Product Operations: 10 Practical Strategies for Attracting New Users!

Nowadays, in an era where traffic is king, the cost of attracting new users has become higher. Although there are various ways to attract new users, it is not easy to ensure user retention and conversion. The author of this article shares ten strategies for attracting new users. Let’s take a look.

When it comes to product operation , its main tasks are nothing more than attracting new users, retaining users, activating users, and converting users. Today, let’s talk about how different roles can be used to attract new users and how to achieve it specifically.

This chapter breaks down the issue from three dimensions to see what strategies people in different positions adopt.

1. Product Strategy

Product strategy refers to the product department's ability to attract new users through new product features or new product development methods.

There are four common strategies for attracting new customers:

1. Invitation code, beta code

Invitation codes and internal testing codes are issued by enterprises. The number of invitation codes is limited and they are given priority to seed users. They are then spread through the seed users’ social circles of acquaintances to attract the first wave of target users.

Invitation codes are generally obtained for free (of course, there are also scalpers who maliciously speculate on codes for their own benefit). Only with an invitation code can you purchase or use a product. The invitation code method seems to set a high entry threshold for product dissemination, but the users who pass the high threshold are often of higher quality and can subsequently disseminate the content for a second or even third time, achieving exponential growth in the dissemination of the entire product.

The first batch of core users of Xiaomi mobile phones were also spread through F codes. The F code not only increased the scarcity of the product, but also controlled the production cost of the mobile phone supply chain by issuing limited F codes. Therefore, the production of Xiaomi mobile phones generally does not have product backlogs or difficulties in production capital turnover.

One of the key points of attracting new customers is to control costs. If your product also has difficulties in capital turnover, it is recommended to use invitation codes to attract new customers.

2. Word of mouth

Products are the primary productive force and the bridge connecting enterprises and users.

Good product + good user reputation = hot product, so a product that can be spread by user word of mouth is what every product manager hopes to see most.

This proves that the product is not only well-made and popular among users, but also can solve user needs and users are willing to use it; most importantly, the product can continuously expand its circle of users through word of mouth, and it also saves marketing costs and operational promotion costs.

3. Newbie benefits

Newbie benefits are specific benefits given to new users who have never used or registered a product in order to achieve the company's customer acquisition goals.

There are various forms of display of novice benefits, such as receiving them on the opening page, receiving them in a pop-up window, receiving them on the activity page, receiving them through novice tasks, etc.; with the increase in customer acquisition costs, the cost of novice benefits has increased from the initial few yuan to more than several hundred yuan, and it has become increasingly difficult to acquire new users, approaching the industry ceiling.

From first-tier cities to fourth- and fifth-tier cities, many companies have launched beachhead-style customer acquisition strategies; surrounding cities from rural areas, or sinking from cities to rural areas; going from the domestic market to the world, or entering the domestic market from overseas markets, are several beachhead models commonly used by most companies.

4. Incentive-based new customer acquisition

Incentive-based new customer acquisition has been a very popular method of attracting new customers in recent years. Inviting friends to get rewards, inviting friends to earn red envelopes, etc. are all incentive-based new customer acquisition methods.

The underlying logic of the incentive-based new user acquisition method is that the company will directly pay the operating and promotion costs originally planned for advertising to users (omitting the advertising middlemen who make a profit from the price difference), and achieve rapid growth in new users by issuing incentive rewards to users while keeping the operating costs the same.

However, users brought back by the incentive-based method are prone to being fleeced. If the platform cancels the incentive rewards one day, the fleeced users will most likely immediately stop attracting new users, and the risk of retained users leaving is also high. This is the biggest drawback of the bounty reward method of attracting new users. Unless there is sufficient operating expenses to support it, use it with caution (this method of attracting new users is really expensive).

2. Market Strategy

Market strategy refers to the marketing or sales department achieving new customer acquisition targets through methods such as buying volume, exchanging volume, and marketing activities.

1. Advertising

Advertising is a common method used by many companies/products to attract new users. Common forms of advertising include SEM, Guangdiantong, Fanstong, paid soft articles, outdoor advertising, TV advertising, elevator advertising, patch advertising, etc.; many large companies are scrambling to purchase large-scale TV advertising such as the Spring Festival Gala.

However, as the advertising bidding ranking method increases the cost of attracting new users through advertising, and users are not easily deceived by advertisements, the quality of users acquired through advertising has gradually declined.

2. Channel bundling cooperation

The so-called bundling, as the name suggests, is to forcibly combine CPs and sell them together, buy one get one free.

Channel bundling cooperation is more common among large companies. New products can be bundled with star products that perform well, and old companies can bring in new users to divert some of the users. Small companies can also try to spend money to cooperate with large channels (the input-output ratio needs to be considered).

Channel bundling is common on the PC side. After downloading an application, if you are not careful and fail to check other recommended applications, you will find that other bundled applications are forcibly installed (the country has strongly condemned and stopped this bundling behavior, and major APPs have restrained themselves).

It is more common for mobile apps to collaborate on joint products, such as the bundled sale of JD.com and iQiyi cards. When you buy a joint card, it means that you will most likely download the JD.com or iQiyi app at the same time, register as their user, and will most likely become a paying converted user of the two platforms later on.

3. Offline activities

Offline activities are suitable for products that require users to try them on-site, such as cosmetics, food, shoes, etc.; Internet online products generally rarely conduct offline new customer acquisition activities, unless there is a strong need for brand promotion, then offline activities will be conducted.

Of course, in order to reduce promotion costs, many companies carry out new user acquisition activities while doing brand promotion activities; for example, they let users follow the official account, download the APP, register new users, etc. According to experience, Internet products often attract new users through offline activities, and the churn rate is high (basically more than 70% of users will be lost on the same day). It is recommended that those who are responsible for attracting new users to Internet products use this strategy with caution.

4. Exchange

The APP exchange method is very common and necessary. For many small companies with limited promotion funds, exchanging traffic with other companies for free is the most cost-effective way, as they can direct the other party's users to their own channels for free. However, free APP exchange is hard to come by, which is a bit like the initial barter.

Companies participating in market exchanges will only exchange traffic for free unless they encounter products (objects) that are suitable (needed) by both parties. This is especially true for newly launched products, which have too small a user base to find suitable exchange partners. Even if they do find one, not many companies are willing to cooperate with them in the early stages because of the small user base.

Because exchanging traffic is difficult and the probability of success is low, there are fewer and fewer companies that exchange traffic for free, and most of them adopt the form of buying traffic.

3. Operational Strategy

Operational strategy refers to the common methods used by the operations department to achieve targets through promotion, event planning, etc.

1. App Store Promotion (ASO Promotion)

The app store is a gathering place for users to "purchase (download)" apps, so major companies will put their own apps on the app store for users to download.

There are a huge number of APP products in the app store, with countless new products launched every day. The limited product promotion space cannot meet the needs of all companies. Therefore, the app store also has paid promotion (ASO), which places advertisements on the store platform and targets the precise users that the company wants for paid promotion.

2. Fission activity

Fission is a form of event marketing, and its goal is to trigger users to spread and share activities on their own by planning creative activities, so as to achieve the ultimate event indicators.

The biggest advantage of fission is that after entering the growth hacker model, as the number of users increases, the cost of acquiring a single customer continues to decrease.

Currently, the common and classic ways to play activity fission include bargaining, helping to open red envelopes, planting fruits together, collecting blessings (collecting word cards), and receiving cards.

3. Push

Push is the easiest way to reach users and has high timeliness. New products that meet user demands can be pushed to users through common operational strategies such as user operations, refined recommendations, and user insights (the full push strategy should be used with caution).

If refined operations are done well, both user experience and commercial development can be guaranteed, achieving a balanced and sustainable development.

The ways to attract new users are changing with each passing day, and different departments can come up with many new ways. However, no matter what functional department, the most important thing is that all departments can work together to attract new users, and avoid doing their own things. This will not produce a clustering effect and ultimately waste resources.

Author: Kaka Source: Internet Guide (ID: hlwzhibei) Kaka's Product Notes