Useful information | If startups do these four things well, having tens of millions of users is no longer a dream!

My topic today is how start-ups can promote themselves, mainly based on my own previous promotion experience and ideas. Because I have been doing promotion basically since 2005, and the products I promote include FREEWAP, APP, enterprise service products, WeChat public accounts, etc. In fact, every time I do promotion, I practice and research by myself, and then practice it according to my own situation. After practice, I will publish this thing, keep learning, and constantly improve my methods to make my promotion methods more effective.

Now I will talk about how start-ups can promote themselves.

First: Who are our users?

The prerequisite is that the product has been launched and our product is very good. I won’t talk about making the product. This is what the product manager should do. Only with a good product can we have the premise for promotion. With this premise, the first thing we need to think about when promoting is who our users are for this product. When I was chatting with some entrepreneurs before, many of them were not very clear about who their users were. What kind of users were the products they were making for? They said that young people were our users. I laughed at that time. If all young people are users, then this is equivalent to having no users. The scope is too large and unclear. It is also very abstract and difficult to define. We also have some APP entrepreneurs who think that our users are women, and there are many women, of all ages and statuses, including students and married women.

Many entrepreneurs are not clear about their user positioning at the beginning. Who are the real users? In my opinion, the real users are people who can be seen and touched. For example, for freshmen in universities in Beijing, this is very accurate. Or newly married women, or people who use WeChat public accounts, or children between 6 and 12 years old, this group of people is very precise. After you have precisely targeted the target group, your ideas will be clear when doing promotion. For example, when I promoted the WeChat official account before, my official account was aimed at the mobile Internet industry, and my direction was very clear. Secondly, in this industry, my users are those who do APP promotion, so the channel personnel, market, and products of APP promotion are all my users. After thinking about it carefully, it is very clear who my users are.

Therefore, the real user positioning must be clear. I have summarized several characteristics. First of all, we must define his age, whether it is 18, 19, or a certain age range. The second is gender, whether male or female, status, single or married, as well as income and hobbies, such as watching movies, traveling, etc. There is also the field and position in which you are located, such as the Internet industry or the hospital industry, or the military, students, education, insurance, finance and other industries. We must have a clear understanding of the field in which we are located. The second is the location, whether it is in Beijing or Shanghai, a certain district in Beijing or a certain district in Nanjing, we need to have a very precise positioning for this.

I had a client who consulted me before. He was in the UBI car insurance business. When I talked to him, I found some problems. He said that all drivers were his users. This was very vague and the positioning was not accurate enough. If it's difficult for me to promote for him, how can that be possible when all the drivers are your users. Later I talked to him for a long time and I learned that generally users buy insurance at 4S stores for the first three years after buying a new car. Maybe after a few years, new users will find that 4S stores are more expensive and may change their insurance later. So this is found through user analysis and positioning.

Therefore, when doing promotion, you must know who our users are, including those of you who work in education or finance. You must first understand who our users are, and you must be clear about it in your mind. Once you have this clear understanding, your goal will be clear when you do promotion. Otherwise, if you do promotion without a goal, you will end up doing a lot of work, being exhausted, and still seeing no results. You may even be scolded by your boss or leader, and end up with a thankless outcome.

Second: Where are our users?

Where are the users? Divided into online and offline. Offline means our users are in a specific place that they can see, maybe a school? Or office buildings in a certain area? For example, if you want to promote to programmers, where do you think there are the most programmers? There are programmers in Baidu, Wangjing, and Zhongguancun, but the largest number of them are probably on Beijing Metro Line 13, as well as in Xi'erqi, Huoying and other places along the line. Basically, if you look at those dressed in the subway, 90% of them are programmers. This positioning is very clear, and we can immediately know where the users we are promoting are. After knowing the location of this user, we can promote to them by distributing flyers, doing car body advertising, door-to-door marketing and many other promotion methods can be used.

Next are the online users, such as every forum. For example, if we want to promote to developers, our users are developers. For example, developer forums, developer websites, developer download sites, etc. are where our users are located.

Or in certain technical personnel QQ groups, WeChat groups, etc., we can summarize wherever our users are. Then through investigation I know which websites most people gather on. We can find out the top ten websites, which can basically cover 90% of the users.

WeChat group, you just need to find a WeChat group, and it is easy to find another WeChat group through a WeChat group. Add the group where the user is. After adding tens of thousands of groups, basically all channel personnel are covered.

We will promote our products wherever our users are. The user's location must be visible and tangible. If it is not visible or tangible, it is difficult for us to promote it and we have no way to do it.

Third: Establish links with users

The previous part talked about who the users are and where they are. The third part talks about how to establish links with users. What is a link? It means that through some means I can push my information to the user's contact information, so that the user knows who I am. Making a phone call is a link, sending an email is a link, these are all links. For example, if we know that a user is on the subway, I can give the user a flyer which is a link. If a user posts on a forum, it is a link. The people who read the post and the person who posted the post are linked together.

Here are some ways to link

• The first type is traffic link. For example, if my user is a NetEase user, I can send him an email and collect the user's email address through forums, websites, activities and other methods. For example, if I am doing an activity on Metro Line 13 and asking everyone to fill out a questionnaire, their email addresses will be collected. With the user's email address, we can establish a link for the user.
• The second is through text messages. If you have the mobile phone numbers of these users, you can send text messages to them, send them some information about your products, and guide them to download our products. These are also links, SMS links.
• The third one is IM. If we have the user’s WeChat, you can add their users if you find a WeChat group and connect the users through WeChat. This is a WeChat link.
• The fourth one is a forum like a post, where links are established between those who post and those who read the posts.
• The fifth one is push. If you have various push channels, you can establish links with users through push.

The advantage of traffic links is that you can see the effects directly. For example, EDM is the simplest way of promotion. I now send out tens of millions of EDMs to users, and I can see the user's transaction volume in the background. If he makes a purchase this time, his user is your active user. Through the background, you can distinguish between users who have purchased and those who have not purchased, so that the user group can be promoted very finely.

What I want to talk about next is invisible promotion, which is brand link. The bad thing about brand links is that their effects cannot be accurately evaluated. For example, if we put up an ad on a train carriage in the subway, I don’t know how many people will use my product after seeing the ad. This is not very clear and it is difficult for me to count. But I know that it is useful to do so because brand links can bring more exposure to the product, and increased exposure can bring more users to the traffic link.

There are many ways to expose your brand

• The first is media exposure, such as some interviews through Sina, exposing that a certain entrepreneur has launched a product, what this product is like, and what it can help people do.
• The second is exposure on social media. For example, Weibo, Moments, and Renren. Although they are no longer popular now, they are exposed on social media, such as Momo’s information flow. Now many companies are also doing this kind of advertising.
• The third is exposure on TV media. I think everyone knows this. You can place advertisements in certain entrepreneurial columns targeting your own user groups. Of course, different media have different fees. Now the fees of various TV stations are relatively expensive. You can watch TV series on the Internet, such as "The Legend of Miyue", or live broadcasts on the Internet.
• The fourth is exposure through outdoor media, such as light boxes and large LED screens.
• The fifth is salon conferences. We spend more than 1 million yuan a year on conferences held in many salons, covering all the top domestic conferences. There are two relatively well-known ones in the mobile Internet industry. The first one is the more grassroots one, which is GMIC. The second one is the more official China Internet Conference, which is organized by the Internet Society of China. We attend these two conferences every year.
• The last one is broadcasting and live streaming, such as Himalaya, which are areas of brand exposure.

Regarding brand exposure, we also need to do some careful analysis. As I said just now, the premise of brand exposure is to know where our users are. For example, if our users are in this salon or conference, we will expose them in this salon or conference. Our users all like to watch Hunan Satellite TV, so we will cover Hunan Satellite TV. Our users like Weibo, so we advertise on Weibo. I met an entrepreneur before, and he said that their users are all from third- and fourth-tier cities and like to use Momo. So we can rent Momo and put advertisements on it, so that most of our users can see our products. There are also some media, for example, our users like to read Chuangyebang, 36Kr and the like, we can place advertisements in these media. So you don’t know how many users a brand link can bring you, but through continuous exposure you can expand your influence among the user group. He sees you today, he sees you tomorrow, and he sees you the day after tomorrow. Over time, he will slowly learn to use you.

There are three purposes of branding

• Let people who don’t know you know you. This is the first goal and also the first level of brand exposure. After we put the advertisement on TV, the first effect is that people who don’t know you will know you.
• The second is to let people in need choose you, which is the second stage.
• The third level is to make people who use your products like your products. Your service is good and your products are good. This is a virtuous cycle. Therefore, the benefits of the three levels of brand exposure are very obvious.

There is a difference between brand exposure and traffic exposure. If you promote through traffic, you can see users with just one push. To accumulate brand volume, it may take you a long time and many events. For example, we who work in marketing often hold events for the industry, basically once a week, dozens of times a year, large and small. But after one year of doing this, you will see the results.

I have deep feelings about this as I work in marketing myself. When I was working on App security, this company used to work on technology and had never done any branding activities. If you went out to discuss cooperation with others, they wouldn't know your company. You have to convince him to accept your product, but the user will think that your product is unknown and he will not use it, so the cost of persuasion is very high. But if you do enough brand exposure and he knows you, then first of all he will have a preliminary understanding in his mind, I have seen this thing before in a newspaper or subway, or read an article. At this time, if you promote it to him and explain it to him, he will be more likely to accept it. This is the benefit of brand exposure.

Later, we carried out marketing activities for a year (we had never done this before), including media interviews, social activities, and salons. In the second year, we gradually saw the effects. Some founders would come to us and say that their product needed security protection and they heard that your company did a good job. This is the benefit of brand exposure. So there is a difference between brand exposure and traffic exposure.

It is best for start-ups to base their business on their own needs. For example, I have just started a business, I don’t have much money, and I have higher requirements for users. We can choose the method of traffic linking, which is a rather tiring job. For example, when I was doing WeChat promotion before, in order to attract fans, I sent group messages to more than 300 groups and attracted more than 300 fans, with a conversion rate of 10%. The 300 groups covered 3,000 people, and 300 fans were converted, 10%. This method doesn't cost money, but it is tiring after all, so it is more suitable for startups. But if your company is already big enough, you can lay out all the promotion lines such as email, phone, text messages, and brands. These are all channels and can be used. Make a table of 20 to 30 channels and list which channels are free. For example, traffic promotion is free. I can promote users through this channel when I start my business. As for brand exposure, you can promote some relatively easy things, such as seeking media interviews and writing some entrepreneurial stories, which does not cost any money.

In short, you need to create both traffic links and brand links. According to your own situation, do everything you can, and then you will be successful.

Fourth: Prepare the materials before linking

The fourth preparation is to lay the foundation. Once we know who the users are and where they are, we will know how to promote them. Then there is one last step in promotion, which is to prepare the materials that need to be linked. The first is product-related information. Many users do not have a standard product document, product name, product abbreviation, product logo, slogan, screenshots, materials, product story, CEO culture, etc. We must have these things before promotion, otherwise problems will arise during promotion. For example, many companies use different names when they are promoting their software, and the software name is still different after half a year of promotion. The names submitted by the two websites were different, and errors were found during the final check. Also, the links are different. Many companies' link websites are frequently revised, and often one website links to another website. Finally, there is a problem, such as a technician modifying the server, and the link becomes invalid. If it becomes invalid, it will not be modified. Originally this link brought you 1,000 users every day, but now you lose 1,000 users. If the cost for one user is 10 yuan, the loss will be 10,000 yuan a day. So these standard materials must be available.

Also, when sending emails to users, if you ask marketing staff to write a product introduction, they will definitely not write it professionally and carefully, and the user will not be interested if they send it to him.

Therefore, before promoting our product, we must prepare complete information about it and make it into a product document. This product document is a document circulated within the company. Sales, business, and bosses must all read it to unify the external perspective.

For example, when it comes to data, we in business talk about data with others, and the market also talks about data, but the wording is not unified. In the end, people don’t even know how many users we have. When the reporter was interviewing and collecting materials, he discovered a problem: whether your users are 200,000 or 300,000, this is a problem of inconsistent caliber. Therefore, as bosses and promoters, we must ensure that the company has very standard information circulated within the company. When we tell our users and the functions of our product, we use standard copy. This way we won’t have any problems when communicating externally. At the same time, it is also very easy for us to do traffic promotion. As long as the description, introduction, and title are different, the traffic will be dispersed. Promotion is to link all nodes to one product, let users come through countless nodes, and finally promote the product. Therefore, material preparation before linking is very important.

Finally, I want to tell you about my experience in promotion:

It is necessary to practice

Only through practice can you become yourself. The four points I just told you are just my experience, not yours. I have practiced and studied this myself, and I found there are many rules. I know when to send messages, when mass messages will be effective, and I know what content to send. You cannot understand these experiences. So you have to practice. Only practice can be your experience. If you don’t practice, it’s useless to listen to it.

Another thing is that practice may not necessarily make you successful, but it can let you know where the problem lies. When I was doing APP promotion, many people came to learn from me. My WeChat was full every day, and they would ask all kinds of questions. Some people forget the answer after asking, but some people will put it into practice after asking, and after practice they will summarize their own set of things. So he knows that I am doing this activity on Weibo and the effect is very effective on WeChat. This is his own experience.

Also, in actual promotion, the external environment is constantly changing, and we must change our promotion methods according to changes in the environment. When we were doing promotion before, Weibo and forums were very popular, but now Weibo and forums are no longer popular. What's popular now? Live streaming is more popular, short videos are more popular, and WeChat is more popular. So we must try new methods in the new environment. We need to change our promotion strategy according to changes in the environment, so that we can truly promote to your users. That’s all I have to say today. Thank you for listening.

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The author of this article @李建华 is compiled and published by (APP Top Promotion). Reprinting this article must be approved by Top Promotion , and please attach the link to this article!