Founder of WeChat Companion: How did a startup app with no money reach 400,000 users in 50 days with zero cost?

My name is SuRe. I’m an experienced product person who has been working in the Internet industry for ten years, but I’m still a newcomer when it comes to starting my own business. Before the Chinese New Year, I suddenly wanted to create a WeChat companion, so I asked a development partner to develop it in 3 days, and it was successfully launched before the Spring Festival (I am responsible for both product and design, which benefits from the profound design skills I acquired when I was a PC QQ interaction designer at Tencent in the first few years of my work, haha).

With 0 cost promotion, we broke through 400,000 users in 50 days, and the weekly active users are nearly 100,000, which far exceeded my expectations. Here is the picture:

Today, I would like to review and analyze why WeChat Companion became so popular and how it achieved 400,000 users in 50 days with zero cost? You can also say that I am speaking after the fact, but of course you can also take five minutes to read it as promotional information. I guarantee you won’t regret it, because the information is at the end. 2. Why are WeChat friends so popular? 1. Hitting the common pain points of users. I believe that the photos and WeChat apps take up the most memory on everyone’s phone. Even though WeChat itself has a function to “clean up WeChat storage space”, most users will not go into Settings-General to clean it up. Whenever they run out of space on their phone, they will just uninstall apps and delete photos. WeChat taking up memory is one of the common pain points for users, so I think it is necessary to make more users aware of it and be able to easily clean up WeChat's memory to make the phone run more smoothly and more enjoyable.

2 It meets the basic needs of the whole nation very well. Similarly, grabbing WeChat red envelopes during the Spring Festival is an exciting game in which everyone can participate. On Weibo, we can see that some dogs will stare at the mobile phone screen intently to grab the red envelopes, which shows how popular it is. Helping users to grab red envelopes automatically is the bounden duty of WeChat partners.

WeChat Companion reached its peak on New Year’s Eve: nearly 40,000 new users per day and nearly 50,000 daily active users. This is a startup app that took only 3 days to design and develop, and it was launched only a few days ago with no money for promotion.

I believe that the popularity of WeChat Companion is inseparable from the fact that the product itself captures the users' pain points and urgent needs, neither too much nor too little, just right. It took only three days for two people to go from idea to design and development to launch. The surge in users is the best encouragement and recognition for us.

We will have more imaginative and practical functions coming online later, but we will keep them confidential for now, haha. Let’s take a look at the current APP function interface:

3. How to achieve 400,000 users in 50 days with zero cost? WeChat Companion is a project that I suddenly wanted to develop. Of course, I had no money to promote it. Before the development of the APP was completed, like most operators of a startup team, I searched everywhere to learn about the free channels and methods for promoting the APP. Finally, I searched for this question on Zhihu: "How can a startup APP with no money get free promotion through 360, App Store, etc." In it, a buddy who is very similar to us introduced a very good free promotion channel. Seeing how excited he talked about it and showing all kinds of data screenshots, I believed it. Students who are interested can click on the link above to read it. I am really grateful to this gentleman!

I knew very well that WeChat Companion had to be launched during the Spring Festival, but our time was very tight. It was only completed a few days before New Year's Eve. It would definitely be too late to apply for the first launch in various markets or to recommend new products by ourselves at that time.

On the first day of the release of WeChat Companion, I harassed all my colleagues and friends around me, and only brought in a pitiful 72 users in total.

Fortunately, this buddy shared his promotion experience in the 360 ​​Mobile Assistant Application Circle, and I also prepared the necessary materials. Then, on the second day after the APP was launched, we were on the 24-hour popular sharing rankings in the application circle, followed by the weekly and monthly rankings. The background data kept rising and never stopped. After a one-month interval, we shared it again after it was removed from the list, and it was back on the list, and the number of users continued to surge.

Directly on the picture: It is still at the first place in the monthly ranking, and new additions are still continuing. . .

Received 16 million views, over 10,000 likes and 450 comments for free. . .

What I want to make clear is that we absolutely do not engage in any behavior of inflating likes or climbing rankings. It is entirely the user's choice! I never thought that the traffic of 360 Application Circle is really so large.

We really have to thank 360 for providing powerful resources for our startup apps. Due to the surge in data, our 360 developer account has become a diamond developer. It will be relatively easy to apply for first release, Dandelion Award, etc., haha.

Four free promotional tips! ! ! Many friends may ask, how can I get on the 360 ​​Mobile Assistant application circle? Here I will share with you, all of which are useful information:

1. App Circle is a place to discover, share and exchange high-quality applications (this is their official advertisement). To put it simply, it is a community where UGC and PGC complement each other. You can also register a 360 account, upload your avatar and name (it is best not to use the name of your own company), and then write a sharing article, publish it, and wait for the administrator to review it before it can be displayed in the App Circle.

2. So, how can you write it in a way that will make it easier to pass the review?

The answer is: stand from the user's perspective and use the user's tone to introduce the user experience of the APP, what are the highlights and features, etc. Never copy and paste the official introduction of the APP.

3. Especially important: If your APP is approved and included in the App Circle, do not post it to your company’s group or circle of friends to ask for likes or other means to increase the likes and rankings. Because although the App Circle is very friendly to us small and medium-sized developers, it is very strict about likes and ranking. According to their group administrator Ergou, the App Circle has a special anti-ranking system, and if ranking manipulation is detected, the account will be automatically blocked and the APP will be removed from the shelves. I have permanently blocked many accounts and removed many apps. Therefore, remember not to manipulate the rankings or the likes. Just let the users make their own choices. You know that manipulating the rankings is not worth the effort.

4. Also, don’t share too frequently. It’s best to share each APP every 7 to 10 days. If it’s still on the leaderboard, wait until it’s off the list before sharing.

5. At the same time, each account can only share one APP per day (generally, an account should occasionally share its own APPs as well as other high-quality APPs. If you only share your own APPs, it is said that it is easier to be identified as an account that is cheating on the rankings, which is not good.)

6. Don’t share lottery and financial apps and 360 competitors in the App Circle, because the App Circle is positioned to discover, share and exchange good apps. It emphasizes quality and tends to favor small and medium-sized high-quality apps, especially those made by startups like us that are exquisite and popular. Haha.

7. Where can I write articles and submit them to the application circle?

There is an "Application Circle" module in the 360 ​​Mobile Assistant PC client. Click Publish, then select the APP, write the experience report according to the prompts, and submit it for review.

Now I still hang out in the App Circle group every day. This is where WeChat Companion exploded. I am still operating an App Circle account and occasionally share some high-quality APPs with friends in the circle.

Finally, I would like to end with the comments of the gentleman who shared his experience in promoting the app circle on Zhihu and express my gratitude to this gentleman. I wish all startup APP teams can have fun in the application circle and find their first wave of users.

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