Operational notes from Tencent PM: 3 major skills for product operation

Making TO C products is like playing with building blocks, while making TO B products is more like stringing together chains. You can focus on 20% of the core functions and remove some other "non-load-bearing" building blocks, and the "product building" will still be there. However, if any link in the chain breaks, the product will no longer be able to run quickly. ——When making TO B products, should we use the building block product thinking or the chain service thinking?

This article takes the author's operation of a ToB product as an example to introduce the ideas and methods in the operation and promotion process. It also records the pitfalls encountered during the operation process, and hopes to communicate and learn with more experts.

The promotion of To B must follow this principle: the bearing pressure generated by the promotion will be applied to every link of the product. To C products can retain users through core functions; however, the service of To B products is like a chain. If a link in this chain is crushed by the pressure of promotion, the effect of the promotion will be greatly reduced.

Product promotion can usually be divided into "preparation - promotion - subsequent optimization", but first we must start with the most basic and most important understanding of the product.

When doing operations, you must understand the product and master the characteristics of the product from an operational perspective.

So, what are the operational angles?

The first is the usage scenario, which answers the question: "Who wants to solve what problem under what circumstances?"

• The second is the market situation, answering a question: "What is the position of your product in the market?"
• Finally, the competition situation, answer a question: "What are the advantages and disadvantages of your product compared with the competition?"

After understanding the product, let’s take a look at product preparation – promotion – subsequent optimization!

1. Preparation

After having a deeper understanding of the product, you can start a series of preparatory work based on the product launch time. The preparatory work for operational promotion is mainly divided into three parts: planning, content and channels .

1.1 Planning - Well-planned is half the battle

For general promotions, the promotion effect and topic popularity will basically become flat in about a week, so the word "rhythm" is the most important. We must be good at using or creating hot spots for the first wave of promotion, and also be good at having follow-up content a week later to continue the popularity.

1.2 Content - A scholar dies for his friend, and a writer writes for the one who pleases him

Many people understand content as writing articles, but that’s not entirely true. It was mentioned above that To B products provide chain-type services. Therefore , in the operation of To B products, content operations are responsible for both attracting new customers and retaining them.

So, how is good content generally produced? Good content requires logic.

Any good content is produced by following these five elements:

Purpose - Audience - Product - Channel - Copywriting

In addition, there is another factor that determines the success of content, called "hot spot". No matter what it is, as long as it becomes a hot spot, the attention it receives will increase exponentially.

1.3 Channels - Before troops move, channels come first

Content and channels are a perfect match, and the chemical reaction between the two can form an amazing network effect. In the process of content operation, I have found that there are too many cases where the same content produces completely different feedback on different channels. "Fine-grained operation" has become an operational topic that operators should pay more and more attention to.

2. Promotion

After completing the preparatory work, the promotion enters the execution stage. The execution of the entire promotion must be arranged according to the time nodes formed in the preparation stage. However, compared to the orderly preparation stage, there will be many unexpected situations in the promotion stage, and we should try to avoid them during the promotion process. Especially when promoting ToB products, we must focus on stability and proceed step by step.

During the promotion phase, we start from four dimensions: preheating, standardization, customer service and emergency plan.

2.1 Warm-up - always leave yourself a way out

The warm-up phase is a promotion phase for the product in the grayscale stage. Its purpose is to verify the usability of the product by attracting a small number of users, discover problems during product use, and make timely optimizations.

The main measures taken can be divided into the following categories: internal testing, whitelist testing, and lightweight promotion. Three different testing methods should be selected according to the different needs of product managers .

During the warm-up process, many product problems may be discovered, so the official launch time of the product may be delayed.

2.2 Standards - No rules, no order

The standards here refer to some unified requirements that must be followed during the promotion process. These requirements are like the unified slogans, uniforms, and beliefs in the military. They are important criteria for external considerations of whether a team is an excellent team.

2.3 Service——Be a Snail Girl

ToB products provide chain-style services. My understanding of chain-style services is the barrel theory: the length of the shortest piece of wood determines your upper limit. Therefore, retaining users in every link of product operation and promotion is more important than a high- traffic promotion.

3 Subsequent optimization stage

Regardless of whether the results of the promotion are good or bad, a summary must be made after the promotion. For successful promotions, we need to summarize the reasons behind them, whether it was accidental or replicable; for failed promotions, we also need to summarize the reasons behind their failure. Then, based on these summarized contents, we can make more optimizations for subsequent promotions.

The follow-up work of promotion mainly includes three aspects: data, users and cases.

3.1 Data - Refined Operation

The mastery and analysis of promotion data is the most basic and important work to achieve "fine operation". We hope to analyze the exposure of the channel and the conversion effect of the channel through the data. In response to the different performances of channels, we will take targeted operational measures. We will increase our operational efforts on good channels and gradually give up on bad channels. It is so cruel.

During the promotion phase, data will be collected for each channel. In this way, we can grasp several of the most critical data indicators related to the channel: PV number, effective active users, effective service times, effective paying users , etc. We conduct routine promotions on a weekly basis, and through these data, we can grasp the weekly and monthly data trends. The weekly data trends can show the quality of the promotional content and its degree of adaptation to the channel; while the monthly data trends can grasp the exposure and conversion capabilities of the channel.

3.2 Users - Find your core users

Promotion will attract a large number of users. For operators, the challenge really begins after the users arrive. All operations will eventually become user operations . For user operations, common tasks are usually user classification, user research and user maintenance.

3.3 Case Study - Step-by-step User Guidance

Strictly speaking, user cases are divided into two categories. One is more promotion-oriented, endorsing the product through high-quality cooperation cases; the other is more guidance-oriented, providing users with a vivid novice guide through use cases.

Regardless of the purpose, operators need to produce good product cases.

4 Summary

Operational promotion is not a castle in the air. It must always be linked to the carrying capacity of the product. The best operational promotion is to do as much promotion as the product has the capacity. To ensure the best activity and retention conversion.