Five rules to start your growth hacking journey

The Origins of Growth Hacking

Originated from Silicon Valley, it was first proposed in 2010, and then attracted widespread attention and discussion in the industry due to an article in 2012. Until today, it has been gradually summarized and organized into a set of effective methods to drive product growth at low cost.

What is Growth Hacking

This is a group of people who use data to drive marketing and market to guide products. All the work of growth hackers is based on data analysis guidance, not guesswork.

Methods: A/B testing, search engine optimization, viral marketing , etc., while page loading speed and registration conversion rate have become the focus of daily attention.

Look at the words “growth hacker” separately: Growth only focuses on product growth, including the accumulation of users and important indicators at each stage of the product life cycle.

The Laws of Growth Hacking

The growth hacker's rules - "A AR RR", are five aspects: user acquisition, activation, retention , monetization and dissemination.

Things to do before promoting your product to acquire users

1. Demand

• Determine whether the demand is a false demand
• Determine whether the demand is rigid
• Can demand solve multiple pain points?
• Frequency of demand

2. Use a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Three points:

• Minimum Viable Product
• User feedback
• Fast iteration

You must first verify whether the business model is feasible and whether it can meet user needs before you can enter the stage of acquiring users. If you are wrong at the beginning, all your efforts will be in vain.

Get User

• Cold start : The process of introducing the first batch of early users before the product form is fully established. Select high-quality early users and establish a data accumulation system
• Seed users : users who enter the product early

After the core functions of the product are developed, it needs to enter the market for promotion before it can be widely promoted. For example, early Facebook was only open to a certain university after it went online, and then gradually expanded its scope. Zhihu adopted a strict invitation and review mechanism in its early days.

Let early users use the product, provide product feedback and user needs, and understand users' real needs through interviews.

1. Internal invitation users

Internal colleagues invite targeted user groups to use the product, constantly raise requirements and provide feedback

2. Promotion on social platforms

By inviting friends to get rewards, etc., it quickly radiates to the surrounding people. For example, many e-commerce products can get cash coupons by inviting friends

Many products now use third-party login methods. The benefits are: allowing users to quickly enter the product and more easily share it on social networking platforms to attract user attention. For example, when you log in using Weibo, you will follow the Weibo account of that product by default.

There are also some phenomenal products, such as Zuji , faceU, etc.

3. Content Marketing

Attract designated target users through specific valuable content, relying on WeChat , in an era where content is king, to gain recognition and attention. The ultimate goal is to convert users into products.

4. Search engine and app store optimization

Includes: keywords, SEO , APP ratings, etc.

5. Online to offline

Commonly known as " ground promotion ", we have been promoting major products for 15 years. Every day, we take a mobile phone to Zhongguancun for a walk and there are too many gifts to take away.

Stimulate activity

Example: LinkedIn

Through A/B testing, we investigate the reasons why users invite their friends and use concise and powerful copywriting to attract users to register and use the app. Update your own contacts by importing email contacts. After the user fills in the information, the system recommends related users based on the filled-in information (position, company, etc.) for the user to establish a relationship chain.

Increasing activity through A/B testing is often used to reduce page barriers, improve conversion rates, determine revision plans, and test new features on a small scale. Through A/B testing, you can find out which ones are helpful for motivation. In the era of mobile Internet , users' time is more fragmented and their thinking time is shorter, so we should find the most appropriate way to help users understand the product quickly. Airbnb once tested changing the collection icon of "Save to Wish List" from a star to a heart, which resulted in a 30% increase in the usage of the wish list.

Improve retention

User retention rate is a core indicator that Internet products need to pay attention to. If new users continue to leave over time, then attracting more new users will be meaningless.

User retention rate = number of retained users/total number of users, which can be divided into next-day retention rate and 7-day retention rate.

There are several possible reasons for low retention rates:

1. There is a program vulnerability
2. Performance bottleneck
3. Poor interactive performance
4. Basic process is not perfect
5. The popularity of topic products has declined
6. There are better alternatives

Ways to improve retention:

1. Optimize product performance

Including: reducing the frequency of flashbacks, returning pictures of different resolutions for different networks, using native instead of H5, etc. When we browse Taobao APP, we sometimes see a prompt like "You are currently using a Wi-Fi environment, and high-definition images are loaded."

2. Improve functions, take small steps, and iterate quickly

Complete the core functions first, then develop other functions. Determine the goals that the product should achieve at each stage, divide the versions according to the stages, and try to iterate the versions in a rhythmic manner.

3. Optimize the experience

(1) Guide new users to get started quickly

There are always some misunderstandings when we make products. We often bring our own understanding of the products to the cognition of ordinary users, always thinking that they can understand our products, processes, and designs. However, the vast majority of users are unwilling to think. Ma Huateng also said that when making products, one should think like a novice user. Therefore, when we design products, we need to make the process simple enough, remove unnecessary elements, and only display core information to users to reduce users' learning costs. For some functions, you can provide users with some usage tutorials through floating layers, but the tutorials should also be relatively simple.

(2) Through social connections

I happened to be playing Tencent's "Honor of Kings" recently. When gold coins are given out in the game , users can be notified in WeChat that your friend has given you XXX. This reminds users to enter the game and provides activity. Weibo, QQ, etc. are all available methods.

(3) Design a wake-up mechanism

The wake-up mechanism is designed specifically for recalling lost users. The prerequisite is that it is necessary to monitor how long the user has not logged into the platform. Commonly used methods are: email, mobile phone number, message push, etc.

The content can be defined based on product attributes. The simplest example is: how long has it been since you last came? E-commerce platforms often use "xx has given you a red envelope worth 100 yuan"; there are also some SaaS products that usually inform users of new features of the product to attract users to use it.

(4) Personalized recommendation

Tmall , Toutiao , etc. will determine your profile based on your behavioral data on the platform, and recommend content that you may be interested in to increase activity. Push notifications are the most important form of messaging, but be careful not to use them too frequently, otherwise it will cause user disgust and may even lead to uninstallation.

(4) Task Sign-in

Many Internet products borrow elements from games and stimulate users to log in through daily tasks. The membership system within the product is also often used to improve retention.

Increase revenue

Free has long been common knowledge in the Internet industry. In the early days, 360 quickly entered the market and gained market share by providing free anti-virus software, thus reaching a user base of hundreds of millions. So how does the free model make money?

1. Value-added service charges

For example, Internet products: QQ, NetEase Cloud Music , SaaS products: Teambition, Eventnote, etc., are all free to use. If you want to enjoy other privileges, you must pay to generate revenue.

2. Serial number

It is often seen in commonly used software, such as: office, sketch, etc. However, when these software are brought to China, you can always find cracked versions.

3. Remove ads

It mainly exists on major video websites. There is always a long advertisement before the video plays. If you don’t want to watch advertisements, just buy a membership.

4. Traffic monetization and advertising in third-party markets

Advertisers will place ads within products that have a large number of users. For example, placing sports shoes advertisements in sports communities. Advertising is also a common tactic used by major Internet companies, such as Baidu and Google. Most of their revenue comes from search engine advertising, which pushes advertisements to precise groups of people. When WeChat ads were first launched, BMW, BBK, and Coca-Cola were said to have adopted this format.

spread

Every once in a while there are products that go viral on the Internet. A while ago, an H5 titled " Xue Zhiqian hasn't written any Weibo jokes for 2 months, so he came up with a big idea" went viral on WeChat Moments. After reading it, I realized it was a marketing advertisement for Tencent Comics. The Internet is never short of such cases.

Leverage Marketing

When there is a new topic on the Internet, many smart Internet products know how to leverage the marketing momentum to push products to users and compete for their attention, thus achieving their goals.

In 2015, the TV series "The Empress of China" was extremely popular, so a camera APP followed suit and launched an event called "Everyone cosplays as Empress Wu", which went viral on WeChat Moments. Every Spring Festival is the peak period of population mobility in my country, and train tickets are hard to come by. In order to make it easier to go home, smart engineers developed a plug-in for grabbing train tickets, which can automatically help netizens grab tickets efficiently. So Cheetah also launched a train ticket grabbing function based on its own browser , which soon gained word-of-mouth among netizens as a "ticket grabbing tool."

The user's psychological grasp during viral transmission

Internet products make use of human nature. If communication can make use of it, it can inspire users to spread the word. Common examples include: usefulness, individuality, showing off, comparison, identification, and conformity.

The path to growth hacking needs to be gradual, and requires constant trial and error, continuous summarization, and continuous thinking at work.

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

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