4 Misconceptions of APP Acquisition of Users, Have You Fallen into Them?

Regardless of whether users are easy to dig, avoid these four misunderstandings first

I heard something ridiculous recently:

A friend told me that the boss of their company prepared 200 million in cash to buy users. The specific operations are as follows:

An old user shares the app with his WeChat friends, and his friends register as members through the shared link. Then both parties will receive 10 yuan in cash and it will be deposited into their personal accounts in the system. In other words, the cost of adding each new user is 20 yuan, and the company's goal is to burn these 200 million yuan to buy 10 million "first fans (loyal rigid fans)".

In less than a week, there was indeed a brief peak in user growth , but the density of users generated per unit time was very high, and it was obvious that someone was maliciously inflating the number of users.

Therefore, a new rule was added: the person being shared must download the APP and log in on the day of successful registration, only then will the new user be considered valid and both parties can get 10 yuan each.

Soon this method was used skillfully, so the company changed the rules: after the person being shared registers as a new user and logs in, 10 yuan will be credited to his account the next day. The sharer can only get 10 yuan after logging in for three consecutive days.

I don’t really care whether the rules are still being “optimized” later. I can only take a deep breath of smoke, exhale slowly, and watch the clouds roll by with a smile, thinking that it’s a pity. Two hundred million can do a lot of things…

Still thinking about user dividends? Still looking for new cakes in the user object? Are there hidden populations beyond the 1.4 billion people? Stop dreaming. The era of acquiring users for free and with high quality is gone forever. There are giants in every field, each industry has been segmented, and users have almost been divided up. Not only have you missed the era of user dividends, but you also don't have unique core competitiveness to convert users of competitors into fans. No matter how easy it is to poach users, the costs are there after all. It is better to avoid these four misunderstandings first.

1. Target users are unclear and seed user standards are missing

This standard did not exist in the incident just now: What are the prerequisites for becoming a so-called "Gang fan"? As a part of the seed users, what factors can play a decisive role in the accumulation of later users? Is it that when a member is generated by a registration system, he is considered a new fan, or does it count only when the retention rate reaches a certain value? There are no standards for these, and leaders make snap decisions, which leads to frequent changes in orders. False sharers continue to profit, and the user group feels that the product team is unreliable and unstable.

Target user fuzziness refers to what kind of users we need during the entire process of discovering new users, what is the age distribution of users, what are their occupational characteristics, and what is the ultimate pain point that can be satisfied for users?

So now everyone is talking about the term target users. Instead of saying this, it is better to say that we have met the needs of a certain type of people through this product. This demand is also the advantage highlighted in the competitive product analysis .

Some products want to have all the functions, some products set the goal of surpassing Taobao and Meituan , and bringing new features to O2O . However, they have not yet grown big, and they have a little bit of all the functions, but no particularly outstanding function.

This ultimately leads to users being very confused. Each user cannot accurately express the product features during the dissemination process, making it difficult to form word-of-mouth communication, let alone accumulate seed users.

Therefore, clarifying the target users' pain points and refining the core value of the product will not only make it easier for new users to get started quickly, but also facilitate the spread of the product by old users.

2. Using a bad experience to buy time for iterations is like picking up sesame seeds and losing watermelons

In order to attract more people, a new business point is added and launched online as soon as possible. Regarding this, either the product manager does not intend to do it anymore, or the boss has a lot of money.

But having a lot of money is not enough. After all, the user base is limited. If you open the door without being prepared to welcome a group of new users, and let them rush in, and then find out what a shitty product it is, with all kinds of bugs such as network delays, routing errors, slow page loading, and application system crashes, are you treating users as guinea pigs or social testers?

If the core experience is not done well, any means and methods to increase the number of users in the future will be futile, and may even be destructive to the existing user system and market share . Moreover, the influx of a large number of users will not only have a terribly low retention rate, but the negative reputation it brings is very unfavorable to the cultivation of seed users.

3. Stick to one method to acquire users

The approach of the friend's company in the case is a typical one of going all the way to the end. Using a network of acquaintances may seem to result in a higher conversion rate , but this ignores one problem: the conversion rate of a single communication channel is infinitely reduced.

For example, the company’s first policy says that new users will receive a 10 yuan registration reward. Then A shares the policy with 50 people in his circle of friends, and 10 people register. At the same time, these 10 people are likely to forward the policy in their own circle of friends . At this time, the company issued a second policy saying that it was not enough for new users to register, and they had to log in for three consecutive days to get rewards. So the probability of the remaining 40 people in A's circle of friends registering was very low. The policies shared by the ten registered people are different from the initial ones. The threshold is raised and the conversion rate is further reduced, so A's circle of friends is basically doomed.

Anyone with a little common sense knows that you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, otherwise all will be lost and you won't be able to measure the pros and cons of different channels . Especially in the modern platform field, there are so many advertising, media, and online channels that can be used to acquire users. This diversification can effectively control costs and obtain data from each platform.

4. Superstitious free registration with prizes

“New users get an instant 200 yuan discount when registering”, “New users get a 10 yuan cash bonus when registering”, “Refer 5 people and get a 200 yuan cash coupon”, can these small profits really stimulate current users? If I download your app just for 10 yuan, then give up this type of user and use the money to develop better features and high-quality experience. Use good products to retain users and meet their needs. Think about it, it’s better to forget about the “10 quick users”.

Judging from the data, the DAU in a certain period of time seems to be very high, but when you look at the retention rate the next day, it is terrible.

There are several reasons not to abuse cash rewards:

1. This is a naked cost for enterprises;
2. Users who come for money are unreliable. They come for money, not because your product is useful, but because they can get money. You can imagine the loyalty of such users.
3. If you can earn money by sharing, then the act of sharing itself naturally carries the smell of money. If you share the app with your friends just to get a reward, you cannot guarantee that they will not be disgusted.

summary

Therefore, I sincerely hope that wealthy companies will think about how to polish their products. Products that can provide value are also contributions to society, providing services to users, and jointly creating a green Internet environment without junk products~

The author of this article @Xing Ye 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