3 strategies for marketing growth in 2020!

Growth is a double-edged sword. It can solve many problems in the development process, but it can also cover up many contradictions. Enterprises must correctly understand growth, take advantage of the buffer period it brings to the enterprise, discover problems in a timely manner, and make up for shortcomings.

What is the strategy for marketing growth in the second half of 2020?

Below, enjoy ~ 

“Marketing strategy is a complete customer value creation system that leads the company to acquire a unique competitive position. Its core is to maintain the company’s sustainable growth. Its essence is a market-driven strategy.”

Philip Kotler, the "Father of Modern Marketing"

I hope everyone can view marketing as a growth strategy, focusing on all aspects of value creation, integrating relevant departments and positions into one, responding quickly to external changes, and ultimately achieving the goal of growth.

What is growth?

Real growth is to connect more users with the value of the company's existing products, that is, to increase the number of effective users of the product over a period of time, thereby achieving growth in sales, revenue and profits.

What is refined growth?

Refined growth is growth achieved based on refined operations and precise marketing.

To achieve growth, we must pay attention to the following points:

Entering the digital age, companies need to achieve a mindset transformation towards data-driven growth, truly help companies implement big data analysis and applications, and give classic strategic theories the wings of digital growth.

According to the 2019 annual report disclosed by Xiaomi Group on the evening of March 31, as of December 31, 2019, Xiaomi has invested in more than 290 companies and expanded its investment to supply chain companies. The motivation behind this is, on the one hand, to provide more products and services to "Mi Fans", so as to achieve the goal of tapping into more value and long-term value of "Mi Fans".

On the other hand, while improving its own product portfolio, it also plays a role in attracting customers from the invested companies, thereby achieving the goal of customer growth.

1. Good products are the cornerstone of growth

If there is no good product, no matter how fast the marketing promotion is and how loud the fanfare is, the final result will inevitably be a dead end.

Philip Kotler believes:

Marketing is not about selling products or services in a savvy way; it is the art of creating real customer value.

Sean Eills, the "Father of Growth Hacker", believes in his book Growth Hacker :

Only by discovering customer pain points and exploring solutions can we find the best fit (PMF) between corporate products and the market. Behind many amazing growth results, a solid understanding of users lays a solid foundation.

When reviewing his entrepreneurial journey, Du Guoying, the founder of Xiaoguan Tea, said something that impressed me: If there is no good product, everything else is nonsense.

Here, I would like to share with you some quotes from two famous entrepreneurs.

One is what Mr. George Merck, the founder of Merck, said: We should always remember that our goal is to save lives, not to make profits. If we remember this, we will never be without profit, and the clearer we remember it, the greater the profit.

One is what Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, said: focus on creating great products, and profits will come naturally.

I hope everyone remembers: First, good products are the cornerstone of marketing; second, we must establish a win-win concept.

Mozi wrote in "The Way of Business" : If I have profit but the guest does not, then the guest will not stay; if my profit is great but the guest's profit is small, then the guest will not last long; if the guest has profit but I do not, then if the skin is gone, where will the hair stay? If the guest’s interests are equal to mine, the guest will stay longer and I will benefit longer! A win-win situation!

When it comes to marketing, it must be a win-win situation for all parties in the end. We must win corresponding returns for our customers, partners, society, and of course ourselves.

2. Before increasing your stock, first increase your stock

As traffic becomes more and more expensive, we must pay more attention to retention issues.

According to a Wharton School study:

A 5% to 10% reduction in customer churn can result in up to 75% additional profit growth.

The cost of attracting a new customer is five times the cost of retaining an old customer.

Every 2% reduction in customer churn is equivalent to a 10% reduction in costs;

When customer loyalty increases by 5%, corporate profits can increase by 25%-85%.

From the above research, we can see that we can’t let old customers slip away easily, so keep your existing customers. We need to think about how to improve conversion rates at every stage of customer maintenance.

3. Refined operations

Xiaohongshu has now become a lifestyle platform and consumption decision-making portal that is deeply loved by young people. Here, some people share reading, some share traveling, and some share fashion and food. We are a diversified lifestyle platform with 220 million users sharing and discovering the life they want. Every day, more than 3 billion notes are exposed in the Xiaohongshu community.

Each of these 220 million people is a living individual and has their own unique characteristics. If we still use the same old model, the service will definitely not be good. Therefore, we need a more refined operating method. Only by making them feel different and find the content they like here can we make them stay. In fact, today, refined operations are no longer a strange concept. If you just search online, you can find a lot of discussions on this topic. Why are more and more people talking about the concept of refined operations?

From the "Mobile Internet Panoramic Ecosystem Traffic Insight Report" released by QuestMobile in March this year, we can see that the growth rate of China's mobile Internet user scale has dropped below 5% in June 2018. In February 2019, the number of users increased by only 7 million compared with December last year, and the competition for traffic has become increasingly severe. The disappearance of the demographic dividend has led to increasingly expensive traffic. The pie is so big, if you want to grow, you have to grab it from other people’s platters.

So what exactly is refined operation? This is a definition we have summarized: through data analysis, we understand user usage habits, and use scientific methods such as AB testing to provide targeted and differentiated services based on different users and scenarios.

How does Xiaohongshu carry out refined operations?

The first step is to analyze the existing data for the problem encountered, identify various possible causes, and propose reasonable hypotheses. The second step is to find out what possible things can be done based on the hypothesis and what the ROI (return on investment) of each thing is, so as to determine the priority of things. The third step is to conduct AB experiments on what you have decided to do. The fourth step is to analyze the results of the AB experiment, verify our hypothesis, and then iterate the product.

One thing that needs to be emphasized here is that problems themselves also have priorities. Some things are important and urgent, so they must be solved with high priority. Some things may be very important but not urgent, so they can be done later. The priority of the problem itself should be reflected in your OKR (Objectives and Key Results). This cycle always revolves around your OKR.

As the saying goes, talk without practice is just empty talk. Below, I will introduce to you how Xiaohongshu applies this methodology based on a real case study of Xiaohongshu.

Refined Operations in Android Pre-installed User Retention Cases

This case is an example of Xiaohongshu’s Android pre-installed user retention optimization. This year, Xiaohongshu has entered into pre-installation cooperation with several major mobile phone manufacturers as a new customer acquisition channel. However, as mobile phones pre-installed with the Xiaohongshu APP came onto the market, Xiaohongshu discovered that the retention rate of users from the pre-installed channels was very low. This is a very serious problem. Low retention rate means that many users will never come back after opening the app once, so the money spent on acquiring customers is wasted. So Xiaohongshu set up a project and decided to improve the retention of pre-installed users.

The project team looked at the funnel data of several pages during the user registration process and found that after a series of pre-operations, a large number of users left Xiaohongshu before seeing its content. These people are unlikely to come back.

Based on such data performance, the project team can roughly come to the following assumption: for many users who did not know Xiaohongshu before, they need to fill in privacy information when opening the first page of the APP, which is very user-unfriendly, and the loading process is long, resulting in serious user loss, leading to a poor overall retention rate.

What can be done about this? Of course, there are many things that can be done, such as: strengthening brand building, increasing advertising investment, letting more people know about the Xiaohongshu brand, shortening the registration process, postponing the operation of collecting user information, displaying the function introduction page first after opening the APP, so that users have a certain understanding of Xiaohongshu, etc.

But what should be done first? Determining priorities is actually a relatively flexible operation. Because everyone has a different perspective, different priority conclusions are often reached. At Xiaohongshu, we have a simple method to determine the priority of things:

First, how much effort do you have to put into doing this?

How many engineers are needed, how many designers are needed, and what does the marketing department need to do?

Second, what is the probability that you will succeed in doing this?

Is it likely to succeed, or is it more likely to fail?

Third, if this thing succeeds, how much influence will he have?

How big are the potential gains? Having such analysis will often help you and your team better determine the priorities of things.

The third step, after determining what needs to be done, is the specific implementation. AB testing is a very useful method for changes with unknown results. For example, we conducted experiments on changes to the login process for pre-installed channel users in three groups. The process for the first group of users was the same as before. For the second and third groups of users, we removed the page where users had to fill in information first and instead had them see the content first and then fill in the information. The difference is that when the second group of users come in, a pop-up window will appear asking them to fill in the form, while the third group of users will be guided to read an article first and then asked to fill in the information. Let’s see what the differences are in the final retention of these three groups of users.

The final step is to analyze the results. Here are two reminders for you:

First, don’t overanalyze. What is overanalysis? When all experiments are designed, the criteria for judging quality have already been determined, but the dimensions of data interpretation are diverse. In an experiment with bad data, you must find its good side, which is often meaningless.

Second, it is better to have no “numbers” than to believe in “numbers” blindly. Data are cold facts, but what is more important to us is the insights behind these numbers. If all your changes are blindly following the results of the data without your own insights and thinking, you will often fall into a pit.

Whether it is community operation or traffic operation, it is not the operation of content in essence, but the operation of people. Content separated from people is just cold text or pictures, but everyone has warmth and personality and is a unique individual.

Author: Daktor

Source: DOKT (Reed Smith PR Consulting)