Case review | Cold start of a new project, clever use of the community to reach 100,000 users in 10 days

The pyramid was not built in a day, and the secret to acquiring 100,000 users in 10 days lies not in these 10 days, but before these 10 days.

There are many blockchain projects, and there is even a saying that "everyone in Wangjing is doing blockchain." Our platform is one of the many blockchain projects.

Our platform’s website was launched on August 29, 2018, and by September 8, it had gained more than 100,000 registered users in just 10 days.

0 cost, cold start , and has surpassed the user scale of 99% of the projects in the blockchain industry.

Today, we will review this online new user acquisition and share it with you. This article will review it from three parts:

1. Briefly introduce the industry background and project background;
2. Review the causes and consequences of the entire new customer acquisition process and share our operating methods ;
3. A summary of the methodology that can be directly reused.

1. Industry and Project Introduction

1.1 Industry Background

Let me first briefly introduce the industry. The blockchain industry, which is currently at the forefront of the trend, is still in its infancy, and digital currency is the first stop for the application of blockchain technology.

The digital currency industry experienced explosive growth in 2017 along with ICOs, giving rise to a large number of wealth creation stories. The myths of 100x and 1,000x coins attracted huge amounts of capital to rush in, pushing the digital currency roller coaster to a new high.

The waterfall after the frenzy came even more violently. The market value of digital currencies in 2018 shrunk severely, and the currency circle entered a long "deep bear".

In this roller coaster capital chasing process, the number of digital currency exchanges has skyrocketed from 5 to 8 to 1,000, 5,000 and even tens of thousands.

1.2 Project Introduction

Our platform is just one of the tens of thousands of exchanges.

As a new exchange that has not yet been launched, how can we stand out in this melee of exchanges?

We analyzed the main problems in the exchange industry:

• Users are “ripped off” by centralized exchanges;
• The exchanges were being ripped off by big players;
• Although there are exchanges, the liquidity of currencies is still limited to currency pairs and platforms;
• Centralized exchange transactions are not transparent, which leads to serious information asymmetry problems.

So we continued to polish our products and build a "peer-to-peer on-chain trading platform" - focusing on the EOS ecosystem of blockchain 3.0, seamlessly exchanging coins based on the Bancor protocol, and all transactions are uploaded to the chain in real time, openly and transparently.

Solving the pain points of the exchange industry is a highly disruptive trading platform form.

2. Even good wine needs to be hidden in a remote alley. Without a community , there will be no promotion.

Li Xiaolai said: "The consensus of idiots is also a consensus."

This sentence may sound like an insult at first glance, but if you think about it carefully, it is quite logical and there is nothing wrong with it.

The consensus mechanism is the prerequisite for the trustless blockchain world to gain self-trust .

Only with the consensus mechanism can the blockchain world function normally.

Consensus is also the core value that every project and platform in the blockchain ecosystem must strive to maintain. With consensus, what you do will be meaningful and your currency will have value. For a new project that has no mines, no users, and even no products, there is no community and no consensus.

Our platform has put a lot of effort into community operations .

2.1 Extensive Mass User Acquisition

6-8 weeks before the launch, we started community operations for domestic users.

Where are cryptocurrency users most active? WeChat groups . In a bear market, we should especially stick together to keep each other warm and recharge our faith.

Drawing on the army of WeChat merchants who have received Harmony, we have sorted out a scripted approach and manually operated 30 mobile phones, each with at least 2 WeChat accounts , to perform group-joining operations in a discontinuous and distributed manner within 24 hours, and have joined more than 6,000 cryptocurrency WeChat groups in total.

These include daily market exchange groups, technical exchange groups, bear market groups for mutual support, and even a large number of groups established by friendly competitors.

Conservatively calculating based on 200 people in a single group, the direct penetration is over 1.2 million people, which is roughly the total number of existing users in the domestic cryptocurrency circle.

Casting a wide net is certainly not enough, and this was the pitfall we encountered in the early days of building the community.

Although we cover a large number of WeChat groups, the problem is that if we don’t create the group ourselves, we will be kicked out or even blocked if we post an advertisement. What should we do next?

Leave the group and add friends. Posting advertisements in a group is not welcomed, but sending friend requests in a group is welcomed by group members.

In order to add friends quickly, we wrote a group messaging robot that sends friend-adding scripts from a large number of groups, automatically approves friend requests, and automatically sends chat scripts after becoming friends.

The work does not stop after adding friends. We introduce machine learning algorithms to analyze the chat tone of WeChat friends and automatically send relevant replies within an acceptable tolerance rate to make the chat with a single friend as intelligent as possible.

In this way, after adding groups and people in a rough manner, a massive user base is covered, but these people are not precise or influential enough. Among them are cryptocurrency users, novice users, and even many people peddling small films.

So now that we have quantity, how do we improve quality?

2.2 Refined KOL community operations

In the first four weeks of the launch, we drew on the team's own personal connections and based on the characteristics of the platform, invested more man-hours in establishing and promoting high-quality communities.

Since our platform is oriented to the EOS ecosystem, EOS technical exchanges and EOS information exchanges are high-frequency and rigid needs. We found some early KOLs in the EOS development circle and established more than a dozen WeChat groups for EOS Open Source Alliance, EOS Ecosystem Technology Exchange, EOS Investment Information, etc.

In addition, the platform is aimed at token transactions based on the Bancor mechanism, which is a brand new concept. What is Bancor? What is an IBO? What is human-machine trading? How to buy and sell?

Many people don’t understand these questions. Where there are problems, there are opportunities, so we have built a learning and exchange group around Bancor for related technologies, future development trends, and tokens. As long as you create a good group atmosphere, group members will promote it for you and invite people to join the group.

WeChat groups under refined operations come with traffic from industry KOLs and veteran investors, and the fission of the "tap water" group is a natural result. This method has a slower growth rate in quantity, but it wins in quality.

With the cooperation of the first two steps, the community of our platform has reached a certain scale, and it is time to reach the critical step of building consensus. After all, the group is not the goal, but consensus is.

2.3 Establishing and maintaining community consensus

When a group comes together, it is unconscious at first, which gives us the opportunity to build group consciousness - consensus.

The groups we built ourselves are all filled with internal smurfs, which are the internet’s internet trolls. Every day we send good news about the EOS ecosystem to all groups. If EOS goes up, the ecosystem will rise; if EOS goes down, the opportunity to buy at the bottom has come...

At the same time, we maintain a high frequency and constantly instill in our group members our platform's new ways of playing, disruptive trading models, and ecological changes that solve industry pain points... Gradually, the ideas we instilled began to occupy the minds of our group members.

2.4 Coordination of marketing activities for the community

To quote a famous saying of a venture capital tycoon: A good project does not necessarily mean it is a good project.

PR

From the beginning of project planning, we started PR promotion simultaneously.

We publish a lot of articles outside the WeChat ecosystem . The landing page of the press release can provide users with timely information feedback through the search engine . When this information is disseminated in the community for the second time, it naturally carries the endorsement of a third party.

Hot topic posters explode the group

In combination with the mobile social features of the WeChat ecosystem, we took advantage of hot topics such as the popularity of Bullet SMS, the 94th Anniversary, and Teachers' Day to create promotional posters.

Fission and new users

If Luckin Coffee can attract new customers by inviting friends to get a cup of coffee, then our platform's fission and attracting new customers starting from the community is the real secret to growing from 0 to 100,000+.

The early community operations have accumulated massive user coverage and precise KOL community resources. Our products also have a new concept of grabbing user attention. So let’s give them a reason to register - simply register to get 200 BID, and then give them a fission bait - invite friends to get 100 BID.

The simplest fighting method is also the most powerful one.

The website was launched on August 29. Data takes off. (The above picture is a screenshot of the data accessed from our platform’s official website)

In terms of community, we started with the top high-quality communities including KOLs, and stimulated sharing by sending red envelopes to the groups. The sharing in the KOL community fully demonstrated their influence. Judging from the data, the traffic increased all of a sudden.

With the support of KOL leaders, we continued to bombard thousands of social networks. "He who wins over small retail investors will rule the world." The long-tail effect brought by retail investors is enormous. Soon, strong community consensus and high sharing rewards stimulated a large number of users to actively and spontaneously start sharing crazily.

On the second day after the website went online, the power of the community was once again demonstrated, and many users could be found online actively sharing links to get free deals. On the second night after the website was launched, there were even registration scripts written by netizens themselves on the Internet. Fortunately, we blocked them in time.

One day after the website went online (about 24 hours), our registrations had reached more than 40,000.

Soon after, we released the news: after the number of registered users reaches 80,000, the registration reward will be reduced from 200BID to 150BID, which triggered the second wave of sharing registrations.

Judging from the data, the number of website visits has been increasing within 10 days.

3. Summary of Methodology

The pyramid was not built in a day, and the secret to acquiring 100,000 users in 10 days is not so much in these 10 days, but before these 10 days.

• About the community: To operate a community well, not only the investment of manpower and time is needed, but also the automation of community operations. The combination of people and robots can multiply the scale benefits of the community and continuously output "consensus", which is the fertile soil with the most potential for fission.
• Traffic preparation: Before the troops move, the food and grass must be prepared first. Before going online, prepare the traffic required to detonate, including massive low-quality traffic, a moderate amount of high-quality traffic, and capture the head and long tail at the same time.
• Fission conversion : With the community and traffic, you need to give a reason for fission - the most direct interest stimulation, and carry out marketing to create a sense of urgency and encourage passers-by to get on the bus as soon as possible.

Cold winter? Bear market? These are not scary. If you find the right method, there will always be opportunities for new projects.

Source: Chen Cuo