Himalaya was established in 2012. Its previous positioning was more like "Radio FM". In 2014, the number of activated users exceeded 50 million. But it really became popular after the advent of knowledge payment——
The exclusive audio playback platform of " Luoji Siwei "
Exclusively authorized by "Hearing Wu Xiaobo Everyday"
The Miwei team led by Ma Dong has launched "Speak Well", "Little Knowledge" and "Workplace Plan B"
The title sponsor of the popular variety show "Sound into the Scene" at the beginning of the year
…
Those who could not distinguish between " Himalaya FM ", "Qingting FM" and "Kaola FM" at the beginning may now have become Himalaya users through Himalaya's APP, mini-programs or in-car hardware.
This is a set of official data from Himalaya:
Unlike Zhihu, a knowledge community that "shares knowledge, experience, and insights", and Duoduo , which is positioned as a "knowledge service provider", Himalaya has been operating with a platform approach since the beginning of the knowledge payment wave. This article attempts to analyze how Himalaya uses its own ideas to achieve double growth in users and revenue after the rise of the knowledge payment wave.
The model for analysis is AARRR .
Acquisition (user acquisition): using various promotion methods, such as offline promotion , advertising , KOL promotion, APP application store distribution , etc., the purpose is to acquire new users, which is also known as " attracting new users" in operational jargon. Activation: After a user comes in, let him/her start using the product instead of just becoming a zombie. This includes the novice training camp of Honor of Kings , the novice red envelopes of Koala.com, and the recommended users (mei) of Momo .
Retention: Users not only visit and leave , but also start to use the various functions of the product many times. I believe many operations colleagues are familiar with this, such as the "user growth system" commonly seen in various APPs.
Revenue: The revenue earned by Internet products, from the "free model" that was popular at the beginning (first gathering massive traffic and then monetizing the traffic) to the "knowledge payment" and " fan economy " that have become popular in the past two years.
Referral (user recommendation): My product colleagues and I joked that whether or not there is a "friend recommendation" function is a key indicator to test the execution of product growth. I believe that people who are used to using apps such as Didi and Meituan are very familiar with "invite friends and both parties can get XX rewards."
As mentioned earlier, Himalaya's product development stages have actually been different since its establishment in 2012 until it seized the opportunity of paid knowledge. The choice of growth ideas and strategies is different at different product development stages.
The product life cycle theory ( PLC ) was first proposed by Raymond Vernon, a professor at Harvard University in 1966 in his article "International Investment and International Trade in the Product Cycle".
So, what stage of development is Himalaya currently in? We can see the total download curve of Himalaya in the Android market from KuChuan as follows: The above figure captures data from October 2015 to July 2018. It can be seen that since the beginning of 2017, Himalaya's APP downloads have shown a rapid growth trend. The paid knowledge market has always been considered a huge pie, and its current size is far from saturated. This is why after Himalaya, Dedao, Zhihu, and Fenda have occupied a large amount of exposure in the paid knowledge circle, new players continue to enter the market: NetEase Cloud Music 's paid column, Qingting FM's "Aidianjin Guide", and Toutiao is also developing paid knowledge products internally, and many vertical fields are still using their own accumulation to try to grab a piece of territory.
In the incremental market, the faster you run, the more beneficial it is to establish your own advantages, and Himalaya is doing just that. Whether it is content categories, number of knowledge products or KOLs, they are all growing at a fairly fast pace.
I remember that at the New List Conference in 2017, Duoduo's CEO Tuo Buhua compared Duoduo to a "boutique", while Himalaya was more like a "shopping mall" or "trading platform". As a platform, it is necessary to consider users at both ends: C-end users - people who consume platform content; B-end users - people who provide platform content.
1. Acquisition: Both the B-end and the C-end drive As a platform, both B-end users and C-end users are indispensable. Himalaya has various ways to acquire C-end users:Content Attraction On knowledge payment platforms, users consume content, so the growth of content is fundamental. Today's Himalaya is a content-rich platform from different dimensions.Free content: audiobooks, music, crosstalk, radio dramas, anchor radio, headlines
Paid content :
Masterclass, boutique mini-class, live micro-class, Xima lectures, audiobooks (paid version)
In terms of content categories, it also covers books, children, entertainment, knowledge, life, art and other fields: Top content such as Ma Dong's "Plan B for Career", Cai Kangyong's "Emotional Intelligence Class", Yu Qiuyu's "Required Course in Chinese Culture", etc. have their own traffic and can naturally convert the lecturer's fans into users of the platform. Fans are also the first batch of users acquired by many knowledge payment platforms during their cold launch . Of course, the risk is that once the instructor leaves, these fans will no longer be loyal users of the platform. Therefore, mid- and long-tail content that meets the needs of different users is also indispensable. Content in categories such as audio novels, crosstalk, jokes, entertainment, and emotional life, although single product sales are difficult to compete with top content, can attract users with different needs.
The two examples mentioned by Himalaya Vice President Li Haibo in his sharing with China Europe Business Review are enough to illustrate how influential the vertical content produced by amateurs is:
KOL attracts new customers If you also follow the public accounts of some knowledge big Vs, and can even see their circle of friends , I believe that part of the content you will definitely see is the "advertisements" sent by the big Vs themselves for the courses. Voice coach Xiao Di promoted the Xike course in her WeChat Moments Uncle Qiuye promoted Teacher Xiaodi’s happy class on his official account The more popular a course is among users, the more traffic it will get from Himalaya and the better recommendation position it will get. This operating mechanism allows Himalaya to cleverly mobilize the enthusiasm of KOLs and make KOL channels its own promotion channels. Activities to attract new customers Large-scale events have the attribute of attracting new users. It goes without saying that when they reach more audiences, they can attract more new users. In the past two years, Himalaya has done a lot of "big things". The first " 123 Knowledge Carnival " in 2016 brought in over 50 million in one day; the second one in 2017 brought in nearly 200 million. In addition to the increase in revenue, it also used actual data to define the relationship between "knowledge" and "payment", occupying everyone's cognitive high ground and achieving good publicity effects. 123 Knowledge Carnival Even Baidu Encyclopedia Has It The "new user gift packs" distributed at the Knowledge Carnival are an important means of acquiring new users. On January 1, 2018, Himalaya also cooperated with Zhejiang Satellite TV on a "New Year's Eve Thought Event", inviting big names including Ma Dong, Gao Xiaosong, Zhang Zhaozhong, Wu Xiaobo and others to engage in a collision of ideas in the form of live broadcast + talk show, focusing on the annual keywords of young people such as "technology, future, youth, opportunity, achievement, happiness, confusion" and so on. Cooperating with first-tier satellite TV stations to hold an evening party has positive significance for attracting TV viewers. Advertising For many products in the growth and maturity stages, traditional offline advertising, TV advertising and other forms are the only way to increase national awareness and acquire more users based on the existing user base. Just look at the oral broadcasts of Douyin , Kuaishou , and Pinduoduo on national variety shows, and you will know how valuable TV advertising is. Compared with these companies, Himalaya is relatively low-key. In early 2018, it sponsored Hunan Satellite TV's original variety show "Sound into the Scene", which was a very consistent investment in brand and program tone and content.
During the 123 Knowledge Carnival, a large number of subway advertisements were also put in place, using celebrities as the main promotional point to build momentum for the carnival.
In addition, Himalaya has also tried online advertising that can accurately reach target users through big data . This is a successful case of Himalaya seen on Tencent’s social advertising platform: Platform Cooperation By cooperating with other platforms and products, Himalaya's content can reach more users, which is also a part of Himalaya's rapid expansion. Any carrier that can occupy users' fragmented time can become Himalaya's content distribution channel: mobile phones, cars, speakers, etc. Currently, 2,000 brands of various items such as audio equipment, table lamps, and bedding have access to Himalaya's content.
In addition to the hardware platform, Himalaya has also reached a deep strategic cooperation with Didi Chauffeur. As the first project of the in-depth cooperation between the two parties, during an event in December 2015, all car owners who used Didi's designated driver service had the opportunity to receive an in-car smart hardware "Car Audio" and an exclusive designated driver voucher provided by Himalaya FM.
City Agent Channel expansion is the only way for many Internet products to expand their user base. Recently, when I opened the Himalaya app, the news of recruiting city agents was displayed in important positions such as the banner: City agents will be responsible for product sales, government and enterprise client development, event organization, etc. in their cities. They will use the local people's connections and resource advantages to expand users and increase revenue. They are a necessary supplement to online expansion. We are waiting to see what results city agents will bring. It can be said that in order to acquire C-end users, Himalaya has tried all available growth methods at this stage, while also accelerating the pace of channel sinking. As for the acquisition of B-side users, I think Himalaya has made efforts mainly from two perspectives: product and operation. In terms of products, Himalaya is quite friendly to anchors and lecturers who are not graduates of broadcasting and hosting majors. The recording tool only requires a mobile phone and a pair of headphones. In the past, this was something that only professional equipment could do, but now it can be done in a fool-proof way through Himalaya's tools, fulfilling the dreams of many people to become anchors. Of course, this is also related to the rise of live streaming platforms , the education of users and the maturity of technology.
In terms of operations, we also have a mature operation training system for the B-side.
There are dedicated personnel to expand and maintain top producers in different fields. In addition, it will also attract MCNs to settle in, achieve batch growth on the B-side, and save management costs.
(Himalaya's family recruitment order attracts unions and MCNs to join) For content production users who actively join the platform, Himalaya also has special training - Himalaya University, which teaches everyone how to become an excellent anchor and how to make money from Himalaya. (The homepage of Himalaya University on Himalaya, with over 100,000 fans, and teaches courses on industry, content, voice training, etc.)2. Activation: Big Data Personalized Recommendations Here, activation is defined as helping users experience the core value of the product and allowing them to achieve an AHA Moment. Himalaya established a big data team in 2014, dedicated to creating personalized radio stations with "one thousand faces for one thousand people". After a new user enters the APP, there will be a tag selection page where the user can choose the area of interest they want to pursue. The app will then recommend content that the user may be interested in based on the user's behavior. The page that each person opens on Himalaya is different, ensuring that people who are interested in the program can find where the program is. (New users select content label page)3. Retention : Multiple carriers + community As a content-based product, how to compete with Douyin and Honor of Kings for user time has become an important retention issue for Himalaya. Himalaya focuses on users' fragmented time: when cleaning, commuting, and even during meals.
In order to cover more scenarios, we see Himalaya distributing content to various carriers:
WeChat mini program , users can listen to the program without opening the app;
Xiaoya AI speaker, seize the smart entrance, Himalaya's "Family Library Plan", Xiaoya in every family is different, the more children listen to it, the more they will recommend your child's growth plan every day, including study abroad, music, enlightenment and other categories;
Car listening device (car Bluetooth MP3) makes it convenient to listen to Himalaya content while driving.
In addition, Himalaya also makes full use of the social form, hoping to further retain users. On the details page of a paid album, the "Join Group" entrance is very obvious. There are many popular courses and the communities are thriving. (Community situation of the Himalaya course "Xiaoxuewen" by the Miwei team) If multiple carriers are designed to occupy users' fragmented time and allow them to "input" knowledge, then Himalaya's "Fun Dubbing" and "National Reading" functions are to guide users to "output".
These two low-threshold functions only require you to hold your mobile phone to record, highlighting the user's sense of participation and entertainment.
For the "National Reading" function, the official will promote user participation through prize-giving activities, special recommendations, etc. At present, a single piece of content (poetry or short article, generally less than 700 words) can be read by up to 4,000 people, and at least 200+.
The effect of interesting dubbing is slightly worse. The interaction volume (likes, comments) of the 30-second dubbing audio on the first screen is basically in single digits.
4. Revenue: Multiple payment models, multi-pronged approach Ximalaya's profit model can be summarized into the following four types: Content Payment Selling content products is Himalaya’s main source of profit. On the one hand, there are various knowledge products such as master classes, boutique mini-classes, live micro-classes, etc. that can be sold individually; on the other hand, the membership that has been promoted recently sells multiple rights and interests in packages. Coincidentally, Zhihu also officially started selling super memberships in June 2018. Chaos University initially adopted a membership model - first pay a one-year membership fee, and then you can enjoy offline classes, online courses and communities, study tours and other services. Why do paid knowledge products adopt a membership model?
Super user thinking proposed by Wu Sheng:
After paying for the super user 's rights and interests, there is a deeper user relationship confirmation and trust establishment. It is a companion, co-built, and personalized user service process, and also an iterative business model . It relies on the complete construction of technical means, product capabilities, experience details, content connections, feedback mechanisms, etc. ——WeChat public account "Scene Lab" "Wu Sheng: Why do we need to propose super user thinking? 》 Through the form of membership payment, the platform not only has a stable cash flow, but more importantly, it establishes a deeper trust relationship with users, which is of great significance for user retention.Fan Economy In addition to courses taught by many big Vs, Himalaya also has a variety of active anchors. The anchors’ profit model is similar to that of other live broadcast platforms: fans give rewards to the anchors in the live broadcast room, and they also need to pay to join the anchor’s fan circle. Live broadcast room gift rewards Anchor Gift Advertising revenue Advertisements are the source of income for many traffic platforms. Ximalaya has three main forms of advertisements: 1. Location advertisements, such as APP opening screen and homepage banner;
Second, audio ads, inserting voice ads in the middle of audio, is also one of the features of audio platforms such as Himalaya;
3. Brand radio, converting users on the platform into fans of your own brand, is also one of the marketing values of the audio platform.
Home page banner advertisement Hardware sales Himalaya is developing a number of smart hardware products, mainly to seize the next generation of traffic entrances and grab users' time and attention. Of course, objectively speaking, the sale of hardware will also bring in corresponding income. There are a total of 7 products on sale in Himalaya’s Tmall store, mainly focusing on headphones and audio equipment that are more related to "audio". In terms of price, it covers multiple price ranges from 99 yuan to 69,800 yuan. The above introduces Himalaya’s sources of income. How can we use these channels to attract more users to pay, or significantly increase revenue in a short period of time?Promotions Promotional activities such as " Double Eleven " and " 618 " have become representative festivals of e-commerce and annual events for consumers. In the field of knowledge payment, Himalaya also hopes to use the "123 Knowledge Carnival" to define an annual promotional festival in this field. It turns out that users of the "Knowledge Carnival" really buy it:
The sales volume of the first “Knowledge Carnival” in 2016 reached 50.88 million yuan, which is equivalent to the sales volume of Taobao’s Double Eleven in the first year.
The results in 2017 were even more promising:
In addition to the annual "123 Knowledge Carnival", Himalaya also regularly holds promotional activities to boost sales of different products, such as the recent "membership + Xiaoya speaker" package sale: User Guide In addition to increasing revenue in the short term through price cuts and discounts during large-scale events, daily payment guidance is also very important. Only when the infrastructure is well built can user trust in the platform be guaranteed. Since users are not that familiar with and trust knowledge products, Ximalaya's paid products generally have a "trial listening" module, where users can first try out a few lessons before deciding whether to purchase. The trial listening content is the essence of the course or celebrity recommendations: (Ma Dong’s “Career Plan B” launched on Ximalaya, users can listen to the introductory remarks and the first lesson, as well as recommendations from Kevin Tsai and Ma Weiwei) Honestly speaking, playing this kind of exciting content as a trial will generally increase users' desire to buy, which is equivalent to advertising the product again, pushing users forward on the road to paying. In order to allow users to have a better understanding and confidence in the courses they purchase, there is a "Listeners' Comments" module under each paid product, which selects high-quality user reviews (high evaluation of the course, long evaluation text, and the reviewer has a certain status in the professional field) to provide more basis for users' purchasing decisions. (Yu Qiuyu's course "Chinese Culture Compulsory Course" on Ximalaya, under the "Listeners' Comments" module, all the comments are very positive)5. Referral (user recommendation): benefits + social chain Speaking of user self-propagation , thanks to WeChat 's "share" function, whether it's Pinduoduo's crazy group buying, or NetEase courses and New World Marketing courses that are screen-sweeping through fission, they can always suddenly detonate your circle of friends. Why is it that paid knowledge always easily attracts a lot of attention in WeChat Moments? In addition to the fact that the WeChat address book connects far more people than the traditional telephone address book, the Moments is also a place that easily creates anxiety - some people post about working overtime, some people post about studying, and this kind of content that helps to improve one's image in the Moments is naturally willing to be forwarded. Friends who receive this kind of information, when they see others studying, do you want to follow up? Do you feel anxious when you see others reading every day? This growing sense of anxiety will one day turn into the act of "purchasing knowledge."
There is a saying now that paying for knowledge solves everyone’s anxiety problem, not the learning problem - the learning process itself is painful, and I pay the fee first, putting aside whether to learn or not, and my inner anxiety seems to be relieved a little.
Based on this user mentality, Himalaya has added another advantage - once the shared courses are purchased, users can directly get cash or their favorite courses. How can they not be tempted?
I have participated in Fantuan’s fission event before. I just posted it on my Moments, and in less than 10 minutes, someone really bought the course through the link I shared, so half of the tuition fee was immediately credited to my WeChat wallet - I have to say, I was really excited at the time, it turned out that money could come so easily!
(Under the "My" tab of the Himalaya app, "Share and Earn" occupies a very prominent position, with simple steps and direct copywriting ) (On Ximalaya’s WeChat mini program, a key activity promoted on the banner and pop-up layer is “Share with friends and listen to the big-name program for free”, using popular courses to attract users to spread on WeChat) I haven't opened the Himalaya APP for a long time since I left the knowledge payment circle half a year ago. This time, in order to deeply apply the A AR RR model, I paid attention to it again and found that it has changed a lot compared to half a year ago - for example, you can keep refreshing the screen as soon as you open it, there are big names without repeating, and interesting cultural and life content. You can imagine how much hard work of many people has been condensed in it. In fact, when it comes to growth, there is no routine that can be solved once and for all, nor is there any universal formula that can achieve success in one go. The most important thing is "execution". Even a small piece of copy or a picture can bring different effects to the overall effect.
Author: Inge Liu , authorized to be published by Qinggua Media .
