The five elements in the product manager's knowledge system have already introduced idea management, demand management, product design and product development. The next element is product operation . In large companies, product operations are independent of the product manager's position and team, but as a product manager, you still need to understand something about operations. At the same time, a team integrating product, operation and marketing is gradually becoming popular in the domestic Internet industry. This team is called: Growth Hacker.

A product goes from idea to demand, to product design and then to the research and development of the development team, finally! The product is about to be "born"! If the process of a product from idea to becoming a great product is from 0 to 100, then all the previous efforts on the product can be said to be the process of a product from 0 to 1, and the next stage is the process from 1 to 100.

Whether a product can be truly successful depends not only on the design and functions of the product itself, but also on the operation after the product is launched. It can be said that for a product to become a great product, it depends on both the design and development of the product from 0-1, and the efforts from 1-100. Only when both stages are achieved to the extreme can a product become a great product.

Students who have some understanding of the product will definitely say that after the product is launched, it is the operation's business. What does it have to do with the product? If you must make such a clear distinction, you can say that most of the work is the responsibility of the operation. However, here we propose a concept that is currently popular in the domestic Internet industry, called growth hacking.

Growth Hacking

The concept of growth hacker was first proposed by Sean Ellis in 2010: "A Growth Hacker is a person whose true north is growth." The publication of Fan Bing's "Growth Hacker" in 2015 made this concept popular in China. In Fan Bing's book, growth hackers are defined as: a group of people who use data to drive marketing , use the market to guide products, and implement growth goals through technical means.

From the definition of growth hacker, we can find that the purpose of growth hacker is to make the product achieve the goal from 0 to 100 through various means. In the domestic Internet industry, there are two positions that are most suitable to become a growth hacker, one is product and the other is operation. But in fact, from the perspective of a successful growth hacker team, a growth hacker should be a combination of product and operation and have certain marketing experience.

In the book "Growth Hacker", the author introduces the goal of achieving product growth according to the A AR RR model. The following content will also use this model to talk about what happens after the product is launched.

1. Acquire users

1.1 Product Cold Start & Acquiring Seed Users

The first thing to do after a product is launched is to accumulate users. No matter what type of product it is, it cannot survive without users. When a product is first released, it will go through a process of importing the first batch of users from zero users and creating product content. This process is called cold start.

The first batch of users accumulated during the cold start process are called seed users. As the name suggests, seed users are the earliest users of a product. Although their number is relatively small, they have great growth potential. If seed users can be cared for and guided during product iteration and operation, they can gradually grow into the product's most loyal supporters and become opinion leaders.

Many times, the acquisition of seed users after a product is launched not only depends on the product's positioning, but also determines the future development direction of the product.

Here is an example that can help your product find seed users quickly and accurately. Zhihu, as the largest knowledge sharing platform in China, did not provide external registration in its early days. Its first batch of users were opinion leaders in the Internet industry such as Kai-Fu Lee found by Zhihu, and registration was open to other users on an invitation basis. Through the invitation system, Zhihu accumulated a large number of opinion leaders in the early stage of product launch and produced a lot of high-quality knowledge question and answer content. After Zhihu opened registration, general users found that a lot of valuable content had been accumulated on the platform, which made it easier for Zhihu to acquire users.

Another similar case of seed user acquisition is Bilibili (B Station for short). When acquiring users, B Station adopted the form of question-and-answer test registration. Users had to answer a lot of two-dimensional knowledge questions when registering. Only qualified users could successfully register as members. Through such a registration mechanism, real two-dimensional users could enter the circle of B Station, gathering a group of "real" users, and laying the foundation for the development of their own products through a group of like-minded users.

1.2 User Acquisition Methodology

1. Relying on a large platform

As China's largest social empire, Tencent's product line covers all aspects related to social networking. Many of Tencent's products are used by users and have a large user base. Why is this? It can be said that many products rely on the powerful social platform QQ. By directing users through the QQ platform, Tencent's many products have a place in their respective categories. This is the advantage of owning a platform.

So what if your company does not have such a platform product based on a large number of users? It’s very simple to rely on such a big platform. If your product has certain social attributes, then you can add a sharing function to the product design. You can share the content of the product to large social platforms such as WeChat Moments, Weibo, and Space, and quickly attract users by increasing the exposure of your product.

There are many products that acquire users in this way. Here are just two examples: Changba and Kuaishou APP. One of these two products is a social product based on music KTV, and the other is a social product based on GIF videos. After the two products were launched, sharing functions were added to allow users to share their own content (music, videos) to platforms such as WeChat Moments or Weibo, which increased product exposure and attracted more users to register and use the products.

2. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a way to attract target audiences by publishing valuable, relevant and continuous content to target users, and gain recognition and attention from users through continuous output, penetration and maintenance of content.

Content marketing relies on high-quality, continuous content to attract users, which is more suitable for content-based products. A typical successful product is Dongqiudi, a content product serving football fans. From sports information to videos to peripheral product sales, it provides users with a variety of football-related experiences. When the Dongqiudi product was launched, there were already three giant products in the related industry in the market: Zhibo , Hupu Sports and Sina Sports. However, Dongqiudi still grew up in the gap between these three giants and became a star product. One of them is to impress and attract users through content. Dongqiudi is committed to providing users with professional football information. In the early stage, it dominated the Zhihu football Q&A area with high-quality answers, attracted users by exposing itself, and always insisted on original and high-quality content output in the process of user accumulation. In this way, it established product reputation and accelerated user scale growth, and finally became the number one football category APP.

3. Event Planning

In the early stage of product launch or when the user base of the product is growing slowly, you can plan some activities to stimulate new users to register and old users to help promote the product. I believe that in the process of daily product use, you have seen a certain APP launching an activity prompt where old users recommend new users and get coupons or new users register to get gift packages.

There are two key issues that need to be clarified when planning an event: How to plan an event? And how to write event planning copy ?

How to plan an event?

• Clarify the purpose of the activity

First of all, we need to be clear about why we are conducting an event. What is the purpose of this event? Is it to attract users to register or to get lost users to reactivate the product? Only by clarifying the purpose of the activity can the subsequent details of the activity be clear.

• Activity rules planning

Whether it is instant discounts for new users when they register, or discounts for old users who recommend new users, all activities have their own unique rules. Only users who complete tasks according to the rules can get activity rewards. Here, the activity rules should be designed to be as simple as possible, easy for users to understand (users don’t have the time to spend a lot of time reading the details of the rules), and unambiguous.

• Selection of publicity channels

The quality of the promotional channel selection directly determines the number of users who obtain event information. Based on the target users, event time point and related event case references, selecting promotional channels with high exposure can acquire more users.

How to write an event planning copy?

A successful event planning copy should include the following basic elements:

Activity theme, activity target, activity time, activity description, rule description, delivery channel, risk control, cost estimate, expected effect and answers to activity-related questions.

The first half of the copy is designed for users and products. The content, starting from the delivery channels to the final question answering, is prepared for colleagues and leaders. Colleagues need to understand what problems will arise in related activities and through which channels the delivery will be carried out, while leaders are more concerned about the risks, costs and final effectiveness of the activities. Of course, the elements in the copy will vary depending on the specific activity and your company. Analyze the specific activity and characterize it based on the above elements.

There are definitely more than three ways to acquire users. Here we will only briefly introduce three commonly used ways to acquire users in current products. After users came, we encountered the next problem: how to make users use our products longer and more frequently?

2. Stimulate activity

After the product cold start and the acquisition of the first batch of seed users, the product has acquired a certain daily operation capability. As the number of users gradually increases, one aspect we need to pay attention to at this stage is user activity. If it is an e-commerce product, the standard of activity may be whether the user frequently logs in to view products and whether they frequently purchase products; if it is a content product, the standard of activity may be whether the user frequently uses the product and publishes content; if it is a social product, the standard of activity may be whether the user frequently goes online and interacts with other users. The activity standards for different types of products are different, so how can we stimulate user activity and allow our users to use the products longer and more frequently?

2.1A/B Testing

A/B testing is a testing method to understand user behavior habits. Simply put, it is to design two plans A and B, with only one different variable between the two plans. Some users use plan A and other users use plan B. Based on user feedback, it can be determined which plan the users are more receptive to.

A/B testing is usually used to improve page conversion rates , such as purchase conversion rates or product registration conversion rates on e-commerce websites. CareLogger A/B tested changing their sign-up button from green to red and increased conversions by 34%. In addition, A/B testing can also be used in many aspects such as product revisions and small-scale testing of new features.

2.2 Subsidy War

A common method used by O2O products is to use subsidies to make users feel that they are getting a good deal and thus stimulate user activity. When it comes to subsidy wars, a classic example is Didi’s red envelope subsidies. In the early days of Didi's product launch, facing two major user groups: taxi drivers and passengers, Didi provided subsidies for taking orders and subsidies for riding to stimulate the activity of drivers and passengers, making drivers feel that they could make money and passengers feel that taking a taxi was cheap. In this way, the activity of the two major target user groups of Didi products has been stimulated to a great extent, allowing Didi to gradually grow into the largest travel solution platform in China and even the country.

Of course, stimulating user activity through subsidies in the form of cash red envelopes is very expensive. Didi’s choice of operational methods in the later stage of the subsidy war is also worth learning from for O2O products. Didi did not directly distribute cash red envelopes to passengers in the later stage of the subsidy war, but required passengers to share Didi products with friends in order to get red envelopes. At the same time, the friends who were shared could also get a red envelope for riding. In this way, the red envelopes not only stimulated the activity of existing users, but also had the potential to drive several potential users to use Didi and become real users.

2.3 “ Game ” Mechanics

When we mention games, we are not referring to game products, but rather to the fact that adding gamification mechanisms to products can motivate users to use the products. This not only stimulates user activity but also increases product stickiness, allowing users to stay in the product more frequently and for longer periods of time.

In the book "Games Change the World", the author puts forward four major determinants of games:

Target

Players can achieve specific results through their efforts, attracting their attention and constantly adjusting their participation

rule

Limits how players achieve their goals. It eliminates or limits the most obvious ways to achieve the goal, pushing players to explore possibilities they have never tried before. Rules can unleash players' creativity and cultivate their strategic thinking.

Feedback system

Points, levels, scores, progress bars, etc. are used to show players how far they are from achieving their goals. For players, real-time feedback is a promise: the goal is achievable, which gives players the motivation to continue.

Voluntary participation

Requires all players to be willing to accept goals and rules

How to incorporate gaming elements into product design and operations? Starbucks’ Starbuck Rewards card mechanism provides a good demonstration of this. Starbucks provides a Starbucks Rewards Card for users who love Starbucks. When making a purchase, there will be several gift cards in the card for users to enjoy coffee discounts. After that, when you buy coffee at Starbucks with the Star Rewards Card, points will be accumulated on the card. Users can grow from the initial Silver Star to the highest personal exclusive Gold Star membership. Each time the star level is upgraded, different gift certificates will be given for users to use for consumption. At the same time, the number of stars in the card will be reset every year and users will need to upgrade again.

The Star Rewards Card mechanism adds gaming elements to non-gaming situations, capitalizing on the user's playful nature to generate attractive and sustained external incentives, inducing participants' internal motivations, thereby effectively increasing participant engagement, achieving changes in attitudes and behaviors, and to a great extent stimulating user activity and stickiness.

2.4 Sign-in & User Incentives

If you have experience in playing mobile games , then you must be familiar with the sign-in mode. For example, in Dota Legend, signing in for N consecutive days will give you a hero, and in Honor of Kings, signing in for N consecutive days will give you a skin, and so on. This way of stimulating user activity is common in products that mainly focus on mobile games. Of course, many products now adopt this approach, stimulating user usage by giving out coins and points when signing in, but if the benefits gained from signing in are not attractive enough, the effect is unlikely to be good.

User motivation is to give users a sense of accomplishment through rewards, thereby motivating them to work towards higher achievement goals. Typical examples include points earned from logging into Tieba and posting; Tencent QQ online time can increase QQ level experience. Similar achievements include levels, points, honors, titles, medals, etc.

No matter how large the number of users of a product is, if the users are not very active, then the product is just a zombie product, with only a large number of users but no active usage.

Does anyone still remember a classic test question we did in elementary school, which said that there is a pool with water added at a certain rate from one side and drained from the other side at a certain rate. How long will it take to fill up the pool? After the product enters the continuous operation period, as the number of users gradually increases, some users will definitely leave. So how can we do our best to reduce user loss? This is also a classic question for product operations.

3. Improve retention

3.1 User Churn

When a product is good enough, it can easily attract a large number of users. On the contrary, if there is a problem with the product, it will cause the original loyal users to abandon it. During the product launch process, user churn is inevitable. So what a product manager or product operator needs to do is to do their utmost to reduce user churn and even use some strategies to bring lost users back to our products.

3.1.1 Reasons for User Loss

• After the product is updated, major bugs or problems such as inability to use normally occur.
• Users are frequently harassed
• Better alternatives are emerging on the market
• Others such as product pain points no longer exist, game clearance, etc.

3.1.2 Define user churn and develop data indicators

There must be a reason for the sudden large-scale loss of users. So how do we detect the phenomenon of user loss? First of all, we need to clarify what kind of users are lost users. When defining the concept of lost users, different types of products will have different definitions. For example, if a user of a social product has no login record in the past seven days, then he may be a lost user.

After clarifying the definition of lost users, we need to formulate lost data indicators and determine the scale of lost users and the reasons for loss by monitoring the data:

• Next-day retention and user feedback on new product versions
• Seven-day retention: user retention after experiencing the entire product life cycle
• 30-day retention. Usually, the initial version iteration of a product is more frequent. The 30-day retention indicator can verify whether the product iteration and development direction are reasonable.

3.1.3 Building an anti-loss model

The definition of churned users and the establishment of churn indicators can help us quickly discover user churn and find out the reasons for user churn. However, finding out who the specific churned users are makes it difficult for us to maintain those specific churned users. Companies with strong technical capabilities will use technical means to build an anti-churn model and use the model to accurately locate lost users.

• According to the definition of lost users, select the data indicators needed to build the model, such as user attributes (age, occupation, etc.) and user behavior (login behavior, purchase behavior, etc.)
• Build the model and test it
• Analyze the background user data through the model to obtain accurate lost user data

3.2 Improve retention

3.2.1 Optimize product performance

The user groups of many products are widely distributed, and the mobile terminals and network environments used are also different. In this case, some products with high requirements for network and terminal performance are prone to user churn. In this case, the product needs to be optimized to provide users with the best user experience possible and reduce user churn due to product performance issues.

If your product does require a fast network and a faster mobile terminal to be used, but you find that a large proportion of users of your product are using a slow network and low-end mobile phones. In this case, a special version of the product can be developed for this group of users, retaining the core functions of the product and reducing certain non-core functions that occupy more network and mobile phone performance resources. It is always better to minimize user churn through this strategy than to lose all users.

3.2.2 Wake-up Mechanism to Recover Lost Users

The wake-up mechanism is a means to maintain lost users by sending wake-up messages to target users in the hope that they will use the product again. Usually, wake-up messages are sent in the form of text messages, emails, and product message push notifications. However, with the increasing prevalence of text message fraud, this method has been abandoned by many companies.

Email wake-up:

• Provide rewards. E-commerce products can give certain coupons or red envelopes to lost users to stimulate users to consume again.
• Inform users of the latest product information and send them updates on recent product features to arouse user interest through new features
• Personalized recommendations, providing content that users are interested in based on the historical usage data of lost users
• User social relationship reminders: Social products can inform users of lost users’ friends’ dynamics and information, and wake up users through social relationships.

Product news push:

The product message push method is suitable for awakening lost users who still retain the product APP, and it is more efficient than the email awakening method. Usually, messages are pushed to users who have not logged in to use the product for a certain period of time, or APP icon message reminders are used to remind users to click on the APP to check. However, one thing to note is also one of the reasons for user churn mentioned above, do not push messages to users too frequently. Too frequent push notifications may backfire and eventually cause users to uninstall the product.

The key to user churn is still the product itself. Various problems may also arise during the product iteration process. In this case, problems should be discovered and corrected in a timely manner to minimize user churn.

4. Increase income

free

When it comes to 360, some people may say that this is a good software that helps many people who are not proficient in computers solve computer problems more conveniently. Of course, some people may say that this is a rogue software. Regarding 360 as a company, the outside world has mixed reviews. Then what we are going to talk about today is how this company grew from an initial computer software assistant to the largest security software company in China. When 360 was just starting out, there were many well-known security software such as Kaspersky, Kingsoft, Rising, etc., but without exception, these products all adopted a paid model. 360 only used one method to compete with these well-known security software companies and eventually successfully defeated the former security software giants: free. 360 provides users with a series of products including 360 Security Guard and 360 Antivirus for free. Users can enjoy services that they used to have to pay hundreds of yuan a year for without spending a penny. 360 quickly occupied the market by providing free products. Although major security software giants later began to implement free policies, they still failed to regain their former glory in this security software war.

The styles of the Internet industry abroad are not quite consistent. The domestic Internet industry has always been popular with free products, free services, etc., using free as the first principle to attract users. But is the “free” Internet really free? When your product is free, what about the costs? How does the free model make money?

Chris Anderson, author of "The Long Tail Theory", introduced in detail the history and development direction of the "free" business model in his book "Free: The Future of Business". Here are a few free business models:

1. Three-party market

The free model based on a three-party system is the most common. This model means that users can use products or services for free, and the costs and fees incurred by using the products or services are paid by a third party. When you use Baidu or Google to search for information, you don't spend a penny, but the cost or fee incurred by using the search function is paid by advertisers or third parties who bid for search rankings.

2. Free plus paid model

This model is also common in the Internet industry. This method means that users can use the basic functions of the product for free, but if you want to use more advanced functions or services, you need to pay. Generally speaking, Internet products follow the "5% rule", which means that 5% of paying users are basically the source of all income for the website.

There are many products that adopt this model, such as NetEase Huatian, a social dating product. The basic functions are free to use, but if you want better recommendations or advanced payment, you need to pay a certain fee. Another example is some rapid prototyping products. The use of the product is free, but if you want to export to a specified format or join a team collaboration mechanism, you need to pay a certain fee.

3. Cross-subsidy

Cross-subsidy means that a product has both free and paid services. This method is to attract users to purchase paid services by providing free services to users. This model is most widely used in gaming products. For example, online games allow users to download for free and have no restrictions on gaming time. However, if you want to upgrade faster and get higher-level equipment, you will need to pay to make your character more powerful.

Of course, in addition to the above-mentioned common free business models, there are many other ways, such as accumulating user base through free services in the early stage, obtaining venture capital , or being acquired or merged by large companies. Free is not really free, but a business model that attracts users. There are many ways to play with free, waiting for you to discover.

5. Viral Marketing

Viral marketing refers to the use of public networks to allow marketing information to spread and diffuse like a virus, so that marketing information is quickly copied and transmitted to tens of thousands or millions of audiences.

In the field of Internet products, viral marketing can also be called word-of-mouth communication. Through communication between people, products can be spread to more users like a virus.

The effectiveness of viral marketing can be verified by the k factor and the viral cycle (the formula comes from Fan Bing's "Growth Hacker"):

K factor = infection rate * conversion rate

(The infection rate refers to the extent to which users spread the product to other users, and the conversion rate refers to the proportion of infected users who become registered users of the product)

The viral cycle starts from when a user sends a viral invitation to other users and ends when the user completes the conversion and becomes a product user.

The viral spread indicator can be used to discover the effectiveness of our viral marketing strategy.

Viral Marketing Methodology

5.1 “Bug” Marketing

In the early days of Baidu Cloud Disk, on June 21, 2013, netizens revealed that all paid services had bugs and the prices were reduced to one thousandth of the original price. That is to say, users only had to pay 0.5 yuan to purchase a 100G annual package instead of 500 yuan. The news spread quickly on the Internet, attracting a large number of users who liked to take advantage of the situation and rushed to buy it. Normally, this bug can be quickly restored through technical means, but Baidu Cloud officials have been slow to fix it. It is not difficult to find that the Baidu Cloud team deliberately created a bug to attract paying users. In the early stage, they acquired users through ultra-low prices, cultivated user usage habits, and then gradually converted these users in the future operation process.

There are many variations of similar bug marketing methods, such as a 15-day trial for Thunder membership for 1 cent, and iQiyi VIP first-month recharge for only 5 yuan. This method allows users who like to get a bargain and enjoy discounts to purchase at extremely attractive prices, and gradually cultivates users' payment habits through product experience.

5.2 Leverage Marketing

Leverage marketing is to organize and plan products or activities through hot events, activities, and topics, attract users' attention through hot topics, and implant products among users at the same time.

A typical case is the Cheetah Browser's Spring Festival Ticket-Grabbing Edition. As we all know, the Spring Festival is a very important festival for Chinese people. Due to population pressure, train tickets are in short supply during festivals and holidays, especially during the Spring Festival. 360 Browser launched a ticket grabbing plug-in very early, but you must use the PC to grab tickets. UC Browser saw this opportunity and loaded the ticket grabbing function through the mobile version of UC Browser, which to some extent solved the pain point of office workers in grabbing tickets during work or when they do not have a computer. Through the release of the Spring Festival ticket-grabbing version of Cheetah Browser, more people who had never known about Cheetah Browser before have become "loyal" users of the browser.

The strategy of leveraging marketing is a very common operation strategy in product operations. Usually, various marketing activities are launched with the help of hot events or popular festivals, such as marketing planning for blind date products on Double 11 or Valentine's Day, etc. Being good at grasping the hot spots around you and formulating operational strategies in a timely manner is an important factor in testing the quality of product operations.

5.3 Understand user psychology and formulate effective marketing strategies

Whether you are a product manager or a product operator, you will be recommended various psychology books in your career. The design and requirements of many products are actually to satisfy the weaknesses of human nature. By understanding the user's psychology and matching it with the nature of your product, you can usually develop better marketing cases . Here are some common user psychology introductions:

• Like, this is the highest level of product communication, users spread the word because they like the product
• Profit-seeking, through various forms of rewards (red envelopes, experience, etc.), to increase users' willingness to spread
• Reciprocity, so that both the sharer and the sharee can benefit, such as Didi red envelope
• Ask for help, spread by asking others for help, such as Candy Crush
• Show off, by sharing, showing off one's achievements, such as the recent popular game Onmyoji
• Scarce, through the use of invitation-based registration, such as the early Zhihu

but! Please remember that whether it is through bug marketing, leveraging marketing, or user psychology marketing, these methods will only increase the number of new users temporarily. If your product provides a bad user experience, no matter how many users you attract, they will eventually leave.

Therefore, the best viral marketing model is actually the self-propagation of the product. Users feel a good user experience when using the product, and then they will involuntarily recommend the product to other users, causing the product to spread freely among user groups. This requires that the product itself must be excellent in terms of design and user experience! (Okay, back to the topic of products...)

6. Data Analysis

6.1 Why Data Analysis?

Among the more popular concepts in the Internet industry in recent years, one is called "big data". Big data first originated from a survey report by McKinsey. Later, with the best-selling of "The Age of Big Data", big data technology quickly became popular in all walks of life. What does big data mean? Simply put, it refers to the amount of data that cannot be obtained within a limited time with limited computing resources. This is called big data. The two most important applications of big data are the storage of big data and the mining and analysis of the value of big data.

Remember the definition of growth hackers in the first section of this chapter? Growth hackers are a group of people who use data to drive marketing, use the market to guide products, and use technical means to implement growth goals. After the product is launched, various types of data will be collected. How to discover problems, patterns, and future trends from the data requires data analysis.

At different stages of product launch and operation, different data indicators are formulated and monitored, and problems are discovered based on changes in indicators and operational strategies are adjusted in a timely manner.

6.2 Data Indicators in AARRR

Here is a list of commonly used data indicators in the five stages of the AARRR model. You can focus on these indicators after the product is launched.

User acquisition stage:

• Number of registered users and growth rate
• The source of the registered user channel (through which method the product was discovered and registered)
• Churn during the registration process (collecting data on users leaving at each stage of the registration process)
• Registered user behavior tracking (collecting the path of registered users using the product)

Stimulate the active phase:

• Number of active users and growth rate
• Registered-Active Ratio (Number of Active Users/Number of Registered Users)
• Login user behavior tracking (collecting the path of users using the product after logging in to the product)
• Frequency and duration of use (collect the number of times users use the product and the average duration of use)

Improve retention stage (this stage includes churn data and retention data):

• Loss rate
• Tracking lost user behavior (determining the cause of loss by tracking lost user behavior)
• The effectiveness of the recovery strategy (number of recovered users/number of lost users)
• Number of retained users
• Registration-retention ratio (number of retained users/number of registered users)
• Frequency and duration of use by retained users (collect the number of times retained users use the product and the average duration of use, discover product deficiencies and operational directions)

Growth income stage:

• Number of paying users and growth rate
• Registration-paying ratio (number of paying users/number of registered users)
• Evaluation payment amount and frequency
• Paying user behavior tracking (optimizing paid features and paths by tracking paying user behavior)

Viral Marketing Stage:

• Number of users brought by different channels
• Channel conversion rate (number of users brought in by the channel converted to registered users/number of users brought in by the channel)

6.3 Focus of attention in different stages of product operation

Through the analysis and review of many excellent products, according to the product life cycle curve, we can find that each product will roughly go through three stages in its entire life cycle: the initial operation period (cold start), the continuous operation period and the mature operation period.

Initial Operation

The initial stage of operation is the accumulation of seed users, and it is also the stage of verifying product logic. At this stage, both product managers and operators should focus primarily on the core functions of the product and related functional experience. Through the feedback from initial users, they should continuously improve product functions and user experience. After all, the product itself is the basis. If the product function has defects or the user experience is poor, then even if more users are attracted, they will all be lost. Therefore, in the early stages of product launch, special attention should be paid to the construction of the product itself.

Continuous operation period

Through continuous polishing of the product in the initial stage of operation, the product should have certain capabilities in core functions and user experience during the sustained operation period. During the sustained operation stage, the product's exposure should be increased through various means such as event operations and hot events to attract more users to use the product. At the same time, at this stage, we still need to continuously optimize product functions and experience based on user feedback.

Mature operation stage

After the first two phases of operation, the product should not have major problems in terms of functionality and experience, and has accumulated a large number of active users. There are two main things to do at this stage: enrich product gameplay and explore commercial monetization.

Content-based products should continuously increase their own content accumulation so that users can continue to maintain interest in content, functional products should continuously expand product functions and increase product playability, and e-commerce products should continuously expand product categories so that users can have more room for choice. Different types of products should constantly enrich their gameplay so that users will not leave because of lack of interest and improve product stickiness to keep users.

In addition to public welfare, the listing of each product or service is for profit. After accumulating a certain amount of users, the product needs to start exploring its own business model. In the previous section on increasing revenue, some free business models were also proposed. Of course, you also need to explore and discover the profit model of your own products.

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The author of this article @记小忆 compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!