APP promotion: Where do new users come from and how to acquire them?

A store without customers will close, and a product without users will fail.

In the Internet world, products without users are meaningless.

Users are the foundation for a product to continuously create value, so acquiring new users (attracting new users) plays a vital role in a company.

Since attracting new customers is so important, what is the process of attracting new customers?

Let’s look at an example:

Xiao Ming is a long-term user of QQ Music. One day when he was taking the subway to work, he was stunned by the scene in front of him as soon as he got on the train, even though he usually played with his mobile phone.

The entire carriage was covered with eye-catching red stickers. Whether it was the handrails around or the place underfoot, it was all covered with red advertisements.

After taking a closer look, I found out that it was a creative advertisement for NetEase Cloud Music. The advertisement was composed of some user comments. I found it quite interesting after reading a few of them.

So Xiao Ming took a few photos and posted them on WeChat Moments, and many friends liked their posts.

After he arrived at the company, he connected to the Wifi and downloaded the NetEase Cloud Music App because he wanted to see what interesting comments there would be on the songs he liked.

After experiencing it for a day, he decided to use NetEase Cloud Music as his first choice for listening to music from now on.

The above case is a very common scenario in the process of adding new users, which can be simplified into 3 steps:

1. Contact: The product is advertised on the subway, allowing potential users (Xiao Ming) to be exposed to product (NetEase Cloud Music) advertising information on their way to work.

2. Feelings: The content, pictures and format of the product promotional information aroused Xiao Ming's interest in the product, and he began to want to give it a try.

3. Action: After generating the intention, I took action immediately and started downloading and using the product after arriving at the company.

Through these three steps, a new user is born. These three steps can be represented by the following flow chart:

There are many ways to attract new users, but acquiring new users requires the same three steps:

Touch → Feel → Act.

Since we have to go through these three steps, our efforts should be directed towards making each of these three steps better.

1. Optimize and increase the number of new users

Every step of the process

Next, I will explain how to make these three steps better.

Due to the limited length of the article, the focus of this article is to first let you know "what are there" and "what is", and then there will be articles that will specifically tell you "how to do it" and explain some specific operating methods.

1. Contact Information

1. Wide dissemination: The wider the product promotion information is spread, the more people will see it and convert.

Product information does not automatically spread to the user's world, we need to take the initiative to spread it.

Advertising: Place ads on platforms with traffic to quickly increase exposure. Although advertising has costs, it is a very efficient basic business practice.

Think about the products and services you use. How many of them have never been advertised?

Currently common advertising types include online advertising (search advertising, information flow advertising, banner advertising, etc.), outdoor advertising (subways, buses, buildings, etc.), and media advertising (TV, radio, websites, public accounts, etc.).

As long as you choose the right delivery channel, control ROI, and continuously optimize, the effect of advertising in acquiring users will be obvious.

Manual forwarding: manually forwarding advertisements, soft articles, and public relations documents to public platforms with traffic such as WeChat groups, Moments, QQ groups, Tieba, Zhihu, and forums.

Although the method is a bit low, it is still very effective for some products.

I know a very successful online travel company that has grown rapidly in the past few years since its establishment. It has completed multiple rounds of financing, and the latest round of financing has exceeded 100 million RMB. One of the ways they acquire users is to cultivate KOLs in the tourism field on Zhihu, and then post soft articles to direct traffic to the APP when necessary.

Word-of-mouth marketing: By creating products or services that exceed user expectations, users are encouraged to spread the word in their social circles.

In 2013, Coca-Cola printed many popular internet nicknames on its bottles. Many young people thought it was very creative and it quickly became popular on social media. Many media outlets rushed to report on it, and it spread widely, achieving sales growth beyond expectations.

Nowadays, social tools are well developed. When people see something very interesting, they often can’t help but want to take out their mobile phones to take pictures and post them on WeChat Moments.

When designing products and services, if you deliberately design a detail that impresses users, you may be able to gain very good reputation and traffic.

I once listened to the sharing of Fu Yu, COO of Qingsongdaojia. When they first started, they provided some systematic and standardized training to the repairmen who came to the door to repair the cars, so that their speech, attire and behavior were very professional.

But what really makes users post to their Moments is the sentence that the maintenance worker always says before leaving: "Do you have any trash that you want me to take away for you?"

In the home appliance repair market at the time, where prices were generally opaque and people were often ripped off, such high-quality and considerate service became a detail that helped Qingsong Home Appliances (the early name of Qingsong Home Appliances) gain a lot of early word-of-mouth publicity.

Of course, things like exceeding expectations will soon pass. You cannot rely on one detail to achieve long-term publicity, so you need to continuously innovate and optimize your services and products to create a good reputation among more users.

Offline marketing: promoting products by distributing flyers and lobbying in offline places where target users gather.

As online traffic becomes increasingly expensive, the cost-effectiveness of offline traffic in some offline scenarios with concentrated users is actually higher than that of online traffic.

Lexin Group is now valued at over 20 billion yuan. Its well-known product Fenqi Le gained all its early users through campus agent sales.

Le Chun Yogurt has launched free tasting activities in many companies, which is also an innovative way of marketing.

User dissemination mechanism: Through deliberately designed mechanisms to induce user dissemination, users are encouraged to actively spread the message in their own social circles.

The difference from the previous word-of-mouth communication is that this user communication mechanism makes more use of the user's motivation for interest rewards, such as bargaining, prizes, and ranking.

Create hot events: Plan hot events that are widely disseminated in the industry, involving a large number of people watching and discussing, and also triggering many media to rush to report.

The Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and the Book Throwing Campaign planned by Xin Shixiang were both very successful hot events. Not only did they dominate the WeChat Moments of many people, they also triggered reports from many media and public accounts, bringing a lot of attention and dissemination.

Exchange resources: Use your existing resources to cooperate and exchange with platforms that have traffic resources.

Exchanging resources is a win-win situation in which both parties give up their own valuable resources. Its biggest advantage is that it does not cost any money (serious face).

For example, app store debut is a very common way of exchanging resources. By choosing to debut in a certain app store and marking the debut in a certain app store on the app startup page, you can get free advertising space in that app store for a period of time.

If you have ever received red envelopes from Didi or Meituan, you will find that some red envelopes are provided by other brands or a certain movie. This is also a way of exchanging resources.

Strive for media coverage: Take the initiative to contact some media, showcase the uniqueness of your products, and seek coverage.

For the media, it also needs high-quality information sources. If your company is indeed worth reporting on, this kind of credible and traffic-generating media coverage can also bring a certain amount of traffic. More importantly, it is very helpful for users to build trust.

It should be noted that these credible platforms need to ensure the continued high quality of their output content and will only choose to report on companies that have an impact on the industry or whose products are extremely innovative. If not, it will be useless to apply.

Develop and manage channels: Channels are interest-binding parties that help product parties to spread and sell products. Developing more valuable channels will significantly increase channel sales.

In 2016, the market share of Oppo and Vivo, which have a large number of offline channels, surpassed Xiaomi, which used to rely mainly on e-commerce channels, and became two dark horses.

2. Accurate communication: The target users of a product are often not all people. With the same amount of delivery, the more precise the target group, the better the effect.

For example, a sports app, although in theory it can advocate that "everyone needs physical exercise to become healthy", the effect of handing out flyers in a vegetable market is definitely not as good as handing them out around a basketball court.

I once saw a door-to-door car washing company, which was promoting its products under office buildings. If you scanned a QR code and followed them, you could get a bottle of mineral water. This promotion method is very unreliable. Even the users in office buildings are mostly subway users who don’t have cars. A lot of manpower and resources are spent to acquire a group of users, but only a small part of them are truly valuable.

Why does Google, as a search company, have such high revenue and market value?

Because a large number of businesses choose to place advertisements on search engines, compared with traditional banner display ads, ads displayed through keyword searches will be more targeted to users.

What’s more powerful than Google is that products like Facebook and WeChat have access to more massive amounts of user behavioral data, and can better assess users’ ages, occupations, and interests, and deliver more targeted advertisements.

Advertisements placed in this way can be more accurate. The more niche the product is, the more precise the delivery needs to be.

3. Eye-catching: In this age of information explosion, each message stays on the screen for a very short time. If it cannot immediately attract attention and make users decide to spend more time reading it, the message will fail.

Therefore, we should avoid overly bland titles, pictures, and redundant and complex promotional information. Instead, we should use focused and creative content to attract users first, which will create subsequent business possibilities.

Choose impactful images:

The human brain's perception of images is faster and stronger than directly reading text. Choosing pictures that are more impactful and shocking will be more likely to catch the eye.

There is a widely circulated sales advertisement for used Aston Martin cars, with a picture of a sexy woman's back. It is easy to be attracted by this back.

The picture was accompanied by a caption: "You know you're not the first but do you really care?" The shock and impact are still very strong.

Increase contrast:

In visual information, the human brain is more likely to notice content with obvious differences, that is, information with higher contrast.

Therefore, when designing a poster, you need to increase the contrast to highlight the important information.

Highlight changes:

Users often no longer have any feeling for the "good" or "very good" advertised by merchants. By comparing the changes before and after using the product, users can feel the effectiveness of the product.

Braun Shaver added a set of photos comparing orangutans and humans. While there are certain similarities, there is a stronger contrast effect. This exaggerated artistic technique is used to vividly display the effect of the razor.

Zoom in on the details:

When materials are limited, it is possible to create a greater impact by magnifying local details. For example, the two advertising pictures below were photoshopped by me. Which one do you think can attract your attention more?

Eye-catching title:

In the era of traditional paper media, the title of an article might be stable and pragmatic, because as long as users bought the newspaper, the title would not affect the number of readers.

In the new media era, people have very short decision time to decide whether to read or not. If you fail to attract users to click in at the first time, the number of readers of this article will often be very low.

Traditional media: "Chiang Kai-shek is dead"

New media title: "He had been an assassin, a gambler, a school principal, had three wives, killed countless people, lost his kingdom shamefully, and retreated to an island where he was still unwilling to submit. He finally died at the age of 88! 》

2. Strong feelings

1. Meet the needs: Users have their own reasons for taking action, and only when their needs are met will they have a strong feeling.

For example, it is useless to talk about the high cost-performance ratio to a girl who likes taking selfies. The function she cares most about may be whether the selfie effect is good.

For some other users, the pain point is that the mobile phone battery is not durable, and OPPO's main selling point of "5 minutes of charging, 2 hours of talk time" hits the mark for these battery-anxious users.

However, there are many mobile phones that do not have clear and definite features. They just have a model number that users cannot perceive and are marked with a price that users do not know whether it is expensive or not. Although this type of mobile phone, which does not clearly meet user needs, has been sold all the time, its total sales volume is far behind the previous two models.

Of course, there are also some products whose selling points are more direct, but the demand is not very strong. For example, Xiaomi has a smart socket that has a function to record electricity usage and save electricity.

In my opinion, this is a false demand. For someone who would spend a few dozen more dollars to buy a smart socket, checking the power consumption and saving a small amount of electricity bill are not their needs.

Judging from Xiaomi's official flagship store, the sales of this socket are far lower than those of Xiaomi's other less smart socket with a USB slot.

2. Clear expression: Deliver information clearly so that users can easily understand the product selling points.

In fact, we often see advertisements that we have no idea what they are about after watching them.

The three photos above were taken by me at the Shenzhen subway station. This advertisement has been placed in the subway station for many years and has turned a little yellow. I have asked these Internet practitioners who love to learn several times in offline sharing sessions to guess what these advertisements are trying to sell.

Elites from all walks of life brainstormed and showed their talents, guessing T-shirts, windbreakers, jeans, hats, bicycles, skateboards, travel, sports, glasses, headphones, watches, bicycles, bracelets, courses, real estate...

I thought of almost everything I could think of, but still couldn't guess the result.

In fact, this advertisement is an advertisement rental information of Shenzhen Metro, hoping that more advertisers will place advertisements here, which means that what is being sold is advertising space.

If the purpose is to sell advertising, a simple and direct advertisement like the one below, although not as artistically appealing as the former, is at least a thousand times more effective.

For beginners, it is important to distinguish between "advertising works" and "advertisements".

To measure whether an advertisement is good or not, one may look at aspects such as creativity, techniques, and aesthetics; while to measure whether an advertisement is good or not, one generally only looks at whether it has sufficiently promoted sales, with effectiveness as the first criterion.

"I won't accept any gifts this year, the only gift I'll accept is Melatonin." This advertisement with grammatical errors may be ordinary in terms of creativity and artistry, but in terms of effect, it is definitely a very good advertisement.

There are some award-winning works at the Cannes Advertising Festival that are difficult for ordinary people to understand. It takes a mentor to explain the ideas for a few minutes before you can understand the creativity. The focus of such advertising works is on art rather than effect.

When we first start learning, we must not go astray.

3. Stimulate motivation: Increase the desire to meet existing needs or the urgency to solve problems.

In other words, it is either to stimulate the acquisition of pleasure or to stimulate the reduction of pain.

For example, "Do you still want to continue to let 2 million mites accompany you every night? XX brand mite removal machine will allow you to have a clean and comfortable sleep." This is to use people's fear to trigger the reduction of pain.

I was also shocked by similar pictures and texts. I felt that there were a lot of mites in the environment around me and wanted to buy a mite removal device.

However, from a rigorous medical science perspective, it has been proven that mites do not cause such serious harm. This is actually just the one-sided statement of the merchants.

4. Alleviate doubts: Anticipate what doubts users may have and let them know how to resolve them in advance.

A good operator should be able to predict what doubts users may have and resolve them in advance.

If a product is sold at a higher price, users may wonder “Why is it more expensive?” You need to explain that the reason may be “the raw materials are good and it is handmade”.

If the product is sold at a much lower price than normal, you also need to explain "why it is so cheap". The reason may be "direct sale from the original factory, new store with diamonds". There may be many similar doubts, such as:

If the size is not right, can I return it?

Is this authentic? Is it guaranteed?

Is the material safe? Are there any discounts for group tours?

When user doubts are reduced, the conversion rate of the product will be significantly improved.

Therefore, more and more merchants on Taobao are now offering shipping insurance. As long as you click to confirm receipt, the payment can be fully refunded without any loss. This way, users can make decisions faster when purchasing.

I have browsed some products on Taobao before, and the way he dispels users' concerns is really extreme:

You can return it if you have opened it, you can return it if you have used it, you can return it if it is ineffective, or you can return it if you are not satisfied with it... In short, as long as you want to return it, no matter what the reason is, you can return it, and you don’t have to pay for the round-trip postage.

(The picture shows a Taobao merchant offering a full refund if you are not satisfied with the product. You can return it even if you have opened it and used it.)

What’s even more amazing is that I saw one that even after returning the money, you could get 10 yuan as mental damage compensation!

I have taught some online or offline sharing courses myself, and I usually add this sentence:

In line with the principle of "never letting readers suffer losses", students who are dissatisfied after taking the course can apply for a full refund unconditionally and without any threshold.

This sentence can dispel the doubts of some unfamiliar users and greatly improve the conversion rate of the product.

At the same time, for a course teacher, although there are certain risks, this is a higher requirement to promote myself to continuously improve the content. It is a better driving force for both myself and my students.

3. Prompt Action

1. Lower the threshold: The higher the threshold for user action, the more difficult it is to form a conversion. Appropriately lowering the threshold can greatly improve the conversion rate.

For example, "You can experience the APP without registering" and "Youku membership can be tried for free for 7 days".

Nearly 10,000 Smart cars have been sold in Mercedes-Benz’s official flagship store on Tmall, but paying 150,000 to 200,000 yuan for an online store is still a very high psychological threshold.

By paying a deposit first, you only need to pay 666 yuan online to get a certain percentage of discount, and finally pick up the car in the store to complete the final transaction.

2. Reduce steps: No matter how good the product is, every additional step will result in a loss of traffic, so if possible, reducing the steps as much as possible will increase user conversions.

I remember seeing a course before, where, perhaps in order to get to know the students better, the course asked students to fill out a very complicated registration form before signing up.

But it is very likely that some users will give up while filling out the form because they find it troublesome.

In the process of completing transaction conversion, steps and jumps should be reduced as much as possible, so that users can pay directly. The research on students’ situation can be done after users make a purchase and then the information can be collected.

From the product interaction trends in recent years, we can find that the steps to use a function are becoming more and more convenient.

For example, the payment function has become more and more convenient, from the web version of Alipay which initially required a number + letter password, to the 6-digit password of WeChat Pay, to the current fingerprint payment.

3. Promote completion: When users are most excited and emotional, promptly encourage them to buy and reduce their hesitation, which will also lead to better conversion results.

For example, "Today's special offer: 30% off first order, limited to today", "The first 1,000 registered users today will receive 500 gold coins."

On the Vipshop website, you will find that almost every product is on sale for a limited time, and there is a countdown on the right side of the product details, constantly reminding you to purchase and place orders in time.

Consumption by users is often an impulsive behavior. If you do not encourage them to consume in a timely manner when they are interested in and impulsive about the product, the probability of subsequent consumption will be very low.

When many operations and marketing professionals encounter problems in attracting new customers, they always think that there is a problem with the information access link. In other words, they think that they do not place enough advertisements or have insufficient channels to increase fans, etc. However, the latter two steps are actually important links that many people overlook.

There are three new links added by users. The first one is related to exposure, and the last two are related to conversion rate.

2. Application demonstration of user added process

What’s the use of knowing the above?

The methods added by users are nothing more than the ones mentioned above. Some are used alone, and some are used in combination. You can start doing what you haven’t done yet, and if you optimize what you have already done, the overall growth will be significantly improved.

Let’s take a look at an example. A classmate once paid me to consult about user growth . Here is the basic situation of his product:

Product: An online education app

Main features: Video courses for learning workplace skills, including free introductory courses and paid advanced courses

Number of registered app users: 8,000 Daily active users: around 100. It has been launched on the iOS AppStore, and on the Android market, it has been launched on App Store, 360, and Baidu Mobile Assistant.

Number of followers of WeChat subscription account: 2500. The source of followers is mainly from a previous event. Daily updates are mainly about the launch of new courses.

At present, we have found several big WeChat accounts to promote hard advertising, but the effect is not very good. We have also posted advertisements in learning-related forums and Douban groups, but the effect is also average.

This product has some problems in positioning and strategy, which are the main reasons for operational difficulties. The product differentiation characteristics are not clear enough, but we will ignore these problems for now. Let's take a look at the three steps of the new user flow mentioned earlier and see what suggestions we can give to the operation of this product:

1. Contact Information

1. Wide dissemination:

The mainstream channels of the Android market have not yet been fully covered, and other application markets such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Meizu, and Wandoujia have been added.

You can increase the app store's first release or joint first release in exchange for a banner recommendation position, and you can start to do some ASO optimization in a targeted manner to increase event exposure.

Find the differentiated and easily spreadable features of the product, explore interesting user stories, and then actively seek exposure from some media, such as 36Kr, Zuimei App, Geek Park, AiFan, etc.

2. Communication accuracy:

Since people with a strong desire to learn only account for a small part of the workplace population, it is not accurate to target large WeChat accounts. It is better to find some vertical or personal growth-related self-media.

Find gathering places for people who love learning in the workplace, such as micro-class groups, offline course venues, Zhihu, and personal growth public accounts.

Write high-quality and informative answers on Zhihu, such as "What pertinent advice do you have for newcomers who are about to enter the workplace?", "How to arrange study time after work?", "What are some excellent workplace learning platforms?", give high-quality answers that can get a lot of likes, and naturally embed APP soft advertisements in the answers to bring in traffic.

In learning courses and conference activities attended by hundreds or thousands of people in local cities, we distribute APP flyers on the spot to attract these users to register.

3. Eye-catching:

The online education learning platform is a seemingly bland promotion that will not arouse much interest among users. If you change it to another title like "A learning app used by people with a monthly salary of 20,000", more people will stop to read it. Then you can just connect the title and the substance in the article.

2. Strong feelings

1. Meet the needs: Some online education platforms’ slogans are “the best online learning platform”, which makes me feel nothing after seeing it. It would be better to say “a little job skill will be explained in 5 minutes”, which can meet the fragmented learning needs of some users.

2. Clear expression: There were a lot of confusing forms in its external promotional materials, which were revised one by one.

3. Stimulate motivation: Are you still struggling in your confused work? XX classroom helps you avoid detours and no longer have to work overtime!

4. Dispel your doubts: You can listen to multiple series of courses without paying.

3. Prompt Action

1. Lower the threshold: registered users can try the first 3 lessons of all courses for free.

2. Reduce steps: Scan the QR code to directly experience the course content, and then an H5 trial page will pop up.

3. Promotion completion: Congratulations on obtaining the qualification for a 2-week free trial of the VIP course. Please enter your mobile phone number to receive it.

In summary, this article breaks down the three steps of acquiring new users into “contact, feeling, and action” and summarizes the methods for optimizing these three steps, giving you an overall thinking framework for acquiring new users.

Hope it helps!

Source: Growth Man (ID: zengzhangxia)