This is the entire process of a product from establishment to acquiring users!
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In the early stages of entrepreneurship , from building a product to acquiring users, these are important links that every startup company needs to face, and are also the core that determines whether the company can survive. I divide this process into two parts, one is building the product, and the other is acquiring users. The following is organized through mind mapping. #1. Build a product 1. The birth of demand Real needs are born from continuous exploration based on actual data. The prototype of Instagram is Burbn, a product based on geographic location check-in. As a complex product that combines LBS and social game content, it is not accepted by users. However, when the Instagram team analyzed user data, they found that some features of this product were popular with users. After some research, they decided to reduce the complex functions and instead do this simple demand well. Soon, they won the favor of users. The best companies in the world have all been born out of other products. What you need is to discover them and make them evolve into something else. 2. Find product-market fit The reason most startups fail is not because they don’t have money, but because they don’t have market demand. Therefore, the key point is to find the fit between entrepreneurial products and the market. If you don’t find market demand, the faster you develop and the more you invest, the further you will be from success. Therefore, before finding the fit between product and market, there is no need for too much complicated investment and promotion, but rather to explore what users really want. The initial design of the product should ensure that it can be used easily and smoothly. Instead of adding various restrictions just to make the functions more complex and the content richer. 3. Determine the demand First of all, we need to distinguish false needs. What is a false demand? Imaginary and real scenes. Make the simplest prototype and determine whether the requirements are really accurate through use. Understand your users. For example, the users of email are ordinary users who only receive a few emails a day, and most of them are advertising emails, rather than product managers like us who receive hundreds of emails every day and need to reply constantly. Secondly, determine whether the demand is urgent, or whether it is a rigid demand. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, physiological and safety are the most basic needs. Finally, it is the market. Is the market size that the product targets large enough? The consequence of insufficient market size is that it is easy to hit a ceiling and lack the potential for growth. By estimating the user base * consumption capacity * proportion of will consumption, we can easily come up with a market size. Behind the market size is the product's monetization ability. A good product is not only able to attract a large number of users, but also needs to be able to monetize in a variety of scenarios. 4. Verification Requirements When a requirement is explored, the first thing to do is not to start work immediately, but to make a prototype to verify the requirement. The Lean Startup defines MVP (Minimum Viable Product), which I describe as: It doesn’t matter whether a minimum viable product is a real “product” or not. The best viable product is the minimum viable solution that can be completed and put into use with minimal effort. When the product is launched on the market, you can fully understand the market's recognition of the product, and start to continuously optimize the product direction and design from the perspective of trial and error, and continuously optimize during the growth process, rather than defining a big burden from the beginning. Of course, a good MVP needs to meet some conditions: Rapid feedback channel. Users can quickly convey feedback to the team through this prototype product. For example, leave a message, feedback email, etc. Official news display. That is, it has a display channel for pushing official news, such as announcements, system push, etc. Inform users of product changes or even PR. Rapid iteration and automatic upgrade. MVP is a prototype that requires continuous optimization and iteration. The iteration process needs to be smooth and able to upgrade automatically. Functions that can improve upgrades should be designed instead of asking users to look for upgrades. The role of MVP is to judge demand, not to be a real product. For example, Dropbox’s initial MVP was just a promotional video that informed users of Dropbox’s features and understood their willingness to pay. From a domestic perspective, the official account is an excellent MVP. Taking WeChat official accounts as an example, it has customized sections, message mechanisms, push mechanisms, and software-independent mechanisms. The requirements of points 1, 2, and 3 in MVP can be met quickly and at almost zero cost. 5. Choose a platform For mobile applications, the main platforms are the APP Store and numerous mobile distribution platforms, and for web applications there is the H5 application platform. Websites need to be compatible with browsers , and various local software need to be compatible with operating systems, etc. Choosing a platform comes down to a question of cost and return. Determine the audience and the platform environment that the audience is likely to use, and consider the relative compatibility requirements and platform choices. For example, many large domestic websites need to use IE6, an outdated browser. This is because my country still runs a large number of Windows XP systems, and its default browser is IE6. For some websites with a strong vertical focus, such as the online education website Coursera, they can consider being incompatible with earlier versions of IE. This is because Coursera's audience is mainly young and well-educated users who will choose newer systems and browsers, so there is no need to worry. As for mobile application platforms, etc., a new platform does not mean useless. Since new platforms are not widely used, being the first launch platform may allow you to get higher exposure and perhaps better conversion results than mature platforms. 6. User Research User research is a fallacy. User research is generally of little value until users actually use the product. Users always tend to prefer some requirements such as free, rich functions, etc., but in fact they may not like them. The best approach is to allow users to use the product quickly, for example, by allowing users to use it without registration first, so that users can experience the functions of the product and truly understand their intentions. #2. Get users 1. Understand and screen users In the early stages of a product’s operation , a group of seed users are needed to bring content and data to the product. They will serve as the foundation for the product’s future development. Therefore, how to identify users and rely on these seed users to build the product’s cold start process is the key to the product’s start-up and also the key to its continued operation in the later stages. What is a seed user? People who are adventurous and willing to try new products Early product users Possesses the potential to become a core user So, how to find good seed users is an important part of the initial operation of the product. Facebook was founded at Harvard University and later expanded to the Ivy League, establishing an elitist social circle and creating interest elements for ordinary users in the outside world to integrate into. Another example is Zhihu, which adopted an invitation system in its early days and invited a large number of celebrities and highly professional users, accumulated a large amount of original content, and increased the community's attractiveness to the outside world. Seed users must be the target users of the product, because these target users can help the product establish effective order and content. For example, the Bilibili website adopts a strategy of combining an invitation system and a question-and-answer system. The invitation system has a limited number of places, and the questions are some relatively difficult two-dimensional knowledge. This can exclude some users who are not related to the target users of the product and reduce product locusts. What is Product Locust? They are mainly Internet practitioners such as product managers and investors . Their purpose of coming here is to find competitors and research data, which is of no help to the long-term operation of the product. Since the main purpose of these people is to test the various functions of the product, their data analysis of the product will be misleading. They may also occupy the quota of seed users and have a negative impact on the product community. As practitioners, this group of people may make some suggestions on the products. However, due to the limitations of their understanding, most of their suggestions are meaningless and should be carefully discerned rather than blindly followed. 2. Start with the details When you choose a field and are ready to make a big move, think carefully about whether you really understand this industry. Dai Yusen, one of the founders of Jumei Youpin and now the vice president of products, carefully studied various knowledge and experiences of cosmetics at the beginning of his business, published some usage experiences and articles, and formed a certain scale of influence in the beauty circle. In the early days of Airbub's operations, the photos taken by landlords were often blurry and users had no desire to buy when they saw them. The founder had no choice but to rent an expensive camera and go around taking pictures. He replaced the blurry photos with beautiful ones, and the effect was obvious. Only when users saw the clear photos could they feel whether the house was really good. The details need to be carefully polished. Sometimes there is no problem with the product design, but problems always appear in some external manifestations. 3. Rely on the platform Social platforms, e-commerce platforms, search platforms, and distribution platforms. The construction of these platforms requires a large number of content providers, and the products of entrepreneurs often meet the characteristics they require. When social networks first entered China, social platforms such as Kaixin.com and 56.com were established, and a large number of game providers also successfully settled in. Among them, the Five Minutes Company developed Happy Farm, which later had a far-reaching influence. With the continuous influx of rich game content, Kaixin.com also became a popular social networking site at the time. After Facebook opened its gaming platform, Zynga actively participated in the construction of the social gaming platform, launched a large number of games, attracted a large number of users, and earned a lot of profits. And because of the rich gaming content on the platform, Facebook also received feedback and grew together. PayPal cooperated with eBay in the early days, and Alipay was linked to Taobao, etc. As service providers that enriched the closed loop of the platform, they also received rich resources from the platform, which promoted their vigorous development. In addition, third-party registration and other access can also help the product grow better. For example, by logging in through QQ, WeChat, or Weibo in China, you can share product updates on the above platforms and earn converted users. The same applies to Facebook and Twitter abroad. Choose a good platform, the platform's traffic can help startups grow quickly. Good products built by the platform will also help the platform gain reputation, and the two will benefit each other. 4. Borrowing third-party data For many products, the accumulation of data content is a process of growth and also a moat that prevents the invasion of new products. In order to break or take over this moat, we need to use data capture technology. Importing Data In September 2010, Microsoft's live space was officially discontinued, and a large number of users were forced to migrate to third-party platforms. At this time, if a complete data import function could be established, the content data and users themselves of these users could be easily obtained. NetEase Blog and Sina Blog quickly followed up with the "one-click import" function, taking this opportunity to quickly import a large number of high-quality users of the original live space, thereby improving the output quality of the entire blog community. Baidu Space stopped its service not long ago, and a large amount of original content in Baidu Space is also facing the fate of disappearing. At this time, the follow-up of other similar service products will surely be able to successfully introduce a batch of high-quality blog resources. Accepting data In the early years of QQ Mail, it was not accepted by mainstream email users due to its reputation and its late entry into the market. Although the functions of QQ Mail have been continuously enriched, users are reluctant to change their mailboxes because mailboxes have already become a component of communication information. For this purpose, QQ Mail has launched a third-party collection function, allowing users to receive emails from all mailboxes through QQ Mail. Due to the large number of QQ users, QQ Mail is more convenient than other email services. The collection function completely eliminates the obstacles in the minds of some users who are unwilling to change their email accounts. Users can freely use all email accounts through QQ Mail, which has also helped it become the number one email service in China. In the early stages of building a social product, due to the small number of users and low user engagement, some tricky methods can be used to temporarily alleviate the problem of insufficient users. Creating a false prosperity For example, in the early days of many social products, the founding team would write some robot accounts to create an illusion of activity in order to cover up the problem of insufficient users. In the early days of Quora, due to the insufficient number of answers, it was unable to attract users. The founding team registered a large number of small accounts, asked and answered questions by themselves, and accumulated some answers from the early community, laying the foundation for the subsequent accumulation of users. Many times, a new product fails to attract people’s attention. Instead of investing money in marketing and advertising immediately, we should first think about why others don’t use this product? Not enough content? Not enough users? Not attracted to the opposite sex? It doesn’t matter, there is nothing to create. Once the user group is established, it’s okay to delete these pseudo-user resources created in the early stage. 5. Content Marketing Marketing methods Nowadays, a large number of online communities such as Weibo, WeChat, Tieba, Zhihu, etc. have attracted the attention of a large number of users, and these places have also become the best gathering places for content marketing. Taking Weibo as an example, establishing an official Weibo account for a product, staffing it with dedicated new media operations talent, and continuously outputting content can attract a large number of fans to help forward and analyze content. If some activities are carried out at this time, it is more likely to create hot topics on Weibo and attract more users to participate. Content Design Sometimes we have to admit the power of "title party". A good title can attract more users' attention. Long article. Surveys show that articles of sufficient length can be shared far more often than shorter articles. From an SEO perspective, long articles contain far more characters and links than short articles. Moreover, in the eyes of users, long articles generally contain richer knowledge and are more worthy of forwarding and sharing, even though they do not read them themselves. Sense of participation. Design discussion-oriented and interactive content to make users feel involved. This sense of participation can enrich the time and energy invested by users and allow users to promote the product for free. 6. SEO, ASO SEO For ordinary websites, if they cannot be indexed by search engines, it means that they almost do not exist in people's field of vision. SEO is a strategy for optimizing search engine ranking rules and has now become a mature job function. These include the density and quantity of keywords, the number of external links, page structure optimization and other methods. Mainstream search engines generally use the Rankpage ranking algorithm, which has its own set of rules. The cracking strategy is analyzed based on the algorithm's structure. For example, the use of "div" is reduced in the web page code, and instead, "header", "section" and other "boxes" with certain meanings in HTML5 are used. Of course, SEO is not just about optimizing for a certain search engine, it can also be optimized by taking advantage of the editability of certain famous websites. For example, Wikipedia is editable. Every time Techcrunch pushes an article, it will update the link in the Wikipedia entry of the article content to increase the access entrance. ASO ASO is an optimization strategy for the APP Store, which generally refers to the optimization of rankings in mobile application stores . Taking the app store as an example, there are still a large number of APP names in the format of "XXX-XXXXXXXXX". The prefix of this type of name is the real name of the product, and the long string behind it is copywriting designed for traffic diversion. Due to the limitations of app store sorting, these originally unrelated products can be displayed due to keyword overlap during the search process, attracting additional traffic. Scoring strategy. Circa adopts a screening rating strategy, screening out a large number of active users and pushing rating pop-up windows. Active users are generally users who are relatively satisfied with the product, otherwise they would not waste time using it in large quantities. Although there may be some flaws, the rating can still be raised to a certain level. 7. Embedded external links and widgets In the early days of MySpace, due to the ban on video websites, MySpace was unable to quote the content of these video websites, which caused an incurable pain point in the product. At this time, YouTube appeared in time and provided a very convenient sharing interface, allowing users to easily analyze YouTube video sources in various social occasions, helping it to develop rapidly. Nowadays, as YouTube has been integrated into various video source websites, its abundant external links have made users inseparable from it. In China, Youku is a reference to YouTube. It also has a large number of sharing interfaces and rich external link resources, and allows other websites to quote its links and video resources. As a result, Youku’s video source has continued to grow, and its influence has continued to increase as its users have surged. It is still the number one video website in China. LinkedIn has also designed a large number of widget interfaces and promoted them on many websites and services. Users can use LinkedIn's widgets to show their resumes to others, which is equivalent to carrying a resume with them, which is extremely convenient. Moreover, as the number of times users use it continues to increase and their recognition of it continues to increase, LinkedIn profiles have become a standard or a norm. 8. Offline Promotion Commonly known as ground promotion . For example, distributing flyers, conducting offline activities such as scanning QR codes , etc. In addition to the traditional ground-based marketing methods, there are also some more ingenious cases. For example, Uber chose rainy San Francisco for its early trials, and was favored due to problems such as difficulty in hailing a taxi and frequent rain. In China, Didi Taxi and other taxi services were first promoted in major cities such as Beijing. The difficulty of hailing a taxi in Beijing is well known. Choosing Beijing as the first trial location for the taxi-hailing software can quickly ignite the enthusiasm of users and serve as a demonstration. Nowadays, many public places provide free WiFi services. One feature of this free service is that when you connect to WiFi, a web page will pop up displaying its promotional content. Due to users' enthusiasm for WiFi, they will intentionally tolerate the generation of such advertisements or promotional information. APP Top Promotion (www.opp2.com) is the top mobile APP promotion platform in China, focusing on mobile APP promotion operation methods, experience and skills, channel ASO optimization ranking, and sharing APP marketing information. Welcome to follow the official WeChat public account: appganhuo [Scan the top APP promotion WeChat QR code to get more dry goods and explosive materials] |
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