Kugou million traffic project practice

When I work on growth for a project, it is like a doctor treating a patient. I need to find the cause of the disease and prescribe the right medicine.

The same growth strategy may be a panacea for one project, but may lead to no improvement or even death for another project. In the final analysis, the problem is that the lesion has not been identified correctly, and this is when a pair of discerning eyes is needed.

Traditional growth teams are good at growth testing, continuous verification, and gradual improvement of data. The unconventional growth operation likes to shoot birds with a shotgun. Hitting the target becomes the highlight of life, and becomes a leek teacher under the survivor bias.

Today, I will take the large-font version of Kugou as an example to explain how I developed a growth plan for this project with millions of daily active users.

1. Project Description: Kugou Large Font Edition

The large-font version of Kugou was launched in December 2019. In the initial stage, it mainly targeted the middle-aged and elderly user group. Later, it transformed into a music version of Qutoutiao. The essence of the product is to do traffic business.

You can make money by listening to songs to attract active users, and then resell these users to advertisers for advertising. The current daily active users have exceeded one million, but the growth has slowed down, and we urgently need a way out.

2. Project Problems: Fission Faults and Limited Channels

For this kind of project that buys low traffic and sells high, the first prerequisite to be solved is: how to acquire customers at a lower price . Otherwise, it will be difficult to differentiate from competitors in a market with fierce competition for traffic.

After diagnosing the problem of slowing project growth, we summarized the following two reasons: fission fault and limited channels.

1. Fission fault

Product phenomenon 1: The fission carrier on WeChat is H5

(1) Core issues

H5 does not have the ability to spread twice, and the fission influence is attenuated.

(2) Problem Analysis

The app is shared to WeChat friends, and the sharing medium is the H5 app download page. Users either download the app according to the process instructions or lose at some stage. With this communication model, the user's communication level is likely to experience a cliff-like drop in the second layer. It does not have the vitality of self-propagation.

Product phenomenon 2: The more invitations you have, the greater the reward acceleration

(1) Core issues

It is easy to cause fission polarization, and fail to maximize the user's enthusiasm for fission.

(2) Problem Analysis

The first invitation reward is the highest, 20,000 gold coins per person. Subsequently, there was a cliff in the invitation reward, with the invitation rewards being 12,000, 14,000, and 18,000 respectively for 6, 11, and 21 people.

This can easily result in a situation where the distribution of the number of user invitations is heavy at both ends, while the middle part is infinitely compressed. Most people complete the first invitation, and only a small number of people go to "increase volume" to make money. The activity level of those invited is not ideal.

2. Limited channels

Channel performance 1: Roi=1, the customer acquisition cost is only 4 yuan.

(1) Core issues

The ability to generate revenue from traffic is limited, resulting in a single method of purchasing traffic at a low price.

(2) Problem Analysis

In order to gain more advertising sales space for this traffic business, the project expanded from making money by listening to music to services such as reading news and watching videos, in an attempt to gain more advertising space. However, the profitability of traffic is always limited, and the channel acquisition cost for new users can only support 4 yuan per person.

Therefore, many new means, after testing to attract new customers, are not expanded further if the unit price is not ideal. Instead, they are added only from the perspective of delivery, which fails to achieve the goal of buying traffic at a low price and selling it at a high price.

Channel performance 2: The delivery path is single and traffic is not leveraged.

(1) Core issues

The traffic from the delivery channel is not used for the second time, so the cost cannot be reduced.

(2) Problem Analysis

Most of the traffic from delivery channels is only used once, the cost cannot be spread out, and the cost-effectiveness is low. This is also a dilemma that many companies that do pure advertising easily fall into.

There are several ways to increase the leverage of traffic: such as enterprise-level private domain pools, traffic amplifiers, combining hotspots, etc., which can reduce the cost of delivery from the perspective of continuous user wake-up or secondary fission of traffic.

3. Growth plans and examples

In response to the performance of the core issues of the project, we formulated corresponding growth strategies and tackled them one by one. Let’s see how we did it.

Strategy 1: Optimize fission nodes

Among the existing fission propagation nodes, the most needed breakthrough is the conversion rate of the H5 page. If we simply optimize the page copy, it will not produce a fundamental change in the conversion rate, so we must introduce growth ideas into every link. The following is the data performance of changing WeChat's H5 to a mini program without changing other paths, allowing app users to share the mini program on WeChat.

How did the data differences in the red area come about? Use the fission properties of mini programs to guide sharing. Here we will analyze with two successful cases: how to achieve point-to-point and point-to-group fission.

Case 1: Hua Xiaozhu Taxi-hailing Mini App

The picture on the left is the mini-program sharing page displayed when the Hua Xiaozhu taxi app is shared to WeChat. Every time a user shares through the mini program, they will be shown clickable information, regardless of whether you have downloaded the app or not.

In the right picture, when the user enters the mini program, he will see an activity prompt that he will get 3 yuan in cash by inviting friends to register. With the dual blessing of promoting clicks and sharing, the Hua Xiaozhu mini program has attracted a large number of users within 2 months and currently ranks among the top 10 in the Aladdin mini program list.

Excluding promotion and subsidies, only from the perspective of new users, the price is 3 yuan for each new user, and it has a self-propagation effect, so the effect is acceptable.

Case 2: Meituan Takeaway Mini Program

On the left of the picture is a mutual aid group where users share takeaway red envelopes. At mealtime on weekdays, a large number of takeaway red envelopes are sent to the group. Everyone sends and grabs each other's red envelopes in order to grab the largest red envelope with the best luck.

This is a WeChat group that is not maintained by anyone, but everyone has formed such a tacit understanding. In the final analysis, it is the sharing mechanism of Meituan Takeaway Mini Program that works well.

The right picture shows the current version of the Meitu Takeaway Mini Program red envelope page. It has gone through three version updates. In the beginning, there was no rule that the Xth person could receive the largest red envelope. The reason for this was to create the following sharing scenarios :

Please help me click, I am only one person away from getting the biggest red envelope.

I have sent it to the group. Each of you please click on it. I will receive the 5th largest red envelope.

Quick, please help me click and see which person has received this red envelope.

It is through this random gameplay that we promote the continuous sharing of mini programs and gain new user growth.

Strategy 2: Betting Membership System

There is nothing wrong with the principle of "the more you work, the more you earn", but problems arise when it is applied to the gradient invitation system.

A person's network of relationships is relatively limited. Even if one really wants to complete the invitation reward, one's social circle is destined to stop inviting people when it reaches a certain limit.

However, the product has created a gradient of invitation rewards, from inviting 1 person to inviting 200 people. The more people you invite, the greater the reward for a single invitation.

This will undoubtedly cultivate a group of "speculators" who invite invalid users, and hurt the enthusiasm of users who can only invite a few new users. The membership mechanism of gambling rewards can solve the problem of gradient rewards very well.

Comparing with the above picture, we can find that the gambling reward model encourages users to invite people to reach a fixed value. This value is within a range that is generally acceptable to the general public and can be achieved with a little effort. Judging from the numerical results, the effect of encouraging a certain behavior to reach a fixed value is far greater than the effect of gradient rewards.

The premise of this effort comes from a seemingly loss-making bet agreement . Companies like Costco and shared bicycles are representatives of this model.

Case 3: Costco’s membership system

As the world's second largest retailer, Costco's operating profit margin comes from membership fees for 70%. How does it do that?

Costco senior members have one number in mind: $6,000.

It is a watershed in betting.

Because 2% of members' spending can be used as cashback, if the spending amount is over US$6,000, the annual fee of US$120 can be waived. Otherwise, it will be a loss.

Through low prices, fewer SKUs, large packaging, and a sales method that always keeps the product sales margin below 14%, compared with the 22% to 25% profit margins of Carrefour and Walmart, Costco's products are really cheap.

Therefore, most members spend more than $6,000 at Costco each year. This creates a large and stable consumer group, which in turn provides strong bargaining power with upstream products.

Suppose Costco adopts a tiered reward model, where the more you buy, the more cash back you get. Will the ultimate outcome be that the number of users and consumption amounts increase?

Case 4: Shared bicycles

Taking Qingju Bicycle as an example, the starting price for a single ride is 1.5 yuan, and a 30-day monthly membership card is sold for 16.8 yuan.

If you ride more than 12 times a month, you can save money by purchasing a membership card.

If you ride less than 12 times a month, it is not cost-effective to buy a membership card.

Bicycle users who ride far more or less than 12 times are not the target groups of this membership model. The real target groups are those who ride around 12 times and are not sure whether they are suitable for purchasing a membership card, as well as those who ride for work more than 12 times stably. This will maximize the user range.

With the same membership model, there are also Meituan takeaway memberships, which cost 15 yuan and come with 6 discount coupons worth 5 yuan. You can get your money back by ordering takeout more than 3 times. These are all designed to lock most user behaviors at a certain value or above in order to achieve the maximum target effect.

Strategy 3: Replicable Content Marketing

Every project wants to make its own: boring?

Is the guidance effective? have!

Is it possible? possible!

Does it take a long time? Hard to say!

Are you sure I can do it?

Hehehehe……..

If it weren’t for an MCN agency, or if there wasn’t genius creativity. To be honest, doing replicable content marketing is more cost-effective than producing high-quality content.

We will create a short video content matrix for the large-font version of Kugou, starting from these three perspectives .

(1) Primary conditions

It must be low-cost, replicable, scalable and convertible. This is what distinguishes high-risk boutique and ineffective content marketing.

(2) Marketing key points

To do content marketing on a personalized recommendation platform, let the content find people, rather than people find people. Secondly, there must be target behavior guidance, such as downloading an app.

(3) Content form

Using classic old songs + classic MV clips or singing clips, and adding some text rendering can match the characteristics of the large-font version, which tends to be a middle-aged and elderly user group.

The reason why there are similar content marketing methods at present is still due to the Renren Video Douyin traffic diversion incident in 2018.

Case 5: Renren Video Douyin traffic diversion incident

2018 was the first heyday of TikTok’s online traffic. In February of that year, a background music (BGM) became popular on TikTok. This background music came from the American TV series “The Gifted”. At that time, only Renren Video was broadcasting this American TV series on the entire Internet. A large number of Douyin users flocked to Renren Video, recognizing each other in the barrage and saying that they came because of Douyin.

According to internal operations, they completed the full-year traffic growth KPI that month, but this was not an intentional marketing behavior on their part; it was a complete "accident."

Since then, Renren Video has embarked on a completely different content marketing path. They use a large number of accounts through self-operation and outsourcing, edit film and television clips, and then guide people to Renren Video in the comment section. This approach has continued to this day and has been imitated by other film and television platforms.

Strategy 4: Use amplifiers

In essence, it is to leverage the delivered traffic to increase the population coverage or recall ability and reduce the delivery cost.

Common methods include: importing private domain traffic pool, small program fission delivery, and combining hot spot delivery.

Case 6: Another project I’m working on recently

The two methods adopted are: importing private domain traffic pool and small program fission delivery.

(1) Importing private domain traffic pool

Originally, the target conversion was directly delivered, with a conversion rate of 2.3%. Later, the delivered traffic was taken over by two traffic pools, and the precise users of the traffic pool were reached for a long time. The final target conversion rate reached 6.5%, achieving a 2.8-fold increase.

Of course, it is not just through the adjustment of the path that multiple growth can be achieved, but it is also necessary to go through two rounds of user operations from rough to fine to achieve the effect. The following are the commonly used operation methods. The first recall method of the official account: welcome message, customer service message push, official account tweet push

There are two ways to recall users through WeChat for Business: private chat, WeChat for Business Moments, and WeChat for Business groups.

(2) Fission delivery of mini programs

Directly delivering to the app is not as effective as directly delivering to the mini-program with fission properties. Target users enter the mini-program and are guided to download the app. Some users provide secondary carrier transmission, which expands user coverage.

Judging from the data results, 10 users can bring in 6 fission users. After deducting the proportion of users who have lost access to the mini program but have not downloaded the app, the final overall conversion rate is higher than that of directly delivering to the app. It has also absorbed a part of the potential user groups on WeChat.

4. Summary

Finally, let me summarize my ideas for growth :

Focus on core issues, find mature solutions, and speak with data.

Author: Professor of Operations

Source: Operations Professor