7 essential skills for operators - Business analysis is a high-level capability for operators

1. What is business analysis capability?

Business analysis ability is a very broad ability. From state-owned enterprises, consulting companies, and corporate think tanks to shop owners and Taobao store owners, all of them more or less have the ability to analyze commercial monetization in their own industry. It analyzes competitors, the environment, and other factors to derive one or more capabilities that are beneficial to its own development or surpassing its competitors.

Can business analysis skills be acquired by reading a few business strategy books?

If you read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, you’ll know that Instagram used the law of individual characters in its early promotion. When Instagram was promoting its products in the early days, its target users were all photographers, because photographers needed a better photo-taking app. Secondly, photos taken by photographers are more likely to have a dissemination effect, and photographers are more willing to share their works on major social networks. So Instagram had a very fast spread speed very early on.

If you read Shi Yuzhu's "Shi Yuzhu's Autobiography: My Marketing Experience", you will know why only 5 flavors are selected for a rainbow candy. Those who have read this book know that there is an example in it: A businessman once sold 18 flavors of Rainbow Candy, monitored the sales data of each flavor, and conducted in-depth consumer research. He knew very clearly what flavors customers liked. So in the end only these 5 flavors were selected.

If you read all the books on business thinking in the world, will you have the ability to conduct business analysis? The answer is obviously no. Everyone will say that theory plus practice is the key to learning a skill. If it is just pure theory without practical experience, it may appear to be slightly inferior in global control and overall perspective. Just like Li Jiaoshou , who was acquired by Baidu a few weeks ago and became the youngest vice president in Baidu's history. Many people say that Li Jiaoshou is just a summarizer of marketing theories and does not have real practical experience, so it is still unknown how much effect he can achieve if he really engages in practical work (this sentence does not maliciously belittle Li Jiaoshou, it is just an example. Fans of the professor should not turn from fans to haters after reading my article).

So what does business analysis skills with practical experience look like?

An audio app (let's call it A) was doing well in its vertical field at the beginning. However, when this field became more and more popular, many companies began to flock in and started to provide subsidies to attract users to use their own apps. Among them, one company (let's call it B) was particularly prominent, and its upward momentum once surpassed A. In less than half a year, Company A's market share began to decline rapidly and its profit margin almost turned into negative growth. The marketing director of Party A must respond, and Party A's marketing team begins to conduct extensive research on competing products, especially Party B, to understand why it is growing so rapidly despite having the same large amount of subsidies. They collected a large amount of information about Party B's market launch strategy and related information through offline surveys, online data collection, words from friends in competing companies, and other channels . By analyzing these materials, we learned that in addition to a large amount of user subsidies, Company B has also established strict systems in user operations , community operations and internal team building. The team is very ferocious, so it has been victorious in market expansion and is very aggressive.

After analyzing Company B's development strategy, Company A quickly adjusted its strategic deployment by strictly selecting a high-quality marketing team and establishing a good salary system to encourage employees. It also continuously innovated in user operations and event operations, quickly focused on users and brought back lost users.

I think the team of Company A above pulled the company back from the brink of death and was able to maintain sustained profitability. This is the value of business analysis capabilities. As operators, we also need this kind of business analysis capability.

2. Why operations require business analysis capabilities

Many people may say that business analysis ability is only needed by marketers , marketers, and bosses, and we just need to do our own operations well. Just imagine, if you have always been stuck on concepts such as user operation, event operation, and content operation , but have not thought about how we can make what we do create value for products and users, what is the meaning of these things?

When I first got involved in operations, I was extremely insensitive to business and I didn’t know what the business logic behind this matter was. Because I think as long as I do my job well, traffic will come and monetization will come. I still remember what my former leader said: All product monetization is designed. Those who monetize through traffic and think that users are the basis of monetization are not real businessmen and they will never achieve great success.

Later, when I was doing anything related to operations, I would think about the logic behind it and how I could bring value to users, because only when the user experience is good, what you do is valuable, and the product operation you do is valuable.

We all know that the o2o industry was very hot in the first two years. At one point, there were thousands of apps in the car wash industry, which means that there were thousands of companies competing in the o2o car wash industry.

How to gain user loyalty and how to ensure user life cycle have always been headaches for these business owners. Therefore, extending the user's usage time and preventing users from leaving has become the focus of major APPs. Everyone will use various promotional activities, lotteries for car peripheral products, low-cost door-to-door car washing and other means to obtain a longer user life cycle.

But everyone knows that the door-to-door car washing industry is a false demand. The demand that exists now is just fake demand created by everyone using subsidies. The user may say that although I like your car wash service this time, I will use this brand’s product next time because it is closer to my home. I came to participate this time only because of your promotion.

The o2o car wash door-to-door service is a false demand. Entrepreneurs have not realized the deep-seated reason. Think about it from another perspective. If we cut off certain functions or services, will users leave us? If I just blindly follow the trend and see that everyone is subsidizing, I will also bring in capital to burn money together. This lack of business logic analysis of the car wash industry will only be a flash in the pan.

3. How to exercise business analysis ability as an operator

1. Build your own pyramid logical thinking

As operators, when we talk about product promotion, we will desperately list various communication channels: comprehensive coverage and linkage communication of Weibo, WeChat and Weibo , video, audio media, using KOLs to expand influence, and so on. These seemingly cool practices make us think that we should list them all first, as we don’t have to pay for them anyway. This is what we call a clueless product promotion operation. If you are really a great operator, I think you will think like this:

First, we need to know whether the purpose of this product promotion is for conversion or just to get more brand exposure, with a big premise and big goal.

The next step should be to find out where our target audience is? Is our product targeted at college students? Or are they the new white-collar workers in the workplace or high-tech business people? After determining the target users, the next step is to write content that is suitable for these groups of people based on their attributes, whether it is lively, humorous, or serious.

When delivering content in the end, we should think about which channel our users will appear more frequently on, and then we should focus on that channel, find a strong selling point, and choose a sophisticated channel for delivery.

I have said so much above just to illustrate one point. When analyzing something, the conclusion should come first, and then it should be expressed from top to bottom, peeling off layer by layer, and breaking through small goals one by one until the ultimate goal is reached. This is the methodology we should adopt when conducting business analysis.

2. Don’t lose sight of the big picture and have a strong ability to change your mindset

When we analyze something, we should not go down a dead end. This will not only go in the wrong direction, but also lead ourselves into the abyss. Many entrepreneurs have a deeper understanding of business than ordinary people like us. Often it is because their ability to change their mindsets is stronger than mine, and they know how to analyze multiple channels and choose the best solution.

When we conduct business analysis, many people will limit themselves to a certain area and do not know how to turn, that is, they fall into the inherent thinking. Only if you change your thinking can you avoid risks. Let’s take an example. Aunt Li’s milk is now sold in a small area due to geographical factors, which means that the customer base is limited. At this time, no matter how Aunt Li organizes discounts and welfare activities, it is useless because the number of users who buy from you every day is fixed and cannot be increased. Therefore, if Aunt Li's milk can maintain its quality, she has two channels to increase her sales.

One is to open more branches, because the branches are spread all over the country and even the world, so as long as the branches are opened, there is no need to worry about no one buying. However, the risks of doing so are huge. It requires huge capital investment in product supply chain and other factors, which is risky. So can we start by opening an online sales channel? Of course you can. You can put your own milk on e-commerce websites for distribution and sale. You can also sell your own products, and this is done under the premise that risks are controllable. Therefore, when conducting business analysis, you should learn to change your mindset and not get yourself stuck in a corner.

Business analysis is based on factual analysis and comes from practice. Those who read reports and theories every day cannot be called business analysts, but are merely transmitters of the appearance of things.

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The author of this article @艺林小宇 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!