Strategies for promoting events and attracting new customers!

This article should have been written in the first half of last year. At that time, I had achieved a small success: I acquired 2 million users in Southeast Asia through "new user acquisition activities" at a cost far lower than buying traffic from Google.

The cost of buying traffic on Google in Southeast Asia is about US$0.05 per CPI (single effective installation, based on the situation at the time), and the CPI I brought in through new customer acquisition activities is about US$0.01~0.02. With 10,000 to 15,000 users every day, that means 2 million users in half a year.

Of course, it’s not just about attracting new customers on the product side. We also promote through KOLs and other means, but attracting new customers does play a decisive leverage role in the middle.

Since I had never made any online money-making products before, the entire process of making money online and attracting new customers was also a process of rapid learning for me.

My core idea for online earning can be summarized as follows: extracting the core elements for successful new customer acquisition activities through extensive research, designing practical plans based on overseas local culture, and then continuously iterating and optimizing through bold attempts and careful verification.

To sum up, it can be summarized into three questions and one key point.

1) Three issues and one key point in attracting new customers

In my own thinking, doing a good job in attracting new customers requires clear thinking about three issues:

Three questions:

1. Core Purpose: What is the core purpose of the new customer acquisition campaign?
2. Gaining trust: How to gain the trust of users?
3. Reward setting: How to set the reward value?

2) A key point

Pay special attention to the top players (KOL, etc.).

Among the three questions, [core purpose] is the starting point, [gaining user trust] is the prerequisite for the activity to proceed, and [setting the reward value] is the core factor that determines the effectiveness of the activity.

After thinking through the above three questions and one key point, the effect of the new customer acquisition activities you design will most likely not be bad. The methodology I share also revolves around the above points.

1. What is the core purpose of the new customer acquisition campaign?

Some people may say: Isn’t the purpose of new user acquisition activities to acquire new users?

But this description is actually quite vague. How much does it cost to acquire new users? What quality of users should be attracted?

As I understand it, the core purpose of new customer acquisition activities is to acquire high-quality users at low cost.

There are two key points here:

The first is low-cost customer acquisition. It is actually a reminder to the designers of the activities that we must not pursue "too low cost customer acquisition" when attracting new customers through activities. Acquiring users through deception, misleading and other means will disrupt the entire market in the long run and will not be conducive to the user's sedimentation on their own products.

My understanding of low cost is that as long as the cost of attracting new users is lower than the cost of buying traffic on channels such as Google, Facebook, and Tiktok, then it can be understood as "low cost". Assuming that the single CPI on Facebook is $1, then the cost of acquiring new users is acceptable as long as it is less than $1.

The second is high-quality users. The definition of high quality is different for different products. The high quality of content products may be high-retention users, while the high quality of e-commerce platforms may be high-paying users. When we design new user acquisition activities, we need to consider the core indicators of these users after they enter the product.

——This is actually also a reminder to the designers of the event not to deliberately mislead and deceive users. Bringing in a large number of low-quality users will not only be detrimental to the dissemination of the product, but will also disrupt the entire fission market.

2. How to gain the trust of users?

[Online earning] has a very bad reputation in China. When ordinary users hear about online earning, they easily think of the countless decimal points behind Pinduoduo's 100 yuan withdrawal activity. So what do Southeast Asian users think of online earning?

——It’s also very bad.

The initiator of this problem is actually domestic manufacturers. A large number of Chinese overseas manufacturers have brought the domestic cunning online earning methods to Southeast Asia, including but not limited to the following methods:

1. Exaggerating the amount of rewards that can be obtained by falsely claiming online earning;
2. Provide multiple thresholds and restrictions when withdrawing money;
3. False withdrawal success rate and data;
4. …

This led to us inviting KOLs to cooperate with us at the beginning of attracting new customers to the online earning platform, but their overall evaluation of the online earning products was relatively poor.

Therefore, no matter how attractive the subsequent reward values ​​are, no matter how smooth the process experience is, no matter how attractive the promotional copy is... it is all in vain.

So what strategies should be adopted to gain the trust of users? This is a prerequisite for determining the success or failure of online earning and attracting new users.

In this regard, the effective strategies I adopted at the time were:

1) Small amount instant payment

When I was researching new customer acquisition activities in Southeast Asia, I found that a large number of products had delayed delivery, usually with a review period of 5 to 7 working days, and some as long as 30 days or more.

Many users complained a lot about this, so when we designed the event, we used [Small Amount Instant Deposit] as the main product selling point, that is, after users log in and complete a simple task, they can get a small reward, and they can withdraw the money quickly. Through such a process, users can feel that the product is trustworthy.

This is actually the "foot-in-the-door effect" in psychology, that is, if you want users to complete a more difficult task (attracting new customers), let them complete a small task (sign in) first and give them immediate positive rewards.

2) Different user stratification

About 70% of the users in the new user acquisition activities are brought by big players (or KOLs), and the interests of these users need special attention. Their trust in the product and their evaluation of the event are crucial, so KOLs will be given a quick channel for cash withdrawals. We will also respond quickly to their feedback.

3) Show the amount of reward

After completing the above two steps, it becomes a natural thing to let KOLs and users post their reward amounts on social media. Social media itself is the main source of product traffic, and the actual reward amount posted will strengthen other users' trust in the product.

4) Data realization

"Creating false display data" is a method that domestic product managers particularly like to use to make the data displayed by the product look particularly good, such as a large number of live broadcast platforms. But I myself am actually becoming more and more disgusted with this, because the starting point itself is dishonest.

So when I am making a product, even when the amount of data is relatively small, I try my best to use real data to display it on the product. It is true that some users cannot distinguish between real and fake data, and when you show users fake data, it is more attractive. But I think more users can sense that when product managers get used to using false data, they actually lose the trust between them and their users.

3. How to set the reward value?

When it comes to setting reward values, many people may think that the more the better. This is indeed true, but when any reward for attracting new customers is given enough, the design value of the product manager is lost.

The value of a product manager lies in making users feel as much as possible that they have the ability to obtain sufficient rewards through activity design. This requires taking advantage of people's gaming psychology to make users feel that there are challenges and difficulties, but at the same time that they can obtain them through their own efforts. That is, the same 100 yuan was spent, but the activity brought in more users, creating a leverage effect in attracting new users.

Taking Pinduoduo's withdrawal of 100 yuan as an example, Plan A: you can get a 10 yuan reward for each new user you bring in; Plan B: the current reward is 90 yuan but it cannot be withdrawn. If you bring in 10 new users, you can get 100 yuan and can withdraw it.

Obviously, the second option brings better activity effects.

Why do I say that? Because I actually verified this, I tried two different strategies in the process of setting the reward value:

The first activity strategy is: you can get XX regular rewards every time you attract a new user and complete the specified behavior.

This kind of activity is actually a labor activity. As long as users pay time and energy, they can get corresponding rewards. However, the reward value is not high and the challenge is average. It is more suitable for risk-averse users. Since the rewards are actually issued, users will have a higher degree of trust in the activity. This kind of activity is also more conducive to building user trust in the product.

The second activity strategy is: within a limited time period, after attracting XX new users, you can get a one-time XX high reward.

This type of activity is more challenging and is a kind of gaming behavior. Once users participate, they must achieve the goal of attracting new users within a limited time period, otherwise they will not receive any rewards. Pinduoduo's 100 yuan withdrawal is an example of this kind of activity, which is more suitable for risk-seeking users.

I tested the two activities simultaneously, and the experimental results showed that 40% of the users who participated in attracting new users chose Activity 1, and 60% chose Activity 2.

The average number of new customers attracted per person in the first activity was 1.2, and the average number of new customers attracted per person in the second activity was 1.8. Later, I further optimized and adjusted the strategy for Activity 2, and added several derivative gameplays to it in parallel, increasing the average number of new customers attracted per person in Activity 2 to 2.7.

4. Focus on the top players

Data released by Google in 2019 showed that YouTube's global monthly active users have exceeded 2 billion. As traffic from other customer acquisition channels becomes increasingly expensive, obtaining traffic from YouTube through KOLs is a good choice. When I was doing online earning activities, the core source of traffic was also YouTube.

1. What is the value of a YouTuber?

Content creators on YouTube are referred to as YouTubers, and their interests deserve the focus and care of the product. Mainly based on several reasons:

One is that YouTubers are people who make a living from this. Especially for mid-level YouTubers (those with less than 50,000 followers), their commercialization methods are relatively limited, and they often earn fees by taking on third-party promotions. So ordinary players participate in activities just for fun, but YouTubers make a living from this. If their interests are not taken into consideration, it will seriously affect the effectiveness of the activities.

Second, YouTube's traffic has a long-tail effect. The long-tail effect here is specific to TikTok. When we watch videos on YouTube, we often find content from N years ago, which makes the video itself have a strong long-tail effect. TikTok videos do not have this feature.

Third, YouTube can indirectly help the website's SEO. As the number of videos on YouTube gradually increases, many users will search for product keywords on Google, which will indirectly help the website's SEO and further bring in natural traffic.

2. How to focus on YouTubers?

At that time, we adopted only two strategies.

The first is to communicate with them before event design, numerical adjustments, and major updates to collect their feedback and opinions. For example, every time the rewards are adjusted, we will first ask for the opinions of KOLs to see their feedback and enthusiasm for participation.

The second is to pay special attention to their opinions and feedback. For example, you can maintain a friendly relationship with YouTubers so that you can give them feedback immediately when they have opinions.

Okay, that’s all I have to share.

Author: Wangzai No.9

Source public account: Product Deep Web