I read 37 blogs of Silicon Valley user growth experts and summarized these 8 key points

I have recently been following a group of growth giants in Silicon Valley, and Andrew Chen is one of them. I gained a lot from reading his blog. I have summarized 8 useful knowledge modules and would like to share them with you.

Here’s a tip for you when reading: please pay attention to his derivation process, not just the conclusion.

1. Who is Andrew Chen?

Andrew Chen's blog focuses on entrepreneurship , growth, design, and more. The concept of growth hacking attracted widespread attention in the industry because Andrew published an article on his blog in 2012 titled " Growth Hacker is the new VP marketing ".

The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs

Here is a real example Andrew gave - comparing the average click-through rate of banner ads from HotWired in 1994 and Facebook in 2011:

1994 HotWired hit rate: 78%

2011 Facebook, click-through rate: 0.05%

As you can see, the difference is 1500 times! While there are many factors that contribute to this difference, the basic trend is that click-through rates on banner ads, email, and many other marketing channels are decreasing every year. The main reasons for this trend are as follows:

Innovations become less attractive. Users will begin to become interested in new things. For example, when HotWired first launched its banner ad, users clicked it for the experience. But as users get used to this form of advertising, they will gradually ignore it.

Competitor impact. Often when a marketing strategy works, competitors will follow suit. And the marketing effect of each individual will be weakened.

The quality of later users declined. Early users tend to actively use the product, so various indicators (click-through rate, registration rate , payment rate, etc.) will perform relatively well. Late users, who make up the majority of users, tend to be less active and need to be constantly influenced before they will use the product, so the efficiency of the marketing strategy will be reduced.

But there is no need to worry, because new marketing channels are constantly being discovered, and these new channels often perform better. Therefore, the most effective way to truly overcome the "bad click-through rate law" is to constantly explore new marketing channels.

3. Make users quit your project easily

According to normal logic, many PMs would probably not accept this view. After all, we all want to do everything we can to "delay" users so that they cannot easily uninstall products, log out of their accounts, or cancel subscriptions.

However, the core idea behind Andrew’s point is that every startup is an iterative learning process that is constantly moving towards “product/market fit”, and you need very high-fidelity signals to tell you whether you are moving in the right direction.

Let’s first explain “product/market fit”. Marc Andreessen (yes, the Silicon Valley godfather who invested in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) said:

In the iterative process towards "product/market fit", data is needed to provide decision support. The better the data, the better the decisions. So, the question is, what kind of data can be used to measure whether users are satisfied with your product?

The answer is: explicit data. for example:

Made a purchase

Used the search function once

Filled out the form

etc.

The corresponding data is implied data, namely:

Similar demographics to the purchasing population

Read the same content as similar users

Have the habit of reading financial articles

etc.

Compared to explicit data, implied data is much less valuable. If you want to collect data to drive decisions, it's best to use clear data, whether it's positive or negative. In fact, if you only focus on positive data, you are ignoring 50% of the data, which will hinder you from achieving "product/market fit".

Therefore, we should “simplify the user abandonment path”. In a word: Let the storm come harder!

4. Metcalfe's Law

Metcalfe's Law was proposed by Metcalfe, a pioneer in computer networks and founder of 3Com. The law states that the value of a network grows at the square of the number of users. Expressed in formula, if the total number of people in the network is n, the network value is n×n=n².

The idea behind this is this: if every new node in the network is connected to every pre-existing node, then as you gain nodes you non-linearly increase the number of connections each person has to everyone else.

For a more in-depth explanation, see the following figure:

As the number of online users increases (the larger N is), the value of the network will accelerate and is proportional to N2; while the cost of user acquisition changes linearly and is proportional to N. After reaching a certain critical point, the value will far exceed the cost.

This law is both a good thing and a bad thing for social platforms. When your users grow from 100 to 200, your value goes up from 10k to 40k, and vice versa. Therefore, how to grasp this law is something that each of us should think about.

5. The science of addiction

I believe that those who love learning already know a lot of reward mechanisms that make users addicted, such as monetary rewards, level incentives, emotional rewards, etc. Here, let me share with you Andrew’s more in-depth analysis.

The reward mechanism can be divided into the following four categories:

The effects of these four reward mechanisms are as follows:

The ratio mechanism produces more user response rates than the interval mechanism.

The variable mechanism generates more user response rates than most fixed mechanisms.

The changing ratio produced the highest user response rate. (such as slot machines in casinos)

When setting user rewards, you can refer to this conclusion. I believe your efficiency will be higher.

MVP versus MDP

Different types of companies will have different first entry points - business-oriented companies will first evaluate feasibility, considering metrics, revenue and market size; technology-oriented companies will first develop a core technology and then build a business around it; user-oriented companies will first focus on the background and behavior of the target users and build a product experience around this.

Therefore, a minimum viable product (MVP) is often built around a business — to validate its business model . For example, you can test the sign-up rate of your landing page, try pre-selling products, and so on. Pricing and payment information should be included in the product as it helps in assessing the real feasibility of the product.

However, if you are user-oriented, you should build a "minimum desired product (MDP)", that is, build the most basic product necessary to provide users with a high-value, high-satisfaction user experience .

To build an MDP, you need to deliver the core of your product experience, not just a landing page, which helps users fully evaluate your product. You want to find metrics that provide value to users, not conversion rates and revenue.

Here are a few examples of "minimum viable products" and "minimum desired products".

If you built a viral social network that is profitable but has severe churn — you built an MVP, not an MDP.

If you build a dating site that many users buy at $20/month, but they can’t find a suitable match — you built an MVP, not an MDP.

If you make a board game that your friends and family love and are addicted to, but you can’t get a gaming company to distribute it — you built an MDP, not an MVP.

It can be seen that whether to build a "minimum viable product" or a "minimum expected product" depends on your core model.

7. Viral Branding versus Viral Action

Viral marketing is divided into viral brands and viral actions.

1. Viral Brands

What is generally referred to as viral marketing is actually viral branding. That is, "do something cool that everyone wants to talk about." There are many examples of this, such as:

NetEase Cloud Music 's "Red Music Review Train"

New World's " Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou " and "Subway Book Throwing Campaign"

Pechoin 's "1931" divine portrait

Distribution posters for NetEase Cloud Classroom and Sanlianting Weekly

These phenomenal viral communications require sufficient creativity, so they are less replicable and difficult for ordinary companies to achieve.

2. Viral Action

This viral marketing method is to delve into the "product", that is, "do something that is easy to spread to others."

In this case, the focus is more on the mechanism of viral transmission rather than the content transmitted. For many products, this means you need to enable users to spread your message more efficiently on social media .

There are many examples of this kind, such as:

YouTube provides users with codes that can quickly copy and paste videos to other websites.

NetEase Wugu Reading allows users to save good sentences directly as pictures.

Get an invitation letter that can generate a user nickname.

These communications do not rely on cool ideas. They are built within the product and rely on self-propagation.

8. The Product Death Cycle

As you can see, this death loop has 3 steps. Let's take a closer look at each step:

1. No one is using the product

This phenomenon is very common for startup products. The approach taken to deal with this dilemma may be the beginning of a product death loop.

2. Survey users about missing features

When you ask users “What features do you think are missing?” you are being completely user-oriented rather than having a product vision, which is a big mistake. Here are the reasons:

The opinions of existing users do not represent the larger group of non-users, and these opinions may mislead you.

The problem with a product is often not just the lack of functionality, but may also be overpricing, insufficient publicity, or inaccurate positioning, etc.

3. Missing functions in the launch

It would be a big mistake to hope that adding missing features will attract users. The product interacts with the user during the first few visits, and these interactions are crucial, such as showing the user the "Aha moment." The missing functions in the online launch cannot replace the weakest link of the user experience. Assuming that the function launched online is to solve the core experience, then it depends on whether it improves the overall UI process, otherwise users will not buy it.

If you want to break the "product death loop", you need to ask more "Why" questions, such as "Is this enough to affect the user experience? Or is it just a cool but niche feature?" Only in this way can you find the most fundamental reason. The solutions are often a series of solutions: market, pricing, channels, content, and even strategy, etc.

9. 25 reasons why users say “bye” (25 exit points)

In social products, the user life cycle can be divided into the following five stages:

Based on these 5 stages, I will tell you 25 reasons why users say goodbay.

1. First experience

“I don’t know what this website is about”

“This site is not for me”

“The colors/design/icons look weird”

“I already use X”

“I don’t want to register”

2. Only individual friends

“I don’t have time to participate”

“I am lonely and have no chance encounters”

"I forgot my password"

“I don’t know how to talk to people”

“I only log in once every few months”

3. Have more friends

“There are a lot of weirdos on this website.”

“People I don’t know keep harassing me”

"My friends, there is no insistence on this."

“I get too many emails from this site”

“I only have 3 friends, it’s so boring”

4. The number of friends exceeds the critical value of social scale

“This site takes up too much of my time”

“There are too many people in my friends list that I don’t know”

“People are stalking me based on my pictures and events!”

“Too many exaggerated things happened”

"Too many notifications"

5. Become a celebrity

“The website doesn’t have feature X which I really need!”

“The upcoming feature Y will destroy the ecosystem of this website!”

“I’ve done a lot on the website, but it’s not worth it.”

“I’m bored because there’s nothing to do on the site”

“Being new to the site seems more fun”

Finally, I strongly recommend that you pay more attention to Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and growth giants, such as Jack Dorsey, Neil Patel, Sean Ellis, etc. After all, they are all people who have completed "10,000 hours" of practice in the fields of business and growth early on.

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

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