Or understand where in the product life cycle it is?
These are all important, but in terms of the “first steps” to take when taking over a new operation , I think they are:General Industry BusinessSome people may wonder here: How can our operators not be proficient in the business? Don’t we communicate with users or answer questions, experience product functions, and are familiar with the product business every day?First of all, we must reach a consensus that the "business" discussed in this article refers to business in a broad sense, and its scope is far larger than the business in the narrow sense of the product (functions, processes, data)."Business in a broad sense" goes beyond the product's functions and includes the business common sense of the industry that the product involves. (The business mentioned below refers to "broad business" and will not be elaborated on)For example, you operate a "mobile office" product for the enterprise market.Business in a narrow sense refers to:
Sign in
Mobile process approval
Field Management
Daily Work Report
...and other functions
The broad definition of business refers to:
What is the overall management status of enterprise information management?
Who are the core participants?
Who are the decision makers and who are the users?
What do they each care about most?
What drives them to adopt or abandon the product?
……etc.
The first step to start operations is to have a general understanding of the industry businessWhether you are a novice or an old hand in operations, "general knowledge of industry business" should be the first thing you do when you start a new operations job.Of course, as senior operators in a certain business field, we may already be proficient in the business.But it is undeniable that many business results are accumulated based on the model of "making mistakes-reflection-adjustment". If we can try to avoid making mistakes from the beginning, why not try it?This does not conflict with the idea of rapid iteration of MVP (minimum viable product).I believe that a qualified operator must first be a business expert . There are many reasons for this, but I will only discuss three points here:1. Without understanding the business, it is difficult to break out of the narrow functional framework and formulate more effective operation strategies;Second, you don’t understand the business, and it’s hard to reach a real understanding with users. Some users even ignore you at all.3. If you don’t understand the business, it is easy to fall into the misunderstanding of “seemingly the best solution”.For example, you operate and promote the "mobile office" product mentioned in the above example, even though the product meets all the characteristics of an excellent product, such as excellent user experience, down-to-earth management functions, etc.In terms of pricing, we have broken through the expensive prices of traditional IT customization projects and adopted free pricing.Even though you think the product has many advantages, it often encounters setbacks in external promotion. This is actually because it falls into some unspoken rules (there will be a detailed explanation later).It can be seen from this that for a qualified operator, he must first have a clear understanding of the business of the product he operates, so that he can accurately understand the potential demands of users, communicate with them seamlessly, guide users, avoid minefields, and make more scientific operational decisions.After saying so much, I just want to say that for operators, the first step in carrying out operations is not to immediately think about users, attracting new customers, promoting activation, and retaining existing customers, but should be: to have a general understanding of the industry business.Of course, we don't need to be scared by these six words and develop procrastination. Our operators are far from being as proficient in industry business as industry analysts in management consulting and financial investment , who often have to conduct in-depth research on various reports, such as: upstream and downstream industrial chains, pricing power, capital flows, market concentration, market capacity, development trends... and so on.No, no, no, it's not that complicated.We only need to understand the business knowledge that is strongly related to operations in a targeted manner, be able to communicate and reach consensus with users, and avoid some industry traps . This is enough.So, what specific businesses are included in the so-called “general industry business”?How should we start learning ?This is the topic of this article. I will share with you my commonly used business cognition method, which only requires four steps:Step 1: Determine the boundaries of the businessStep2: Identify core users, participants and their relationshipsStep3: Understand the factors that influence key behaviorsStep4: Identify the industry's "unspoken rules"They are explained below respectively.Ink smudge dividing lineStep 1: Determine business boundariesFrom an operational perspective, I define the “business boundaries” of operations as follows:Deeply understand all the social knowledge that users need to master.In other words, general industry businesses can even understand users better than the users themselves , rather than just understanding the business at the superficial level of "how to use the product."Of course, the business boundaries of different products vary greatly.Generally speaking:
The business boundaries of tool products (such as Gudong Sports) are smaller than those of social products (such as Momo)
The business boundaries of social products are smaller than those of e-commerce products (such as Mogujie)
E-commerce products are smaller than 2B products (such as mobile office)
This also puts forward different requirements on the business knowledge of operators of different types of products.For products with small business boundaries, such as Gudong Sports, we can use basic common sense to determine that its business boundaries (social knowledge required) include:
Common knowledge about various sports and fitness
Online and offline competitions
Common knowledge on organizing and operating sports activities
GPS Positioning
The meaning of various sports data
……etc.
However, for products with extremely large business boundaries, it is more difficult for new operators who have just started working in this business to make direct judgments.Here I share a method I often use:Reversely explore business boundaries by exhaustively enumerating product usage scenarios.For example, for the 2B mobile office product mentioned above, we can first find its product usage scenario:Scenario 1: Use the product to clock in at workExample of the reverse process:What is attendance for? ——Human Resources Management——Regulate employee behavior and improve business operation efficiency——What other common sense of business management is there and how does a business operate?Scenario 2: Daily and weekly work reportsExample of the reverse process:What is the purpose of a work diary? ——Promote enterprise informatization and collaborative office——What are the history, current situation, process and value of enterprise informatization?…And so on, I won’t go into details.It must be pointed out that the "determining business boundaries" mentioned here, to be precise, is to determine the business scope involved by the mainstream users at the current product stage.After all, the mainstream user groups that any product faces at different stages of its life cycle are quite different. Usually, as the product matures, the user group spreads from core users to peripheral users, and the business scope involved continues to expand.As shown in the following figure:Therefore, when we operators are engaged in the operation of products in a completely new industry, we can determine the business boundaries based on the mainstream user groups targeted at the current product life cycle stage, without having to spend a lot of time thoroughly researching future potential business areas in one go.This is not only a huge workload, but also unscientific.For example, for 2B mobile office products, if the initial mainstream users are small and micro enterprises, then there is no need to study the management and operation models, information construction status, etc. of Fortune 500 companies from the beginning.Business boundaries are the basis for identifying the following business content (identifying participants, key element values, etc.). Therefore, we need to pay more attention in the first step to ensure that the business boundaries are as complete as possible.Step 2: Identify the core users, all participants and their relationshipsContinuing from the above, once we have clarified the current business boundaries of our operations, it will not be difficult to identify the "participants" within the business scope (including internal participants, such as product people, operators, etc.).Generally, I suggest starting from the core user and gradually traversing other participants associated with the core user until you can no longer traverse.For example, we could keep asking the following questions:
Who is core user A?
Who are the participants who provide core value to this user?
Are there more peripheral participants influencing these core participants?
If yes, please list them...
Who is the main user B?…And so on.Let’s take a general knowledge product (such as the Everyone is a Product Manager Community) as an example to briefly explain:Core user A: Junior and intermediate product managers and prospective product managers.Participants who provide core value to A include:
Senior product manager at first- and second-tier Internet companies
Editing in the community
Internet business researchers (such as Li Shaojia)
Entrepreneurs
Knowledge media practitioners
……etc.
Core user B: Operations practitionersParticipants who provide core value to B are:……And so on, I won’t go into details.After we have traversed all the participating roles, we can also draw a picture for easy memory. The following is an example of a user and participant diagram of a live broadcast product:By identifying the core participants within the business scope, we can gradually gain insight into the "contribution" of each participant to operational performance during the operation process, thereby ensuring that the investment in operational resources is "appropriate" during the operation process.For example, the live streaming platform mentioned above:If entertainment influencers have the greatest impact on user activity rates in the early stages, we can further analyze their external aid and how to further improve the level, number of users, and activity rates of entertainment influencers?Then, by continuing to analyze and study external participants, we can eventually find the essence, or more critical factors.For example, if the final investigation finds that the institution is a training institution for internet celebrities, you can consider cooperating with them, etc."Identifying core users and participants" also lays the foundation for the next key step - identifying the key value elements of core participants.Of course, you can also use similar ideas to sort out the core participants of the product you are operating.Step 3: Understand the key behavioral influencers of core users and participants"Key behaviors" usually refer to behaviors that users want to see, such as "paying attention to the product, downloading and experiencing the product, using the product, and sharing the product."The so-called "key behavioral influencing factors" means: various key factors that prompt the above-mentioned behaviors to occur.For example, in the example of the knowledge community product mentioned above, the “key influencing factors” that make various knowledge experts take the initiative to write useful articles may include:
“Authors can receive material rewards”
"Provide reasonable exposure for its articles"
“Enhance the author’s personal brand influence”
……etc.
Of course, on the other hand, we should try our best to avoid those key elements that may cause participants to engage in behaviors that operators "extremely do not want to see".For example, in knowledge-based community products, the “key factors” that cause knowledge providers with real talents to leave the platform may include:
"There are many restrictions on the platform, such as not being able to indicate the source public account "
“The backend editor is not easy to use”
"The trolls are making unreasonable insults to people rather than articles"
“The quality of the article is seriously disproportionate to the exposure it receives”
“Editors don’t respect authors”
……etc
Tips : I used the word "maybe" here to explain that our understanding of the factors that influence user behavior is a preliminary subjective guess, which needs to be verified in operational practice. We cannot make rash assertions and make wrong operational decisions.For example, in the above-mentioned “Internet recruitment ” products, the “key factors influencing” that allow “white-collar users” to upload resumes may include:
“The platform has a large number of high-quality recruiting companies”
"Uploading resumes on the platform is quick and easy, saving time and effort"
“It can improve the success rate of applications (at least in perception)”
“The recruitment process is fair and transparent, and the application progress is announced at any time”
……etc
Tips: During the operation process, we can also maintain a "Key Behavior Influencing Factors Table of Core Users and Participants' Behavior" for internal use by the operation team.It not only helps operators to deeply understand the business, but also serves as a management and inheritance tool for internal operation knowledge, improving the efficiency of new operators, similar to the following table (example):Step 4: Identify business hidden rulesLet me make it clear that the "unspoken rules" referred to here do not refer to the shady activities in society, but rather to some common sense that is latent but must be followed in all walks of life.After all, most Internet services are not native services, but are formed after replacing certain traditional businesses (more optimized).Of course, from business culture to industry operations, they are all evolved from some more primitive forms, so there must be rules that outsiders cannot see.Therefore, this is not just a "technical" issue such as "pursuing maximization of market value and maximization of benefits", but also involves social, cultural, political and even local customs and taboos. These all require us operators to have a deep understanding of them.Many "technical" problems are not about "technology" but social problems are the root.For example, the management products for the enterprise market mentioned earlier in the article, why is it so difficult to promote good free products?A big reason behind this is that as users in the enterprise IT industry, they have become accustomed to the model of paying by IT manpower.Compared with price, he is more concerned about factors such as the stability and security of enterprise services. After all, enterprise-level products are related to the healthy operation of the entire business and are of great importance.How can a free product make a profit?Are you going to sell our company's information?Is follow-up service guaranteed?These most basic elements actually make people feel worried, while paying has become a promise that reassures users.Therefore, for decision makers who operate such products, if they are well versed in the background business knowledge of the industry, they will not come up with such thankless strategies of "free" when facing medium and large enterprise customers.Even if they want to launch such a free product, the operators will prepare a set of "market-appropriate" language in advance when communicating with customers."Unwritten rules", no matter how big or small, occur in almost any social field.For example, when running your own media , writing articles, or even publishing books, are there no “unspoken rules”?For example:
Many seemingly simple articles often have many followers;
However, many seemingly thoughtful contents have very low readerships;
Or are there some books that seem like not many people understand them, but are also extremely popular? (For example, Hawking 's "A Brief History of Time", it is said that only five people in Russia in the 1990s could understand it, but it has always been a bestseller)
There are reasons behind all these phenomena...all of which are left for the readers to figure out on their own.If your operational mission requires you to achieve certain business goals, then you have to abide by those rules.So, what are the channels to obtain relevant "hidden knowledge" in various industries? Here are some recommended channels:
Guidance from industry veterans (don’t just try to get something for nothing)
Knowledge-based UGC communities represented by Zhihu
Public reports and financial statements issued by listed companies
Tips: Some Internet companies have a certain "reading budget". You can make full use of these resources and purchase some books related to industry background knowledge.Of course, I think the most important way to understand the "unspoken rules" is to return to yourself:You should reflect on yourself three times a day. As long as you notice some "unnatural" or "illogical" phenomena, you should collect more information, analyze and think about them. Day after day, you will naturally become a business expert through accumulation, and this is also one of the core competitiveness of operators.SummarizeWhen we take over a new operation, regardless of whether we have already dabbled in the related business of the target product, we should at least first examine whether we have been familiar with the basic business requirements mentioned in this article:1. Clarify business boundaries: deeply understand all the social knowledge that users need to master.For unfamiliar areas, you can work backwards from the product's application scenarios and explore the business boundaries.2. Understand who the core users are, who the other participants are who influence the core users, and the relationships between them.Improve core users and participants gradually according to the development stages of the product life cycle , without having to do it all at once.3. Understand the key behavioral influencing factors of core users and major participants.Remember to verify some key "guesses" and maintain them into an operation tool table to facilitate operation work and management.4. Identify the unspoken rules of the business: understand what can be done and what cannot be done.Before I end, I have to say one more thing: Remember, “what you learn from books is always shallow.”No matter how deep our understanding of the broad business of the industry in which we operate is, as KK said in "The Inevitable", the present is the future, and everything is "taking shape", not to mention that things change over time and everything changes in an instant.Therefore, as an operator who is working on the front line with users and has the closest contact with users, don’t forget to keenly capture changes in business “market conditions” at any time and refresh your own business experience.
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