For Internet people who are engaged in user growth, one of the main tasks of the job is to output ideas and plans for growth activities.

Today, as Internet products and activities become increasingly homogenized, innovative and effective growth methods appear less and less frequently. User growth workers have searched through competing and non-competing products, and started weekly brainstorming sessions, but the results have not been ideal.

Today I will share the thinking model of growth activity planning summarized in my work. Starting from the three dimensions of roles, scenarios, and motivations, the planning of growth activities and the generation of ideas can be traced and governed.

1. RSM Model

The RSM model starts with the three dimensions of roles, scenarios, and motivations to plan growth activities:

• Role: The main driver of marketing growth activities, not all participants;
• Scene: The main situation in which the character participates in the activity, which affects the user's emotions;
• Motivation: The reason why the character is willing to participate in the activity, which determines the user's willingness.

In addition to being derived from personal learning and work experience summary, the rationality of the RSM model also comes from the 5W1H principle.

The 5W1H principle is a widely used thinking method, which evolved from the "5W analysis method" proposed by American political scientist Lasswell. 5W1H refers to who, when, where, what, why and how.

Corresponding to growth activity planning, users (who) participate in a specific form of activity (how) in a specific scenario (when/where) for specific reasons (why). I did not put what into user activities, because how can summarize the activities, but instead understood what as the overall goal, that is, what we (the business side) want.

The RSM model focuses on who (i.e. role), why (i.e. motivation), and when/where (i.e. scenario), because what (goal) is the general premise. As for the specific activity content and form (how), it needs to be considered when further improving the growth activity plan. It will be involved in the early planning of the activity, but will not be the focus.

If we put the cart before the horse and focus on the specific content and form of the event in the early stages of event planning without the support of a basic framework, the risk of event failure will be higher and it will not be conducive to the effective iteration of the event.

Next, I will talk about the specific contents of the three dimensions of roles, scenes, and motivations. I hope it will be helpful for you to generate ideas and plan activities.

2. Role: Find the key people

1. Narrow role

In a narrow sense, roles refer to the users of a product. Most products’ growth activities are based on existing users. Stratifying users through different dimensions can help us better understand existing users and plan targeted activities.

Taking the online education industry as an example, a common way of user stratification is to divide users into newly registered users, trial class users, low-priced class users, full-priced class users, and silent churn users. Different user groups have different characteristics, which is also related to our subsequent thinking scenarios and motivations.

The value of user segmentation for event planning lies in that, on the one hand, it gives priority to and utilizes users with high user value and high event potential; on the other hand, it considers different event content and forms based on users with different characteristics to improve event efficiency and benefits.

For two-sided products (such as Didi and Airbnb), the users of the products include C-end users (demand-side users) and B-end users (supply-side users). When planning activities for such products, there are more user roles that can be utilized. Activities can be planned separately based on user characteristics, or attempts can be made to connect the two types of users to produce an activity effect of 1+1>2.

2. Broad Role

The broad role includes not only product users, but also partners and external platforms.

A typical example of a partner is the common joint membership, for example, buying a JD Plus membership and getting an iQiyi membership for free is using partners to help drive conversion growth.

External platforms mainly include some advertising platforms, paid brand partners, etc. These are also the drivers we can leverage when planning growth campaigns to help us generate growth.

3. Scenario: Influencing User Emotions

In the previous article, the scene corresponds to when and where in the 5W1H principle, but the scene is not just a concept of time and space, it also includes specific situations and behavioral interactions.

The most important function of the scene is that it can affect the user's emotions and even the user's needs, thereby affecting the user's decision. People are more likely to have a big meal after getting their salary and to take a taxi on rainy days. By making good use of scenarios and letting users perform expected activities, the probability of a successful event can be greatly increased.

Scenarios can be divided into online scenarios and offline scenarios:

1. Online scenario

Online scenarios mainly refer to the user's behavioral scenarios within our products, and can be extended to include the user's behavioral scenarios on the Internet. General growth activities are still focused on behavioral scenarios within the product, and we have less influence on other online scenarios.

But it does not mean that we cannot interfere. We can still explore and utilize users’ online behavior scenarios outside the product through partners, external platforms, etc.

By focusing on the user's behavioral scenarios within the product, we can sort out the main process paths of users using the product and find key scenarios. It is also necessary to combine the user stratification mentioned in the role section. The product paths for different user groups are different, and the key scenarios are also likely to be different.

In addition to the main path, we should also pay attention to the segmented paths. The user's individual needs and the starting points of the activities may also be hidden outside the main path.

Growth activities inevitably require users to share and spread information, or even invite them to register or purchase, which to some extent goes against the users' subjective wishes. Intervening in activities in appropriate scenarios can reduce users' behavioral resistance.

Add-to-cart when placing an order for e-commerce products and discounts for additional courses after purchasing courses in online education products are both typical examples of leveraging online scenarios. The higher the conversion rate, the more you can guide users to perform specific behaviors in key scenarios where user emotions are best.

2. Offline scenarios

Although we are planning Internet products and activities, more user scenarios still occur offline. Paying attention to and thinking about offline scenarios can help us better understand users and find the connection points with growth activities.

Moreover, growth activities are not limited to online activities. Offline activities can also help us achieve our growth goals.

Through user research, we can better explore users' offline scenarios. You can also break away from yourself and enter the role of a user, sort out "a user's day", and find scenarios where products and activities can be combined.

4. Motivation: Determine User Intentions

Scenarios can help us find the right trigger points for growth activities and reduce users' behavioral resistance, while motivation can directly enhance users' behavioral motivation.

Why are users willing to participate in activities? Especially growth activities that go against subjective intentions to a certain extent? This is directly related to the participation and final results of the event, and needs to be considered during event planning.

Generally, users' motivations are divided into internal motivations and external motivations. The effectiveness of activities can be greatly improved through the rational use or design of motivations.

1. Intrinsic Motivation

Internal motivation refers to the subjective desire to do something, which is directly driven by personal psychology.

Starting to run every day because of the motivation of "wanting to get healthy", starting to study hard because of the motivation of "wanting to improve and grow", and starting to practice Rubik's Cube because of the motivation of "fun" are all manifestations of internal motivation.

To understand and discover the internal motivations of users, we need to have a further understanding of user psychology. The internal motivations of different types of users are often different, so we need to conduct specific analysis based on product and user characteristics. Honor and showing off/hobbies/social relationships/reciprocity and altruism are relatively common internal motivations.

2. External Motivation

External motivation refers to the feeling that you have to do something, mainly various rewards.

In order to get free eggs, grandpas and grandmas lined up at the sales office; in order to get shopping discounts, men and women who like to shop online played the complicated Double Eleven activities. Without eggs there would be no queues, and without discounts there would be no mutual aid in raising cats. This is extrinsic motivation.

Focusing on the activity level, external motivation can be divided into internal rewards and external rewards.

Internal rewards are rewards related to the company/product, such as Taobao coupons are internal rewards. The advantage of internal rewards is that they can be strongly related to the product, and can even be used only within the product, which can strengthen the brand and retain users.

External rewards are rewards that are not related to the company/product, such as the most common cash and some general gifts. They have nothing to do with the product itself, but users need and like them. They are also common in growth activities.

The selection of rewards is relatively flexible. It does not mean that internal rewards and external rewards are necessarily superior or inferior. Different products and different users still have different preferences for rewards.

3. Crowding-out effect

Regarding internal motivation and external motivation, there is a "crowding out effect", that is, external motivation will reduce the user's intrinsic motivation.

Let me explain the crowding-out effect with a little story:

A group of naughty children always like to urinate in front of the elderly's house. Scolding and chasing them away only makes them worse. The old man came up with an idea. He said to the children, "From now on, if you come to my doorstep to pee every day, I will reward you with 10 yuan."

The children were so happy that a few days later the old man changed the reward to 5 yuan. The children were not happy but felt it was okay. After a while, the old man stopped giving money, and the children were very angry and stopped coming.

The naive children initially urinated in front of the old man’s door because of the internal motivation of “fun and interesting”, but the old man added the external motivation of “monetary reward”. The internal motivation + external motivation made the children more willing to urinate, but after the external motivation disappeared, the internal motivation also decreased - this is the crowding-out effect.

The crowding-out effect requires us to consider targeted rewards when designing user motivations, and to carefully add external motivations to what users are already doing due to internal motivations. On the other hand, we need to manage user expectations and consider whether user behavior will change uncontrollably after the activity ends and there are no rewards.

The above is the sharing about the RSM model. When planning growth activities, we should think from the three perspectives of users, scenarios, and motivations. First, we should find the key users, then look for suitable trigger scenarios based on user characteristics, and finally combine the design of motivations to improve the reliability of activity ideas to a certain extent.

Of course, there are still many challenges from idea to plan and to specific implementation, but well begun is half the success!

Author: Wu Yijiu

Source: Wu Yijiu