Seed users, how to achieve growth from 0 to 1?

I believe that many startup teams have encountered similar problems: How to promote products? How to get more users. Buy traffic ? Ground promotion ? Spending money on advertising? …There could be many answers. Today, we take educational institutions as an example to explore how to think from a product level, how to deeply cultivate seed users , and achieve healthy growth in the initial stage.

1. Seed users = the source of growth

The Internet era has brought about an explosive increase in the efficiency of information dissemination between people, which makes the role of "seed users" particularly prominent. The era of "good wine needs no bush" is gone forever. Any product/service can achieve good user growth as long as it accurately finds the seed user group and continuously maintains the seed users. Without exception, successful products such as Meituan and Xiaomi have drawn a perfect user growth curve based on effective seed user operations .

In order to let the seed user group drive user growth, we usually need to find the right people at the first time , so that the "seed users" can feel the product and our respect for them. Only in this way will they actively recommend it to their friends around them, indirectly spread the word for us, and achieve our goal of acquiring new users.

Secondly, we need to establish direct contact with seed users and adopt various means to enhance their experience of the product. Only in this way can we find an appropriate opportunity to convey the following "signal" to them: "Recommend us to your good friends and let them experience it together."

Finally, activate the sharing of the seed user group . When it comes to sharing, many people will think of, please forward it for me, and I will give you a red envelope or a gift. It cannot be said that this method is bad, but before adopting this method, you must make sure whether this method is liked by your seed user group. At least make the seed users feel "honored" when they get your benefits.

In a word: Seed users are our “breadwinners”, and we must “care” for them with all our heart! Every bit of love they give you will be rewarded with the source of growth!

2. Take personalized recommended educational products as an example

1. Who are the seed users?

Product functions are designed around user needs, so we need to determine who the seed users are based on product attributes.

-Product Features

The selling point of personalized recommendation products in the education field is that it aggregates courses across the entire network and relies on technical means to achieve personalized intelligent recommendations for educational categories, solving the problem that users cannot find the courses they need. The product may not have complete functions in the early stages, and the recommended results may be inaccurate.

-User needs

I am troubled by the numerous educational courses on the market and hope to find a course that can actually solve my personalized problems.

-User profile confirmation

They have a strong motivation to learn the required knowledge and have personalized learning needs. Their pain points are even stronger than those of ordinary users. They dare to try new things and are willing to use the products even if they know they are not perfect. They are also willing to report the imperfections to the company.

-Typical usage scenarios

For example, someone wants to find a career course on how to jump from a small company to a large one, but after searching, he finds that the content is all similar and he doesn’t know how to choose, so the plan to buy the course is put on hold. For example, someone saw a poster for a copywriting course. The wording hit the pain points and made people excited. They signed up without knowing the specific content of the course. However, during the actual learning process, they found that it was very different from what they had " imagined ".

2. How to verify product requirements during the DEMO period

From the perspective of the chronological order of seed user acquisition and operational logic, it is divided into the DEMO period and the product start-up period. The two time periods have different focuses. We take the DEMO period that focuses on verifying the feasibility of the product as an example. The investment in this stage is mainly on labor costs, because the brand endorsement is weak during this period, product functions are missing, and product R&D personnel need to focus on face-to-face communication with users. Therefore, there is no need to spend money and energy on advertising , and it is more appropriate to spend money on team benefits.

- Attract the first wave of users from people around you

Material preparation: product DEMO, questionnaire

After we have an idea, we will make it into a DEMO, which can be presented in the form of H5. At this time, we need to conduct a small-scale test and invite internal members and friends with whom we have a particularly good relationship to participate. A total of about 10 people will conduct the test, mainly to provide opinions on functional completeness and product fluency. Note that their praise for the product can be ignored, and the main focus is to collect problems.

- Introducing a second wave of users from social connections

Material preparation: product DEMO2.0, survey questionnaire, poster

Attract the first wave of seed users in the form of posters in WeChat Moments and social networks , preferably 200 people. The overall process is poster and questionnaire production → poster and questionnaire release → user filling in information → staff proactively contact → invite user to experience and observe → conduct user interviews and targeted adjustments.

The purpose of this version of DEMO is to observe whether users are interested in product highlights, their reactions to the product interaction layer, their interests and cognitive blind spots, and to understand how users use the product function layer through user behavior data.

In addition, the purpose of the survey questionnaire is to fully understand the users, observe whether the users who perform well in the end are the seed users we defined earlier, determine the characteristics of the seed users, and prepare for the search for later users.

- External channel promotion attracted the third wave of users

Material preparation: DEMO3.0, questionnaire, poster, promotional copy

We also need to conduct a wave of tests in external channels to verify whether the user portrait we determined in the second step is true, in preparation for later rollout.

For example, in the second step, we identified that the novices in new media operations in small and medium-sized enterprises and those who had purchased paid courses 2-3 times before had the best retention rate and activity in the DEMO test. Then we can find an account in the product operation category to help post the copy, telling our story and what we have done, and at the end of the copy, reveal a page of poster to invite users to participate in internal testing.

If the retention rate and activity data found in external channel promotion and social relationships match, then the DEMO stage is over. If it is found that the users obtained through external channel promotion perform poorly, then it is necessary to select again in the second step of user testing and test again in the external channel.

Generally speaking, this wave of users is expected to involve 200 people, and the expected retention rate is more than 100. That is to say, if the DEMO stage goes smoothly, 200 seed users will be obtained before the product goes online.

3. Deepen user operations at the product seed stage

The key tasks at this stage are user acquisition and user retention (improving word of mouth). At the same time, for platforms that update courses through machine crawling, front-end problems can be mainly solved through technology, so you only need to focus on back-end user operations.

- New customer acquisition strategy

If you plan to attract new users through a wave of " recruiting learning enthusiasts " activities, you can refer to the following ideas:

Describe the "pain point" scenario: Seed user Xiao Wang signed up for numerous courses, but because the course matching was not high, he gained nothing from the courses;

Deliver product value: Our product has a personalized recommendation function, which greatly improves your efficiency in finding learning courses.

Define the user scope: What kind of target users do we hope to work with to enhance our own value through personalized learning? Review the iterative development process of the product in the seed stage, such as what adjustments the product has undergone and what results have been achieved.

Encourage registration benefits: inform the application method and what benefits users who apply will receive

-Secondary dissemination of retained users

The product is first accessed by users who are innovative and willing to try and fail, but most users often do not use it due to various concerns, or are in a wait-and-see stage. At this time, we need to make content based on the good performance of previously retained users to stimulate their motivation to sign up. At the same time, all previous friends can also recommend some new users. The two together can reach a total of 1,000 people. If the retention rate can also reach 30%, that means 300 people will use it.

It is worth noting that although the more users the better, the entry of inappropriate users in the early stages of the product will only destroy the overall community atmosphere. In order to prevent these users from entering, we can adopt an audit mechanism in the process of acquiring the first 1,000 users. Only users who match the user portraits with the most retention in the DEMO testing phase can enter.

From the user's perspective, on the one hand, we give users an extraordinary sense of respect and participation, and ensure that all product suggestions put forward by users are quickly given the first feedback and resolved as soon as possible. On the other hand, they must have their own needs for participating in the internal test. For example, some users really can't stand the complicated online courses, some users are for socializing, and some users may be attracted by the platform's subsidies. Therefore, we need to communicate with users to understand their needs and meet them accurately.

3. Data analysis = the core driving force of growth

“It’s an exciting time,” says Shawndra Hill, Wharton professor of operations and information management. “There’s a ton of data that can be mined to get a deep understanding of users, their attitudes and what they’re thinking.” Data analysis has become one of the core drivers of business growth.

After a product has been in operation for a period of time, user retention data will be generated. In this case, we can use this data to determine "where did the user see the product and why did they use the product?" and thus make a preliminary judgment on the source of the user. Based on the data results, channels with more sources will put more effort into it.

In addition, as a startup product, A/B testing tests different content, functions, products, etc. on a small scale, and through analysis of test data, finds out what users like best, and then applies it to extensive promotion . In the early stage of promotion, we need to establish continuous content interaction with the seed user group. The purpose of interaction is not only to establish emotional connections, but also to get what users want and need. Therefore, we can analyze the interactive data, group and profile different types of user groups, so as to better iterate products and services and accurately push products, services and other content to users.

The road to entrepreneurship is not smooth. We need to make the best plans, try our best, prepare for the worst, and welcome the best possible results. In the early stages of educational institutions, personalized recommendations are used as the entry point. Although this is a direction that can be tried, there are many problems, such as copyright risks. For example, when the demand for courses is weak and the total amount is small, errors in course recommendations will definitely affect the user experience. Therefore, after understanding the user's preferences, pushing suitable courses to users will be a more reasonable solution.

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

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