Spending billions of dollars but still having no users, what is the key to user growth?

Recently, many people around me have come to me to talk about user growth , but everyone has different opinions. Some people say that user growth is "Growth hacking ", some people say that user growth is acquiring new users , and some people say that user growth needs to be divided into different methods , etc. There are many different opinions. Today I will talk about my understanding of user growth based on my own personal experience.

1. Effective user growth: deep integration of traditional classic marketing theory and Internet products

First of all, I believe that user growth must be based on a certain era and industry background;

Secondly, it is necessary to combine a certain user growth methodology and deeply integrate traditional classic marketing theories with Internet products in order to achieve effective user growth.

Simply put, user growth is neither traditional marketing nor simple Internet products and operations , but the product of the deep integration of the two, and it can only be established in a certain historical context.

For example, Didi Chuxing achieved user growth through red envelope sharing. In the mobile Internet era, a pure mobile Internet product, through innovation in marketing tools , grafted red envelope sharing onto the super APP WeChat , and enjoyed the explosive user growth brought about by the social dividend and the mobile Internet population dividend.

Below I will use the group buying industry that the author has personal experience in as an example to elaborate on my point of view.

2. Lessons from the Thousand Group Wars: Bet on the right trend and gain user growth most efficiently from fierce market competition

The word " group buying " runs through my career. I have grown up with the development, rise and fall of the entire industry. From 2010 to 2016, I worked in Qunar , Qihoo 360, and Baidu. I personally experienced and witnessed the rise and fall of this industry from different perspectives and positions. The stages can be divided into the following:

2010: The beginning of group buying

A number of websites such as Meituan , Manzuo, and Lashou were established one after another, imitating Groupon in the United States;

2011~2012: Thousands of Groups War

First, Wowotuan became famous through crazy mergers and acquisitions, and then Lashou burned through money like crazy to go public and then failed;

2012~2014: Three major players

Meituan.com, Dianping.com, and Baidu Nuomi are the three major players;

2014-2015: The Duopoly Era

In June 2015, Alibaba invested 6 billion to revive Koubei. In November, Meituan and Dianping merged to form New Meituan Dianping , and Tencent made a strategic investment.

2016-2017: Big changes in the industry

The industry has undergone tremendous changes, rapidly shifting from the local life service e-commerce battlefield to the mobile payment battlefield. The business model has also evolved from an e-commerce model to a financial model, a huge change from services to finance, and will continue for many years.

During this period, the industry has undergone tremendous changes. Along with the dramatic changes in the industry, the way of user growth has also undergone tremendous changes. From PC to mobile, from online to offline, from pure Internet to deep transformation of traditional industries, every dramatic change will bring new growth opportunities.

Mobile population dividend, social dividend, content dividend, information flow dividend, etc. Whoever can make the right choices in the fierce market competition environment when the external environment changes dramatically, grasp the development rhythm of the enterprise, and achieve sustainable growth will have the last laugh.

From 2010 to the first half of 2012, I was engaged in user growth work for group buying in the hotel and tourism vertical category at Qunar.com. At that time, it was still the PC Internet era, and the main transactions of group buying websites were made on the PC side. The main means of user growth still relied on PC channel delivery, such as: URL navigation, search engines , EDM, group buying navigation, etc.

At that time, mobile Internet was still in its infancy; EDM was the main means of transaction in the early days of group buying. In the United States, Groupon's orders completed through EDM accounted for more than 60% to 80%.

I also did a lot of EDM work at Qunar at the time. From that time on, we started to use this method to do precision marketing and user growth.

From 2012 to 2014, I worked at Qihoo 360 to increase the user base of the 360 ​​Group Buying Navigation open platform and was responsible for the traffic distribution of 360 Group Buying Navigation. I observed the development of the industry from the perspective of the platform. At that time, I could already see the final industry structure from the data.

I remember that what impressed me most at that time was the conversion rate from UV to transaction. Meituan ranked first with a staggering 30%. Dianping ranked second with 15%. Nuomi ranked third with only 5%. This basically laid the foundation for the future competitive landscape (the reasons why Meituan was able to achieve such a staggering conversion rate are explained in detail in my new book “Exploding User Growth”).

In 2012, the overall number of purchasing users in the group buying industry showed "zero growth" . According to statistics, the monthly number of purchasers in the group buying industry has always hovered around 40 million and has not increased. This record was maintained for more than a year.

At this time, the development of mobile Internet brought new hope to the entire industry.

Local life services themselves have extremely strong LBS attributes, and mobile group buying is more suitable for the user's purchasing environment. The user's purchasing habits have changed from advance purchase to instant purchase and instant consumption, and even purchase after consumption when paying the bill.

With the development of mobile Internet, user growth has shifted from pure online to online and offline linkage, from first-tier cities to channel sinking, penetrating into fourth- and fifth-tier cities and even lower-level cities, which has once again rapidly increased the user growth of the entire industry.

In the second half of 2014, I was fortunate to be invited to Baidu to be responsible for the user growth of Baidu Nuomi. During my time at Nuomi, I was responsible for the growth of C-end users, B-end users, the growth of overall sales performance in cities, and the growth of category sales performance.

Participated in several major projects that helped Baidu Nuomi achieve a leapfrog growth in daily peak sales from tens of millions to hundreds of millions.

With the cooperation of various teams, we have achieved a successful turnaround from lagging behind to becoming the number one market share in many cities. On this basis, I have built a complete urban user growth system from users to merchants, from cities to business districts, and from categories to stores.

During my time at Baidu, the mobile Internet was experiencing explosive growth, and the sales share of group buying websites on PC and mobile devices underwent a drastic change.

It took less than two years for the PC to go from having an absolute advantage at the beginning to having less than 10% of the market share in the end.

During this stage, user growth mainly comes from the mobile application market , manufacturer pre-installation, offline promotion and category expansion. Both user growth channels and growth methods have undergone tremendous changes with the advent of mobile Internet.

After experiencing practical growth in multiple positions at Baidu, I have a more comprehensive vision and a deeper perspective to summarize how Internet companies should achieve "growth" .

In my new book, “Exploding User Growth”, I summarize this user growth journey like this:

During the wireless process, the structure of user groups has changed greatly. Group buying has become a standard feature of offline life services. The user group has expanded from a group that mainly pursues cheapness to a group that mainly pursues convenience of use, and the industry penetration rate has been greatly improved.

Meituan.com was one of the first companies to try wireless group buying. They focused their subsidies on mobile devices and even decisively cut all traffic purchase costs on the PC side when there was still a large amount of traffic on the PC side. They invested all of it on the mobile side, grasped the major changes in the strategic customer base, quickly kept up with the pace of wireless Internet development, and caught up with the growth dividend brought by the expansion of the user group brought by the development of mobile Internet.

In 2013, the transaction volume of group buying on Meituan.com via mobile phones accounted for 50% of the total transaction volume. By 2016, the wireless portion accounted for more than 90%.

Against the backdrop of dramatic changes in the Internet environment, the entire industry has also experienced a crazy money-burning subsidy war: various subsidy wars from the merchant side to the user side, and has also experienced category expansion: from movie categories and catering categories to all categories of local life services, creating a one-stop local life service e-commerce platform.

The form of products has also gone through innovative explorations from set meals to vouchers to mobile payment with discounts, as well as online seat selection, food delivery, door-to-door services, etc., which are constantly in line with the changes in the external environment and user needs. As shown in the figure below, taking Meituan as an example, how to achieve user growth through product innovation based on industry changes and user needs:

Looking back from 2010 to 2016, the development of the entire industry is a classic business drama about "user growth".

3. Looking at user growth from the perspective of the Internet finance trend: a multi-dimensional and changing system

In 2016, Baidu Nuomi began to transform and integrate with the search system. At this time, I returned to my old employer Qihoo 360 and was responsible for the user growth of "Your Wealth", the wealth management platform of 360 Financial Group. This stage is the golden time for the rapid development of the Internet finance industry.

With the birth of Yu'e Bao in 2013, it experienced explosive growth in 2014, with the scale of management reaching 570 billion yuan. By 2017, the scale of management exceeded one trillion yuan, making it the world's largest money market fund.

Yu'ebao ushered in the first year of Internet financial management for Chinese people, and at the same time, it also promoted the rapid development of the entire Internet financial industry.

From the beginning of 2016 to date, I have built from scratch the user growth system of 360 Financial Group's "Your Wealth", including: channel customer acquisition, user conversion and retention , activity growth system, user referral system and full-process management of the user life cycle .

This period also coincided with the explosion of mobile social dividends, and many Internet companies took advantage of the social dividends to achieve explosive growth. Some excellent Internet financial companies have also seized this wave of social dividends and achieved rapid user growth.

At the same time, the sources and methods of channels are also undergoing tremendous changes. The explosion of information flow advertising , short videos , live broadcasts and other content platforms have become platforms that occupy a relatively long period of user time. Content-based advertising represented by WeChat public accounts has become precise advertising. The means and forms of user growth have once again changed with the changes in these external environments.

Therefore, what I want to express is that "user growth" is a multi-dimensional system, which is how I defined it in "Exploding User Growth".

The user growth system includes a series of internal factors such as channels, products, data, brands, activities, users, and supply. It is also a constantly changing process to make the right market strategy, product strategy, operation strategy, and channel strategy in the external environment and competitive conditions to ultimately achieve user growth.

Regarding the group buying industry, I boldly predict that in the next three years, finance and content should be the driving forces for user growth.

The point of this book is: start with the end in mind, growth is not the end, but the beginning. Growth is a long and continuous process, and is also the result of a combination of multi-dimensional factors. User growth is only the first step. We must continue to operate for users, continuously guide user growth through product innovation, building user stickiness, and other means, and establish a complete and scientific growth system.