Taking "Tencent Game Manager" as an example, let's talk about user growth!

1. Market Background

By thinking about and analyzing the market situation, we can test the significance and value of our own products and seek growth points suitable for development.

1.1 Large-screen ecological layout

As the mobile Internet develops rapidly and matures, large screens have become a new business breakthrough. Large-screen advertising, large-screen games, large-screen shopping, etc. have gradually become new business growth points, that is, from the era of popular small screens to the era of large, small and multiple screens interacting.

1.2 Mobile Games Surge

The 2017-2018 China Mobile Game Market Research Report released by iiMedia Research on March 21, 2018 shows:

In 2017, the number of mobile game users in China reached 544 million, and is expected to exceed 550 million in 2018.

Phenomenal games such as Honor of Kings and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds have a huge influence on society. A single game product can spawn multiple industrial chains. Taking Honor of Kings as an example, it has spawned e-sports events (such as the Honor of Kings Champions Cup International Invitational, one of the exhibition events of the 2018 Jakarta Asian Games), professional players (top players have an annual income of over one million yuan), e-sports content media (videos, game anchors, etc.), peripheral products (peripheral hardware, etc.), paid services (training strategies, playing ranking techniques, etc.), etc.

1.3 IoT Intelligence

The IoT strategy (internet of things) was proposed in 2014, connecting all devices with mobile phones as the core. Four years later, Xiaomi TV has become the industry leader, there are constant reports that Huawei is making TVs, Luo Yonghao has released the Hammer Computer, OnePlus has announced plans to make smart TVs, and mobile phone companies are still exploring the next smart terminal with a sense of crisis. No matter what the next one is, it is inseparable from the call of the era of Internet of Things intelligence.

2. Product Analysis

After understanding the overall environment, you should sort out your own product structure to facilitate the next step of outputting corresponding user growth strategies.

2.1 Product Positioning

Tencent Game Manager provides a gaming experience that connects mobile phones, controllers, computers, and keyboards and mice. It focuses on "software for playing games on TV" and is defined as a living room gaming entertainment platform. (It is recommended that product positioning is not limited to "living room")

2.2 Demand Source/Usage Scenario

• Mobile phone + handle: optimize the control experience
• Controller + TV: Provides a large-screen experience and optimized operation
• Mobile phone + TV: providing a large-screen experience
• Mobile phone + keyboard and mouse: Optimize the control experience

The large-screen experience is suitable for games that emphasize control and do not cause significant visual interference when the screen is enlarged, but popular games will also impose restrictions on non-mobile terminals.

• Sports racing: football (such as FIFA World of Football), basketball (such as NBA), badminton (such as Badminton Master), racing (such as QQ Speed)
• Shooting games: Chicken Dinner (such as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds)
• Arcade games: such as King of Fighters Destiny, Contra, Tetris
• Business strategy: MOBA multiplayer online battle arena (such as King of Glory), war strategy
• Action-adventure: Parkour (such as Despicable Me: Minion Rush)
• Casual puzzle: Casual competition (such as Snake Battle, Archer Battle)

OnePlus CEO Liu Zuohu: "There are four major scenarios in life: mobile, home, car, and office." The space that Tencent Game Manager can play in these four is abstracted as: long-distance trips + game controllers (long-distance buses/planes), family interaction + TV/controllers, B-side team building + TV/controllers, etc.

2.3 User Stratification

• Mobile phone + controller: This user group meets one or more of the following conditions: they have a certain understanding and enthusiasm for games, attach importance to gaming experience, are willing to spend money on gaming experience, have a certain financial foundation to support the cost of gaming equipment, and are familiar with the use of mobile Internet products.
• Controller + TV: The C-end includes families with a younger average age, and the B-end includes homestays and game theme stores.
• Mobile phone + TV: Similar to the second category, but they may not know enough about the controller or are not willing to spend extra money on gaming peripherals.
• Mobile phone + keyboard and mouse: e-sports players and office users.

Humphrey Ho, managing partner of Hylink, an independent digital advertising company in China, said:

Globally: Esports fans tend to be young males, with half of them between the ages of 21 and 35 and 71% male. Most esports fans have full-time jobs and high incomes. Moreover, esports fans are mostly internet natives and prefer to purchase content and merchandise online.

High-end e-sports players are accompanied by e-sports fans. The mobile phone + keyboard and mouse model is conducive to developing the e-sports fan market, strengthening the demand for ordinary players to participate in e-sports, and creating a national e-sports craze.

The common point among the four types of users is that they value the gaming experience, are not simply satisfied with the gaming experience that can be accessed through fingertips on a small screen, and are willing to spend money and time for an interesting and better experience. The handles, TV or keyboard and mouse superimposed on the mobile phone are all expandable usage scenarios.

2.4 Profit Model

Self-operated mall: Mobile phones, controllers, TVs, keyboards and mice are all hardware, but the purchasing power required is different. For Tencent Game Manager, it is more reasonable to use controllers, keyboards and mice, etc., which have relatively small purchase thresholds and resistance, as profit breakthrough points.

Purchase from high-quality and reliable controller suppliers, attract users to buy controllers, keyboards and mice in your own mall by giving discounts, and earn the difference. Surrounding the handle, there are handle stickers, handle joystick protective caps, handle phone holders, etc.

If the membership system is expanded in the future, the points redemption mall can redeem points for goods in its own mall, thus realizing a closed loop again.

Game promotion: By adapting to more types of mobile games, we can increase user traffic while increasing the exposure of game recommendations and earn advertising fees.

2.5 Competitive Product Analysis

Game arcade APP provided by game controller manufacturers: for example, the "Feizhi Game Hall" APP corresponding to the Feizhi Black Warrior X8 Pro dual-mode somatosensory controller. The advantages of this type of application are quite obvious. It only requires adapting the software and hardware according to its own product line, which reduces the complexity relatively and allows more types of games to be introduced faster. Compared with such applications, the advantage of Tencent Game Manager lies in the richer corporate resources and self-operated shopping mall, which can satisfy more types of game players.

Home game consoles and handheld game consoles: For example, the Nintendo Switch supports three modes of play: TV, desktop, and portable. It comes with controllers that can be detached or merged, and can be held vertically or horizontally, as well as a console. The advantage is that it has rich experience in the electronic game industry, the ultimate product experience, and has been rolled out in the global market. However, the disadvantage is that it relies on the console to reduce portability, and relies on game cards to enhance the sense of ritual of the game while reducing the convenience of purchase.

2.6 Enterprise Resources

1. Tencent’s game-related products include: Penguin Esports, Tencent Game Assistant, QQ Games, Tencent NOW Live (game live streaming), Tencent Video (game section), etc. First, these can all become sources of games for Tencent Game Manager, and second, they can provide corresponding promotional resources.
2. Tencent’s products that are not related to games include: Tencent Mobile Manager, Tencent WiFi Manager, Tencent Sports, etc. First, they can provide complementary marketing resources and product functions to these products. Second, the official websites of these products can set up entrances to each other, which is conducive to SEO construction.
3. Hardware: Tencent Games has become the largest game development and distribution platform in China. It is expected to reach cooperation with TV, game controller and other manufacturers with terminal technology advantages, and is committed to providing smooth, clear and delicate high-end large-screen interactive experience.
4. Exhibition participation: Increase public exposure through offline user-intensive occasions, such as the 201 First International Wuhan Douyu Live Broadcast Festival, where Tencent Game Manager set up a booth. The main promotion methods include well-known game anchors and popular beauty anchors demonstrating large-screen games on site, and on-site experience by onlookers.

3. User Growth Strategy

3.1 Growth Values

Qingshan Capital proposed in "WhatsApp: The Growth Logic Behind 1 Billion Users":

• Truly useful products, that’s what can really drive growth.
• Disrupt the established market with a service that is not only more affordable, but also more reliable and capable.
• Focusing on the product itself has made a huge contribution to WhatsApp's word-of-mouth growth, resulting in a rich user experience and quick registration.

3.2 Product Direction

3.2.1 Software:

The product structure of Tencent Game Manager Android version v1.7.3 is divided into three sections: functions, services, and marketing.

Function:

① Software and hardware adaptation: The R&D team needs to speed up the completion of technical solutions for rapid adaptation of software and hardware, solve the problem of some hardware not being adapted, and enable the platform to quickly introduce game types suitable for large-screen experience.

② Optimize guidance: transform the single-conversation guidance into a human-computer dialogue style, and then gradually make it intelligent and user-friendly . You can refer to the immersive services of smart investment advisory products on the market. When the human-computer dialogue cannot continue, feedback mechanism, manual customer service and community mutual assistance interaction can be provided.

③Game selection: You can try to add parent-child interactive games to increase family usage scenarios; you can launch limited-time recommended games based on different festivals or social hot spots. More importantly, we should provide good game selection services to reduce the mental effort of users in selecting games by themselves.

④ User mining: As the number of users and games gradually increases, it is necessary to dig deeper into user data to understand their different usage habits and make personalized recommendations for games and hardware products .

Service: See 3.3 Promotion Direction of this article.

Marketing: See 3.3 Promotion Direction of this article.

3.2.2 Hardware:

To propose an immature possibility, Tencent Game Manager carefully selects hardware products (controllers/keyboards and mice/TVs) at different levels in the industry that have the potential or characteristics to become blockbusters, and launches co-branded customized models with hardware manufacturers. There are four important meanings:

• Tencent Game Manager is naturally a combination of software and hardware. This move can strengthen the connection between Tencent Game Manager and hardware and highlight the advantages of Tencent Game Manager's aggregation.
• One of the sources of profit.
• Hardware vendors are able and willing to share most of the customer service work.
• Data can be accumulated, and in the future, self-operated hardware can be combined with deeper technologies such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things to form a complete system of software and hardware data interaction.

3.3 Promotion direction

Concept Operation:

① Individual group: E-sports for all, an e-sports experience that ordinary players can also enjoy

② Enterprise Group: As one of the entertainment methods or tools in the management of enterprise employee relations

③ Family group: Turn your home into a playground for games

④ Long-distance travel group: Combined with long-distance buses, airplanes and other transportation scenarios, turning the boredom of long-distance travel into fun

Content Operations:

Through the demand for gift-giving, we can expand our business through e-commerce platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Taobao, NetEase Yanxuan, JD.com, Fireball Buyer, and Gift Talk, or e-commerce platforms with their own content communities, starting with the demand for gift-giving.

Use new gameplay as a promotional point, refer to game guides and videos on the market, and output game content.

Channel Operations:

① Form a cooperation plan with hardware manufacturers such as mobile phones and televisions, and attract B-end terminal equipment parties to include Tencent Game Manager in the list of pre-installed APPs in Rom through the selling point of "ultimate gaming experience", so as to popularize the experience of large-screen gaming and ultimate control to a wider user group and activate demand.

②SEO construction: improving Baidu Encyclopedia entries, optimizing the TKD of the official website, setting up entrances between websites, etc., are conducive to optimizing product keyword searches and enhancing users' awareness and confidence in products and brands.

③ Through the traffic sharing strategy, cooperate with large and small game studios. In the early stage of game release/initial stage of life cycle, the large screen can become one of the incubators of games. The large-screen devices and games complement each other and have a benign relationship of gaining users.

④ Combining with well-known Tencent products with certain traffic is one of the more labor-saving methods. For details, see 2.6 Enterprise Resources in this article.

Community Operation:

① Promptly resolve and provide feedback on issues raised by community users, summarize the issues, and apply them to the actual product optimization demand pool.

② Cultivate community KOLs within the user group. Each popular game has corresponding active players, who can motivate other silent and potentially unstimulated users through the game strategies and player opinions they provide.

③ Although questionnaire surveys, face-to-face surveys and other methods have their own disadvantages, on the one hand they can be used as reference tools for product optimization and product operations, and on the other hand they can convey to community users the team’s emphasis on the product and users.

Event Operations:

① Game reward packages are used as activity selling points and resources to attract participation.

② Through means such as giving concessions, launch preferential purchases for controllers, keyboards and mice according to festivals and hot spots.

③ Set up booths for offline game-themed exhibitions and design on-site interactive sessions.

④ Create a national e-sports festival and establish a limited-time pk ranking competition.

⑤ Develop offline corporate social PK competitions and embed B-side usage scenarios.

Source: Wanying is not this Ying