A story tells you: the role of operations in products

In fact, after doing operations , you will find that operators are simply problem solvers, and the objects of our solutions are actually users.

1. Why do we choose to do operations?

Just like the countless new graduates flooding into the market every year, countless "operations specialists" flood into various companies every year. I think most people’s idea is: since they cannot be a product manager who can change everything, then they should “settle for the next best thing” and do operations.

In the eyes of many people, operations is a position that does not require too many professional skills, but "the reason why a practitioner can meet the professional requirements in this field is because he has done a lot of adaptation and evolution work for the industry and profession." No matter what your major was in college, operations requires your passion for the profession and the patience to endure loneliness. Of course, if you have a major such as finance, computer science or even graphic design, it will be of great help to you in using Excel, Axure or even Photoshop in your future work.

Many people who have been engaged in operations for a period of time, especially event operations , will ask, "Isn't this what marketing does? Then why don't we just do marketing planning?"

Yes, I think part of operations is essentially marketing, but it is different from traditional marketing. So why should we choose to do operations?

When I was doing operations, I kept thinking about how to summarize operations. In short, it can be summarized into three points:

1. Attract new users and retain existing customers: Bring new users to the product and maintain existing customers.
2. Traffic conversion : traffic is converted into users, new users are converted into registered users, and registered users are converted into paying users .
3. Monetization and Profit: Through various operational means, the product can bring continuous and stable profits.

My understanding of the operation:

Operation is based on products and centered on users, maintaining the long-term and stable development of products.

We can see the difference between marketing and operations here:

Marketing focuses more on the promotion and dissemination of products. It needs to cater to the effectiveness of the market, which leads to the limitations of marketing. However, operations pay more attention to the changes of the entire product and users as their life cycle changes, and maintain products and users in a standardized and cyclical manner.

Therefore, by doing operations, you can not only learn relevant knowledge about event marketing , but also learn the structured and logical thinking of products. What's more, user and content operations can even exercise your copywriting skills and understanding of user behavior habits.

2. What can operations do?

Let me tell you a little story~

A is the owner of a barbecue restaurant. He has a wonderful barbecue secret recipe passed down from his ancestors, and C is his promotion specialist. A sells barbecue in the store every day, and C helps him post flyers in the downtown area, bringing in batches of users. However, A discovered that although C could attract many customers every day, many of them just took a look at the door and left. A was very puzzled. There was absolutely no problem with his barbecue secret recipe, the barbecue was very delicious, and C had attracted a lot of people. So why was his business still so bad?

After a while, A invited B. What did B do? B started to hold promotions in the barbecue restaurant every now and then, hanging a banner that read "Spicy Lamb Rings! Buy two, get one free!" and even started issuing barbecue membership cards, which offered 12% off; ordinary customers who made 5 purchases in the store could get 50% off their next purchase; it's no wonder that the barbecue restaurant became more and more popular and was packed with customers.

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The story ends here, we can roughly sort it out↓

A stands for (resource) product. C stands for traffic (users). Then B is operations.

Let me add one more point here: What is a product? Products are actually solutions that users buy to solve their problems. We extract the subject, predicate and object↓

Products are solutions

When you are hungry, you go buy buns; when you are cold, you go buy clothes; when you are thirsty, you go buy drinks.

Products satisfy users and users verify products. The two are complementary to each other.

But as a user, there are so many products nowadays. What choices will you make when faced with so many categories? For breakfast every morning, would you choose Zhoupu or McDonald's? Is it really the taste that leads you to make the choice? Because of its discount? Buy fried dough sticks and get free soy milk; or is it because you have a membership card and get 20% off on bread? Has everyone thought about these?

The "free gifts for purchases over a certain amount", "membership card mechanism" and "discounts for purchases over a certain amount" mentioned above are all common means and methods in operations. Through store activities, we can encourage users to shop in stores, increase their shopping frequency, and increase their average spending per customer.

Does having good products and a lot of traffic mean you can run a successful business?

The answer is: not necessarily.

As products become more and more homogeneous and differentiation becomes smaller and smaller, operations play a decisive role . Operations can't make it 0-1, but operations can make it 1-1000...

• Promote the relationship between new users and products (attract new users)
• Promote user loyalty to the product (retention, activeness)

As products become more homogeneous, operational differentiation becomes more obvious and effective.

To give a very new example, nowadays the pace of life is accelerating, and takeout has become an indispensable part of people’s lives. As we all know, there are two takeout apps - Ele.me and Meituan Waimai .

(Today we are not writing a research report on the competition between the two products, but just hope to tell you the importance of operation to the product through case analysis)

Without considering the UI design layout of the two apps for now, and both apps can provide me with a variety of takeaway partners, how do I choose among so many similarities?

We can see that in Ele.me, there is a clear and top-notch "Super Member" logo:

1. It costs 20 yuan to open this function in the early stage
2. Give away 20 yuan red envelope every month without any threshold
3. For every 5 orders, you will receive a 5 yuan free red envelope
4. Members enjoy more special offers

By operating a membership system and group pricing, member users can get early investment → early benefits → later continuous benefits. This will not only increase users' favorability towards using the product, but also improve their loyalty to the product . I recharged money with you, and I can get a red envelope? Why not spend money here?

Of course, there may be many different actual situations, but this alone can attract the attention and favor of a large number of users for Ele.me food delivery.

Therefore, good operations mean more traffic conversion, whether it is traffic converted into registered users, or registered users converted into paying users . Generally speaking, with the same traffic, a higher conversion rate means a higher GMV.

3. How to think about operations?

Okay, let’s continue telling barbecue stories.

After his business was booming, Boss A opened three branches. Many tourists came to shop every day. However, after a few months, financial data showed that the business of these stores had gradually reached a bottleneck and the profits showed a negative growth trend. So B started to do new actions again.

B found the sales reports for the past three months and selected the top three most popular categories; and conducted a store questionnaire survey to investigate users' suggestions and opinions on the store's barbecue. In subsequent purchases, we increased the purchase volume and added diversity based on sales rankings and user survey reports, and suspended purchases of products with poor sales.

We truly thought from the user's perspective, increasing revenue and reducing expenditure, in order to lower input costs and cut unnecessary expenses. After a month, although the turnover did not increase significantly, the profit gradually began to increase, and the barbecue restaurant business began to flourish again.

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I simply divide the operational thinking modes into two types: user-oriented operation and data-based operation .

Customized operation :

They tend to consider things from the user's perspective, and more often they will substitute the user's role into the consumption scenario, whether it is empathy or questionnaire survey. For example, in the story, B organized a lot of activities, provided raffles and various benefits to attract users, encourage users to initiate designated actions, increase user activity and unit price, etc.

The advantage of user-oriented operation is that it can be closer to users' ideas and is dominated by user perception. This will lead to a higher reputation and better user loyalty . However, it is more effective in the early stages of the product, but this operational thinking model will encounter many problems in the middle and late stages.

Data-driven operations :

Whether it is traditional industries or Internet operations , data analysis is indispensable. In the early stages of a product, when there is less traffic and fewer users, user-friendly operations may be relatively simple and effective. By organizing an event, traffic can skyrocket and the product will receive rave reviews. However, as the product matures and users become more stable, data-driven operations begin to demonstrate their importance.

Break down the data, break down the problem. Big data can tell us a lot. So this is the user portrait? So this is what users like? Data analysis can often give operators new perspectives and new operational directions. It will never work if you work in isolation.

So, if we go back to the story, it is not difficult to find that: when the company's products encountered bottlenecks, the operator B in the story used big data combined with user research reports to summarize the latest product sales strategy, reduce costs, increase revenue and reduce expenditure, and realize profits. This is a successful operation.

Here I want to emphasize that as an operator, no matter what operational thinking mode you are in now, you must learn to ask yourself questions at any time. No matter how self-congratulatory the copywriting is, no matter how good the event page is, no matter how powerful the coupon promotion is, those are all imagined by ourselves while sitting in front of the computer.

Remind yourself more often that what we need to provide is user solutions.

Ask yourself more often, is this really what the user wants?

IV. Conclusion

In fact, after doing operations, you will find that operators are simply problem solvers, and the objects of our solutions are actually users.

Whether it is the operational remedy after the product itself has problems; or solving the problems encountered in each life cycle of the product; or even solving the new user acquisition and retention in each user life cycle until the user leaves.

Good operations can summarize the problems you encounter in one sentence, see the essence through the surface, and hit the nail on the head, which is the highest level.

"What goals do we hope to achieve by how much activity resources and at what time?" This is the most basic and fundamental overview of an activity. If you can't clearly express the problem you are facing or the solution you want to solve it, then you may not have understood the nature of the problem.

Operation is not everything, but without operation is absolutely impossible.

I am still in the learning stage about operations. In the future, I will make my own sharing on the categories of operations. I hope my articles can give you some ideas, and answer questions and solve doubts for newcomers who have just entered the workplace.