What is User Growth Marketing? How to do it?

Have you noticed that there are more and more operational terms in the market, such as live streaming, private domain traffic, short video marketing, and other types of term strategies. They are so fancy that it’s dizzying.

Why are there so many noun strategies? Since it is becoming increasingly difficult to generate traffic and sell goods, everyone cannot find a good direction and is becoming more and more anxious. They want to rely on these strategies to help companies break through current difficulties and find long-term business directions.

This anxiety also reflects the current situation: the overall environment is not good, traffic dividends are getting smaller and smaller, traffic costs are getting higher and higher, business owners are paying more and more attention to the actual effects of marketing, and have little money for advertising exposure.

To answer the question of why the entire growth environment has slowly evolved into the current situation, we need to look for answers from the source, understand the development context of the entire environment, and while looking for answers, explore a more efficient and lower-cost growth path to solve existing growth problems.

The entire article will be divided into 5 major sections:

1. How is the growth logic different between the past and present?

2. A growth gameplay that is more suitable for players with zero resources.

3. Find your core users.

4. Call on everyone to contribute to your dream.

5. How to operate core users well.

1. How is the growth logic different from the past and present?

In the past, growth was achieved through exposure, and the method used was brainwashing slogans coupled with media bombardment.

For example, this year I will not accept any gifts during the holidays, and the only gifts I will accept are advertisements such as Melatonin. Combined with the constant propaganda bombardment from CCTV and local satellite TV stations, this repeated brainwashing advertising is very impressive.

And there were fewer products in the past. When you don’t know what to choose, you usually choose what you are familiar with.

When business owners discover that brainwash advertising can significantly increase sales, they will follow suit. Moreover, in the era of traditional media, users have few channels to obtain new information and can only obtain it through television and radio. As long as these two high grounds are occupied, product advertisements will continue to circulate in the minds of consumers, forming a foundation of trust and cognition for the product, leading to purchase.

However, this brainwashing model can only be implemented under the premise of having capital, being able to spend money, and daring to spend money, and the audience may not be able to maintain the enthusiasm for a few days and forget the information.

In this era of information explosion, it is difficult to make people remember something simply by relying on advertising exposure. Even if they remember it, it is difficult to form the perception that they buy from you.

People have more and more choices. No longer influenced by the single channel of the past, the scenario for purchasing a certain product will be affected by more forms of information.

Think about your spare time after get off work. Do you still watch TV or listen to the radio? Most people probably spend their time on various apps.

For example, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, the original intention of developing these apps is to capture people's attention, and attention is money.

The scenarios for buying things are becoming more and more diverse. Maybe when you are browsing Xiaohongshu, you see a diary sharing makeup knowledge, such as: how to apply lipstick to look better, how to choose lipstick to better suit your temperament, and then you place an order after being attracted.

In addition to tutorials, some brands will create product stories on it. I have made a blackhead removal product before. The basic story process is:

Describe the pain point. Blackheads are unsightly and make your overall condition worse. If you accidentally stay up late, you will easily get irritated and become swollen and inflamed.

Explain the cause of the problem: Use your own real experience to substitute. Due to work reasons, you often stay up late, which leads to blackheads. In order to solve the problem, you ask many people how to solve the problem and what the cause of the problem is.

The last step: After going through a lot of hardships, I finally found a way to remove blackheads. I recommend this secret recipe for removing blackheads to everyone.

After seeing these knowledge tutorials, you will develop interest and trust in the products, have a desire to learn more, and continue to search on the platform. The more positive reviews you find about the products, the more you want to buy them.

At this time, the brand only needs to continue to add brand-related tutorials and stories on the platform, and users will convince themselves.

The content of this kind of knowledge tutorial is more technical than brainwash advertisements, because it takes a certain amount of time and content foundation to collect tutorials, collect stories, and organize the stories into tutorials.

The above mentioned is the grass-planting type of growth. There is another very popular simple and crude model: fission type of growth.

Regarding fission, although it can quickly grow to tens of thousands of users, in my understanding, growth is not only the growth of users, but also the growth of products.

First of all, for fission growth, it must have fission thinking, which should be reflected in the existence of an interest mechanism in the sharing and invitation links, and the conscious improvement of the efficiency of these two links.

For example, in a fission activity, A sees B’s poster. After A scans B’s poster and purchases a course, a window will pop up on the carrier that purchased the course, such as a mini program or APP, to inform A that if he invites someone else, he will get the same reward as B. A is encouraged to forward the poster, and then A's next level C follows the same process as A.

This is the most basic distribution fission process. Reward reminders are designed for each link to maximize the number of people sharing and inviting.

The second is product growth. The ultimate goal is to differentiate from other brands and leave a mark in the minds of consumers, making it recognizable.

The functions of the product must be effective and verified by the market. Truly solve user pain points instead of creating a false demand.

The product is 1, and growth can make 1 become 100, 1000 or even more. If the product is not good, growth will hardly work.

2. A growth gameplay that is more suitable for players with zero resources

After understanding the development history of growth, you will find that there are many ways to play, but many of them require you to have certain resources. For ordinary players like us with 0 resources, what is the growth gameplay that is more suitable for entry?

First of all, you need to have your product, and the product needs to be verified by the market. The second is to have hardcore fan users. Once you have 1,000 hardcore users, they will completely trust you and buy the products you promote, then you basically won’t have to worry about food and clothing.

For example, before Xiaomi made mobile phones, it established its own mobile phone community, interacting with mobile phone enthusiasts in the community to find out what needs are not being met. It asked these enthusiasts to give suggestions, and they produced products based on the suggestions. This is Xiaomi's fan marketing.

Let users participate in product design and marketing, and turn users into fans of the product. Let them spread spontaneously. When friends recommend this marketing to friends, the trust will be stronger and the transaction rate will increase significantly.

3. Find your core users

In the early stage, we need to find these 1,000 core users and gather them together.

How to find it? First think about what product you want to make?

This can be a virtual course or a physical product.

When he was the course. You need to have a certain level of content skills. You should break down the courses you want to take into small knowledge points according to the catalogs in various books, and write articles about your past experiences and publish them on self-media platforms.

For example, if you want to take courses in the field of operations, then the field of operations is divided into user operations, content operations, community operations, etc. You can find books in these fields, combine their catalog or keywords in the books with your past experience as an operations manager, write articles, and post them on Bird Brother's Notes or Everyone is a Product Manager.

The second is a physical product. The initial cost may be a little higher. You need to make a product, which can be a bowl of noodles, a book, or a cup of milk tea.

After making the product, find some influential bloggers and opinion leaders in the city where you want to start a business and ask them to try your product.

Conduct trial and error on a small scale, get real feedback, and then make improvements. There is no need to worry that others will be unwilling to try, as everyone has a desire to teach others. When you are particularly sincere, others will be willing to help you to the best of their ability.

After figuring out what product to make, find seed users to start with.

Here are three methods that are more useful to everyone: 1. Mutual promotion, 2. Content growth, 3. Community links, and 4. Offline links.

1. User mutual promotion, in simple terms, means finding a public account of the same type as yours, writing a recommendation article for each other and placing it in the other’s public account. Promote the information of each other’s official accounts and direct users of each other’s official accounts.

2. To grow content, you need to write some valuable content and post it on self-media platforms, using some baits, such as asking you to send gift packages of 10 classic projects that can earn you over 10,000 yuan from January to December, etc., to attract users to add you.

3. The link to the community is to search for relevant groups on Douban and the new version. For example, if I am an operator, I can search for operation groups, entrepreneurship groups, and new media groups accordingly and join the group. Here, you don’t directly enter the group to advertise, but enter the group to output some useful information or information packages, and attract users to add you through useful information and information packages.

You can also actively add users in the group. Note that the adding words can be written as: we are all in the same group, communicating with each other, or I heard that you have some experience in operations and I want to learn from you. Be sincere and others will generally approve your application.

4. Give the products to more than 20 nearby stores to try, first solve the problem of nearby customers, and then expand slowly.

4. Call on everyone to contribute to your dream

Attract classmates who think you are great through your content/products. Collect their opinions and ask them if they are willing to work together to create a systematic course/product. Collect their opinions and feedback to polish the course more specifically.

After you let initial users try your product, it will be tiring to chat with them privately one by one. We need to set up a group to collect everyone's opinions in a unified way.

But before creating a group, you should think clearly about what the meaning of the community is?

It’s not just about bringing some people in. My mission is to gather a group of people to do something together and know why we are doing it. Group members must have a sense of mission to stay in the group and help us test and polish the product.

For example, my hardcore fan group, I am willing to make the best milk tea and the best virtual courses, and I need your support and help. When I succeed, I will leave a mark for you in my product story and give you corresponding material incentives.

Once you have this kind of community awareness. The community positioning and subsequent direction will not be distorted, and the group will not become a place for advertising.

5. How to operate core users well

After you have die-hard fans, you still need to organize activities regularly. I won’t talk about many very specific things here, but I will give you a framework for thinking. How to carry out subsequent operations?

There are two key points in the thinking framework: 1. User contact points, 2. User contact product life cycle.

1. User contact points

First think about what points users will come into contact with at each stage after the product is launched?

If you are doing online operations.

Basic process for traders:

Prepare benefits, find out user needs based on user surveys, design posters accordingly, and share them.

Basic user process:

The first contact point is this poster. All the information on the poster can be optimized.

The second contact point is the carrier where users scan the code to enter the transaction, such as the mini program, the content that pops up after the APP, the overall layout of the page, the sharing materials that pop up, whether the forwarded materials are simple and convenient enough, and whether there are corresponding words to refer to when forwarding to the circle of friends to invite friends to sign up for the event to avoid over-thinking.

When you think through every point that the user comes into contact with, you will have a very clear perception of the user flow, which can help you optimize the path in subsequent activities.

If it is an offline product operation, there is a physical store.

The first contact point: The sign and door head that the user sees outside the door can attract him.

The second contact point: when the user enters the store, whether the clerk is enthusiastic enough and whether he greets them is also the basis for the impression score.

The decoration, music and smell inside are all very important. Are the goods on the shelves neatly arranged and is there any dust? Whether or not one can quickly find the products they want are all touchpoints for users.

The third contact point: In terms of the experience process, when you want to take a break in the store, are there chairs and hot water?

The fourth touchpoint: at checkout. Does the store give him some small benefits or surprises, such as lucky temptation, 10% or 20% discount, or give him an ice cream?

Of course, these are just relatively simple paths that users access. As long as you are willing to think and reflect, there will be many links and details that can be optimized.

The second is the user's life cycle .

The time users come into contact with the product varies in different time periods.

When you are a novice and just start browsing or registering, you don’t make any purchases.

During the understanding period, they only purchase front-end traffic-generating products and do not renew for products with higher value. For these customers, the main follow-up means are text messages and phone calls to re-reach them.

In the mature stage, customers who have already purchased the product have a certain degree of trust in the product, and we can ask them to help us attract new customers and continue to convert them to purchase other course products. At the same time, we can use some tiered rewards and coupons to motivate users to bring in more potential user groups.

Finally, I would like to summarize. The growth logic in the past and now is actually different. In the past, people were attracted by a single advertising channel, and then they were washed down layer by layer until they finally became users who bought the products.

Now we need to start from the overall situation, from the MVP of the minimum viable product at the beginning, study the users, study the products, and continuously optimize each touch point through these two lines of users and products. Transfer this traffic to your own private traffic pool to shape the brand value of the product.

When these two lines move forward in tandem, your growth loop will become more and more complete.

What I hope most is that after reading this, you can put it into practice accordingly, rather than just learning theory.

Author: Paian Thinking

Source: Paian Thinking