Behind the booming operations, why is the conversion rate always heartbreaking?

What is the most difficult thing about starting a product or business? Look for the right positioning! What is the hardest thing about developing products and businesses? Stick to your positioning! The biggest challenge I have encountered from my several years of product experience is the word "positioning", because if the direction is wrong, all my efforts will be in vain! Positioning is the position of a product or company in the minds of users. Therefore, to clarify the positioning, it is mainly about clarifying the user group of the service and the content of the service. The combination of the two can best form a sub-category.

For example, Diqiao is positioned as a calcium supplement for mothers and infants . After years of hard work, Diqiao has always ranked first in the calcium supplement category for mothers and infants.

What impressed me most during the operation of the Diqiao brand was the brand team's continuous service to the target population. Whether it was online video advertising or offline brand activities , they all revolved around the mother and baby population and the various scenarios in which this population existed as their own channels . The hospital team also focuses on promoting the product in a few departments such as obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, etc., and educates their core target groups through doctors and their prescriptions.

It is the product positioning and brand operation based firmly on the target user group that enables us to continuously invest limited resources in where they can produce the greatest results, thus creating a brand such as maternal and infant calcium supplements. At the group's internal SFE training, ROSA said a classic saying: "Doing marketing is making choices." With limited resources, we must choose the market where our core target population is located.

In the past few years, the biggest mistake we made in product operations was that we did not have an accurate and segmented target user group. The user group positioning was too broad, which led to a significant horizontal extension of product services and a lack of distinctive and in-depth columns. Although it could more or less meet the needs of users, it was difficult to capture the hearts of any segment of the population.

During our operations, product promotion relies more on some brand activities, and user activity is mainly maintained through points. If we separate the operation from the core services of the product itself, we will only get the number of users but lack quality. Low-quality people do not contribute much value to us, but continue to consume our operational energy and resources, and "bad money drives out good money" resulting in the loss of high-quality users.

Live streaming has been very popular in the past two years. I have seen many platforms using WeChat accounts to do free live streaming, such as health lectures. But I also found that the live broadcast content was too general. The live broadcast process did not transform into its own products, and there was not even any brand exposure or positioning guidance. In the era of rampant live broadcasts, this method is difficult to attract users. Even if it attracts a large number of users' attention, what role does it play for the core product?

The subsidy model is a very unique landscape of the Chinese Internet . The purpose of the subsidy is: first, to burn money to compete and grab market share; second, to encourage users to use the product more motivatedly in the early stages and cultivate user usage habits.

If the subsidy model only cultivates a group of people who are greedy for small profits, instead of allowing the target users to develop a habit of using the product, and people leave once the subsidies stop, then wouldn't it be a waste of money and time, and in the end both people and money will be lost, which is not worth the loss?

Products and operations that lack segmented positioning of the target group may seem to be in full swing, but in fact they are all in vain. It is heartbreaking to look at the pitiful conversion rate data.

When making a product, you must first find the correct positioning; when operating, you must first identify the target audience. This is especially important in the early stages of the product.

We use the early childhood education platform to simulate the way of thinking about product operations, hoping to form a set of universal guidance models.

Step 1: Create a hierarchical user model

Figure 1: User tier model

First of all, you need to clearly identify who the users you serve are? Parents (born in the 80s and 90s) of children aged 2-7 who are concerned about their children’s education . In fact, this user group and the parenting user group are inherently segmented and differentiated. Parenting focuses more on material needs, while early education focuses more on spiritual needs.

Then continue to segment the target users, that is, who are the core users? There are two ways of thinking here:

• First, I am very clear about what I want to do and what services I want to provide. This starts from the needs and I just need to find the group of people who have the strongest corresponding needs.
• Second, I have my eyes on this market, but I am not sure what specific services will be provided. This requires market and population analysis, sorting out the core needs of different groups of people, and then determining the core group and core service content.

The figure below finds the corresponding target users by dividing early childhood education into several different types. Of course, it can be further subdivided, or divided by other dimensions, but in short, no matter which method is used, you must find your core group to ensure that the positioning of the early products and the resources for operations can be focused.

Figure 2: Classification of early childhood education users

Find the best entry point through the process of segmenting users into core users. The process of connecting users to stakeholders mainly depends on the future market size and profit model. For example, whether the stakeholders of early education users include the children’s grandparents, or even the children themselves, the children’s teachers (kindergartens and training classes), various early education institutions, commercial institutions, etc.

Step 2: Establish and operate seed users

Figure 3: Seed user characteristics

As the name suggests, seed users are the initial users of the product. They will use the product, make product suggestions, accept the immaturity of the product, and are willing to actively promote it. For example, Xiaomi’s seed users are early mobile phone enthusiasts, and Zhihu’s seed users are some big Vs in the Internet industry. Seed users play a vital role in the initial market validation and product improvement of our products, so the successful operation of seed users is the first step towards product success.

You don’t need many seed users, but you need high-quality target users. Just like early education products, relatives and friends with children around you are the first batch of seed users.

Reference: "How can startup teams quickly acquire seed users and detonate user nuclear reactors? 》

Step 3: Continuously build product capabilities around target users

After establishing a group portrait of the target users, we must constantly explore the needs of the target group, so as to build products and services that meet the needs of the target user group. Only then can the product generate stickiness and form brand loyalty.

For example, as shown in Figure 2, our target users are parents who pay attention to their children's personalities and have the strongest demand for early childhood education content. For parents who are preparing to enroll their children in interest classes, choosing an early childhood education institution is their biggest need. Our service direction is to help them find an early childhood education institution with good brands, favorable prices, and that their children like. For parents who pay special attention to their children's performance in school and in groups, communication with teachers is of utmost importance. Building a communication and collaboration platform can better impress target users.

Therefore, only by knowing what your target user group is can you accurately grasp user needs and put limited resources into products and services that are most likely to produce results. If we don't segment our target user groups, our products will expand horizontally in order to serve more users. However, things don't always go as planned because they are too big and comprehensive and lose their distinctive features and fail to capture the minds of users.

So after we realized our problem, we gradually took measures to reduce the frequency of activities, lower the ratio of points issued, and turned to building core products and improving product experience. Although this caused a large number of users to leave, the addition of high-quality target users also increased the value created by users.

Step 4: Continuously verify and modify the target user group during the operation process

Products give birth to children, and operations raise children. The success of a product requires close cooperation between the product team and the operations team. In fact, a more appropriate explanation of product and operation is that the product points out the direction of (child's) development, while operation guarantees the direction of (child's) development. But sometimes, the direction indicated by the product may not be correct, and it needs to be discovered and corrected during the operation process; sometimes, the operation may deviate from the direction and need to be corrected by matching with the target user group.

So we found that target users are not actually equal to core users. Target users are the core users we set when we make products, but they will change during the operation process. So I simply made a comparison table of target users and core users (taking the doctor group as an example), and I can do an analysis and comparison every once in a while.

Figure 4: Listing target user portraits and core user portraits

Through this table, we define the target users and potential users we need (of course, the attributes of this portrait can be edited or increased according to our needs). Then, during the operation process, we continuously analyze the portraits of the current core users from the current active users to match them with the target users, so as to determine whether the product and operation are consistent.

So how do we analyze core users? The best way is to analyze user attribute data and behavioral data . Analysis of large sample data is generally more realistic. The second best way is to continuously conduct user surveys to determine the current user base. The worst way is subjective judgment, but it is most likely to produce errors. Therefore, data-driven operations are very important!

If there is a big deviation between core users and target users, does it necessarily mean a bad result? In fact, this is not the case, because as we have said above, both products and operations may go wrong. What to do when disagreements arise? Should we correct it according to the original target users, or continue according to the current core users? The most unbiased approach I feel is to assess the commercial value of the target group and the current core group. If the target users are more valuable, operations need to adjust strategies and correct routes; if the core users are more valuable, then the current core users will be used as new target users and the product will adjust direction.

Our product has been operating for several years and has gradually become a platform. More services have been provided. Our current core users basically overlap with the users established in the early days. Is there no need to segment the user base? Actually, it is not. No matter how big the platform is, the core functions of the platform's initial positioning should not change. For example, no matter how big WeChat is, the core of communication will not change. If the core positioning and functions change, it will become another product.

As long as the core positioning remains unchanged, the core user group can be segmented. So now there are more and more product functions, all we do is to find the core users and highlight the functions of their core needs, and put other services with higher importance in secondary or deeper levels of entrances, that is, maintain the core positioning of the product, and provide more service functions to meet the needs of more users.

In addition, after the product is expanded, the operation of product users can be split according to channels and user groups. Taking the early education platform as an example, our core function is behavioral education for users. However, as the user base increases, we gradually improve the interest education function and preschool education function. We can split the channel for operation, and each part still follows the four-step operation system introduced above.

Another example is the Fenda platform. After completing the initial accumulation of the platform, the population expanded rapidly. The operation of the Fenda platform is basically segmented by industry. Channels such as health, law, and parenting operate independently, and each part still needs to do user stratification and build product and operation systems around their respective core groups.

As the saying goes: "If a ship has no direction, no wind is favorable to it!" Only by clarifying the products and operations based on the target user group can the ship sail on the right course and brave the wind and waves!