Dedicated to Internet entrepreneurs: How to bring in traffic with less money!

Starting a business is difficult, I respect you and me. For a startup project, you can only get about a few million in angel investment. The costs of developing just one APP would amount to one or two million. Even if it does not involve APP development, the expenses such as manpower, venue, taxes, etc., from the angel round to the A round, will require at least half a year of preparation. Then, the manpower and budget left for the market are almost zero. Buying traffic is unrealistic. Is it possible to bring in traffic at a lower cost?

Many people will think of SEO, forum marketing, ASO, WeChat marketing, etc., but they are confused about how to implement them, and these methods are slow to take effect.

For a startup project, time is life. If the traffic brought in is ineffective or too slow, it may lead to project failure. How to bring effective traffic within limited time and budget?

We analyze them one by one according to background, problems and methods.

• Background: A startup project needs to launch a product, but time, manpower, and financial resources are limited
• Problem: SEO is slow, forum marketing is too narrow, ASO has limitations, how to quickly introduce effective traffic
• Solution: SEO, ASO, and WeChat channels as the end point, maximizing the use of mobile and social dividends for exposure
• Logic: In the era of mobile social networking, everyone is a channel, content circulates very quickly, and communities are closely connected to users. With content as the core, guide users to share; with people as channels, encourage users to forward; with communities as connections, cultivate user loyalty. SEO, ASO, forums, and communities are equivalent to obtaining paid traffic without spending money. For example, SEO can be regarded as SEM, and SEM is equivalent to hard advertising, which is used as a way to acquire users.

If the previous content marketing is compared to pulling, soft exposure; then the subsequent channel operation is pushing, hard advertising. In fact, most non-brand displays can be seen as point-to-point sales, such as SEM, DSP, feed flow, etc. Obviously, point-to-point sales require a sufficient volume to achieve a certain dissemination density, and the use of pull marketing techniques can allow users to spread spontaneously and thus reach the vacuum zone of dissemination.

Let's discuss the implementation of the above solution:

Step 1: Full coverage of hard advertising

How to do it:

Based on brand story, product features, founder background, financing and other aspects of packaging, comprehensive coverage, such as Baidu Encyclopedia, Zhidao, Tieba, Zhihu, Douban, etc. The key point is that users can see you when searching for your brand terms.

For search engines, official websites, encyclopedias and news sources can easily be ranked at the top. When posting on forums and communities, try to use embedded content as much as possible. As for ASO, just set up the keywords in the background.

Hard advertising itself is just auxiliary. It is enough to cover the brand words. There is no need to consider other things. If you have the money and manpower to generate competitive products or industry-wide traffic, you should spend the money on brand exposure. For example, in ASO, instead of spending a lot of money on other people’s brand words or industry hot words, it is better to increase the search volume of your own brand words.

Step 2: Content Planning

How to do it:

Plan your content based on Weibo and WeChat subscription accounts. In essence, buying a big WeChat account is to gain users’ attention, but what should I do if I don’t have money? Create a big WeChat account for yourself.

For a new product, why would users pay attention to you? content. Only content that is useful to users can attract them. For example, if I am an automobile APP, it can be based on sharing automobile information, or it can be based on the emotional content of men's nature. Why is it said to be the emotional content of men’s nature? Because most of the people who drive cars are men, and emotional things can touch them more and bring about interaction and sharing.

The essence of creating content is to pursue interaction and sharing. Only interaction and sharing can break the inefficient point-to-point communication.

From this point of view, you need to hire someone who is good at creating content. For a startup project that cannot afford to hire a big shot, I think you'd better hire someone born in the 1990s or 1995s, who is lively and confident, loves life, and preferably has a passion to explore the world, because the content comes from the soul's perception of life.

In addition to these, content planning based on hot topics is also key, including popular IPs, film and television dramas, entertainment programs, celebrities, hot events, etc. Durex is one of the most famous ones.

Step 3: Event Planning

How to do it:

With the above two preparations, and the founders and team using WeChat Moments, friend introductions, and other methods, they can bring in a group of seed users. But that’s not enough. We need to achieve large-scale exposure through activities to accumulate more effective users.

The key to event planning is to leverage social dividends to spark topics, so the event must be creative and have viral mechanisms. H5 is a better form of implementation, although inducing sharing may be banned at present.

Reverse group buying is a viral mechanism that has been used more frequently in recent years. For example, a product has a high cost-effectiveness, but the number of buyers needs to reach a certain number to complete the order, thereby increasing the user's desire to share the purchase page with friends. In essence, in the era of mobile social networking, everyone is a medium.

After the event planning is completed, we will utilize the founder and team’s social circles, communities, micro-businesses, Weibo, WeChat, news self-media, etc. to maximize its dissemination. If you have a certain budget, you can purchase some KOL resources, such as Weibo, WeChat, etc.

In addition to the sharing mechanism for activities, the product itself can also open up an invitation mechanism, such as giving points for recommending friends. In the era of mobile social networking, the biggest dividends are content and people.

A single activity may not achieve the desired results, so we will summarize the data and continuously optimize to improve activity efficiency. Repeat the above process to achieve the final effect. For start-ups, it is not only important to save money, but also to be fast. Maximize exposure through content marketing and event planning, and finally use SEO, ASO, etc. to close the deal.

In addition, in terms of traffic generation, more business cooperation can be carried out. For example, we cooperate with China Telecom to offer free phone bills when you register, and cooperate with iQiyi to offer membership.

After completing the cold start and obtaining the A round of funding, we can expand the team, coordinate traditional media, new media, and corporate self-media, and make content marketing, event planning, and community operations more refined and detailed. It is also necessary to place hard advertisements targeting the end-users, such as SEM, DSP, feed flow, WeChat big accounts, etc. At the same time, brand display advertising should also be invested heavily, including traditional TV, targeted advertising, subways, cinemas and various new media brand advertising.