How to achieve product growth through “circle fission”?

People in society are divided into different levels, and people of the same level can only be friends with people of the same level. Each level is a circle. Before a product is born, one should think about what kind of people the product corresponds to and what the characteristics of the group are, so as to design the product model.

Those who have been responsible for APP promotion know that the dividends of the Internet have basically disappeared. If new Internet products want to obtain a large amount of traffic , they can no longer use the original methods to achieve results; and paid promotion is even more stressful. Throwing out BMWs one after another every minute is really not something that start-ups can afford.

In the past, we mostly did marketing through media communication; now at the end of the mobile Internet era, users’ attention has been distracted by various scenarios, and traditional media can no longer play a key role. Smart Internet practitioners have begun to spread information through social media , transforming the communication media from traditional core media to user-centered autonomous communication, which has greatly improved communication efficiency.

Recently we all know that Tencent banned Toutiao 's Douyin , and Douyin sued Tencent for unfair competition. It seemed like a fight between the two companies, but in fact it was a manifestation of the depletion of traffic behind the scenes.

Of course, competition is bound to exist. In fact, if there is no WeChat ecosystem and no circle of friends , how many current projects can survive? Aren’t all the various screen-sweeping events we see in Moments spread by leveraging the social relationships in Moments?

Let’s talk about this topic today.

Everyone likes to call the crazy spread of information in the circle of friends viral marketing , which is correct, but not accurate enough. Think about it: would a marketing design that is so LOW-level that it cannot be helped be read and forwarded by literary youths like you?

Obviously not, and they might not even look at it. So the essence of viral marketing is: marketing in a specific circle. The reason why it can spread wildly is mainly because the friends in each person’s circle of friends are basically in the same circle as themselves, so I prefer to call this kind of screen-sweeping event in the circle of friends " circle fission ."

So what exactly are circles?

It is easy to understand if you break the two words down: circle + level. The level of the circle you are in is the circle. The circle of Didi drivers is mostly Didi drivers; the circle of delivery boys is mostly delivery boys; the circle of our leaders is mostly middle-class people such as leaders or entrepreneurs .

To put it simply, people in society are divided into different levels, and people of the same level can only be friends with people of the same level. Each level is a circle.

Before a product is born, one should think about what kind of people the product corresponds to and what the characteristics of the group are, so as to design the product model.

Many entrepreneurs don’t think clearly in the early stages. Most of them just have a feeling and then go for it. In the process, they discover some problems and make gradual adjustments. Although they can eventually get on the right track, the cost loss in the middle is still relatively large.

There is another meaning to thinking it through in advance, which is “marketing in advance” .

Marketing pre-positioning means that during the product planning stage, we can add some marketing incentives to the product based on the marketing objectives, such as designing controversial features, etc. After the product is launched, we will cooperate with the market to launch a combination of measures using social networks for dissemination (we will talk about this specifically later).

Back to the topic, after looking at the circles, let’s take a look at fission: fission is easier to understand, that is, A spreads to B and C, and B spreads to D, E, F...extending infinitely downwards.

Circle + fission means forming fission within the circle. Let’s first look at a few cases, and then talk about how to apply it in combination with projects.

Case 1

In the second half of 2017, I found that the women in my circle of friends started to post some cartoon characters. Yes, they were those four wild men who couldn’t afford to support themselves.

" Love and Producer " is a development game produced by NetEase. It creates virtual characters based on women's fantasies about four typical men. The dialogue segments and poster designs within the product are constantly stimulating the emotions of female users , thereby generating sharing behaviors that lead to self-propagation of the product on social media.

"Love and Producer" did have advertisements in the early days, but the results were not ideal. Such excellent results were actually achieved by relying on the spontaneous dissemination of users. The success of this game in dissemination is attributed to its perfect penetration into the circle of young female users. Through the design of mechanisms and content, users in the female circle can't stop playing it.

Case 2

"Who doesn't love this cup, Luckin Coffee"

Since 2018, Internet practitioners and white-collar workers in other industries have noticed a new coffee retail brand that is extremely popular. The successful marketing has also made the company's marketing director famous.

In fact, long before Luckin Coffee was founded, there was already a "Lian Coffee" with the same model. Both Lian Coffee and "Luckin Coffee" designed sharing mechanisms for their products. Lian Coffee was richer, with gifting, group buying, etc., but it still could not resist the attack of the little blue cup. Compared with Lian Coffee, the brand value of Little Blue Cup has penetrated deeper into the hearts of the new middle class and pseudo-literary young people, and the core consumer groups of the coffee category are these two groups of people.

Chain Coffee as a whole is too fast-moving consumer goods and too universal, so it is of no use to any group of people. From a product perspective, it has not found the core user group.

The two projects are representative in recent years. Both achieved a cold start of the product through the fission of social media, quickly acquired a large number of customers at a very low cost, and the users were extremely accurate. The main reason is that they had already determined the user circle for communication before designing the product fission. When designing the communication mechanism, designing according to the characteristics of the crowd will have a great effect.

How can we design viral transmission mechanisms for our own products to seize this life-saving straw of growth?

Here I want to emphasize that this article is talking about a mechanism in the product. The mechanism is long-term and effective. To put it simply, it can be understood as a function in the product, not a marketing event planned by the marketing department. Events are short-term activities that gain temporary benefits. For example, "Book Throwing Campaign" and " Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou " are called events, which we will not discuss in this article.

Defining circles

There are two dimensions to defining circles. On the one hand, the company needs to think about what kind of user circle it subjectively wants. On the other hand, the user circle that the product mechanism is naturally suitable for.

For example: For a second-hand e-commerce project, the company may prefer to attract user groups with certain consumption power, mostly white-collar workers and students, but we all know that it is often the low-income groups who need second-hand products more.

The former is the subjective consciousness of the enterprise, and the latter is the natural applicable user.

Or, as a product developer of a stranger social software, we must hope that the majority of our product users are female. Women are a scarce resource in the social environment. With female users, will men be far behind? Once it is launched on the market, male users, as the natural target group, will definitely flock to it.

So what should we do to clearly define our marketing methods?

In the case of stranger social networking that we just talked about, if female resources are too scarce, the natural male users will not get their needs met after entering and will gradually leave. So Momo ’s early user acquisition and advertising were mostly targeted at female users. What does this mean?

In fact, a large part of the definition of circles is determined subjectively. In our current product strategy, if we need more or more of a certain type of user, we can shift the circle positioning of the product at the current stage in a subjective direction.

After defining the circle, we need to dig deeper and roughly understand the specific portrait of the users in this circle, including but not limited to: main gender, age, income status, basic emotional characteristics, general education status, common shared hobbies, etc. The more detailed the understanding, the easier it is to trigger user emotional connections when designing communication mechanisms.

But is it enough to just define the circles?

Of course not. The next step is to design corresponding rules based on the circle.

Fission Mechanism

Above we have clearly understood the user circles and user portraits of our product, so now we need to design a corresponding fission mechanism based on the characteristics of this type of users.

What exactly are we talking about when we talk about fission? In fact, it is not complicated. The fission mechanism refers to spreading our products or services in a decentralized way with almost zero cost, so as to achieve the goal of acquiring users and brand communication.

This is why people call it viral transmission. Fission is like a virus. Every user is an infected cell, which then infects the next new cell.

Based on the characteristics of the virus, we can draw a conclusion that if we want to maximize our dissemination goals, we need to increase the coverage of the virus - that is, the coverage area of ​​this fission mechanism. Don’t forget the premise of circle here. To a large extent, the mechanism you design can only be disseminated on a large scale within one circle.

How to maximize the coverage area is the key issue that product managers should focus on. There are two factors that affect the coverage: one is the trigger engine, and the other is the infection rate.

Let’s first look at the trigger engine. We can see the sharing function in all major products. This is the most basic trigger engine, which becomes a trigger switch for dissemination through sharing behavior. For example: I saw a very interesting ghost video on Bilibili and forwarded it to my circle of friends without thinking, which completed the first step of viral transmission.

Many e-commerce projects will package a simple sharing function into various forms, with the aim of maximizing the completion of this first step and triggering user sharing, such as: the picture below.

By inviting friends and giving red envelopes, users are stimulated to trigger fission.

With fission, we need to look at the next factor, the infection rate. It is definitely not enough to just share. Someone has to see it and participate. Therefore, the infection rate is actually the conversion rate , which is the degree of conversion of other people with the starting point as the node after the fission behavior is initiated by the starting point of the transmission.

To put it simply, it is: how to improve the forwarded fission virus and maximize its conversion rate - that is, to infect more people. There are many methods. We can continuously optimize through changes and data feedback by optimizing landing pages , optimizing sharing copy , optimizing visual design, etc.

What I want to emphasize is actually the circle. Improving the conversion rate must be based on the circle. For example, when it comes to aesthetics, everyone has different aesthetics. A hundred people may have a hundred different opinions on the same design. There is no greatest common divisor for this.

Therefore, the circle is the core dimension to improve the conversion rate. Whether the design is good or not is not commented on by a certain person, but is determined by our circle users. We can come up with two or three versions of the design style, divide it into several versions or use grayscale testing to verify the results.

To sum up, the design of the fission mechanism should be based on the circle of people, to design a powerful trigger engine, while continuously optimizing the infection rate to maximize the coverage of the population.

Do you remember the popular "Rush to the Top" competition that was popular a while ago? You can share it with your friends to connect with them, and you will get a chance to be resurrected after the connection is successful. In the absence of any channels , the summit formed a smooth assembly line through the benefits of winning cash, combined with design pictures that suit the circle, various strange questions that are themselves very topic-spreading, and the desire to show off after winning the prize.

There is an incentive to share. When others see you sharing the money you earn, this creates a high infection rate. In the end, you die halfway through answering a question, and the chance to resurrect becomes a necessity that triggers sharing.

This is a combination of trigger engine and infection rate.

Summarize

After reading this article, you can combine the projects you are currently responsible for to redefine the value of communication through the concept of circles, and add a new circle fission model to product design. If you already have similar functions, rethink whether they are optimal and whether they can be further optimized through the circle fission theory.

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

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games