Are there any rules to follow in operations and promotion at different stages of product development?

As mentioned before, in the content of Chapter 4, we want to focus on the life and death of a product, how to plan operations , and whether there are some rules behind it that can be followed.

There are actually two main clues to explore this topic:

First, determine how to formulate operational strategies and plans based on different product development stages or the current market share;

Second, determine how to formulate operational strategies and plans based on different product forms and business types.

In this article, let’s first talk about the “first” mentioned above.

In fact, from the perspective of the product’s development stage, we can divide the products into the following four types:

• Exploration products

Features: It has not been online for long, the product is still being polished, the demand has yet to be verified, the market share is very small and can be basically ignored, and it has not yet been accepted by most people.

Typical examples: Zhihu between 2011 and 2012, Sina Weibo in 2010, and most products that were launched within 8 months.

• Rapidly growing products

Characteristics: The demand has been verified and a certain market share has been initially obtained. A large number of similar competitors have emerged in the market, and it is necessary to rely on rapid growth to quickly occupy the market and break through the siege.

Typical representatives: Inke in the first half of 2016, Didi Chuxing in 2014, and Momo in 2013.

• Mature and stable products

Characteristics: The market is close to saturation, the product itself has already occupied a very solid market share, and there is little room for growth.

Typical representatives: WeChat, Baidu Maps, Mayu, Dayima, etc. in 2016.

• Decline products

Characteristics: Alternative products emerge, and users begin to leave in large numbers and move to alternative products.

Typical representatives: Douban, Tianya Community, Mop, etc. in 2016.

Normally, a product will go through the above four stages from birth to death, and the focus in each stage will be different.

Next, let’s look at the differences in operational performance and focus of products at different stages.

Let us first clarify a basic argument: the purpose of operating an exploration product is not to acquire a large number of users, but to make all necessary preparations to be able to serve a large number of users one day in the future. Including: product functions, product experience, product style and atmosphere, and service capabilities.

In addition, we can also use Zhihu between 2011 and 2012 and Sina Weibo around 2010 to see what similarities there are in the operations of exploration period products.

1. They all chose a more closed and restrictive operating mode. Both Zhihu and Weibo adopted the "invitation code" mechanism in the early days to control the growth of the absolute number of users. Zhihu has maintained the invitation code registration mechanism for two years. Because of the existence of invitation codes, they maximized the purity and controllability of the early product atmosphere.
2. In addition to users who came with the "invitation code", they also invited a group of well-known and influential "big Vs" to join and use the product through operations in the early days, such as Kai-Fu Lee and Lei Jun on Zhihu, Huang Jianxiang and Zheng Yuanjie on Weibo. This group of big Vs not only became loyal users of the early products, but also continued to bring new attention to the products with their own influence.
3. They have provided all kinds of "unparalleled" care to early seed users . For example, @张亮 (the guy from Innovation Works) and @张亮Leo (yes, my good friend, the fat guy who wrote "Starting Operations from Scratch") on Zhihu, Zheng Yuanjie on Weibo, etc., all gained a large number of fans and magnified their own value by being active and proactive in the early development of Zhihu and Weibo. In addition, many early core users of Zhihu and Weibo have always maintained a very close relationship with Zhihu and Weibo. They know many official Zhihu and Weibo employees, and are still often invited to visit Zhihu offices and participate in various activities organized by Zhihu (don't ask me how I know this).

At this point, we may be able to summarize that for a product in the exploration stage, the common operating points are as follows:

1. Select user. Try your best to use various means to exclude users who may harm your product (such as the typical "troll" type of users who curse wherever they go), or users whom you are not yet capable of serving well (a typical example is Zhihu which only focused on entrepreneurship and Internet-related topics in its early days).
2. Try to find some "active" and "influential" celebrity leaders in a small circle to become your early seed users through invitations, BD and other means. Then, by serving them well, make them willing to endorse you and spread your products. Their trust and endorsement are of great value to an early product. Moreover, for such users, if you can serve one well, you can easily influence a group of people.
3. You must give your seed users all kinds of extra attention and let them feel that the feeling of being a user here is significantly different from being a user somewhere else. The logic is actually very simple: since we have already said that the early product experience may be very bad and uncertain, the operation side naturally needs to invest more energy to give users a reason to stay.

Usually, if you find that your product's user recognition and seed user activity are already very high, and the user growth rate begins to accelerate significantly, you may have passed the exploration period.

Inke in the first half of 2016, Didi Chuxing in 2014, and Momo from the second half of 2012 to 2012, their common characteristics are: they began to use all the means and resources they could see to do everything possible to quickly occupy the market.

As for why you need to start accelerating to capture the market, first, the product is ready, some users have already recognized and accepted the product, and the cost of user education becomes lower; second, because you have already verified the feasibility, a large number of competing products will often appear at this stage, so if you don’t run fast enough, you will easily be killed by others.

From the perspective of the stages they are in, we can also see some commonalities:

1. About the promotion level. The construction of various channels, from app store promotion to performance-based advertising (such as Guangdiantong , etc.), often starts to increase from this stage.
2. Various events and topics surrounding the product often emerge in an endless stream during this stage. For example, Yingke now has live broadcasts by celebrities every two or three weeks. Momo started to label itself as the "hookup tool" in the second half of 2012 and has developed various topics and communications based on this label. Didi Chuxing started to actively cooperate with major brands in 2014 to plan cross-border marketing and event marketing (such as Han Hong's red envelope advertisement).
3. Often at this stage, large-scale subsidies and other measures are used to rapidly increase user growth and cultivate user habits. A typical example is Didi Chuxing's red envelope program that lasted almost a whole year in 2014.
4. During this stage, user-oriented operations began to shift from extensive to gradually refined. For example, in 2014, Didi Chuxing began to implement different subsidy strategies for different users based on regions, time periods, etc.; for another example, the anchors on Inke had begun to be classified for maintenance and management by the first half of 2016.

To summarize -

For a product that has passed the exploration period and entered the rapid growth period, the core goal is to quickly gain user growth. In order to occupy the market as quickly as possible, the product at this stage will often launch a full-scale attack in various promotion channels and methods, and even implement a large amount of subsidies, in an effort to occupy the market as soon as possible.

In addition, operations at this stage will gradually become more refined, and will begin to provide different services to different users or implement different operational methods.

The so-called "mature and stable" products must have very little room for growth in the number of users in the corresponding field and the product already has a relatively stable position.

In comparison, products such as WeChat, Dianping, Mayu, and Dayima in the first half of 2016 are all products that have entered the "mature and stable stage".

The common characteristics of products at this stage are: paying close attention to user activity and commercial monetization paths. At the same time, user-oriented operations also begin to be fully refined.

Example:

At this stage of WeChat, you will start to see more Moments ads, and you will see WeChat start to integrate more services in large numbers.

At this stage of Dianping, you will receive a large number of push notifications on your mobile phone more frequently, and regularly receive various coupons and official event information.

At this stage, you will see that the points systems and activities of Mayu and Dayima are becoming stronger and stronger within the products. You will also find that they have begun to try to start their own monetization through e-commerce .

In addition, the above-mentioned products must have already started comprehensive and refined operations for users at this moment. For example, the information that different users see and receive in the product after logging in will be completely different.

Summarize--

A mature and stable product will, in theory, enter a comprehensive and sophisticated operation period - for different product modules and different types of users, there should be dedicated operations personnel to provide users with corresponding services and information.

At the same time, the operational work at this stage will generally be guided by the three major directions of brand image building, user activity and commercial realization. Therefore, the specific work content of the operation end often includes: a large number of brand communication activities and events, a large number of activities for specific users with relatively fixed cycles, various potential commercial realization methods and operations centered on increasing revenue.

Products in the decline stage are usually the dominant ones in the previous era, but it is obvious that the future no longer belongs to them. Their previous users begin to leave in large numbers and move to various alternative products.

Therefore, the operational focus of this type of product is often the maintenance of old users and life cycle management. Through various means, we try to slow down the loss of old users as much as possible, and at the same time continue to explore new product directions, striving to make a good alternative product before potential alternative products develop.

However, if a product really reaches this stage, the possibility of revival is generally small...

Example:

Douban has been anxious since 2014, constantly trying to release new products, but its huge product line has always been tangled...

The two dominant players in the BBS era, Maopu and Tianya, known as "Mowpu in the north and Tianya in the south", have lost a large number of users since the rise of various new communities such as Weibo in 2011, and have faded out of the mainstream Internet world.

Summarize--

For a product in its decline, operations can basically only maintain and strengthen various previous means to extend its life cycle. At the same time, recalling and taking over lost users may become a relatively important operational task in this stage. However, such work often does not produce much effect.

If you are unfortunately responsible for such a product, my biggest advice is to find space to do something productive yourself and do it quickly. At least it will look much better on your resume in the future...

Well, so far, we have used some cases to show you the focus of different products in their different stages of operation. For those students who have not worked for a long time, may have only worked in one or two companies, have focused on execution for a long time but lack knowledge and thinking about the planning of operational work, this article should be able to give you a lot of inspiration.

In the next article, we will start from product form and business type to talk specifically about the specific work content and focus of operations in various types of product forms and business types, and even the differences in operational strategies. Let’s see you next time.