From 100,000 to 10 million: How to rapidly increase the number of App users

This article is an experience sharing by Li Jianhua from Mobile Internet in the WeChat group "Everyone is a Product Manager". The article mainly talks about how to increase the number of your App users to tens of millions or even hundreds of millions through some high-end strategies and tactics when your number of users already reaches 100,000 or hundreds of thousands. The content of the article is based on the author's own practical promotion experience and is not absolute. It can provide reference and reference for some friends who are doing App promotion.

1. Know yourself: How to analyze yourself and the market. With 100,000 users, you have completed a process from 0 to 1. Now the market and your products will change. At this time, how should you analyze yourself?

I keep writing about practical stuff and I’m almost done writing. There’s nothing I can do because I’m a real person and I don’t know how to play with the real stuff, so I can only write about my experiences and lessons in a real way. If your App is already in the 0 to 1 state, then the rest of the things is the 1 to N state. I haven’t finished reading the book “0 to 1”, but it is indeed a good book. It contains a lot of experiences. I recommend everyone to read it. I have a free PDF version here. If you need it, you can add me on WeChat. I will send it to everyone after the event. Here, let’s discuss how to know yourself when you already have 100,000 users? Knowing yourself means understanding your current position in the market.

For an app, if you want to know the status of your app in the current market and its influence, you need to learn how to know the status of this app at large traffic entrances. You say your app is very well-known, but a search engine doesn't find any clues. This means that your product is not very well-known. After all, the search engine is the largest of all traffic entrances. Although there is a lot of public opinion saying that other traffic entrances have appeared and endangered the search engine, a lean camel is bigger than a horse. The number and ranking of search engine search results can still indirectly reflect the popularity and influence of your app.

So I will list a few network traffic and public opinion portals. The first is the traffic entrance: major app stores. The second type is the brand influence portal, such as search engines, Weibo, WeChat, and question-and-answer communities such as Zhihu.

The major app stores are still the main traffic entrances. For example, you can see how your app ranks in the top ten app stores, the number of reviews, and the number of search keywords. If you really don’t know which app is ranked the best, you can search for some well-known apps and compare them with your app. For example, you can search Sina Weibo, or Sogou Input Method to see their rankings, and then search your app to see your ranking. By comparing, you will know the status of your own app, or how far your app is from success.

When promoting apps before, we often searched for well-known apps, such as Sogou Input Method, to see the channel lists and public opinion portals where these well-known apps were located, and check whether our app was on these channel lists and public opinion portals. If so, we would see if it was good. If not, we would quickly join in. By comparing with first-class apps, you can easily find the shortcomings of your own app and make up for the weaknesses in your channels.

This is the comparison strategy. Of course, this strategy can also be used to test the influence of your App on the online brand. This is generally measured through the Baidu Index, but the Baidu Index can only be used as a reference. If you want to make a detailed comparison, you need to use China's top three search engines, China's top three public opinion platforms, and China's top three communities. In this way, the search engines are Baidu, 360, and Sogou, the public opinion platforms are Weibo and WeChat, and the interactive communities including Zhihu can all be counted. By comparing the number of results with well-known apps in search engines, you will find out where the gap is between you and where they are better than you. For example, you find that the first three pages of an App are all the download address, introduction, news, and the number of search results reaches 5 million. But after searching for your own App, you find that the number of results is less than 1 page, and there are many other vague words. Then it means that your App has poor brand awareness and needs to do better in brand marketing.

By comparing the above two aspects, you will find out how much work your channels still need to do to achieve the best. For example, after comparison, you may find that many of your apps have not yet been launched on many channels. How much more work does your marketing need to do to reach the brand awareness of well-known apps?

2. From 10 to 1000, what are the strategies and ideas?

The strategy I just mentioned is to compare and understand your own gaps and shortcomings. So what to do next? Take the initiative to make up for your shortcomings and increase the number of App users. If you want to increase the volume of your App, there are two ways. One way is through channels. The volume from channels is immediate. For example, if you ask for a recommendation position in a large market today, the activation volume in your background will increase. Another way to promote is brand promotion. The so-called brand promotion refers to popularity and influence. Some App channels are not strong, but the brand effect is strong, so the download volume will also be very large. However, brands and channels have their own advantages and disadvantages. Channel promotion is a very traditional method of App promotion, just like the previous dealers selling mobile phones, they all use channels, various channels, and they will build good relationships with whoever has a large volume. Channels determine the sales volume of products, so the same is true for App channels. You will do public relations with the channel that has a large volume. For example, the top ten app stores currently include Baidu App Store, 360 App Store, etc. If you use channels, the effect will be immediate, but channels are limited. When channels reach a certain level, they will encounter bottlenecks and they will not be able to do any more. It's like a channel gives you the best position, and the best position gives you only a limited amount of traffic. We once encountered such a problem. We laid out 400 channels, but even though we laid out more channels, the traffic growth trend was still very small.

So at this time, we need to build a brand. A brand is intangible, but it can bring you growth. For example, we once did an event marketing that brought in tens of millions of users. You can see this in the article I once wrote, "100,000 yuan brings in 20 million users." These volumes are all incremental revenues brought by the brand. However, branding is a slow process and the effects of branding are difficult to detect. For example, if you post some press releases on some news websites or ask self-media to write an in-depth article, it may not bring any downloads, let alone any users. Therefore, branding is a matter of "good intentions do not necessarily bring good rewards". Our brand marketing was successful that time. If it was not successful, you would definitely be criticized by your boss, saying that you don’t know how to plan, your copywriting is wrong, and you don’t work hard. When you fail, anyone has an excuse to say that you are wrong. When you succeed, a group of people will praise you. The effect of branding is immeasurable. For example, when I send out a PR article or organize a small event, they are all brand marketing. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, one event can bring millions of downloads. Sometimes, I may be so busy that the download volume does not change significantly. Another thing is that the brand effect needs to be accumulated. You won’t become famous if you organize an event once, but if you persist for a year or two, you may become world-famous. Those companies with relatively high reputation are the result of long-term accumulation.

Now that we understand the relationship between channels and brands, when promoting the App, we need to do both simultaneously. Channels and brands are like the two legs of a person, complementing each other and influencing each other. We have expanded our channels to reach 1 million, but brand marketing has brought us 20 million or even 40 million. This is the result of the simultaneous development of channels and brands. Therefore, when promoting, channel-based and brand marketing can be the focus and is essential. There are many competing apps at present, and even fresh graduates know how to build channels, so you will not be much better than your competitors in this regard. However, when it comes to brand marketing, not every app will become popular overnight. Experienced brand marketing experts and continuous brand marketing will increase your success rate.

3. From 10 to 1000, what are the tactics and methods?

I am a Virgo and I set high standards for myself when it comes to promotion. Take App promotion for example. There are many techniques to increase traffic, such as laying out channels, exchanging traffic, brushing rankings, and points walls. However, when I started promoting our App, I spent a year laying out channels. In fact, I knew about exchanging traffic a long time ago, but I never did it, nor did I let the product do it. It was only a year later that we started to create pages for exchanging traffic to exchange traffic. Why do this? The means of promotion are like the cards in your hand. If you throw away all the cards at the beginning, how can you play later? So when promoting your app, don’t use all the methods at the beginning, otherwise you will be stuck in the end. So during the year of building the channel, I spent a lot of time studying the attributes of the channel, such as a channel's website ranking, traffic, website color scheme, Baidu search engine snapshots, display ranking after search, number of search results and many other parameters. By studying these parameters of a channel, I can basically judge whether the channel is large and how great its future development opportunities are. Therefore, I found a lot of large-scale and medium-sized channels in the early stage. Currently, these application distribution channels have undergone relatively large changes, so I will not list the list here to avoid misleading subsequent friends.

While building channels, we also did another thing, which was brand marketing. Including the maintenance of Weibo, forum maintenance, and news release. In 2010, Weibo and forums were the most popular at the time. In addition to the number of our early first batch of users coming from channels, some also came from forums. At that time, the more famous forums were Jifeng and Android. We would regularly interact with friends who replied to posts. This method enabled our app posts to always remain at the top of the forum. When posting, I would post in the style of a forum's editorial team, which would make the post look very professional and well-organized. Later, it was often marked as a featured post and pinned to the top by the moderator. I remember that a post I posted on the Weiphone forum brought us nearly 10,000 activations in one day.

When I was doing Weibo maintenance, I basically searched for various topics related to the App. For example, our App at the time was about QR codes, so I searched for various QR code topics and interacted with the other party. At that time, most of the people who paid attention to QR codes were big Vs and celebrities. My professional level was admired by many professionals, which also brought us great popularity and made me more professional. These most clumsy methods allowed many big Vs and celebrities to know about our software and company, and helped us to spread word of mouth.

The last method is media communication. I wrote articles on donews very early on to promote our industry and products. On the one hand, these brought me fame, and on the other hand, attracted the attention of many media to our company. Later, "Internet Weekly" also interviewed us. These uninterrupted media exposures enhanced our popularity. It also paved the way for subsequent event marketing.

So, if you want your app volume to increase from 10 to 1,000, you must do the limited tasks well, don’t be lazy, and be careful and serious. Then it can definitely go from 10 to 1000, or even to N. At the same time, we must keep up with the trend of the times. For example, we should focus our main energy on what is the hottest thing at the moment. At that time, Weibo, forums, and media were very popular. Now WeChat, self-media, and new media are very popular. A person who makes products or does promotion must understand that they must seize the trend of the times, because new product forms such as WeChat must have stronger vitality and development potential than old products. Question and answer communities are expected to be popular in the future. Those who make products and do promotion must make plans so that the promotion effect of the App can be maximized.

4. Share some of my experiences and skills

1. Before doing anything, analyze and think more. More thinking and analysis can help a person or a company avoid detours, save time and costs.

2. When doing it, you need to learn more. Everything is constantly changing. When doing it, keep learning according to the changes and adjust your promotion strategy to maintain rapid growth of promotion.

3. Learn to take shortcuts and don't make yourself too tired. Taking shortcuts means looking for shortcuts and methods. Don't be too rigid. Some companies are particularly rigid when it comes to promotions and they won't adapt. As a result, people in the company are exhausted every day, but they still don't see any results. What you have worked for five years may not be as good as what others have done in half a year. It's not that you don't work hard, it's that you are too stupid.

4. Have your own ideas and methods, your own principles, and don’t be easily persuaded by others. Now all kinds of public opinions will influence you. You must believe in your own methods and do not change strategies easily. A company I met was killed by itself because it had too many product lines and too many directions in the later stage. Therefore, it is relatively difficult to control your own desires, especially for bosses who are most likely to cause the company to fall into the generation gap.

5. Adapt to the trend, don't fight against it. This is the truth. Companies that fight against the trend have gone bankrupt, and companies that are too conservative have also gone bankrupt. Find the wind outlet, be an eagle, and fly higher and lighter.

6. You must learn to cling to the thighs, especially the thighs like BAT. It is easy to cling to the thighs, but you must learn how to cling while maintaining your own interests. Here are methods and techniques.