User growth methodology, a must-read for marketers!

The topic of growth has been mentioned repeatedly by the media in recent years. It is also an important topic at major conferences and an eternal theme for companies. When talking about growth, user growth comes first. Without users, there is no need to talk about performance growth or brand growth.

The book "New Customers" written by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Myers mentioned: User growth is more important than anything else. Only by attracting new customers can you achieve retention, activation, monetization, and word of mouth.

The recently released "White Paper on the Value of Bytedance Short Video Advertising" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") also mentioned the importance of attracting new users to brand growth.

In brand marketing, the repurchase and purchase frequency of a single brand in the same category are positively correlated with the brand penetration rate. In other words, the more people consume a brand, the higher the user loyalty.

In the past few years, when I was providing brand consulting, I communicated with some business founders and CMOs and found out that how to increase user growth when traffic is scarce? What is more important is how to make effective users see the brand, form memories and generate conversions? How can the “50% of advertising costs that are wasted” in the traditional media era be “not wasted” in the digital age?

After reading the "white paper", I feel that it is not only a trend report, but also a marketing methodology that is in line with the present and future. In terms of user growth, many companies are struggling to find out where to find incremental users, how to impress users, and there is also a lack of effective measurement of user purchase conversions.

In recent years, short videos have become an important way for users to acquire content. From watching to creating, short videos have been integrated into people's work and life. More and more brands have established their own short video accounts to reach target users through short video marketing. This "white paper" takes the advertising value of short videos as the core, and focuses on the underlying logic of attracting new users through short videos. I summarize it into three key steps: find new users, impress new users, and convert new users.

01 Find new users

The "2020 TikTok Data Report" on January 5, 2021 showed that TikTok's daily active users have exceeded 600 million (including the TikTok Volcano version, as of August 2020).

Compared with major mainstream APPs (video category), the daily active activity trend has increased significantly. According to data from Questmobile, the daily active activity of short video ads on Bytedance has steadily increased, and users spend more time consuming Douyin content every day; for advertisers, the advertising inventory that can be delivered and the amount of new users that can be found are larger.

People watch variety shows and TV series on some long video platforms. If users do not buy membership, they will be forced to watch advertisements. Traditional video platforms that develop with the VIP membership model use membership rights to block advertisements; for those who are willing to pay for membership and can watch videos online for a long time, they may be potential users that brands aspire to reach, but they are "blocked".

According to public financial reports, the membership growth rate of mainstream media platforms continued to climb in 2019. Because members "block" advertisements, the continuous growth of membership may lead to a relative reduction in advertising inventory.

"Finding new users" requires, on the one hand, having enough daily active users and a good growth trend in users; on the other hand, having sufficient effectiveness guarantee capabilities before advertising, such as the "Scientific Diversion Efficiency Measurement" shared in the "White Paper" of Big Data Engine:

Effectiveness measurement refers to the scientific A/B diversion capability of Bytedance, which can be simply understood as advertisers dividing users into two groups, A and B, namely "can see ads" and "cannot see ads" when placing ads. After a period of time, the differences in users' purchase conversions, brand awareness, and other behavioral differences are analyzed, and the effect of attracting new users is effectively evaluated through A/B experiments.

【Case Study】Sanyuan Foods Efficiently Expands Popular Circles

In order to cooperate with the implantation of the hit TV series "In the Name of Family", Sanyuan hopes to maximize the enhancement of Sanyuan's brand value and sales conversion among the circle of people through the massive engine short video advertising, deepen brand memory, strengthen brand preference, enable target consumers to have a strong association between the brand and home, and reach the circle of people who have already recognized the brand.

02 Impress new users

According to the "2020 TikTok Data Report", the average daily video search volume on TikTok exceeded 400 million (as of December 2020). Short video users have formed the habit of actively searching and obtaining brand information on short video platforms; at the same time, among all touchpoints, short video platforms have become the most important source of brand awareness.

From user "initiative" to forming "habit", and then to "source of cognition", it can be seen that short videos have rapidly become an important channel for brand information delivery. Awareness is an important indicator for users to differentiate between brands; and the presentation of short video content can easily produce visual impact, resonance, and empathy for users, thereby forming a strong memory.

The "White Paper" shows that regarding "Which of the following channels do you use to obtain and learn about brand-related information?" Social media accounts for 43.3% and short video platforms for 41.6%; regarding "Which channels' advertisements or information will arouse your attention and curiosity about the brand?" Short video platforms account for 28.9% and social media for 27.4%.

How to “impress new users”? When you place short video information flow ads, will users stay when they scroll to your short video? What dimensions will influence users?

The "White Paper" summarizes four dimensions:

• Advertisements have a visual impact;
• The content is simple and focused, with the key points highlighted;
• The content resonates with consumers;
• The material is unique;

[Case Study] Carslan’s Clever Use of Vertical Screen Advertising

In July and August 2020, KISS ME promoted its new product "New Boyfriend Lip Glaze" on multiple platforms across the entire network, in order to fully leverage the influence of brand spokesperson Tong Liya and brand new lip spokesperson Zhang Xincheng; this marketing campaign selected platforms with strong visual tension and achieved wide coverage of the target population through multi-platform delivery.

Taking into account the characteristics of young audiences, KISS ME specially cut vertical communication materials based on the OTV version of the video to suit the short video viewing habits. It used the vertical screen format of short videos to create the visual impact of a "video call", narrowing the distance between celebrities and fans. Ultimately, it achieved good performance in the short video opening screen and information flow.

The data collected by Nielsen through questionnaires and modeling shows that the improvement in brand indicators after exposure to short video ads is higher than the improvement in advertising exposure on other platforms. Bytedance short video ads can effectively make users "remember" them.

By adjusting the material from horizontal to vertical, the brand awareness and popularity of this event, as well as the conversion behavior in the subsequent links, were greatly improved.

The main reasons are, on the one hand, that horizontal screen emphasizes storytelling, while vertical screen video emphasizes interactivity, creating a strong sense of immersion; on the other hand, the expression method is simple and direct, bringing a strong impact in a short period of time.

In terms of "impressing new users", how to formulate a good content strategy, we can see in the "White Paper" that Bytedance can break down the entire video into finer granularity and accurately locate key shots with high click-through rates; after such analysis, we will clearly know which part of the video has problems and which part is attractive, and by increasing the retention rate of key frames of advertising videos, the playback time can be greatly increased.

Through a more fine-grained analysis, we can find that the best combination of the first 5 seconds of the beauty video content is: the "black screen text + asking questions and interacting with users" form with the best retention rate has a 340% higher retention rate than the "product picture + promotion mechanism" form with the worst retention rate.

03 Convert new users

From finding, impressing to converting new users, ultimately bringing about user growth and successfully acquiring new users, it all depends on the conversion effect.

In this regard, the "White Paper" gives a set of numbers: 138, 125, 119, 114, and 100. Behind these numbers is Kantar Worldpanel's efficiency conversion analysis of multiple clients. The conversion rate of people exposed to the massive engine increased by 38%, which is higher than other media such as online videos, outdoor advertising, and TV advertising.

At the conversion level, the "White Paper" has two recommended strategies worth paying attention to:

1. Strategy 1: Brand-effect combination

The "White Paper" shows that the superposition of brand advertising and performance advertising will have the effect of 1+1>2; at the same frequency, the efficiency conversion rate of the superposition of brand + performance advertising is greater than the efficiency conversion rate of single brand reach or single performance reach.

"Integration of brand and effect" has always been the pursuit of marketers, and there are also people who question it. However, in the continuous practice over the years, we have found that the biggest misunderstanding is to use promotional performance advertising to look at brand indicators, and use performance indicators to measure brand advertising; the two are also slightly different in content and related delivery tools. Through efficiency measurement, we explore a better "brand and effect combination" to better achieve integration of brand and effect.

2. Strategy 2: Crowd Strategy

In the past, in digital advertising, the crowd strategy was to make direct attribution based on brand, category, highly relevant interests, demographic attributes, etc. The efficiency conversion has brought us a new perspective, and cross-analyzed with direct conversion to identify different user groups.

Different strategies can be formulated according to the characteristics of different groups of people. Strategic suggestions (illustration):

• Advantageous groups (high conversion, high efficiency, sensitive to advertising): target consumption upgrades, focus on new products and trend products;
• Attract new users (low conversion, high efficiency, insensitive to advertising): The goal is to attract new users, focusing on small packages and trial packs;
• Defensive group (high conversion, high efficiency, insensitive to advertising): the goal is to increase customer orders, focusing on large packages;
• Low-intent groups (low conversion, low efficiency, and insensitive to advertising): Optimize materials to improve conversion rate

A certain food and beverage brand positions its core group at high-spending mothers, and focuses on attracting new customers: first-tier men… There are also changes corresponding to different products. In order to increase efficiency and conversion, the crowd strategy is combined with products and content, so that the conversion will be more effective.

To sum up, the user growth methodology given in the "Broadcasting Engine Short Video Advertising Value White Paper" has three steps:

• Find new users
• Impress new users
• Convert new users

The value of short videos cannot be underestimated, cannot be underestimated, and cannot be missed. Regardless of whether you have seen this "white paper" or not, in the past few years, I have mentioned the importance of short videos many times on many occasions and in many articles. How should marketing be done in the future?

Simply put: market where your users are!

Author: Wei Jiadong

Source: Wei Jiadong