How does APP user operation conduct new user acquisition activities?

In the second half of the Internet, traffic is quite expensive, and how to attract new users is a problem that troubles many operations.

I heard an interesting story. A colleague said that his friend wanted to promote in overseas markets and talked to the top 50 app lists about cooperation in Southeast Asia, Brazil, Japan, etc. After writing English emails and chatting for a long time, he found out that the team was either in Hangzhou, Chengdu or Shenzhen. Making a fortune in silence is our culture.

Many of them are tool-type products, such as file transfer tools, photo beautification tools, etc. These tool products have seized the Internet dividends abroad and have grown rapidly abroad. It is said that the customer acquisition cost is extremely low.

In the second half of the Internet, traffic is quite expensive, and how to attract new users is a problem that troubles many operations.

The concept of attracting new customers is too broad. Different types of products have different growth methods. Let’s first discuss “how to attract new customers for tool products.”

How to define tool products?

Defined from the user's usage scenario, tool products are often used by users in a specific scenario and are created to solve a clear need.

The product feature is to allow users to quickly solve their needs through the shortest operation path, a typical "use it and leave" product form.

What tools and products are available?

According to different usage products, tool products can be roughly divided into four categories: life and entertainment, efficiency improvement, vertical professional, and system tools.

What are the main ways to attract new customers for tool products?

There are many ways to attract new users for tool products. Today we will discuss five common ways: friend invitations; information flow ads; social media; celebrity effect; and word-of-mouth.

1. Friend Invitation

The essence of friend invitations is social fission, where the existing stock drives the incremental growth. Throw out a benefit point to users, generally use material or spiritual incentives to stimulate user invitations, such as: red envelopes, cycling coupons, ticket-grabbing acceleration packages, VIP experience cards, etc.

One of the core points of social fission is how to motivate users to form fission. However, everyone is using this routine, so it is particularly important to differentiate it in a variety of ways.

To summarize briefly, the friend invitation forms of current tool products are mainly:

(1) Material incentives

1) Cash bonus

Red envelopes are the simplest and most effective way to attract new customers, but they can also easily attract users who are looking for free money.

For example: Baidu's Spring Festival Gala "Good Luck Chinese New Year" red envelope activity, Meituan Takeout's 10 yuan red envelope for inviting a friend, and payment package's collection of five blessings, etc. The friend invitation activity method is very simple, but the effect is very good.

2) Function/privilege rewards

If there is not enough operating funds, using various product privilege experiences to stimulate sharing is also a good operating method .

For example, Vue's inviting friends can "unlock certain special stickers", WeChat Reading's "team up to draw unlimited cards", NetEase Wugou Reading's free time, and spot's "adding friends can unlock special maps".

(2) Spiritual motivation

In order to increase user stickiness or improve the possibility of commercial monetization, many tools often introduce communities and add social elements. Where there are people, there is the world; where there are people, there is human nature that can be exploited. In addition to material incentives, a sense of superiority, existence, accomplishment, and identity are all spiritual needs that everyone wants to be satisfied.

Spiritual incentives such as contribution values, rankings, and scarce titles in the tool community can actually enhance their sense of participation and honor.

2. Information flow advertising

What is information flow advertising? Information flow advertising is advertising that is mixed with content, also known as native advertising.

For example: when you watch Tik Tok videos, read Toutiao news, or watch Moments ads, etc., they can all be called information flow ads. Advertisements are usually in the form of text or video. Clicking on the text or video will redirect you to the ad details page.

In this age of scarce traffic and user attention, the price of information flow advertising is not cheap. Then why is the cost of acquiring customers so high, and why are there so many products running information flow ads?

Because as long as the lifetime value (payment) obtained from each new player is higher than the customer acquisition cost, that is, LTV>CPA, you can make money by placing a large amount of advertisements to attract new players.

This is also the reason why when you browse advertisements, you see games, e-commerce, novels, and financial loan products. It is better for users to pay.

Therefore, if the registration cost of a single user of a tool product is lower than the user’s lifetime value (LTV), it may not be appropriate to place information flow ads. Unless the advertising video material is very effective, the CPA of acquiring customers through information flow is lower than that of other channels.

3. Social Media

Before Zepeto became a hot topic in WeChat Moments, a group of seed users in the Xiaohongshu community had already shared it on their own. Love Bank successfully occupied the appstore rankings with the popular Douyin video "Sign in 365 days to receive 1,000 cash".

The main ways in which tool products are spread through social media are:

(1) Operating official social media accounts

Two Weibo and one Douyin are standard, as well as Zhihu and Xiaohongshu. . Popular social media such as QQ.com are also channels for attracting new users of tool products.

However, due to the strong functional attributes of tool products, it is difficult to attract a lot of attention on social media, and it is not easy to gain fans. It is a test of operational creativity and long-term continuous content output.

(2) Find internet celebrities to promote

A few years ago, when Weibo was still in its bonus period, the cost of acquiring customers by finding internet celebrities to use promotional tools was extremely low, as low as 1-2 yuan for a registered user. At that time, many netizens simply downloaded the tools after seeing the recommendations from bloggers.

Nowadays, users are highly immune to advertisements and there are many tools and products. The effectiveness of promotion by influencers on Weibo has dropped significantly.

The current promotion costs of public accounts are not cheap. The cost of a headline with 20,000 to 30,000 views is about 5k to 20,000 yuan. Based on a conversion rate of 3%, the registration price will be more than 30 yuan.

New channels such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu... currently still have traffic dividends, but their commercialization level is not high. Many internet celebrities’ advertising orders are quite good, and fans are not so averse to internet celebrities taking advertisements, so it’s worth a try.

(3) Soft article promotion

Post soft articles on media such as Toutiao, Baijiahao, Sohu, UC Dayu, Jianshu, 36kr, iFanr, Zuimeiyingjing, and Apso, and use long-term traffic to attract new users.

4. Word of mouth

I remember that during the World Cup last year, Tencent Maps launched a feature called "Find a Bar to Watch the Game". You can see nearby bars, skewers and other places to watch the game. You can also randomly draw red envelopes for watching the game every day, and you can withdraw the money by signing in offline.

At that time, going to bars, barbecue places and other places to drink, eat barbecue and talk about football was a basic need, but how to find nearby bars was a pain point.

At first, when I wanted to make an appointment with friends to watch a game offline, I couldn’t find a suitable recommended bar on Baidu Maps, which was very frustrating. When I saw this World Cup event (feature) on Tencent Maps, I felt a little excited and recommended this feature to some friends.

The core of a tool product is whether it can help users solve problems more efficiently. If the product has a good product experience and can exceed user expectations, users will naturally help you spread the word.

Emotional design, hidden Easter eggs, and surprising features. . It is particularly important to differentiate yourself and create unexpected little surprises.

1. Star Effect

For some tool products, there is actually not much differentiation. On the one hand, utilizing celebrities can play a role in brand promotion and occupy the minds of users; on the other hand, it can maximize the conversion of the celebrity’s fan base, play a role in attracting new members and activating them. Wherever the idol is, there are the fans.

The main operating methods of tool products using the star effect are as follows:

(1) Launch product features related to celebrities

For example, there are celebrity navigation voice packs for Baidu Maps, celebrity keyboard skins for iFLYTEK Input Method, and celebrity themes for Simple Search, with customizable skins and personalized greetings.

(2) Invite celebrities to be spokespersons

For example, during the Spring Festival, Tencent Maps invited Zhang Yixing to be its brand spokesperson and released a new brand proposition, "Partner for Experiencing the World", dedicated to providing users with smarter and more considerate navigation services.

At the same time, Zhang Yixing’s navigation voice package was launched online, and Weibo topics, official accounts and forwarding interactions by big Vs were used to expand exposure, attracting many of Zhang Yixing’s fans to download and use Tencent Maps.

(3) Star list

Set up a celebrity popularity list to attract fans to spontaneously support their idols. With one vote from you and one vote from me, Sister Ju can continue to dance.

summary

In addition to the five tools mentioned above, there are also other ways to attract new users, such as free subsidies, traffic swaps, long-tail traffic, and buying traffic from app stores. Different operation teams can formulate different new customer acquisition strategies based on the promotion budget.

Since tool products are difficult to monetize, many startup operation teams do not have sufficient funds for promotion. It is not recommended to spend too much money on trial and error in the early stages. Try to find some free channels, polish the product experience, and then use a low budget to quickly test high-quality new customer acquisition channels.

Source: Operation Wars