Frequently asked questions and answers about user growth!

This article is just a beginning, sorting out 5 very representative questions received during this period, many of which are introduced in detail in the book.

1. What exactly is user growth doing?

This is a question I answered on Zhihu, and it is very representative.

Many product managers and product operators are very confused. What changes will there be in their work content after adding the prefix "user growth"? Section 7.1.3 of this book provides a detailed introduction to the content and functions of the work, as well as the division of labor within the team, and 7.5.1 provides job descriptions of the three major types of user growth positions in leading Internet companies. I will not repeat it here. I would like to skip the introduction of specific work content and add some understanding of user growth work.

(1) Regardless of your position in user growth, you must be aware of looking at user growth from a global perspective.

The global perspective is introduced in detail in Section 1.3 of this book, and Chapter 2 details how to move from methodology to specific implementation.

(2) User growth is not just about hacking. If you understand growth hackers literally, you might think that their work is full of black technology or aims to create viral spread through various techniques. In the past one or two years, there have indeed been many misunderstandings about growth hacking. If one overemphasizes free, large-scale and rapid user acquisition, and expects to have an easy-to-use marketing tool to quickly build a social fission engine, then one is oversimplifying user growth.

User growth still depends on product thinking, respecting user needs and market rules, and making good use of data and technology. In essence, it requires perfecting a business model rather than just completing an indicator.

(3) User growth is more than just a growth model. The model here refers to some higher-dimensional, universal and replicable thinking methods that are refined based on a large amount of analysis and event summary. There are many classic growth models today, but models are not omnipotent. Anyone who has worked in user growth knows that these models alone are far from enough to guide us in the work of user growth.

If you apply these models without considering the industry background and product development stage, you will get ridiculous results.

(4) User growth requires a focus on increments and how to accurately evaluate increments.

For frontline user growth practitioners, experimental methods and their proper application are critical. We must also continue to influence decision makers, use more reasonable means to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies, and create a culture of experimentation. The basic principles of the experiment are not difficult; the real obstacle is the awareness of the experiment and the willingness to analyze. Experiment is just a scientific method that can improve the precision and accuracy of quantitative results, but what is more important for user growth is to find the right direction and get to the point.

You must not take some relatively obscure statistical knowledge as a panacea for user growth and show it off everywhere.

(5) User growth as I understand it is just a working method. It is a summary of the development of the business world in the past years and the Internet field in the past 20 years: we need to look at the data and be more precise.

User growth is not that mysterious. It is the implementation of a global perspective + experimental methods. It still follows the most important point in Internet thinking: based on user value.

In short, methodology is to be used, not to be shown off. No matter how fancy the user growth practices are, I believe they are inseparable from the user value as the foundation, creating or optimizing business models from macro opportunities (the Tao level), and polishing products and marketing methods through data-driven (the tool and technique level). Don't forget your original intention.

2. How do product operations and product managers switch to user growth and what do they do respectively?

This question is mainly asked by friends who are currently in product operations and product management positions. I believe that students in data analysis, development, etc. also have similar questions. I use the following figure to introduce the positions and general work content involved in an ideal growth team:

Every growth project needs a person in charge who is responsible for setting the goals for the project (usually how much a certain indicator should be improved) and for pushing the goals down to an executable state. During the entire project execution process, the person in charge is also the promoter of the rhythm, responsible for organizing various meetings and discussions, and reporting upward in a timely manner to solve problems, obtain resources, and obtain appropriate experimental time.

Data analysis is primarily responsible for the discovery of growth opportunities. In addition to conventional macro business performance data, more energy needs to be invested in the analysis of user behavior. The main goal is to identify problems or opportunities and further develop growth hypotheses. During growth experiments and experimental analysis, data analysis is also the main force. It is necessary to master scientific and rigorous analysis methods and to stand from a neutral perspective to rationally judge the effectiveness of the strategy.

Product managers (or product planners, designers) usually need to complete client function design, tool function design and other tasks required for growth projects. On the client side, it is necessary to design the entire user path from the user's perspective, and improve the overall conversion rate of the strategy through necessary front and back guidance, reasonable combination of copywriting materials, etc. On the tool side, product design needs to design product functions based on team needs to improve team work efficiency, and avoid blindly piling up various functions.

Product operations are mainly responsible for the formulation of growth strategies and, based on the understanding of users, comprehensively output operational ideas on "how to improve growth targets."

In many growth teams, the work content of product managers and product operations may be similar. In general, they are responsible for the overall design and implementation of growth strategies.

R&D personnel are mainly divided into algorithms and engineering. The algorithm needs to collaborate deeply with product operations to find the target audience more accurately and provide more reasonable numerical solutions. Many of the related outputs come from models developed by algorithm colleagues. The engineering department is mainly responsible for the development of client front-end and back-end related functions, as well as the development of tools.

In general, a basic growth team needs to include the above members. Depending on the growth project, if there are many that involve market launches and brand strategies, marketing colleagues will also be included. If some projects involve channel deployment and business cooperation, business and legal colleagues will also be included.

3. What is the difference between a user growth product manager and a strategic product manager?

Recently, friends from ByteDance also published a book called "Practical Strategic Product Managers". Some friends asked what is the difference between a growth product manager and a strategic product manager.

I personally think the biggest difference between the two is team affiliation. There is overlap, but the difference is actually not that important. Strategic product managers usually have a clear goal and need to improve relevant indicators through the formulation and optimization of various strategies; many user growth product managers need to focus on strategy formulation, and our previous team had a dedicated position for growth strategy. If this position falls within the growth team, then the title is growth product manager. If not, then it is usually called strategic product manager.

By extension, what is the strategy doing? Specific strategies are highly correlated with business. Here is an example of Didi to explain what a strategic product manager does:

The main principle of Didi's order dispatching strategy is: from a global perspective, try to meet as many travel needs as possible and ensure that every ride-hailing demand of the passenger can be met faster and more certainly. At the same time, we strive to improve the efficiency of each driver in accepting orders, so as to minimize the total pick-up distance and time.

It is almost impossible to achieve the best in real time, but a slight delay and waiting until a certain amount of orders have accumulated before doing batch matching is a feasible method. The core idea is to let passengers and drivers wait for a while (the actual time is not long, and users can hardly perceive the difference in waiting), and then distribute them centrally after collecting some orders and driver information. When there are enough and densely packed orders and drivers, the dispatching strategy can find a better dispatching method more reasonably and from a global perspective.

The figure below shows an example of a global optimal scenario. If passenger A calls for an order, the order will be immediately assigned to car 1 nearby, and then passenger B who calls for an order will be assigned to car 2. It can be seen that passenger B needs a relatively long time to wait for car 2, so passenger B may cancel the order. After global optimal processing, after waiting for a while, the orders of Passenger 1 and Passenger 2 are processed at the same time. It can be found that if car 1 is assigned to passenger B and car 2 is assigned to passenger A, the total waiting time of the two is shorter than before. Passenger B's order was also completed without sacrificing Passenger A's experience too much. Of course, actual decision making is more complicated than this example, but the core idea is basically the same.

4. Is it only Internet companies that need to pay attention to user growth and experimentation?

No, authors of public accounts, authors of video accounts, UP hosts at Bilibili, or friends who do live broadcasts all need to pay attention to user growth and experimentation. Indeed, the data and tools of Internet companies are relatively complete and easier to use, but what is more important is to have incremental awareness and experimental thinking. Relying on third-party platforms, you can also make good use of data to make some assumptions and verifications.

For example, in terms of the use of data, official accounts have the ability to "quasi-experiment". The WeChat public account backend can support distribution by region. You can find two cities with similar fans, city level and size to try to conduct a control experiment. By distributing the same article to two regions, we can roughly verify the impact of different titles, graphic and text layouts, distribution time periods, etc. on user opening rate, completion rate, and attention attraction. Although this is not a strict randomized controlled experiment, if the results are significantly different, it can still be used as a reference for optimization.

5. How to prepare your resume and interview questions? How to improve interview/recruitment success rate?

User growth positions require quick identification of problems and finding solutions. Therefore, you need to focus on problem-solving skills during your resume and interview. During the interview, you need to concisely describe the problem-solving process to demonstrate its replicability. The STAR principle is strongly recommended, which clearly describes the four elements of situation, task, action and result. Then give a detailed introduction based on the points that the interviewer focuses on. For more information on interview preparation, please refer to Section 7.5 of the book.

The first thing for a candidate to succeed in an interview is to have the ability. Section 7.4 lists three essential mindsets and three essential abilities. Assuming that the candidate has the basic abilities, he or she also needs to prepare some growth insights into the track of the target position, fully understand the growth opportunities, and be able to take action as soon as they come. This is a very important plus point. Switching to the recruiter's perspective, you can also refer to the capability map to evaluate the interviewee.

Author: Cucumber Morning News

Source: User Growth Practical Notes (ugnote)