After 6 hours of review, I summarized these 5 user growth experiences

Growth is one of the most important tasks for an enterprise, and growth also requires skills. Seizing opportunities is very important. Seizing opportunities and continuous innovation are ways for enterprises to grow. Whether an enterprise can grow healthily requires multiple factors and development potential.

The vent thing

A trend is never a bad thing. Something like the current dou+ will only make good entrepreneurs and companies grow faster and expel bad money from the market faster. There will be some unexpected things, after all, there are quite a few bugs in Earth OL’s algorithm. But doing things with high probability and pursuing results with high probability is the creed of growth that keeps you at the forefront.

There are two types of trends: one is the industry/model trend, and the other is the traffic trend. The former is what the company has to do, mainly due to the catalysis of capital. Especially now, there is too much money in the market but few good investment targets, resulting in the growth period of emerging tracks becoming shorter and shorter.

In the past, the Hundred Regiments Campaign took five years to come to an end, but now online education has become an oligopoly in less than a year. The acceleration of the track’s growth period also means the acceleration of the growth of practitioners, so we will find that those industries that are driving growth are often those that are in the limelight. If you are doing growth, it is also recommended to go to the hot spot.

Only companies in the developmental stage have large room for growth, and only growth has room for growth; companies in the mature stage will only be confined to a small area. I'm not targeting anyone, I'm just saying that's human nature.

Chasing traffic trends is something that many growth initiatives need to do. You have to do what others dare not do. For example, go to an emerging platform to get traffic and be the first to simulate a mature offline model online.

My biggest feeling from working in this industry in the past few years is that following the strategy is indeed very stable, but if you follow it, it means that you are placing your success or failure on resources and talents. As for this kind of thing, if the giants enter the market, they will crush us and there will be no chance of winning.

There is no startup company that is doing well now that is not because it was the first to try something new, took a bite, and happened to reap a wave of dividends, and has since been far ahead of its peers. Looking at those followers who are taking every step as it comes, they may make money, but there is absolutely no possibility of sustainable development.

The best strategy for poor people to go to the casino is to go all in. There is still a chance of winning in one hand. If you win, run away. If you lose, accept the loss. After all, long-term gambling will lead to losses. The dealer takes a commission, and there is also a momentum buff after a round of bets.

Starting a business is also gambling, and those with large traffic are the dealers. Although the company is not just all-in, it invests heavily in innovation, which many companies cannot push forward. So theory is just theory. When it comes to oneself, one just can’t bring oneself to do it, and eventually chronic death becomes the norm.

What is most important for growth?

I used to think that growth followed dividends.

Because all growth in the market is based on techniques, and techniques are effective methods under the current trends. This thing is really effective and has misled me for a long time. Although the technique is short-term, multiple short-term effects can be pieced together into a long-term effect. This was my misunderstanding in the past. As long as you keep learning new ways to play, you can maintain rapid growth.

But in reality, no one or any company can always follow the dividends . Trying to piece together the long-term from the short-term will only lead to exhaustion and a lack of strategic continuity.

Bonuses are important, skills are important, but you only need to get one wave to complete the accelerated start. For example, Himalaya’s ecological loopholes, Baowan’s distribution, Wandou’s channels, Dongao’s books, and Zhonghua’s offline. What will be needed after this is more strategic determination and long-termism.

Based on these, we can conclude that the most important things for growth are growth efficiency and scale space.

Whether a company or a track has room for scaling depends first on whether it can run a complete growth model. And this growth model often depends 80% on whether there is a complete main user link.

It means that a user comes in, does something first, then does something else, and then generates revenue, and the ROI is positive. The time it takes for users to complete this link, as well as the fixed cost of this link, often determine the ceiling of the track or company.

The link must be short enough; if the link is too long, it will not be scalable. You can refer to a series of methods such as Aha to extract the key points. Now the methodology on the market is relatively mature, and there are only a few short links. What to choose depends on the company's genes, and whether it can survive depends on the compatibility of the company's genes and the track.

For example, some online education platforms have many famous teachers, so they can offer large classes. Some schools, however, have good services and can only offer small classes.

Is hard cross mode okay?

Yes, but it will most likely fail. This is determined by people and organizations. Unless the company undergoes a major change, the tone will not change. There are only a few things that each person is suitable for doing, and there are only a few things that the companies managed by these people are suitable for doing. Before it is necessary to cross a stage, it is truly a great wisdom to give up nine and keep one.

The degree of productization of the main link is usually a company's competitive barrier. In the past, we often said that what China likes most and does best is model innovation.

But if you look back at the Internet today, there are indeed many models in one track, but there are also many competitors in each model. And often, once a model emerges, everyone will copy it and transform.

However, companies in the same track and with the same model may produce vastly different results. Putting aside the factors of resources and people, the result of the model is nothing more than the product of multiple links. The higher the degree of productization/standardization, the lower the cost and the higher the lower limit. The higher the quality of productization/standardization, the higher the labor efficiency and the higher the upper limit.

The polishing process is a delicate job, but as long as you calm down, it is just a matter of time. Therefore, it is a false proposition that the link ratio cannot be improved. Unless you hit the ceiling of the industry.

The biggest problem is still determination and resources. This model is not effective. How should we change it? Should we continue? Can the existing resources test it once or ten times? Can the company wait half a year or one month?

Therefore, in terms of getting results, it is more difficult for startups than for large companies. When carrying a shotgun to hunt, the difference between having 1 bullet or 10 bullets is more than 10 times.

Once the model is determined, the upper and lower limits of a model actually depend on only two points: the utilization efficiency of users in the model and the revenue scale space.

The former is a series of operations for user growth and scale operation, while the latter often depends on the matching degree between the monetization model and the growth method.

I want to emphasize here that I always believe that there is no difference between good and bad monetization methods, only differences in the degree of channel matching.

Sales Monetization and Traffic

As mentioned above, there is no high or low growth model, and there is no high or low monetization model. But the business models of companies born from the combination of the two do vary in quality.

Before solving the combinatorial problem, we need to clarify the factors. For the sake of convenience, we will exclude bilateral market businesses.

A one-sided market actually aims to solve two problems: one is users and the other is monetization.

Although a company will do both at the same time, it must have a relative advantage on one side in the early stage, otherwise it is nonsense. So should we solve the traffic problem first, or the sales problem first?

The answer from the Internet in the past few years has been relatively unified: solve the traffic problem first.

It doesn’t matter how bad the sales are, as long as the customer acquisition cost is low enough, there will be profits. As long as the customer acquisition speed is fast enough, there will be enough financing even without profit. So everyone will scramble to grab land. If there are enough users, the company can survive. If there are enough users, there will be enough room for trial and error, and the conversion rate will be gradually optimized.

However, in recent years, companies in different tracks have shown different strategies. Simply put, it depends on where the leverage of the track is. If the leverage is at the front end, the traffic model is mostly the main one. If the leverage is at the back end, sales often become the deciding factor.

This is also easy to understand. For leveraged front-end platforms such as e-commerce, for example, the profit of a product may be only a few dollars. If the customer acquisition cost is reduced by one dollar, the profit will increase by one dollar, which accounts for several tens of percent. For leverage on the back end, such as education, the front end can acquire dozens or hundreds of users at a low cost, and the revenue brought may be equivalent to one more order on the back end.

Is it difficult to place one more order? Disaster. But compared with the requirement of reducing costs by several tens of percent at the front end, I think it is relatively simple. The former is the market competition environment, and the latter is the optimization of closed processes. The difference is quite obvious.

But why do people always tend to solve front-end problems first? Because front-end problems are quantifiable, do not fluctuate much, and can be calculated.

I know how much the cost needs to be reduced to make the link passable, and I know in which direction I should make changes. If the click-through rate is low, change the click-through rate; if the landing page is not good, change the landing page; if the channel is not good, change the channel.

But the backend often doesn’t know how to change it. You can say increase the speed of follow-up, increase the frequency of follow-up, and improve the wording. But when it comes to human implementation, there will always be numerous mistakes and omissions.

In the final analysis, problems related to things are easy to solve, but problems related to people are difficult to solve. The front end is to deal with several people and then solve problems. The backend is about dealing with a group of people and solving people’s problems. The difficulty can be seen from this.

But the bug is that as the dividends have faded over the years, there is not much room for low-cost customer acquisition at the front end. Once market competition becomes the dominant factor, there is not much room for maneuverability.

So we will find that in recent years, leverage in the front-end track has begun to focus on retention and private domain. Leverage is in the high-priced track at the back end, and we began to pay attention to conversion rates and optimize personnel efficiency. The same model, but a slightly worse backend, often makes the difference between whether it can be scaled.

Of course, there are still low-cost channels, and they need to be divided into different tracks. Part of the factor that determines the cost of advertising is the supply and demand of traffic, so it would be much better to avoid the top ones.

User traffic acquisition

User growth can be categorized into two types based on cost: paid and free. But how can it be completely free? It’s just that manual labor has replaced spending money, so ultimately it’s a question of leverage. Paid delivery has the highest leverage rate, followed by the distribution of high-quality content.

To be honest, if you have high-quality content, there is no shortage of traffic. There are so many content platforms, and there are many IPs that become popular one after another. But few companies are willing to take the time to do this.

The reason is very simple and difficult to control. Moreover, most of the companies that are good at content are companies that sell advertising. Companies that lack traffic are companies that sell products. A company with good products must have good content? The difference is actually quite big.

So the two more common categories are: either leveraging paid advertising platforms and optimizing links. Either the content platform focuses on quantity. But what is more interesting is the content promotion model such as dou+, French fries, and zhi+.

According to official statements, these are to speed up the distribution of good content and accelerate the death of bad content. From a content perspective, this is true. However, in terms of business model and traffic acquisition, it lowers the threshold for companies to acquire traffic through content.

You may not be able to produce content that will go viral through natural distribution, but you can produce content that is above average. From the data I know so far, as long as you have content of a few levels or above, you can obtain a large amount of low-cost traffic through the additional push method.

This is a low-lying area and it will take time to sharpen. As a result, companies that have achieved results now often keep silent, and companies that have not achieved results are unwilling to even try. In the Internet age, information is really closed. Invalid information breaks through regional boundaries, and valuable information is even more scarce.

The reason for the low cost is also easy to understand. High-quality content meets the ecological needs of the platform, and the platform is willing to maintain the ecology and give up part of the profits. Moreover, this is not something that can be achieved simply by having money, so the profits that the platform gives up will not be particularly large overall. At least for now.

If user growth is classified according to purpose, it can be classified into: scale, low cost, and utilization. Scaling depends on paid delivery and paid content distribution. Low cost means content acquisition and productization. Utilization tends to be standardized and private. I won’t go into detail in this article, I’ll get into it later.

Of course, the above are all general trends. It is difficult for some companies to turn around, while some companies are still fighting hard. Therefore, there are currently two strategies to save the country in a roundabout way: front-end online earning and back-end service. It has to be said that the ability to do dirty work, B-side resource barriers, and personnel genes are truly the company's moat.

A little private goods

Recently a friend sent me an article, which made me feel quite emotional. Three of them are:

• The hardest part in the workplace is proving your ability. And most of the time, there is nothing I can do.
• Trust is generated by performance, and performance is generated by trust.
• So far, there is no particularly good a priori method to measure ability. Until you do something amazing, you have no ability.

What’s quite coincidental is that in January and February of this year, about ten people who had a good relationship with each other started their own businesses together. I talked about this topic with them and some bosses some time ago, either in casual chats or consultations. The general conclusions are:

• In a company, important results are produced. Mostly after 8-12 months.
• In most cases, one does not reach a certain position because of the ability, but rather, one reaches a certain position first and then acquires the ability.

This made me reflect on my personal excessive focus on professional skills. In the past, I might have thought that professional skills accounted for 70% if a person wanted to be successful. Now I would think it's 30%, maybe even less.

Author: Ye Yasheng

Source: Yayoi Ye