A reusable user growth method

Nowadays, user growth is becoming increasingly difficult. Faced with this situation, the author of this article analyzes the two underlying logics and two guarantees of user growth, and proposes a qualified closed-loop growth thinking and a set of practical user growth methodologies. Recommended for those who are interested in user growth.

Growth is becoming more and more important!

Because growth is getting harder.

Our initial enthusiasm for trying new things has passed. We have installed and uninstalled all kinds of mobile apps and have already found the ones we love.

The threshold for product research and development continues to decline, and various players are entering the market. There is serious homogeneity, and consumers are dazzled by the market, creating a red ocean.

In the past two years, I have been working on growth, and today I would like to share some of my thoughts on growth.

1. The underlying logic of growth

What is the underlying logic of growth?

Conduct a new customer event to attract more new users; optimize a registration process to increase user registration conversion rate; acquire new customers through invitation fission activities by bringing old customers in to bring new customers.

These are common ways we achieve user growth. What is the deeper logic behind these growth movements?

I believe that there are two underlying logics of growth: refinement and scale.

1. Refinement: Speak the truth to people and lies to ghosts.
2. Use refinement to convert more existing users.
3. Scaling: One-click replication, rapid growth

Based on the ability of refined operations, we can acquire more new users using the same model.

Precision and scale complement each other and enhance each other, thus starting the growth flywheel.

2. Two major guarantees for growth

Without the two major guarantees, growth is just a castle in the air.

In the process of implementing growth, if there is any condition, it is indispensable.

I think these two are crucial: data support and diverse roles.

1. Data support

1. Data awareness building: Strengthen the growth team’s brains. Everyone needs to strengthen data awareness.
2. Data infrastructure: Growth market data, growth action effects, growth anomaly analysis, these most basic data should become the infrastructure and can be quickly obtained;
3. Data research methods: scientific data verification scheme, AB testing, funnel analysis, clustering model, etc.

2. Diverse roles

Growth involves many aspects, including products, operations, design, R&D, etc. If conditions permit, a complete team can be formed; if there are insufficient resources, the person in charge of growth should also have capabilities and experience in all aspects.

3. Growth Closed Loop

What should qualified closed-loop growth thinking look like?

What kind of thinking should we follow when we start working on growth? After one or two years of experimenting and summarizing, I think you can use the following idea directly.

Many people’s growth ideas are:

User-Problem (Requirement)-Scenario-Solution-Data

In fact, this is not comprehensive and scientific enough:

• There is a lack of in-depth analysis of the current situation;
• Haven’t found the current core growth focus.

In my humble opinion, the closed-loop thinking of growth should be:

Data-Main contradiction-User-Problem (demand)-Scenario-Solution-Data

• Data: First, understand the current business situation through data, and then use indicators to break it down to find out the current potential for growth. For details, please see my previous article "One formula to master the management essence of product experts with more than 10 years of experience".
• Main contradiction: Based on the data, understand the main contradiction that is currently hindering growth: is it a process conversion problem, an exposure problem, or a problem with the product itself.

After the above analysis, we can then find the target users, convert their problems into needs, trigger them in certain scenarios, and find the corresponding solutions.

4. Practical application of growth methods

A 6-step, reusable, practical approach to growth.

From the perspective of user life cycle management, I divide the target growth population into: new users, existing users, and churned users. Next, I will talk about specific growth methods based on these three dimensions.

1. New Users

Attracting new customers is the main target group for growth.

The first step is to understand the current business situation through data.

1) Overall situation

Daily new customer trend chart, cumulative user data trend chart, number of new customer conversions, new customer conversion amount, new customer conversion rate, etc., to understand the overall business situation.

2) Main traffic sources

After understanding the overall situation, we need to analyze the traffic end.

Which channels do new customers mainly flow from? Natural traffic, new customers brought in by old customers, new customers attracted by activities, new special projects, etc., clearly divide the sources of new customers and look at the proportion and trend changes of each module.

3) Conversion

For the above traffic sources, further analyze the conversion status of each module. How much traffic comes in every day, how many new users register successfully, and how many users are successfully converted.

After completing the above three steps, you will have a general understanding of the overall business situation.

The second step is to identify the main contradiction.

By formula decomposition method: New customers = channel flow (channel 1 + channel 2 + ... + channel n) * conversion rate (channel 1 + channel 2 + ... + channel n)

From the data, you can focus on a few key points:

1. Which channels account for a relatively large proportion of traffic? Which of them have lower conversion rates?
2. Which channels have relatively high and stable conversion rates? Which of these have insufficient traffic?

If you want to increase the number of new users, you can only make breakthroughs from two angles: 1. For those with large traffic, increase the conversion rate; 2. For those with high conversion rate, increase the traffic.

Find the corresponding channels and analyze the reasons for low traffic or low conversion rate. Why is this the case?

Look for reasons from multiple aspects (Mece's Law/Pyramid): Is it because of poor channel traffic? Or are the channel costs too high? Is it the activity design page that is not working? Or is it that the quality of users themselves is very poor?

Study each reason one by one and find out the main contradiction.

The third step is to analyze user characteristics.

Outline the user portrait: age, gender ratio, city, education level, annual income level, consumption habits, etc. After having a rough judgment of the portraits of these users, you can get to know this group of people through real contact with friends around you.

The fourth step is to analyze user needs.

Based on what we know, why do existing users use the platform’s products, and what core functions and services do they care about most? Do these users have differences in channel characteristics? For these users, what functions and pages do they browse and use the most within 7 days of opening a new account?

Based on this, we can make the most basic deduction and find that new users will also have similar concerns and then add channel characteristics.

The fifth step is to find the triggering scenarios for users to use the product.

For example, taxi-hailing platforms are generally used by users who encounter places where public transportation is not available or has no coverage, or when the users are in a hurry.

It is often troublesome to take the bus on rainy days, so many people choose to take a taxi. If an advertising platform pushes taxi platforms and taxi coupons to users based on weather conditions, the conversion rate will be very high.

Therefore, after analyzing user needs, finding the scenarios that trigger users to use platform functions can help acquire new users more efficiently.

Step 6: Propose a solution.

Through the above analysis, we have reached the last step: the specific plan to resolve the main contradiction.

If the conversion rate is not high: then optimize the conversion path and conversion hook.

The design here is to be combined with user needs and user-triggered scenarios: needs, triggers, actions.

Give users a reason to act.

For example, e-commerce platforms: give benefits – new user benefit coupons + limited time countdown for receiving them;

Another example: Describing the effect after use - Cover in Cover advertisement, the waist is no longer sore, the legs are no longer painful, and you can climb to the fifth floor in one breath, hey, it’s not hard ~

2. Existing users & lost users

The growth of existing users focuses on the growth of users into a more loyal group; the growth of lost users focuses on user return.

For these two user groups, the ideas for growth are exactly the same as for new users. I won’t elaborate on them one by one. Let me talk about some different focuses:

1) Growth of existing users

Start from two aspects: horizontal and vertical lines.

Horizontally: allowing users to experience more of the other functions on the platform, which is cross-business operation.

Vertically: Allow users to experience the core functions of the platform more deeply and more frequently, such as becoming a member and paying more money; using WeChat Pay and using it more frequently.

2) Growth through lost users

The user's recovery strategy can be formulated based on the user's historical behavior.

A user has experienced a certain product/feature in the past: you can recall the user by updating the feature/launching a new product;

B users were previously converted by activities: you can use the return welfare gift package to reach users;

If user C has not been converted before, then the user is like a new user. You can refer to the strategy for converting new users to do the reflux.

The above three methods are not completely fixed. They can be used alternately. Use the one that is effective in analyzing data.

To sum up: This sharing session talked about the underlying logic of growth, two major guarantees, the closed-loop thinking process, and a complete interpretation of the analysis process for growth for new customers.

There are many tricks to each module, and this article only briefly touches on them.

But I suggest that you don’t just stop there. We should follow the corresponding ideas, think deeply, try and summarize. I look forward to you sharing your practical experience with me.

Author: Walking Nobita

Source: Nobita carries his bag