What should we do when the activities are ineffective in attracting new users and it is difficult to operate seed users?

1. The new user acquisition activities for C-end users are not effective. What should we do?

In fact, we are in big companies, including Alibaba, 360, and Mop in the past. First, having traffic does not necessarily mean good results. Second, to be honest, our traffic is gathered from everywhere, either from daily traffic, or from talking to partners about cooperation, or from applying for large-traffic entrances. Our own positions often do not have much traffic.

Regarding event operations , I would like to share some practical tips and methods:

1. Every activity is just a beginning, not an end.

What does it mean? Operations cannot be conducted just for the sake of conducting activities, and then we think that everything is fine and we can be relaxed and happy after the activities are over. That's not the case.

1) Every activity must accumulate effective users

For example, you can accumulate potential users for each activity in the community. The community is a very useful tool to increase user reach, and at least these users will not be lost. This way, when you hold your next event, these users will still be available. In this way, you can accumulate some users in each activity. Even if there are only dozens of users at the beginning, it doesn’t matter. With continuous accumulation, after a year, you will have a considerable user base.

The first event I organized in my life was on Mop. Mop had a lot of traffic that year, and Alexa ranked over 100 in the world. However, the module I was responsible for had no traffic. I pieced things together and recruited people from everywhere, but there were only 45 participating users in total, and only a dozen local users participated. The others were all people I invited from various places, but the quality was high. The overall effect of the activity was very good, and the data increased dozens of times.

Later, I worked on activities on Mop and was invincible.

2) High-quality users in the event

These users are even more precious, especially start-ups and companies with a small number of users. When organizing activities and performing operations, one should be like Cao Cao, eager to seek talented people. Every operator should have eyes to discover user talents, that is, high-quality users. For example, if you are holding an essay contest, you should add all the winning users as friends and then operate the event well.

3) The next event will always be better than the last one

This is the basic principle of doing activities. If there is no progress every time you do an activity, then what are you doing? Everyone knows that they have to write a review of an activity. Many students, when the activity is done well, write it as if they are seeking credit or reward, with a lot of words about how great I am. But if the activity goes wrong, what they write is like a confession, as if they are asking for forgiveness. What’s the point?

If you conduct an activity but cannot summarize the rules, you will not know what was done well and why it was done well, whether it can be reused in subsequent activities, what was done poorly and why it was done poorly, how competitors do it, and what are the advantages and disadvantages. When doing activities, it is not a bad thing to fall into traps. If you don’t fall into traps this time, you may fall into them next time. The key is to remember the lesson. Otherwise, any review you do will be meaningless. It is better not to do it. Why waste the time?

Is the activity for the boss to see? Not at all, it’s for you to see, okay?

4) MVP of event operation

There are many forms of events, and not all of them are suitable for your business. Then you need to be the MVP, which means testing the waters in the simplest and least costly way. This is very important. When I organize an event, I also have to test the waters. I can't conclude that a certain form of event will be the most effective based on my experience.

We can first find some small traffic bases, or try it in the community, both are OK.

5) Copy of activities

Why do you want to be MVP? The next step is to replicate the activity. When a form of activity has been verified to be OK, we need to find a way to make every element of the activity, such as the theme, title, gameplay, rules, prize settings, selection methods, traffic, resources, etc., all these details, SOP-ized. SOP does not mean it is completely fixed. For example, in the same essay writing activity, there are many kinds of creative ideas and the prizes can be very rich. You can organize activities with pure C participation, or you can bring the B side in to participate in the activities together.

This kind of activity is operated in a continuously refined manner and can be done in a very solid and thorough manner. Instead of trying one thing at a time, without fully implementing one form of activity or verifying its effectiveness, you start to verify the next one. As a result, you end up doing everything again and conclude that this is not the best way to operate the activity. This is not good.

6) Activities are “done”

Do activities, do activities, the effect of the activities themselves is created. That’s why I said at the beginning that every activity should retain users, and the core of the activity is people. They can all play a role in your subsequent activities.

No one is participating in the event? Then wouldn’t you arrange some active users to act as “shills” in advance? Since users have already settled down, if you arrange some users in advance, even if you give them some small prizes, wouldn’t the early atmosphere of the event be very good? Many times, it’s not that users don’t want to participate, but that the atmosphere of your event is too cold, so they feel that there is no need to participate in your event. You have to create the feeling of fighting and competing, or you will regret it for the rest of your life if you don't participate.

Also, once the activity is done, just wait for users to participate, and you can get busy with other things? With this kind of thinking, you will never be able to carry out activities well in your lifetime. When preparing for an event, you should prepare all kinds of supplies, such as looking for traffic, prizes, partners, "stooges", etc. After the activity is launched, you need to keep an eye on it. If the effect is not good, find the problem immediately. If the traffic is not enough, make up for it. If there are not enough prizes, increase the prizes (What's wrong? Is it not possible? Who says the prizes are fixed?). If there are not enough people, recruit people from everywhere to participate. If the communication channels are not enough, recruit people to help you spread the word. You have a lot of work to do.

7) Short-term activities will ultimately be meaningless

If you only do some scattered activities each time, and think about changing your ideas and doing the next one after finishing one. That can't be done well. Short-term activities are like a blind man trying to break a stick. In the end, you will tire yourself out and your users will be fooled by you. It's a waste of resources and your own time, and the final effect will not be very good.

The best activity must be one that has been MVP-verified, and is constantly optimized, becoming more and more standardized and enriched. Make this activity a series and continue to do it, even for a year. Double 11, isn’t it just a series? It’s just that its cycle is one year because it’s too big. A truth.

If you can carry out several series of brand activities in a year, the whole industry may know you!

2. In the absence of seed user operations, where should the focus of operations be placed?

This question is difficult to answer because it depends on the specific business.

But first of all, I don’t think that the way of operating seed users is wrong. I think you have not grasped the key points of being a seed user.

1) Seed users do not simply pursue quantity, quality is the first priority

So no matter what method you use, whether it is to attract people one by one, import users from new media, or build a community. The core starting point for you to do this work should be how many high-quality users I have.

If you think this way when you are recruiting people, you should also think this way when you are building a community (you can create a separate group for high-quality users and operate it well). Even if you have 3,000 high-quality seed users, they may be able to match the 30,000 people of others.

2) It is not enough to just attract seed users, but they also need to be managed

For example, you can activate them by designing some activities, or through live broadcasts, content, topic discussions, etc. In short, let them form as much knowledge about your platform as possible every day.

3) Let them help improve your product

This is very important. To be honest, many product managers in companies work in isolation. In fact, they don’t understand users at all. They just think of themselves as users. If you have 3,000 seed users, you can collect a lot of good suggestions and feedback every week, so that your product managers will know which features to develop.

Let me talk about these three points first, you can try them first.

What is the focus of operations? I think we need to judge from several angles?

1. Your company’s KPIs. If the goal is to attract new customers, then design some operational strategies that focus on attracting new customers. Of course, you cannot just focus on attracting new customers, you also need to do a good job of retention and activity.

2. What specific functions do you currently have? Because operations require designing operational strategies based on these existing functions.

3. What are your team’s strengths? Everyone has different strengths. For example, if your leader is good at new media or social media, then you can make good use of these operational tools.

These factors need to be considered comprehensively.

Author: Leo

Source: Leileitalk520