I work in operations at Alibaba 3 - 818 classic misunderstandings in operations

Thanks Mantou for the invitation. I always find it the most difficult to write this kind of experience-sharing article.

If it is written in a more profound way, it becomes a metaphysical reading material at the airport; if it is written in a more inspirational way, it becomes a chicken soup; if it is written in a more practical way, it may be used for risk control and tea invitations for fear of data leakage; if it is written in a more humorous way, it may become a personal friendship article.

In order to avoid the above-mentioned classic experience sharing modes, I decided to write this article as a manifesto in addition to the personal introduction part, to talk about and criticize the classic misunderstandings in operations. My words may be rough but the logic is valid. If they hit the mark, you should study and understand them carefully. If they don’t hit the mark, just take it as an excuse to make you laugh.

[Personal introduction: What operations do I do in Alibaba]

Compared with most of Alibaba’s operations, the operations work I do is really easy to explain because I am doing the business that everyone is most familiar with. When people mention Alibaba, they will definitely think of Taobao first. When they think of Taobao, they usually first think of clothes sold on Taobao. I work in industry operations at Alibaba's Taobao, and the industry I am responsible for is clothing.

right. What about Double 11 and Double 12? The clothing promotion page you see is my contribution (blush)

It is said that working in the clothing industry is equivalent to having one foot in the fashion circle. The team includes former designers, fashion magazine editors, male models, etc. If you don't wear Milan Fashion Week-style clothes to work, you'd feel embarrassed to say hello to people if you can't name the popular winter color of 2015, Marsala burgundy. I don’t know why my boss recruited someone so down-to-earth like me. I guess it was for the diversity of the team (covering his face and running away)

Ai Weiwei made a statement: You artists should call yourselves idiots three times before you start to do art.

Similarly, operators should often ask themselves the following three questions:

1. Are you stupid to start doing operations without knowing what they are?

2. Is it stupid to execute without business thinking?

3. Having first-hand information about users, wouldn’t it be stupid not to do more and force product design?

Listen to these three misconceptions and see if they apply to you.

[Misconception 1: Thinking about “how to do it” without asking “what it is”]

"Teacher Wei Shou, my product xxx has very few users. How can I operate and promote it?"

What exactly are we talking about when we talk about operations?

It is said that there are 66 followers on the question “What is a product” on Zhihu, and as many as 480 followers on the question “What is operation”. This reflects from one aspect that when it comes to operations, most people are still at the stage of understanding "what it is".

So what is operation? As usual, I’ll give you a few definitions from some great predecessors and then my own definition.

[Definition from the great writer Zhang Liang Leo]

“Operation is all the means to help promote, use and recognize the product. Putting aside product design, after the product is launched, it is all about operation.”

[Definition from the great god Liu Chui]

"Broadly speaking, all manual intervention around website products is called operations."

What both great masters said was good enough, but what is intriguing is that Leo used the word "except xx" to define it, which means that if the reader does not understand "xx", they will not understand what "except xx" is. However, Hammer God's definition uses human intervention to describe operations, which can easily form a vicious circle of circular definitions: What is operation: human intervention in website products, what is human intervention? ：Operate website products.

Operation is not explained clearly because it is too difficult to define operation from the perspective of the Internet - the word operation appeared much earlier than the Internet. In the era without the Internet, the commercial world has already relied on operators for maintenance and management: magazine editors are essentially content operators; Erkang of 4A companies are essentially promotion operators; casino dealers are essentially game user operators; salesmen are essentially business development operators.

Do you understand? With the Internet's transformation of traditional industries, these occupations have not disappeared, but are uniformly summarized by the word "operation".

Therefore, my definition of operation is: operation is the simulation of all business behaviors of traditional industries after products and technologies have solved the underlying architecture.

The business departments of a typical corporate organizational structure are nothing more than R&D, production, supply chain, and marketing. Based on the corporate organizational form of traditional industries, it is easy for us to accurately divide and define Internet operations:

1. Production R&D department

They decide the company's products, which corresponds to the determination of target users and content production for the Internet, that is, the work content of data operations and content operations: data operations determine the R&D direction (content), and content operations produce content.

2. Supply Chain Department

Solve the logistics of products. Since the Internet often does not involve the transfer of physical distance, this part of Internet operations does not require special functional allocation.

3. Marketing and Sales Department

They solve the problem of product promotion and sales, which corresponds to the promotion and profitability of website products on the Internet, that is, the work content of promotion operations and business development operations: promotion operations increase the influence of websites and products, and business development operations further expand the influence and ultimately create commercial value for website products.

R&D selects the target market and conducts product R&D——Manufacturing and producing products——Marketing and promoting products——Selling products——Sales uses user data to feedback R&D and revise product positioning——Continue a new round of R&D and production.

Creating business value through this cycle is the business closed loop of traditional industries.

Similarly, on the Internet:

Data operations and content operations determine the content of website products - promotion operations and business development operations expand its dissemination and influence - and ultimately improve content through user feedback.

Creating business value through this cycle is the business closed loop of Internet operations.

After understanding what operations are, when looking at questions like "how to promote unpopular products", there are at least two experiences to share:

1. When doing Internet operations, you can seek experience from the corresponding functional departments of traditional industries. Promotion operations that understand advertising psychology are more valuable than those that know SEO.

2. Promotion is the last link in the business closed loop. Difficulties in promotion are not necessarily a problem of promotion. Solutions must be found from the entire chain.

[Misconception 2: Just thinking about “how to do it” without asking “why”]

My supervisor likes to remind us of two points the most. The first is that we should do operations with business thinking (the second will be mentioned in misunderstanding three). What is business thinking? That is, you must know the significance of execution before execution, keep the goal in mind and constantly adjust the execution plan during execution, and review and reflect on the results after execution.

It is not enough to just draw a Gantt chart when operating a project. In the process of project management, you should at least think about the business in the following aspects:

1. Project formulation process: (1) Goal setting (the boss sets a KPI, which is impossible to think about, because you don’t understand the boss’s world) - (2) Competitiveness model five forces analysis to determine strategy and identify the market environment - (3) 4P marketing theory to determine tactics and identify consumers’ small psychology

Always remember that it is the boss who sets the KPI, but you are the one who executes it, so the executive level should always have a deeper understanding of the goals than the management level.

As a project executor, you must break down the KPIs reasonably: If the goal is to achieve a 200% increase in product DAU within 3 months, how do you segment new users from several dimensions? How many channels are there and how can we integrate them reasonably? The more detailed the goal, the easier it is to execute and achieve it. All the foreman know that if they let Quandan move these bricks and Dachuai move those bricks, and everyone rushes to move a truckload of bricks, in the end no one will move anything.

As a project executor, you also need to conduct a competitiveness analysis of the market environment and a marketing strategy combination analysis for target users. You can learn these from any book on management or marketing, so I won’t go into details.

2. Project Execution Process: Keep the Ultimate Goal in Mind and Forget the Interim Goals

A common misunderstanding in operations is to replace the ultimate goal with a phased goal, which often leads to "deceptive prosperity".

For example, for a luxury e-commerce company, in order to accumulate the first batch of users in a short period of time, it may not be a good operation method to adopt the method of widely issuing coupons. The users targeted by luxury e-commerce are not so price sensitive. Coupons can attract a large number of users in a short period of time, but these users are likely to quickly leave after using up the coupons - the active users of this product may quickly plummet without spending money on promotion.

3. After the project is completed, you must reflect and settle down *3. Important things should be said three times

The end of a project should not be the end date of the project execution, but the time when the next project is improved based on the lessons learned. In Alibaba, the culture of project review is very good. When doing industry operations and promotional activities, we conduct small reviews for small promotions and large reviews for large promotions. Because no matter how valuable other people’s experiences are to you, the person who can help you the most is your past self.

Taking platform e-commerce as an example, a qualified review should at least include the following points:

(1) Data dimension: The data summarizes the results of this activity, breaking it down into each activity block, distinguishing between PC and wireless

(2) Resource integration dimension: How efficient is resource utilization and how effective is integrated marketing?

(3) Seller cultivation dimension: How are the key sellers performing? Are there any dark horses?

(4) Product dimension: Do the selected promotional products meet consumer expectations? Are there any potential hot-sellers that can be promoted later?

[Misconception 3: Knowing “how to do it” but not “doing more”]

The "do more" here means that an operation that has basically mastered the skills is still constrained by the product, only regards "product" as the supreme concept, and does not know how to use operational advantages to force product design. Is the product important? Of course it is important, but operations cannot be complacent and lose control of the overall situation, otherwise it will fall into the situation of "doing miscellaneous work".

The debate over which is more important, product or operation, happens every three days with a small argument and every five days with a big argument. Judging from the current mainstream public opinion, it seems that products have more advantages. The junior high school girls who came here for internship all said: "Product manager" sounds more powerful than "operations specialist", which makes me feel so unfulfilled.