21 ways to help you acquire effective users at low cost!

From the perspective of product operation , how to acquire the first 1,000 effective users at low cost?

The difference between seed users and valid users

1. Seed users

Seed users refer to users who can "sprout" and have the potential to grow into towering trees. Referring to the individual character rule of the tipping point, the role of seed users in products can be divided into the following three categories:

1) Expert. You can think of it as the group of seeds that are willing to share content for the product. A typical feature is that they often do not obtain information passively, but actively collect first-hand and second-hand information, process and compare the collected information, and then share it on the product without hesitation so that more people can know about it.

2) Contact person. They are the seed users who can spread the content of the product. They may not be good at creating content, but they know a lot of people, and the people they can connect to are definitely not limited to one or several fields, but should be of different ages, different occupations, different life forms, and even different nationalities. Many experts believe that some special professions are areas where contacts are more densely distributed, such as journalists, lawyers and other professions.

Following this definition, let me share a cold start case about "Youwofan" that I heard at a Tencent Internet Salon: Since some of the founding team of this product came from the journalism field, they made use of media resources and often invited reporters from various portal magazines and newspapers to dinner for free. The only thing the reporters had to do was to post to their Moments after the meal and say, "This dinner was organized with the product 'Youwofan'!" Isn't this operational method of making full use of contacts very smart?

3) Salesman. Contacts help you let more people know about your product, while salesmen are the ones who get more people to use your product. Salespeople generally have a positive and optimistic nature. They always have a happy expression on their faces when they speak. They are very confident in the views they express and pass this confidence on to their audience. They are good at "interacting" with their audience, etc. Under the influence and persuasion of the salesperson, consumers will be more impressed by the information they receive and find it more credible and willing to accept it.

As a public account that dares to share anything in a practical manner, Xiaoxian will tell you another case here: In December 2015, in the marketing campaign of Tiantian Orchard Orange’s Mr. Gift Box, he not only managed the contacts, but also mobilized salesmen. For example, my good friend Xiao Liu is a salesman. He took the initiative to send invitation codes in the community and personally taught everyone how to redeem the code, so my circle of friends was flooded with messages one day in December.

2. Valid users

The above is the definition of seed users with reference to the rule of individual characters, but the protagonist discussed in this article is not them, but effective users. What does a valid user mean?

They are the real target users of the product, including seed users, lurking users, and onlookers. They are not zombie users or non-target users. Therefore, on the basis of clarifying the difference between seed users and target users, if we want to truly acquire effective users, we need to position the current product before the promotion begins. Only in this way can you know where to acquire users.

The more precise the positioning of a startup product is, the better. In a nutshell, it is about what functions should be used to meet the needs of what users in what scenarios. For example, if you are running a mother and baby community, you might define your product as “using videos to guide mothers on how to feed their babies healthily.” This short sentence not only explains the selling points that can be used to acquire users during the promotion process, but also clarifies the attributes of our target users:

• Age: 23-40
• Gender: Female
• Income: Upper middle class
• Hobbies: Parenting
• Status: Mother
• Other: Baby-related diet topics

want