How to achieve user growth from the perspective of user retention goals?

Retention is the goal of many product operations . After retention, we need to consider user word of mouth and bring in more new customers through widespread sharing by users. So how should we achieve user growth based on user retention goals?

What is user growth? Definition from the perspective of new and old customers:

• New customer growth: generally refers to the increase in new customers brought in through channels , operational activities, brand advertising, and interest points;
• Growth of old customers: generally refers to converting new customers through operational means, so that past users come again, that is, user retention.

The number of users has increased, and now what? It also depends on “user retention”.

Retention is the goal of many product operations. User retention can test the value of the product and whether the product truly provides users with long-term functions. After retention, we need to consider user word of mouth and bring in more new customers through extensive sharing by users, thereby achieving scale revenue for the product.

So how should we achieve user growth based on user retention goals?

1. Pure user growth depends on tactics

Many times, our user operation strategy was done very well, and we designed a complete user growth path based on the AARRR model . However, we did not expect that we would go wrong in the first step. Users simply did not buy into it, attracting new users was hindered, and the effect was not as explosive as expected. No matter how good the strategy was, it could not be implemented.

Or in another case, the product has been operating and has a certain number of seed users , but has been lukewarm and has not seen any breakthrough in business growth? At this time, it means that the operational tactics need to be adjusted.

Here are some typical cases of cold start :

1. TikTok

Cold start tactics: Star effect

Earlier, Yue Yunpeng posted a Weibo with the logo of the Douyin APP . The next day, the Douyin index jumped to more than 2,000 and continued to rise gradually in the following months.

Tik Tok videos are full of entertainment and fun, which fits in with the current love of ghost culture among many young people. After it started to gain momentum, many celebrities also started to join in.

For example, Hu Yanbin launched a music video challenge on Douyin using his new song "No Choice" as the background music. The effect was very good. Even Hu Yanbin's former dancers participated in the challenge, and the video they shot received more than 20,000 likes. Other stars include Christy Chung, Yuan Shanshan, etc., and now the Tik Tok short video team is also promoting the celebrity effect. Now users only need to open the APP to see some short videos of celebrities playing Tik Tok recommended to you on the homepage, so the celebrity effect has greatly helped Tik Tok to get a cold start. (Many case studies mentioned)

2. Pinduoduo

Cold start tactics: red envelope fission

Pinduoduo's model has changed from users looking for products to users bringing products to help you find users. Due to the change in the logic of users and products, Pinduoduo's customer acquisition costs have dropped rapidly and the conversion rate has greatly increased.

In Pinduoduo, the initiator and recipient of a group purchase are equal to each other. The initiator himself will not gain any additional economic benefits from it, and in the process of further dissemination, everyone joining the group is equal, so it is easier to stimulate the user's relationship chain and effectively combine the interaction between goods and people through the dissemination of social media . Pinduoduo has successfully opened up the source of social traffic .

3. Mobike & OFO

Cold start tactics: brand communication

In the early days, Mobike and OFO were basically fighting a capital war. There was a time when China's shared bicycle industry saw abnormal competition. Not only did users not have to pay, but companies also had to give red envelopes to subsidize users. Faced with such usage conditions, OFO took the lead in attracting investment , launching new models, increasing publicity efforts and improving user comfort.

Mobike gave an even more unexpected response. In March 2017, Mobike officially entered Singapore, becoming the first company to go abroad and enter overseas markets, thus starting China's shared bicycle internationalization journey.

The tactical approaches of the two are obviously different, but the only thing that is certain is that during the white-hot stage of the bicycle market, they won a large market share in the bicycle market. This can only be achieved through strong brand promotion. At that time, OFO and Mobike spent a lot of money on online and offline investment. Compared with those low-key bicycle brands, Mobike and OFO have taken the initiative tactically by leveraging capital for word-of-mouth communication.

These platforms adopted excellent tactical play in the cold start phase. The essence of cold start operations is to adopt a preemptive strategy and strive to achieve combat objectives in the shortest time through a series of rapid and fierce offensive operations.

The above three cases are different from our previous path of attracting new users, promoting activation and retaining existing users. Instead, they put the "dissemination" path first and use tactical approaches to spread the product quickly, thereby accumulating the first batch of seed users.

This method of acquiring users is different from our approach of attracting new users at the strategic level. At the strategic level, we focus on continuously bringing in large-scale users. During that period, we will focus more on developing long-term strategies for attracting new users in dimensions such as content supply, activity supply, product supply, and data supply. Often in the early stages of user growth or when encountering growth bottlenecks, we need to design a set of efficient operational strategies to achieve a breakthrough in the "quantity" of product users.

To move from quantity to quality, we need to rely on the user's refined operations (introduced below).

2. Don’t just look at user growth, structured thinking is important

I have interviewed many students in operations. When asked about their understanding of operations, most of them would talk to me about attracting new customers, promoting activation, and retention. Students who have thought more comprehensively would talk about communication and closed-loop transactions.

Admittedly, most companies are working around these points. As for how to achieve growth, most will talk about activities, interest points, channels... These are OK for assessing the execution of an operation, but structured thinking is far from enough.

So, what is structured thinking?

It is necessary to look at the entire path of user growth, activity, retention, and transactions together. The author believes that there are the following points (which can be further explored):

• Sorting out user structured information and data caliber from the bottom layer, to specific applications in the middle layer, and to scenario distribution at the upper layer;
• Starting from the upstream user goals, break down the path to achieving the goals and quantify the final results (as mentioned in the figure below).

The author believes that user growth is inseparable from the two indicators of user activity and user conversion, and it also needs to rely on user conversion path design.

3. User growth is inseparable from user conversion path design

User conversion path design requires refined user operations and optimization of path conversion data.

User growth is a continuous, scalable process of bringing in users. From new users to potential users to closed-loop users, the user growth strategy for each level is different. The growth of new and old customers is a good idea for user stratification. New customers focus on product awareness and benefit stimulation, while old customers focus on retention and conversion.

Refined user operations require user segmentation, which has many dimensions:

• User access behavior: number of visits in the past X days, the last visit X days ago, visit interval, visit depth, etc.
• Browse page: browse the market, browse categories, browse a specific module (content, tools , categories, business details, group details, free, styles, etc.);
• Purchase behavior: number of purchases, purchase frequency, and purchase categories;
• Interactive behaviors: sign-in, comment/leave a message, make an appointment, collect, share, and like;
• …

User stratification depends on user structured information. Structured information refers to the underlying user data and supply path. User stratification includes three aspects: underlying, application, and distribution:

1. Bottom layer: builds the foundation for operation scenarios and user data analysis , consisting of TAG, supply, and data;
2. Application layer: The core is scenario application. After classifying users, refined operations need to match users with the best scenarios through scenario mining and user testing, so as to recommend different services.
3. Distribution layer: The purpose of distribution is to expand volume and conversion. After we have built these user scenarios, how can we empower the scenarios to bring the maximum DAU and CTR ?

From the bottom layer to scene application and then to distribution, this is a complete user path. High-level operations should build a set of suitable user models based on the user's complete path to reduce the company's operating costs.

For example, when talking about user operation, many people think that they need to do content operation (such as new media ) and event operation , but is there any theoretical basis for doing these? At the current stage of the company, should we focus on content or activities? What is your playing style? All of these are inseparable from systematic planning. Systematic planning requires operators to have insight into the core issues at this stage so as to find effective ways to break through the problems.

User path design example (taking DAU as an example):

Based on the above goal of daily active users, although there are many implementation paths, each path can be broken down into a new path. For example, the content operation path can be broken down as follows:

Based on the differences in corporate business, we can get a user growth model that best suits the company's business line, which depends on the operator's own understanding of the business and accumulated experience. Any growth path is inseparable from the user conversion funnel, which requires operations to have an in-depth understanding of each link of conversion data and improve the CTR of the final intended users.

In summary, what I want to express is that growth is closely related to user activity and retention. Attracting new users is growth, and converting transaction users is also growth. If you attract a group of invalid users purely for the sake of growth, such growth is meaningless.

If you are currently using content to increase user growth, then this is the time to research what interest hooks in the content will attract users. Content is not just self-media or copywriting in a narrow sense. Everything that can be packaged in some form and ultimately presented to users is your content.

Pictures, texts, short videos, rankings, and personalized product service packages are all forms of content. Pushing content to users is much more subtle than directly pushing transaction activities. Content is a means of converting potential users, and can also be called a "content hook."

Just imagine that when you simply and crudely push products and services to users, why can’t your user base and activity level increase? At this point, you need to see whether the users match the content you provide (you need to study user intentions). This brings us back to the user stratification issue we provided earlier, because users at each level have different intentions for the services provided by the product.

Blind growth is meaningless, we must also look at it in conjunction with the user conversion path...

This article was compiled and published by @曹烨(Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games