Operational Tips: How can a good product retain users?

Many bosses are very tired doing business. Why? Although he was gaining traffic every day, his traffic was also lost very quickly, so he had to keep directing traffic to maintain normal orders.

The traffic dividend is gradually disappearing, the rules of various platforms are being improved, and attracting traffic is no easier than before. In such an environment, if you don’t pay attention to "operation" and don’t have the awareness and measures to retain fans, it will undoubtedly be very tiring.

The second half of the Internet will focus more and more on operations, that is, the focus will shift from "traffic" to "retention". It is a common problem that user growth has reached a bottleneck and become slow, so "eating the existing stock" will become particularly important.

What’s the point if you’re gaining followers while losing them at the same time? It is better to maintain the existing fans.

The 1,000 fans theory states that as long as you have 1,000 true fans you can make a living. This sentence comes from the book "The Element of Technique" by American writer Kevin Kelly.

OK, let’s get into the topic. Today we will talk about user operations.

01

Any type of operation is a very systematic job.

Let’s first talk about what user operation is: In general, user operation refers to formulating plans based on user needs with the goal of increasing the activity, retention, and payment of product users.

All products need to attract new users, retain old users, keep existing users active, encourage new users to pay, encourage old users to repurchase, and recover lost or silent users. But any product has a life cycle. When it is unable to acquire new users, maintain old users, and users are still leaving, the product’s life cycle will decline rapidly.

Therefore, products should adopt different operating strategies at different stages or when facing different users. This requires operators to understand user portraits, master user data, and even analyze user behavior to know why they pay? Why not pay? Why is it lost?

Some children may ask why it is necessary to understand user portraits, master user data, and even analyze user behavior?

I patted the child's head and explained patiently: If you don't understand these data, how can you determine the user type and which cycle the product is in? How can we talk about operational strategies without knowing these basic data? How to sell more goods and make more money?

Seeing the child’s expression of confusion, I continued: There may be many types of users, such as potential users, real users, core users, lost users, etc. Taking different measures for different users is the traditional tiered marketing, which is also equivalent to a part of the operation.

If you don’t know why users buy your product and why they don’t buy your product, it’s like fighting a war without a commander.

There is no question of optimization, let alone more money.

02

Now that we know what user operation is, let’s talk about the daily work of user operation.

1. Open source: attract new users.
2. Cost saving: Prevent user churn and recover churn.
3. Maintenance: Activate new users and retain old users.
4. Stimulus: Convert users.

The above four points are the daily basic work of user operations.

03

Open source is the guiding flow, and there are two key steps here:

1. Get the flow port.
2. Get the conversion copy right.

The former determines your exposure, and the latter determines whether you can guide precise users to your retention platforms such as WeChat and official accounts.

Here we will focus on conversion.

The key factors to attract traffic are: path + value.

1. The path should be short . In simple terms, it means that it is easy for users to find you, the cost of finding you is low , and you are relatively valuable, so the vast majority of users will pay attention to you. Therefore, we try to shorten the path for users to find us, so as to avoid loss due to high action costs.
2. The value must be high , which means the value of the bait must be attractive. It is best to give timely feedback on the bait, for example, follow XXX and get XXX immediately. Here is a detail that if you take a screenshot of the gift, the conversion rate will increase. I have tested it, if you don’t believe me, you can try it. Of course, the steps to obtain it are also simpler, and still follow the principle of short path.

For example:

04

There are two main aspects of throttling:

1. Prevent user churn.
2. Recover lost users.

First, we need to understand a big premise: prevention is better than recovery. Don’t wait until all users have left before you try to recover them. Be prepared to prevent them from losing before they leave, because it is very difficult, almost impossible, to recover them after they have left.

Since we want to prevent churn, we should first define churn. For example, a user who places orders every month suddenly hasn’t placed an order in two months; a user who often likes your WeChat Moments and interacts with you has not interacted with you in the past week...

When users begin to show signs of leaving (leaving behavior), pull them back in time. For example: if you find that the user has not placed an order for almost two months, send a coupon or a no-threshold coupon to stimulate the user to place an order. If you find that the user has not interacted with you for a long time, take the initiative to send a private chat to say hello (prevention mechanism).

So there are two major steps to prevent user churn:

• Step 1: Define the criteria for churn.
• Step 2: Establish a prevention mechanism.

There are three main steps to recovery:

• Step 1: Through what channels will the recovery information be delivered?
• Step 2: What to use to save it.
• Step 3: What to do after recovery.

I have always said that you should try to put users in multiple frames (sedimentation platforms) instead of putting all your eggs in one frame. If a user is lost in one frame and is still in another frame, at least you can reach him with the recovery information through the other frame. If you don’t establish multiple channels of contact, you can’t even reach the customer with information, let alone think about recovery.

The second question is, how to save it? The most effective method is to find the person who tied the bell to untie it, that is, you should use the same method to win back the user because he chose you in the first place.

The third question is, what to do after recovery? After getting back together, of course you need to give guidance and care, just like after breaking up with your girlfriend and finally getting back together, you always have to coax her and try to improve her, right? Otherwise, sooner or later she will become someone else's wife.

One thing to note: If you are lucky enough to win back a lost user, please treat this user as a new user.

05

Maintenance also has two contents:

1. Activate new users.
2. Retain old users.

There are generally two situations in which users are active: one is that they use the product frequently and have a high repurchase rate; the other is that they often inquire about the product but do not place an order. The second situation may be that the user has no purchasing power or has some doubts about the product.

First, define the standards for being active based on your own situation.

One thing needs to be made clear: users will not become active and stay for no reason. You must be of some value to users for them to be willing to stay. So find out the reasons behind this behavior, and then deliberately guide users so that they will not abandon you.

Unless the thing that attracted him in the first place disappears, or disappears and there is nothing that can continue to attract him and make him accept it to maintain your relationship, the user will naturally leave.

It's like when we are in love, we may choose to be with someone because of some advantages in him. But one day his advantages disappear, and many disadvantages appear but there are no more advantages that you can appreciate, then naturally the feelings fade.

Then again, why do you follow this account? Is it because I’m reliable? Because the content is dry? Because it’s not about cutting leeks but about giving with all your heart?

In short, you keep following someone because he or she has some value to you, otherwise you would have unfollowed him or she ... long ago, right? Then my simplest operational strategy is to continuously output valuable information (initial value), of course this is also my original intention.

You read every article of mine, so you are active; if you don’t unfollow me and add me on WeChat, I have successfully kept you.

So don’t blame users for leaving, first look at what value you have to users.

06

Here comes the purpose: converting users.

There are also two key points in converting users:

1. Make active non-paying users pay.
2. Keep paying users paying.

Of course, the prerequisite for continued payment is: the attributes of your product. We don’t buy refrigerators every month, do we? Then someone said: What a coincidence, my product is the kind that doesn’t generate repeat purchases often, what should I do?

It doesn’t matter. Look at the problem from a different angle and you will find answers to all problems.

Users are valuable not only when they purchase and place orders, which is of course the most valuable. In addition, users also have:

1. Communication value: gain popularity and let users tell others to achieve fission goals.
2. Trust value: Provide testimonials as a reference for users who have not purchased or are hesitant to purchase.
3. Cross-border value: exchange resources with peers and promote similar industries.

In short, one fish can be eaten in three ways.

If one point cannot be met, then the other points must be met, otherwise this user will be of no value to us.

Remember that users who say they love you every day may not necessarily love you. Only those users who pay for your value without saying a word may love you. It's like the saying: People who are willing to spend money on you don't necessarily love you, and people who are unwilling to spend money on you definitely don't love you.

One final piece of advice: no matter how many ways you have to acquire new users, you must have at least one way to retain them. This is the most critical part of the operation!

Source: Lao Wang loves sharing