Customer acquisition period: How to do channel management well?

We have previously introduced the five major stages of the user life cycle, as well as the operational objectives and operational strategies that correspond to the five stages: customer acquisition, growth, maturity, decline, and churn. This has established a basic framework for the user life cycle from a macro perspective.

This article starts with the customer acquisition period and analyzes how we can do a good job of channel management in the process of attracting new customers? What factors need to be considered? How to find the best channel?

1. Why do channel management?

Before we discuss how to manage channels for promotion and customer acquisition, let’s first analyze why we need to do channel management. In the figure below, the five most common channels for promotion and customer acquisition are summarized. In today’s era, the source of traffic is bound to be these channels.

Let’s take a simple example: a company developed and launched an APP. During the customer acquisition period, it used the five channels mentioned above, including the App Store , Baidu’s bidding ads, and offline subway ads. It also held two salon events and ran information flow ads for a month, and finally obtained more than 10,000 registered users. However, because the user data was not collected and organized at the beginning, when it was necessary to carry out refined operations on users, it was discovered that the collected data was too simple. We only knew which channel it came from. As for the number of user activities, the number of times the APP was opened, the frequency of opening, time, behavior, and triggered events, none of them were available. As a result, it was impossible to carry out refined operations, and subsequent users gradually left.

From the above examples, we can see that due to unclear user portraits and poor management of users coming from each channel, it is impossible to optimize the channels and subsequently carry out refined operations. Therefore, when our product is launched, we must do a good job of channel management to lay a solid foundation for subsequent refined operations.

2. How to do channel management well?

The above analysis explains why we need to do channel management, so how should we do it? In fact, the essence of channel management is to manage users coming from each channel. In the process of channel management during the customer acquisition period, we need to focus on three aspects: user quantity, user quality and comprehensive user management.

1. Number of users

In the process of channel management, the number of users is the most direct indicator, reflecting the ability to acquire customers through the channel. The indicators that can be measured and counted for the number of users include the total number of users in each channel, the number of new users, the number of active users, etc.

You can count the number of new users in each channel, choose to view the time interval, and view the browser , city and other information of the new users. The more complete the information, the more beneficial it will be for subsequent refined operations.

2. User Quality

In channel management, the number of users is important, but the quality of users is equally important. The quality of users reflects whether the attributes of the channel’s customer acquisition match, whether they are target users , and whether they can develop into loyal users. Measurable indicators of user quality include the channel’s user usage time, frequency, stickiness, retention rate , etc.

You can count the number of users on each channel, select the viewing time interval, and view the viewing status of users on each channel on the product page to analyze user stickiness, etc.

3. Comprehensive user management

On the basis of doing a good job in user quantity management and user quality management, the two can be integrated to conduct comprehensive user management based on user behavior , analyze user behavior, find the optimal channel, and the proportion of each channel in the promotion.

After doing a good job of channel management, we can carry out refined operations and adopt differentiated operation strategies for users in different channels. We can also adjust the customer acquisition channels according to the results of channel management and optimize the customer acquisition channels in order to acquire more users.

Summary: This article analyzes the importance of channel management and how to conduct channel management. It is important to note that before promoting a product to acquire customers, it is imperative to plan channel management and do a good job of data collection , so that subsequent refined operations can achieve successful results.

Source: Zhuge io Data Coach