How to acquire seed users without money or resources?

When a new product is just starting to operate, I believe every operator will encounter the same problem: no money and no resources, but the boss has set various target KPIs. Those who have read "Xiaomi Word-of-Mouth Marketing Internal Manual: Sense of Participation" know that Xiaomi obtained its first batch of seed users through forums at almost no cost, and then continued to spread through word-of-mouth, and now has more than 60 million users. So, how do you get the first batch of seed users without money and resources?

What is a seed user?

Seed users ≠ initial users. They should be a very core group of target users . They are heavy users of the product and can promote the development of the product. They are the first batch of users who are conducive to cultivating a product atmosphere.

Seed users are contagious, have a strong desire to share, and are willing to use their influence to attract more target users to use the product.

From the definition of seed users, we have seen their value. Especially for new products, the importance of seed users is obvious.

Who is the audience for the product?

Before operating a new product, we need to think about two questions:

• 1. What are the characteristics of users who are willing to actively use our products?
• 2. What kind of users do we want to use our products?

Some operations personnel may fall into a misunderstanding - from the company's perspective, they believe that the users who use the product are this or that group. In fact, it is possible that the users we think will use the product are not interested in the product, and the user groups we ignore may be potential target users. This requires us to reach a consensus on the two issues mentioned above, that is, the users we want are precisely those who are interested in the product. Only in this way can we continue to formulate operational strategies and attract the first batch of seed users.

Seed users, as in-depth users of the product, are bound to be one of the audiences. Different audiences have different interests in products. In other words, when we are positioning our audience, we have actually determined the selling points of the product. For example, if we determine that our target audience is women between the ages of 16 and 25, then when we determine the selling points of our products, we must consider the characteristics of users in this range.

What is the selling point of the product?

After determining our potential target users, we need to determine the selling points of the product. The famous USP (Unique Selling Proposition) theory analyzes the unique selling point of a product:

• First, it must contain specific commodity utility, that is, each advertisement must make a statement to consumers and give consumers a clear benefit promise;
• Second, it must be unique and distinctive, something that other similar competing products do not have or have not advertised;
• Third, it must be conducive to promoting sales, that is, the argument must be powerful enough to attract millions of people.

From the USP theory, we can see that the unique selling point of a product can be either function or service. Extract the selling points of the product and package them according to the characteristics of potential target users.

How to find the selling point of a product? We need to think from the user's perspective - what the user needs. For new products, if payment is involved, users are most concerned about three issues:

1. It is the security of funds to ensure that the money paid will not be wasted. This is the same problem that all products involving payment will encounter at the beginning.
2. It is a discount offer. On the basis of financial security, the cheaper the better.
3. It is the service attitude. Whether it is delivery, customer service or other services, the service that can be distinguished from other similar competing products should be as good as possible.

After summarizing the issues that users are most concerned about, you can then follow the clues and emphasize the safety of funds through the platform and daily promotion work. Because this is a problem that many new products will encounter, it is generally not recommended to promote it as a selling point for a certain product.

Discounts, by giving away low prices on a few products that can most appeal to the target user group, create hot-selling products and attract users to use them. E-commerce products most often use this method to attract the first batch of seed users.

Service attitude, for example, recharge business, the recharge products are all supplied by operators, so relatively speaking, there is not much difference in delivery time, arrival time, etc. At this time, to attract the first batch of users to switch from the usual recharge channels , it is necessary to find another way, such as through reminder services. When each target user has insufficient traffic /call balance, timely reminders for recharge are given to avoid additional deductions or shutdowns. When the price difference is not big, users will often subconsciously recharge their balance when they receive the insufficient balance information of the product in a timely manner.

What are some free ways to attract new customers? How to do it respectively?

Since there is no money and no resources, how do you acquire users after determining the target audience and selling points of the product? Let’s first sort out what are the free ways to attract new customers?

It can also be seen from the above picture that there are many ways to attract new customers on the market that do not require payment. Especially for apps, it is relatively easy to acquire the first batch of users. For example, app stores and application markets can provide some free exposure opportunities. Next, I will focus on analyzing five methods that are more effective in attracting new customers.

1. New Media Promotion

In our daily new media operations , what we often do is resource exchange. However, when the new media was just starting to operate, we had not yet accumulated seed users. Therefore, when we talked about cooperation with other new media at this time, we were often rejected. What should I do at this time? From another perspective, when we don’t have fans as a resource to exchange, can we cooperate through profit sharing, commissions or other means? Of course, if it comes to paid new media cooperation on the market now, the price is basically quoted for each article. Therefore, if it is through sharing, commission, etc., it may be difficult. However, there is room for cooperation if the share or commission ratio is appropriately increased while ensuring a relatively high conversion rate .

The core basis for a high conversion rate is that the positioning of both parties is relatively consistent. Taking the skirt worn by a 20-year-old girl as an example, if 90% of the new media user group are male, then the conversion rate will definitely be low. They are not the precise target audience, and it is even less likely that they will become seed users. Therefore, only by finding a public account with the same audience characteristics as our target audience and then negotiating cooperation can we achieve better results.

As the saying goes, every person has his or her own face, so after deciding on the new media to cooperate with, you need to write targeted articles based on the characteristics of different new media. For example, if the style of public account A has always been in the form of light comics, then we will use light comics to promote the product selling points and attract users' attention.

2. Collaborate with comprehensive or complementary apps

Comprehensive apps want to improve their products or services as much as possible, so if your product selling point is unique, they are often willing to cooperate; complementary apps often need each other, which is the same as the close relationship between a store selling sports equipment and a store selling sportswear.

For example, before traveling abroad, most people are accustomed to using travel apps to learn about travel strategies, and they also buy a local phone card in case they cannot contact their home country in time after traveling. So, if the selling point of our product is cheap phone cards with good signals, we can convince travel apps to cooperate with us and promote us. For them, adding a service makes users more sticky; for us, this way of diverting traffic attracts a very precise audience. The form of cooperation can still be the profit sharing or commission method mentioned above.

3. SMS

There are many monthly marketing text messages on the market, and the fees are as low as 1 cent. For conventional marketing text messages, the conversion rate from sending the text message to the user following or downloading it is 3% to 10%, and the fluctuation depends on the attractiveness of the text message content. Overall, the cost of attracting new customers is still very low. When editing text messages, pay attention to three issues:

1. As for the number of words, the simpler the better. It should not exceed the number of characters in a text message to avoid some users being affected by their phone models and receiving incomplete information.
2. It is to put important information in front, so that when the user's phone is locked, the text message notification on the phone screen can also attract him to click through the preview of some information.
3. Is to use punctuation marks flexibly. For emphasized information, you can use [ ],! etc. punctuation marks.

4. Ground promotion

There are various forms of ground promotion, including distributing flyers, door-to-door sales, setting up stalls, and offline cooperation with enterprises. For example, the recently popular shared umbrellas have cooperated with some convenience stores. When users make purchases and pay at convenience stores, the store clerks distribute promotional leaflets for shared umbrellas. If the number of field sales staff is limited, try to choose places with concentrated traffic, such as university towns in some places with a floating population of hundreds of thousands. This way, you can get higher returns with the lowest possible expenditure.

5. Sharing

As mentioned earlier, seed users are willing to use their own power to influence people around them to become new users. Therefore, after acquiring some seed users, we will continue to guide them to share fission based on this group of users to attract new users to join. Guide seed users to share, and it is best to promise certain benefits. For example, if an old user successfully attracts a new user to follow him, he will receive a 10% discount coupon. Of course, it would be even better if we could encourage users to share actively through event marketing . Event marketing has the characteristics of fast dissemination speed, large scale of new users, and extremely low or even zero cost. Therefore, the quality of users acquired is higher than that obtained through interest attraction. For example, Xin Shixiang ’s subway book-throwing campaign and Tiantian’s photoshopped elementary school graduation photos. However, there are no absolute rules for event marketing, and it is impossible to replicate the success of predecessors. You can only achieve success through constant trial and error, plus a bit of luck.

What are the user touchpoints?

Generally speaking, it is most effective to attract user attention or downloads through activities. The types of activities for attracting new customers can be divided into two categories: one is event marketing, which is "emotional touch"; the other is interest marketing, which is "interest driven".

Event Marketing

Some time ago, an article titled "Sorry, Mom and Dad can't give you a school district house worth 8 million yuan" went viral on the WeChat Moments of new parents. The article has been read over 4 million times, and the WeChat official account that planned the article gained over 170,000 new followers in just a few days. This case tells us that a successful public account activity or topic can bring huge and high-quality traffic at zero cost. In summary, event marketing has several main characteristics:

• It is to plan phenomenal activities or topics, whether it is the 8 million yuan school district house just mentioned, or the " escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou " planned by Xin Shixiang, they are all controversial and hot topics now.
• It is consistent with the product positioning and can resonate with the audience. If the product is mainly based on content operation , there is relatively more room for choice. By selecting correct topics that conform to the mainstream three views, there is a chance to plan successful event marketing.

However, if the product is mainly based on subscriptions, careful planning is required. After all, if it deviates from the topic, even if the event marketing is very successful, the traffic obtained may not be accurate, and it may even lead to negative word-of-mouth impact.

Benefit Marketing

Benefit-driven event planning falls into two categories:

• The first is direct benefits, such as coupons for following, iPhone 8 for downloading, etc. The budget for these activities is very low or even no cost. Subscription products will get the opportunity to get new user orders through such activities.
• The second is to guide old users to attract new users, such as sharing to get benefits, forwarding to win prizes, etc. In this way, the enthusiasm of the earliest batch of seed users is mobilized, prompting them to more actively mobilize their own power to influence people around them to pay attention or download.

So, how do you plan a good event? Simply put, the event process is divided into four steps: event preparation - event planning - event execution - effect analysis. During the event preparation period, the main focus is on analyzing the platform status, users and competing products. After completing a series of analyses, you will have a reference for the event goals, objects, time, themes, and forms during event planning. The event budget needs to be determined based on the actual situation of the product. It is best to reduce costs through coupons or cooperation. For the operator who plans and operates the event, the most important task during the event execution period is communication. The work progress of all staff members related to the event depends on the follow-up of the event planner. After the event is launched, it is necessary to summarize and review the results of the event, optimize any problems that can be fixed in a timely manner, and learn from the experience and lessons for the next event planning.

If you want to understand the methods and key points of event planning in more depth and detail, I recommend reading my previous article "How to plan a complete online event? Here is a complete plan

To sum up, even if you have no money or resources, there are still many ways to effectively attract new customers. This requires operators to combine product appeal and user psychology through rational analysis and emotional touch, and ultimately find ways to attract users and promote user conversion.