How do e-commerce and education industry communities attract new members?

Today I would like to share with you some of my thoughts and ideas after reading Qu Hui’s “Silicon Valley Growth Hacker’s Practical Notes”. We will start from two well-known industries, e-commerce and education, and share "How to attract new users in the e-commerce and education industries?"

1. Six major user life cycles in e-commerce and education industries

2. Four major ways to attract new customers in the e-commerce industry (taking Perfect Diary as an example)

3. 3 Steps to Choose the Right User Acquisition Channel

The user life cycle can be divided into the following steps: user acquisition - user activation - user retention - user conversion.

The length of the user life cycle can directly affect product sales and brand market competitiveness. The longer the user life cycle is, the more competitive the company will become.

For the e-commerce industry, its user life cycle can be divided into six stages: potential - new - effective - active - dormant - dead.

1. Potential Users

The first stage of the user life cycle is potential users, which are the target group that meets the product positioning and has purchasing power;

2. New users

In the second stage , when a potential user makes his first purchase, he can be considered a new user;

3. Valid users

The third stage of the user life cycle is effective users. Simply put, effective users are users who repurchase products. Because if the e-commerce industry wants to improve its performance, the key lies in the conversion of users from first consumption to second consumption;

4. Active users (loyal users)

This group of people can be said to be consumers who have a strong sense of identification with the product;

5. Dormant Users

Dormant users need us to effectively activate and awaken them through operational means to prevent them from forgetting our products and services over time;

6. Dead users

The last stage of a user's life cycle is a dead user. At this stage, we basically don't need to spend energy to wake up or maintain the user, which can save costs or simply give up.

For the education industry , the user life cycle can be roughly divided into four stages: potential users - contracted users - renewal users - terminated users.

1. Potential Users

The first stage of the user life cycle in the education industry is potential users. Platform staff will follow up on users whose information is collected and invite them to participate in trial classes. The target users do not refuse and complete the trial classes, but have not yet formally signed up to become our users. However, there is a possibility of conversion to formal users . Such users can be defined as potential users.

2. Contracted users

Contracted users are users who have officially registered, paid fees, and signed contracts with educational institutions/platforms.

3. Renewal users

The renewing users are those who recognize the courses, teachers, and services of educational institutions/platforms and have the need for self-improvement, and continue to purchase courses in other subjects or upgrade courses.

4. Termination of User Contract

The last stage of the user life cycle is terminated users. They are not only users who cancel their contracts abnormally , but also more users who terminate their contracts normally after the course ends.

Attracting new customers, promoting activation, conversion and retention, as the first link - attracting new customers, play a decisive role.

Taking the beauty e-commerce company "Perfect Diary" as an example, they attract new customers through social media platforms, offline and other channels. Below, Yuki will share with you their new customer acquisition channels.

1) Public account traffic diversion:

They have created a huge public account matrix, using public account activities to attract conversions, promote repeat purchases, and retain private domain traffic through public accounts . It can be said that the Perfect Diary brand is a typical case for the beauty e-commerce industry to learn from.

2) Offline store traffic diversion:

Offline stores attract customers by giving away beauty eggs, directing them to the WeChat account of the IP "Xiao Wanzi", which then becomes the brand's private traffic and they then invite customers to join the welfare group.

Every time there is an activity, it is sent to the group to convert and encourage users to repurchase in the community, thereby increasing the conversion rate and repurchase rate of the products.

3) Weibo platform traffic diversion:

During last year's Double Eleven, they made good use of the Weibo platform for marketing, with top-tier celebrities endorsing the brand, giving users the visual effect of an international brand.

Perfect Diary invited Zhou Xun and Zou Ye as brand spokespersons and brand ambassadors respectively. The topic immediately became a hot topic on Weibo , attracting many users, especially fans of Zhou Xun and Zou Ye, to follow Perfect Diary and stimulating users to buy the same lipsticks and eye shadows as the stars.

This wave of marketing can be said to be very successful, further expanding Perfect Diary's brand awareness, promoting new product conversions and increasing Double Eleven sales.

They also have offline elevator and subway advertisements. Zhou Xun's advertisements as Perfect Diary's global spokesperson are everywhere in community elevators and subway entrances . The offline channels are also aimed at expanding the brand's awareness.

We need to understand the target audience of our product, product form, industry it is in, and profit model?

Taking Zebra AI in the online education industry as an example, let me tell you about its product features.

Zebra AI is an intelligent education platform that focuses on the enlightenment learning of children aged 2-8 and provides multi-disciplinary online learning.

At present, Zebra AI Class has become a heavyweight product of Yuanfudao online education. Its core selling point is AI empowerment . It now has AI course products in multiple subjects such as English, thinking, and Chinese to make profits, and its monthly revenue has exceeded 500 million yuan.

2. Understand your user base

We need to analyze who the users are, find out what labels they have, where they often appear, and how to reach them . We can think about this from three perspectives.

1) Who—To accurately locate users

Before your product is released to users, you need to analyze the users that the product is most likely to cover and do precise positioning.

The most important thing at this stage is to exclude those people who are unlikely to become users of the product and to keep the focus on core functions in product planning.

2) Where—Find out where the targeted users gather

For example, Zebra AI Class has placed advertisements in more than 60 cities across the country, surrounding bus stations, subway stations, building elevators, etc., which are places frequented by parents and children.

Take Pinduoduo in the e-commerce industry as an example. When the product was first launched, Pinduoduo had a very clear definition of their user range. They mainly targeted company employees and freelancers in third- and fourth-tier cities , and took advantage of the fact that these people have a lot of fragmented time, pay attention to cost-effectiveness when shopping, and like to get small bargains. They provided a large number of popular daily necessities, snacks, clothing, shoes and other fast-moving consumer goods, and used group buying and discounts to stimulate user consumption, thereby rapidly developing their business.

3) How—How to reach target users

User reach refers to the platform reaching users by pushing messages , giving users corresponding notifications, and guiding users to visit corresponding pages for user consumption.

Here are 8 ways to reach users in the e-commerce industry:

1. Shopping on social media platforms

When users shop on social media platforms, they can directly reach the users;

2. Influencer Marketing:

In the e-commerce industry, you can use influencers to promote products and increase users’ trust in the products, which will allow the products themselves to establish a closer connection with your audience.

3. Chatbots and Automation Tools:

In shopping, we can set up automatic replies to improve communication efficiency and reach users more timely;

4. Omnichannel Retail:

We can also combine social media platform activities, mobile marketing activities and website sales to work together to complete the final conversion;

5. Same picture search function:

The same-item image search gives users the opportunity to find similar products at a lower price online. At this time, sales volume and price may affect the user's final choice;

6. Big Data Analysis:

Big data analysis also provides an opportunity to view the search trends of various products . These trends show the keywords used by users when searching online, which regions these consumers come from, and what their specific identities are...

The above information directly reflects the actual needs of consumers. Big data can help us better understand users and make it easier for them to make purchasing decisions.

7. Better UI (user interface) / UX (user experience) design:

The visual design of the interface is also a way to reach users. Visual design can enhance users’ desire to buy.

8. Same-day/next-day delivery service:

This aspect is the logistics experience. Same-day or next-day delivery can quickly solve users' timeliness needs.

The above are 8 ways to reach users in the e-commerce industry.

Next, I will take Zebra AI as an example to analyze how they reach users.

Zebra AI reaches its users through platforms such as Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu. Here I will explain Douyin and WeChat in detail.

Tik Tok:

It is mainly delivered through information flow advertising.

They cater to the platform's tone and focus on learning interesting content. Every 10 works will include one entertaining video such as dancing. Each video is less than 15 seconds long and is created frequently, with basically one update every day.

Increase user activity through content diversion. Another approach is to use the "impulse + sunk cost" method to allow users to complete a one-time payment.

WeChat:

Zebra AI Class has set up three traffic entrances in the WeChat ecosystem: official accounts, service accounts, and mini-programs.

By delivering information flow, cooperating on soft articles, and conducting event fission in the circle of friends , we can gain exposure and then direct traffic to official accounts, service accounts, and mini-programs.

Taking the service account as an example, when a user follows the service account for the first time, he or she may want to sign up for a 49-yuan English trial class, which includes 10 AI interactive classes + 10 days of tutoring by an exclusive teacher + free shipping of supporting teaching materials.

In addition, there are free resources such as small classes taught by foreign teachers, picture book stories, popular science comics, etc., to motivate them to learn.

Finally, guide users to download the APP to obtain more free learning resources.

In addition to the 49 yuan English trial class, there is also a 0 yuan trial class, which attracts new customers by converting high-priced classes through training camps.

There are many channels and methods to attract new users. The last step we need to do is to screen the channels to attract new users. We can choose some appropriate channels and methods based on our product life cycle, project budget, user portrait and other aspects.

In the third chapter of the book "Silicon Valley Growth Hacker's Practical Notes", Qu Hui mentioned: More than 70% of growth experts said that "user recommendations" are one of the most important channels for early product growth.

Because user recommendations have the characteristics of low acquisition cost, good user quality and high conversion rate , they are currently the more popular method.

User recommendations have a viral effect , so they are suitable for fission growth. Here are three fission methods:

1. Word of mouth fission

When users have a good experience with your product and think that the product is good and the user experience is also very good, then users will be willing to introduce the product or service to others, forming word-of-mouth in the user's social circle. These new users will then continue to promote the product to their social circle through the same mechanism , thus achieving the effect of very rapid and large-scale external dissemination, that is, viral transmission, which can be said to be zero-cost customer acquisition.

But the premise of word-of-mouth communication is that your product is good enough to attract users. Xiaomi and Haidilao are the best examples. They have maximized the cost-effectiveness and service of their products, and have established themselves as a word-of-mouth publicity point in their industry.

2. Group buying fission

The second type is group buying fission, which is done very well by Pinduoduo, an e-commerce platform that started out as a group buying platform.

The concept of group buying is that two or more people form a group together . Users initiate the group buying and share it with friends through social means. When friends participate in the group buying, they can purchase a certain product or service at a price lower than the unit price. Both the inviter and the invitee can get the group buying price. The fission of group buying actually takes advantage of the psychology of reciprocity.

3. Invite fission

In the third chapter of the book, Qu Hui wrote: For social network products, if old users invite friends to join, the product experience will become better for both people, so invitations are one of the most important ways to grow social networks.

The logic of invitation fission is to set up a certain reward mechanism to attract old users to bring in new users, use the resources of old users to acquire new users, and give rewards to new and old users at the same time, so that both parties can profit.

Invitation fission is quite common in the e-commerce industry, such as the currently popular fresh food e-commerce platforms such as Dingdong Maicai, PuPu, and MissFresh.

Among them, the reward method for old users to bring in new users on the PuPu platform is mainly to receive physical items. If an old user invites a new user and successfully places an order with a paid amount of more than 10 yuan within 14 days, the old user can get a gift package coupon and physical items worth 88 yuan. The more users you invite, the more you get.

New users can get 188 yuan new user coupons and exclusive benefits for new users, so old users will be willing to help promote the platform and attract new users. At the same time, PuPu will increase its market share.

The above are the three channels recommended by users, which is why this channel is popular in the e-commerce industry.

Author: Xingxiu

Source: HelloXingXio