How to quickly acquire seed users and detonate product potential?

In the Internet age, the efficiency of information dissemination between people has increased explosively. For any product or service, user maintenance is very important, especially "seed users", who are of paramount importance.

The cost of directly spending money to promote a new product may be relatively high. As long as we accurately find its seed users and continuously maintain them, and accumulate word-of-mouth and potential energy, the effect of further promotion may be better, and we can achieve good user growth.

Today, I will talk to you about how to operate seed users.

01Ideal portrait of seed users

First of all, we need to select suitable users as seed users. So what kind of users can become seed users? You can choose from the following 3 characteristics.

1. Can provide valuable information

Early products require users to help you polish and perfect them. So we need some more active users who are willing to express their opinions, like to make suggestions, interact with you continuously, and even willing to operate the product with you. Therefore, we can also call seed users "product consultants".

If you can't find a few seed users who are willing to try and actively cooperate, the value of your early product growth will be relatively limited.

2. Can tolerate defects and have strong product demand

New products that are newly launched often have many problems and the experience is not perfect. Users who start to criticize when they see a bug, or uninstall the app immediately, are definitely not the users we need in the early stages.

What we need are users with higher fault tolerance. What kind of user has high fault tolerance? It depends on whether the user's demand for the product is strong and urgent.

For example, Didi Taxi. Many people's companies are in remote areas, where there are very few taxis. They often work overtime at night and it is difficult to get a taxi.

So when Didi was first launched and could help them book taxis conveniently, they were eager and eager to see the product. Even if there are some problems with the product in its early stages, it will not prevent them from using it.

3. You can become a voluntary salesperson

If users are very satisfied with the product experience, they will definitely help you spread the word. Therefore, when choosing, it is best if the seed users have a certain influence in a small circle, or are opinion leaders in a specific circle.

Once such a person becomes an early seed user and you serve him well and he recognizes your product, as long as you mention it to everyone in this circle and use his influence to infiltrate specific circles, it will have a great dissemination effect.

02Operation methods of seed users

Once we have the first batch of seed users, how do we operate and maintain them? Here are the two main points:

1. Provide an experience that exceeds expectations

2. Build strong trust and strong interactive relationships

The first one is easy to understand. When users get an experience that exceeds their expectations in the early stages of a product, it will generate good word of mouth and they will be willing to recommend the product to their friends.

The second is as we mentioned before, the ideal seed user can continuously interact with us and is willing to give us feedback. Especially in the early stages of a product, users may not necessarily have a good experience, so we need to have a strong trusting and emotional relationship with users to make them happy to interact.

① Give seed users a sense of importance

In the early Xiaomi forum, Mi Fans were a very classic successful case of seed user operation , and even today Mi Fans are still powerful. Let’s take a look at how Xiaomi operators get along with users?

When users provide feedback on the forum, operations staff will respond immediately to the feedback, confirm that the problem has been solved within a week, and update the problem-solving status in real time. This means that users will definitely get feedback on the forum, and this feedback will be visible to everyone.

Regardless of the severity of the problem, Xiaomi officials have taken it so seriously. If it were you, would your favorability towards this brand be improved?

② Give seed users a sense of respect

Zhihu also attaches great importance to their seed users. It is said that there was a netizen who contributed a lot of high-quality answers on Zhihu in the early days. Zhihu co-founder Huang Jixin actually took the initiative to find him, hoping to meet him for a meal and make friends!

The official senior officials have taken the initiative to step forward, which shows that they value seed users and are willing to make friends with them. Once you build a solid friendship with them, you can interact more with users and it will be easier to operate.

③ Give privileges to seed users

As users with the strongest demand for products, seed users are definitely eager to try out the new features of the product. Before the sports and fitness product Keep went online, it recruited experience officers to try free fitness classes.

Similarly, giving seed users more benefits and privileges can increase their stickiness and recognition, and help us better improve our products.

④ Provide seed users with offline social opportunities

There are common points among seed users, and it is of great significance to initiate offline activities with themes, gather them together, and listen to their real opinions. Moreover, offline social aggregation of users brings many benefits:

1. Help improve products and maintain seed users

2. Helps to establish valuable social links

3. Enhance the relationship between the product team and users

4. It is conducive to the spread of product word-of-mouth and the production of UGC content

Operations staff can customize event invitations for each seed user, strongly suggesting that the seed user feels valued and demonstrates a sense of honor. Then you can use your own social media to spread the event.

03Misunderstandings and strategies for operating seed users

When maintaining seed users, you may encounter some pitfalls. Here are some suggestions for you, hoping they can help you.

1. Screening seed users should not be too simple

First of all, we need to make it clear who the real seed users are and how to correctly screen seed users.

In fact, many teams, especially entrepreneurial teams, tend to stay on the surface. Only for seed users, they are divided and screened based on simple age, gender, region and income. But in fact, this is only the basic information of seed users. We should add targeted screening conditions based on the characteristics and purpose of the product.

If your product is a mid- to high-end food e-commerce platform targeting urban middle-class people, the screening criteria can be considered as follows:

Women aged 27-35 working in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou

It fits the urban and middle-class positioning, and women are more inclined to buy snacks than men, so women can be given priority.

Do you often buy or want to buy certain brands?

This is to investigate users' brand awareness and can screen out low-end users.

How much is the monthly food consumption, and what percentage is it in the salary income?

Because it is positioned as mid- to high-end food, the consumption capacity needs to be set within a range.

Frequency of purchasing food on different e-commerce platforms

The time frequency here can be set to a range according to the actual situation

Family and marital status

Users of different identities have very different purchasing needs and habits. Single, married, and married with children users all need to be subdivided.

2. Clarify what seed users should do and what they can get

After gaining seed users, product managers and operations staff should develop an outline to arrange what the seed users need to do after entering or contacting the product, how to do it, how to provide feedback after completion, and what they will get after the feedback. All these must be made clear in advance.

If there are no clear instructions and reward mechanisms, seed users will feel at a loss and will not be clearly respected. The distance between us and the seed users will only grow further and further, and all our efforts will be in vain.

Here are some suggestions for you:

First, we need to understand the basic situation of the seed user, including when it is convenient to contact them, the model of their mobile phone device, whether they prefer to meet in person or by phone, etc. and record it down. Have a general understanding of users and avoid disturbing them at inconvenient times and scenarios.

Next, we will tell users what our product is and what we need you to do with us in the next period of time.

What device do you need (mobile phone, PC, tablet, etc.)

How to use (is there a specific process)

How to provide feedback (via WeChat or QQ, or by appointment, face-to-face or telephone communication)

After seed users complete their stage tasks, they should be given some small benefits or verbal thanks. If the company has sufficient budget, a more clear reward mechanism should be established. Once there are discounts and welfare activities, seed users will be notified first.

Another very important point is to conduct phased evaluation of seed users. Did users cooperate with us in the previous stage? If not, think about the reason. Was it poor communication? Bad service? Or are users too busy to deal with us? Users who need to give up should be more decisive, after all, time is limited.

Note: Pay attention to adjusting the tasks of seed users at different stages of the product. For example, if the product is still in the internal testing stage, let the seed users focus on experiencing the product; after the product is launched, it needs to be spread, and the design should encourage seed users to share and spread the word.

3. Don’t blindly adopt community management

Many operators will maintain seed users through communities. Although WeChat groups and QQ groups can bring users closer, there must be a reasonable boundary.

Some operators have set up dozens of groups. Each person has several mobile phones and several WeChat accounts. They spend every day in the group and everyone is exhausted. It was very active at first, but became silent after a while. What is the reason? Because the novelty has worn off, and with so many WeChat groups, I can’t keep up with them all.

Blind socialization is not advisable. Instead, you can choose a suitable group size based on your own reality, consider efficient and appropriate management methods, and determine a good activity incentive mechanism. Maintaining a group is a tedious task in itself. We have invested a lot of time and energy into it. So, don’t we do other things? The input-output ratio should also be fully considered.

4. Being influenced by users’ biased opinions

When communicating with seed users, they will generate many ideas and opinions. Sometimes we tend to fall into a passive situation, thinking that every opinion is right and every demand must be valued and met, and as a result we are led by the users.

In fact, the opinions and requests raised by users may have the following problems:

What users say may not necessarily be what they think;

Users do not express their real needs;

User opinions are not necessarily reasonable. Many of their opinions may just be an intuitive feeling and may be biased.

So how can we avoid these pitfalls? You can think about these points:

① Whether the actual situation allows

The feasibility of the user's requirements should be considered based on their actual situation. For example, how many development resources are needed? How much manpower is needed? How many working days does it take?

② Focus on product positioning

For the requirements raised by users, we must clarify whether they are in line with the product positioning. If it does, we can discuss it further; if it doesn’t, we can put it aside for now.

③ Explore users’ real needs

When communicating with users, we need to think about whether they are expressing their true thoughts.

For example, the user says there is no reminder function, but we do have this function. Then we have to ask further: is it because the product function reach rate is too low? Or do users actually want to set reminder times themselves?

④ Consider the user’s usage scenario

People behave differently in different scenarios, and when users give feedback, they may not necessarily consider these different scenarios, which requires us to restore the usage scenarios.

04 Summary

What did we share today? Let me help you review:

1. The ideal profile of a seed user is:

Can provide valuable information

Can tolerate product defects and have strong and urgent product demand

Can become a volunteer salesperson

2. Operation method of seed users:

Focusing on two key points:

Deliver an experience that exceeds expectations

Build strong trust and interactive relationships

Specific method:

Give seed users a sense of importance

Give seed users a sense of respect

Granting privileges to seed users

Give seed users offline social opportunities

3. Misunderstandings in operating seed users:

Screening seed users is too simple

Solution: Combine product features and purposes to add targeted screening conditions

Unclear assignment

Solution: Understand the user situation, guide them to carry out phased tasks, issue rewards, and evaluate users

Blind socialization

Solution: Based on your own situation, choose an appropriate group size and establish efficient and appropriate management methods and incentive mechanisms.

Being influenced by users’ biased opinions

Solution: Consider based on actual resources, product positioning, real user needs, and usage scenarios.

Source: Operation Xiaokaxiu (ID: yunyingshow)