How does your product explode in the market?

There is a saying circulating on the Internet : "The second one is doomed to die", which means that if a product does not have the ability to attract users and detonate the market, it will face the problem of being unable to maintain user traffic , a continuous decline in user retention rate , and eventually being eliminated from the market. Looking at the Chinese market, whether it is offline physical goods or online applications, there are countless products that were once popular but eventually died out.

In physical stores, only Coca-Cola can compete with Lao Gan Ma for the title of "best hard currency". These products have extremely high turnover rates and are almost the epitome of "as long as they are purchased, they can be sold out", but how many people remember their former followers such as "Lao Gan Die and Feichang Coke"? WeChat has become one of the most frequently used software on mobile phones, but when was the last time you used MiTalk, its early competitor, or have you ever used it at all?

Not only in China, but also globally, user traffic is the most scarce resource in this era. Because users have limited time and energy, only a few products can gain their favor, and most products have disappeared by the time users become aware of them.

This is what Steven van Belleghem, a pioneer in European user relationship research, explored in his book "The Nature of the User": Almost all popular products have touched upon the "nature of the user". They have bound the user's usage attributes with "personalization" and "humanization", and the companies that own these products have also driven product research and development and precise user operations based on "personalization" and "humanization".

1. Impress users with emotions

Countless business theories point out that using emotions is more effective than using rationality to influence user decisions. Users and products establish an emotional connection through the medium of people or things. The media creates an impression of the product for users, which then leads to a favorable impression, and finally recognition after personal experience, which ultimately determines their decision-making. Therefore, excellent products establish emotional resonance with users through experience, which is the key for good products to capture the minds of users in the future.

Digital transformation brings more efficient product processes and feedback mechanisms to the market. However, companies should pay more attention to the cold and stereotyped shortcomings of digital transformation. The power to overcome these shortcomings is the basis for companies to establish emotional bonds with users in future markets.

Bellegum's advice is to "communicate with users in a 'human' way." In other words, the human power of the enterprise. Users are living individuals who like "humanized" communication methods.

How many people hang up the phone the moment the recording of a marketing call sounds? A classic example of humanized communication is Zappos, an American e-commerce platform, which is also the representative of "ultimate user experience " in the speeches of many business leaders. The company's customer service can chat with users, recommend the most suitable products to users (even if they are products from other e-commerce platforms), order pizza for users, and provide users with clothing advice and guidelines... This way of establishing an emotional connection with users is why this company stands out from the highly competitive US e-commerce industry.

In 2009, Amazon acquired Zappos for nearly $1 billion. During the acquisition, Bezos admitted, "Once I see a company that makes users obsessed, I will be obsessed with that company. Zappos' user experience is unmatched by Amazon."

2. Make accurate recommendations for group users

Only when a network can satisfy the needs of tens of millions of people can it satisfy the needs of one person. This is a very interesting business breakthrough - it actually breaks through a paradox and uses a large-scale method on the Internet to fully meet the needs of a single individual.

As big data becomes increasingly popular, products that serve individuals have room to grow. This is the basis of precision operation: give users what they really want, not let them choose between product A and product B which they think is "more suitable", but only recommend product X that "fully meets their needs at the moment". In an era of scarce user traffic, "choice" means "being abandoned", and "no choice" means precision.

"Precision" is the core requirement for future business competition. When enterprises use precision operations, they further refine certain users with common attributes based on big data and user analysis, and accurately meet the needs of the refined users with different attributes. This is what the operations industry often says: "Customer service, tailor-made for each individual."

This operation method can help companies identify high-value users and potential users, and use completely different operation strategies for different groups: for high-value users, use "awakening" of previous product experience to trigger multiple positive reviews; for potential users, use methods such as promoting brands and introducing them at low prices to prompt them to make purchasing decisions faster.

The advantage of personalized and precise operations is not only in promoting user purchases. Personalization is the most critical force in guiding decision-making in many aspects such as user personalized search and word-of-mouth communication.

3. Personalization + Humanization = Future User Competitiveness

Emotional connotations will impact user relationships. But the emotional part of the user experience can only work if the rational, practical part of it works well. Therefore, successful user relationships in the future must be based on rationality (personalization) and sensibility (humanization).

Future user relationships will be more reflected in the offline world, specifically in the way of retrieving shopping information, changes in payment methods, and being identified before consumption. These transformative forces require companies to continuously expand their digital interfaces, that is, to enhance the user experience in smarter ways.

In addition, it is not difficult to find that today's big online players are rapidly occupying the offline world. Whether it is the physical store strategy of e-commerce companies, the sensor strategy similar to Google and Facebook, or the AR technology of mobile phone manufacturers, these are the keys for technology companies to connect the online and offline worlds.

But disappointingly, the important impact of digital transformation has been overlooked: as many companies enable digital transformation of user relationships, the human power of user relationships is becoming increasingly important.

As user relationships become increasingly digital, we need to understand how much value the human element still has in user relationships. As digitalization increases, human contact is bound to gradually decrease. People will become a scarce resource in user relationships.

Purely digital relationships have potential drawbacks because they are too rational; the human factor can add a human touch to digital relationships. However, human touch is always necessary, and no company is willing to establish a relationship with users that is based entirely on rationality.

Modern business relationships are not only a rational decision-making relationship between users and companies, but also a comprehensive connection that integrates various different relationships. Through social media , users can even establish connections with employees within the company, and even between different users within the same company. This new type of user-enterprise relationship will become the core competitiveness of future enterprises.

Author: The essence of the user , authorized by Qinggua Media to publish.

Source: The nature of users