Analysis of Bilibili’s membership marketing system!

"Are you messing with me again? I remember the fear of being dominated by the entrance exam in the early days." "It was all thanks to the ghost animal zone that saved me." "The fake two-thorn ape turned out to be me." "It seems that the last time I answered questions was seven years ago." "My youth is back." "Anime is all about voice actors, it's numb." "I never thought that one day I would be doing advanced math questions on Bilibili"...

Recently, Bilibili launched a hardcore membership function, allowing some Level 6 users to rediscover the feeling when they first joined the site to answer questions.

Answering questions is a unique community culture of Bilibili and a common memory point for many users. The more difficult the question, the more exciting it is. But this time, Bilibili allows users who pass the hardcore membership exam first to set exam questions for those who come later.

After the first batch of hardcore members who successfully passed the test obtained the right to set questions, in order to "torture" those who came later, some of the questions they set were too unpopular, even tricky and weird.

They also share their strategies and experiences in answering questions as "experienced people"; some start to deceive people in the comments, publishing some false "new rules" after becoming a hardcore member, misleading some uninformed users. As a result, users who later took the hardcore membership exam could only search for answers on Baidu while doing the questions in order to obtain the hardcore membership logo.

In just one week, challenging the hardcore membership advanced test has become a hot topic. It has to be said that Bilibili has turned even exams into a successful marketing campaign.

So, why does Bilibili launch hardcore membership at this stage?

In recent years, after B station accelerated its commercialization, its user base has tended to be diversified. Especially after "Houlang" broke the circle, a large number of new users have poured in. Old users are dissatisfied with the dilution of the core two-dimensional culture. How to integrate new users with existing users on the site, how to provide old users with a better experience environment and improve the stickiness of old users, are the directions of B station in the next few years.

B Station CEO Chen Rui once said that B Station’s short-term goal is to reach 400 million MAU by 2023.

The emergence of hardcore members has allowed old users of Bilibili to regain a sense of belonging and recognition and continue to work for their love.

Be happy in the collapse, this is the new world of LV6

Previously, a user complained: "There are more and more level 6 users on the site. After reaching the maximum level, there may be no motivation. I hope the platform can have new ways to play."

Recently, Bilibili has launched an internal test of a new feature for active users who have reached level 6 - hardcore membership (equivalent to the advanced version of level 6 users). Participate in 100 questions on your mobile phone. After passing the test, you can get the title of "Hardcore Member", unlock exclusive rights such as the LV6 special logo (little lightning), hardcore member barrage mode baeta, LV6 trial question setting rights, special attention, and doubling of the blacklist limit.

However, the test questions are quite difficult and the angles of the questions are quite strange. Let’s first feel the test style of hardcore members:

Jackie Chan's nose is bigger than which of the following?

How is the puppet Ryuju activated in the anime "Clockwork Planet"?

At how many seconds on the countdown did Director Kim win the game?

How much do strawberries cost at the place where Liu Huaqiang buys melons?

Even a level 10 scholar of "The Legend of Zhen Huan" would be confused when seeing "What did Chun'er eat for breakfast when she complained to Zhen Huan about gaining weight?" I understood the question and the content was familiar, but the answer was a small detail in the scene that I would not notice.

So there was such a dramatic scene: an undergraduate student majoring in chemistry had to search on his iPad for the answer to the fourth question: "Which substance has carbon atoms arranged in an sp2 structure?" The whole test process can be described as "the physics teacher was speechless and the chemistry teacher cried."

Mr. Jiang, the UP host in the technology area, simply did the questions in the live broadcast room, turning an individual test into a group exam, and successfully completed the challenge with the help of netizens and search.

Many users who were tortured and frustrated by the test questions complained that the questions were too "hardcore" and made fun of their own lack of knowledge. Hardcore members have become a hot topic in popular social media.

There are also some talented people who think the questions are not difficult and even ask to shorten the time for answering the questions.

In order to finish answering the questions in the shortest time, one UP host challenged himself to pass the test by choosing all A (the test rules require answering 60 or more questions correctly within 120 minutes to pass). However, according to probability theory, the score will not be high in this case, and this is indeed the case. The UP host finally scored 19 points and failed to advance.

Complaints aside, the most discussed topic in the comment section is how to successfully pass the hardcore membership test? The generally recognized more reliable method is to choose only one partition and focus on answering one type of question. Moreover, the question bank in the ghost area is relatively simple, and it is easier to search for answers on the Internet.

LV6 users who passed the exam with great difficulty, in addition to sharing their own answering strategies and experiences, also began to torture those who came later. For example, some users said that after becoming hardcore members, they could no longer make three consecutive draws, trying to confuse some users who were not aware of the situation with false "new regulations."

Some users even showed off the little lightning logo, which was ridiculed by other users. The whole process generated a lot of interaction.

In addition, the right to set questions has also been "ruined" by hardcore members. Some people use the jokes and unpopular knowledge accumulated over the years as questions, and post the submitted questions publicly, which has drawn everyone's pleas for mercy and advice: "The validity period is only 1 year. I advise you to be kind and avoid backlash."

Delegating the right to set questions to users is a very good community self-circulation and self-operation model. While maintaining the community atmosphere and increasing user activity, it is also necessary to optimize the question review mechanism to make the questions more relevant to the field. Many users reported that when doing advanced math questions in the knowledge field, there were options in the history field in the sports field, and some unpopular knowledge could not even be found with answers on the Internet.

Hardcore members also have an exclusive barrage mode. Once it is turned on, the system will give priority to displaying barrage content sent by other hardcore members. It is equivalent to creating a good barrage environment for LV6 members.

How has Bilibili’s membership system evolved?

This is not the first time that Bilibili has used membership logos for marketing. Every April Fool's Day, Bilibili will change the pink logo of the annual senior membership into a green junior membership logo, and the nickname will also become emerald green. Therefore, "You are green" has also become a greeting for users to interact during April Fool's Day.

Why Bilibili can play with membership identification? This has to start with Bilibili’s unique membership system.

In the early days of Bilibili, an invitation code system was adopted. Registration was not opened until May 20, 2013, when it was changed to a registration and answering system. The six-level membership model was modeled after a certain scientific achievement of a certain railgun.

The membership level reflects the user's activity on Bilibili. Different membership levels have different community privileges. The newly registered user is at level 0. Only after passing a 100-question test (60 points to pass, the questions include barrage etiquette, as well as some basic knowledge of animation, comics, and games) to become a formal member can one have a membership level. The membership level can be upgraded after gaining enough experience points.

Because of the entry examination, the twelfth-month retention rate of Bilibili users has remained at 80% or above for many years. Moreover, unlike other video websites, Bilibili opens up barrage and interactive permissions in terms of level incentives - barrage color settings, advanced barrage, private message comments with UP hosts, and other operations.

Since its inception, Bilibili has always adopted a membership model of "genuine, free, and ad-free". On October 10, 2016, Bilibili launched its first membership service with a premium membership system, with payment types including monthly, quarterly, and annual premium memberships.

Value-added services have improved Bilibili's existing membership system, and the payment mechanism has enabled those born in the 1990s and 2000s to build up copyright awareness. With the continuous iteration of premium membership content and functions, users' way of expressing their support for Bilibili has gradually become "buy an annual membership for this small broken site" and "can I watch this without paying?"

To a certain extent, the membership system is integrated with the community spirit of "generating electricity for love", and the logos and exclusive functions related to specific groups of people are also common ways for Bilibili to provide users with a better interactive experience.

It can be seen that this time the hardcore membership internal test mainly selects highly active LV6 users. The purpose is to hit the old users' points again through the question-answering test and increase the old users' stickiness to the platform.

B Station's Radicalism and Restraint

Bilibili has its own considerations behind launching the hardcore premium membership at this stage.

In the past few years, Bilibili has undergone a long process of de-labeling, that is, removing subculture labels such as the second dimension, ghost animal, and niche that remain in the public's impression. After going public, Bilibili began to implement a business strategy centered on user growth and made a series of attempts to break the circle, which were very effective.

From the short film "The Next Wave" in 2020 to the 2021 New Year's Eve Gala, Bilibili has crossed boundaries and gone beyond its circle time and time again. Just recently, some of the top Tik Tok bloggers moved to Bilibili and quickly gained millions of followers.

But these contents do not match the original temperament of Bilibili. In other words, while gaining a large number of new users, it also caused disgust among the existing hardcore 2D users on the site. Because not all new users understand the rules and etiquette of Bilibili.

Previously, a UP host once said that in fact, the two-dimensional world is only an important category of Bilibili. So, apart from the two-dimensional world, what kind of content is suitable for Bilibili? The answer is hardcore content.

But as more and more people of all kinds flock to Bilibili to make money and marketing accounts are everywhere, the overall quality of the content is being diluted at a visible rate, bad money is driving out good money, and those high-quality UP hosts who originally generated money with love will find it increasingly difficult to produce content.

Especially in the third quarter of 2021, investment losses attracted a lot of public pressure.

In fact, in the past few years, Bilibili has developed rapidly, and its user activity and company market value have been approaching or even surpassing the top domestic video platforms. After breaking the circle many times, Bilibili has already earned face, and the remaining time is needed to transform the face into real substance.

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