How to acquire users through users? These 10 cases are worth your reference

Growth Hacking: Going Viral to Acquire Users

When it comes to acquiring users through users, a term called growth hacker comes to mind. This term comes from a book written by a very famous teacher named Fan Bing called Growth Hacker, which mainly talks about how some Internet companies in Silicon Valley quickly achieve user growth through technology. There are two cases in this book that are quite impressive, and I would like to share them with you.

Case 1: hot-mail

It tells the story of a case of email promotion in the United States, which is called hot-mail.

At that time, its investors gave the two founders a suggestion for promotion: add a sentence "You can sign up for free email at hot-mail " under every email sent by users.

In the beginning, the two founders were actually very skeptical of the investor’s advice, thinking that it was purely an advertising act. They were very disapproving, but they had no other choice so they gave it a try. The results were far beyond expectations, with the number of users growing virally; especially when it spread from the United States to Africa and India, the growth effect was even better.

Because of this short sentence, Hot-mail became known to a lot of people. They achieved user growth in this way, and similar email-type products also used this method. As a result, the entire concept of viral transmission and hacker growth became popular in the United States.

Case 2: Baidu Cloud Disk

This case was an event marketing campaign conducted by Baidu Cloud at the time, called “Major BUG in Baidu Cloud’s payment system” .

Baidu Cloud Disk used to be charged, and all storage above 256G was charged. If you wanted to use 1T, you might have to pay around a few dozen dollars. Suddenly one day, Baidu Cloud decided to adjust its prices: storage above 1T is free.

Before the adjustment, Baidu carried out an event marketing, which was to let many users post anonymously on various forums, and even some marketing accounts posted that there was a bug in Baidu technology. Normally, a company like Baidu should resolve a bug within 60 minutes, but this bug lasted for about 20 hours.

Later, someone came out and said that this was an event marketing by Baidu, which wanted to spread its free gimmick by exposing negative ridicule . In the end, Baidu Cloud Disk quickly gained nearly several million users through the price reduction method and the BUG event marketing.

Since growth hacking is so hard, who do you think is more likely to become a growth hacker?

Are they marketing students, operations students, product students, or technical students?

In Fan Bing's book, he believes that technical students are most likely to become growth hackers. Because technical students can quickly implement their ideas. Technical students have this practical ability. For example, if I want to change something, then I change it. If I want to make an activity page, then I do it.

However, even if the operations staff have good ideas, they have to wait a long time before they can be implemented. This was the reason Fan Bing gave at the time why technical students are most likely to become growth hackers. Compared with marketing and operations, technology has more ability to achieve this. Another example is product design. Students who study design are more likely to become growth hackers than those in any other position.

For students who are engaged in content operations, they are not from a technical or product background and can only write articles. These public accounts have tens of millions of followers, some even having millions, and these students expressed their dissatisfaction. Content operations colleagues can refute and respond in this way. After the content operations students finished their rebuttal, the user operations students also began to express their dissatisfaction.

So how do we show our dissatisfaction? Let’s illustrate it through cases.

Ten examples of achieving user growth through user guidance

Many people think that user operation is just chatting with users every day . So, is user operation really just random chatting? Of course not!

The core of user operation:

The first is to understand the users. What are your target users like? What do they need? What kind of people are they?

And what is his behavioral data like in our product? You need to know him very well, including his reading data, sharing data, and purchase data.

The second is sharing and leveraging users. After you understand the users, you need to utilize them and use them to achieve some of our operational goals. The process of utilization is to achieve more user growth or other purposes by having users do something.

Four ways to increase users

There are four major methods of leveraging users to achieve user growth. Which one to use depends on the scale and duration of your user utilization.

The first category is about community , leveraging user growth through community. For example, there are many groups/public accounts that give out information packages. If you want this information package, you have to scan the QR code and then join the group. After joining the group, you find out that you need to share this poster on your circle of friends, and even attach a sentence to get such an information package. This is a routine currently used by many to acquire customers through social networks. In addition to the social networks, there are also some layouts, product strategies and activities.

Different strategies have different latitudes of use . Generally speaking, there are two latitudes:

• The first is how big the user base you need to leverage is.
• The second is how long you want users to participate in user growth; then combine the two dimensions to decide specifically which strategies we should use.

The two most effective strategies for achieving user growth: event planning strategy and product operation strategy

Case 1: Xiaohongshu’s delivery box

Many students who work in e-commerce were curious before, “How can we get users, and users who have already purchased products, to help spread the word and share their orders?”

A common practice is to send coupons to users, like JD.com does, and let them post their orders to participate in a lucky draw. The courier box of Xiaohongshu is quite interesting. The courier box of Xiaohongshu is very distinctive. A set of courier boxes will be released for every anniversary celebration . Users will be very willing to share this kind of slogan box after receiving it.

In addition to using this creative slogan, Xiaohongshu also held an activity called Guess the Song and Guess the Movie in March this year. Some hand-drawn pictures are put inside each box to let users guess the movie. Then, users are asked to take the box and post it on Weibo with @小红书猜电影 in the form of a Weibo topic to participate in the discussion of this topic.

For users who participate in the discussion of this topic, 3 users will be selected from those who guessed correctly every day to receive some gifts from Xiaohongshu for free. The total reading volume of this topic has reached over 70 million, and the effect is quite good. Xiaohongshu held two issues in March. It can be seen that through this kind of sharing by users on social platforms, it is still possible to achieve relatively good effects in brand dissemination and user acquisition.

Case 2: Mr. Orange Gift Box

This is a case planned by Tiantian Orchard. In fact, users can be divided into many categories. Some users, in addition to purchasing, also have the value of spreading information. We often call this kind of user a QL user.

Mr. Orange Gift Box brought QL to its full potential when planning this event. First, he found a QL who was good at playing in the new media circle. In addition to being a leader himself, this person also knew many small ET leaders. Through this QL, he sent gift certificates for Mr. Orange gift boxes to other small QLs .

So what can these small QLs do with this voucher? You can redeem Mr. Orange’s gift box for free, which is worth about 100 yuan. After we get the gift box, the QL who is directly connected to Tiantian Orchard will chat with us privately and ask: Have you received your gift box? If you receive it, would you mind sharing it with your friends?

As a small QL, you eat other people's food for free, and the packaging itself is pretty good, shouldn't you share it? Then I shared it. As for small QLs like me, I saw dozens of them in my circle of friends at that time. At that time, my circle of friends was flooded with messages in a small period of time. This kind of small-scale dissemination effect is quite good.

In addition, I would like to remind everyone that if you want QL to share a picture or text, or an advertisement with you, the sharing effect may be better than the push from a public account with only a few thousand followers . Therefore, the charges for such small sharing will usually be more expensive than this gift box.

Case 3: “A little bit of thought”

This APP is mainly used to recommend some good gifts and products to everyone. Everyone has some corresponding confusions. For example, you don’t know what kind of gift to give, so an activity is planned to solve the gift-giving needs of a large number of users. How does he do it?

Let a user who wants to give gifts put together a gift package, and this gift package may contain five items. So you pack this gift package, which is equivalent to saying that I have already selected the gift and then give this gift package to the corresponding person.

Users who receive this gift package will receive a corresponding discount. For example, if the normal original price is more than 100 yuan, then he may only need 50 or 60 yuan to get this gift package, and the customer acquisition cost is spread over the gift package discount . Through the gift box promotion, Xinyidiandian gained about 50,000 new users in two weeks, and the total number of users placing orders increased by more than 20,000, with very good results. Through this method, the customer acquisition cost can be reduced to just over 20 yuan.

The customer acquisition cost of twenty yuan for an e-commerce brand is very low, while the customer acquisition cost for e-commerce platforms is basically at least two hundred yuan. Through this activity, the cost was reduced to just over 20 yuan per user by acquiring users. Cases like unpacking gift boxes are currently used very frequently on WeChat. If there are similar free lectures, you can share this with users. As long as two users follow this service account, you can attend the lecture for free. This is a similar small method of acquiring users through users.

Case 4: “Guess the Question Red Packet”

Guessing red envelopes mainly takes advantage of a user's foresight, for example, "Guess who my favorite person is", you share it on your Moments, and then your friends will be very curious about who you like.

When he wants to see the answer, he must first follow the service account and then reply. If your reply is correct, the red envelope is yours; if your reply is wrong, it doesn’t matter, it will guide you to send a red envelope of your own for guessing the question.

This is a way for a virus to spread . Your friends are attracted by your red envelopes for guessing questions. Your friends feel that participating in these fun things also initiate a red envelope, and then they also share this thing on their circle of friends. Then his friends also get involved, and the whole process forms a transmission.

The effect was quite good, because on the fifth day of the entire event, its event page was blocked and the event was taken offline.

So many students asked, is it easy to get blocked by acquiring customers in this way? In fact, activities like this generally won’t result in an account being blocked.

Here’s a suggestion for everyone . When you are doing an event, don’t worry about what will happen later, but worry about whether it will be popular in the beginning. Because if you gain 50,000 or 60,000 followers a day, your account will not be blocked; if you gain 200,000 or 300,000 followers a day, the official WeChat operation may detect your abnormality, so don't worry, just do it.

Case 5: Group buying

There are many third-party platforms and many e-commerce platforms that are doing group buying.

Regarding group buying, my advice is not to treat it as an activity. It is a better way to acquire users. For example, Pinduoduo's current valuation, including the number of APP downloads, is quite good. The group buying method is a viral way to acquire customers , which is actually very good. When you are doing group buying, you can calculate the user acquisition cost into your group buying case. It is cheaper than buying users normally or simply purchasing users. This is something that requires more consideration.

How to utilize users at the product level and let them help you acquire users

Case 1: "NetEase Cloud Music" generates pictures by listening to songs

After you finish listening to a song and find the lyrics moving, you can select the lyrics of the song. After selecting, a pop-up will appear and a picture will be generated immediately. At this time, you can generate a picture with the lyrics and share it.

This picture is very beautiful . At the top of the picture is the cover of the song, then the lyrics, and at the bottom is the QR code of this product . In this way, users can spread the word.

Similar to these, platforms such as JD.com, Tmall, and Taobao all make this function of sharing pictures into a product. If you take a screenshot on JD.com now, it will prompt you to share this item on your Moments. This method is to get the user to generate a good-looking picture and share it on WeChat Moments, and then attract the user.

Case 2: Sharing red envelopes

Sharing red envelopes is already a thing that everyone has played out. The one with the most sophisticated tricks in sharing red envelopes is Xiaohongshu.

It guides you to share, and the sharing routine is the same as everyone else's, guiding you to share through rewards ; its most in-depth routine is for new users who see the red envelope page. A new user sees the red envelope link you shared with him. After he opens it, he doesn't know how much money he will receive. Only when he enters his phone number and completes the registration, can he know how much money is hidden in the red envelope you shared with me . When he reaches this step, Xiaohongshu has already turned him into its own user.

Similar red envelope sharing products that are doing well include Didi Dache and the previously popular Yidao Car Rental. They can combine hot topics to package red envelopes. For example, when Empress Wu became popular, they gave Wu Meiniang's red envelopes; when Lu Han became popular, they gave Lu Han's red envelopes; when Ode to Joy became popular, they gave Ode to Joy's red envelopes. Through the creation of IP, red envelopes can be made more fun and interesting. The whole strategy of the red envelope function is to tell users what they can get and make new users who receive the red envelope feel it is fun and interesting.

Case 3: Default sharing: suitable for community-based products and content-based products

By default, users are allowed to synchronize the content they share to community platforms and social platforms.

For example, if your user shares some useful information in your product, you should ask him to check the button for sharing to social platforms by default while sharing the useful information. When he clicks to publish, the information will be automatically retrieved and synchronized to QQ Space, Weibo, Moments, Maimai, Momo and other platforms.

In this way, it is possible to drive traffic to the product through content and user sharing . The drainage effect of this method is good, judging from some of the projects I have participated in before. Assuming that you share more than a hundred pieces of content every day and can acquire 200 to 300 new users every day, the effect is quite good. If your community can share 2,000 to 3,000 posts with others, and acquire 2,000 to 3,000 new users every day in this way, that would be quite impressive.

Case 4: “Address Book Friends”

Many products with social functions can acquire users in this way. "Address Book Friends" can quickly add the address book friends in the user's current phone to your product , allowing your users to send invitations to their address book friends and then become your users. This function is a very traditional and effective one , and is used in many products. Take Renren for example. When it was first established, it was spread through invitations from friends in universities. Although Renren is dead, it still sends emails to our mailbox from time to time .

It can be seen that the method of acquiring users through address book friends is actually quite effective, and this is a function that everyone may try to add. If you have this function, you can also plan some activities, such as PK invited by friends, which is also a good way.

Case 5: Planning for Enterprises: Micro-Vouchers

Micro coupons are designed to help review and operate practitioners or some companies to quickly build a community around their service accounts.

The main functions of this community include live streaming, event planning, e-commerce tools, and some promotional functions ; in addition to these common tools, it also has a tool called fission posters , which allows users to share the corresponding posters of the event to their Moments by posting events, and then let their friends follow this official account, and then they can get a coupon for free. A feature like this one is sold for 5,000 yuan . For many people, especially personal public account operators, it is very difficult to earn this 5,000 yuan.

So, it made a trial version . If you want to use these functions, you can use them, but there is a requirement that you must go to my service account to initiate this community, and then create this community. After creating this community, if you want to activate it, there is another requirement that you must attract 50 public users in the community before you can activate it. When these 50 community users were attracted by him, they had already become fans of the service account. This is a technique and example for acquiring users through free trials of features, if your business is B-side oriented.

Through this method, the service account gains about 300-400 followers every day, and now the number of followers is about 300,000 to 400,000. It can be seen that this kind of show is quite good. If you are in the to B business, you can try to buy some things for to C and let them help you acquire customers.

The above are 11 operational cases on how to acquire users through users. The following is a summary of the entire case.

Summary: Five core elements of user acquisition through user

When planning some activities, you can think from these five dimensions.

The first dimension is called "user group"

First think about who your user group is and which user group you want to capitalize on. Because most products have different types of users, you must first think clearly about which user group you want to capitalize on. You have to analyze it, because only in this way can you plan it more thoroughly and then you can plan the next one, two, and three steps.

After determining the user group you want to tap into, the next step is to think about what tools to use to better help you acquire users and better help them persuade others to use your product. The core point of this tool is: low threshold.

Secondly, this tool is visual and the progress is visual .

For example, if I invite friends, and I have invited a certain number of them, they should tell me, so that I can continue to invite more and I can be more motivated to do this.

If you say that I invited a user, but I don’t know how many people I invited today, the effect would be very bad. Visualization is to constantly tell him the progress, such as how many people you have invited now, how many people are left to reach the top, how much is your current income, and so on. This kind of data can better stimulate users to invite others.

There are many free invitation sharing tools at present, such as Sohu Quick Station, Points Treasure, Qianliao. It is also a very good sharing tool that everyone can use. If you have the conditions to develop something, you can develop some sharing tools like the red envelopes mentioned earlier.

The third is sharing incentives

That is to tell the user why he should share. The analysis of the user group in the first step is very critical here. If you don’t position this group well and you don’t know what they need, your user motivation will actually be very passive. I send you a red envelope, which is a universal incentive. The problem with universal incentives is that the user acquisition is not very accurate. The best thing is to analyze the characteristics of users, and then formulate some prizes that meet their current requirements and happen to be in line with the positioning of our platform as incentives. This is the best way.

The fourth is communication packaging

The purpose of communication packaging is to make users feel that I am sharing this thing with dignity, rather than just doing it for a small profit. Companies like Yidao Car and Didi Taxi package their red envelopes through various collaborations with celebrities and IPs, making them feel that the red envelopes are very interesting. This is the charm of communication. Convincing others that my thing is cool, that I share it for your own good and to reflect my identity, this is called communication packaging. You have to package this thing better, so that users don't feel that it is too commercial and that it will hurt their relationship with their friends. This is very important.

The fifth is research channels

When users want to share your things, you have to consider what kind of titles on different channels will be popular with the public. QQ Space and Moments are definitely different. Second, is the forwarding rate of pictures high, or the forwarding rate of pictures and texts high? This is also different. At present, the forwarding rate of pictures is relatively high, so you need to study the characteristics of users in different channels, and then come up with corresponding titles/pictures to increase the forwarding rate of communication. Find ways to enable users to achieve the corresponding communication goals at a very low cost. This is what operations colleagues need to do to help users, rather than forcing users to share, which is wrong.