Looking at the construction of marketing scenarios from Pinduoduo's "Duoduo Orchard"

At a time when fruit prices are getting higher and higher, "cherry freedom" has become a popular Internet term, and whether one can buy cherries at will has become a yardstick for measuring economic freedom. As if seeing everyone's "fruit anxiety", the offer of planting trees and getting free fruit at Duoduo Orchard has become very popular, and users have transformed themselves into farmers, carrying watering cans and becoming "cloud farmers."

Duoduo Orchard is a cultivation game within Pinduoduo. When you click in, you will be asked to choose a fruit to grow. Earn water droplets through sharing, browsing, placing orders, etc., water the fruits every day, and watch the fruits you plant sprout from seeds and slowly grow into a fruit tree. The most important thing is that after the fruits bloom and bear fruit, Pinduoduo will send you a box of the fruits you planted for free.

Since its launch, "Duoduo Orchard" can plant more than 2 million trees every day during peak periods.

Media reports show that in the first quarter of 2020, Duoduo Orchard had more than 50 million daily active users, an increase of 11 million from the beginning of the year, and more than 1 million kilograms of fruit were delivered every day. On October 10, 2019, Chu Orange and Pinduoduo reached a strategic cooperation agreement. Users have a chance to win Chu Orange seeds by watering the fruits in Pinduoduo Orchard. When the fruits are ripe, users can receive physical Chu Oranges directly supplied from the base.

During the epidemic, Duoduo Orchard gave away fruits for free through interactive entertainment with users, helping some poor areas to consume fruit stocks, which not only brought profits to fruit farmers, but also won a good reputation for Pinduoduo.

1. Design of Duoduo Orchard

Duoduo Orchard was designed with two basic elements: water drops and fertilizers. Watering makes fruit trees grow, and fertilizers can accelerate their growth. Duoduo Orchard has also made extensions to multiple scenarios. In addition to obtaining water drops and fertilizers from daily tasks in the orchard, you can also redeem water drops, fertilizers, and special effects props by accumulating stars. The gold coins harvested in Duoduo Farm can also be exchanged for water drops and fertilizers.

There will be a certain waiting time for each watering of the orchard. As the fruit tree grows, the time intervals gradually increase. Initially the waiting time is 8 seconds, which will not cause much resistance from users. As the fruit trees grow, the waiting time increases to 15 seconds, and users have adapted to the 8-second waiting interval. Although it felt like it took a long time, it was still acceptable, and the fruits had already grown. Finally, it increases to 33s. At this time, even if the user feels that the waiting time is too long, he will not give up the game easily, because he has already invested a lot of time and can see the fruits of his labor.

The setting of the waiting time for watering in Duoduo Orchard fully captures the user's psychology, prompting users to complete more tasks to redeem special effect props, reduce waiting time, or browse products and make purchases while waiting.

In addition, in the later stages of fruit tree growth, the role of chemical fertilizers begins to become apparent. This manifests itself as faster nutrient consumption and slower growth of fruit trees, necessitating timely replenishment of fertilizers.

Fertilizer is much more difficult to obtain than from Water Drops. Users must complete group orders or attract new members to obtain it. In the later stage of fruit trees bearing fruit, the platform induces users to perform the behaviors expected by increasing the sense of shortage of fertilizers and making it more difficult to obtain fertilizers.

Figure 1: Duoduo Orchard game page

Figure 2: Duoduo Orchard Product Structure

2. The underlying logic and core of Duoduo Orchard

Duoduo Orchard is a cultivation game. In the construction of marketing scenarios, cultivation games generate a large number of clicks and interactions through an addictive gaming experience, thereby creating more user interaction opportunities, and ultimately achieving the goal of retaining users and slowly converting them.

Pinduoduo's users are mainly women, and most of them are between 25 and 35 years old; this age group is mostly housewives, and they prefer affordable prices when shopping; users are relatively dispersed, mainly in provinces and cities with relatively high population density, such as second- and third-tier cities in Guangdong, Shandong, Jiangsu and other places, and these users are sensitive to prices when purchasing.

Figure 3: Pinduoduo customer portrait; Source: iResearch

Duoduo Orchard accurately grasps the psychology of Pinduoduo's customers. For these customers, the physical fruit rewards in the game are quite attractive, and they have a certain tolerance for the game. You only need to spend a little time every day to get free fruits. Although the fruits are not much, you can use the fragmented time to play games, which not only kills time but also allows you to get fruits. It is also very cost-effective to buy them with coupons from the orchard farm.

For users, the motivation for participating in the game is to get rewards. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, rewards are mainly divided into two types: one is external rewards (material rewards), which bring real benefits, and the other is internal rewards (spiritual rewards), which mainly satisfy the user's sense of self-realization, honor, vanity, etc. Duoduo Orchard has inherited Pinduoduo's genes - real profit concessions and material benefits; therefore, the underlying logic and core of Duoduo Orchard is to stimulate users' motivation to participate by providing incentives or benefits. In order to obtain rewards, users will generate the behaviors that the platform hopes will be achieved, such as attracting new users, retaining users, and repurchasing.

Figure 4: Duoduo Orchard user participation motivation

3. Duoduo Orchard Scene Construction

1. Clear rewards and low entry barriers

Users think simply, but they are also smart. They will quickly go over the input-output ratio of this matter in their minds, and will gladly join in after learning that they can get real fruit by just moving their fingers and clicking a few times every day.

In order to increase users' willingness to participate, the first thing to consider is the user's behavior cost, including whether the game's participation entrance is obvious, whether the task completion is easy enough, whether the specified user behavior is simple, and whether the required psychological cost and actual cost are low enough.

To plant trees in Duoduo Orchard, users only need to click on water droplets to water them. The operation is simple and requires almost no cost. The psychological cost of inviting friends to water the plants is high, but the corresponding reward is also higher; on the one hand, the reward must obviously exceed the cost required by the user, and on the other hand, it must be clearly communicated to the user. For example, in Duoduo Orchard, there will always be “number of times left to success” under the fruit trees to stimulate users to remain active.

2. Combine with the core functions of the product

Duoduo Orchard offers a certain amount of material value in exchange for the commercial value that users may generate.

The platform combines the core functional design tasks of the product, and equates the designated user behavior with the behavior that users are expected to perform frequently as much as possible, thereby creating maximum profit. For example, as an e-commerce platform, Pinduoduo's GMV (gross merchandise volume) is one of the core indicators it values ​​most. Users placing orders, collecting products, and adding them to shopping carts are all positive behaviors that are encouraged by the platform, and therefore they will receive water drops.

3. Construct a reasonable points system

Points are an abstract concept, which refers to the intermediate rewards obtained after completing corresponding tasks. For example, the water drops distributed by the platform after placing an order on Duoduo Orchard are points. Intermediate reward means that it is not the user's ultimate goal, but an intermediate medium for the user to obtain the ultimate reward. The reason for adding this intermediate medium is, on the one hand, to more clearly quantify the level and rights in a digital form, and on the other hand, to make the segmentation of user growth stages more flexible.

In Duoduo Orchard, you should reasonably design the rules for which tasks can win points, how many points can be won for each task, whether the points are distributed in real time or periodically, etc. Users can clearly perceive the points reward rules and conditions. At the same time, the points that can eventually be exchanged for fruits are displayed dynamically and clearly in front of users.

4. Add interactive mechanisms related to friendships to achieve fission

Whether from the perspective of attracting new users or maximizing activation, it is indispensable to add friend relationship chains to task design. The more participating nodes connected to the network, the greater the network effect of Duoduo Orchard, and the longer the life cycle of the game will be.

Not only that, the participation of friends can increase the existing users' sense of participation and identity, and the introduction of social rankings can further stimulate users' self-realization psychology.

5. Create a closed loop to retain customers

The entire Duoduo Orchard is a closed loop. As the level increases, Duoduo Orchard uses pastures and farms to keep users staying longer. Orchards and farm pastures are related and are both part of agriculture, which will naturally make users have no objection. The harvest from pastures and farms can be used to help the growth of fruit trees.

Similarly, the pages of the farm and ranch are filled with various coupons, tasks, etc. to guide users; when users leave these two pages, the first thing they think of is not to close Pinduoduo, but the page they return to is still the orchard, and users spend a lot of time without realizing it.

The organic combination of orchards, farms and ranches gives users more choices and also adds more ways of induction.

IV. Revelation

Scenarios have become the core touchpoints for banks and users to build connections. They can drive the increase of active users and stickiness of mobile banking, and achieve various goals such as attracting new users, attracting traffic, promoting activation, retaining customers, and product marketing.

As can be seen from Duoduo Orchard, scene construction must first be fun, so that users can feel the excitement and challenge and get timely feedback. Next is easy-to-play games, preferably small games that users can play at first sight, with moderate difficulty and smooth and reasonable flow. Then set reasonable points rules and rewards based on the target customer profile and the core functions of the product. Finally, in order to attract more customers and improve retention and conversion rates, on the one hand, social elements can be introduced, and on the other hand, a closed loop can be created by combining various financial and non-financial scenarios.

Of course, the risk compliance, customer base, and value created by banks are different from those of Pinduoduo, so the construction of marketing scenarios is an issue that requires long-term thinking.

Author: Wangzai649

Source: Wangzai649