Three ways to increase users in the second half of Internet finance!

The development of Internet finance has entered the second half, and life is difficult for everyone.

The growth rate of overseas listed mutual finance stocks so far this year (2018.6.25)

The recent Lianbi Finance and Tang Xiaoseng, Shanlin Finance at the beginning of the year, and the earlier Qianbao and Kuailu, all have run away one after another, impacting investors ' confidence, which is ultimately reflected in the business, that is, funds and users continue to be withdrawn from the Internet finance industry. Coupled with the 3.2.1 clause of the APP Store's review of financial apps and the transformation of custodian banks, there are a lot of headaches - in other words, user growth is not easy.

It is difficult for grassroots platforms, and it is not easy for financial institutions with golden reputations either. After the introduction of the new asset management regulations, it has become imperative to break the rigid guarantee and break the maturity mismatch. Coupled with the prohibition on money market funds increasing their scale, the restriction of a 10,000 yuan cap on quick redemption of money market funds, and the incorporation of payment institutions into China UnionPay, the online finance departments of many small and medium-sized brokerages and the e-commerce departments of fund companies have begun to shrink, with comprehensive tightening from budget to compilation. At the same time, the work of direct bank connections, customer retention, and system transformation has not been reduced at all - the landlord has no surplus food.

A few days ago, I posted a message on WeChat Moments :

Many friends left comments below, thinking I was going to change jobs - but in fact, what I wanted to talk about was the mentality when facing a downturn in the industry.

Around 2013-2014, when people talked about Internet finance, it was synonymous with high salaries, innovation, and high returns. A large group of people could be attracted by just putting up a flagpole. Since 2016, the entire Internet finance industry has been gloomy, with compliance constraints internally and traffic becoming more expensive externally. When people heard that fission was effective in acquiring customers, they all rushed to do fission. When they heard that TikTok was very popular, they all rushed to open accounts and shoot videos. The scene was just like when everyone suddenly rushed into the carriage for no apparent reason at the train station in the early years. If you think with your heels instead of your brain, the end result will be that you will be led into a pit by the people in front of you.

In my opinion, the most effective strategies for user growth in the second half of Internet finance are the following three:

When doing financial business, you must first have cyclical thinking. You can make money in the up cycle, but you must also be able to take hits in the down cycle. You don't have to remember what the Kitchin cycle, Juglar cycle, and Kuznets cycle of financial and economic cycles mean, but you need to understand that money and people are like the tides, with ebbs and flows, and financial conditions and financial asset prices will change with the ebbs and flows of the tides. If you want to gain a foothold in this industry, then you should learn how to breathe and swim well. If you want to chase the trend and maximize your personal gains, then you can change lanes. New retail, artificial intelligence , and blockchain are all good choices.

Always remember that focus is the result of rational choice based on abundant options.

Regarding the nature of finance, I agree most with the following two experts:

Professor Chen Zhiwu defined that the key to success is "risk-return-liquidity". When it comes to increasing the number of Internet finance users, this is the cornerstone of the work framework, whether it is products or operations . I have explained this many times in the courses I shared before, so I won’t repeat it here.

The latter definition can be understood as a summary of the career development paths of Internet finance professionals:

From another perspective, when it comes to the growth of mutual finance users, you can have a new perspective:

Everyone is familiar with the word "science", but when it comes to its definition, probably few people can clearly explain it. Here is a paragraph of Baidu's explanation:

Science refers to learning in different disciplines, and later refers to studying various knowledge through detailed classification (such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc.) to form a gradually complete knowledge system . It is a science about discovery, invention, creation and practice. It is a general term for the knowledge system of human exploration, research and understanding of the laws of change of all things in the universe.

Science is a system of ordered knowledge based on testable explanations and predictions about the form and organization of reality.

In general, there are three core points:

It is necessary to be able to grasp every node of user conversion according to the user's conversion funnel, and then subdivide the large node into several small nodes, sort out each node one by one, and solve each problem one by one. In the previous article "Growth Logic Based on User Behavior : Touching Operational Strategies 03", the content about funnel splitting has been mentioned, so I will not repeat it here. Additionally, break down your metrics based on the growth levers you have available to you. For example, active users = new users + current active users + recall of lost users , which is a meaningful way of splitting.

The split is to better form synergy. Whether it is the AARRR model or the universal formula of e-commerce (GMV= UV conversion rate average order value), no matter which industry you are working on for growth, you must have your own effective framework system. This is often the difference between a product manager/operation manager and a product director/ operation director .

There is no universal growth formula in this world, nor is there a one-step growth strategy. Modern medicine emphasizes "large-sample randomized double-blind controlled trials". Based on this system, the FDA has its own requirements for the approval of new drugs from phase 1 to phase 3. This is why food and drug supervision and administration departments in many countries fully trust the FDA's approval results. When it comes to user growth, no matter what ideas and strategies you come up with, they must be verified or falsified through AB testing, repeated iterations, and optimization. You can think of the various methods shared by Internet celebrities as shortcuts, but whether they work or not you have to test them yourself to know for sure.

Overall, I strongly agree with the " Growth Hacker Cycle" model proposed by Sean Ellis: from analyzing data and proposing insights, forming experimental ideas, prioritizing experiments to running experiments, this is a complete cycle. All you have to do is find the basic framework of your industry, and then keep reusing and iterating this model.

The Growth Hacking Cycle (Sean Ellis)

The editor once proposed a set of life algorithms:

• Achievement = core algorithm × the square of a large number of repeated actions.

According to this logic, you can form your own set of user growth algorithms:

• User growth = growth hacking cycle × a large number of repeated actions squared.