Product Operation: How to build user growth channels?

Before we start building a growth framework for our product, the first question we need to answer is: where should the growth direction start?

If the flow/context of growth is not clear, it will consume a lot of hidden costs such as the team's time and energy. In today's world of refined operational growth, we should learn to establish a deductive growth mindset.

The direction of growth can be divided into two parts: external channel growth and internal product growth.

1. External channel growth

External channel growth is a general direction and concept. If we break it down, it can be divided into several branches:

1. We-media channels

For example: public accounts, Weibo, Zhihu, Baidu Baike, Sohu, etc., release PR, product promotion, activities, product updates, information and other content to enrich the product media level.

2. Advertising channels

For example: There are many large and small channels such as WeChat, Douyin, Baidu, and Wangmeng. The team needs to have a certain ability to judge the quality of the channels, and constantly test and optimize the material content to achieve ROI conversion ratio. This is a very large section, so I will break it down for now.

3. Cross-industry cooperation

In line with the product's target users and non-benchmark industries, it can be understood as an exchange of advertising traffic. As of today, this traffic still exists and is active in the market. In the past, it involved exchanging banners and resource positions, but now there is in-depth gameplay through joint membership.

4. Short video channels

Video promotion and traffic generation is a direction that many companies have been exploring recently, including Tik Tok, Bilibili, Weibo, etc. The author has also been exposed to it, but has not studied it in depth. He is willing to share good experiences with everyone.

5. SEO/ASO channels

SEO optimization and self-media channels complement each other, but will focus on content blocks such as encyclopedias, official website sub-pages (similar to APP sub-packaging), and searches.

There is no need to say much about ASO. It is something that every APP needs to do. It mainly optimizes the rankings, subpackaging, resource positions, etc. of major mainstream app stores, such as the Android App Store, Apple App Store, etc.

6. Brand Channel

For example, games and tool products often sponsor anchors, conference materials, or engage in joint marketing with big products or IPs to deepen user impressions and provide soft brand traffic.

After breaking it down, you may find that there are many growth directions that you can try. However, don't try to do too much at once. Make a comprehensive decision based on the industry attributes of your product and the team's operating costs. Choose one or two main directions and arrange manpower to specialize in them. The rest should be used as auxiliary directions and be carried out every week. The specific analysis methods and cases of external growth channels will not be expanded here for the time being, and will be opened in a separate article.

2. Product Internal Growth

This is also a general direction. Before building internal growth, the team should have the thinking level of building a framework. Why do I say this? External strength relies on fists and feet, while internal strength relies on solidity. Think about it.

1. Activity construction

In my daily operations, activities are divided into two sections:

(1) Seasonal activities

Such as national holidays (May 1st, National Day, Dragon Boat Festival, etc.), product festivals (618, Double 11, product anniversary, membership day, etc.), marketing activities, etc.; such activities require the team to make scheduling plans in advance, and prepare the design, materials, and personnel half a month or more in advance depending on the intensity of the activity.

(2) Product activities

It is a fixed architecture that can be optimized according to the user life cycle stage. For example, after a new user registers, there will be a novice welfare activity to encourage the user to take the next step; for example, to guide the user to pay for the first time, there must be a first-order discount activity; for example, if the conversion expires and the user repurchases, there will be a limited-time promotion reminder, and so on. This type of activity is integrated into the product and is an operational function that appears at all stages of the user life cycle and complements it.

Secondly, when we carry out activities, there will definitely be good and bad results. After reviewing and summarizing, good activities and bad activities should not be discarded together. For a good event, operators must develop a framework mindset and build reusable event templates for the team; continue to optimize and reuse them in the next product cycle to reduce the team's repeated development costs.

For example, activities such as Double 11, 618, and Alipay New Year's Five Blessings are essentially promotions by giving out coupons and scanning codes to receive blessings. The basic framework remains unchanged, but what changes are the gameplay and content enrichment. The scale of your activities may not be that large, but the underlying framework thinking is the same.

2. User tasks

This is the gameplay we often see in major products, such as sign-in, sharing, novice/growth tasks, etc., which is mainly used to guide users to develop active latent habits, share exposure, understand product functions, etc.

There is no need to explain much about signing in, it is relatively easy to understand. There are many case studies on the Internet that you can refer to and think about.

The idea behind the novice/growth tasks is to break down the main functions of the product into individual modules one by one, and guide users to explore and become familiar with them. Secondly, we should do a good job in the design of task gamification and reward balance, which are closely linked to each other. Avoid having too many tasks, or having too fragmented or disjointed task connection processes, which will cause users to feel disgusted and bored.

Some readers may ask at this step: How can the shared content be built into product growth?

Although the author did not do a lot of research and analysis, here is an analysis based on two apps that I use:

Reading apps: WeChat Reading and NetEase Snail Reading APP both reward book coins for reading for one hour every day. Receiving book coins is a daily task after reading. The difference is that Snail reads automatically by default, while WeChat Reading requires a sharing action before receiving book coins.

Educational APP: In order to reduce users’ psychological barriers to purchase, educational APP often provides the function of auditioning the first few sections. After listening, a pop-up window will appear giving suggestions and discounted purchases. Discounted purchases are to encourage users to share and give discounts. It used to be given as a gift when you registered, but now it’s integrated into the product, strengthening the connection.

We often find it easier to remember and understand sign-in, novice/growth tasks, etc. during the operation process; but in fact, the sharing function is also a very important and complete section. Operations should consciously and preparedly integrate it into all aspects of the user experience product, not just use this function when inviting people.

3. Share invitation

Invitation fission growth can be said to be a powerful function that many products will use, and the author has used it many times on different products. But what you don’t need to know is that I have the following opinions on the operation ideas of inviting fission growth for your reference:

(1) Understand the user’s invitation capabilities

Regarding the design of invitation rewards, many products are different at different stages: cash, coupons, points/coins, memberships, physical objects, etc. are currently the mainstream ways of playing. Except for a few products that have cash rewards, most products are designed with rewards based on the product's existing resources. At this point, we need to think about a question:

How can users invite users with the same needs more efficiently and avoid freeloaders?

My solution to this problem is to conduct multiple batches of user research interviews, and let the users themselves answer from the user's perspective how many people around them have the same needs.

Many operations colleagues may not do this step. If you don’t even know how many people your own users can invite, and you only focus on optimizing activities and rewards, is this really appropriate?

According to the survey results, you will find that: a small number of users are unwilling to share (the reason may be that they may not have similar friends), some users have only 1-2 such friends, most users may have 3-5 such friends, and a small number of users have 5-10 such friends. Taking the median, we set the number of friends with the same needs in the user circle to be around 3-5.

(2) Phased encouragement

Knowing that users can invite friends can help us control the behavior of freeloaders. On the other hand, let me ask you a simple question:

Do you want users to invite these five friends at once?

If your answer is "no", that's great. If you answered quickly based on your feeling, you may have some sense of operational rhythm and control over progress. If you think and analyze carefully for a few minutes, it means that you have a certain emotion and sense of responsibility towards the product and users. Don't doubt it, this is true.

If you answered: Yes. Then let’s not talk about this today.

Let’s think about this issue from the user’s perspective. Humanity and product emotion are the key words. When a new user comes in and is not fully familiar with the product, how much stimulation will the invitation and encouragement give to him? If he shares it, how will he introduce it to his friends?

Users don’t want to quickly over-consume their personal connections for a new product; similarly, I don’t encourage users to do so.

Although there is growth pressure on the product, the emotion/loyalty between the product and the user is a very important and measurable bond that is cultivated gradually. For example, for my product, after research, I found that each user has about five friends who meet the product’s target users. My invitation design is as follows:

a. After a user becomes a member of a product and maintains stable and active behavior, the product will open 1-2 invitations to encourage promotion to membership privileges.

b. When a user's membership expires and there is no repurchase during the cooling-off period, 1-3 invitations can be opened to encourage the user to invite friends and stay and continue to use the membership.

c. When the user is in the upper-middle stage of the user level, 2-3 invitations will be opened to encourage users to share this benefit and play together.

Break down invitation fission into different stages of the user life cycle, and gradually open up and encourage as the user's emotional connection with the product grows; the user's invitation expression content and invitation willingness will be greatly enhanced.

On the contrary, if you want to encourage users to invite as many people as possible, 5, 10, 20 people... you can easily do it by increasing the cash/reward incentives and adding daily invitation leaderboard encouragement.

But as a user operator, don’t you care whether users recognize your product or reward you? How do users express their invitations to friends?

“Come and download the Luckin app and get a cup of coffee for free.” I might download it just for the cheap price, but do I really need to drink coffee? It may not be within my needs, and secondly, your family doesn't have as much money as them.

We often say: We must be friends with users, have a sense of responsibility and ownership towards products, and be responsible and emotional towards users and products. Have you really done this?

d. Gamification function: originated from the gamification gameplay design of Alipay such as raising chickens and planting trees, and developed in the emerging mainstream product applications such as Pinduoduo mining and Lian Coffee Pocket Coffee. At present, this is a very good way to grow. I believe that more and more products will build such functions within the products in the future. For example, Qutoutiao is also raising chickens...

Why is gamification a good way to grow your business? I think it not only enriches the product tone, but also increases user activity, and will directly replace the boring sign-in function; secondly, the gamification of the game integrates multiple modules such as invitation, sharing, sign-in, points, etc., which simplifies the complex and is worth exploring and learning.

For example, I made a small gamification function: users log in every day to use the core functions of the product, and are rewarded with 10 energy points for every full minute, which can be used to water/plant a fruit (my products are named after fruits).

The underlying operational framework is: how many times a week a user is active, and how long it takes each time to gain energy to grow/pick fruit, and the fruit can be exchanged for member discounts and mall props (currently simply put, it is a points exchange gameplay). However, the anthropomorphic and figurative design increases the fun, participation, and activity of the product.

Conclusion

This article gives you a general description of the underlying methods and logical thinking for growth. When we face growth next time, there is no need to be gloomy. We should first establish the big tree (external + internal dual engines) - sort out the branches (subdivided growth modules) - integrate strength, find the focus - test growth, optimize and review.

I hope it inspires you.

Author: Mao Li

Source: Operational Growth