I have summarized 7 data-driven customer acquisition methods, all here!

In early March this year, Wang Xing mentioned in a speech released internally at Meituan that pre-installation fees and e-market fees in 2017 would increase by 30% compared to 2016. The reasons are: first, the growth in the number of mobile phones has stagnated; second, consumers are constantly uninstalling apps; and third, promotion costs have increased by 30%. The entire mobile Internet will be extremely tragic in 2017, and many unimaginable companies will die.

As the Internet enters the second half of its development, marketing channels and marketing costs have undergone tremendous changes. If you still do not change your existing methods of acquiring new users, there are only two possibilities: First, you spend the same amount of money as before, but you can no longer acquire so many new users, and without new sources of customers, you cannot convert more revenue; second, you spend several times the original amount of money to acquire the same number of new users, but because you fail to control the budget, you suffer an imbalance between income and expenditure and put yourself in financial trouble.

The methods that can help us solve the customer acquisition dilemma are: ① Find more effective customer acquisition channels; ② Improve the customer acquisition efficiency of existing channels. Growth hacking can help you in both aspects. This article summarizes 7 data-driven customer acquisition methods. If you have not tried these methods before, I hope they can help you open up new ideas and become new customer acquisition channels;

1. Content

Acquiring new users through content is nothing new. The most typical example is actually each product/brand’s own WeChat official account . Most products will maintain their own official account , whether they appear to be doing brand communication, user interaction, or publishing their latest updates, etc. You will find that many companies create an official account just for the sake of having an official account (many times it is just a small project that managers come up with on a whim, "If others have it, I must have it too"), and do not add value to the product itself.

Since the content is difficult to create, or the WeChat public account boom has passed, then let’s not do it well. However, for many small-scale products, creating good content will become your cheapest and most effective channel for acquiring customers. It is not recommended to give up so early.

Why can creating content help you acquire new users? Here are 5 reasons:

1. A large number of articles will generate a large number of keywords , making it easier to achieve brand exposure when searching and helping your SEO strategy;
2. Creating content is a long-term process. The more articles you accumulate, the more chances you have to capture users.
3. Content is a form of user education. People who understand your product will be more willing to use your product or service.
4. If the content is created by an individual (usually the founder himself), this person can be promoted to a position of thought leader, and people are more inclined to choose a product or service of "industry authority" than a product or service made by an ordinary person;
5. Good content can withstand dissemination, and the wider it is disseminated, the greater the chance of attracting new users.

If you agree that the content needs to be produced, then the next step is to help you produce the content well. Here we will not discuss too much about "how to organize content", but provide the following five suggestions around the core indicator of "acquiring new users":

1. After accumulating content, reorganize your articles into e-books, manuals or guides , and add your brand exposure, advertising and contact information;
2. Turn articles into audio or video. Gain new customer acquisition channels through new media methods, including your brand exposure, advertising and contact information;
3. Infographics are a way for people to quickly obtain and spread information more easily than articles, audio, and video. Find a good topic, organize the data, tell a story in the picture in a lively and concise way, and add your brand exposure, advertising and contact information;
4. Online lectures. Host or attend some lectures. The advantage of lectures is that you can spread your ideas very logically, and PPT or videos can enhance your presentation effect. In addition, the speaker's personal appeal can help you improve your persuasiveness and convert users .
5. Offline speech. As with online lectures, it is important to note that in offline scenarios you can also provide personal contact information as appropriate, and have the opportunity to get to know your potential users up close, and even take the opportunity to interview them.

In general, there is a core concept in acquiring customers through content, which is that you need to provide value to users and continuously increase the value of your products, services, and content, and users will come to you uninvited.

2. Social Platforms

Another way to acquire new users is through existing social platforms, by letting people know about your product through interaction on social platforms. I have received similar messages on my Weibo, Douban, and WeChat accounts, including those promoting apps, data services, and offline activities . I don’t know if they have done any data tracking for this type of promotion. I just want to remind those colleagues who hope to acquire new users through social platforms to avoid these minefields:

1. Don’t follow someone and then stop following them after a while. Whether you are intentionally trying to attract the other party's attention or you are not able to take action in time due to strategy adjustment or personal negligence, this behavior will only reduce the other party's favorability towards you, but will not help you acquire a new user;
2. Don't let your behavior bother the other person. Put yourself in their shoes. If you received a meaningless private message containing an advertisement, would you delete it directly? Think about what kind of private messages you would be interested in, and adjust your strategy in that direction;
3. Don't buy powder. The industry chain of buying fans is already very mature. Maybe in the early stage you can get some seemingly good data, or even help you get a good valuation. However, in the long run, this is of no use to your business model .

Here are some tips to help you acquire new users:

1. Filter social platforms. If your product or service targets a niche market, then taking action on a platform where users in this niche gather will be better than searching for a needle in a haystack on Weibo.
2. Screen objects and improve conversion efficiency. Assess whether the other party may be your potential user by observing their social records. They may even know your product.
3. Every interaction needs to demonstrate your value. What kind of help or advice might the other party need? Find these points and tell the other party your solution. You need to start from the other person's perspective and give them what they want, so that establishing a connection will be much smoother;
4. Make yourself an interesting individual on social platforms. It doesn't have to be nutritious, but it must be interesting. If people want to pay attention to you unconsciously, then you have achieved your goal.
5. The number of followers has no absolute correlation with new user conversion, but don't worry about it. Even if you gain 100,000 followers on Weibo, you may not necessarily gain 1,000 new users. However, what is important is that your interaction with these 100,000 fans will give all onlookers a new perception of your brand, which will also promote the generation of new users.

3. Organize competitions

Many people may not realize that competitions are actually a great way to acquire customers. If you want to acquire new users by organizing a competition, you need to pay attention to the following points:

1. Distribute meaningful prizes to participants and winners. Don’t just give away iPhones or iPads and think you’re very cool; you’re wasting the opportunity to convert users. Prepare some prizes that represent your product or company. For example, some OTAs often give away free hotel accommodation or travel opportunities, while some education-related projects may set the grand prize as the right to attend paid courses for free.
2. It’s best if the prize is an experience rather than just a product or service. Assuming the budget for the first prize is 5,000 yuan, you can choose to give away an iPad, provide a free consultation service, or attend a high-end private party with other like-minded friends. It seems obvious that the last option will leave the deepest impression on the user - this is your goal. Your 5,000 yuan is not to help the company consume the budget, but to get this deep user, and hope that this deep user can help you convert other users;
3. Don’t set too few prizes , as this will dampen participation enthusiasm and make it unplayable.
4. The competition should last long enough to attract more users to participate. It is recommended to last about one month.
5. The best contest structure is one where the contestants can help you achieve your goals in organizing the contest, and also help them win the grand prize. For example, you can add a parameter to the conditions for winning the grand prize, which is the number of supporters of the participating proposal. Then those who want to win the grand prize will definitely promote their proposals, which is to help you spread the brand. If this spread can attract more people to participate, the competition will enter a virtuous circle.
6. Announce the results of the competition with great fanfare to amplify the red carpet effect. This is another opportunity for you to gain attention and new traffic .

IV. LOPA

LOPA stands for leverage other people's audience, which refers to users who leverage other platforms. In fact, this point has already been reflected in the above strategies (with the help of content platforms, social platforms, etc.), but I still want to take this concept out separately, hoping to trigger new thinking and customer acquisition plans.

Based on LOPA, there are some other methods worth trying:

1. Provide gifts for traffic-generating activities. For example, before a certain celebrity ’s public account reposts a lucky draw, they offer your product as an event prize; a certain traffic platform is going to hold an offline event and sponsor some souvenirs, brochures, or paper and pens printed with your product’s logo and QR code;
2. Provide your products or services for free to well-known figures or opinion leaders in a certain field and invite them to experience them. If they share it with their fans, you will not only get new traffic but also increased brand endorsement.

If you think of other methods, please feel free to communicate with us.

5. Advertising

Advertising should be the most basic method of acquiring customers. The emphasis here is on data-driven. The following methods can help you improve the efficiency of acquiring new users through advertising while reducing the corresponding costs:

1. Choose the distribution channel that suits you. The key to reducing costs and improving efficiency is to reduce the cost loss caused by meaningless clicks and improve the user quality of the channel. If you provide recruitment services, it is obviously more cost-effective to buy advertising space on Maimai than on Weibo;
2. Select the channels that users would use in other situations. Still taking recruitment as an example, imagine that a user who needs to find a job will not only obtain recruitment information and industry trends on Maimai, he may also need to find a resume template, or even find a course on job hunting or skill improvement on an open course website. Then the platform that provides resume templates and courses will also become your choice for advertising;
3. How much you should spend on acquiring each customer depends on the customer lifetime value. Simply put, the concept of customer lifetime value is how much money you can earn from a customer during his or her lifetime. Assume that on average, a customer may pay 20,000 yuan for the services you provide. Then an average customer acquisition cost of 500 yuan per person is absolutely acceptable. If your competitor spends 800 yuan per person on customer acquisition at this time, then don't hesitate to increase the budget to 1,000 yuan per person.
4. If possible, avoid middlemen. If you have tried all the above methods and still cannot afford the current customer acquisition costs, then another way is to bypass the middlemen and work directly with the channel itself. This will require more resources and manpower, but if you can do it, you can actually try;
5. If you're going to pay per click, then improve the quality of each click. This requires you to clearly convey the information about your product in your advertisements so that only those who are truly interested will click on it. For example, don’t overload your ad with too many elements just to attract people. The purpose of an ad is to showcase your product or service. Also, if you offer a paid product or service, try to put the price directly on it (to be more tactful, you can write promotional or discount information).
6. Test different ad variations. You cannot subjectively judge which ad is the most effective, so let the data speak for itself and try several types. You can apply the various testing methods mentioned in the previous article and make the final decision based on the test data.

6. Exchange Traffic

If you don’t want to spend money on advertising, there is another way to get advertising space, which is to exchange traffic . On the premise that both parties reach an agreement, while the other party promotes your products, you also need to promote the other party's products. This is a great way to acquire traffic. If the product tones of both parties match and the users overlap to a high degree, it is definitely a win-win deal.

There are many ways to achieve exchange of traffic. To put it simply, you can promote each other on Weibo, become each other's strategic partners, promote each other's advertising space, exchange physical prizes, etc.; to be more complicated, you can cooperate to develop new products or services and promote them to the market, and expand each other's influence through in-depth cooperation.

7. Telesales

The last method is telephone sales. This approach is not suitable for all types of businesses, and it is indeed inconsistent with the way the Internet has developed based on economies of scale. However, refined operations are bound to involve the maintenance of core users, and calling users to achieve sales goals is the most direct means. Research shows that allowing users to interact with brands and services in the real world (not just online) can bring them closer and increase their trust in the brand. Especially when many startup teams are in a state of no resources and no accumulation, telephone sales may become a breakthrough for cold start .

Again, telesales isn’t suitable for all business types, but at the same time, don’t rule it out.

8. Summary

It must be reiterated at the end that even seemingly simple methods require you to follow the workflow of "define action indicators - track and analyze indicators - use existing advantages to find solutions - start testing - test - retry" to ensure the scientific nature of the process and the rigor of the data, otherwise you will not be able to obtain the most authentic user feedback and customer acquisition effects.

Due to the length of this article, many of the parts that I want to explore in depth and give examples are not elaborated in detail. If you are interested in this topic, please continue to pay attention to the subsequent articles in this series:)

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

The author of this article @莔莔有神 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map