Using the AARRR model, let’s talk about APP operations!

The AARRR funnel model, also known as the Pirate Model, explains the five indicators for achieving user growth, and can also help us better explain the principles of acquiring and maintaining customers.

I have read so many articles in this community and recently bought "Growth Hacker". Before reading, in order to improve my thinking ability, let me talk about it on paper: AARRR model talks about APP operation.

The structural framework of the whole article is as follows:

1. User Acquisition

There are many channels for acquiring app users on the market, but they can be roughly divided into two types: advertising acquisition and recommendation fission from old users.

1. Advertisement acquisition

1) Channel selection

When placing advertisements, you need to carefully choose the delivery channels. In this era where everyone is their own media, the channels have also become more diversified.

Big Vs in vertical fields on media platforms such as Weibo, Zhihu, and Xiaohongshu often have good promotion effects on products that match their fans/audiences, because their fans/audiences have certain label characteristics, but these products are more like commodities rather than Internet apps.

Official advertising platforms such as WeChat and ByteDance have no disadvantages except for their high prices. These large platforms use big data to provide advertisers with personalized user screening dimensions. For example, you can choose the age range, gender, personality preferences, etc. of the target users. After screening through these conditions, the user groups reached by the advertisements are more likely to be retained by your APP.

When placing advertisements, you also need to regularly check and compare the quality of users coming from each channel, and appropriately screen and compare the advertising effects of each channel to seek the highest advertising returns.

2) Advertising copy

The content of the advertisement is the key factor in determining whether users are interested in the app. For graphic advertisements, the main functions of the product need to be expressed concisely to attract the attention of target users.

Please think carefully about the phrase “attract the attention of target users”. If a product promotion advertisement promotes the product to the sky in an exaggerated way, but the actual situation is not satisfactory, and a large number of users flock to the product because of this advertisement, but are disappointed and uninstall the product in the end, it will all be a waste of time. Will the product owner still dwell on the vanity of a short-term increase in user registrations?

An e-commerce app promotional ad said "Users can get 100 yuan after successful registration!" But what was given was a 100 yuan coupon within the app, 10 coupons of 10 yuan each, and the coupons had to be used after spending 200 yuan.

There are countless advertisements on the market that play this kind of word game. This advertisement really succinctly expresses the core function of the product: "cheap and discounted prices." But when I downloaded and registered with great joy, I thought I had found a treasure and could get it for free.

However, the instructions for using this set of coupons slapped me in the face. At this time, I felt that I was deceived. On the premise that I already own several e-commerce apps, I would not uninstall them and keep them for the New Year!

Of course, if you look at this advertisement from another angle, the result will be completely opposite: the promotion effect of ordinary advertisements for this app is not good, but the number of user registrations increases several times due to advertisements with incentive inducements. At this time, even if a lot of users are lost, I believe that the number of users who stay in the end will be not low, and it will only affect the brand image and reputation.

Advertising programs can also achieve good promotional effects by moderately taking advantage of hot topics, but be selective and avoid taking advantage of all hot topics.

2. Recommend fission

1) Active sharing (user loyalty)

Users' active sharing can also be divided into two major reasons: showing off and recommending.

For example, when I win the game "Peace Elite", I will click the share button to share it with my good friends to show off my gaming skills so that he won't mock me for my poor gaming skills. Showing off appeals to the vanity of users.

When I like a small and beautiful photo-editing software, I may recommend it to a friend who loves taking photos. At this time, I really think that this app is very good and hope that it can also help my friend. The recommendation captures the user's desire to share.

Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between recommendation and showing off. For example, after I finished reading the "Ordinary World" series of books on WeChat Reading, I shared my reading results with a classmate who had mentioned this book in front of me. At this time, is it a recommendation or showing off?

If you want to increase the number of times users actively share and encourage them to develop the habit of sharing, you need to control the scenarios that allow users to show off and recommend. The above-mentioned apps have set up sharing entrances in corresponding scenarios, which plays a certain guiding role invisibly.

2) Passive sharing (activity operation)

Users’ passive sharing mainly comes from the attraction of rewards, such as Taobao’s Double Eleven building promotion and Pinduoduo’s price cuts. In the past two years, Taobao's Double Eleven event of building a building and raising cats has been criticized, with users complaining that it is too complicated and labor-intensive and the rewards are merely so-so.

Admittedly, I also think that planning such a complicated event is annoying and the user experience is not good, but it does not rule out that they want to integrate the habit of "Taobao Double Eleven Shopping" into the lives of as many people as possible.

Just imagine, for me, whether Taobao holds similar activities on Double Eleven or not, I will buy a lot of things on Double Eleven. However, there are always some people who may not have shopping plans. It is precisely because of their friends’ sharing that they follow the trend. This may be the warm-up effect of the event, attracting more users to participate and forming a national shopping frenzy.

Organize activities to attract users to participate in sharing. The degree of user participation in the activities is proportional to the attractiveness of the rewards to users. Therefore, in this regard, product owners need to grasp the user's psychology well, and also need to consider the investment cost.

2. User Activation

My understanding of user activation refers to making users active on our products (a slightly rough understanding). It’s mainly about the experience of core functions and first impression.

1. Experience the core functions

What will a new user do first when he enters the app?

Currently on the market, except for some tool apps and game products, other Internet products basically do not require a lot of boring guidance, and new users can easily get started. So what will a new user do? What’s the first thing they do after opening the app and registering? What does the product owner want them to do?

Take Sina Weibo for example. A new user who has just registered has many options. He can post on Weibo, browse Weibo, check the hot search list, and edit his personal information first. As a product designer, I would prefer users to browse and post on Weibo, and hope that users can participate in this huge information community.

This can well explain why when I downloaded and installed TikTok and opened it, what caught my eye was a short video instead of logging into the system. In fact, these subtle differences are not obvious here. I also think that in this example, isn’t it different to log in and then watch the video?

It's different because in my impression I know what TikTok is, but what if it is an unfamiliar app? When I open it, it will remind me to log in and obtain permissions. Due to my sensitivity to personal information, I will naturally choose to exit and return. At this time, it will lose such a "noble" user like me, haha.

2. First impression

When people meet, they will have a first impression. Although the old saying goes "Don't judge a book by its cover", the first impression determines whether I am interested in you and whether I want to continue communicating with you. The same is true for people and products. The first impression can be the brand influence/reputation, the first page the user opens the product, or the product advertising screen.

3. User Retention

Why do users continue to use your product? I will expand on two dimensions: active and passive.

1. Be proactive

Before designing a product, demand analysis and market research will be conducted. These two steps will determine the user attributes of your product. What kind of people will prefer our product? A college student or a veteran in the workplace? Housewives from third- and fourth-tier cities or extroverted young people from first- and second-tier cities?

The biggest reason why users actively choose your product is that the product’s functions meet their needs.

The Five Forces Model can explain this phenomenon very well (the Five Forces Model is an analytical method used to analyze the existing competitiveness of an enterprise. It is explained using Douyin as an example. Here, "products meet user needs" is regarded as a manifestation of competitiveness):

1. The competitiveness of existing competing products in the same industry is insufficient (Weishi compared to Douyin)
2. The barrier to entry for potential competitors is not low (iQiyi compared to TikTok)
3. The substitution ability of substitutes is not strong (too many to mention)
4. Suppliers have limited bargaining power (large platforms, content creators have low bargaining power)
5. Consumers have limited bargaining power (large platforms have low bargaining power for consumers. Note: Currently, there is no strong bargaining relationship between Douyin users and the platform. This may be more reflected in Douyin ads)

After having a group of users, it is necessary to continuously update and iterate the product based on user feedback and market environment to keep it competitive. (Data collection - User behavior data analysis - Product optimization - Grayscale testing - Focus on competing products)

2. Passive

The reasons why users passively use products can be divided into two aspects: interest attraction and compulsion:

1) Benefit attraction

The most common and applicable user operation method is to use reward mechanisms to motivate users to perform a series of behaviors within the app, increase user usage time, and enhance user stickiness.

Gamified operations can be seen everywhere in Internet products, such as Meituan and Ele.me's fruit-watering game, in which players can get a free portion of fruit by watering fruit seeds and growing them to maturity; and Alipay's tree-planting and chicken-raising game.

Why is gamification so popular? I think: games have a certain addictive effect. Maybe users initially play the game of watering fruits/planting trees and raising chickens just to get a free fruit/tree, but what happens after the user persists for a period of time? Daily/emotional/social (this senior user of Alipay tree planting has some understanding of this).

2) Forced

Products that have to be used for work and life, such as DingTalk on some parents' mobile phones, internal clock-in apps for corporate employees, some G-end products, etc. As for B-end SASS, they also need to be used for work reasons, but this should not be classified as forced use, because SASS products also meet the needs of corporate employees for work scenarios.

4. User Conversion

For current Internet products, user conversion is still mainly based on advertising and payment for value-added services.

1. Advertising

1) Active click

Why do users actively watch ads? That means you must gain something after reading it, and the reward you get must be attractive and urgent.

eg1: When I wanted to use Baidu Netdisk to download a 2G software installation package that I needed to install urgently, I found that my download speed was 10kb as I had not activated my membership, and it was estimated to take more than 50 hours to complete. At this time, there is a button that prompts you to enjoy 5 minutes of VIP high-speed download by watching a 30-second video. After watching the video, the download speed is as high as 10m/s, and it is expected to be completed in 3 minutes.

eg2: I subscribed to iQiyi VIP for one month. On the last day and the last hour, I was watching the 40th episode of Nirvana in Fire. But when I wanted to watch the next episode, I found that my membership had been used up and I had no right to continue watching. And I didn’t want to subscribe to VIP for another month just for the remaining two episodes. At this time, a pop-up window pops up, and the text says "Dear user, are you willing to watch a 180s video in exchange for a 1-hour membership?"

Let me ask you, if you were me, would you take the initiative to watch the video? Users actively click on ads, which reflects the urgency of the scenario and the attractiveness of the reward.

2) Passive

There are also some mandatory display ads in advertising, such as app splash screen ads, WeChat public account content ads, Moments ads, etc. Passive means that these ads will be displayed no matter how users view them.

These ads have a certain impact on user experience, especially some rogue ads that deliberately set wrong close symbols to induce users to click. Of course, there are some that have very little impact, such as WeChat Moments ads, which are displayed in a graphic format similar to Moments, which can weaken users' sensitivity to ads.

2. Payment for value-added services

What are value-added services?

Suppose a company rents an isolated island for tourists to visit. Ordinary users row boats from land to the island by themselves, while VIP users arrive on the company's speedboat.

In order to make the tourist attraction popular, the company cannot prohibit users from rowing manually and only allow them to take expensive speedboats to reach the isolated island. However, in order to make more money, the operator has to set up multiple methods and services to meet the different needs of users. The key to distinguishing value-added services from ordinary ones is differentiation.

Differentiation is not as simple as distinguishing between these two methods. The key point is whether the ordinary model is still attractive to most users after differentiation, and whether the gap between value-added services and ordinary models can induce some users to choose the paid conversion path.

If the user experience of the free model is reduced in order to highlight the value-added services, it may cause a large number of original users to leave; if the two differentiations are not obvious, then what can be used to attract users to pay?

I don’t have an answer either, but I think we can start with user awareness. The future payment model for value-added services will tend to be personalized and scenario-based.

For example, if I want to be a member of iQiyi, but I just want to watch a VIP movie, then I need to be a VIP member for at least one month. However, most people are reluctant to do so and have to borrow from friends. For this demand scenario, if it is changed to: paying 1 yuan, you will have the right to watch a VIP movie for one month. Would this be better?

5. Recommendations

The recommendation has been shown in the first part of user acquisition. I think it is more important to control the scenario.

Author: The future is coming, no need to wait for me

Source: The future is here, no need to wait for me