How to use growth hacking thinking for promotion?

Back to August 1, 2017, at 11:23 am, I was still writing a requirements document at my workstation when the company’s internal IM tool pushed an invitation for internal referral for campus recruitment.

I happened to have been researching growth hacking during that period, so I decided to take this opportunity to do a small experiment. I secretly put down the work at hand and quickly started to think of ideas and write. An hour later, soon at 12:32 noon, the copy was published online. Without even having time to eat, I immediately started looking for the first batch of seed users , trying to complete the first wave of promotion as quickly as possible.

After completing the cold start , I leisurely went to the cafeteria to enjoy my delicious meal. I returned to my workstation in the afternoon and opened my mailbox. Sure enough, dozens of internal referral application emails had already come in. Afterwards, all the work was carried out smoothly.

The entire campus recruitment referral process lasted 13 days. Since I had to work during the day, I could only handle it in the evenings and weekends. In total, we received about 3,000 referral application emails. After hard work, we also brought in a brother from 360 children's watches. In the end, we recommended 2,000 high-quality resumes and helped nearly 100 job seekers reach the final HR interview. Next, let’s sort out the core points of the entire promotion process, which may be of some benefit and inspiration to you.

1. Demand Analysis

First, let’s briefly analyze the needs of both ends, one is the student side, and the other is the enterprise side.

1. Student side

• A simple and reliable internal referral channel , not wanting to compete with tens of millions of campus recruits
• I recognize my seniors from the past and hope someone can guide me.
• Afraid of missing out on a business, afraid of falling behind others

2. Enterprise side

• High-quality and matching student resumes
• Low cost or even no cost
• Enhance brand influence through campus recruitment

2. Select a traffic pool

Forums, BBS , Weibo, public accounts , WeChat groups , QQ groups, Moments , Douban , etc. are all candidates for consideration. In contrast, the Beiyou Forum, although more traditional, is very suitable. On the one hand, my background as a senior at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications makes it easy for me to win the students’ trust. On the other hand, students of Beihang University are very active and have a strong spirit of sharing. The Beihang University Forum has a certain influence in the Internet circle. It can radiate to surrounding universities in Beijing and attract a large number of high-quality student groups. It has 300,000 daily PVs, and the user quality of the channel is also very high. Therefore, I chose the Beiyou Forum as the first launch platform.

3. Activate User

Activating users means getting them to complete certain actions, such as submitting a resume. We have selected the traffic pool so that at least some users can see the referral information. But how to activate them? I mainly made 3 designs:

1. I would like to introduce myself as a senior student from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. I am willing to help everyone with internal referrals as soon as possible and win the trust of students.
2. Briefly introduce the referral position, requirements and deadline.
3. Publish the company email address for internal referrals and resumes. Enterprise-level email addresses have a higher recognition rate.

Here are a few tips for copywriting:

1. The entire copywriter’s contact information only retains my personal email address, and does not publish any URLs, public accounts and other information to avoid user loss caused by external jumps, and ensure that students can only apply for internal referrals through my email address.
2. Through guidance through conversation, students can be given a certain sense of urgency, and if they submit their applications late, they will not be able to get in line.
3. Use font size, color, etc. to highlight key information to reduce users' reading cost. For example, email address, internal referral deadline, and exemption from written test for internal referrals.

4. Cold Start

This step is crucial because there are so many new posts on the forum that when we post a post, it basically falls on deaf ears. Especially as a recruitment post, it receives far less attention than posts such as anecdotes, gossip, and jokes. Students also have no desire to comment or top the post, so it is very easy to be replaced by other posts.

Therefore, during the cold start phase, I mainly relied on manpower to push it forward. I quickly found a dozen friends to help me “brush up good reviews”. At least in the section of “graduates looking for jobs”, it ranks in the top three.

After the cold start work was basically completed, we soon saw some results and received dozens of internal referral application emails. Don’t underestimate these “seed users”. A single spark can start a prairie fire. Below I will introduce how to make it happen.

5. Retention

After users read the job posting, they may collect it, save the referral information, or even send their resume. But this is far from enough. We hope that students can continue to pay attention to 360 campus recruitment and internal referrals, and be full of action to improve the conversion rate of successful employment. This is our ultimate goal. Because in the entire process from students seeing the message, submitting the application, successful internal referral, editing the online resume, attending the interview, and signing the contract, any link may cause the student to interrupt the recruitment process.

After observation, WeChat group is a relatively low-cost and attractive way of communication for students. Therefore, I invited students to join the WeChat group with reasons such as "being the first to get internal referral information and interview experience guidance". I completed two training sessions there, helping everyone sort out common mistakes in interviews. This work is very helpful to students. The WeChat group was quickly filled up and the atmosphere in the group was very good. Everyone actively discussed and shared information, such as carpooling to interviews. Through this WeChat group, I also got to know the students’ pain points and needs firsthand. For example, many interview notification calls and text messages were blocked by mobile phone apps , resulting in students not receiving notifications. I also immediately reported this to the campus recruitment team.

6. Trigger user recommendations

Different communities have different ways of playing. In the WeChat ecosystem , it mainly relies on users sharing to their Moments, while traditional BBS mainly relies on top posts to become popular. Here you need to read the rules in detail, ask the moderators, and observe the top ten popular lists to understand some of the rule details (routine gameplay) of the Beiyou Forum. For example:

1. The logic of popular topics on the homepage: which sections are likely to become popular, and which sections are restricted and not allowed to become popular.
2. Which sections do not allow comments (and therefore cannot push posts).
3. In which sections are job postings allowed?
4. Specifications for post title content and what content is not allowed to be posted.
5. How much traffic the section itself has.

Because the "Recruitment Information" section does not allow comments (and therefore cannot be pushed to the top of the post), I finally chose the "Graduates Looking for Jobs" section.

The next most critical step is here: how to become popular on the homepage. After observation, it was found that the top ten hot topics on the homepage are sorted according to the number of users' comment IDs. Therefore, you should immediately consider how to guide users to place comments at the top of the page.

What I am thinking about is: we need to form a benefit exchange with users, link actions (comments) with rewards, and at least give users a reason to comment. This action needs to find the user's most painful point and requires simple operation and immediate results. In the end, I chose the solution of "comment grabbing a spot" = "prioritizing internal referrals". The original text is as follows:

[Small benefit] Since there are too many people registering, please comment "internal referral + email" at the bottom of the post. I will give priority to students who have grabbed a spot. Thank you for helping to push the post so that more Beihang University friends can see the internal referral information in time.

Soon, the results came. The number of people commenting on the post quickly climbed, reaching nearly 250 comments within two days (compared to previous hot posts on the homepage, which generally had around 50 comments). For two consecutive days, my posts ranked 2nd and 3rd among the top ten hot topics on the homepage.

My mailbox is basically at full capacity, and the speed of internal referrals can hardly keep up with the growth rate of emails.

7. Secondary Dissemination

This was unexpected, but it makes sense. Because the internal referral post dominated the forum for two days, it was targeted by a private public account related to campus recruitment. A large number of WeChat public accounts , both large and small, began to forward my internal recommendations and contact information. This brings about two essential changes:

First , in the following 10 days, the number of internal referral application emails in my mailbox skyrocketed to 3,000. I worked overtime until one or two in the morning every day, but it was still difficult to digest all these resumes. To the extent that, I invited a brother from the 360 ​​children's watch department to join the project and work hard with me through the night. As mentioned above, after careful screening and comparison, we finally recommended about 2,000 resumes, and nearly 100 job seekers reached the final interview. I got first place in the internal referral and he got second place.

Second , after the secondary dissemination of the official account, the channel has changed, resulting in the quality of the resumes received being far inferior to before. Therefore, we have learned a lesson: remember not to choose channels randomly.

During the entire process, we did not spend a penny and did not use any channel resources from the company or friends. With a grateful heart (I have also received help from alumni through internal referrals before), and since it can help the company with campus recruitment and save costs, why not do it?

AARRR Model

Next, let’s review it with the growth hacker’s mindset and analyze it using the most familiar AARRR model:

The funnel model above is also one of the most commonly used tools for our product managers in their work. Based on the model, we break down each step as follows:

1. Acquisition : Select a high-quality traffic pool where the target user group is densely distributed. I chose the Beiyou Forum.
2. Activation : Target the user’s pain points, select the right entry point, generate a response within 3 seconds of the user’s visual attention, and further complete the activation. My main goal is to have senior brothers help junior brothers and sisters wholeheartedly and be the first to recommend them internally.
3. Retention : Let users continue to pay attention to 360 campus recruitment and internal referral, not just stay at the first and second steps, but take active actions: submit resumes, interviews, and join the company.
4. Revenue : Smooth the entire process of student promotion in campus recruitment, remove obstacles, strive to improve the conversion rate between each link, and maximize the conversion rate of the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal of this promotion is “successful employment of students”.
5. Recommendation (Ref) : Grasp the core pain points of students, and give certain rewards and punishments to user behaviors (comments and posts) through benefit association, giving users a reason to support us and making them willing to endorse my products. This step is the key link in whether this promotion can be detonated.

Zhang Ximeng, a senior domestic growth expert, once mentioned in a lecture that before the product itself is polished, the harder you promote it, the worse the results will be . Therefore, good products are the foundation and prerequisite. The "product" of 360 campus recruitment internal referral is already highly recognized among students. I just did a little bit of work to make more people know the news that "360 campus recruitment internal referral has started."

The small experiment I mentioned above is just a small application of the growth hacking theory. Let’s go back to growth hacking itself. In 2015, Professor Fan Bing published a book called “ Growth Hacker ”, which allowed more people in China to understand this new concept. In fact, Qualaroo's CEO Sean Ellis had already proposed Growth Hacker 8 years ago. Two years later, Andrew Chen’s book “Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing” attracted much attention in the industry.

Growth Hacker/Growth Hacker is usually defined as someone who is good at using data to drive marketing , using the market to guide products, and implementing growth goals through technological means. They are well versed in user psychology, good at using creativity, able to bypass technical limitations, and solve early product growth problems at extremely low cost.

It is understood that in recent years, major domestic Internet companies have been actively recruiting growth talents. For example, Toutiao has a 200-person growth team. " User growth " does not teach you a growth technique, because the technique will become ineffective after it becomes well-known and widely used. "User growth" is actually a complete set of systematic working methods and processes: setting goals, finding creative ideas, experimenting, summarizing and reviewing, reusing methods, and then continuously advancing to the next goal.

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

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