How do emerging social tools break the monetization curse? Here are 3 suggestions

Meitu XiuXiu, which is considered to best represent the "use it and go" product spirit of Zhang Xiaolong , the father of WeChat , recently announced its connection to the personalized e-commerce platform Meitu Customization , in order to accelerate commercialization by importing huge traffic to the latter.

Difficulty in monetization is an old problem for tool products. While enjoying huge traffic, it is difficult to find a suitable large-scale monetization method. This sweet trouble has also become a nightmare for product managers . The difficulty in monetizing tools stems from two reasons: first, users are used and then left, so user stickiness is poor; second, tool products have a prominent "winner takes all" effect, making it extremely difficult to build a moat.

But if we combine the commercialization attempts of Instagram and Snap in the United States and WeChat and Meitu in China, we will find that most of the products follow this iron rule: while sticking to their duties as tools, they also need to constantly explore new boundaries and create greater value for users.

Specifically, there are three experiences that can be used as reference for tool products:

Lesson 1: From product to community

A pure product model is difficult to make a profit, and community attributes must be added. The most important method is to add UGC or PGC content in addition to the tools.

When QQ was first launched, its user base grew rapidly, but it had not found a way to monetize it until the group chat function was launched in 2002. From that moment on, QQ was no longer just an instant messaging tool. As Tencent's official biography "Tencent Biography" states: "The invention of QQ groups completely changed the way netizens maintain relationships and interact online, marking the emergence of the concept of social networks in China, 18 months earlier than Facebook."

From group chat to the subsequently launched QQ Space, QQ has evolved from a chat tool to a social network, breaking the tool curse. In the United States, Instagram, which initially provided photo editing functions, eventually developed into a super photo-sharing community, achieving a leap from product to social.

For emerging tool products, the key to solving the problem is how to continuously strengthen social attributes and increase user stickiness like super platforms such as QQ, WeChat, and Weibo. In the past few years, Moji Weather 's "Shijing Weather" and Dayima 's "Sisters Say" have both tried to embed social modules internally. This approach has a clear media color and is relatively traditional.

Experience 2: Explore users’ long-tail needs

The vast majority of high-traffic tool products have basically adopted a free model and use it to defend their market leadership, such as WeChat, Youdao Dictionary, and Meitu.

The most successful charging case in history is the skins and props of QQ Show. Later, when people reviewed their experience, they found that what was being sold here was not props and costumes, but emotional sustenance. Users purchased these virtual objects ultimately to showcase an ideal character image online.

This was a rare exception. People would not pay for QQ's chat function - the previously tried QQ registration fee system was complained about, but the optional and seemingly dispensable virtual props once allowed Tencent to reap the first pot of gold in social networks. The secret lies in users' long-tail demand for personal image.

Later generations also began to learn from this practice.

Soon after Youdao Dictionary went online, product managers discovered that these users with English learning needs could be converted into consumers of online English education at a very high conversion rate . In addition, most traditional language training institutions are not good at online education , so Youdao Dictionary connected other online education services to its own platform, which not only met the long-tail needs of users, but also increased the platform function of the product.

Meitu and Youdao Dictionary are also very similar. When photo editing becomes a necessity after taking photos, they will pay attention to users' subsequent needs - photo developing, peripheral product production, so they add extended services for users through customization: cooperate with OEMs to customize peripheral products; launch joint cooperation products with international brands, celebrities, and Internet celebrities .

However, not all tool products have the ability to develop long-tail demand. They often need to have a certain user base: the user scale exceeds 100 million, most of the users are young and fashionable, and have a strong demand for personalized consumption.

Experience 3: Create a new consumption scenario and integrate online and offline

Advertising is the most common service, but it is also easily rejected by users and even leads to user loss. A smarter approach is to create a new advertising consumption scenario, connect online and offline, and enhance the e-commerce value of tool products.

Previously, Facebook IQ made a closed-loop diagram of the role of social networks in beauty consumption, namely "inspiration-learning-suggestion-purchase-sharing". The study found that there are multiple "touch points" in the entire closed loop. The survey shows that more than 3/4 of beauty-conscious customers will be attracted by a product they have no intention of buying, which provides opportunities for brand manufacturers to attract potential customers through Facebook and Instagram.

Social platforms where women predominate have greater e-commerce conversion value. As Jack Ma said when Alibaba went public in the United States in 2014, "Today I want to tell you Alibaba 's business secrets. 70% of Alibaba's buyers are women, and 55% of its sellers are women. These are our main resources. So, I want to thank women. Without you, Alibaba would not be able to go public in New York."

In the past, because what you see is not what you get, there is a huge gap between the buyer's show and the seller's show. After developing online marketing for a period of time, many fashion brands such as clothing and beauty have returned to offline experiential consumption. However, the disadvantages of this offline consumption are also obvious: high marketing costs, slow expansion, and it is difficult to enjoy the dividends of e-commerce development . How to create a more suitable scene and smooth the gap between virtual and reality has become the key to solving this problem.

To some extent, for tool apps with large traffic, whether they can be monetized is not a problem in itself. The real problem is how to maximize monetization.

If we summarize the experiences of successful people, we will find that the core of commercializing tool products is to further expand the user base by trying new promotion channels , use cutting-edge technologies to add new functions to continuously iterate the value of tools, and develop communities to increase user retention time. In summary, tool attributes are the foundation, community operation is the key, and e-commerce is the main channel for monetization .

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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