The specific practice of "growth hacking": how to "acquire more users"

The theory of "growth hacking" has become a new hot word in the domestic entrepreneurial field this year. It has spread rapidly along with people's perception that "European and American information is more cutting-edge." This concept, which was popularized by Sean Ellis, has attracted much attention because he used his growth hacking skills to help Dropbox increase its user base by 500% in one year without spending any extra budget.

"Growth hacker" has long been a job title in foreign Internet companies. However, the introduction and discussion of growth hackers in many domestic knowledge sharing communities seem to overemphasize theory but give the illusion that nothing is said. In fact, if we calm down and think about it, the core and key of growth hacking are still the familiar topics in China such as "attracting new customers", "promoting activation" and "communication and conversion".

Based on my experience in past startups, I would like to share with you some specific examples of growth hacking. I hope to return to concrete practice in a context where theories are flying all over the place and seem like empty talk.

Due to space limitations, I will no longer introduce the meaning of the "growth hacker" theory or the "A AR RR" model, etc. I will only talk about the effective methods I have used to address one key issue - how to acquire more users.

1. A small change in the email mechanism increased user return by 3 times

When doing operations or product development, you will always encounter the problem of slow growth of data indicators in functional areas or page visits. There are a lot of methods on how to improve, but why it works for others but not for you is a difficult question to answer. Operations may blame the product for not being good enough, and the product may blame the lack of technical skills, slow launch and many bugs...

In a previous project I was in charge of, I was responsible for user growth during operations. When everyone sat down to have a meeting, they did use all the methods that could be used, but no one dug deep into the essence and characteristics of the methods. More often than not, we are stuck in the rut of "the majority method is the truth". For example, a function that was being used at the time to encourage users to return adopted an email distribution mechanism - through the user's email address, activity emails or content emails were pushed to the user, encouraging the user to return to the page and increase the page PV. However, the content that required research and event draws, new product introduction function displays, etc. all used an email interface.

Soon, I asked the team to change the interface to distinguish different email requirements. And on the pages that need specific and focused traffic, a small but very useful "growth" secret is used:

Change the contact person and email title to which the email is sent. In the past, when users received emails pushed by the system in their mailbox, because mailboxes are a product that users use very frequently, users have long trained themselves to quickly distinguish between contact emails and so-called "advertising" emails among a pile of emails. All I have to do is to replace the sender of the email with the name of the operations classmate himself, and change the subject of the email to "Good morning" and many other greetings and friendly daily expressions.

Soon, the user return data changed. When users receive such emails, they put aside their intuitive resistance, and the authenticity of the contact name also prompts them to want to open the email content more. Product content has received more exposure and display, and combined with life scenario-based designs at the UI and other design levels, user return has increased significantly, and event information and products have received greater exposure opportunities.

In this growth example, the approach is very similar to the Thirty-Six Stratagems of Stratagems: Playing Hard to Get. Although they wanted to acquire users, emphasize the brand, and deepen product awareness, they refused to dwell on dogmatic theoretical nagging and made a small change to the email mechanism, which immediately brought them returns that exceeded their expectations.

Although this method is not applicable to every company (corporate image, public opinion, product continuity, etc. need to be considered), it is particularly useful for start-up companies, especially content products.

2. Scan the code to download multiple sentences for more efficient promotion

Scanning the QR code to download the app is the most basic promotion method in the domestic Internet circle. But even this most basic promotion method still contains many tips and areas for improvement.

You may know the theory of “growth hacking” by heart, but if you don’t think about the essence of the method, you will not be able to achieve growth. This is why we must maintain insight and innovative thinking.

In a previous product promotion, among the many channels for diversion, due to the SP’s superior attitude and scarce resources, the need to scan the code to download became one of the promotion tasks of the marketing team.

Although we have discussed ways to promote in the community and in the locations of target user groups, the results are not excellent and we are in urgent need of a breakthrough and improvement.

So, I followed the marketing team offline for a day. Through careful observation, I found that users were often hesitant when taking the business card to scan the code. In addition to the fact that they were not interested and were just giving the market face, many users used the excuse of needing to connect to WiFi to go home to download the product, resulting in low on-site conversion rates.

On the other hand, although some ground-based promotional leaflets are well designed, users are not interested in the QR codes and they are thrown into the trash.

Just like many video sites have the concept of "attention threshold" for users (for example, YouTube once ensured that ads could be closed within n seconds so that users could stay and watch the video), there must be such a conversion time window on a single page. Once this time is exceeded, user acquisition becomes an almost impossible task. So, what we need to do is to get as many users download the product as possible in the shortest possible time.

After analysis, when reviewing the situation in the evening, I proposed a plan to modify the QR code design. The specific measures are two steps. The first is to redesign two sets of QR code solutions and use two sets of design solutions in different communities due to different user groups. The second step is to add a line above the QR code to directly and powerfully explain the package size of our application.

Through communication with technical colleagues, the product package was compressed again, and the designer also added the sentence "Only 10M traffic is required for downloading" on the QR code. Later, marketing colleagues wrote prompt text such as "The traffic used to download the app is equivalent to 2 songs" based on this.

What the user is thinking is, is this app I need to download a bit big? How big is it? You need to check it yourself. If it is too big, exit and stop downloading. The entire psychological process may be very long. Why should we let users think so much instead of explaining it directly? For the single pages sent out and picked up by users, users no longer need to spend extra time thinking, nor do they need the market to waste time nagging about anything. Simple and clear promotion allows users to directly gain a clear understanding of the "download" step - downloading it will only cost a few MB of traffic.

As a result, the changes were seen from the data background. In terms of promotion, we made some small changes, and in terms of new user acquisition, we completed the equivalent of data that would have taken nearly two weeks in the past within one week.

3. Help users take screenshots and share faster

User sharing is something that any product desires. Especially in promotion, with the spread of users, it is easy to form a wider topic influence and give the product greater exposure.

Taking screenshots is a natural behavior for users. When encountering an interesting page or fun chat, users are willing to take screenshots. What are screenshots used for? Of course, the most important thing is to share it with your friends and let this interesting emotion infect others.

When we were promoting our previous products, we also considered the need for screenshots. Set up more interesting pages to encourage users to take screenshots and share them. But have we ever thought about how to help users share better? Traditional sharing requires many steps: taking a screenshot, exiting the current app, opening apps such as WeChat /Weibo, then opening the album to find the screenshot, and clicking send. It is very complicated, and if any step is slightly wrong, the user may give up.

At that time, I suggested to capture the screenshot button. Through event monitoring or broadcasting mechanism, the user's functional operation behavior on the mobile phone is obtained. This includes screenshots. When the user takes a screenshot, a share button will pop up directly. By connecting to a third-party SDK, the user can directly choose to share to WeChat, Weibo and other applications with one click.

Now, this feature is also used by many large products, but when we were doing this, few people had done this. By exploring the needs themselves, I can understand the user's emotions, which is an alternative secret to growth.

Through this method, we found in the SDK data call that users began to use the sharing button within the app on a large scale. This shows that there are indeed a large number of such users. Helping them connect products and social networks is the best way for us to spread the word.

Later, colleagues continued to dig deeper into this function and worked their way back to designing hidden pages to stimulate users’ screenshot sharing behavior. Why do we dare to stimulate now? Because the convenience of user sharing is guaranteed, which naturally gives us greater confidence in the rhythm of operations.

Summarize

The above three examples are very representative of the growth I have experienced. To sum up:

The first change to the email mechanism reminds us that we need to analyze the methods we encounter in combination with specific cases and adapt to user habits.

The second case of scanning the QR code to download illustrates that we need to observe user behavior and transform this behavior into our design thinking.

The third sharing case is to make us pay attention to some technical boundaries and make the simple action of sharing a smoother experience.

Whether it is "growth hacking" or other theories, there is a big premise: pay attention to users, care about technology, and think innovatively. I hope the above growth examples can serve as a reference for everyone to develop more "growth hacking" practices in the future.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media information flow

This article was compiled and published by @冯政坊 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!