How to promote products to gain more users and traffic?

An old friend of mine from the media industry started a business in the field of self-media and quickly obtained 10 million in financing , becoming a new benchmark in the industry. These days we have made an appointment to have a deep discussion at one place about how to promote and how to get more users and traffic .

This question is not only the one that self-media encounters and is asked the most frequently, but it is also the issue that companies are most concerned about today. It’s hard to answer every time. It’s not something that can be solved by editing or operational skills . There are too many changes and adjustments. This time, I had an in-depth chat with this old friend about my personal insights on how to generate self-media traffic and users. It just so happens that we had a deep discussion about this last time, and it is very representative, so let’s review it together. It may not be correct, but just use it as a reference.

The first time was last year. He had just formed a team and launched his first content. He was anxious to promote it, so he prepared a large sum of money and found us (I was the vice president of Weibo, a large and good social media communication company in China). I thought about it and replied:

You don't need to prepare any money for promotion, and in fact you don't need to. In the first stage, if you make good use of yourself, it will be enough to explode.

I suggested that he just seek collaboration from within his own network .

He has been in the media industry for many years, and his friends are all senior executives or key players in major media circles. The assistance of these people was enough to make his carefully prepared content a hit. It's that simple.

Once this stage is completed, we can talk about how to promote it later.

Things went as expected, and the first issue of content received millions of views. Soon investors came and financing was in place.

After a period of time, the content became more exciting and attentive, but the traffic only decreased and did not increase. The old friend was a little puzzled, so he came to meet again, and this latest conversation revolved around this background.

My new suggestion to him is: adjust the strategy to focus on the users.

In fact, the first suggestion is the simplest "traffic thinking" or traffic strategy. You only need to cover multiple core media platforms and get recommended to get good traffic.

Usually, traffic thinking relies on BD (business cooperation) to find support and expand partners to form a huge external "traffic pool". No one has more senior resources than this old friend - he is the biggest BD, and the content is exciting enough to support such a collaboration.

However, the “traffic pool” approach has several natural limitations:

• KPI restrictions of the platform. Any traffic platform will evaluate its own traffic conversion . For example, if recommending celebrity entertainment content to 1,000 people can get 600 clicks, and recommending serious and professional content to them can only get 50 click conversions, they will obviously choose celebrity entertainment content without hesitation. Over time, the BD advantage will still disappear. As the saying goes: You can't give face every day.
• Restrictions on cooperation. The content that platforms naturally want to obtain is exclusive cooperation, rather than being everywhere. This is a huge conflict as the traffic pool requires extensive cooperation.

These restrictions will cause Laoyou to gradually lose its traffic advantage. Therefore, the "traffic pool" must quickly switch to the "user pool" approach - that is, the user thinking just mentioned.

Insert a digression: Luo Zhenyu of Luoji Siwei mentioned this some time ago, saying that the traffic pool thinking is no longer effective and this approach should be abandoned.

Fatty Luo is super smart and he saw the key right away. The problem is, if we abandon this way of playing, what way of playing can we take over? He didn't say anything else, but turned around and started playing " Get ". In fact, the successor gameplay is the "user pool". It seems that Lao Luo is playing like this.

What is a User Pool?

In the past two years, when I was writing "The Small Group Effect", I retrieved the data on users and traffic obtained by most apps from social networks , as well as the data on users' sharing destinations, and found a common point: 70-80% of users shared to "groups and friends" . What about the past? In the past, circle of friends ranked first. Users prefer to chat, share and discuss in their own small circles. In these circles, users have stronger trust and influence, which leads to stronger conversions and higher active retention .

Each small circle is a small pool, a small user pool.

Another corresponding data is: the value brought by fans is getting higher and higher, helping self-media to earn more and more money. On average, one fan of an excellent self-media outlet can bring in 400-500 yuan in revenue per year. This is a very ideal state - since 2016, the socialization of self-media has been in full swing, and this factor has a lot to do with it.

Interestingly, these small circles are closed.

The relationship chain has erected a natural barrier. The wind can come in, the rain can come in, but public relations cannot come in, and the information that the company hopes to spread and disseminate cannot come in. However, the results that companies/self-media hope to achieve, such as traffic, revenue, conversions, etc., depend precisely on these small circles. How can we turn users who read the information once and then never care about it into disseminators, spreading the information to their small circle, encouraging them to actively discuss and participate, and bring their friends back again? This question has been answered since the birth of social networks - to form relationships between users, fans and companies/self-media.

It’s just that fans’ requirements for “relationships” are changing too quickly. Now, the relationship has become a "small circle".

Do not, do not, do not underestimate this change. It is fatal. All of a sudden, the way social networks are played has changed completely, and many of the previous strategies, gameplay, and understandings have to be rebuilt from the ground up.

The essence of traffic strategy is "conversion", and behind it is a typical funnel model . Enterprises obtain more traffic through purchasing, BD, marketing and other strategies, and use operational techniques to settle and retain users layer by layer, but every time the user takes a step down, a large part will be lost, just like a funnel.

Another major background is that traffic has become increasingly expensive and the benefits of new users are gone. With the decline of communication channels including print media and television, paying for traffic and cheap channels are becoming increasingly unrealistic - the basis of traffic strategies are gradually disappearing.

How to Play with the User Pool

The so-called "traffic pool" gameplay becomes the "user pool" gameplay, which refers to how companies and self-media make good use of every fan and discover the small circles behind them - this is actually a typical community logic, with the role of an "amplifier" behind it.

Amplifier has always been the core function of social networks, but today communities have taken over the baton. Each user attracts more users through sharing and trust endorsement. Therefore, every additional hardcore user is equivalent to adding a huge "user pool".

The traffic strategy is the funnel, and the user strategy is the amplifier.

This change was mentioned in the preface of "The Small Group Effect" and the foreword written by the big guys: in the future, the "user pool" gameplay or user gameplay will become one of the core strategies to dominate market communication and promotion.

There are some simple rules to be found when using the "user pool" approach or the user approach. I suggested three steps to my friend:

The first is to break the ice

Browsing is the simplest action, and letting users generate something is the beginning of their becoming more active.

In a product, giving users something to do will make them more active. How to guide users and fans to take the first ice-breaking action? And what to do? It depends on the team's planning.

Usually, participating in a discussion (writing a comment), taking part in a survey, voting, encouraging attention, etc. are common ice-breaking actions.

Breaking the ice also includes breaking the ice of relationships. How to establish a certain relationship between users and companies/ brands /content is also an issue worth considering. Once this is expanded, it will become a huge topic.

The second is the user pool

Behind the user pool is a simple question: what feelings or benefits does the user get from the content that motivates him to share it.

Only by sharing can you enter the small circle - the better and more solid the content, the more advantage you will have in this regard. There are many strategies to encourage sharing, and in social networking, there are six major driving forces that are most used. They are profit-driven, honor-driven, relationship-driven, event-driven, region-driven, and interest-driven.

The third is the advanced mechanism

Users take ice-breaking actions and share, but this is a one-time relationship, only slightly better than browsing behavior. Another strategy and mechanism is needed to keep users engaged. The advanced mechanism is to solve this problem.

There are several common solutions:

1. For example, benefit-driven strategies often combine benefits to advance. A typical strategy is to get as much benefit as the number of friends you invite.
2. It is an advanced level driven by honor. The typical strategy is that the more contributions you make, the more honor you will get.
3. It is a common operation advancement method, such as how long you are active and what title you get;

These three thoughts combined can solve big problems.

The author of this article @徐志斌 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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