Fission, distribution...Detailed explanation of the four major user growth models

In order to cope with the increasingly competitive online education market, front-end customer acquisition has become more important. Although the core of online education growth is to ensure high retention of full-priced products, this is the bottom line for survival. The key is how to invest more energy in the traffic end to achieve sustainable growth.

There is a growth tool that may help online education companies achieve this goal, and that is referrals.

Dugujun is very fond of observing the customer acquisition methods of mainstream players in online education, and has even dismantled the referral and drainage systems of more than 10 education companies in the hope of finding the core rules of self-growth.

Next, Dugujun will use a series of articles to deeply analyze the essential logic and operational methods of referrals, hoping to give some inspiration to online education practitioners.

This article is the first one, so let’s start with the definition of referral.

01. What is referral?

We should always ask why, but first we should ask what. We must first clearly understand what a referral is.

There have always been different opinions on the definition of referral, but there is a consensus in the industry, that is, "old users bring new users", which can be said to be a very popular saying.

But what is an old user? What is a new user? Without a clear definition of these two key concepts, it is meaningless to discuss the nature of referrals.

1. What is an old user?

The so-called old users must be sticky to the online education institutions, that is, they have a high degree of trust. Most people understand them as users of core paid products, such as long-term students.

In fact, there are certain definition criteria for old users, and they can be distinguished by products and processes. Moreover, the referral strategies designed for old users of different levels are different.

For example, VIPKID’s core referral activities are mostly aimed at paying students of major courses. Only these people can participate in its invitation and recommendation activities and receive rewards. However, in order to expand the scope of attracting new students, VIPKID has also designed some low-priced courses, group courses, family education lectures, etc. to meet the needs. The main target is users who have signed up for these courses but have not signed up for major courses.

2. What is a new user?

To define a new user, you need to look at the scenario and medium in which the referral is used.

They can be registered users, trial class users, traffic product users, or paying users of core products. In most cases, new users mainly refer to registered users and trial course users.

Taking VIPKID as an example, its most basic referral activities are mainly aimed at new registered users. As long as old users successfully invite new users to register and make appointments for classes, they can get class rewards. The purpose of this is to reduce the difficulty for old users to invite new users. At the same time, class rewards can also be used as a tool to retain old users, killing two birds with one stone.

So, what exactly is a referral?

The author believes that the growth method that can mobilize old users (mainly paying users) to bring in new users (mainly experience users) can be called referral or old users bringing in new users.

In fact, the essence of referral is a user operation strategy, which focuses on maintaining old users, especially core paying users, and mobilizing them to carry out productized and large-scale sharing or invitation actions, while using marketing and sales to complete the conversion of new users.

Now that we have a clear definition of referral, let’s sort out the difference between referral and another concept, which is fission.

02. The difference between fission and referral

Many people around me believe that fission is also about old employees bringing in new ones, and some even directly equate it with referrals. At first glance, it seems to be nothing wrong, but in fact it is not.

In fact, fission is a concept with a larger scope than referral. As long as one person can bring another person to complete the same or even more in-depth action, it can be called fission. In other words, both parties in the fission can be users with any degree of investment in the product.

For example, in the case of fission in the form of Mission Bao, the only requirement for both parties is to follow the official account, while the definition of referral requires that one side is a paying user and the other side is a product tester or paying user.

The description just now is actually a broad definition of fission. From this perspective, referral belongs to fission, and referral and fission are in a relationship of being included and including. But in reality, fission is often defined in a narrow sense, which simply means "traffic brings traffic".

The vast majority of fissions have the following three characteristics: high frequency, demand-driven, and poor experience.

High frequency means that the fission lasts for a very short time. Generally, the cycle of a fission activity is 2 to 3 days, occasionally 5 days, and the longest is a week. It is very fast and stops after a wave of traffic is collected.

Demand-driven means initiating fission activities based on users' different levels of needs and pain points. This is the main reason for the high frequency of fission. Only sufficient demand can support sufficient fission activities.

A poor experience means that fission is often very rough, requiring constant reminders to users to share and invite, and using copywriting, visuals, interactions, rankings and other means to constantly disturb the other party just to increase the sharing rate.

For example, the "High-Paying Operation Growth Chart" that was all over the screen in Sanjieke borrowed the gameplay of Taskbao and used high-brand physical products to stimulate users. It only had a half-day activity period and frantically disturbed users, but it only brought about an increase of 140,000 fans in 15 hours. It was a typical traffic thinking.

Referrals are a little different. First, it will clearly screen users who participate in sharing or invitations, and have threshold restrictions, for example, only paying users can participate; secondly, in terms of time, the operation and iteration cycle is relatively long, requiring at least one month of testing, and it also depends on the quality of the users brought in and the conversion effect; finally, the driving force is also different, which is the deep-seated user pain points and product reputation.

So, we can summarize the difference between the two:

(1) Referrals will clearly distinguish between new and old users, but fission does not need to make a clear distinction. Therefore, in a broad sense, fission includes referrals. This is also the reason why there is no essential difference between the two from the perspective of the user life cycle.

(2) In a narrow sense, fission is to use traffic to bring more traffic, which is a traffic-based thinking approach, while referrals require screening of users and accurate traffic, which is a conversion idea.

03. Re-understanding distribution and group buying

Finally, I would like to talk about distribution and group buying, which are two indispensable means in the self-growth system of online education. Do you think distribution and group buying should be considered (narrowly defined) fission or referrals?

The reason why we need to distinguish between distribution and group buying here is to tell everyone that different understandings of a growth model will affect the actual results you achieve with the help of the model, and slightly biased understanding can conceal the essence of the growth problem.

The essence of distribution is an agency sales system, which is to ask users to help sell products, and then reward them with shares. From this point of view, distribution belongs to referral. However, we also need to look at the attributes of the distribution products. If it is a high-potential traffic-generating product, such as the classic "New World Marketing Course", which is a traffic strategy, it can be classified as fission.

Therefore, we also need to classify the distribution internally. The distribution of low-priced courses for the purpose of attracting traffic is of the fission type, and the promoter mechanism for the purpose of sales is a kind of referral system. In this way, we will know more clearly how to implement the distribution.

Now let’s look at group buying, which is also called group buying. It is essentially a conversion tool or model, but because it can automatically bring in new users, it is necessary to distinguish between fission and referral.

In fact, group buying and distribution are the same thing. There are also group buying for the purpose of attracting traffic, such as the common 0 yuan/1 yuan group buying classes, which can be classified as fission because they can quickly increase the volume. Group buying of high-priced classes by multiple people and unlimited low-price or high-price group buying that can only be initiated by old users can all be classified as referrals. As for group buying distribution and tiered group buying, it depends on the matching products and purposes. Some tiered group buying does not even fall into the category of fission and referral.

This article systematically sorts out the definition of referral, the difference between fission and referral, and makes a cognitive division between distribution and group buying. The purpose is to help everyone make a clear classification so that when you adopt any growth model of fission, referral, distribution and group buying, you will not suffer disappointing results due to unclear understanding.

Author: Wild Operation Community

Source: Wild Operation Community