No bragging! Teach you how to promote millions of users at zero cost (Part 1)

A blind cat catches a dead mouse

How did we do it at the beginning? Maybe everyone is here for this thing, let me analyze it step by step for you. To be honest, as a college student, I had nothing at that time. What should I do?

1. Mobilize people around you to share

The first thing that came to my mind was to mobilize everyone around me to share. At that time, a strict order was issued in the company that everyone had to find ten. These ten people must help us find nine, and these nine people must help us find eight. At that time, the company had a little over ten people, about thirteen or fourteen people. Through this method, we did gain our first batch of users.

But to be honest, this group of users are not particularly pure and have no demand for our products. Some of them have eight-pack abs, so do they still need to use our products? However, it is a better way to mobilize people around you to do publicity.

2. "Undercover" QQ group, explosive promotion

The second thing we did was to infiltrate a number of groups, including those for girls' beauty, body care, and casual chatting. We opened a lot of QQ numbers and joined every group. There was a limit on the number of groups we could join per day. We also hired interns to chat, and we had to get familiar with the group owners. Otherwise, if we were kicked out for posting advertisements, our efforts would be in vain.

Why do this? We found that no matter what kind of operation or promotion activity we do, the budget is actually very limited. It is impossible to cover the entire marketing cost with your own money. More costs are spent between users, and they introduce it to others.

So, although QQ has been around for many years, the form of QQ groups on the Internet is still maintained very well and they are very active.

Especially for our main categories, weight loss and fitness, I find that every day quite a lot of people upload photos of their weight and take photos of their body shape today to see how it differs from thirty days ago. They encourage and communicate with each other every day. I think this is a very good opportunity.

Then we also gained a considerable number of users through this event, our first batch of users.

We planted nearly 200 groups in advance, and then when we thought about our product, after the first batch of users gave us feedback verifying that this version had no major problems, we started the second step and detonated the "bomb" in the group. We promoted it in those 200 groups, especially the groups that fit our category, to spread the news and recommend this app.

3. Some small tricks

Then our third step is to use some small tricks, which may be an uncommon way of promotion.

When we launched version 1.0, the product was so bad that I didn’t even want to show it to my dad, it was so bad. what to do? I wanted to take it off the shelves at that time, but then I thought it’s not possible. I had a long ideological struggle and decided that it’s not possible. After all, I have been doing it for so long, I can’t take it off the shelves.

what to do? We changed to charging a fee. At that time, the download price was less than 1 yuan, so we set the price at 6 yuan, but no one downloaded it anyway.

At this time, I thought about the issue of free apps, especially three, two, or even five or six years ago, when there were not so many apps downloaded or free apps, and many apps were paid. So iOS either required jailbreaking or sharing an account.

At that time, the limited-time free traffic was quite large, and quite a lot of apps, accounts or websites would recommend limited-time free traffic.

We are making a tool application, and the next version will definitely not be so ugly. So if I adjust it to a paid version and then make it free, can it make the product more attractive and increase the number of installations?

It turned out to be successful. After I switched the app to paid and then free for a limited time, I submitted my app to all the limited-time free app channels, asked my friends to recommend it for me, took the initiative to get to know the operators in those channels, and asked them to find ways to promote our app.

It just so happens that we went through a one-month development cycle from the previous version to the next version, which also complies with the policy of limited-time versions, although no one would buy the original version.

As a result, this limited-time free operation was very successful, helping us to gain traffic in almost all limited-time free channels, and in a very good position. This even includes some big Weibo accounts, some of which now charge 10,000 or 20,000 for one push, and the number of installations suddenly increases.

But this alone has not helped me reach a million users, because after all, losing weight, to be honest, is an anti-human thing. Many users may not really like this, and it is not in line with Chinese culture. Of course, this is something I only understood afterwards, and only after being scolded by many investors.

What did we do later? The second step is to mix channels.

Channel is king

After we have completed the above steps, we can actually show off to more channels in the subsequent applications: "Look, our app has been online for a few days and has received so many downloads!"

After I had the capital to brag, I went to look for more diverse channels, trying to find friends to promote it, sending emails, in short, I tried every possible way. When I went to Beijing, I would definitely visit everyone I could, telling them how awesome my product was and asking if they could promote it. We did find some people and received some support in terms of recommendations and traffic.

Among them, I should thank 360. Although 360’s reputation is not very good now, I will not criticize it. At that time, 360 gave our product the "360 Dandelion Award", which provided us with traffic support worth nearly one million yuan. Thank you very much!

But I would also like to share a piece of experience with you. When you communicate with the channel parties, you must understand what the channel operations value. Various channels are definitely not startups. They are all just trying to make a living, so what are their KPIs? Actually it is – distribution volume.

Once they push an app, they need to be responsible for the traffic. If I give you the best position on the homepage, it can normally convert 100,000 downloads, but if you put your app there, it can only get down to 30,000, then his KPI will not be achieved.

So how can you make him feel that your app can definitely bring him better results and meet his KPI? Here we need to see some tricks you use to package your products and conduct PR .

This includes when everyone, especially new companies, write some initial emails, and how you can amplify even a small iteration of a feature. It's really important to feel like you've spent three months working on a huge new version.

Of course, it’s not good to over-exaggerate, but I strongly recommend that you put more effort into this. The specific method of communicating with channels is very methodological. Once you have a stable and long-term cooperation and he has enough trust in your team, your subsequent cooperation will be more pleasant and efficient.

APP Store official recommendation

Our version 1.2 and the subsequent version 1.3 received relatively substantial downloads and a lot of feedback, so we began to have greater ambitions and kept thinking, how can we get more traffic?

We had about several hundred thousand activated users at the time, so how could we increase the number to a higher level? There are wolves in front and tigers behind us. Various new fitness apps have emerged one after another. They have raised more money than us and have better products. What should we do?

At that time, we made a decision that really tested our willpower and courage - to overturn and redo it! Yes, that’s right, just push the product back and do it again. At that time, we had only one goal, which was to get recommended on the official homepage of the Apple store.

How to get it? I don’t know if anyone here has done special research on this issue? We did research on it at the time and spent more than a week or nearly two weeks investigating this matter. We looked at all the apps that were recommended on the official homepage of the Apple store over a long period of time to see what they were like, including asking many industry experts.

Later we came up with the following conclusions and would like to share them with you.

1. Correct classification

First of all, if you want to be recommended by the Apple store, you must be in the correct category. If you are a social product, it will be very difficult to get on the list. The editors at the Apple Store don’t like this. So what categories will be favored by the Apple Store?

Tools, reading, newspapers and magazines, music, etc., which are more tool-oriented, are tools with universal needs. Users spend a lot of time using them every day, and these categories are easily recommended.

2. Sufficient sense of design

Another thing to note is the sense of design . The Apple store is very, very superficial . After we released the new version, it was indeed recommended by the editor of the Apple Store. But in fact, we ourselves were not very satisfied with the product at that time. That version still had many bugs, and in our opinion, it might not even have the mainstream logic.

But fortunately, the product still has some sense of design, so it was quickly recommended by the Apple Store. In fact, you can take a good look at each issue of the official recommendations of the Apple Store. Most of the products have very good visual effects.

Therefore, it is important to be a visual party.

We made some visual adjustments at the time. We adopted the design standards of iOS8 for the entire tone and color of the app, which is actually the flat style of iOS7.

Anyway, in order to get recommended, we have overall aligned our product design style with the officially recommended design standards.

Then we used some things that no one else had used: for example, we used 3D figures to demonstrate fitness movements to replace our previous 2D flat fat men. At that time, this had never been done on the market. At that time, everyone was demonstrating in person, including various handsome guys, muscular men, or beautiful women with great figures.

After tasting the sweetness, we went deeper in this direction. We did 3D modeling, rendering, and made better 3D figures.

So, although this visual aspect is of little use to the main business process of the app, due to its outstanding visual design and special design elements, it was repeatedly recommended by the editors of the Apple Store, and ultimately brought in a lot of traffic.

3. Take advantage of new features

The third point is to take advantage of new features. That is to say, if iOS updates something new, you must adapt it as soon as possible. When Apple Watch was released, why did some big companies follow up with these new features as soon as possible?

In fact, this is also actively approaching the recommendation requirements of the Apple Store. Look how much I’m cooperating with you, dad, just push it!

Therefore, if you have sufficient development resources, you might as well follow up with some new features. Perhaps this product or function does not bring any particularly effective growth at the business level, but if it can be officially recommended in the first place, it means getting a lot of traffic at a lower cost.

Product and entrepreneurial experience

1. The founding team should not always think about making big news

The founding team should not always think about making big news. This is actually said to the boss. Don't always try to make a big news!

If the product is not well made, but you insist on promoting it through operational means, I cannot say that there are no successful cases, but it is indeed tiring, the efficiency will be low, and the stability cannot be guaranteed. In many cases , successful cases are the result of luck, which is the same as buying lottery tickets.

When it comes to product development, everyone should think calmly about PR. Smart phones are now so popular that they are even rotten. So many good apps have also become rotten. Almost all the good things we can think of have been used over and over again. So what can really attract users to continue?

- The product is the most important thing.

Similarly, I also advise many of my colleagues in operations not to limit themselves to just being an operations person and thinking, "I am responsible for getting people to use the entire product."

We should spend more of our time, especially in the early stages, communicating with our product colleagues and discussing users' potential needs with them.

Because compared to them, colleagues in operations are closer to users. Many times we need to let them hear the users' real suggestions, and we should even participate in the product design process.

2. Really understand your product positioning, market and users

I talked about the last two points together, which is to really understand your product positioning, market and users. I will discuss this part in detail later.

Another thing I want to say is that I am also continuing to learn a market theory - market focus theory and leverage effect.

In fact, I found that many startup teams, including my own friends, who started their own businesses, later asked me why their products couldn’t be sold or why they were not made well and no one wanted to use them.

In fact, the fundamental reason is that when making this product, you haven't thought clearly about what you want to do. It's useless to look for direction afterwards.

But where should the value of our operations staff lie?

Even if the product's positioning, market or users are unclear, is it possible for us to help them find their true market positioning quickly under current possible circumstances? It is really us who repackages a positioning instead of telling the product that we can't do it.

Market Focus Theory

What is market focus theory? I can’t recite it myself, but many people understand that I want to focus important resources or core support into a concentrated market environment.

If we can put all our core resources into the most precise market, we will be able to reach the most precise users and avoid wasting resources. This is far better than spreading our resources across multiple markets.

Of course, I believe that everyone understands what I mean, but do you really understand what a market is?

What exactly is a real market? Are you dealing with a market of twenty people or a market of twenty markets with one person?

Example:

Let’s think about this example. I saw a case before, an O2O project, which was an O2O service that provided door-to-door service to help people repair computers, clean computers, etc.

But when I heard about this thing, I felt it was unreliable. Why? It’s just that his promotion method is unreliable. He promotes the products door to door.

Why? I found that he did not take one point into consideration when he was doing this market: In this market, will users refer to each other's opinions before deciding to consume or adopt your product?

Essentially, if the target users in a market do not refer to each other's opinions before making a purchasing decision, then this is not an independent market, but countless small markets.

Because when you go to repair a computer in some high-end communities, what would you actually do?

You will check on the Internet, you will ask colleagues and friends who are familiar with this thing, but you will not knock on your neighbor’s door and ask how to repair the computer. No way? Definitely not.

But when you do housework, you may ask your neighbors or the property management to recommend a reliable nanny. But in the above case, there is no communication between users regarding purchasing decisions.

So, if he were to promote this project in the context of this project, I would advise him to focus on the office in the early stages. Similarly, in a vertical market like the office, who would you ask first if your computer breaks down?

Ask the developers who write the code, or ask your product manager. I don’t know why product managers generally seem to be able to repair computers.

This is a thought, that is, what you are actually doing is a decentralized market. You think it is very concentrated but it is actually a decentralized market, or you should be working on a very concentrated market.

This theory is a marketing theory that is very suitable for traditional industries, but it is worth learning and referring to in many aspects.