Use 8 real cases to look at the current survival status and solutions of the operation group!
|
In the past six months, I have communicated with many operations friends, and I found that although the specific problems encountered by everyone are different, there are many similarities in essence. I have summarized these similarities as follows, which basically represents the current survival status of the operations team. You are welcome to identify yourself with them. 1. The boss doesn’t understand operations This problem is the most representative and can be associated with more branches. The entire problem chain is as follows: The boss does not understand operations → The company does not value operations → Product/marketing/sales/technology leads operations → The team does not have an operations atmosphere → Cannot attract excellent operations talents → Newcomers do not grow This repetitive process forms a vicious cycle of "the less you understand, the weaker you become", and each node in the link is a specific problem. The following is an illustration of a real case, with the names and companies of the parties involved omitted. Case 1: Congcong is a new operator of a word-memorizing app. With the increase in the number of users, the boss felt that the team needed an operations role, but had no specific plan, so she asked her to find me. "How do I do user operations?" Congcong asked this very general question when we first met, and from her tone, it can be felt that she is not familiar with this concept. It’s useless to answer the question now, so I plan to understand the situation first: “How did you do it before the operation?” She sighed, "There was no full-time operation before, and my boss transferred me from the customer service team. Now I just collect feedback and answer questions in the group." "Well, this is just a branch of operations. Doing this is not the same as doing operations." I seemed to feel the seriousness of the problem. This is a typical case of "the boss doesn't understand operations." First of all, the boss thinks that operations are not important and is slow to build an operations team, or thinks that operations and customer service are the same job. Secondly, there is no soil for growth for operations in the team. From strategy formulation to specific execution, newcomers can only cross the river by feeling the stones on their own. I tried my best to explain the framework of user operation ideas to Congcong, but I still don’t think she can fully implement it. It’s not because of personal ability, but if the boss does not agree, a newcomer will definitely not be able to change the company’s genes, and will encounter various obstacles during the implementation process, resulting in failure to implement. Such an environment is not suitable for operation and survival. Of course, this product can rank among the top three in the industry, so it must have strong competitiveness. I am only analyzing the problem from the perspective of an individual operator. Case 2: Liu Zhen has been working in Internet operations for 3 years and has some experience. In order to improve my personal abilities faster, I switched to this quasi-giant that started out as a group buying company and was responsible for product operations in a vertical field. Her goal is to increase the number of new customers within a cost-controlled range, mainly through subsidy activities. Since she had never done similar work before, Liu Zhen felt that she had learned a lot here and worked hard and dedicatedly until the boss in charge of operations was replaced by an executive with a sales background. "After he came, the atmosphere of the team changed. It no longer felt like an Internet company," Liu Zhen said a little anxiously. She then complained, "We no longer have a flexible working system. We are required to arrive at work at a unified time in the morning, and someone checks on us every day. The work content of operations has also shifted towards sales support, and many operations-oriented things are no longer done. Even the work structure has been adjusted and started to be linked to sales. I feel like I am no longer an operations person, but a sales assistant." Frankly speaking, colleagues at the executive level do not need to pay too much attention to the boss replacement. This is a company decision, and based on our perspective and the amount of information we have, we should not make too many comments. But looking at this issue from the perspective of personal growth environment, the positioning of operations has changed and its importance has been weakened. This will result in experienced operations personnel like Liu Zhen no longer having room for personal growth, leading to the loss of outstanding talent. Case 3: Liu Lu works in user operations at the world's largest Chinese search company, reporting to the product manager. The way their team works is that the product manager decides what functions each version will have and in what form it will be implemented; operations are responsible for the promotion and maintenance work after the launch. The problem is that operations have never been involved in product decision-making discussions and have been unaware of product progress for a long time. Operations will not be informed until the decision has been made, and even the prototype, interaction, and design draft have been finalized, and RD has started development. Liu Lu said to me angrily: "Operation should never be a role of being told, but should be deeply involved in decision-making, contribute to one's understanding of user needs, quickly verify some uncertain issues, and prepare for post-launch operation work in advance!" The normal state of the operation team is to do things according to the determined rhythm and plan, cultivate user habits step by step, publicize the brand externally time and time again, and introduce influential external resources one by one. But before the quantitative change could lead to qualitative change, the product was changed and the operations were unprepared. If the operation is to make emergency adjustments at this time, it means that the rhythm will be disrupted, the previous accumulation will be almost wasted, and the users will also be affected. Liu Lu gave an example, saying: "Operation is like a 100-meter race. There is the initial start, acceleration along the way, and finally the successful crossing of the finish line. But many people ignore the initial start and acceleration, and just hope that you can cross the finish line quickly. This is obviously a layman's perspective of seeking quick success and instant benefits. My boss is the product manager, and she holds this view. Just aim to cross the finish line in the end, regardless of the accumulation of the first two steps. When they see that you haven't crossed the finish line yet, they can't help but start giving instructions: Can you take a bigger stride? Can you pay more attention to the opponents around you? Can you adjust your running posture? . . If I followed these trivial, unstructured suggestions, I would definitely fail. What's worse is that after you fall, she will think it's your own problem. " To sum up, the situation in Liu Lu's company is that the product manager makes decisions and the operations assistant does the minor work. But product managers only have a superficial understanding of operations, but the scary thing is that they think this is the full picture of operations. 2. Blind KPI orientation The effectiveness of operations is measured by data, and this data is the KPI of the operation. But we cannot blindly pursue KPIs and ignore the logic behind them. I have always believed that the most important role of KPI is to point the team in a direction, allowing everyone to work together towards one point without deviating or dispersing. Even if the initially determined number is not reached in the end, it is not the most serious matter. We can just analyze the specific reasons and then make adjustments. But some companies put pressure on KPIs for operations, just like putting pressure on sales volume. This will eventually lead to operations no longer paying attention to process results, but only focusing on the final numbers, which will cause great harm to product quality. Case 4: Shanshan is a Weibo operator for a map app and also a Douban celebrity. I was pulled to this product by my previous boss from my previous employer, hoping that I could make Weibo a success with my excellent copywriting and creative abilities. Her KPI during the probation period is to increase her fans from 150,000 to 500,000. Unfortunately, she didn't do it and left without being converted to a full-time employee. Weibo in the past two years is similar to WeChat public accounts in the past two years. During the initial bonus period, there are many ways to quickly increase followers. If you don't seize this opportunity, there is a stage where you can easily and quickly gain a lot of fans by giving away iPhones and iPads, and the unfollow rate is acceptable. If you don’t catch up with this stage, it will be difficult to increase your Weibo followers quickly. I hope to develop Weibo through the power of content, and reflect it in the number of fans and interactions. This will definitely take a long time, I think at least 2-3 months. In addition, this is a tool product, and the content of Weibo will be restricted by the product positioning, making its operation more difficult. What is even more despairing is that the final goal is more than three times the initial data, which is an impossible task. But two months after Shanshan left, the number of followers of this Weibo post reached 1.3 million, but the number of reposts remained in the single digits, the same as before. This plot development just proves my point above. If a company only emphasizes KPI and does not pay attention to the process, it is equivalent to "forcing good employees into prostitution". There is always a way to solve the problem. Case 5: Xiaobo works in operations at a tool app of BAT and reports to the product manager. They believed that DAU and user usage frequency would not increase if they only made tools, so they added a community module and let Xiaobo be responsible for the cold start. This product manager knew that a cold start is not easy, and he also knew that the reason why Zhihu successfully completed the cold start was because of Li Kaifu's group of KOLs, so he guided Xiaobo and said: It is important to find seed users, ensure the quality of initial content, and cultivate a good community atmosphere. Xiaobo nodded and thought, "I think everyone on earth knows this principle. The real difficulty lies in how to implement it." The product manager asked again: "Can we attract 50 core users this week?" Xiaobo: “Well, it should be possible. But does this have anything to do with the high-quality content and community atmosphere you mentioned?” The product manager didn’t respond and continued, “Can you estimate how many posts are published every day?” Xiaobo was about to explode, thinking: "It is completely meaningless to estimate how many posts there will be during the cold start. It is simply nonsense. Without previous data as a reference, user habits have not been formed, and there is no profit for the time being. It is impossible for them to listen to you so much. How can I estimate it?" But since he was his superior, Xiaobo could not argue with him and could only say, "Expect 100 posts per day." The product manager rolled his eyes and asked with his head tilted, "Only 2 per person per day. I can send 3 in half an hour. Can you send more? How about 120?" Xiaobo sighed and said, "Okay." He didn't expect that the bargaining that happened in the wholesale market would also happen here. Things didn't develop smoothly afterwards. Users were not very receptive to the product and it was not possible to reach 100 posts per day. So Xiaobo could only do it manually just to achieve this goal. Of course, this does not solve the problem, and the user contribution volume has not improved. At this time, the product manager said to a row of tables: "Go to the machine to grab the posts of competitors and import them in." Xiaobo later resigned because he felt he could not meet the expectations of his leadership. After importing that batch of posts, the community module lost all its atmosphere, weakened its entrance with each version iteration, and slowly withdrew from the stage. Whether it is 100 posts or 1,000 posts per day, the operation can definitely be completed, such as the case of Xiaobo. But the question is, is this a core number? Does it have a direct impact on the final result? Do we really have to do everything we can to achieve it? 3. The product is bad or the positioning is wrong The carrier of operations work is the product. If the product is bad or mispositioned, it is essentially useless work for the operation. It is like filling a swimming pool with water while leaving the drain open; nothing is left. The shortage of R&D resources and the iterative rhythm of products are acceptable. Part of the responsibilities of operations is to fill in the gaps in the process of product improvement. But I don’t think that a “shitty product” should be operated anyway. This view shows a lack of independent thinking and project promotion ability. It is a kind of servility and puts oneself at the bottom of the value chain. Case 6: Cai Cai's company is in the medical industry. Its core resources are the directors of tertiary hospitals and top experts in the industry. It makes profits by organizing offline seminars and collecting sponsorship fees from pharmaceutical companies and other brands. The boss wanted to maximize the value of these resources, so he made an app, and Cai Cai was responsible for the overall operation. But she didn't know where to start, so she came to me. I asked her, "The current situation of Internet medical care is like this. What differentiated services does your company have? What needs can it meet for doctors?" She was stumped by my question, as if she had never thought about this question before, and then she managed to squeeze out a selling point: "You can download conference materials on our app, but this is something only we have. Is it considered differentiation?" Before I could refute her, she immediately said, "We also have news, activities, and interviews. Are these enough?" After talking for an hour, I found that they did not analyze user needs, nor did they consider differentiated core competitiveness. This is equivalent to making this product without a clear positioning. The several modules currently available in the product not only provide a poor user experience, but also provide no value to users. Even though Caicai is a very hard-working and attentive operator, faced with such a product, even if some operational measures are taken, there will be no effect. Later, Cai Cai resigned. 4. Operational output is difficult to define The survival status of the operation group also follows a "chain of misery": low wages → boring work → lots of overtime → output is difficult to define. The hard part is that not only is the income low and the workload heavy, but even after working hard for a long time, in the end you still can't clearly tell which piece of land you planted. Without visible output, one’s status will naturally be low and income will be low. This is a vicious cycle. Case 7: Xiaohang works in product operations at a trading app. His recent task is to increase the number of product reviews, which is a UGC job. He manages core users and plans some activities to guide users to post high-quality reviews in a timely manner. After a period of operation, the number of comments increased rapidly, with 100,000 users actively posting comments every day. One day, the boss questioned Xiaohang's work: "The number of comments brought by operations such as users, activities and content is at most 10,000 per day, accounting for 10% of the total, but you and your team have a total of 3 people doing this. By this calculation, the number of comments brought by each operation student accounts for only 3%, and the income-output ratio is very low." Xiao Hang was very dissatisfied with this. The conclusion drawn by the boss is to erase the results of their work. He believes that the reason why the number of reviews can reach 100,000 is because of the leadership of the initial core users, who posted high-quality reviews in a timely manner after each consumption, ensuring that subsequent users who did not purchase the product can see objective and fair evaluations no matter which long-tail product page they visit. This is a very detailed but very good experience. In addition, for a transactional app, it is very difficult to cultivate the habit of users contributing content, so the UGC atmosphere is also very important. All these revenues are brought by core users. Xiaohang gave me an analogy: "It's like a pyramid, built up brick by brick. Every brick is the same, but the bricks that make up the top of the pyramid are more valuable because they represent the height of the entire pyramid." However, the boss would not listen to this logic and would still ask him what percentage of the comments he brought. Although Xiaohang tried his best to increase the scale, the operational means were not integrated into the product process after all, the exposure and conversion rate were very low, resulting in the share never increasing. I personally agree with Xiaohang's point of view, and I don't think there is anything wrong with the boss only focusing on input and output. This is a pitfall of this operations position. After the operation has cultivated user habits and UGC atmosphere, it may be necessary to consider removing or reducing the operation staff, and mainly rely on optimizing products and sorting to improve. Case 8: Ruirui is an O2O product operator that mainly organizes promotional activities. According to different POIs, different activities are launched online, focusing on new customers or transaction volume. Her daily work is to formulate strategies and place orders. Every time Ruirui summarizes the results of an activity, the transaction volume can increase by 100%. But one time she found that there was a POI that did not hold any activities, but its transaction volume also increased by 30%. So, how can we determine how much profit the operation brings? There is no good solution at the moment. During the regular meeting, the boss asked Ruirui: "How do you judge whether the effect of an activity meets expectations? You said that the growth this time was 100%, but how do I know if it could have grown by 120%? Or if you didn't do the activity, you would have also seen an 80% growth." Fortunately, Ruirui has thought about this problem for a long time: "We are in the tourism industry, so we can compare with the same period in history, but we need to take into account the overall fluctuations of the industry, but we still can't get specific figures." This case is similar to Case 2 above. The overall market fluctuates greatly and it is difficult to find patterns. The profits brought by operations are always a drop in the bucket for the entire market. Even if the operation has made a lot of efforts, as long as the market fluctuates, the operation's profits will be wiped out in an instant. The above is about the survival status of operations, which is the hard and difficult side. However, judging from recent development trends, the role of operations is becoming increasingly important, and the demand for related talent is also greater . There are two reasons: 1. Products are difficult to differentiate The imperfect protection of intellectual property rights in China has led to a large number of similar products in the Internet industry. Some of them are even blatant plagiarisms, which are exactly the same from product models to design interactions. As long as a product becomes popular, there will definitely be a wave of similar products following suit. In the United States, each product has its own unique selling point, and it is rare to see exactly the same products. This is also related to the different entrepreneurial atmospheres and legal perfection of the two countries. Therefore, it is simply a myth to capture the market by relying on new product models and good experiences. Therefore, we can only rely on the promotion and dissemination of operations to make the product popular. This is the value of operations. 2. Resources are no longer scarce In an entrepreneurial-themed coffee shop in Beijing, if you just turn your ear, you can hear your neighbors talking about how much investment has come in and which important people they know. It seems that neither money nor connections are scarce resources, otherwise you would not have the face to start a business. Therefore, resources are not a question of having or not having them, but how to use them better. How to maximize the effectiveness of resources and better implement them into products is precisely a test of operational skills. In the past two years, many products have been driven by operations or developed with the power of operations . The two most familiar examples are Weibo and Zhihu. As the Internet and traditional industries become more closely integrated, the role of operations positions will become more important, and the demand for operations talents will also be greater. In short, although operations personnel still face many difficulties at present, in the long run, this position and this type of talent are very valuable. Therefore, in your daily work, accumulate bit by bit, think more, summarize more, and communicate more. Don't doubt the prospects of this industry and this position. You will reap the fruits if you persist. If you need ASO optimization service, please click this link: Introduction to ASO optimization service APP Top Promotion (www.opp2.com) is the top mobile APP promotion platform in China. Welcome to follow our official WeChat public account: appganhuo [Scan the top APP promotion WeChat QR code to get more dry goods and explosive materials] |
<<: Putting aside vanity metrics, how do you plan a successful new customer acquisition campaign?
>>: How much does it cost to join the Qiqihar Home Furnishing Mini Program?
Recommend
How can operations learn from user feedback and avoid detours?
Learning from user feedback is a big or small thi...
Brand Operations: How do brands influence consumer behavior?
Recently, all the major subway lines and bus stop...
How much does it cost to make a wine utensils mini program in Bayanzhuoer?
There is no doubt that the topic of mini programs...
Using the AARRR model to analyze Pinduoduo's user growth
The AARRR model describes the five processes in t...
How to start with data analysis to carry out SEM bidding promotion?
SEM is the abbreviation of Search Engine Marketin...
How to find a better WeChat mini program development company?
Q: How to find a better WeChat applet development...
How to pass the novice period of Baijiahao? How many points does Baijiahao have to pass the novice level?
Baijiahao can actually be understood as Baidu’s “...
"Kunlun Maker's Violent Gold Rush" series of lessons 1-30
Many newbies who have just entered the Internet i...
APP operation and promotion tips: 37 free online promotion channels
The following is a complete guide that will intro...
Bidding strategy, how to grasp the best promotion time period for bidding promotion?
The timing of bidding promotion requires a lot of...
Can Cordyceps sinensis be eaten by people with high blood pressure?
Everyone knows that people with high blood pressu...
Analysis of 5 different cross-border e-commerce operation models
This article analyzes different cross-border e-co...
Build a live broadcast operation system from 0 to 1!
More and more To B companies are starting to do l...
The first 20 sentences to chat with girls on WeChat
Introduction to the top 20 sentences for chatting...
Are you feeling painful from spending too much on promotion? Give you an effective new media marketing channel!
This article divides the nine common new media pl...