How to develop a suitable user growth strategy?

Before doing user growth , it is very important to have a clear and complete user growth strategy . It can help you stay firm on your direction in the fog, and never waver even if you encounter any difficulties.

As the founder, CEO, operations team leader, and operations worker of a startup team, what worries you the most?

Product user growth.

This is the biggest headache for all startups.

Without customer acquisition, it is impossible to verify demand and business model ; without verification, there will be no revenue and no data; without data, it will be impossible to raise funds and continue to expand the market size.

Therefore, user growth is always the top priority for all entrepreneurial teams.

In order to solve this problem, everyone has their own unique ideas: some friends will read various articles and books about growth hacking , some friends will sign up for training courses and lectures on user growth, and will listen to the sharing of some experts.

Over time, everyone worships Xduoduo's group buying, sharing and fission as if it were a god; they get itchy when they see Xjiweidian's distribution and attracting people, and they even get excited when they see various mini-programs fissioning and posters flooding the screen in the circle of friends .

But when you make up your mind and decide that your own product should also "borrow" these routines to achieve user growth, you find that there are always so many things to do and you don’t know where to start; even if you implement it, the effect is not good.

This is because you only see the "skin" of these growth methods, but have not considered that behind these growth methods are strategies formulated based on the characteristics of your own products and users. It is also the long-term iteration and persistence of these growth strategies.

Only if your growth strategy can be adapted to local conditions, suitable for your products, match your users, and can provide long-term and stable output, and if you persist in it, can all your growth methods bring about the desired user growth.

Well, today I will tell you how to develop a user growth strategy that suits your product.

As well as several more commonly used user growth strategies that can be stably output and replicated.

Then let me make a statement in advance:

1. If your product already has more than 10 million users, or your company has a large amount of marketing funds and can always carry out large-scale marketing, or your product is very outstanding, has a strong rigid demand entry point, and has a good user reputation, then you don’t need to read this article.
2. If your product strength is average, and the market demand is not particularly strong, or your product targets a niche user group, or even has a large number of competitors, then I hope my article can give you some inspiring thoughts.

Finally, due to space limitations, the content of this article will be more focused on strategy selection and framework formulation, and will not involve specific operational practices.

Let me emphasize again:

This article will not involve any practical operations. It is just a theoretical framework.

01

Many operation friends often encounter such a situation.

Your boss often gives you articles such as "How to get 1 million download users in 30 days" and "A case of attracting 100,000 fans with a public account at zero cost", and tells you to do what is written in the article, hoping that you can also copy a successful case.

Some bosses, after seeing the popularity of Xduoduo’s group buying, came running and said, “We also want to do group buying.” Then he saw that Xtoutiao’s apprentice recruitment model was very good, and came running and said, “We also want to do the apprentice recruitment model.” Then he saw the course posters that were flooding the WeChat Moments, and came running to tell you, “We also want to do it.”

I believe everyone often encounters such scenarios at work.

This is a typical manifestation of having "user growth awareness" but no "user growth strategy".

So what is a “user growth strategy”?

02

The user growth strategy is based on a full analysis of your product form, user characteristics, and the methods of similar products, and a set of long-term growth methods suitable for your own products is developed.

I believe a good growth strategy must meet two points:

1. Stable and sustainable volume.
2. Long-term sustainable implementation.

These two points are very critical.

The first point can help us eliminate some creative marketing activities and event marketing activities.

Your circle of friends may often be flooded with creative marketing activities for some products. Although they are very helpful for increasing the number of product users, it is a pity that the success rate is too low and too much luck is involved. There are very high requirements for every aspect including creativity, planning, copywriting , execution and channels .

Such creative marketing and event marketing cannot generate stable and sustainable sales, so it cannot be considered a good growth strategy.

The second point is also very important.

The user growth strategy you develop must be executable in the long term.

You saw that group buying red envelopes were good, so you went to make them; as a result, before you were successful, you saw that other people’s distribution was good, so you decided to also enter the distribution market... In short, you just do whatever you see, piecemeal, without a long-term plan. This is destined not to be a good user growth strategy.

Therefore, all startup CEOs, operation team leaders, and operation workers should not only be aware of user growth

You must also have the ability to analyze and formulate a "user growth strategy."

So what are the "growth strategies" that have been proven to be long-term, stable and effective at this stage?

03

First of all, we exclude growth methods such as app market placement, advertising placement , and channel placement, because they are more dependent on how much money you have, which is not within the scope of our discussion today.

I think the first growth strategy that works well is:

1. Integrate scarce resources

This growth strategy has been widely used in various WeChat public accounts , video apps, live broadcast apps , information products and other products. It is very suitable for content-oriented products to increase user growth.

For example, I learned about a public account for workplace training for college students. In order to increase customer acquisition, it compiled a list of interview questions from major Internet companies, and then released it to users through the public account, informing users that these questions can be obtained for free, but they need to post a sharing poster with the public account QR code to their friends circle and take a screenshot to obtain it.

This simple fission method can attract nearly 10,000 fans to the official account every time, and the entire cost of attracting new fans is basically close to 0.

After tasting the sweetness, the official account formulated a user growth strategy based on this. They subsequently integrated various content packages, including "200 Useful PPT Templates" and "Recommended HR Email Addresses of 100 Fortune 500 Companies", and produced and exported them in batches, bringing a steady stream of users to the official account.

This scarce resource is not necessarily data, it can also be people.

The most famous example of this is the war between game live streaming platforms , where both sides spared no expense in signing well-known anchors. Because well-known anchors are scarce resources in the game live streaming industry, as long as they can be integrated, effective user growth can be achieved.

In addition to information, people, courses, videos, etc. can all be considered scarce resources.

The best example of this that I know of is a small video site.

In 2017, when all major live streaming video platforms were engaged in a copyright war for TV dramas and movie content, this video website took a different approach and discovered that Southeast Asian TV dramas were beginning to have a large number of fans in China. We then began to develop a user growth strategy with this content at the core. A large number of Southeast Asian TV dramas have been uploaded to this platform. Since this is a market that many video giants have ignored, the video website has gained nearly one million users in a few months relying on word of mouth from the audience.

Therefore, by properly collecting, integrating, purchasing and signing scarce resources in the market, explosive user growth can be achieved.

Our operations friends should pay special attention here that the scarce resources mentioned here do not mean they are really scarce. Scarcity is only relative. After all, the Internet is so developed, what content can’t be found?

But when you integrate, package and edit these resources through some operational means, users can get them all from you with just a few clicks, and then your resources become valuable and scarce to users.

After all, users are lazy.

04

The second growth strategy is more common and is called:

2. Expand the user traffic pool

This includes opening up traffic entrances for users through various means, or establishing a "pool" that can store users.

An early typical example of this growth strategy is the vest packages that are now frequently used by major APPs.

For example, a well-known recruitment app achieved a large amount of user growth through the use of fake packages.

When you download a college recruitment app from the app store, you open it and find that it is his app. Then you download another unrelated white-collar recruitment app and open it and find that it is the same app. When you download an internship and job search app, you find that...

There are also ways to split up the APP functions and expand the scale in a decentralized manner.

For example, a certain mobile phone management assistant APP includes multiple functions such as antivirus, cleaning, and saving. In addition to the main APP, the APP separates these functions and makes independent APPs for each of them to increase the volume of the application market.

This growth strategy has also been carried forward in traditional industries.

For example, a certain chain of gyms, whenever it opens in a new area, will create many fake fitness centers and swimming pools in that area on Dianping.com, and provide fake addresses and pictures.

When users call any of the fake fitness centers, they are sold a real gym experience.

For example, a restaurant may register multiple restaurants with different names on a food delivery platform, and each restaurant may even serve different cuisines. Some are Sichuan cuisine, some are Northeastern cuisine, and some are home-cooked dishes. But any user who orders food at any store actually orders it from the same store.

In addition to broadening the user traffic entrance, building a user traffic pool is also very important.

Apps like XX Worth Buying, XX Tree, and X Hongshu are all very classic user growth strategies that attract traffic through content, create a pool, and then convert it into e-commerce sales.

Now many small e-commerce companies have also started to build communities . They will rely on their own WeChat public accounts or apps to establish dozens or even hundreds of WeChat groups , which are also creating user traffic pools.

05

The third user growth strategy is already familiar to everyone, which is:

3. Product benefit driven

Through the internal interest incentives of the product, users are driven to spread the message in a fission-like manner .

Including group buying, invitations, bringing in new customers, fission, profit sharing, etc.

The most well-known ones in this regard are Xduoduo and Xtoutiao: inviting friends to group buy for flash sales, making money by reading news, and other means of user growth. Since a large number of articles have been written in this regard, I will not go into details here.

The fourth user growth strategy I call:

4. Make a feint to the east and attack in the west

This is a very clever growth strategy and one of my favorite growth strategies.

The core of this growth strategy is to artificially lower the promotion threshold by means of a feint to the east and attack in the west.

For example, a maternal and infant community e-commerce company adopts a two-level distribution model, and its user growth goal is only one:

Find more mothers to open stores on their platform.

However, the e-commerce company did not directly promote to the mothers how to open a store, how good it is to open a store, and how profitable it is at the beginning. Instead, they first built an online mother-and-baby micro-classroom, inviting well-known parenting experts to give lectures to mothers every week.

The lectures are free, just share the lecture link and poster.

These moms will definitely be happy to listen, and the number of new users, retention , registrations, and attention are all very high.

Once mothers are attracted through this low-threshold method, we send operations staff to follow up and convert them to open stores on the platform, with excellent results. Even if users are not converted quickly, such growth strategies can still be used to retain users and buy time for subsequent conversions.

Just imagine if we recommend such a heavy product as opening a store to make money to these mothers right from the start, they will definitely face a big setback.

This growth strategy is also used in the promotion of some enterprise-level service products.

As we all know, enterprise-level service products are difficult to promote, the process is slow, and it takes a long time for users to recognize them.

In order to increase their customer growth faster, a certain APP third-party service did not send salesmen to visit every store and make cold calls like traditional companies do. Instead, it held a large number of lectures on APP operation and promotion services in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and invited APP experts to give lectures for free. Through such courses, it first attracted target users and then carried out layer-by-layer conversion in the process.

In any case, such a growth promotion strategy will be much better than getting straight to the point with customers right away.

The fifth user growth strategy is well-known:

5. Distribution

In addition to e-commerce, distribution has now been applied to many fields including online education .

A relatively successful case is an online homework grading APP. Through cooperation with many class teachers, the promoters told these class teachers that as long as they sent the download QR code with a specific channel link to the students' parents and asked them to download it and use the APP to upload homework, the class teachers could receive corresponding promotion fees on a monthly basis. If the class teacher can invite other class teachers to join as downline teachers, then the online class teacher can obtain higher-level benefits.

Maybe you don’t like growth strategies such as distribution, superiors and subordinates, and communication in the circle of friends, but it is undeniable that distribution has increasingly become a means of growth for various products, and is no longer limited to the WeChat ecosystem. Independent apps are also increasingly being promoted in the form of distribution.

06

Therefore, all the growth strategies you see, except for market launch, advertising, creative marketing, chasing hot spots and other means, are nothing more than these growth strategies.

Therefore, it is very important to choose a user growth strategy that suits you.

Because each of these growth strategies will have certain difficulties and problems, and will require a huge investment of resources, as well as a long period of iteration and optimization.

Just like Xduoduo has always insisted on product profit-driven growth strategy, from the initial group buying and flash sales to the current red envelope grabbing at the hour, zero-yuan group buying, invitation red envelopes, limited-time grabs, etc., it has continuously optimized and iterated more than ten fission methods.

Some companies only dabble in growth strategies, try them once, and when they see no effect, stop immediately. Then you will never be able to find the door to user growth.

Therefore, recognizing your own growth strategy, sticking to it, and continuously optimizing it are one of the most important core elements of growth.

So how do you decide which growth strategy is right for you?

I think it is mainly based on the following core.

07

That is to constantly consider your product form and user form, as well as the resources at hand.

There are many considerations involved here.

If your product is content-oriented, integrating scarce resources and scarce high-quality content will always be the best means of growth.

If you are making a stock app, the comprehensive and organized financial reports of listed companies may be the best scarce resources; if you are a designer resource website, the lectures, manuscripts, and articles of design masters, after integration, will be very good scarce resources, and I believe they will definitely bring you better user growth.

If your product is e-commerce and mainly online education, your users are concentrated around KOL (class teachers, big Vs , group leaders, etc.). Then the distribution growth strategy is undoubtedly more suitable for you.

If the threshold of your product is very high and the conversion path is very long, such as some enterprise services, bulk consumer goods, etc.

Don't be in a hurry. Lowering the promotion threshold by making a feint to the east and building a user traffic pool will be a great strategy.

If your users are mainly in third- and fourth-tier cities and they care more about these small favors, then driving the effect through product benefits will undoubtedly maximize the effect.

I believe that with the inspiration from the above, combined with your products, users and resources, you will think a lot.

08

Actually, coming back to the point. In the process of increasing product users, we do not only use one growth strategy. Often, in order to achieve better growth results, we even use a combination of multiple growth strategies.

For example, a famous maternal and child community e-commerce company that I mentioned above used the method of feinting to the east and attacking in the west + distribution to achieve growth.

There is also a method to follow when implementing a combination of user growth strategies.

For example, by opening multiple traffic entrances in the early stage, we can obtain the earliest batch of seed users as much as possible, and then by finding some scarce content, we can mobilize seed users to spread it in large quantities and bring in more users. Once a certain user base has been established, continue to expand the scale quickly by driving product benefits.

There are many more examples like this.

Of course, each growth strategy also has corresponding risks and difficulties: the risk of copyright, the risk of freeloaders , the risk of fission being blocked, the risk of power dispersion, etc. These problems need to be overcome and solved in the process of user growth.

But I still think:

Before doing user growth, it is very important to have a clear and complete user growth strategy. It can help you stay firm on your direction in the fog, and never waver even if you encounter any difficulties.

Once your growth strategy is developed, implement it with determination, resolve, and persistence.

Just like operations and products, good growth also requires long-term persistence and iteration, and requires long-term stable output.

I wish you all can find a growth strategy that suits your product as soon as possible. I will also explain more practical content about user growth in subsequent articles.

The author of this article @刘玮冬操作手记 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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