4 methods to teach you how to efficiently acquire seed users

In the early stages of a business , when you are short of money, people, and fame, where should you start in acquiring the first batch of seed users ? Many people mistakenly believe that seed users are the first batch of users or initial users, and even in the early stages of a startup they only pursue user quantity while ignoring user quality. So how do we correctly understand seed users? How to improve the quality of new users? How to obtain high-quality seed users?

1. How to understand seed stage users

Seed users are the first batch of users acquired when your product is first launched. They are your loyal fans (heavy users). They will try out your product regardless of whether it is functional or not, and are willing to provide feedback and optimization suggestions for product functions. Therefore, the growth of seed users requires the joint efforts of product, operation , design and development to gather seed users. So, what should product and operation do in the seed user accumulation stage?

1. For products:

There is no need to worry about bugs after the product is launched, as long as the main process runs smoothly. The product functions do not need to be complicated, but they must have core functions. Use core functions to gain user awareness and retain users. According to the MVP principle of minimum viable product, through testing and collecting user feedback, rapid iteration, and continuous correction of products, ultimately adapt to market demand.

2. For operations: the most important thing is to identify the target user group

You cannot "cast a wide net" during the seed stage. You need to screen target users, study their characteristics, strategically activate seed users and keep them, and clearly identify who the product's target users are? Where are they? How do we acquire them? As stated in the book “User Power”: The characteristics of the seed user group can be summarized as: strong demand, the user group must be clear, and the smaller the group definition, the better; the user group loves to spread, and the younger the better.

2. Ideas for finding seed users

The following 7 questions can help you connect your analytical thinking:

1. What is the product positioning?

Products are the starting point of operations. First, identify the pain points that the product will solve, the needs it will meet, and what is the difference between it and other similar products?

2. Which segment of the population will be most interested in the product?

Among the people who all have needs, there must be a group of people who have a particularly strong need. That is, we need to find them out from this group of people and try to describe their characteristics through some words/labels.

3. What are the characteristics of this group of people?

What are the characteristics of this group of people in terms of gender, age, region, education level, etc., and what unique habits do they have? What is the spending power? What is the consumption frequency? What are your consumption preferences?

4. Where does this group of people often appear?

What products/apps do they like to use? What kind of public accounts and big Vs do you follow? In what offline occasions does it appear more frequently? Users were not created, they have always existed. Here are some sources of seed users for enterprises. Although many of them cannot be copied, the ideas are the same:

airbnb For out-of-town attendees who cannot stay in hotels

Jumei.com founder's post on BB cream on Renren.com

Campus Network Popular Student Union Activities, Register to Get Tickets

Didi Taxi (driver side) Train station taxi driver

Uber China (passenger side) Foreigners in Sanlitun

Course Grid: Go deep into campus to promote

Facebook Harvard University students

Hot Mom Gang Shenzhen Maternal and Child Health Hospital distributes flyers

Meila APPSTORE search for beauty products

Fashion Community P1 Fashionistas in Sanlitun

Douban Programmer Pascal Community

Dropbox users who watched the introduction video and made an appointment

Zhihu Founder’s Tech Circle Friends

5. What is this group of people interested in?

What do you like? What do you hate? What kind of values? What kind of articles would resonate with them? What are some words that only this group of people can understand? Just like the words used by the post-00s such as “wash and touch the cup” mentioned by Luo Pang in his New Year’s Eve speech.

6. What methods can be used to attract them?

Combine the core features of the product with their preferences. What can they get as the first users?

7. How to screen out unsuitable people?

In order to prevent inappropriate users from entering and destroying the "atmosphere", the highest quality users can be screened out through invitation codes, application review, payment, etc.

3. Strategies and methods for acquiring users

1. Screen new customer acquisition channels

After the product is cold-started , have you noticed the paths that users from different channels take after entering the product? The figure below shows the basic path that a user takes when he or she first enters a product. This path can help us determine whether he or she has the “potential” to develop into a seed user.

User path: entering the product through recommendation/download, most users may stay on the LP page, some users just take a quick look and leave, while some users may leave the current LP page and enter the second page and may jump multiple times to complete the first transaction or certain key behaviors, such as financial management users binding bank cards. Of course, it is also possible that they will find no content of interest and choose to leave the product.

By observing the user path, we can screen a group of users. Generally speaking, you need to observe whether there are any differences in the length of time a user stays in the product. If so, you need to filter out the top users who are very willing to consume your product, and then make a second recommendation and recall to slowly convert these users into your seed users.

It would be perfect if there was a tool that could connect promotion channels with user behaviors and customize any conversion behaviors , and optimize the delivery strategy in time according to the data. Coincidentally, we have just launched a SEM search optimization function:

Set up conversion paths

Description: Automatically synchronize SEM delivery data and integrate it with user behavior data. You can quickly filter different conversion goals for accurate evaluation and flexibly define conversion goals to improve the efficiency of new customer acquisition.

2. Invite with sincerity and care with true heart

By inviting people, more benefits can be brought to the sharers and the people being shared. The picture below is an invitation page that we often see.

Especially for community products, users are attracted through invitation mechanisms, content and social relationships, and relationships between users are established through products. For example, in the early days, Renren.com stimulated users to invite interactions through social games such as stealing vegetables and grabbing parking spaces. These are all means, and its purpose is to establish connections with users more quickly.

In addition to community products, tool products also often use invitation mechanisms, such as Dropbox. Inviting friends to use Dropbox will gain more space. In addition, financial management products will also attract users through profit rebates. After all, the core purpose of financial management users is nothing more than to get more money, so in financial management products, the invitation mechanism is used to the extreme, and even levels are distinguished. The more cumulative invitations, the higher the rebate, which stimulates you to share with more friends.

3. Platform activities: low cost and accurate positioning

For example, for a certain fitness product, users consume fitness courses. During the product launch and development phase, they continued to create high-quality content on WeChat and Weibo, and posted articles in forums and groups in the fitness field; for example, how to exercise to lose weight, before-and-after comparisons after weight loss, and how to eat to avoid getting fat - many of these articles have a good dissemination effect, and finally users who are interested in fitness follow their WeChat and Weibo and become seed users.

4. Some stupid ways are also good ways

For example, Didi Chuxing, in its early days, in order to get to know the industry and understand where its target user group (B-side drivers) was. The operating staff went directly to Beijing South Railway Station and other areas where there were concentrated "working hours" and had drivers download the app one by one. After a small number of drivers who had tasted the sweetness spread the word among the taxi fleet, Didi became popular among the drivers and attracted a large number of B-end users. It is worth emphasizing that before promotion , you must first clarify the product type and user type and classify the user groups. For example, community products can be divided into: content providers and content consumers. You must formulate strategies for cultivating seed users based on different roles and do not blindly pursue a single number of users.

If you still can’t find seed users, or if seed users leave quickly after arriving, you may need to think carefully about whether you don’t know your users well enough. Is the demand itself a false demand? When the segmentation is very detailed, it is impossible to attract users with clear products. Even if there are more promotional resources and channels, how many users can be attracted?

Author of this article@ Zhuge Jun is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services Advertising platform Longyou Century