Product operation strategy in 4 cycles!

The product is so good, why is there not much user growth in the week after launch? Compared to many operations personnel, they will more or less doubt their own operation plans when facing questions from product managers. In fact, APP, like other products, also has its life cycle. In different life cycles of products, the effects of various operating methods are naturally different. Therefore, different operating strategies should be used for different stages.

This article will explain how products should operate in different periods from four major cycles.

1. Exploration Period

During the exploration period of the APP, products and users are the focus of operations. The product manager presents the product to the public and waits for users to test it. To verify the product model, a certain amount of user participation is required. At this stage, operators need to find people who understand the product: seed users.

Considering that a large number of users will enter in the future, in order to prevent messy content from causing the community to get out of control, it is necessary to determine the tone of the content while looking for users.

1. Introducing seed users

When talking about seed users, we have to mention the product Zhihu. When Zhihu first entered the market, it chose a semi-closed form. The founder used his own connections to invite some well-known people in the industry to join Zhihu. With the help of these celebrities' fame, various posts asking for invitation codes have appeared on the Internet.

According to the recollections of many users, they shamelessly looked for big shots on Weibo, Douban and other platforms, and finally got the invitation code.

In fact, Zhihu officials also distributed invitation codes at that time, but users were required to fill out forms and apply. The form was relatively complicated and could only be obtained after passing official review. This method of filling in personal information to obtain an invitation code actually builds a bridge of communication between yourself and the seed users.

It’s like you opened a hot pot restaurant. No one knew about it in the early stage, so you needed to use flyers or WeChat to forward your store activities to get a certain number of users. Only in this way can you attract some people to consume in your store and support your store. If your taste is authentic and the price is reasonable, you will naturally attract a lot of users and you will get your first batch of seed users.

The operation department will feedback the problems and suggestions encountered by seed users to the product manager, and the product manager will improve the product based on user needs.

2. Determination of content tone

Airbnb found in an investigation that the pictures on its website were all taken casually by landlords with their mobile phones and had no appeal to users. In the early stages, there is naturally nothing to attract users. In order to attract users, Airbnb's operators go door to door to help landlords take pictures of their own houses, beautify the pictures, and upload them to the Internet. Once the core point is found, sales will naturally increase. The tone of the content will affect the user's subjective feelings when they first enter the APP. So at this stage, operators should determine the content tone of the APP:

• If it is a content product, you need to determine the criteria for judging the content;
• If it is an e-commerce product, you need to determine the image display of the product;
• If it is a social product, you need to determine how users are connected to each other.

2. Growth Stage

Before the APP enters the mature stage, it already has a group of seed users who have a very unique understanding of the product. During the growth stage of the product, a tough battle for users begins. At this stage, the core should focus on user operation, increasing user activity, and also pay attention to brand operation.

Next, we will use the case of Xiaohongshu to illustrate how to operate during the growth period.

1. Driven by UGC content, Xiaohongshu’s user ecosystem is generally divided into two categories. One type is avant-garde buyers who share their shopping experiences and usage experiences in the community after shopping. This type of people has strong consumption power and is willing to share. They are also the core mainstream driving force of Xiaohongshu's UGC content production; the other type has a certain consumption power, faces difficulties in shopping, and does not know how to make choices such as buying and traveling. UGC is the king of content growth. Such climax-driven content comes from the endorsement of Xiaohongshu’s social value. The number of likes and followers of Xiaohongshu’s creative content is no longer centered around the product, but has formed an expert effect that spans the chain.

2. User registration mechanism. When you first register on Xiaohongshu, you are asked to select categories, that is, to choose topics that interest you. Only after you check the interests you want to know and register, the algorithm can recommend the content you want to see. Only in this way can users be retained to the greatest extent. This is also the most user filtering and also the most confidence in the product.

3. The algorithm is tailored to each user. The deeper the user browses, the more similar content will be detected and recommended. This algorithm is more similar to Taobao and even Toutiao. In Xiaohongshu, click on the recommendation/search content, and it will make recommendations of similar value based on the search content. After clicking on the content again, the content below will be recommended in more depth. Once you return to the homepage, the content displayed on the homepage will change according to your interests.

4. Operation of top accounts. Operation of Xiaohongshu’s official account is also a very important measure. Various sweet potatoes are the key to supporting the entire top operation. These top accounts are vertical and active in various interest fields, and each account has millions of fans. These accounts will select high-quality content from tens of millions of pieces of content and publish them to promote within the account. This method can bring strong traffic and attention to the creators. The official calls this kind of luck "flipping". Being able to see the dawn of hope is the eternal driving force.

5. Expert star effect. Xiaohongshu has attracted a large number of celebrities, whether it is Hu Ge or Di Lieba. The entry of these celebrities will attract a large number of follow-up fans. As long as they come in, Xiaohongshu can use algorithms to consume them. Xiaohongshu has become an internet celebrity platform, and building such a platform is to give users real social value. In this era of traffic dominance, once you become popular on any platform, traffic will always revolve around you.

6. Sharing mechanism. Xiaohongshu’s sharing methods include H5 Moments, mini-program friends, and generated pictures. Each sharing method, such as copying links, has been optimized in a delicate manner and upgraded to improve the product experience. Once the user enters the designated content through the shared link, he or she will be returned to the algorithm's recommendation page, which has laid a very good foundation for Xiaohongshu's user growth and expert effect.

The star effect, value effect, and trend of the times have become the traffic effect of Xiaohongshu at this stage. Those who want to be famous and acquire knowledge are constantly colliding here. Xiaohongshu's operating methods during its growth period can be called excellent because it did three things well: entry point, user experience, and growth model.

3. Maturity

In theory, products in the mature and stable stage will enter a comprehensive and refined operation period - for different product modules and different types of users, there should be dedicated operations personnel to be responsible for providing users with corresponding services and information. The operational work at this stage will generally be guided by three major directions: establishing brand image, user activity and commercial monetization.

1. Establishing brand image

Product operation requires a large number of brand communication activities and events to promote product value and establish brand image.

A brand communication activity needs to pay attention to the following four aspects:

1. Brand positioning must always be measured to see whether it is in line with consumer interests and whether it is consistent with the brand’s own positioning.
2. Brand creativity has four characteristics: novelty, surprise, shock and effectiveness.
3. When it comes to brand communication, even good things need to be promoted. Every aspect of a series of activities that may leave an impression on customers, such as the company, product, packaging, price, channel, advertising, public relations, and service, are actually constantly speaking to consumers. The ways of brand communication include advertising, public relations, promotional communication, interpersonal relationship communication, word-of-mouth communication, etc.
4. Operation and maintenance, competition is cruel. As the saying goes, "It is difficult to conquer the world, but it is even harder to defend it!" Brands also need to be cared for, operated and maintained! The consequence of improper brand maintenance is "a thousand-mile dam collapsed by an ant hole."

2. Improve user activity

User activity can be promoted simultaneously from two aspects: user incentive system and refined content push, creating a large number of activities with relatively fixed cycles for specific users.

User incentives:

Common user incentives include spiritual, emotional and interest incentives.

1. Spiritual incentives: including levels, medals, honor system (such as QQ levels, Weibo medals, Starbucks membership privileges, etc.), membership rights (such as priority boarding for business class passengers, acceleration for Thunder members, and higher-level services that only a few or paying users can enjoy).
2. Emotional motivation: motivation from the perspective of human nature, such as laziness, vanity, possessiveness, curiosity, fear, sense of belonging, etc. Release relevant incentive content activities within the app to trigger user resonance and discussion.
3. Interest incentives: offering ticket tools such as red envelopes, combination tickets, vouchers, platform virtual currency, and physical virtual prizes.

Refined APP content push:

To achieve refined APP content push, it is necessary to select the best push content and channels for different user groups, and to control the time and frequency of push to show respect and care for users.

Classify users based on their attributes and push content that is characteristic of that group, rather than blindly pushing content that covers everything. For example: if an activity that is only aimed at women is also pushed to male users, it will cause unnecessary information disturbance to male users and leave a bad impression.

The nature of the APP itself affects the time and frequency of push notifications to a certain extent. Some APPs are suitable for daily push notifications, such as information, news, and weather APPs. However, the number of push notifications per day must be controlled. The time of each push should be fixed, or at least stable within a certain time range (except for major or emergencies), and try not to disturb users during working hours.

For food delivery apps like Ele.me and Meituan, the best time to push information such as coupons is between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m., which is in line with the habit of office workers to order food in advance. It will not cause information interference and can maximize the conversion rate of push notifications.

3. Commercialization

Different companies and products have different specific monetization forms, so you need to try various potential commercial monetization methods based on your own product types.

In the current model, monetization is divided into quantitative monetization and qualitative monetization. Quantitative monetization mainly involves advertising (hard ads, soft ads, exchange and traffic diversion), which has low returns, high costs (reduced user experience), and low quality.

Qualitative change is built on quantity, mainly e-commerce, membership, content payment, etc., which come from high-quality users. Therefore, the user fit is high, the benefits are high, the user experience is improved, and the quality is high.

4. Recession

Products in the decline stage are usually the dominant ones in the previous era, but it is obvious that the future no longer belongs to them. Their previous users begin to leave in large numbers and move to various alternative products.

In fact, every Internet product will enter a period of decline, but this does not mean that the life of the product will end.

Therefore, the operational focus of this type of product is often the maintenance of old users and life cycle management. Through various means, we try to slow down the loss of old users as much as possible, and at the same time continue to explore new product directions, striving to make a good alternative product before potential alternative products develop. However, if a product really reaches this stage, the possibility of revival is generally small...

Example:

Douban has been anxious since 2014, constantly trying to release new products, but its huge product line has always been tangled...

The two dominant players in the BBS era, Maopu and Tianya, known as "Mowpu in the north and Tianya in the south", have lost a large number of users since the rise of various new communities such as Weibo in 2011, and have faded out of the mainstream Internet world.

Kodak was once the big brother in the field of film and film cameras, and it continued to extend the life cycle of this field by acquiring patents and improving film. However, no matter how we improve and enhance the efficiency of shooting, we are still making changes within the framework of film and cannot break through the original limitations. Such a structure made this giant extremely weak and powerless in the face of digital cameras, and eventually it went bankrupt.

For a product in its decline, operations can basically only maintain and strengthen various previous means to extend its life cycle. At the same time, recalling and taking over lost users may become a relatively important operational task in this stage. However, such work often does not produce much effect.

In the field of mobile Internet, products adapt to the market through continuous iteration, which is a reflection of the continuous extension of their life cycle. But iteration means that the product will become more and more bloated. The more you want to please everyone and meet the needs of all users, the less likely it will be to perfectly meet the needs of users in any target market.

At this time, new changes will occur in the market, either segmentation of vertical fields, such as fitness software, large and comprehensive software will gradually be replaced by software for training specialized parts. Or it is a simplification of the original product, such as a Lite version. Recognizing the life cycle is only the beginning of progress; extending the life cycle is the key.

By Te Fuir

Source: Te Fuir

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