Case Analysis: How does Kugou increase its user base?

This is the fifth article I have written about growth hacking, which mainly introduces the growth hacking analysis and application methods of Kugou.

The previous growth hacking articles about Love Bank, Amap, WeChat Reading, and the Double Eleven fission of Fan Deng Reading Club were officially pushed in the Renren Product Experience column and Zhihu column, and the Renren product manager gave the location of the carousel banner on the official website homepage.

Similarly, the number of readings of growth articles is constantly being refreshed, from 5,000 readings for the first article to an average of 20,000 readings per article on each platform now. This shows that the analysis and application methods of growth hackers are recognized, and it also repositions me.

I believe everyone has been to KTV, ordered songs by their favorite stars, and sang the most classic and popular songs. I will go out with friends one evening after get off work, or on a sunny weekend. Or they may be in a good mood after drinking and go to karaoke together. They may also choose to sing to vent their emotions because of a breakup or a setback at work or in their life. Of course, if there is a microphone master among your friends, the possibility of being asked to sing songs frequently will be very high.

Now, think back, what was the scene and emotions that drove you to go to KTV last time?

According to the data from Analysys Qianfan in February 2018, the monthly active users of the Kugou APP reached 125.858 million, the number of launches was 484.5302 million times, and the usage time was 479.0424 million hours. It currently ranks third in the audio entertainment industry and remains first in the mobile karaoke field. The industry penetration rate of active users has reached 77.2%, and the industry monopoly rate reached a peak of 83.5% in January this year.

Analysis of the Exclusive Rate Trend of the National K-Song APP Industry

(January 2017 - February 2018)

As shown in the figure, such a high industry user exclusivity rate is due to the fact that Kugou has continuously iterated its products to achieve user experience fission, and has relied on external communities, internal social currencies and other functions to continuously stimulate explosive user fission. After analyzing the product iterations and version function changes of Kugou, I have a deeper respect and admiration for its product team. The road to growth is difficult, but for Karaoke, it seems to have found a straight and relaxed growth path, with users multiplying quickly and retaining users at a higher level.

Follow my thoughts to understand the “method” of Kugou’s growth.

1. Viewpoint: Product iteration helps the path to growth

Can product iteration also promote user growth ?

Yes, it helps growth.

The growth path of product operation from 0 to 1 is: cold start-attract new users-retention-activity-monetization. Looking at the entire version iteration and update of Kugou, the shadow of growth hackers is everywhere. To explain, growth hacking is no longer just about specific user-based fission growth, but about user retention and active growth.

The product analysis chart below shows the direction of change of Kugou, from the live broadcast function of version 3.9.8 a year ago, to PK, gift sending, filters, live broadcast and microphone changes, to the latest version 5.5.6, the function of karaoke room challenge gameplay appeared. The most eye-catching feature is that the version is constantly upgrading to social, community, emotional, tool and monetization. Simple product functions have made Kugou explode.

Today's growth content will focus on analyzing these points.

Timeline of product iterations and updates:

2. Growth Hacker 1: Social Growth Method

WeSing is an important mobile entertainment application under Tencent. "Social" is the label that everyone gives to all Tencent products. Looking at and analyzing WeSing, social products are the core element connecting user growth.

If you are a user of this software, you will quickly think of what I am going to talk about next. If you are unfamiliar with this software, you can try it once and you will immediately understand the social logic of this product.

1. Social growth method 1: dynamic publishing

Regarding software message reminders, in my opinion, there are only two best software, one is the Alipay payment arrival reminder, the other is the Kugou dynamic release reminder.

Kugou has opened up two-way login entrances for WeChat and QQ. When you enter the software, there will be thoughtful social reminders, reminding you to follow your friends and view their previous singing records; when friends register for the software, the system will immediately push friends to join Kugou; when friends finish their first performance or release, the system will perform intelligent editing based on the song title and push text, and these contents will greatly stimulate your curiosity, driving you to open it to listen to the song your friends have just sung.

But it’s not over yet. You will always feel that other people’s voices are not as good as yours, and the PK challenge function is just the right place for you to show off your skills.

1. The second social growth method: song competition

Everyone thinks that their own voice is perfect, and they are unwilling to be outdone and want to challenge themselves. This weakness of human nature has been fully released in Kugou, and the song competition function was born. There will be a score number displayed in the song competition, and the melody will dance along with the notes. This score value will be synchronously calculated into the "banner" progress bar of the competition, constantly stimulating your little nerves.

Visible goals are the most tempting, just like the process of killing monsters and upgrading in a game, you have to keep an eye on the progress bar at all times. After completing the song competition, the system will congratulate you and also notify the loser. This step-by-step social interaction will bring greater activity.

1. Social growth method 3: Nearby dynamics

When it comes to social dynamics based on LBS, the most successful ones are Tantan and Momo, which have taken stranger social interaction to a new level. People nearby who follow you can view all your updates, follow each other, like your updates, send gifts, and even comment on them. Although the current Kugou does not have the "god-like" traffic and aura of Tik Tok, who doesn't want to have more fans and be recognized?

Let the nearby dynamics just meet this psychological "need".

1. Social growth method 4: song chorus and video chorus

Chorus is similar to fighting, but its nature is completely opposite. The excitement of competing in competitions and the desire to rise to the top of the world by singing in a chorus break the joy of singing alone and also open up the experience of "communication" with nearby strangers. In my opinion, the fun of singing a song together will be greater if the other half is a familiar friend, lover or even someone closer (after all, my singing is not very good).

When people get together during the New Year and other holidays, the links they share with friends or invite others to sing together on WeChat will once again have a fission effect.

Video chorus is a new feature recently launched by Kugou. Some of the recent products have adopted the style of short videos, which is not the focus of our discussion this time. The emergence of video chorus also shows that Kugou is moving towards a more entertaining track that caters to short videos.

1. Social growth method 5: song rankings and friend rankings

We have mentioned the role of competitive rankings many times. Every product of Tencent has the necessary ranking function, including Honor of Kings, WeChat Sports, WeChat Reading, etc. But we still want to continue to talk about the logical advantages behind the rankings of Kugou.

The role of the ranking list is to stimulate the "weakness" of human nature that is unwilling to give in, and then invest more time and emotion to catch up with the current score ranking. You may be wondering, some songs at the top of the charts are terrible, but they still have a lot of likes and rewards, why is that?

There is an organization called "union" behind this, and this organization takes on the role of making you money. Taobao has a union for fake orders, live streaming platforms have a union, and Kugou also has a union, but it has a new name, called "Family."

Summary: To sum up, the social growth model of Kugou is its main core. From dynamic publishing, song competitions, nearby dynamics, song video chorus, song friend rankings, the embedded social chain connects emotions from the bones and defeats human nature. It is not difficult to make a good product like this. You must have a heart that can understand human nature and don’t be an idealistic product manager.

3. Growth Hacker 2: How to grow social currency

This social currency is not a social currency, but a consumer currency with representative value based on the internal circulation of Kugou. The expansion of the traffic pool and the increase in popularity have become the best model for Kugou to monetize. The emergence of internal social rewards is a monetization method that has been explored after long-term operations.

There are two kinds of internal currencies in Kugou, one is flowers and the other is K coins. Flowers and K coins are consumed in the same way, both are rewards for songs, but the channels for obtaining them are completely different. Flowers are actions that automatically trigger the system to reward by completing certain tasks, for example, through logging in, playing works frequently, sharing works, publishing works, and many other ways.

K coin is the most popular "social currency" among enterprises and rewarded users. First of all, the recharge method of K coin is to exchange it with RMB at an equivalent value, and it does not support other exchanges or channels to obtain it by completing tasks. K coins can be withdrawn, but flowers can only be consumed and cannot be withdrawn.

As we said above, there is an organization called "family" in karaoke, and this family is responsible for helping you make money and share the money. The strength of the "family" indicates the speed of expansion of this organization, and it is also the beneficial value to the platform. (Of course, the platform will also support families or unions, and some "big families" are even incubated by Kugou itself. This kind of family routine is often seen in live broadcast platforms that want to promote active and better-looking product users, which in turn derives a gray industry).

Summary: Social currency is the most important way to increase user activity and build a halo image. The closed loop must be established for internal and external acquisition and internal consumption of the product to allow users to feel involved and invested in all aspects of the product. WeChat Reading is a very good example. Students who are interested can read my previous article about the case of "WeChat Reading Growth Hacker".

4. Growth Hacker 3: User Fission Red Envelope Invitation

Kugou, which has always been low-key, has recently started an activity where users can get red envelopes by inviting them to Kugou. The rules of the game are very simple. Invite new friends to register and download Kugou, and you can get cash red envelopes, which can be withdrawn when the amount reaches 10 yuan.

According to my own operation process and experience, when the invitation is opened, there will be an official reward. You only need to invite two people to easily meet the 10 yuan standard. But one thing you need to note is that the withdrawal standard needs to be an integer, that is, out of 12.8 yuan, you can only withdraw 10 yuan, and the remaining 2.8 yuan can be exchanged for K coins or continue to be deposited.

However, there is one thing that needs to be especially pointed out. Kugou did not put this function in the most obvious position, but at a deeper entrance. Or we can imagine that Kugou is an entrance to maintain stability. Attracting new users is not the core position at present, but using new users to drive retention and even increase activity.

Summary: This kind of red envelope invitation fission behavior does not bring any innovation to the growth style, but the growth momentum remains. The steps for Kugou are very simple, and user registration only requires WeChat authorization. If it is applied to other products that are not connected to WeChat, will it be more difficult to invite users? There are also some that require filling out an invitation code to be considered a formal invitation, which may help you change your growth methods and thinking.

5. Growth Hacker 4: Tools for Retention and Fission

As we mentioned at the beginning, the most powerful thing about Kugou is its high retention and high conversion. The user fission and new customer acquisition methods mentioned above are just extensions of retention fission.

For ordinary users who want to sing whenever they want, Kugou is just an ordinary singing platform. For users who want to improve the beauty of their voice, it is a rare practice tool platform. But for users with good voices or even talented people, it provides an excellent stage. This constitutes the user attributes and platform nature of Kugou, a platform that integrates emotions, tools and self-expression.

For ordinary users, Kugou will recommend your favorite songs based on the music you browse (and QQ Music) and the recent popular music through intelligent algorithms, and push songs that are familiar or hummable, seizing the last second before you leave the product. When singing your favorite song,

Giving an "SSS" rating will drive you to forward it to WeChat or your circle of friends. After all, it represents your unique sound quality and sense of superiority.

For users who want to improve the beauty of their voice, Kugou is a very good platform. The practice tool system (tuning) within Kugou provides an excellent "practice venue" for improving or modifying pronunciation. Because of the addition of artificial intelligence algorithms, when you pass the practice, the algorithm will push songs that are slightly more difficult or have similar to the one currently practiced but lacks the tones, so that you can practice in depth.

This results in long-term commitment, with some people contributing the longest.

For users with talented voices, this is a platform for cultivating fans and making money. As mentioned above, the union of the Kugou "family" is a huge organization. As long as the "sound quality" is outstanding and at the "sss" level, it will be on the list. Being on the list means the opportunity to receive rewards, gain fans, and even become an Internet celebrity. Once you can make money and have fans, your retention time will be longer and your activity and stability will be improved.

6. Growth Hacker 5: Growth Operations Route (Summary)

Most of the users who were attracted to Kugou for the first time were driven by emotions and were limited by offline KTV scenes, so they chose to try a new solution. The above article talked about the many ways in which Kugou has achieved growth and fission. Continue to follow my thoughts to gain a deeper understanding of Kugou’s growth strategy from 0 to 1.

1. Cold Start

Adopting the reservation mechanism, hunger marketing is used to attract the first batch of users. Half a month before the release of the Kugou product, users were allowed to make reservations for downloading through a large number of channels and were rewarded with certain prizes. We quickly gained very good traffic import. On the first day of its release, there were 200,000 active users. The mechanism of holding competitions can attract high-quality users and contribute the first batch of high-quality content to Kugou.

1. Attract new customers

Marketing promotion through cooperation with TV programs. For example, in November 2014, through the cooperation with Happy Camp, the popular effect of celebrities attracted a large number of new users. On the other hand, through the continuous diversion of WeChat and QQ, a large number of users were diverted, enabling Kugou to grow rapidly.

1. active

Various competitions are held in conjunction with current affairs and hot topics. For example, we synchronized the exclusive accompaniment of "I Am a Singer" on the entire network and held the offline I Am a Singer competition; cooperated with Zhejiang Satellite TV to hold the China Voice Shanghai Online Audition Competition; and cooperated with Shenzhen Satellite TV's large-scale original music reality show "The Singer Is Here" to open the registration channel for the K-song competition area. The holding of various competitions has greatly improved the activity and retention of Kugou.

From the above analysis, we can see that every time Kugou splits, it grows with the help of public emotions; hunger marketing, TV cooperation, celebrity cooperation, hot topics, etc. will drive users into the product and handle emotions more appropriately. Emotions have become the only way to increase the number of people using Kugou. When you are sad, you want to sing to vent. When you are happy, you want to sing for others to listen to. When you hear a popular song on Tik Tok and have the urge to imitate it, all of these motivations are generated by emotions.

Summarize

Social networking solves people’s time problem. Kugou is a great product with deep roots. The ways of fission include red envelope sharing, song ranking, family members, scoring and evaluation, reward mechanism, task collection, and intelligent recommendation. The relationship chain of a large number of acquaintances, if you want to make a big product, must have a way of socializing with strangers. If you are learning or understanding the application of this product, you can read this article carefully several times.

Fission comes from consensus, sharing comes from a sense of superiority, and retention comes from trust. When you are most familiar with your product, it does not mean that users can understand your product. However, if you bring customers to KTV, then you will know how your product is made.

Source: Post-95s Talking About Technology