How to find user growth points? Build a Mini Program User Growth Model

1. If a business is not growing, it is dying

I have mentioned more than once in my articles that no matter whether you are doing user operations, a product manager, or a programmer, we all have a common goal, which is to hope that someone will use our product. This "use" means that we hope to acquire users on a large scale. But the user growth we are talking about is not just the growth of these individual indicators, but is more focused on long-term user growth, retention and even the value generated by the product.

So, if a business is not growing, it is not far from death. Businesses need to continuously acquire new users. Even in this era when the Internet's demographic dividend is disappearing, it cannot stop BAT from continuing to grow. They focus their user growth points overseas and acquire more new users by going overseas. Because BAT also knows that "If you are not growing, then you are dying!".

2. How do I find user growth points?

*What have I done in the past six months?

My interest in mini programs can be traced back to 2017, when the mini programs were first launched. 2017 is the first year of Mini Programs. During this year, Mini Programs have experienced many twists and turns, from being highly anticipated to being regarded as useless, and then finally to a bright future. The emergence of the mini game "Jump Jump" has made Mini Programs the focus of the whole nation.

And I have been waiting for an opportunity to come.

It was not until May of this year that I joined a mini program company and was responsible for the user growth of a game social product [Kaiheiwan] . I plunged into the blue ocean of mini programs, focusing on product operations and how to acquire users. In the past six months, we have increased the number of users from 0 to 2 million, and my team and I have been exploring a growth path that is more suitable for mini programs. Because I think that when it comes to mini program growth, or user growth, there is actually no most suitable way to acquire users. There are more suitable ways. Because we are suitable for growth, we actually need to pay attention to the cost issue. The cost will vary greatly depending on the growth method. So in the past six months, I started to build my own growth team and explore a user growth path that is more suitable for my own product.

*How do I break boundaries to grow my user base?

The mini program is from WeChat. WeChat groups belong to WeChat; WeChat public accounts belong to WeChat; Moments belong to WeChat; and Moments, WeChat public accounts, and WeChat groups bring together 1 billion people out of the country’s 1.3 billion people. These are all part of the WeChat ecosystem, so it is natural to promote mini-programs in WeChat groups, WeChat public accounts, and among friends. This is a big advantage, I know where my users are!

When I was in charge of the growth of this mini program, I, like most people, acquired users through the WeChat public account. Because WeChat official accounts are themselves part of the WeChat ecosystem, mini-programs and WeChat official accounts can also be seamlessly connected, so binding to WeChat official accounts was also an important channel for many mini-programs to acquire users in the early days. The menu bar of WeChat public accounts is a low-cost derivative channel to acquire users. Therefore, purchasing menu bars at a low cost is also an important channel for many promoters to acquire mini program users.

At the same time, many operators and promoters will also find user needs through activities to carry out welfare activities to attract user participation, and set bait in the activities to let users share them to their friends circle and WeChat groups. In fact, this is also because of the strong penetration of WeChat groups and friends circle , such as Pinduoduo's zero-yuan purchase, etc. I will not go into details here.

There is another approach that is also commonly used by many operators today. Since we know that many users are in WeChat groups or Moments, and since the number of people in Moments is fixed, let's create WeChat groups. We can create as many WeChat groups as we want. Therefore, many company operators and promoters will focus on how to create thousands of WeChat groups. Because they know that as long as you have tens of thousands of WeChat groups, you can throw your mini-program into these groups, and it will be natural for users to click on it.

Little do people know that the difficulty of operating a WeChat group is actually beyond the imagination of many individuals or companies. Therefore, many companies will also spend money to buy WeChat groups. Now many advertising and marketing companies also provide these services. How much does a group cost? I have 100,000 groups, and the number of people covered can reach tens of millions. After you buy these communities, you spend a huge amount of money to set up 10,000 groups. After the launch, when you look at the background data and see that the new data does not exceed three digits, you know that you have been cheated. In fact, you are not cheated. These advertising companies did help you set up 10,000 groups, but these 10,000 groups have long been zombie groups.

The same is true for the circle of friends. In fact, the circle of friends of many people can also be sold. But think about it, if your product is not strong enough and the benefits are not strong enough, then using money on these channels is actually a waste of money.

WeChat official accounts, menu bars, and WeChat groups were a necessary path for us in the early stages of exploring new ways of adding new features, because this is a process that many small program entrepreneurs will go through. However, for many vertical industry small programs, the WeChat ecosystem alone is not enough, especially for our new generation of gaming and social products. It is even more insufficient (because the social circles of those born after 1995 or even 2005 rarely appear on WeChat).

During this period, I have been exploring one thing: where are my users? WeChat official accounts are a known continent, and we have put a lot of effort into this channel. However, as the number of users exceeded 100,000 and 200,000, I felt that this channel was far from meeting the needs of growth. I knew that sooner or later I would encounter a growth bottleneck, and I needed to find new channels as soon as possible to acquire new users.

I thought of short videos at the time, but based on cognitive considerations, it is difficult for a user to search for your product and use you after watching a short video. Because he has to watch the video - exit the short video - open WeChat - click search - enter the product name - use it. This growth path is actually a very long growth path compared to any other channel in the WeChat ecosystem. It is impossible for users to perform such operations, and even if they do, it will be a very small part. For the short video growth channel, one factor that needs to be considered is the cost issue. Because no matter whether you are using this short video channel or making and publishing videos yourself, the cost is actually very high compared to the usual growth methods.

However, through research, we found that more than 40% of the user groups of Douyin and Kuaishou are born after 1995 and under the age of 25. This means that Douyin has captured the post-95 population in first- and second-tier cities, and Kuaishou has captured the post-95 population in third- and fourth-tier cities. These two platforms have the population we need, and the key is how to attract this population, which is the focus of our thinking.

In the early stage, in order to be able to trial and error at a lower cost, we chose Weibo as the channel to test the path we mentioned earlier: watch the video - exit the short video - open WeChat - click search - enter the product name - use it.

Why did I choose Weibo? Because compared to short videos, Weibo has low cost and targets a more precise audience. Weibo has been developing for nearly ten years, and its user base has long since expanded to third- and fourth-tier cities. In addition, it has also established a relatively large number of top accounts in the gaming field, so choosing this platform to generate traffic is also a key consideration for us.

At that time, we adopted the @two friends random lottery method commonly used by Weibo to obtain more users to forward it, thereby achieving the effect of expanding the dissemination. Due to limited budget, we have conducted a detailed analysis of all the Weibo accounts we cooperate with and will not allow the emergence of fake accounts (as everyone knows, fake accounts on Weibo are very prevalent, and the price of inflating traffic is very low, leading to the prevalence of fake accounts, and we have fallen into many traps in this regard when doing marketing before).

At the same time, we have also set parameters for each channel and monitored the volume of each channel. We launched 5 accounts at the same time that day. One hour later, the data of the mini program was very good and reached a peak. This shows that this approach is effective, and the growth path we ultimately verified: watch video (information) - exit the APP - open WeChat - click search - enter the product name - use it, is actually very effective. This is also closely related to the interest points we have chosen, because our users are all users who play PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds or King of Glory, and they are irresistible to hero skins, especially skins that cost more than 888 points.

The growth path on Weibo is possible. If you copy this incentive point and path to other platforms, the benefits generated will be comparable. Only the platform will change, and the users and incentive points will remain unchanged. As long as you grasp the method well, your users will continue to flock to you.

Therefore, we also copied this method to short videos (TikTok & Kuaishou) to acquire users on a large scale at the lowest cost. This method is also effective, except that Kuaishou and Douyin use videos instead of text, but the effect is more significant, users can see it more realistically, and it is more conducive to conversion.

In fact, expanding from WeChat public accounts to Weibo and short videos is actually a bold attempt. We don’t know how effective it will be yet, but as long as we find an effective reuse routine, we can just replicate it on a larger scale. Because when you can see that this approach is effective, you have to strive for more resources to do it so that you can maximize its value.

*What can attract users to the mini program I am responsible for?

In fact, when I took over the user growth of this mini program, I was thinking more about how to acquire users on a large scale at a low cost. It would be best if it was the cool acquisition method of growth hackers. Cases of how to acquire a large number of users, whether you understand it or not, always come to my mind.

During that period, I also studied a lot of cases. Although I have had such operating cases myself, each industry is different, and the connections between people, products, and businesses are also different, so how to find the entry point is the first thing I need to study.

There were always two problems in my mind that needed to be solved:

（1）Where do my users gather?

(2) What do my users need?

Only after solving these two problems can I formulate targeted measures to acquire this group of users.

I have mentioned earlier in the article that my users are on Douyin, Kuaishou, Weibo, and WeChat public accounts, and these platforms are actually "centralized" platforms, which have relatively large number of top users, which we often call KOLs. So the first step was that I knew these platforms could gather the user groups I needed, and on a large scale. In addition to these more popular platforms, there are actually many more niche platforms that also have the users I need, such as Tieba, Bilibili, Interest Tribe, QQ Space, Douyu... and these platforms all have so-called KOLs, so how do I find them?

The answer is that I first need to know what age group my users are in, and then find the platforms that these users frequently visit. My target users are a group of primary and secondary school students born after 1995. These “new users” are also a generation with strong individuality. I don’t know what’s going on in their minds? But I know which platforms they will go to and what types of platforms they are. It is natural to label this group of users through the platform's tone.

OK, now we know where our target users are! The next step is to tease them. Before you flirt with them, you need to know what they need. This will arouse their desire to take action.

My target users are mobile game enthusiasts. Games occupy most of their time. At the same time, if I narrow the scope, they are a group of users who play Honor of Kings. So the needs of users who play Honor of Kings are: play with friends? CP? Hero skin? Yes, these are all needs. If you want to find a hardcore need, it is skin, and free skin. Then find out their hard-core needs and set up these inducements to attract your users.

At the same time, we also have such a benefit point in our products, which is to imitate the gameplay of e-commerce, such as drawing skins for free and helping people get skins for free. This is a practice that complements external traffic and internal retention. In fact, when you find out what your users need, you can come up with many new ideas based on these interests . For example, there is a demand for playing together in a group, so we set up a group for playing together in a group, with a few experts in it. If users want to join the group, do they need to do something? Similarly, finding a partner is also a very important need for this group of players. Can it help you solve the problem of being single? We can use big data to help you solve the problem of being single. For the gaming world which is mostly populated by male users, we can also do a lot of things about it.

3. Every industry has its own user growth point

If you are a student who can read this article to this point, I believe you have also been looking for how to find user needs for your own products (industry), and then combine operational gameplay to successfully attract more users to use your products.

Next, I will talk about the demand points that can be explored in the following industries to attract user participation.

*Education Industry

In fact, since last year, fission gameplay has begun to enter the vision of operators. The representative of this is Jianfeng. The gameplay played by the Jianfeng team basically belongs to the education industry, or what we call the field of knowledge content.

Why is it that the education industry is easy to attract people to forward and then go viral on WeChat Moments? In fact, it is the users' needs that are at work here. The pain point comes first. The core of "knowledge payment + fan fission" is still the word "knowledge". Fans are not stupid, they basically understand the routines, and the reason why they still play with you is that it is this knowledge point that attracts them.

Because knowledge content is a non-standard product and is cheap (because the Internet makes content cheap), many companies can play with it, and the distribution of knowledge is easy. As long as you complete the task, you can get your "knowledge" in Baidu Netdisk. This kind of knowledge with low cost and little risk is more likely to be popular with everyone. As long as you use this routine and have the tools and technology in place, you can attract a lot of target users to participate.

For example, the Sanlian Life Weekly of the Jianfeng team, the NetEase Xijing Class, and the marketing class of the Xinshixiang team. Of course, what you see are all at the screen-sweeping level. There are many other ways of playing that also attract a lot of users to participate, but they have not reached the screen-sweeping level. However, it is common to gain thousands or tens of thousands of fans.

You ask me, is this routine still feasible? The answer is yes. As long as the target audience of the launch pool is accurate, thousands of people will participate.

* Travel industry

The representatives of the travel industry are Didi, Mobike, and ofo.

In this industry, all you need to attract users to use your products is coupons, all kinds of coupons and cards, such as x yuan coupons, x yuan recharge and x yuan return coupons, monthly cards...

In fact, the travel industry is a bit like the e-commerce industry. Both have their own products. There are many preferential points on these products, and these are also gimmicks to attract users. The world is full of people seeking profit. When organizing activities and finding out user needs, these needs are enough to shake up the industry. For example, Mobike and ofo.

After Mobike’s continuous free activities after the college entrance examination last year, it suddenly launched a big move and launched the Mobike free month activity. Different from previous Mobike activities, this time Mobike’s free activity is in the form of a monthly card. Users need to receive a monthly card for free before they can ride for free for one month. This move caught OFO off guard. However, OFO’s monthly card was released nearly a month late. The face value of OFO's ticket is also 20 yuan, but the first month is free and users can also ride for free for 30 days. The two sides interact with each other, and each takes his turn, which has attracted many users.

* Tourism industry

In fact, when it comes to operations and promotion, the tourism industry is much easier to do than many other industries, because traveling is what many people yearn for, especially to some rare tourist destinations around the world which are places that many people are vying to visit. So at this time, when you are looking for user growth points, in addition to some free hotels, free tickets and other coupons on your own platform, you should think more about the users' inner yearning. For example, if your promotional platform is on Douyin, you can form a two-person team to record and edit some beautiful scenery to attract users to like and comment. Many scenic spots that were not visited by many people before have become popular on Douyin and have become popular tourist destinations. Once the video goes viral, the number of users of your product will also increase.

*Music and sports industry

Why put these two types of products together? Because I think these two types of apps have one thing in common, that is, both types of products are "centralized". What is centralization? It means that there are idols that fans pursue. For example, Kobe, McGrady, James from the NBA, etc., and the music products are even more detailed, such as Jay Chou, Leehom Wang, Lu Han, Wilber Pan, etc. So how can we attract more users? That is through voting activities. Because it is a voting activity, fans vote for their favorite stars, and it is their obligation to cheer for their idols.

For example, QQ Music, with fan economy as its direction, planned a voting activity to divert traffic from the APP to the WeChat official account, namely the "Annual Peak Sharing List", which is to let fans vote through a ranking list (this voting can be done in the APP and on the WeChat official account).

Starting with the fan group laid the foundation for the success of this event, because the obvious characteristics of the fan group are a sense of identity, participation, and superiority. In response to the "three senses" of fans, the operation threshold of voting activities in the form of rankings has become lower, and the effect achieved is very good. It can be said to be one of the most cost-effective operation methods. QQ Music ultimately achieved an increase in downloads, and its public account also gained 1.5 million followers.

4. If you were asked to be responsible for the growth of a mini program, what would you do?

How do I build a user growth team?

Many friends who study user growth may have a misunderstanding, that is, they think that fission is user growth. You believe everything you see seriously. For example, after seeing many people organize an event and attract nearly one million new users, that is a great user growth. What I want to tell you is that fission is just a way and means of user growth, it cannot summarize user growth. The growth we are talking about is growth in multiple ways and dimensions. Multi-mode means that there are many ways to achieve user growth, such as marketing activities (brand activities, fission activities), popular content (good articles on WeChat public accounts, good videos on Douyin). Multi-dimensional means that you have to consider user growth from a vertical dimension. Users coming in from the channel alone are only the first step in growth. You also have to activate them, retain them, and convert them, which is what we call the AARRR model. So when we talk about user growth, we focus more on long-term user growth, retention and even the value generated by the product. In this article, we will also focus on the first "A", the issue of user acquisition.

So when I was building a user growth team, it didn’t mean that I had to recruit people who were great in technology, operations, and marketing. Of course, it would be best if I could recruit these people, but you have to face the fact that if these people really existed, nine out of ten times they would do it themselves. So I need to be clear about what kind of people I need. At this time, I need to clarify what the growth path of my mini program is?

You have to first clarify what your growth path is? Then build the corresponding team structure. For example, if your traffic entrances include short videos, WeChat public accounts, Weibo, and mini programs, then look for corresponding talents. For example, WeChat public accounts and Weibo can actually be collectively referred to as new media. As for the new media portal, you can find a specialist to be responsible for this work. For example, as short video is a traffic entrance, you can look for short video operation talents. Therefore, only when you know your traffic entrance and then find corresponding experts to be responsible for conversion, your team can make the best use of their talents and maximize benefits.

* The user growth model should be small and beautiful (the path should be clear and don’t cast a wide net)

When it comes to user growth, many people actually advocate that the more the better, meaning the more traffic entrances you have, the better. But I don’t think so. I think that in the early stages of your user growth traffic entrances should be small and beautiful. This small and beautiful includes two levels:

The first level is that the user conversion path needs to be very clear and then verified. For example, as we mentioned earlier in the article, if your promotional platform is on Douyin, then when you do marketing on it, users will have to go through the steps of watching the video - exiting the short video - opening WeChat - clicking search - entering the product name - using it.

When you clearly understand every step your users need to go through, you will have a clear idea of ​​what needs to be optimized in each step, and then you will spend manpower and resources to specialize in this channel. For example, when we convert on Douyin, we actually know each step, so we know what problems may arise in each step. For example, when a user opens a search, WeChat actually has many searches, including the search at the top of the homepage, WeChat mini-program search, etc. Also, when a user searches for a "new word" for the first time, more searches will appear. If your user groups are at two extremes: very young or very old, they will feel that your product does not exist and will be lost at this stage, etc. Therefore, when we know where problems may arise in these steps, we will specifically mark them and provide clear guidance during promotion.

The second level is to avoid building channels in a large and widespread manner. In fact, I do not advocate the strategy of casting a wide net for promotion. When your human resources are limited, if you disperse your "troops" to fight, you will inevitably be defeated by the enemy. In the early stages, when manpower and funds are limited, you should focus on 1-2 channels and delve deeper. You will find that the routines there are very deep, but after you have studied them thoroughly, they are actually nothing more than that. You can also apply your routines to other platforms as well, so that you can achieve twice the result with half the effort.

* Dare to break boundaries in mini program growth

To dare to push boundaries, you need a growth mindset. Our human brain has two types of thinking: long-term thinking and the opposite fixed thinking. For example, some people think that they are not born to learn foreign languages ​​and it is impossible for them to learn a foreign language well; some people believe that although foreign languages ​​are difficult, as long as they study hard, they can still improve. Of these two mindsets, we call the former a fixed mindset and the latter a growth mindset.

Similarly, some people think that promoting mini programs is difficult, but they are still willing to try, and will also use various means to achieve growth. He thinks that although it is difficult, as long as you have patience and perseverance and are willing to explore, there will be a solution. Some people think that promoting mini programs is difficult, and that it is impossible to achieve the KPI assigned by their superiors through the channels I know now. Such people can only wait for death. Obviously, a growth mindset values ​​effort and growth, so people with this mindset are willing to take on challenges, are able to face failure, see their own growth from the experience of failure, and will not resist learning new things. The fixed mindset values ​​talent or innate ability, and believes that whether a person can accomplish something depends entirely on intelligence, and hard work is useless. It can be seen that growth mindset focuses more on self-improvement and growth, while fixed mindset only wants to prove one's intelligence to the outside world or cover up one's own stupidity.

When I was in charge of promoting this mini program and expanding the channels to Weibo and short videos, I definitely thought about fighting a desperate battle. If I failed, I would not be afraid to take it as a lesson. Drawing some useful lessons from it is also a form of growth. Of course, I think another very important thing here is to have an environment that tolerates your trial and error. This environment includes whether your boss can tolerate your trial and error, and whether the company has enough patience and funds for you to make trial and error. These two are quite important. If not allowed, then you won’t even have the opportunity to try and error, and then you will never dare to step out of your fixed thinking.

5. Not only big goals, but also key actions

You must have a goal in everything you do, because it can guide you forward and make your daily work meaningful. If you have a goal, of course you have to have key behaviors. Everything the team does is centered around this big goal.

At this time, it may be necessary to introduce [OKR], which is the objectives and key results method. I believe that in 2018, those who work in operations will have heard of OKR even if they have never used this method. OKR is a strategic goal and task system, a set of management tools and methods for defining clear goals and tracking their completion. It consists of two main parts: a clear goal that requires extreme focus and several key results that quantify the goal.

In other words, the team needs to have a big goal, and our team members need to focus on this "big O" to do tasks that can affect this goal. This way we can know whether everything we do is meaningful or not, and at the same time we can focus on the goal and not waste effective time on ineffective things.

For example, our team has a goal every month, and the biggest "O" of this goal is to attract new users at a lower cost, higher efficiency and on a larger scale. Then what each specialist needs to do is to plan his or her own strategy for the "traffic outlet" that he or she is responsible for. This strategy is how to attract new users at a lower cost, higher efficiency and on a larger scale. Then "Little O" needs to attract xx new users every month. And what are the key actions to attract these XX new users? For example, our new media operations specialist is responsible for the WeChat public account platform, which is actually a traffic entrance. So he needs to formulate many key behavioral strategies every month based on this "little O" to achieve his goals. The "small O" that other specialists are responsible for is also a component of the entire "big O". Only when it is completed can it be easier to achieve the big goal. So everyone does their job and does their work well.

Source: Yilin Xiaoyu ( cs-jy8 )