuclear weapons, quickly exploded in promotion. These 4,000 internal test core users plus the mines we laid in the new media, the two forces pushed forward together and have come to where we are today."

Momo

The core and scarce resource of social software is female users, especially high-quality female users. When Momo was developing, it chose Sina Weibo and QQ Space as two distribution channels, and attracted a lot of female users through a series of special copy promotions.

In addition, Momo has also spent money to "attract" a group of high-quality female users such as flight attendants, models, Taobao girls, and school beauties to endorse its products. In this way, "if you build a phoenix tree, you will find a phoenix to roost on it."

Little Red Book

The first batch of Xiaohongshu users came from the WeChat public account. At that time, they posted some popular articles on the official account, and then set up a reply mechanism on the official account. By following the official account and replying "xxx", you can get a certain guide, etc. In addition, Xiaohongshu also had one-on-one "chat recommendations" with the women in line at the Exit and Entry Administration at the time, using shopping guides to attract these target users to follow the official account.

In September and October 2013, after the PC version and APP of Xiaohongshu were launched, Xiaohongshu fans on the official account were directly imported into the APP. This was the source of the first batch of Xiaohongshu users.

other

Airbnb: Local promotion for out-of-town attendees who cannot afford to stay in hotels;

Didi Taxi: The B-side promotes taxi drivers on the ground, and the C-side spends money on online activities;

Course Grid: Obtain course information and conduct on-site promotion on campus;

Toutiao: pre-installed on mobile phones and recommended by mobile app stores;

Faceu: Recommended position in the app store, encouraging sharing and word-of-mouth communication;

Zhihu: The founder’s friends in the technology circle;

Sina Weibo: Invite celebrities and big Vs to join the Weibo account at high prices;

Huxiu: Accumulating seed users in the media circle;

…

Summarize

Before making a product, you should first have a basic understanding of your product users, such as what is the positioning of my product? What pain points and needs are you preparing to solve? Who are the target users? What are the characteristics of this group of users? Where do they usually appear? With this basic understanding, we will not make any deviations when acquiring the first batch of users. The methods for acquiring the first batch of users are roughly as follows:

Online : media and new media promotion (official accounts, Weibo, Douyin, forums), comprehensive or complementary app cooperation, telephone marketing, mobile phone pre-installation, app store recommendations, interception of competing products, etc. Representative products include Xiaohongshu, Taobao, WeChat, Momo, etc.

Offline: door-to-door visits, one-to-one download guides, ground promotion, flyers and posters, resource exchange, etc. Representative products include Airbnb, Didi Taxi, and CourseGrid.

After acquiring the first batch of users, everything is not over. Our products and operations must keep up in the later stage, and we must find ways to make this batch of seed users split. The premise of all this is that our own products are strong and have actually solved certain pain points and urgent needs!

Author: Ma Xiaoshuaishuai

Source: Unknown Story