From 0-1, how to transform commercial product operations?

The author of this article selected several job responsibilities related to commercial product operations from recruitment websites for interpretation. See how to transform commercial product operations from 0-1?

Several reasons for writing this article:

1. There is almost no relevant information about commercial product operations on the Internet;
2. Product commercialization is an inevitable choice for enterprises to survive after the Internet dividend gradually declines;
3. It is stated that commercial product operation is a job that we will come into contact with on a daily basis and is not that difficult. It is a good direction for future transformation.

To engage in commercial operations, one generally needs to have more than 3-5 years of relevant work experience. Therefore, campus recruits and operators with less years of work experience rarely have the opportunity to come into contact with this position. As a result, this position does not have as broad a mass base as new media operations , user operations , etc., making it seem even more mysterious.

I copied down several job responsibilities related to commercial product operations from recruitment websites and interpreted them.

“Plan the pace of commercial activities, be responsible for the design and development of operational activities, and be responsible for the KPI of turnover”

Here are a few things you can learn from this recruitment document :

(1) Understand the commercial activities

For the fission courses that are common in the circle of friends , preparations for post-launch operations and promotions must be made during the activity design and development phase. The first wave of promotion is through seed users , the second wave is through major WeChat and QQ groups, the third wave is through WeChat public accounts , the fourth wave is through friendship promotion by big Vs , and soft articles are released to ignite topics and guide self-propagation. If you have this experience, you can also make corresponding copies.

When it comes to commercial activities, what remains unchanged are the purpose of the activity, audience positioning, channel selection, brand display, creative design, online promotion, public opinion monitoring, and analysis and review. What matters more is the control over ROI, such as how much each wave of promotion costs, the value brought by each key action, and the expected revenue. The control over the details of money will be higher.

For some partners who have worked in operations at large group companies, one of their main tasks is to sort out and schedule internal resources before developing and launching an event. For example: there are multiple apps within the group, as well as some websites and public account matrices. You need to make appointments with these product lines for resource scheduling based on the time when the product is launched and promoted, and the day on which you hope to reach a peak, and produce corresponding promotional materials based on the schedule you can apply for.

Even the operations team did not conduct a business calculation on the resources required for this event, and instead viewed such resource coordination as routine internal support.

When it comes to promoting commercial activities, detailed settlement must be done for each promotion. If you use the homepage banner of another product within the group, you need to calculate clearly what the price is for placing this banner with external advertisers, or what its UV value is.

For example: I was previously responsible for the operation of an App. This App had not yet taken over the homepage banner advertisement, but the company’s marketing department wanted to use this banner and hoped that we would give them a quote.

There happened to be an advertisement on the banner that directed traffic to our own product’s WeChat official account. I calculated a preliminary banner price based on how many people the banner directed to the official account every day, the price of a single active user of this type of official account, and the subsequent registration conversion of users of the WeChat official account. I made a slight upward adjustment on this basis, and that was the quotation I gave to the marketing department.

It is not difficult to launch commercial activities, but you need to fully understand the market conditions and choose from the many resources at your disposal. The basis for selection is data support, but the data cannot rely solely on the data provided by the other party. You need to verify it from multiple sources.

(2) Have worked in event operations , understand prototypes and requirements, and can follow up on development

Partners who have worked in event operations and product operations should have used Sketch and Axure to make event prototypes, write requirement documents, and follow up on event design, development, testing and launch. Other positions such as new media operations and user operations also require you to do some small activities and small designs on your own to a greater or lesser extent. So these modules are experiences that can be completely replicated.

I have indeed met colleagues who have been working for 3 years but still don't know how to use Axure. They use PPT to make diagrams. The tool is really just a means to help us improve efficiency. As the saying goes, "It's always good to have many skills", so mastering one more tool is also adding value to yourself. This part belongs to the general operation content and will not be elaborated in detail.

(3) Have certain qualifications, have done indicator analysis, and can be responsible for business data

When you get a large business indicator, your main task is to break down the indicator into the proportion that each team needs to complete, and specifically divide it into which data indicator each person is responsible for.

The most difficult thing now is to hear the leader wave his hand and say: Complete 100 million this month. When you hear it, you immediately become anxious and tell the leader that this is impossible, it is very difficult, etc. If you are unhappy, your leader will be unhappy too.

Operations have always been at the forefront of the business. When you first enter the industry, you may not have much concept of indicators. For example: as a partner in community operation, seeing users being active makes you have a lot of fun yourself. Gradually, after you get the hang of it, the company will have requirements for the number of posts in the community and the number of replies to each post. Then comes the commercialization part. How much revenue can each of your posts bring to the platform? The turnover KPI of this community needs you to set and bear it.

So, when you get an indicator, don't be in a hurry, break it down first. For example: this month's target is 100 million. Based on the current traffic of the platform, we can guarantee a minimum of 6 million. The key point is how to achieve an incremental 4 million on this basis. You need to sort out the existing traffic on the platform that has not been fully utilized, as well as the new monetization projects that the platform can undertake.

The second one is easy to say. You can find such projects based on the attributes of the platform. The focus is on the first one, which is also the place that best reflects the operational capabilities. You need to sort out the areas where you can increase the value of traffic, what means you can use to increase traffic in these areas, what support is needed, and who in the team is more suitable. You need to think about these things.

This does not mean that you have to be a team leader to do these things. A very important ability in operations is the ability to break down problems and the subsequent coordination and promotion of resources.

In addition, you can optimize key product links and promote market investment to achieve turnover KPIs.

“Sensitive to data, able to identify advertiser delivery issues and optimize based on exposure, click, conversion and other data”

This recruitment copy shows that commercial operations have relatively high data requirements, which is understandable. A company needs money to survive, and every point related to money is important.

As far as I know, many operating partners do not look at the data in the early stages. They feel that what they do is very miscellaneous and chaotic, and they don’t know what contributions they have made. The data does not seem to have much to do with them.

One of the new graduates I am teaching this year is the one who, when he comes to work every day, he will first deal with some of the work that was planned yesterday. I told him to look at the data first to see if there are any abnormalities in each link, and then start the specific work. If the data is not correct, the execution work you do will only be ineffective.

Three types of data and their application value in data-driven operations:

(1) Business data

Used to monitor business progress and health, such as conversion rate , number of paying users , sales, churn rate, etc. Business data is the most core and basic of these three types of data.

The core meaning is that as long as we have business data, we can do daily user reach work, for example: you can do a rough recall of users who have lost in a certain link. But this data is very basic, because you don’t know the characteristics of the lost users and cannot reach them in a refined and targeted manner.

(2) User behavior data

The actions taken by users are used to analyze users’ specific growth paths and user behavior characteristics. Such as the entire experience process of a new user after entering the product, and the user's usage of a specific function.

User behavior data alone is of no reference value. Only by associating user behavior data with business data can we know whether the user's use of a certain function is conducive to increasing business volume.

For example: Usually, paying users are the ones who complete their personal information first after entering the product. After knowing this behavioral data, you can guide users to complete their personal information.

(3) User basic data

User basic data is actually individual data used to portray user portraits and label users. Gender, age, region, preferences, occupation, etc.

For a startup company, basic data must be the last data to be paid attention to, because it is necessary to accumulate enough data samples to build a user portrait, and a startup company does not have such a user base.

Secondly, these data are provided to operations for refined operations, and they cannot be considered refined in the initial stage. However, as an enterprise grows slowly and hopes to build a good operation system, basic data is indispensable.

If you have accepted several advertisers, you can test each of them by placing them in the first screen banner for one day or by pushing the same amount of users for testing. You may find that the exposure rates of the ads are similar.

However, ad A has the best click rate, and ad B has the best conversion rate, so you need to analyze the degree of compatibility between the user group and the ad you are targeting, whether the material of ad A is more appealing to people to click on, and whether ad B brings more effective value to product users.

Then decide which positions, which advertisers to give, and how to assist advertisers in gaining exposure and converting traffic. The above mainly depends on the calculation of UV value and ROI.

“Have a deep understanding of the system and product logic of Internet advertising , and understand the promotion needs of Internet advertisers”

Under this recruitment copy, what I want to sort out for you is the current Internet advertising ecosystem. Many people have heard of CPC and PPC. These are charging methods or payment models for Internet advertising. All these payment methods are nested under the Internet advertising ecosystem.

First, clarify a few concepts:

1. Advertiser: A person who wants to advertise his or her own product.
2. Media (traffic source): the carrier for advertising.
3. Advertiser: A person who brings together advertisers and media businesses, commonly known as an intermediary.
4. Audience: People who consume the advertisement.

(1) Ad Network

In the early days, advertisers would find some media platforms with relatively large traffic, but platforms with smaller traffic but good user quality were ignored. There are many of these long-tail platforms, and their combined traffic is also huge.

Then Ad Networks emerged, acting as intermediaries and taking all media platforms under their control. If advertisers want to advertise, they only need to negotiate the price with the Ad Network.

This model helps niche platforms gain profits and reduces the workload for advertisers in looking for media. However, a problem gradually emerged. There were more and more Ad Networks, and they were mixed with good and bad ones. The workload for advertisers to select media platforms increased again.

The media platforms that originally had the most say no longer have it, and pricing and cooperation rules are all set by Ad Networks. Advertisers find that their input-output ratio is getting worse and worse, and all they get is some long-tail traffic. So, Ad Exchange came into being.

(2) AD Exchange

Ad Exchange not only brings all media platforms under its umbrella, but also absorbs Ad Network. In addition to advertisers seeking ad space on Ad Exchange, different Ad Networks will also purchase ad space for promotion in order to increase their own traffic.

The biggest difference between Ad Exchange and Ad Network is that they use "real-time bidding" (RTB). For example, if I pay 0.1 yuan per click more than you to purchase the same ad space on a CPC basis , then I can get the ad space, and I can decide whether to stop using the ad space in time based on real-time data performance.

It seems that this model is already perfect, but now many Ad Exchanges have gradually emerged, and advertisers can only place ads based on location. These locations "look" better, but it is unknown who the users are behind them and whether the groups match the target audience of the ads. At this time, DSP was born.

(3) DSP (demand-side-platform)

In DSP, the concept of tens of thousands of ad spaces disappears. Advertisers no longer need to search for ads among thousands, because behind each ad space corresponds a group of users with specific attributes. Advertisers no longer buy ad spaces, but target users .

As an advertising space, the system will automatically match what kind of users you need and how many you need. There is also a DMP (data management platform) behind this. The DSP itself may not have enough data to support program automation, so it needs to access external data. How the DMP obtains data will not be elaborated here.

“Responsible for the innovation of business models and exploring new revenue growth points”

This is something that real commercial product operations need to explore in depth, and it is also the biggest difference from all the above requirements. It seems more like something that product managers should do, and this is also the difference between product operations and other operations.

In a mature enterprise, they may not easily try commercialization, because every company has its own mission and vision, and its products have their own tone. In this case, whether to commercialize and what kind of commercialization attempts to make are all things that need to be repeatedly considered. If the decision is made to commercialize, operations staff need to think about how to quickly advance commercialization and conduct verification without interfering with the existing user experience .

Commercialization is not a very abstract word. To put it in a lower dimension, for example: your company is a weather tool app, and an advertiser of sunscreen wants to put an ad on your product. You need to consider whether to conduct targeted display and conduct effectiveness testing based on weather conditions, user's region, gender, etc. This will then promote the official launch of this advertisement, which is also called commercialization.

In general, the common directions of commercial operations are as follows:

(1) Membership type

There is a direct difference between the membership type and the value-added service type. For example, Taobao 88VIP, which came out in recent days, is a membership service, and the membership service of the Little Black Fish App, etc. The starting point of the entire service is to purchase a membership.

If you understand the concept of membership as a platform, then all gameplay is based on having members. Commercial product operations need to think about how to stimulate users to purchase memberships, and more directly, think about what attractive services you can provide under the membership system .

The micro-businesses in the circle of friends are a textbook example of the membership system, which continuously develops second- and third-level members to form multi-level distribution. Have you noticed that as a micro-businessman, you may not sell a single facial mask, but this does not prevent you from making money. Because you can develop your next level of members, they will give you a certain percentage of the membership fees they pay.

I previously built a public account from 0 to 1 with more than 100,000 followers. For a while, I was anxious about the revenue, so I launched a membership activity: all paying users can join a QQ group, and a variety of services are provided to everyone in the group. However, the follow-up services did not keep up, and we received a lot of complaints from users.

After learning from my failures, I lowered the charging threshold and clearly stated the services that I can provide 100% to everyone. In the subsequent service process, I introduced new knowledge content with consumer attributes in the form of member discounts to guide users to buy, which achieved better conversion effects. Moreover, members will feel their own dignity and sense of identity, which will indirectly attract more people to apply to join the membership group.

For membership-based business operations, you can start by learning about user incentive systems , user model building, points systems , etc. It is important to emphasize that membership-based business operations are not one-time operations, but rather targeted operations using membership as the dividing line, targeting potential points during the long-term service process before users become members and after they become members.

(2) Pricing strategy

Products with pricing strategies are more likely to be platform products. For example, Qunar.com and Rong360.com do not sell products themselves, but they provide users with products that best meet their conditions by comparing data from the entire network and earn commissions from them.

Behind the simple phrase "provide users with products that best meet their requirements" is the product's attributes, sales, positive reviews, price, and the advertising costs of the advertisers behind the products. If you directly present the products with the most advertisements to users, it is obviously unreasonable and users will leave your platform.

When I was working in operations at Qunar, one thing I had to do every day was to check the inventory and prices of our private room hotels. If I found that the lowest price for a hotel retrieved on our platform came from Ctrip (which had not yet merged at the time), I would make timely adjustments. The adjustments can be made by lowering prices on our own, promoting business communication with hotels, or adjusting search strategies.

Strategic business operations have certain requirements for search recommendations, data-driven, anti-fraud, product logical thinking, etc., and you can start from these aspects.

(3) Advertising

Advertising is known as the most brutal form of business operation, but in fact, advertising is not that simple. A business partner once told me: "In business, you don't have to touch the data or the business. The key is to be able to brag and give your own resources to advertisers. That's easy."

In fact, many companies are doing this, and there is only one dimension to assess whether an advertisement is accepted: money.

We are operations, and operations require understanding of the business, data, and our users. On this basis, we no longer just look at money. We need to see whether the tone of the advertisement and the product are consistent, whether the users of our products are the advertising audience group, and how to display it without affecting the user experience or the core business logic of the product.

I have done advertising integration several times, and at the beginning, I didn’t really understand it. The other party said that they would put their download guide material on our product’s banner for one day, and also put our App’s download guide material on their banner for one day.

Finally, we found that the download volume was very small. Originally, the average PV of this banner was about 3 times per user per day, but after posting this material, it was less than 1 time.

When we worked together again later, we jointly launched an H5 campaign, which featured the core services of the two products on the H5 page , and guided users to complete designated tasks in the two apps in order to receive corresponding material rewards. The two apps promoted this H5 together, and the effect was significantly improved.

When doing advertising-based business operations, the most important thing is to understand the needs of advertisers and how to advance this simple and direct demand in a refined direction that is easily accepted by users.

(4) Value-added service type

Value-added services are exclusive services provided to certain specific users under the condition that the existing business is relatively mature. These services can be purchased or obtained by completing specified actions.

Here we need to expand the concept of commercialization: commercialization is not only about services that generate direct revenue, sometimes guiding users to complete designated actions can also indirectly generate revenue, a typical example being Baidu promotion , where the platform charges advertisers based on user ad clicks.

The existing products and services on the Internet can basically meet more than 99% of the needs of most users, but not everyone needs value-added services. White-collar workers often go to 7-11 and FamilyMart to buy things. Sometimes, in order to clear out some unpopular items, these convenience stores will say when you check out: "Add 2 yuan and you can get a bottle of XX drink." These are value-added services. Does everyone need them?

No.

With the upgrading of consumption, there are always people who want better services, such as: Maimai membership, which can highlight one's status and increase the upper limit of adding friends; for example: Evernote membership, which can increase storage space, image search and other services.

Not everyone needs these, but these value-added services do not conflict with the product business itself. They are scalable businesses that are explored and derived from existing businesses. Moreover, value-added services can enrich product scenarios.

(5) E-commerce

We are often surprised that some companies can continue to obtain financing or even go public despite years of losses. The reason is that they have the ability to continuously generate traffic.

I used to work for an online education company, where I was involved in the operation of several tool apps. The main function of these tool apps was to increase the depth of the group's traffic pool and then direct this traffic to other e-commerce product lines within the group.

Tool-type products have inherent advantages in e-commerce monetization: scenario-based and personalization.

Because of the unique attributes of tool products, these users are easy to define, and we know what they might like and in what scenarios they might shop. And use these tools to understand the personalized characteristics of users, and thus make e-commerce recommendations that are among the top thousands of people.

For example: When a user is memorizing words, recommend an article to tell him how to memorize words more effectively. The article can also recommend some equipment for memorizing words, such as desk lamps, noise-canceling headphones, notepads, etc. E-commerce traffic diversion is not simply H5 jump or waking up the e-commerce app, there are more content-based parts.

Everyone has the desire to consume. If existing businesses and e-commerce can be effectively combined, it can enhance the imagination space of products and provide more support for the expansion of product scenarios.

Regarding commercial product operations, I personally think that the threshold is not very high, and operational experience in other fields is also applicable. Think more in your daily work and pay more attention to relevant cases in the industry. Everyone can make commercial attempts.