APP promotion and operation: 10 cases tell you how to acquire users through users

I give the following definition of user operation: User operation is a way of thinking that is most relevant to users in order to achieve a certain operational goal, and under the influence of this way of thinking, an executable strategy combination is made.

This definition of user operation based on personal practice may be a bit difficult to read. Xiaoxian will consciously explain the three key elements in the definition.

• Operational Purpose

Attracting new customers, retaining existing customers, promoting activation, conversion , and branding, these concepts have been talked about so much that there is no need to explain them!

• User Thinking

It means that when thinking about operational strategies to achieve a certain business goal, we will give priority to the user's perspective.

For example, when user operations are used to attract new users, the first thing that comes to mind should not be advertising for channel operations, but how to use the product’s existing users to attract new users. Referral system, a tool similar to Airbnb that achieves user growth , is a very typical user thinking.

• Strategy portfolio

Achieving a certain operational goal based on user thinking can be achieved by combining multiple strategies. Taking attracting new users as an example, in addition to planning old activities to attract new users, you can also introduce new users through high-quality online interviews with users or micro-courses by KOLs (key opinion leaders). You can also improve the efficiency of old users inviting new users through product-level design.

In order to facilitate everyone to achieve business goals through users and quickly find suitable operating strategies for their own products. Now, based on the definition of user operation, a user operation decision model based on the number of users and the duration of user participation is given.

In combination with this user operation decision-making model, this article focuses on 10 cases of event planning and product functions distributed in the first and second quadrants to see how the products in the cases allow a large number of users to participate in the work of introducing new users for a long time, thereby achieving the operational version of hacker growth.

Product function part

Case 1: Sharing red envelopes

I don’t know when it started, but a red envelope sharing page will pop up the moment the user completes the payment, and more and more transaction products have adopted it as standard, such as Dianping, Didi Chuxing, Xiaohongshu , and Ele.me.

"If all 10 coupons are collected within 24 hours, you will receive a 7-yuan no-threshold cash coupon, and have a chance to win a 10,000-yuan no-threshold super cash gift package."

Among these products, Xiaohongshu seems to me to have the most tricks, because the copywriting it writes is not only very tempting to those who send out red envelopes, but also very intriguing to those who receive them. The moment you open the red envelope, it tells you that you have to enter your mobile phone number before you can see how much money is in the red envelope. It really encourages people to register step by step!

Of course, the most creative ways to share red envelopes should be through ride-hailing services such as Didi Chuxing and Yidao Car. From time to time, they cooperate with celebrities and advertisers' resources to promote red envelopes. In short, they will release red envelopes based on what is popular in the market.

Case 2: Generate pictures

Transaction products involve sharing red envelopes, while content products involve generating pictures. Currently, the products that are most popular with this function are NetEase Cloud Music and WeChat Reading .

When you see a sentence that is useful or inspiring to you, you can long press the screen to select it, and then use the generate picture function to quickly turn the text into a beautiful and artistic photo to share with your friends .

Similar to this is the screenshot sharing prompt for trading products. When users take a screenshot of a certain interface of the app, a pop-up window will pop up to guide them to share it on social media .

Case 3: Share pictures and texts to social platforms by default

Community products are user-contributed content. In order to allow users to share the content shared in the product to social platforms with a return link, we often check the button that synchronizes to Weibo by default in the posting function settings. When the user clicks the publish button, the Weibo sharing interface will be automatically called up. (In 2013, it seemed that there was no need to confirm on Weibo and the information was shared directly).

Although it’s a bit rogue, it’s still recommended that the product be used in the early stages. It can indeed gain a lot of returning users on social platforms every day.

Case 4: Invite friends from your address book

When your product starts to add social attributes, you can consider using this feature. The operation is relatively simple. In the product's friend list, the user's address book friend list is captured. The user clicks on the invitation and can send a text message to make the request with one click.

Although this is a very old function for users to invite other users, the fact that there are still many products using it shows that it is still effective. When I mention it, I think of Renren , except that what Renren did at that time was to let us invite friends via email.

Case 5: Trial of enterprise service software

As an easter egg in this article, let me share a case of how an enterprise-level product quickly gained followers through feature trials.

The main body of the case is Weiquan, which is a product specially designed to provide public account social services for enterprises. Through it, companies can quickly build an online community around their service accounts that integrates live streaming , picture and text sharing, event publishing, user interaction, member management, and e-commerce monetization. At the same time, the community/event/live streaming fission poster plug-in it provides can also quickly help companies increase their followers.

After introducing the functions here, everyone should be more excited to use them. but! If you want to use it, you have to pay 5,000 yuan/year first.

However, there is now a trial function. You can create a personal online community in the official service account, and you can activate this community by inviting 20 friends to enjoy online live broadcast, online sharing, and event services...

During the entire process, all users of the trial version of the online community created by users must follow Weiquan’s service account. It was through this routine that Weiquan quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of fans.

Event planning section

Case 1: Mr. Orange Gift Box

The Mr. Orange gift box from Tiantian Orchard was all over my circle of friends one day in December 2015!

The reason is that my good friend Xiao Liu (a KOL in the new media circle) was helping Tiantian Fruit Garden distribute redemption codes for gift boxes. Then, under his guidance, we, the small KOLs who received the codes, posted photos of the gift boxes and sales live broadcast links to his circle of friends at the same time.

Similar to this is the cold-start promotion of the [Woyoufan] app. Guan Yijing, a member of their founding team, was once the public relations director of a well-known investment bank. She knew journalist friends on various platforms, so she used her wit to get access to these free media resources. Whenever she goes on a business trip, she invites reporters from local portal magazines and newspapers to dinner. All the reporters need to do is post on their Moments after the meal, saying that it was a dinner party organized by the "I have food" product team!

Case 2: Guess the question and win a red envelope

Did you fall in love with me back then?

Who is my favorite male star?

Do you think I'm handsome?

…

This is an activity I saw during the Spring Festival this year. The main purpose of the activity is to take advantage of people's hysterical psychology. Every user who sends red envelopes to participate in the activity wants to see how friends in the circle of friends will answer questions about themselves?

When netizens smell the red envelopes, they naturally follow the official account to answer questions and grab the red envelopes.

But what they never expected was that the moment they answered the question and grabbed the red envelope, they were destined to become the next person to send out the red envelope out of curiosity.

Because our operations colleagues had already set up automatic replies, guiding them to send red envelopes, and then share them on WeChat Moments for friends to answer questions. It will become a virus if it continues like this, and the public account will gain followers very well.

Case 3: Unpacking a gift box

For many people, one of the biggest problems when browsing e-commerce platforms is that they don’t know what good things there are to buy.

If there is an event like this, where your good friends help you pick the products, and you only need to spend very little money to team up with your friends to buy them, I wonder if you would be more willing to take out your wallet and buy them in this case.

This is a [gift box opening] activity planned by Xinyidiandian, a Shanghai-based startup focusing on quality life. This upgraded version of group buying is a very typical user-invitation-user activity. According to their person in charge, the entire event attracted 50,000 new users, generated more than 50,000 orders, and the customer acquisition cost for paying users dropped to 17.52 yuan.

Case 4: Guess the classic love movie

Students are often curious about how to get paying users to post their orders more actively. In fact, this work can be carried out by motivating users and making posting orders interesting. The former is easier for everyone to understand, and the latter can be explained by the "Guess the Classic Romance Movie" activity.

The copywriting on Xiaohongshu’s express boxes has always been praised, and it reached new heights on White Valentine’s Day on March 5.

In order to let users happily post photos of their delivery boxes on Weibo, Xiaohongshu asked friends to guess which movie the pattern on the top of the delivery box represented for 6 consecutive days, and stated that it would select 2 lucky winners from the netizens who guessed correctly every day to give them a skin care set. The whole review activity was interesting and fun, and the current reading volume of the topic has reached nearly 60 million.

Case 5: Group buying

It is a very common way of playing. Now more and more products regard group buying as a regular traffic-generating activity. Users can enter the product at any time and initiate a group buying activity recommended for the day. Gradually, it will evolve into a function of the product.

Xiaoxian will first share 10 operational cases of users inviting users. Next, we will extract the common points of these cases. I call these common points the five operational elements for achieving user growth through user sharing.

1) User Group

For user operations, when mobilizing users to achieve data growth, the first thing you need to think about is who these users are, where they are, what characteristics they have, and what methods are currently available to connect with them?

2) Sharing Incentives

Want to understand clearly why users should help you achieve your operational goals. Can you satisfy their need to show off or satisfy their curiosity? If there is no better method, then we can only give them benefits. After all, users are profit-seeking.

3) Sharing tools

Progress visualization and personalization are key to the development of sharing tools. The greatest value of the tool lies in reducing the cost of user participation and helping them better invite friends to join the product.

4) Packaging and communication

For users, sharing event links on social media actually consumes their personal brand. In order to reduce user resistance, you need to package the entire event. Either it's about style or it's about sentiment. Of course, charity has also been used by many companies as an excuse.

5) Channel research

Most of the activity traffic of users inviting users comes from social media, so it is necessary for operations to analyze the characteristics of different social media channels. For example, the difference between users of Moments and QQ Space determines that the shared texts must be differentiated. For a simple circle of friends, the conversion rate of information shared by users in the circle of friends should be better in the form of pictures than in the form of pictures and texts.

Finally, in my opinion, there are two points about how to do user operations. The first point is to fully understand the users through data, interviews or questionnaires. The second point is to use operational means based on the understanding of users to mobilize users to achieve operational goals (attract new users, promote activation, conversion, retention). I hope this article will inspire you in your understanding of the latter.

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

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