Practical Tips | Mobile Internet Million-level Channel Promotion Methodology

The entire channel operation will be carried out around CAC. Within the controllable range of CAC, maximizing the volume is the most important strategic direction for the entire channel operation.

Friends often ask me that they spent a lot of money this month but there was no effect. So where did the advertising money go?

Putting aside temporary investments for promotional activities or large-scale public relations events, regular traffic introduction is of paramount importance and a key factor in ensuring the steady growth of new users on the platform. If you were given 10 million now, how would you spend it efficiently?

When a project gets a budget of tens of millions, it often means that the channel is crucial to the entire operation system. The core goal at this time is to quickly accumulate seed users , form a certain amount of user self-growth after reaching a certain scale, and seize the bonus period of acquiring users. This requires that the number of users acquired is large enough, with millions or even tens of millions of registrations, and the number of users is relatively accurate, with a certain proportion of seed users. Only in this way can the entire channel operation system be healthy and efficient.

Generally speaking, the company will not give you a clear budget level. The person in charge of channel operations must plan how much the budget is and how to spend it. Therefore, you must calculate CAC (single user acquisition cost) based on AR PU value, or even LTV ( user life cycle contribution value). Then, combined with the payment rate, you can estimate the cost of an effective registered user. In this way, you can evaluate the budget level and the total goal of how many registered users and paying users you want. This gives the entire channel operation a clear goal, which is a good start.

After having a clear goal, it is crucial to formulate phased goals, select channels, and allocate budget for each channel. The entire channel operation will be carried out around CAC. Within the controllable range of CAC, maximizing the volume is the most important strategic direction for the entire channel operation. To maximize the scale, we must continuously optimize CAC and seize more traffic, which requires refined channel operations. Since traffic is not monopolized by any one company, everyone can get it as long as the bid is high. In order to spend the money effectively and achieve the best results, refined operations are needed. Through refined operations, the cost of the entire channel system can be lower, but the scale can be large. It can be seen that the essence of channel operation lies in refined operation, optimizing CAC, and maximizing the scale.

A few things you must know about channel operations:

1. Mobile is the general trend, traffic is concentrated on mobile, and usage habits are also on mobile. Especially WeChat and APP, so we should seize WeChat and application market to obtain traffic, and give priority to WeChat public account and APP for landing (if there is no APP, WeChat public account can be used first)

2. The first step in channel operation is exposure. Only with enough exposure can you get more traffic.

3. The advertising triggering mechanism is very critical. It is very important to understand the traffic distribution mechanism of different channels.

4. The essence of channel operation lies in refinement and reasonable control of CAC.

5. Maximizing volume is the foundation of maximizing channel operations. If you don’t do it, your competitors will.

6. The purpose of channel operation is to pass the baton to user operation and product operation , so that self-growth becomes the source of traffic.

Now let’s get to the point. At the beginning of the year, I took over a project, which was an enterprise-level application and paid software. The TOB market has many shortcomings, including complex buyer decisions, difficulty in reaching decision makers with advertisements, high marketing costs, and difficulty in building a sales team. I found a lot of information on the Internet and finally decided to use salesforce data for reference. As of July 31, 2011, Salesforce.com had 104,000 customers and more than 2.1 million subscribers, with a paying ratio of 4.95%. Considering its own brand , the maturity of the domestic market, and purchasing preferences, I believe that the paying rate is between 2% and 3%. Combining the unit price and renewal rate of our products, we can calculate the LTV. From this, I calculated the CAC, combined with the paying rate, and deduced the cost of a single registered user, and then derived the total budget and total number of registered users based on the total paying number target.

My overall goal is to register 200,000 real companies. The specific payment numbers and registration costs are business secrets, so I won’t disclose them. According to the implementation results, the goals of the first phase have been exceeded. (I left the second phase due to personal reasons)

After planning the overall goal, how to achieve it? I did a simple channel analysis:

Since this product is a paid software with a relatively high average order value, and the target user group is narrow and has low activity, there is little expectation of user operation and word-of-mouth communication. I focus on paid advertising, mainly performance marketing , supplemented by media public relations and traditional media, to obtain real and effective corporate user registrations. (In fact, TOB software will be more effective if it relies on the market and traditional brand advertising, with channel operations as an auxiliary. Due to the scope of my authority, I am not in charge of the market and brand, so this article focuses on the refinement of channel operations)

Combined with the characteristics of the target group, I divide the channels into four echelons:

The first tier is the keyword category, which is divided into Category A and Category B. Category A is Baidu PC and mobile, and only invests in the web; Category B is 360 Sogou Shenma, and only invests in the web.

The second tier is the super advertising platform , which mainly promotes the web and invests less in apps, such as Sina Fuyi and Guangdiantong (do not invest in long-tail resources, and give priority to QQ information flow ). (Some were not invested because they do not match the product and there is no suitable landing page ).

The third tier is the application market, including Baidu 91/Xiaomi/360/ App Store / Wandoujia , which mainly invest in CPD and occasionally make debuts .

The fourth tier is the alliance network type, including Baidu Alliance, App Store Cash Flow, Google Alliance, etc. One thing to note here is that the quality of users in the alliance network type is the worst, without a doubt. Again, it is critical to understand the traffic distribution mechanism of each channel. Think about a question, why do all advertising platforms have quality factors? This is an indicator used by product managers of advertising platforms. By introducing quality indicators, the matching degree between products and user needs is improved, and the value of each display is maximized.

Let's first focus on the first echelon. Since Baidu Fengchao system is the most professional advertising system in China, its traffic distribution mechanism is the most mature, user stickiness is good, brand loyalty is high, and keywords firmly lock in precise users. This makes Baidu's search channel conversion very good, and it is the best channel. This includes Baidu keyword search and Baidu brand traffic, such as Baidu Pinzhuan, Starting Line, Huabiao, and Aladdin . Of course, Baidu Union is not included here. When I evaluate the monthly traffic, I will take the search traffic out for separate evaluation and exclude the clicks from Baidu and Google Union. Here I will focus on how to use Baidu channels and how to make them bigger. You can refer to Sogou, 360 and Shenma.

I have worked on hospital projects before, managing a website planning team of more than a dozen people, and in charge of a SEM team of more than a dozen people. There were as many as 6 websites launched, with an average daily consumption of about 300,000. At most times, three bidding rankings were used to ensure maximum traffic. Our operating idea is to operate multiple accounts, focus on different keywords, have multiple rankings, and differentiate landing pages.

The advantage of this is that you can grab more traffic, and the differentiation of the landing page can give you more advantages in ranking, and multiple rankings ensure maximum traffic. At that time, the website planning team of more than a dozen people, in addition to occasional website planning and revisions, daily event topics and product function topics, spent more time on optimizing core keyword landing pages, especially some of the keywords that ranked first by competitors. For their landing pages, combined with the characteristics of our products, we found a point that met user needs and had our unique advantages, explained it in depth, and guided user inquiries.

One of our macro requirements at the time was to have the highest traffic among our peers and to leave the second place by a certain distance without too high a cost. Of course, we put in a lot of traditional advertising, such as subways, buses, and TV ads, mainly to attract traffic from brand words and to strengthen brand impression. When users see our products through keywords, combined with previous impressions, conversion will be improved .

The core of the first-tier operation lies in the control of traffic. Compared with the guiding factors of the landing page, the selection of keywords and the size of brand word traffic are the first priority. The traffic trend of brand words can be queried through Baidu Index, and the traffic of brand words can be increased through brand advertising, such as previous offline advertising, PR or event marketing . On the other hand, through a large amount of search exposure, users’ secondary searches are increased, achieving growth in brand terms. The specific operation method is relatively complicated and will not be described in detail here. You are welcome to communicate privately.

The selection of keywords is a rather complicated matter, and we need to have a certain estimate of the final model. Assuming that we expect the search traffic to be relatively stable three months later, which words will the traffic be distributed among in the end? What percentage of traffic comes from brand words? What percentage of traffic comes from core keywords? What percentage of the keywords are golden long-tail keywords ? Generally speaking, brand word traffic should eventually account for 10~20% of the total traffic. For example, if I spend 50,000 on searches a day, and the average click price is 5 yuan, the traffic is about 10,000. Then the brand word traffic should account for 1,000~2,000, and the core keywords cannot exceed 1/3 of the total traffic. Too much cost will be unbearable.

After we have a certain plan for traffic, we can start building an account. The entire account should be clear and complex, and the landing page delivery strategy should be clear. I won’t go into details. Just pay attention to daily consumption. For bidding ads, if you spend less money, the effect will definitely not be good because the scale is too small.

After the account was restructured and more than a month of debugging, Baidu's traffic increased by about 7 times, daily registrations increased from dozens to hundreds, and the registration cost was only half of the KPI. Moreover, the investment in mobile terminals is relatively weak because there is no good mobile website and the work on corporate WeChat accounts has been delayed, so there is a lot of room for the first echelon. Finally, I would like to point out that the payment ratio of the traffic brought by the first echelon is very high, which exceeds the payment conversion rate I estimated when I took over the project.

In addition to refining the keyword selection of the search channel, I also made many adjustments on the keyword landing page and planned multiple topics. Combining my previous experience, the topic must have a clear theme, a high degree of fit with the keywords, strong guidance, and a very grand and beautiful design. This is the premise. An ugly page will appear to be a copycat.

The second echelon is characterized by materials, which need to be continuously optimized and changed frequently to avoid aesthetic fatigue. In the copywriting, try to use scenario-based methods. For example, a certain financial product uses the slogan “If you haven’t bought a house at the age of 30, invest 100,000 yuan and pay the down payment in one year.” I suggest that you just let the agent handle this. The quantity is large, but the effect is average.

The third tier is the application market where the user quality is high, but the cost is also high. Similarly, you need to study the traffic distribution mechanism of the application market so that you know where to optimize. Downloads and comments not only have a great impact on conversion rate, but also affect your display chances. As the saying goes, exposure comes first, then everything else.

The fourth tier can be chosen optionally.

There are two types of traffic on WeChat. The first is to create content and gain fans. You can attract fans through professional content. After you have a large number of fans, you can attract fans to register through activities, and then guide them to pay. The second method is to ask a big V to forward it and directly obtain user registration. My understanding of the first way to create content is to find professionals. If you are in finance, you can find financial journalists to write it. If you are in the automotive industry , you can find automotive editors to write it. The focus of the content is depth, not writing style. Only in-depth articles can influence the target users, while joke articles can only attract attention. The second type requires refined operations, organizing into media libraries, classifications, and monitoring of the registration rates , registration costs, payment rates, renewal rates, etc. of different accounts. It is broken down into the number of article readings, reposts, likes, etc.

Back to the beginning, the essence of channel operation lies in strictly controlling the range of CAC and relying on refined operations to maximize the scale. For the best channels, we must maximize the traffic. When the traffic is maximized, blindly raising prices to increase traffic will only deepen the cost increase. This requires the cooperation of multiple channels, including strengthening PR and brand advertising, social marketing , and realizing product-effect interaction. Ultimately, we rely on user operations and product operations to tap into the user value brought by channel operations, and promote user sharing and dissemination, which ultimately leads to the influx of new users. This is the closed loop of the entire channel operation.

Mobile traffic is the general trend, however, there is still a lot of high-quality traffic on the PC side. We use various methods to guide users to the APP and WeChat. The specific methods are not described here (simple user operations and product operations can be achieved).

The methodology of channel operation is to find the target user group based on product characteristics and calculate CAC, so as to evaluate the feasibility of each channel, and finally carry out refined operations based on the traffic distribution mechanism of each channel.

What if it’s a social product? Do you still use search channels? CAC determines that it cannot be used, while the product's easy-to-spread nature determines that social marketing channels are the most suitable. The market must be leveraged from the user and product operation levels.

In fact, the selection of channels is similar, and the information in each industry is relatively transparent. Everyone knows which channel is good and which is bad, but why are the effects different? Putting aside brand factors, product experience, and user operations, in terms of pure front-end channel operations, refined operations are the key to success. The more detailed the channel operation system and the better the execution, the lower the CAC will be, and on this basis, more traffic can be captured.