Why do you have such a hard time finding seed users?

After the product is launched, someone is needed to use it, so everyone naturally thinks of finding a group of seed users , but many people have no idea about this. I don’t know where to find it, and even if I find it, I don’t know how to get it. There is another group of people who are very good at attracting seed users, and it seems very good, but the results are always not very good. What's the problem?

Let’s see how they do it?

Common seed user operation dilemma

A very common scenario for seed users is this:

Each person in the company team is assigned a certain recruitment target, and each person is responsible for recruiting enough people to meet the target and bringing them into the seed user group.

As long as I have a good relationship with my friends, I might invite them all. I thought that no matter what, I would just add people in to make the group look more popular, and I could replace them if they are not suitable later.

Soon, hundreds of people were added to the group. The group owner sent a product link and gave out a red envelope, asking everyone to download the product, experience it, and share their opinions. Most people received the red envelopes, and only a small number of people downloaded the product, and these people put forward some suggestions.

Since they are all friends, they were pulled in for the sake of face. Most of them are not users with urgent needs in this area that need to be solved. Therefore, I basically have no motivation to download it. The first thing I do after joining a group is to block the group immediately, and then check it out occasionally when I have time.

After watching for a while, the people in the group found that the content in the group had nothing to do with them. In order to avoid being disturbed by too much information, they chose to quit.

Those who are still in the group are either the type who receive so many group messages that they don’t read them at all, or they are the ones who want to use the group in the future, so that when they need it, they can post their own advertisements in the group.

Since there is not much valuable output in this group, the operator is also very distressed. Every time he asks everyone to give their opinions, he finds that fewer and fewer people give feedback. On the contrary, from time to time, someone would pop up to post advertisements. Since many of them are acquaintances and friends, and some even sent red envelopes, it would be embarrassing to ask them to leave the group.

The "bandwagon effect" and "broken window effect" began to take effect at this time. Some people saw that others could also post advertisements, so they also began to post advertisements boldly. In this way, the discussion about the product was completely drowned out by a bunch of miscellaneous news.

After operating for a while, the team found that this group was not only inactive, but when it was active it was mostly filled with advertisements or gossip, and users did not offer many feedback on the product.

So I was puzzled: Why is it so difficult to manage seed users?

So they thought that maybe "this batch of seed users are not good enough" and found a new batch of seed users. However, history always repeats itself, and the tragedy repeats itself, and finally it becomes a dead group that posts advertisements.

The seed user operation method seems to be correct, so why can't it be operated? At what stage did the problem occur?

Biased understanding of seed users

I think the main reason for the above dilemma is that most operators make two major mistakes :

1. Misunderstanding what seed users are, mistaking the first batch of users and early users for seed users;
2. Focus on the quantity of seed-stage operations rather than the quality of operations for seed users.

So what exactly is a seed user?

I think seed users need to meet 3 conditions :

1. They are the target users of this product, and their pain points are even more severe than those of general users;
2. Dare to try new things and be willing to use them even if the products are not perfect;
3. Willing to provide feedback and suggestions for the product.

Seed stage of product development

Why do you need to meet the above three conditions to be called a seed user? This is closely related to the first stage seed stage of the product.

Some people may say, isn’t the operational goal of the first phase to attract the first batch of users and start building barriers with competitors?

Wrong! It is this typical misunderstanding that leads to the problems mentioned at the beginning of the article.

The operational goal of the first phase is not to attract a certain number of users, the most critical goal is to verify the product model!

Please note that there is no mention of quantity in the above goals. To achieve the goal of verifying the product model, the most important thing is actually the quality of users, not the number of users.

On the contrary, if the product model can be verified, the fewer users the better.

Yes, you read it right. Unlike the user number target that many bosses set at the early stage of the product, if user verification can be achieved at this stage, the fewer users the better. Why?

Because for the same verification purpose, fewer users means lower costs and easier to make major modifications and adjustments, but too many users is harmful.

But why in this situation, most people still hope that the number of users at this stage is as large as possible?

Because they believe that in the process of verifying the success of the project, it is better to accumulate more users. Once the verification is successful, it will be easier to make the next step with a larger user base.

but! They overlooked one fact:

99% of products will fail. Most of the reasons for failure are that the product itself does not meet user needs well. In other words, the product model is not good.

Most entrepreneurial product ideas come from the founders. Based on their own experiences and observations, they often have a flash of inspiration at some point in time and come up with an idea that they think is brilliant.

I felt that few people could think of this idea, and I thought that this product would be used by many people and would have a bright future, so I started my business.

However, the founder must think that his idea is great, otherwise he would not start a business. However, the facts have proved that there are only very few projects that are truly reliable and can ultimately be recognized by users and prosper.

Including Tencent, which is recognized as the best product developer in China, new projects are launched every day, but most projects will stop investment within two years.

Therefore, an important task in the early stages of an Internet startup is to strive to become one of the 1% of successful companies that can pass product model verification.

For the 1% of projects that ultimately survived, many of their product directions were completely different from what was originally envisioned.

How to increase the success rate of your product?

One of the most successful methodologies used here is "lean entrepreneurship", which uses the minimum viable product, takes small steps, and iterates quickly.

This means that during the start-up period, timely feedback from seed users should be obtained to shorten the iteration time of each version as much as possible, quickly improve the product, and polish out a product that can basically meet user needs.

Therefore, it can be seen that the most important thing in the seed stage is to quickly iterate the product , achieve the product retention rate target, and prepare for the next outbreak; if the retention rate is not good enough, quickly adjust and iterate based on user feedback and product judgment to make products that meet user needs; if the retention and activity are very low for a long time, it is very likely that there is a problem with the product itself, and the wrong product direction has been chosen. It is a wise choice to give up in time.

If problems with product direction are discovered in time, there will still be time and funds to adjust the direction and invest in trying new directions.

Therefore, in the process of verifying the product model, a very important role is the seed user.

At this point, you should be able to clearly understand why seed users need to have these three conditions:

1. They are the target users of this product, and their pain points are even more severe than those of general users;
2. Dare to try new things and be willing to use them even if the products are not perfect;
3. Willing to provide feedback and suggestions for the product.

Only such users can provide the suggestions needed for rapid product iteration. At this stage, the number is really not too important.

If you increase the number of users at the expense of accurate users, it would be a loss-making choice.

Do seed users really need precision?

Do seed users really need to be so precise?

1. Accurate seed users are conducive to making accurate decisions

Different user groups have different demands for similar products, and the conflicts between these different demands are difficult to balance and reconcile.

For example, for the same social product, business people value security and privacy, literary young people pay attention to temperament and atmosphere; those born after 1995 value new trends; middle-aged and elderly people value simple operation and the ability to view family photos; corporate users value work collaboration; users who want to have sex must be able to view people nearby, etc. It is difficult to meet the needs of different user groups at the same time at the beginning, especially for a startup company.

Moreover, if these different types of people are in the same group, they cannot convince each other of the demands they raise, and quarrels and divisions are inevitable.

If the product manager is not very skilled, he or she can easily be led astray by users.

Example: MIUI seed users

Soon after its launch, MIUI quickly polished a product with a good reputation through rapid iteration and gained a large number of users. How did MIUI's early seed users make their choices?

MIUI's seed users are Android enthusiasts who like to flash their phones. This choice is very clever and meets the three characteristics of seed users mentioned above: They are Android enthusiasts, not Apple fans, not Nokia users, not ordinary Android users, but the kind of enthusiasts who can't wait to flash their phones every day. They are eager for the functional iterations on their phones and constantly give various suggestions for the products. Then everyone votes together to decide what features to add to the next version. They feel a great sense of accomplishment when they see their suggestions being adopted, and will spontaneously introduce them to their friends and tell them which optimization they proposed.

With the help of these seed users, MIUI updated and iterated with many excellent features. It could be said that it was the best Android system on the market at that time. Therefore, it quickly accumulated a large number of users, laying a good foundation for the next step of Xiaomi mobile phone development and listing.

Where do these MIUI seed users come from? At that time, the team posted on Jifeng and Anzhi forums and recruited them. Only 100 users were selected for the first batch of internal test users, and then they were expanded step by step.

At that time, they did not set a target of a large number of seed users at the outset, but rather expanded gradually, with only 100 selected seed users in the first batch.

However, if the seed users are replaced by another group of novice users, they may be led astray. They will say, "Ah! Why does it crash again? I actually need to flash the phone to install the system?" The suggestions they put forward may be some very sparse and ordinary suggestions, and it is difficult for MIUI to have such excellent changes in a short period of time.

2. People prefer to be with people who are similar to themselves. When there is a certain density of similar people, it is easier to open up and communicate better.

For example, if the MIUI enthusiasts mentioned above tell people around them that they spend several hours every day installing the mobile phone system and achieve a small change in the boot screen in a few days, people around them will definitely think they are crazy.

But if you tell everyone about this in the MIUI forum, your post will definitely be worshipped and topped by others. This completely different kind of experience is also what the precise seed user group wants to provide.

Who are the seed users?

In addition to the mistake of mistaking early users for seed users, another fundamental reason why many companies have difficulty finding seed users is that they do not clearly define their products, do not segment the population as target users , and try to make a perfect product from the beginning to meet the needs of multiple groups of people. Therefore, the pain points that the product satisfies are unclear and the population is not specific. It is of course very difficult to find users in such a vast crowd.

This is no longer the era of decades ago when there were few websites and the only way to read news was on Yahoo. The cost of making an APP is constantly decreasing. There are a large number of APPs in almost every field. Trying to make a large and comprehensive product from the beginning is simply courting death.

However, there are still many teams that do this and simply think that if the product is already online but no users are using it, it is the responsibility of the operation itself.

This is the shared responsibility of the team, and the root cause lies with the boss.

Instead of looking for users in a general way, find a specific group of people for the product; instead of doing all the functions in a big way, solve the user's pain point in a differentiated way.

After the product is launched, it is just the beginning. Product, operation, design, development and seed users come together to create an excellent product.

Conclusion

1. Seed users are not equal to initial users;
2. Only those who meet the following three conditions can be called seed users;
3. The quality of seed users is far more important than the quantity;
4. Only after defining the product can we know who the seed users are.