Customer acquisition methodology: How to attract new users at a lower cost?

No matter it is an emerging industry like bike-sharing or an old industry like payment, attracting new customers is always ongoing. Attracting new customers, retention , activity, conversion , loss, activation, etc. are the whole process of operation . Attracting new customers is the first step. If it is not done well, the product will lack soul. The soul is the user. Without users, no matter how refined and perfect the product is, it will be meaningless. Attracting new users is so important. As a qualified operator in the new era, how should we attract new users?

The following is an outline of this article:

1. Accurately reach users and provide sufficient exposure

1. Accurate advertising

Advertising expenditures of some listed companies ( data source: financial reports)

There is no product that is completely without advertising . From the table we can see that even Kweichow Moutai, China's national liquor, which has won 15 international gold medals since 1915, requires large advertising investments. According to statistics from Wind Information Data, the total advertising and promotion expenses of domestic listed companies in 2014 totaled 65.929 billion yuan. Even industry giants are still continuously investing in advertisements to increase user awareness of their brands. What reason do we have to expect to acquire customers without investing a penny?

Advertising is a very necessary means of promotion and reach. Advertising must be delivered accurately enough . Instead of blindly pursuing delivery on large -traffic platforms, it is better to allocate part of the funds to invest in vertical small and medium-sized platforms, conduct multi-frequency, multi-cycle, and small-scale testing, and then deliver the results steadily and accurately.

Here is a list of online mobile Internet traffic distribution channels (incomplete version)

Before deciding to invest large amounts of money in advertising, you must conduct testing . Without testing, you will never know which platform has the best traffic and is most suitable for your product at a certain stage. From a broad perspective, large platforms have large and scattered traffic and are more suitable for search advertising. Vertical platforms must also comprehensively consider the delivery of various competing products in the industry, and the conversion rate of multiple companies on a vertical platform is rarely effective.

In addition to online advertising, there is also offline advertising. Subway and bus stations, community and campus notice boards, media scrolling screens, elevators and windows in shopping malls and office buildings, etc. can all be options for offline advertising.

Examples:

In the hit drama "Day and Night", which has a Douban score of 9.1 and has been viewed over 2 billion times, the creative mid-roll advertisements of the two P2P platforms, Qianzhan and Aiqianjin, are in line with the development of the entire plot. It is said that the price of one advertisement is 1 million. If the purpose is to attract new customers, then this advertisement placement is not accurate. Of course, if the purpose is to expand the brand influence, then there is nothing wrong with it.

In contrast, another financial company’s advertising (brand name omitted):

• Advertising purpose : To help an online financial institution acquire high-quality customers at low cost
• Advertising background : A certain online financial company is an Internet financial management comprehensive service platform. With its excellent comprehensive strength and professional service capabilities, it stands out among many financial wealth management service institutions. At the same time, with the proliferation of Internet financial service institutions and the rise of consumer finance, the cost of acquiring financial customers continues to rise, so they urgently need to acquire customers accurately and attract new customers at low cost.
• Delivery goal : Customer acquisition effect oriented, ROI exceeds the industry average.
• Launch period : March 2017 - June 2017
• Target group for financial management: 20-35 years old, high-quality business people, financial people, financial management people, and young consumers with a bachelor's degree or above. 70% of them are male and 30% are female
• Delivery type : PC-side such as finance, news, and portal websites; APP-side such as automobiles , IT, and education.
• Implementation : Through data analysis , they found that the target group would pay attention to the weather conditions every day to avoid missing flights and choose whether to drive or take a taxi; at the same time, they pay attention to news and financial trends, and care about the depreciation of their wealth accumulation and investment opportunities; among them, male financial management users generally pay attention to sports events and sports news, have favorite sports stars and teams, and are willing to watch games on site. Therefore, they tried to place advertisements on channels such as "Weather News", " Sohu News , Tencent News ", and " Sina Sports". They found that users who read financial news have a strong desire to manage their finances, and then they increased advertising on financial news websites and apps.

In summary, advertising placement requires analyzing the behavior of target users . Now almost every Internet user is transparent. Find the correlation between a certain behavior and the users of your own platform, test the placement, increase the placement ratio based on the effect, and thus control the cost of acquiring new customers as much as possible.

2. Manual precision reach (online forwarding, offline promotion )

What should I do if I really don’t have the funds to place advertisements? Then you can only attract customers manually. Of course, when you have money to invest in advertising, manual recruitment is also a good way to understand the market response of your products more directly. If the goal is to acquire customers precisely rather than build a brand, whether it is manual forwarding or offline promotion, the information should reach the target users rather than casting a wide net.

For example, in the promotion of parking APP, INRIX, a well-known American traffic information data company, was the first to launch parking software. It is a parking assistance service mobile app - "INRIX On-Street Parking". Their offline promotion scenarios include "intersections on the street", "parking lots in community office buildings", "branded car repair shops and specialty stores". When conducting road promotion, they only choose private cars instead of buses and taxis; when going to the parking lot, try to negotiate with the property for cooperation in promotion on the parking poles. If that doesn't work, go to the parking lot for ground promotion during rush hours.

In short, when you start promoting, you should think about how to acquire customers faster and more accurately.

3. Strive for spontaneous sharing by users

While attracting new users, don’t forget the role of old users in attracting new users. Old users can share spontaneously or as a result of being rewarded by the platform. Although the methods are different, the result is to share the product with people around them.

When users encounter interesting things while using the APP, they will share them. When Mobike was first launched on the market, everyone rushed to try it out. At that time, I often saw friends sharing their itineraries on WeChat Moments , and some even posted to compare the number of trips and cycling time. Users' spontaneous sharing behavior brought a large number of users to Mobike in a short period of time.

Users think the product is very good and spontaneously share it with their friends. The Get APP and the Numa APP, both of which are knowledge-based payment products, have such differences in their product sharing designs. In the Get APP, you can see the function of "Recommend [Get] to Friends". Users can generate posters according to their needs and share them with their friends, or directly share them with their friends with one click. However, the NuMa APP does not have this function.

In addition to the APP's own sharing button, users will also make spontaneous recommendations during chats . For example, if someone says that she doesn't have the perseverance to read, I will recommend " NetEase Wugu Reading " to her, and ask her to read for at least one hour every day. After one hour, you will not be able to read anymore (unless you post a book review. If she posts a book review, it means that she has gradually become accustomed to and even fallen in love with reading).

There will also be very good UGC in the APP. A certain picture, a certain sentence, or a certain article is very touching, and users will share it spontaneously. For example, NetEase Cloud Music , Liubai, and Everyone is a Product Manager .

In addition to spontaneous sharing by users, there are also ways to induce users to share through benefits, such as Pinduoduo's group buying model, Meituan 's red envelope model and Ele.me 's ride voucher reward model. Basically all consumer and financial apps have a mechanism for user sharing rewards.

4. Inter-industry traffic resource exchange

There should be no direct conflict of interest between platforms that exchange traffic, but there must be a certain degree of user overlap. In the absence of any cost expenditure, the platform can use its own traffic to negotiate traffic exchange cooperation with platforms that meet the standards. It is best to first find a leading company with which you have a personal relationship, obtain their cooperation, and then negotiate traffic cooperation with other companies to have a better chance.

Quoting Baidu Encyclopedia (the world's largest Chinese encyclopedia)'s explanation of "traffic exchange", the concept and technical methods for achieving cooperation have been described very clearly, so I will not go into details here.

Examples:

I remember that Lu Songsong of Qihoo 360 shared his own traffic exchange case, citing the case of the video search product operation of "Lu Songsong's Blog": At the beginning, I did a lot of preparatory work, thinking about how to increase the traffic of this product. First, I analyzed some traffic data from previous collaborations. I stopped some collaborations with very poor results and only kept two with decent traffic results. This way I had a lot of traffic positions freed up for BD exchange.

First, I collected the contact information of many entertainment websites that were willing to do traffic exchange cooperation, and then talked to them one by one. At the beginning, the traffic of our products was not large, so we started with a small exchange. However, relying solely on BD position will never bring higher traffic. Because users who visit video search are mainly here to search for videos, they will not click on too many partner website links in the BD position.

Later, I thought about the product feature of video search. Users who visit our website will eventually go to some video sharing websites, such as "Youku", "Tudou", "Ku6" and other websites. I wonder why we should give them traffic for nothing, we should let these websites give us BD positions and return our traffic.

Later, I talked to all the video sharing websites that were among the ALEXA 1000 at that time. At the beginning, two video sharing websites that had a good personal relationship with the company agreed to cooperate.

With the cases, it will be easier to talk about the rest. I will tell some video sharing websites that a certain video website has also cooperated with us, and at that time many video sharing websites also cooperated with some entertainment websites to exchange traffic. Our video search traffic is more targeted. If entertainment websites can cooperate with us, they should cooperate with us even more.

At that time, the policy for cooperation with video sharing websites was that if you gave me 1,000 IPs, I would give you 2,000 IPs. In short, the more traffic they cooperate with us, the more cost-effective it is for them. Therefore, nearly 8 of the video sharing websites within the ALEXA 1000 cooperated with us at that time, and several of them had large traffic exchanges with tens of thousands of IPs, such as "Youku", "Ku6", "Popcorn", "mofile", "Ouou", etc., which were all major partners at the time.

At that time, there were several similar video search websites, such as "iAsk Video Search", " Yahoo Video Search" and "Baidu Video Search". Because they did not require these video websites to return traffic, it was still difficult for me to approach these video websites to discuss traffic exchange cooperation. In this way, I used the characteristics of the video search product to direct the traffic from video website A to video website B, and the traffic from video website B to video website C. Through cooperation with video sharing websites, the traffic is growing. As a result, the traffic exported from the BD position is increasing, and I have also increased exchanges with some entertainment websites.

I remember that when it reached its peak, we had hundreds of WPVs a day, which was several times more than when I first took over. Moreover, I was able to do this without any support from any company resources, which gave me a sense of accomplishment at the time. My experience doing promotion at Qihoo Video Search has always been the most enjoyable period in my career.

5. Media exposure

A Tencent startup partner once revealed:

“Many startups don’t have the resources and their voices are too weak. Sometimes, the projects are obviously good, but the articles that come out are really unattractive and not suitable for the platform to report.”

The platforms I usually read most of the product reports are " iHeima ", "Huxiu.com" and " 36Kr ". Every time they report, they package the emotions around the stories and thinking of the founders; they start the report by analyzing the differentiated excellence of products or services, the attentive and high standards of the whole process service, and the complementary advantages of the team founders (having strong professional capabilities in the industry and keen insight into the market).

Many times, media resources are not based on how much you pay. Media platforms also need high-quality content materials. What they want are entrepreneurs who have ideas, attitudes, and practical knowledge , and who will express their understanding of the industry, the market, and users. Therefore, to do PR well, the first thing to do is not to ask what resources are available, but how you understand PR and how you understand the people who help you do PR. Otherwise, no matter how many resources you have, it will be useless.

6. Channel operation management

Because I work in the Internet finance industry, I understand very well that the assets in the financial industry are controlled by intermediaries. In addition to operating their own assets, financial platforms also have to cooperate with intermediaries to obtain assets. In this process, the platform cannot come into contact with the real borrowers, but only with various intermediaries. This is the current situation in the industry, so multi-channel operation and management is very important.

The so-called channel refers to a partner that can deliver users to products and provide business support. Financial platforms need to obtain both assets (borrowers) and funds ( investors ). To obtain assets, they need to cooperate with intermediaries in various industries and have them provide clients who meet the risk control standards of the financial platform; funds must also be obtained from various traffic platforms and have long-term cooperation channels.

Regularly and continuously analyze the conversion effect of resources provided by channels, communicate effectively with channel parties, and promptly inform or even terminate cooperation with channel parties when the bad debt rate is high, and guard against the risk of channel cashing out or brushing orders.

2. Attract users’ attention

1. Accurate contact is the basis for triggering demand resonance

We always think about how to make articles more contagious and how to push video H5 to more people, so we will put it into various channels in large quantities, but the effect may not be good. A lot of money is spent, but the effect is not good, so we are under great pressure. When we reflect on it again, we did not push high-quality content to the right people. It is better to use a small net to block the mouth of the creek where the fish come into contact than to use a big net to catch fish in the sea.

2. The image and text have visual or sensory impact

(1) Differentiation comparison

Contrast is to emphasize and compare different things or different aspects of the same thing to create a strong contrast. Contrast can be an intuitive image, such as contrast in color, shape, texture, quantity, area, direction, etc.; it can also be an intrinsic meaning, such as contrast in attributes, function, mood, connotation, and characteristics, etc. Contrasting elements either create fierce conflicts or complement each other to form a strong difference effect. The purpose of contrasting creativity is to highlight the main reason for the advertisement and influence the audience with a stimulating message.

Examples:

(Image from "Creative Design" oritive.com)

High-contrast cosmetic surgery ad: The ad is set in a reunion of a group of seniors who graduated in 1969. The old men and women in the middle thought that the young woman in red looked like their granddaughter in terms of face and figure. Her confidence and smile contrasted with the strange looks of her male classmates and the embarrassed expressions of her female classmates. Her incompatible youthful attitude announced the success of the cosmetic surgery.

The 2008 Olympic Games poster uses many contrasting techniques: first, there is a contrast in expression, with the athletes being photographic material and the crowd being sketched; second, there is a contrast in color, with the athletes in color and the crowd in black and white; and finally, there is a contrast in composition, with the athletes against a large blank background and the crowd being densely packed and very compact. These contrasts are condensed into a huge visual tension, vividly expressing the tense atmosphere of the upcoming opening of the Beijing Olympics and the shocking aura of thousands of people working together.

(2) Magnify selling points

Do you think the following advertisements are tacky?

• Malatang merchants : "Boil the vegetables with mountain spring water, change the pot every hour, Malatang can be so healthy",
• Local Chicken Restaurant : "Mainly promotes "Let you taste the taste of chicken 40 years ago",
• Organic black tea merchant : "Other people's tea tastes like pesticides, but our organic tea can only taste the fragrance."

When we eat Malatang, do we worry that the merchant will reuse the soup pot, or even use it for more than one day? Do you miss the taste of free-range chickens that have long lost their original flavor due to modern feed farming? When it comes to black tea, do you complain about the “bitter” smell of pesticides? Our pain point is the merchant's selling point. The merchant directly exaggerates the selling point and promotes it . Customers will at least try it regardless of whether it is a novelty or not.

Examples:

• OPPO R11: "20 million front and back cameras for clearer photos."
• Candy Phone F11: "50 million pixels, clearer than clearer."

Oppo directly stated its selling point as “clearer”, while Candy amplified the selling point of “clearness” as “clearer, clearer than” and placed advertisements specifically for Oppo. It is both interesting and has a strong selling point implantation effect. This kind of advertising completely beats competitors’, which is really impressive!

(2) Creative content

We have seen many creative advertising designs, and we have to say that some slightly weird and connotative advertisements are more impressive. In the advertising design industry, creativity seems to be a spring that will never run dry. All kinds of funny, surprising, exaggerated and meaningful creative advertisements emerge in an endless stream.

Examples:

Hand Sanitizer : "What did your hands touch in a day, and what did you do with them in the end? It's scary to think about it. So, would you choose not to recall it, or choose Siribuncha instant hand sanitizer?"

NBA players: "Sports require passion and animal-like ferocity."

Dry Cleaner : "Whether it's lipstick, oil or wine stains, get rid of them all."

3. Hit users’ strong demands and provide solutions

It is not enough to hit the user's pain points, but also to provide simple and direct solutions, which will not hurt the user's feelings and can drive new product additions.

Examples:

On Double Eleven 2016, Dingdang Express Pharmacy took advantage of its strong identity, high recognition and deep acceptance, and implanted the advertisement into its posters in a clever manner, which not only increased its exposure rate but also successfully attracted attention. The fresh painting style and heartwarming words do not make people feel disgusted at all, but instead increase their favorability. It not only identifies the accidental injuries that users may encounter when shopping and in daily life, but can also promptly offer its own "20-minute door-to-door drug delivery" solution, which can be said to be a thoughtful little cotton-padded jacket.

4. Make bold promises and eliminate users’ last concerns

It is a big step for a user to go from not knowing "you" to being willing to get to know you. She needs to break through her own psychological security line, and this step often results in a higher loss rate. Just like when you are pursuing a girl, you ask her to meet you in a movie theater or a sparsely populated mountain for the first time. Who would be willing to trust her safety to you?

Examples:

We all say that there are many fakes on Taobao . It’s because individual sellers are unreliable. You have to pay for the shipping costs when you return the goods, which is time-consuming, laborious and thankless. Giving a bad review may even lead to harassment from the seller. However, there are also many sellers who are working hard to improve trust, using guarantee mechanisms to reduce order costs, and making bold promises while providing good products and logistics cooperation. If you don’t even believe in your own products, how can you expect users to trust them? This has widened the gap between us and many other stores.

3. User needs are ignited and users actively acquire products

1. Provide access to the content in one step

Never make the mistake of carelessness. You may have finally attracted users with content, advertising, or any other means, but fail to provide a portal to download the product, or make the portal invisible unless you look carefully. This is just attracting new users and is just a brand promotion.

2. Reduce user opportunity costs

A user's choice to do or not do a certain operation is a decision-making behavior. From an economic perspective, the "cost" of decision-making behavior is opportunity cost. The user's behavior in obtaining the product will include "whether the experience is good", "whether the information is safe", "whether it will consume data traffic", "whether it will take a lot of time", "whether it will be useful in the future", etc. There are some problems we can solve and some we cannot. We try our best to reduce the user's opportunity cost so that the expected benefit is greater than the opportunity cost. This way, the user loss during the product acquisition process can be reduced.

3. Keep the number of steps involved as simple as possible

In the process of attracting new users, we must guard against users abandoning the product after registering it, so we must make the registration process as simple as possible, or even make it a guest mode, where users can enter certain interfaces of the product without logging in, and then limit the use of the most distinctive functions to those after registration, so as to reduce the registration churn rate.

Examples:

WeChat Reading is a Tencent product, and it has developed a "trial" function because a small number of people have this demand. They don't want their WeChat friends to see what book they are reading, or they don't want to use WeChat to log in to any product other than the WeChat APP. This optimizes the user loss rate on the login interface with maximum efficiency. If Tencent does this within its own product system, why should we require users to log in?

4. Use "benefits" for a limited time to finalize the deal

If the user has not registered yet, exclusive discounts for new users are also a common method to attract new users. If the user has already registered for the product, the limited-time discounts that have already been received can give the user a sense of urgency and create an impulse, leading to some kind of consumption or conversion behavior (such as buying books with WeChat Reading's time coins, etc.).

Exclusive activities for new customers are standard for almost every product. To make the page more impactful, for example, the countdown on Vipshop ’s discount page and payment page can create a sense of urgency and lead to actions being completed without full consideration. Users are also emotional people who are easily impulsive and can easily shift to rational and conservative thinking. The longer they consider, the less likely they are to take action on the product.

Having written this far, I feel like I’ve finally finished talking about attracting new users. If you think the article is good, please share it generously~