Introducing 5 data-driven and practical customer acquisition methods

Admittedly, in many cases, the acquisition of new users is highly dependent on operational strategies, but if the product itself can bring its own ecosystem for acquiring new users, it will undoubtedly become an important part of the entire business model . On the one hand, the customer acquisition ability of the product itself is often very cheap, and even if it requires a certain budget, it is far lower than purchasing traffic from other channels ; on the other hand, assuming that a group of users are acquired through operational means, and after this group of users enter the product, they are converted through the stimulation of the product itself, bringing in the second and third groups of users, this means that the customer acquisition cost spread over each user will be greatly reduced.

Obviously, the most direct impact of a product approach to acquiring new users is: saving money. This article discusses how to acquire new users through product design.

☆ 1 ☆

User invitation

This is probably the most common and straightforward way to acquire new users through a product. Common tricks include reading relationship information (mobile phone address book, email contacts, social platform contacts), inviting registration, sharing and dissemination, etc. To encourage users to initiate invitations, you can consider using the following methods:

1) Offer discounts

This is probably the most common and straightforward way to acquire new users through a product. Common tricks include reading relationship information (mobile phone address book, email contacts, social platform contacts), inviting registration, sharing and dissemination, etc. To encourage users to initiate invitations, you can consider using the following methods:

1) Offer discounts

That is, if the user can attract new users, then additional discounts will be provided to current users. This method actually uses the same customer acquisition budget but gives it directly to users instead of channels. In addition, the average customer acquisition cost per user is much lower than directly purchasing traffic.

There are also many cases where discounts are offered to encourage users to initiate invitations: for example, financial products often offer commissions for bringing in new users. Users can invite their friends to register as new users. If the new users complete registration, real-name authentication, and first purchase, the commissions will be directly returned according to certain rules (usually the money is directly transferred to your account, which is very simple and crude). Products that provide paid products or services often return a certain percentage of rewards . For example, if you introduce a friend to register on NetEase Kaola, NetEase Kaola will return coupons of different denominations according to the corresponding rules.

On the left is the new customer rebate activity of Wa Caibao, and on the right is the activity of inviting friends on NetEase Kaola

2) Mutual benefit

Penguin Intelligence once conducted a survey and found that if users judge that the information is valuable to their friends, then their willingness to tell their friends will be greatly increased. Mutual benefit is based on such a mentality, providing some benefits to both the inviter and the invitee, prompting existing users to initiate invitations.

Airbnb is a typical example. If you invite your friends to register for Airbnb, both of you will receive travel funds. As for China, to give a less appropriate example, during the 2017 Spring Festival, Alipay 's "Five Blessings" campaign took advantage of the psychology of mutual benefit among users, and through the users of the social functions on the platform, it attracted other users to use the social functions. The users themselves simply hoped to exchange cards with their friends and collect the five blessings together. A more typical example is a food delivery app . Every time you place an order, you have to share it on a social platform and open the red envelopes with your friends to get coupons.

Airbnb invite friends page

3) Ask for help

If users want to obtain certain information or services within the product and must rely on the help of others, then this will also stimulate users to initiate invitations. Nowadays, many online lectures ask users to generate invitation cards and put them in their circle of friends to ask others to scan the QR code, follow a WeChat account or download a certain APP. Only after the invitation is successful, N people will be eligible to attend the lecture. This kind of help-seeking method is used to stimulate users to spread the word.

☆ 2 ☆

Social Sharing

Sharing is not as purposeful as invitations (nor is it as profit-driven), but leveraging the traffic advantages of social platforms can effectively provide a large amount of exposure for your products.

If you want to use social sharing to bring new users to your product, you need to pay attention to the following issues:

1) Providing shareable capabilities

What needs to be emphasized here is that you need to access a shareable target platform based on your own user characteristics . I believe that products that need to gain new traffic through sharing have already been connected to the sharing function. Sharing to WeChat and Weibo has almost become standard. However, for products aimed at the post-90s generation, do not forget to add sharing to QQ; for products aimed at working people, you need to be able to share to LinkedIn/DingTalk/Maimai.

2) Provide motivation for sharing

To grasp the user's psychology and promote product dissemination, the most common and effective way is to help users show off . The various H5 mini -games that were popular in the circle of friends before took advantage of this psychology. After the mini-games were banned, the hand-painted special effects of Meitu XiuXiu and "Your Name" which was very popular at the end of last year. 》 Image-based communication products such as the same filter have taken up the baton again, also taking advantage of this mentality.

3) Provide shareable content

If you want to enable user sharing, you also need to prepare shareable content for users. Many content apps (such as Yige, MONO, etc.) will make daily cards with a strong sense of design and high quality, for users to share on WeChat Moments, thereby gaining exposure and new traffic.

4) Provide a convenient sharing path

At the interactive operation level, we also need to consider user usage habits and how to more effectively guide users to complete sharing behaviors.

On the left is MONO’s daily signature. When it was first launched, people often shared it on WeChat Moments. On the right is a daily signature. What I want to complain about is that this daily signature is too long. The share button is not visible on the first screen. It’s a pity that it loses its functionality for the sake of pretense.

☆ 3 ☆

Making good use of APIs

In addition to users actively triggering sharing, we can also use social platforms at the API level to provide us with new traffic. I remember that about ten years ago, when domestic blogs were the most popular (if anyone still remembers sites like BlogChina, BlogBus, and NetEase Blog), it was very popular to add external widgets to your blog, such as displaying your own guestbook in the sidebar of the blog (there was a very design-conscious foreign product, but I forgot the name), your own Fanfou , or a player with a pre-selected playlist (also a very design-conscious product, but I forgot which company it was from). It is very simple to display these widgets. Just copy a piece of code from their own website and paste it into the management background of the blog. Once displayed, once someone clicks on these controls, a new page will open to display the blogger's personal space.

This approach would be very direct and effective in the PC era, but it is very difficult to achieve jump diversion in an APP. One example is the cooperation between WeChat and LinkedIn , where users can bind their LinkedIn accounts in WeChat and gain exposure when other users view their profiles. However, given that there is no data to support the effectiveness of this cooperation, and that LinkedIn has been struggling in China, it is better not to mention it.

In the mobile era, new ways of playing with APIs may only rely heavily on the openness of the platform . Only when social platforms are willing to open APIs can they provide your products with new exposure opportunities. From this perspective, the most typical ones should be WeChat public accounts and WeChat service accounts . Through WeChat's open API, users' basic information can be obtained, and support can be provided for functions such as materials, sharing, transactions, and coupons. (It is possible for WeChat public accounts and WeChat service accounts to take advantage of WeChat's traffic dividend, but the WeChat mini-programs that aim to connect offline are not the same. If you are interested, you can check out my article " Zhang Xiaolong answers eight questions about WeChat mini-programs , revealing what WeChat's intentions are?" published on the official account Poko.)

☆ 4 ☆

Motivating users

The attributes of some products themselves can easily encourage users to recommend them to others through user incentives. A typical example abroad is Dropbox. Dropbox is a cloud storage product that uses its own storage space as a bargaining chip. If a user invites others to use Dropbox, the storage space of both the inviter and the invitee will increase. This strategy has greatly stimulated the number of users.

I spent a long time looking for typical domestic cases, and found that the best game in terms of incentives to attract new users was Happy Match. Inviting friends can upgrade fruit trees, inviting friends can unlock side quests, inviting friends can play special levels, inviting friends can get rewards... All the scenarios that motivate users to initiate invitations are very appropriate. It is worthy of being a national game and is worth learning.

☆ 5 ☆

Make a good product and create a good reputation

There is no need to say much about the last point: as long as you stick to the right thing, stick to a good product concept, calm down and polish the product details, and provide good services, users will definitely be willing to recommend your product. Just like every time I hear someone talking about financial management , I will definitely recommend Jianqi Finance , because Jianqi has enlightened my financial intelligence and accompanied me, who had nothing, to gradually gain the ability to stand on my own feet; if we talk about exercise, I will definitely recommend Keep , which provides a very good experience in fragmented exercise. The recording of various exercise data can not only satisfy my obsessive-compulsive habit of data control, but also urge myself to stick to it; and so on, I will definitely recommend Airbnb for finding accommodation when traveling abroad, NetEase Cloud Music for listening to music, and Amap for maps...

You see, as a product manager , how happy it is to be trusted, relied on and respected by users.

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

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