How to find a foothold when taking over a brand new business operation? Here are 6 ways

When I was about to get off work last night, a colleague came to me and said he wanted to talk about some operational confusion. Of course I was extremely pleased. This industry is relatively new and developing rapidly. Sometimes I want to learn but don’t know what to do. Chatting with colleagues is the best thing.

The topic she brought up was that she was recently working on a new business, but she didn't know where to start, the new business didn't have enough users, and she wondered how to increase the traffic. New business means that it is new to the company, as the company has never done such business before; it is also new to her, as she has never done such operation before.

If we look at it from the perspective of attracting new customers, the first thing is to set up outlets in some channels, take inventory of all available channel positions, and strive for resources. Then explain the value of your product in the channel position and tell users what the product can provide, especially what special value it has for new users.

The channel position is relatively easy to discuss, as the team will be able to clearly understand it once they sit down and take stock. She said the difficulty lies in the product value , because their products are low-frequency and high-priced, and they cannot impress people as well as high-frequency products. Others may just send a red envelope, but even if they send a red envelope, the utilization rate is not high. She has a headache.

The difficulty lies in how to provide a gimmick or a hook to attract potential users. I asked her: What kind of people are your users? Why do they buy your products? If you don’t know how to attract new users, then ask old users why they come?

In fact, it is to do user research, the purpose of which is to understand user needs. Whether you are making products or operating them, you must know very clearly what kind of people are using your products and what characteristics these people have. Some are explicit characteristics, such as age, gender, and region; some are implicit characteristics, such as how many children there are in the family, how much income there is, what kind of personality they have, and what their educational level is.

I particularly understand the difficulties this colleague mentioned, as I have also experienced them. Some people say that to do operations, you need to understand human nature. Understanding human nature actually means empathy, knowing what users want, being able to understand users, and then being able to give users what they want, and users are willing to play with you.

When I first started working in the maternal and infant sector , I knew it was going to be difficult. It was a new track for me and the user groups I was facing had changed. I had no idea what the needs or characteristics of these people were.

When discussing a business direction in a meeting, everyone suddenly realized that they were not very sure about this direction and were not sure whether users really had this demand. This situation is not OK. User needs are not determined by discussions in a conference room. They must be expressed by real users.

The question is, what are some ways to quickly understand user needs?

Method 1: Data Analysis

Although I put data analysis first, for the early stage of the business (the word "early stage" here has two meanings. One is that the business may be new, and the second is that for operations colleagues, this business has never been done before), data analysis is relatively important, but not the most important.

First, it is because it is the early stage of the business, and it is very likely that relatively complete data indicators and reports have not yet been established, and there is not enough data on hand; secondly, the operations staff are faced with cold data in their minds and cannot figure out the true human nature behind the data. They lack a perceptual understanding of the business or users.

It is better to have a comprehensive understanding of users and a user portrait that covers the characteristics of all users. But for operations colleagues, the more concrete the user image is, the better. Data analysis can provide a relatively comprehensive user portrait, but it cannot provide specific user emotions and judgments.

In other words, if you rely solely on data analysis in the early stages, you will find that it is not enough.

Method 2: Questionnaire Survey

Questionnaires are suitable for verifying product direction or helping you get answers to some questions. When we first started, we wanted to determine the various needs of mothers regarding taking photos with their babies. What did she use to take the photos, what did she use to save them, what did she use to beautify them, where did she put the photos, etc.

No one is an expert at everything. When I first started designing questionnaires, I was in a dilemma as I didn’t know how to set up the questions and options. If you feel that you are not that professional, you can ask someone more professional for advice. I found a few colleagues who are mothers, sent them the questionnaire, and asked them what they did wrong and how to improve. Then I found a colleague who was more professional in conducting questionnaires and asked her to help me take a look.

After completing the questionnaire, find a channel to publish it. The final data will give you more confidence in this product or direction.

Method 3: In-depth interviews

After completing the questionnaire, I feel that my grasp of user needs is not very accurate. I then conducted in-depth interviews with potential user groups.

Where do the interviewees come from? My feeling is that in-depth interviews are not like questionnaires, which require a wide or large sample size. In-depth interviews only require finding a few typical users. What is more important than the sample size is the quality of the sample, and the interviewees have trust in the interviewer.

My choice at that time was to look for it among my own circle of friends. I called the mothers and babies I knew one by one and asked them to recommend mothers and babies they knew with whom they had a good relationship. They range from first-tier cities to fourth- and fifth-tier cities, from pregnant mothers to newborns, to parents with older children.

Design an interview outline before the interview. At that time, I wanted to understand the needs of mothers and babies, so I chatted with them as a friend to see what issues they were concerned about and what mother and baby software they usually used.

After talking to more than 20 people, I organized it into a table and wrote an email. I found out what the needs of users at different stages are, which needs are high-frequency, which needs are low-frequency, which needs have a longer life cycle, and which needs have a shorter life cycle.

After completing the in-depth interviews, I no longer look confused when I attend the requirements review meeting.

Method 4: Focus Group Interview

In the early stage, we communicate with potential users, and then we start to explore users in our own products. Find the most core and active users of your product, talk to them, make friends with them, ask them why they use your product, what needs it meets, and whether they are willing to recommend the product to their friends. No matter what the answer is, tell them the reasons. What do they think are the shortcomings of the product and what features do they like to use the most.

I pulled out the most core and active users, created a group, and chat with them frequently. For example, if we want to change the official website of a product, we need to write the core selling points of the product on the official website. I will first extract a few core selling points of the product, and then throw them to the users, asking them to help me sort out which of these core selling points are the most important. After determining the core selling points and their ranking, consider each selling point carefully . For example, a user told me that "never lose" is better than "permanently save". I asked her why, and she said that permanent save can be saved anywhere, and just saving is not enough. If you can really achieve never lose, then I would be very willing to use your product.

Sometimes when planning an event and setting the rules, I don’t know what users need to do and what kind of rewards they will get at the beginning. Especially for rewards, we also talk to users and ask them what they want and what can attract them most. They make a list and then I give it to other ordinary users to vote. In this way, I know what kind of gifts the users want.

Method 5: Observation

I was still chatting with my users before, and the next step is to observe them. My observations can be divided into two aspects: one is to observe how the users of our benchmark competitors use the competitors, and the other is to observe how our own users use our own products.

For competing products, find very active and typical loyal users of the competing products, keep an eye on them, and see how often they use the competing products and what kind of content they update and publish on the competing products. Find very active and typical loyal users of your product, keep an eye on them, and see how often they use our product.

Method 6: Telephone follow-up

The same telephone is used here, which is different from the previous in-depth interview. The most important thing about an in-depth interview is depth. It doesn’t really matter what kind of interview method is used. Of course, it would be best if the interview could be face to face.

The telephone follow-up here is to randomly select some users and chat with them. If they are churned users, ask them why they churned; if they are active users, ask them why they are active.

Telephone follow-up may also encounter difficulties. It may be easier for active users, but it is easy to hang up the phone for lost users or silent users.

With these tips, the probability of a return call will be higher:

(1) Call at the time that is most suitable for the user.

The first thing required here is to understand the user's daily routine. For mothers, the best time to answer the phone is around 10 a.m. and around 3 or 4 p.m. Around ten o'clock in the morning, after serving the baby breakfast and washing the clothes, it is still early to prepare lunch. At this stage, the mother is relatively free. Around three or four in the afternoon, the mother and baby have just finished their nap and both are in good spirits. There is still some time before preparing dinner, so they are relatively free at this time.

(2) The probability of the call being connected is higher if the user’s name is called out immediately.

The user's name is not written very clearly, and sometimes you need some tricks to guess it. For example, guessing from the username, some usernames will be "Xiao Haohao's Mom". When making a phone call, if the first question is: Are you Haohao's mother? The probability of being connected is slightly higher.

(3) If you first promise to cooperate with the interview, you are more likely to receive a small gift.

People are profit-seeking animals. If you can get a small gift by answering a phone call and chatting for a few minutes, the probability of being rejected will be much smaller.

The above are some of the ways I can think of for now to understand users and their needs. These are all common methods found in textbooks. There is nothing particularly novel about them. My colleagues said that some of them even look particularly "stupid". However, colleagues also said that sometimes methods that seem "stupid" can actually work.

This is what I want to say. In my previous work, I often found that sometimes methods that seem "stupid" can actually work.

Don’t be afraid to talk to your users. In most cases, they won’t reject you. In most cases, they will give you more than you give them.

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