APP product operation: How should tool-type APP products be promoted and operated?

When developing tool-type products, Cheetah Mobile CEO Fu Sheng summarized a set of methodologies: enter from the edge, break through at a single point, and achieve perfection. This is the thinking perspective of a product manager, which means avoiding areas where giants gather, finding a breakthrough point, investing all your energy, and making the product experience the best it can be, and users will naturally like it. Fu Sheng often uses the Cheetah Clean Master product as an example, saying that he has invested 200 product managers and R&D engineers in this cleaning tool, but I have never heard Fu Sheng tell the public how many operators he has invested. So, do tool-type products need operations?

Let’s look at some of the characteristics of tool-based products:

1) The substitutability of tool-type products is the strongest among all product categories

PC security software, browsers, and cloud storage have all gone through a fierce competition phase. The competition in the mobile assistant, mobile guard, etc. is also the most intense. Users actually have a lot of choices for tool-type products. If I don’t like using 360 products, I can switch to Kingsoft, Baidu, or Tencent. In the case of popular tool products, users are definitely a buyer's market, with supply far exceeding demand, and you have to serve them well and wait for users to come.

2) Even good wine needs to be hidden in a remote alley. The biggest problem with tool-type products is that users don’t know how to use them.

Although almost all product managers know the phrase "Don't make me think", when adding requirements on the spur of the moment, have you really thought about whether users will use it? It's simple. It's not only for Internet practitioners, but also for people of your parents' age to use it for the first time.

3) Tool-based products have the worst stickiness and users are prone to churn

When you go to the app market to check user reviews, you may see users commenting on the QQ download page, "Bad review! Uninstall!" These comments are probably meant to scare people, and they are just saying it. But if a user says he wants to uninstall a tool-type product, he or she will most likely really uninstall it.

Many people complain that Sina Weibo’s user experience is terrible, but no one stops using Weibo because of this terrible experience. If users of tool-type products are not satisfied with the product at all, they will uninstall it immediately without mercy and will find a new favorite right away. Why? Because social products have users’ social relationship chains, and users are reluctant to give them up. Although there are so many advertisements on video websites that it’s maddening, some video resources are only available on specific websites. For tool-type products, the replacement cost is very low for users, not to mention that there are many spare parts available.

I always say that "good products are the result of operations", and this statement absolutely applies to all types of products. If there is zero operation, it means giving up the initiative.

So how do tool-based products operate?

1. Understand the tool usage scenarios and use scenario-based operation thinking

The so-called tools are used to help people solve a specific problem efficiently, such as Baidu Maps. The human brain is limited and cannot remember all geographical locations and routes, so using map tools saves the process of memory, finds locations, and checks routes. This is the most common usage scenario of map tools.

There are two factors that motivate users to use tool-type products: the desire to use them and the scenario of use. When making tool-type products, you must always ask users in what scenarios they would think of opening your product. This specific scenario is the basis of all operations.

2. The first priority of tool-based products is that users can use them

There was a mobile phone antivirus APP abroad. The entire interface had only one button. When you clicked it, an animation prompt would appear saying that the antivirus was completed, and the entire usage process was over. Some tool-type products can indeed achieve the ultimate because of their clear positioning and simple functions, and users can use them right away. However, some products, such as Office software, are inherently complex in function and must involve operations so that users can at least use them and the value of the product can be reflected.

There are two things operators need to do here:

The first is value delivery: telling users what specific problems this tool can solve for you.

The second is to teach users how to use it: WPS Office has released many practical Office tutorials to help users learn to use their own software. This is a very good tool product operation process. Only when users know how to use it can they feel the unique value brought by the product.

3. Establish user operation channels to strengthen the connection between products and users

Most tool-type products do not have any interaction with users within the product itself, so it is necessary to build external channels for user operations, which can be social media such as Weibo and WeChat, or communities such as forums and Tieba. In short, companies should build channels wherever users are. Currently, the best performing product is Xiaomi mobile phone, which uses Weibo to attract new fans, the community to retain users, and WeChat to act as a customer service provider. In this way, a complete user operation system has been built.

4. Promote product manufacturing operation points and improve product stickiness

When the product itself has no place to operate, we can push the product to create operation points. The purpose is to make the product not just a dry tool, but to make it flesh and blood through additional functional points.

Here are two examples:

Baidu Maps, is it still a pure map tool now? It has long ceased to be so. Food, hotels, group buying, car rentals, and takeout are the combination of the LBS attributes of map products and the current popular O2O life services. The embedding of related services has greatly improved the product stickiness of Baidu Maps. Users no longer need to install so many apps, this one is enough.

As for the domestic office software WPS, in terms of functionality alone, WPS is definitely not as good as Microsoft Office. However, in recent years, WPS has discovered that templates are an important user demand, so it created the Daokeer online template library. By providing a large number of templates, it makes content a part of the product, increasing user usage and favorability. According to the survey, one of the important reasons why many student users choose WPS is that WPS has free PPT templates, which are very convenient to use. This is to productize the content and make the template library part of the product.

5. Give the product packaging a stylish feel

These days, you have to have passion in everything you do, but of course you can’t fake it. The key is to resonate with users through high-end sentiments.

For example, Evernote’s official mission is to create a second brain for humans, rather than just a note-taking tool. A morning diary tool, its sentiment is to realize dreams and create miracles in one's life. Todolist is a product that we can say is used to manage a chaotic life.

After creating such a high-end sentiment, the originally simple and plain product functions have become grand and impressive, not only resonating with users, but also giving them a sense of mission to accomplish. This sense of mission will increase the frequency of users actively using the product, and will also be of great help in achieving operational goals such as retaining users and increasing product DAU.

APP Top Promotion (www.opp2.com) is the top Apple and Android application APP promotion platform in China, focusing on mobile promotion operations, research on ASO algorithm rules to optimize rankings, market channel promotion, WeChat marketing promotion, App marketing promotion experience case sharing, and App promotion marketing information.

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