How to build a user growth system with the help of distribution methods?

Since 2018, fission, viral marketing and distribution have attracted more and more attention. When products are almost the same, operations become one of the means to win. In a startup company, many resources are limited. How to build your own user growth system when resources are limited?

Starting today, I will write several articles to explain in detail how various user growth systems are built, improved, operated, and ultimately achieved results.

Today I will bring you a detailed explanation of "distribution", which has been proven to be a very effective user growth strategy at this stage.

one

Whether you are familiar with the distribution promotion model or not, the following scenarios have appeared more and more in your circle of friends , WeChat groups , and in life.

You are a girl who loves shopping. One day, you accidentally joined a shopping sharing group, in which the group owner would share product links from XX platform every day. Although you have never heard of this XX platform, the products shared by the group owner seem to have a good price-performance ratio. They are very cheap and practical. Finally one day, you click on the link and place an order.

Your circle of friends will be refreshed every day by a certain housewife. She often recommends various discounts from a certain fresh food platform in her circle of friends. The posters she posts are beautiful and the prices of the fruits on them are attractive. Finally one day, you suddenly got inspired, clicked on the poster she posted, and decided to place an order;

You are a father. Today your child has just started to learn the 26 English letters in kindergarten. The kindergarten teacher has repeatedly emphasized in the parent group that parents should practice what they learned today after taking their babies home. At the same time, a link was sent out, asking parents to click on the link and download an APP called XX English Practice. At the same time, the teacher told the parents that this APP can help babies practice speaking. After listening to the teacher, you naturally dare not neglect and download it quickly;

You often discuss stocks with everyone in a stock group. One day, you suddenly complain that the stock app you are using is not very easy to use and want to change it. Can anyone recommend one? A big guy in the group sends you a link, very enthusiastically asks you to download this APP, and tells you that you can get recharge money if you register now, and you can receive it by entering the invitation code XXX;

Not to mention, the various course posters that often flood your circle of friends, such as "Former X Director of Tencent Lecture: 9 Major Factors to Help You Gain Millions of Followers" and "Private Teachings from Financial Masters: How to Achieve Financial Freedom Before Age 25", etc. Attract you to pay and sign up.

In the promotion scenarios I mentioned above, basically all of them used the "distribution" promotion model. When we as the "downstream customer" complete various actions such as purchase, download, registration, use, filling in invitation code, etc., the "upstream customer" who recommends these products to us will receive corresponding commissions or rewards.

Therefore, the user growth model of "distribution" is no longer limited to consumer goods industries such as e-commerce , WeChat business, and purchasing agents, but has also been applied to the promotion of media, finance, recruitment , online medical care, online education and other products. The frequency of its occurrence may be high or low depending on the scenario.

As a user growth strategy of "the upstream company promotes and the downstream company collects commissions", I believe that the "distribution" promotion model is very suitable for early user growth of startups because it has many noteworthy aspects.

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First of all, "distribution" creates the possibility for startups to promote products and acquire customers at low cost.

Especially now, the costs of various CPM ads, information flow ads , and app market promotions are touching. Often, as soon as the account is recharged, the number immediately becomes zero after running an ad, but the downloads, registrations, and conversions brought about are very few.

So in comparison, the "distribution" model of first promoting, then downloading, registering, converting, and purchasing, and then paying the promoter (hereinafter referred to as "Little B") is becoming more and more popular among startups. After all, most startups do not have much money to invest in the market in the early stages.

At the same time, many startups are often troubled by fake volume and low-quality users when doing promotion in the early stages. However, after using the distribution system to promote products, due to the use of post-settlement methods, the product party can have higher assessment requirements for the quality of users brought by small Bs. Try your best to ensure high-quality users.

Second, if "distribution" is regarded as a promotion channel , then building such a promotion channel is undoubtedly very efficient.

Compared with opening offline stores, negotiating with offline channels, talking with agents, advertising , ground promotion and other means, building a "distribution" system is relatively more efficient. After you have formulated the corresponding rebate rules, reward rules, and communication processes, you can mobilize existing users to become small Bs to spread the word, or you can use the "online and offline" method to quickly increase the volume. This is undoubtedly much faster and more efficient than traveling to each city, talking to each merchant, and placing advertisements one by one.

Third, distribution is a lever that can help products quickly reach target users .

Because many startups are working on products and projects in niche vertical markets. The target users of these products are narrow and vertical. This makes it difficult for startups to reach and recruit them through conventional advertising. At this time, "distribution" can serve as a very good lever to help your products quickly reach target users.

Next, let me tell you a case:

After a pregnancy sugar control management APP was developed and launched, it was always troubled by the inability to acquire customers accurately and efficiently due to its narrow target user group (pregnant mothers with high blood sugar risk).

Anyone who has been a mother or has a baby at home will know that women have extremely high requirements for blood sugar management during pregnancy. They need to monitor their blood sugar frequently to prevent effects on the fetus.

The company's team has also tried to place ads in some maternal and infant communities and official accounts , but because these official accounts and maternal and infant communities have a large number of users and the user levels vary greatly, this has resulted in extremely low conversion rates for targeted users. At the same time, due to the high cost, this kind of promotion cannot be sustained in the long run.

Later, they carefully analyzed the characteristics of users and decided to directly promote to doctors and adopt the "distribution" model.

They quickly formed a hospital promotion team and intensively visited doctors in hospitals and clinics, telling them that as long as they let patients download their APP, the doctors would receive a reward of 50 yuan per user. The downloading scenario was also very natural. The doctor only needed to tell the patient to download the APP, enter my specific number, and record blood sugar regularly, and I would be able to see your blood sugar records in the background. Easy to manage.

After hearing what the doctor said, pregnant mothers will of course download it obediently and even use it frequently.

You see, it is with the help of "distribution" that the company's products can quickly reach a very narrow user group and are quite efficient. Although it takes some time to negotiate with a doctor in the initial stage, every time you succeed in negotiating with one, it is like opening a new "highway". At the same time, it also solves the problem of daily activity of users after downloading.

In this way, the company quickly acquired its first 10,000 precise seed users , creating favorable conditions for subsequent financing .

After talking about this case, I believe startups should realize the importance of distribution to user growth.

So how should startups build their own distribution user growth system?

And what issues need to be considered during the construction process?

three

If you want to use distribution methods to help increase user growth, you must think clearly about the following issues.

Because distribution growth is not suitable for all products.

Therefore, it is crucial to think about the following issues.

The first question is: Is your product easy to sell (is it easy to promote)?

Whether this is easy to sell (promote) involves many dimensions.

Is the product good enough? Is the brand enough? Is it practical enough? Is Xiao B’s promotion scenario natural enough? Is it necessary enough? Cheap enough? Is it cost-effective enough? Targeted enough? Is the downloading and purchasing process simple enough? etc.

These dimensions will determine whether your product is easy to sell (promote) and whether it is suitable for distribution.

For example, it is stupid to sell houses through distribution (a real estate APP has actually done such an activity before), because the scene is not natural enough. Who would buy such expensive things in WeChat groups or Moments?

However, the promotion of online English courses with a per-customer price of 2,000 yuan on WeChat is very targeted.

30% of a certain online English platform’s customer acquisition channels come from distribution channels, with the average customer spending reaching 2,000 yuan. Do you think a 2,000 yuan English course is expensive? It is definitely expensive, but because the courses are good enough, word of mouth among parents will spread rapidly on social platforms.

For example, a certain news APP has attracted a large number of users through the distribution and apprenticeship model. It costs 5 yuan to download the news APP. For idle people, housewives, and elderly people in third- and fourth-tier cities, the cost-effectiveness is high enough, and the distribution of such a product can be quickly successful.

For example, school teachers recommend parents to download a homework grading APP. The scenario is very natural and targeted enough, and using distribution to achieve growth will definitely not be a bad idea.

There is also a maternal and child platform that used high subsidies to lower the price of a certain diaper to the floor price, and used it as a hot-selling product, which made small Bs swarm their WeChat Moments and attracted a large number of new users to place orders. If the product is good enough and cheap enough (even if it is subsidized), it is very suitable for distribution.

There is also a certain women's community e-commerce platform, where the daily hot-selling products are all high-cost-effective products priced at a dozen or twenty yuan. They are cheap enough and cost-effective enough, which can help small Bs (distributors) sell their products in the fastest way.

Then there are those lecture posters that are all over the screen. The registration price for a lecture is only a dozen yuan, which is low enough that even if you spend the money but don’t attend the lecture, it’s not worth it.

So if you want to use distribution to increase user growth, you must be clear about what advantages your product has? Being cheap enough, easy to use, targeted enough, suitable for the scenario, cost-effective, able to solve problems, and having a good reputation can all become growth points for distribution explosion.

Four

The second question to consider is: Can we give small Bs high enough rebates and commissions?

If the advantages of your own products are not sufficient, higher rebates and high commissions can still achieve growth in distribution.

There will always be brave men when there is a big reward.

For example, a course that is flooding the WeChat Moments is priced at 19.9 yuan per class. Young people can just move their fingers and forward the poster to their WeChat Moments. For each class sold, they will get 9 yuan back, with a rebate of up to 50%. Although the average order value is very low, it is sincere enough.

In an episode of social e-commerce, small Bs would receive a high commission of 200 yuan for selling a blanket for 390 yuan to the next buyer, which is also as high as 50%.

An online children's financial education course has a customer unit price of 3,000 yuan, and the commission is as high as 15% to 20%, with a maximum of 600 yuan.

This is just the commission for first-level distribution.

If it is secondary distribution, there can be multiple layers of "pumping" online.

For example, I developed my downline brothers, and my downline brothers developed their downline brothers. After my brother sold the goods, he earned 200 yuan, and I can get an additional commission reward of 30%, or 60 yuan.

Whether it is possible to continue to provide high rebates and high commissions to the first and second levels is the second point to consider in driving the growth of distribution users.

However, one additional explanation should be given here: high rebates must be based on the fact that the product is easy to sell or promote. Otherwise, even if you give small Bs up to 90% rebates and commissions, what’s the point if the product cannot be promoted or sold?

The next third question is: Can the threshold for promotion be low enough and the process short enough?

We all know that the longer the promotion path, the more serious the user loss . This is especially important for a distribution system that is conversion- and experience-oriented.

This is why many social e-commerce platforms place their main promotional vehicles on WeChat official accounts and mini programs . Instead of putting it in the APP, let small B users initiate the spread from within the APP.

Because in this way, small B users can quickly obtain dissemination and sharing materials on WeChat, and quickly forward them to the target user group, reducing unnecessary steps such as downloading APP and registration, and reducing conversion loss rate.

Therefore, if you are doing distribution, in order to ensure the shortest possible promotion and conversion process, the main promotion platforms will basically be official accounts and mini programs.

Here is a case that must be mentioned:

These are the very popular online English education platforms like XXkid and XX English. Although these platforms require users to download APP or online client to connect with North American teachers on the other side of the ocean. However, these two companies did not focus on promoting APP or clients for the distribution and promotion of their products. Instead, we focus on promoting the products through our official WeChat account.

Because by forwarding course posters through small Bs, guiding parents to follow the official account to sign up, this process is shorter than downloading the APP, the client is short enough, and the conversion rate is surprisingly high! Therefore, these English platforms will connect a large number of customer service systems and sales systems to the official accounts, allowing the official accounts to complete user acquisition and registration.

Just imagine, if we let small Bs promote XXkid's online English APP and XX English's client, such a process would be cumbersome and lengthy, which would be very uneconomical for improving distribution efficiency.

Therefore, if a startup company does distribution, it must fully consider:

Can the distribution promotion and user acquisition process be short enough?

five

The last question to consider is: where do Xiao B, that is, the distributors, come from?

Are the small Bs converted from the product’s own users? Or build a dedicated distribution team? Or is it both?

This also requires comprehensive consideration based on your own situation, capabilities, resources, investment, etc.

Xiao B is directly converted from a user in the product. This model is light and fast.

For example, in the registration process of many lectures, a distribution function will be added. After the user registers, a prompt box will pop up immediately:

Share the course poster to your friends circle and get 100% of the registration fee back.

In this way, registered users can be instantly transformed into distribution users and fission can begin.

For example, a certain online Olympiad education platform will mobilize sales staff to call paying parents one by one, asking them to forward the course link to their friends circle and attach a recommendation. Parents who forward the link will be given rewards such as tuition reduction, tuition refund, and class return, so that paying parents can quickly be converted into small B users.

However, for some e-commerce products, such a system is not good, because a user who buys things cannot truly become a user who sells things.

Because from buying things to selling things, the identity transformation between the two is still very large.

So at this time, it may be necessary to build a special distribution team to assist with shipments. For example, some early micro-businesses, mothers, and Taobao customers will be introduced as small Bs, because such small Bs are professional enough, know how to ship and promote, and are more capable than ordinary users.

For some functional products, such as homework grading apps, insurance products, online education products, financial products , and credit products, it is also necessary to build a special distribution team because these products need to find some specific and professional KOLs to promote them. For example, class teachers, insurance sales stars, kindergarten teachers, etc.

Because these KOLs are often nodes in the target user group, and a large number of users gather around them. As long as you capture these KOLs, you can reach them quickly.

Such a system is also heavy enough and requires strong operational capabilities.

six

So let’s look back at these four questions.

1. Is the product easy to sell (is it easy to promote)?

2. Can distribution provide sufficiently high rebates and commissions?

3. Can it effectively lower the promotion threshold and path?

4. And where do the distribution users come from?

You need to think about and ask yourself each question repeatedly. It is not necessary to do every one of them to be perfect, because many times, these four questions tend to present a dynamic game.

What does it mean?

For example, my product may not be easy to sell, but my small B users are strong enough and the rebate is high enough to drive the operation of the distribution system, refer to Xji Micro Store;

For example, my distribution users are not good, but the value lies in the simple promotion threshold, high frequency, and everyone can do it. There will always be conversions through layers of funnels. Refer to the various lectures on the WeChat Moments;

For example, the commission I give is not high, or even very low, but the product is good enough, the promotion threshold is simple enough, and the scene is natural enough, there are still many people flocking to it.

Therefore, the success of distribution is often the result of a dynamic game of various factors. If you ask me which factor is more decisive in the game, I think it is:

Small B (distribution users) have the decisive power.

Yes, finding enough high-quality small Bs who can sell and promote products is the most important part of distribution.

So how do you find enough small Bs?

As of now, there are mainly the following methods.

seven

First, the founder brings his own small B resources into the market.

Although you may spray a screen full of water when seeing this sentence, I have to mention that if you carefully look at the resumes of the founders of community e-commerce such as Xjiweidian, XXcatch, and Xyiku, you will find that the founders have been in the e-commerce circle and micro-business circle for a long time in their early years and have a large number of micro-business and Taoke resources. Therefore, when we transformed into a community e-commerce and distribution model in the later stage, we immediately connected with the previous large WeChat merchants and Taobao agents and quickly completed the cold start .

The second is to use the method of feinting to the east and attacking to the west to attract Xiao B

I have talked about this in previous articles. For example, a certain maternal and infant community e-commerce platform found that mothers in second- and third-tier cities have both a lot of time and a strong desire to make money, so encouraging mothers to open stores was the main task of the early launch of the maternal and infant community e-commerce.

But if we tell mothers about opening a store from the very beginning, we will definitely encounter great resistance during the promotion process. Therefore, the maternal and infant community e-commerce adopted a method of making a feint to the east and attacking in the west.

They invited many big Vs in the maternal and child circles and parenting experts to give free lectures in WeChat groups and official accounts, attracting a large number of mothers' attention. After the mothers paid attention, they sent operations to follow up one by one and convert them into small B users who opened stores. Because of the previous lecture courses, the conversion rate is very high.

The third way is for small B to pull small B

After many social e-commerce platforms have a group of small B users in the early stage, they are not in a hurry to mobilize small B users to sell goods and increase volume, but instead let these small B users attract more small B users as soon as possible. For example, a certain catcher will receive high rewards for developing downlines and recruiting people to open stores. He will receive a reward of 200 yuan for developing a new store manager, and so on. There will be more rewards for new store managers who bring in new store managers. By driving people to recruit other people with high rewards, we can quickly expand the number of small B users and expand the scale.

Some friends may ask, won’t this kind of reward-driven approach of pulling people offline be used by the wool-pulling party ? Won’t a bunch of zombie users be attracted to brush rewards?

Here we need to mention a reward strategy often used in "distribution":

Bonus received, withdrawal threshold met.

What does it mean?

That is, when I attract a large number of new small B users, I will quickly receive monetary rewards from the platform, which may be hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands. But if I want to withdraw these amounts, it is not easy, as the platform usually sets various standards.

For example, some platforms will stipulate that my bonus can only be withdrawn after the newly brought in small B users have revenue, or the reward can only be withdrawn after the revenue reaches a certain amount, etc.

This method of first "accounting" the bonus and then setting a threshold for withdrawal is often used in the operation of the distribution system. It not only quickly gives small B users extremely high pleasure, but also ensures that the rewards are only used for the genuine users they bring, thus avoiding the risk of being fleeced.

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The fourth way is to directly find KOLs through field promotion.

For example, class teachers, sales experts, kindergarten teachers, doctors, webmasters, digital city owners, store owners, etc. These nodes are surrounded by a large number of user resources, and we can directly send field salesmen to find them. It is simple, crude and direct.

A certain APP service promoter adopted the approach of directly cooperating with small business owners in digital cities. In the early years, when the trend of replacing smartphones began to gradually rise, the APP service promoter discovered that these small business owners selling mobile phones were actually a very good distribution channel. They will send field sales staff to communicate with these small business owners. As long as they pre-install certain apps on the phones they sell to customers, the promoters will pay them 3 to 4 yuan per app.

This scenario is very natural, because after many people buy a mobile phone, the boss will say, there are no apps in your phone, can I install the apps for you? The customer will surely agree happily. In this way, the boss has installed WeChat, Alipay and other commonly used apps for the customers, and also smuggled in some private goods of the service provider. The service provider only needs to determine whether the installation is successful based on the specific installation identification code.

The fifth is to continuously filter out small B users on the product side.

Convert people who sign up for courses to become small B users, convert paying parents to become small B users, for example, X Toutiao, becomes a small B user by recommending friends, recruiting disciples and receiving red envelopes, etc. There are many such examples, all of which use various methods on the product side to wash out small B users, and then use distribution to help user growth.

So when you have a large number of small B users, it is very important to use the right platform and functions to support them.

Nine

Because small Bs also need products to support their promotion.

For example, they need to receive new promotional materials every day.

As a small B user, I sell your company's products, but you can't even provide me with a product poster? How do I promote this?

For example, they need to be able to see the results and profits of their promotion within the product.

For example, as a small B user, I posted product links in more than a dozen groups today, and then went to my earnings to see how many people clicked on my link, how many people put it in the shopping cart, how many people placed an order, and how much revenue I received...

What a wonderful promotion this is.

For example, if the product wants to support me, can it bind and develop downlines?

How is this binding done? Is it an invitation code? Phone number? Or can I just scan the code to bind?

Can I see the promotion results of my downlines in the product?

And so on and so forth.

Therefore, distribution also needs the support of products and functions. Sometimes you even need to create a new product to support it.

For example, the promotion of the homework grading APP mentioned above. In order to make it convenient for teachers to check their income and receive promotional materials, the company has created an independent public account that is very hidden. Only teachers who actually promote the APP can follow this public account.

This will separate the homework app from the distribution system, and will prevent students and parents from knowing that the teacher's promotion of the app is a commercial act, thus preventing them from having any unpleasant thoughts.

ten

Okay, now everything is ready. We have the product, we have the small Bs, and we have established a distribution system. Now comes the most exciting operation part:

How to drive small Bs to promote efficiently?

I think this is the most fun part of growing distribution users and it fully reflects the operational strength of a company.

The efficient promotion of small Bs mainly revolves around two core aspects.

The first core is to lower the promotion threshold for small B as much as possible.

The second core is to improve the output quality of Xiao B.

Let’s talk about the first one first.

This lowering of the promotion threshold has many aspects.

For example, as I mentioned before, promoting small B and landing users on WeChat official accounts as early as possible, rather than directing them to download the APP, is one of the means to lower the promotion threshold.

Another way to lower the threshold for promotion is to consider that it is difficult for small B to get users to pay when it starts promoting. However, if it is possible to attract traffic, it is also great.

Therefore, some online education platforms will provide Xiao B with free trial courses, allowing Xiao B to distribute and promote them. As long as users come to experience it for free and then pay later, Xiao B will still get a corresponding share, which greatly lowers the threshold for Xiao B's promotion;

Another method is what I mentioned earlier, which is to use some low-priced popular products and subsidies to try to get Xiao B to bind and trade with users in his circle first, and then create conditions for subsequent secondary purchases;

For example, many products will provide red envelopes. Users will receive red envelopes when registering or downloading. Therefore, when promoting, small Bs will not directly ask for purchase or registration, but will instead tell everyone to receive the red envelopes, which is also an artificial lowering of the promotion threshold.

The most important way to lower the promotion threshold is to give small Bs enough confidence. Because selling goods itself is something that is often hit hard, if you cannot use some techniques to help Xiao B make money quickly in the beginning, the loss of Xiao B will be very serious. After all, distribution itself is not a very stable job. Many people do it purely because they are interested in it, and stop doing it when they are no longer interested.

Next, let’s talk about the second core: improving the promotion quality of small B.

The quality of this promotion includes the copywriting , sophistication, and frequency of changes of the materials.

And corresponding training, promotion skills training and so on.

For example, many small Bs come to collect promotional materials every day. Stores like Xjiweidian will prepare 4-sheet, 6-sheet, and 9-grid posters for the small Bs, as well as corresponding copywriting.

Xiao B only needs to copy, paste, save and forward, and no longer needs to provide pictures and write copy as he did in the past when doing WeChat business.

Another way to improve the quality of Xiao B’s promotion is training.

So if you are lucky enough to become a small B, you must be brainwashed in various ways in the WeChat group every day, and the recommendation of skills is indispensable.

Many platforms will regularly invite small Bs with good promotion data to share with the entire distribution team, so that good strategies can be copied by more small Bs as soon as possible.

I think the most successful one here is the large-scale distribution fission promotion campaign carried out by a certain lending APP in its early years. At that time, anyone who promoted the loan APP would receive a reward of at least 20 yuan for each successful user binding. At that time, the official also released many promotion strategies to allow these small B users to learn successful promotion experiences and promote the APP faster.

A very famous example is:

In order to get everyone entering the store to install the loan APP more quickly, a small boss of a supermarket bought a lot of eggs and told customers that as long as they installed the APP, they would get 8 eggs for free. As a result, the promotion volume reached more than 100 per day, and after deducting the cost of eggs, it was still very profitable. This routine was later reused by many small Bs. At that time, many small county cinemas and supermarkets had such promotion booths. Download the loan APP to get milk, plush toys (costing a few yuan), etc.

It can also be considered an alternative distribution model.

Well, I have written so much today, and I believe it will be able to provide some ideas and thoughts for startups to build a distribution system. I also hope that startups can use distribution methods to grab the first batch of seed users this morning and open the door to their own user growth as soon as possible.

Later, I will also bring you more practical content about user growth.

Thank you everyone!

Author: Liu Weidong, authorized to be published by Qinggua Media .

Source: Liu Weidong's Operation Notes (ID: 382033730)