How to create a hit product through seed user operations?

Seed users generally have an open and adventurous spirit and a sense of innovation. They embrace change, actively try new products or things, and can tolerate the imperfections of new products.

1. An interesting question

Can you imagine...

You are walking on the street and see two RMB notes on the ground, one is 100 yuan and the other is 5 yuan. Which one will you pick up?

This is an interesting brain teaser. Someone once answered: "Of course it's 100 yuan. Only a fool would pick up 5 yuan." So what is your answer?

In fact, a normal person would pick up both in this situation. That’s the correct answer, isn’t it? But why is this? The answer is obvious. Isn't picking up two bills totaling 105 yuan more than picking up one bill totaling 100 yuan? It is human nature to maximize profits.

2. Inspiration from the Problem

Why am I talking about this?

In fact, when we operators start a new project, we often make this choice: we hope that more people will see, buy and use our products or services, so we launch them into the national market from the beginning.

But many times the results are often not satisfactory. After all, the budget of every company and every project is very limited. Putting a limited budget into an unlimited market is like throwing a stone into the ocean and expecting the sea level to rise.

However, if you put the stone into a basin of water, the water level will rise immediately, and the effect will be immediate. Just like a crow drinking water, you only need to put a few stones into the bottle and you can drink the water.

As early as two years ago, I launched a project with a very limited budget, but I still pushed it to users in the national market. Of course, it ended in failure (of course, this is just one of the reasons).

Over the past two years, I have gradually realized the role of seed users. Later, in several small project practices, I used seed users to start the project without any tricks and achieved good results. This has further strengthened my idea: when resources and budget are limited, using seed users to start the project is a good model. More importantly, this is in line with the life cycle law of product development.

3. Seed Users

If you have read an article I wrote before, "Promoting explosive products? 1 core idea, 2 public domain traffic pools, 8 ways to divert traffic, you must understand", and you will know that the project I am currently operating has entered the public domain traffic selection stage. And I gave 8 ways to attract traffic in the previous article, which is worth saving.

If the previous article was about the "high-end" method for creating explosive products (short time, quick results, but high cost and high risk), then the method for creating explosive products through seed user operations is "small and beautiful" (long time, slow results, but relatively low cost and low risk). After a product has been successfully run through seed users, you can increase investment and continue to attract new users on a large scale through seed users.

But once a project is launched, how can it be operated through seed users? Especially for operators of traditional e-commerce, I think it would be a rather confusing state. Over the past six months, I have summarized a set of seed user operation models. The content is very dry. Although it may not be all correct, it is of great significance for our operators' learning and project guidance.

1. What is a seed user?

Seeds, as the name suggests, are potential stocks that can take root, sprout, and grow into towering trees. Seed users are those who start using the product from its initial form, accept the imperfections of the product, constantly make suggestions for optimizing the product, are willing to share with friends around them, and are willing to independently maintain the reputation of the product.

Not all users or initial users are seed users. To become a seed user, you must at least meet the following conditions.

These conditions for seed users are the most basic, but it does not mean that you can become a seed user just by having these conditions. Appropriate screening must be made based on the actual situation of the enterprise.

2. Big Five Personality

Above we know the conditions for seed users, so for operators, how can they know which users in the user group meet these conditions? In other words, how can we screen out users who meet these conditions? This requires the use of the "Big Five" personality model.

So what are the Big Five?

First of all, personality mainly refers to a person's unique and stable way of thinking and behavior style that is different from others, and refers to a person's overall mental outlook. Personality is unique to human beings and is formed by the interaction between innate genetic qualities and acquired environment.

One notable characteristic of personality is that it is relatively stable and not easily changed; it remains what it is. Then, the "Big Five" of the Big Five personality traits are artificially divided into five trait types: "openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism". As shown in the following figure:

The above introduces the Big Five personality traits in detail, among which the personality trait of "openness" best matches the temperament of seed users. That is to say, when we screen seed users, we can give priority to users with open personality traits.

Finally, how do we judge these personality traits of users? In fact, there is already a solution for this problem. Usually, users are asked to answer a questionnaire, and the system uses the scores on the questionnaire to determine which personality trait type the user belongs to.

So where is this questionnaire? To avoid suspicion of advertising, you can send a private message or reply to this article and I will tell you where your questionnaire is.

3. What are the uses of seed users?

This is a question that cannot be avoided. What is the use of seed users? Based on my personal experience and understanding over the years, I think there are at least two points.

1) Seed users can help companies quickly iterate their products

When a product is first launched, it is bound to have many imperfections. Seed users can quickly discover problems that we cannot find during use. We quickly make modifications and improvements based on seed user feedback.

In addition, if a product should add certain features, we can obtain feedback data through interviews with seed users and then make a decision, rather than just letting the boss decide on a whim. This can to a certain extent avoid "dictatorship" and the creation of some seemingly useful but useless functions, wasting the company's time and money.

2) Seed users can multiply and attract new users

When a new product comes out, the cost of directly paying for promotion and putting it on the market is usually quite high, and the results are usually not very ideal, and it is easy to fall into a dilemma.

What dilemma? The first one or two investments are often for operators to test market feedback, which can also be understood as paying tuition fees. But the boss doesn't think so. He believes that if you invest, there should be output. Seeing that the first one or two times of output resulted in serious losses, his confidence would be greatly hit.

Even though the operator had accumulated data, understood the market situation, and re-optimized the launch strategy, the boss became timid. If he invested, he was afraid of continuing to lose money; if he didn't invest, the previous investment would be wasted.

But with seed users, these situations can be greatly improved. The operator can set up a set of fission and new user acquisition process mechanisms, which can allow seed users to fission and acquire new users at very low costs. The new users attracted can be immediately split and attracted again, and then enjoy the same treatment as the seed users.

This operating method has become a standard routine in the education industry or the knowledge payment industry. It has only changed the gameplay and concepts, but the essence remains the same. Of course, the fission operation of seed users is not only applicable to the education industry, but also to the e-commerce industry and the catering industry.

4. Seed User Operation

Since seed users are so important, how can we find and operate seed users? Here I give my initial thinking model, as follows:

1. User Profile

I believe that people who work in e-commerce are no strangers to user portraits. In other words, we must be very clear about who our target users are.

But unfortunately, although we e-commerce people are familiar with user portraits, we are also unfamiliar with them. Familiarity means that we know we need to create user profiles, such as basic data such as gender, age, consumption level, and permanent place of residence; unfamiliarity means that in addition to these basic data, we don’t seem to know what other data we need, and what the use of having these data is.

Then I will give my user portrait model. Since there are many ways to create user portraits, mine is for reference only, as shown in the figure below:

When we create user portraits, the more detailed the data is, the better. However, data is just data and needs to be labeled (informatized) before it can be used.

There are two ways of labeling: one is label classification; the other is informatization.

Labeling is easy to understand. It means grouping items with the same or similar attributes into one label. There is a many-to-many relationship between labels and users. Informatization means providing an informatized description of user groups with detailed data and portrait tendencies.

For example, this set of data: female, 25-32 years old, company manager, income 8,000-12,000, Guangzhou, has kittens, likes sports, and has a positive life. Then we need to describe this group of user data in an information-based way as: urban white-collar workers, caring, fond of sports, and strong purchasing power.

With these labeled and information-based descriptions of users, our operators can carry out targeted promotional activities in subsequent marketing. For example, hold a badminton competition for local users in Guangzhou, and then promote badminton-related products during the event.

2. Directional diving

After we create user portraits, combined with the seed user conditions and the Big Five personality traits mentioned above, we can accurately select seed users.

For example, if you want seed users who are moms, then we can give away baby toys and baby supplies by meeting certain conditions, and acquire the first wave of mom users through joint promotions with offline maternal and child stores. After doing this kind of activity to acquire the group of mothers a few times, you will be able to add many mothers’ WeChat accounts, and then filter out the seed users based on this.

As for which channels can be used for delivery, how to deliver to acquire more users, how to plan a delivery campaign, etc., these contents can be written into one or two separate articles, and I will continue to share them later when I have time.

3. Screening and marking

Screening and labeling can be simply understood as grouping and managing seed users to facilitate subsequent targeted marketing. We have discussed how to label seed users before, so here we will further explain how to screen seed users.

Generally, the normal process is to screen first and then mark. So how do you filter? In addition to the "crowd portrait" and "seed user condition" identification mentioned above, I provide the following 7 methods.

Each method is very simple to understand. As for the operation methods and tools, I will continue to share them later when I have time. After screening out the seed users, if necessary, we can also group the seed users to achieve more accurate seed user application. So how do we group seed users? According to the purpose of application, we can divide it into the following types:

Different seed users play different roles at different stages. The regrouping of seed users is only meaningful if there is a large seed user group as support, otherwise it will not have much effect.

4. Mutual contribution of value

Mutual contribution of value means contributing value to each other. For example, if we hope that seed users can help us to expand and attract new users, then we must give seed users some benefits, whether it is material or spiritual, there must be some rewards, so that seed users will be more motivated to do these things.

Mutual contribution of value occupies an important position in the entire seed user operation system, and the quality of daily operations determines the participation of seed users. So how can we operate seed users well? This is also a very long article, and it may take several articles to fully explain it, and even require the organization of detailed cases. I will share these contents in the future when I have time.

5. Fission

This is easy to understand. We hope to bring more users to us through the operation of seed users, and fission is one of the nuclear weapons to attract new users in marketing.

So how do we achieve the fission of seed users? What is the process? What tools are needed, etc., this is also a very long article, I will share it in detail later when I have time.

If there are multiple ways to start a project, then starting it through seed users would be considered a relatively stable way with lower risks and a relatively higher success rate. Of course, it also has disadvantages, that is, it is relatively time-consuming and slow to produce results in the early stages, and it really tests the patience of the boss, operator, and team.

This article explains how to operate a seed user from a holistic perspective, and is more inclined towards the direction and ideas level. As for the "seed user operation" module, I will take the time to share it in detail later. If you haven't followed me yet, please click to follow me. Let us learn and make progress together.

Author: Zhi Zhuojian

Source: Zhizhuojian