No one had ever predicted that a devastating pandemic might break out in early 2020. The coronavirus epidemic was like a "black swan", and the entire society was thrown into disarray - work, production, classes, and transportation were suspended, and cities and villages were closed. This was the first time a city was closed since the founding of New China.

The willful black swan flapped its wings, and a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises were "killed".

Whenever there is a "disaster", there will be both opportunities and challenges. How can companies grow during the epidemic? How to make a profit? This is a serious issue.

Let’s talk about growth hacking in this issue.

1. The urgency of growth

As the Internet enters the second half, traffic dividends fade, customer acquisition costs are high, and growth itself has become the core demand of an enterprise.

Coupled with the impact of the black swan, small and medium-sized enterprises are struggling and have to either survive or perish; insufficient capital chains and obstacles to cross-border e-commerce mean that if companies want to achieve long-term development, finding alternative ways to grow have become urgent issues that need to be addressed.

2. Growth Model

Many people have heard of the AARRR growth model, which is characterized by a closed growth loop.

In today's world where customer acquisition costs are extremely high, acquiring users through promotion is only the end point and it is difficult to have a competitive advantage. Only when users become new starting points for dissemination and fission can we gain greater growth power.

3. Growth Methods

In the AARRR model , the conversion rate of each link will affect the compound growth value of the entire ship, and it is the company's expectation to maximize the conversion rate of each link.

How to unlock growth points and maximize growth in each link?

1. Get

The first link to growth is to acquire traffic - it does not mean that more traffic means higher conversions, the quality of traffic is more important.

The key to acquiring traffic is to guide accurate traffic, and quality of traffic is more important than quantity.

How to guide accurate traffic?

There are two types of traffic pools, internal traffic pools and external traffic pools. The internal one can guide precise traffic exposure by increasing fixed resource positions, push, related recommendations, etc.; the external one can attract fine traffic through segmented content interest traffic pools, celebrity fan traffic pools, circle traffic pools, etc.

2. Activation

How to make users realize the core value of the product and generate motivation to use the product repeatedly is an urgent problem that needs to be solved in the product activation process.

The book "Addicted" mentions the four elements of addiction: trigger, action, reward, and investment; triggering user activation is the first step in addiction.

3. Retention

Pop-ups/push notifications and content recommendations are commonly used methods to improve user retention. For example, Toutiao’s daily traffic comes from push notifications, accounting for up to 60% of its user retention and activity levels.

4. Monetization

How to improve the conversion rate of monetization?

Taking membership monetization as an example, how to improve the conversion rate of users directly paying or opening membership?

For example, is it possible to:

• Give new users membership privileges by default and let them try it out for a while.
• Let third parties (such as celebrities, designers, and stores) encourage fans to become members;
• Provide more membership benefits.

Using HMW thinking, you can think of infinite new ways.

5. Recommend

Only when users become new starting points for dissemination can we gain greater growth power. The viral coefficient K is a key factor in generating viral dissemination and fission.

The referral compound interest cycle process is: users use the product → recommend it to friends → friends use the product → recommend it to other friends → and so on.

The recommended hook is to rely on content resonance, emotions, creative planning, gameplay, etc. to achieve screen-sweeping. Common methods include word-of-mouth communication, contagious communication, explosive communication, fission activities, etc.

4. Growth Case

The first time I heard about “growth hacking”, I always felt that it was an unfair method. Aren’t hackers people who often attack other people’s websites on the Internet?

As I thought, the origin of growth hacking is indeed somewhat related to hacking technology.

1. Airbnb’s Growth

Airbnb is a typical example of achieving explosive growth through hacking technology.

Airbnb is a global homestay and short-term apartment booking platform. It has achieved rapid growth mainly by acquiring users through its competitor Craigslist. You may be surprised that a competitor would direct traffic to Airbnb for free.

Let’s talk about the story of Airbnb’s “growth hacker”:

Traffic exposure is the first important link in growth. Without traffic, even the best products can be strangled in the cradle, and the same is true for Airbnb. Airbnb co-founder Nate Blecharczyk discovered a magic number through data analysis - when a specific market has 300 listings for rent and 100 of them have reviews, the market will begin to achieve rapid growth.

How can you get your product data to that magic number?

In order to maximize benefits and minimize costs, early startups would poach employees from their competitors. At the time, Airbnb also targeted its biggest competitor, Craigslist, which used technical marketing (growth hacking) to bring in considerable revenue for Airbnb.

The technical marketing methods used at that time included three processes and growth methods:

• Mining new users from existing platforms;
• The information posted by users on Airbnb was copied to the competitor Craigslist website using hacker methods;
• Use a third-party mail system. When the system detects a rental information on Craigslist, it simulates a customer leaving a message to the landlord and replies through Craigslist's automatic email system.

Airbn's growth hacking approach is incredible.

Airbnb, which achieved user growth , continued to achieve a high rate of activation and retention through strategies such as optimizing house pictures (this was the Aha moment of Airbnb products) and the landlord guarantee plan, ultimately achieving high profits; the growth engine was started, and users' sharing and recommendations made Airbnb the homestay and short-term apartment rental platform with an excellent reputation today.

2. Pinduoduo’s counterattack

Pinduoduo is a hot product that domestic product operators emulate and learn from. Under the fierce competition and siege of BAT, it still broke out of the siege and carved out a new path, which shows excellent wisdom and courage. The key point is that it turned the tide and in just 5 years, its market value was close to BAT and became a leading company.

After analyzing Pinduoduo's product operation strategy, I think there are two main reasons for Pinduoduo's counterattack:

1) Strategy of surrounding cities from the countryside

Specialduo's promotion will adopt the strategy of attacking from third- and fourth-tier cities and encircling the first and second-tier cities; products are well-liked by third- and fourth-tier users and are easier to win the hearts of the people, plus the fission sharing mechanism is easy to expand the market; Under the strategy of rural encirclement of the cities, spells a lot of details for consideration are perfectly beautiful.

Brainwashing advertisements:

Pinduoduo uses strategies such as sponsoring major popular variety shows and placing platform advertisements, such as "Pinduoduo, Pinduoduo, the more you work, the more you save..." - as soon as the melody of this song came out, most users across the country could sing it, which is as brainwashing as the Melatonin advertisement.

The advertising song only has a chorus, the lyrics are simple and easy to remember, and the melody is as catchy as a country ballad. The Pinduoduo brand name is also injected into the lyrics. This magical advertising song has since been deeply rooted in people's hearts.

Product selection strategy:

In the early days of Pinduoduo, the products selected for group buying were mainly paper towels and fruits. Why could these two products trigger a crazy fission of users in third- and fourth-tier cities?

First of all, these two products are cheap, users have high daily demand and there is no obvious strong brand demand; users will compare prices before buying a mobile phone, but not before buying paper towels; most of them will buy whichever one is cheaper and more cost-effective, and paper towels themselves can be stored for a long time.

The product selection advantage drives users crazy, and they make money by buying products at super low prices.

Pricing strategy - 1 yuan group price:

In the early days, many products on Pinduoduo were priced at 1 yuan for group buying, and the stock was limited and first come first served.

Why is it not free but set to 1 yuan group buying? I think there are two reasons:

• For quality and safety reasons – Users of free goods will have safety and quality concerns. Can you eat free stuff? Do you dare to use it? The user's psychological bottom line cannot be crossed.
• Considering the user's emotional expectations - you will have high expectations for a 0-yuan product. When the product does not meet your expectations, you will feel cheated and be very angry. However, it is different for a 1-yuan product. The user themselves does not have high expectations for low-priced products. When the product does not meet your expectations, you will feel that cheap products are not good, and you will just complain a few times and that's it.

Therefore, the 1 yuan price actually increases the probability of users placing orders.

2) A stroke of genius: 10 billion yuan in subsidies

When Pinduoduo first emerged, many users boasted: "I will never buy anything on Pinduoduo, the quality is too bad." However, when Pinduoduo launched the "10 billion subsidies" in a way that was considered a stroke of genius, many "true love" users were crushed by Pinduoduo.

The essence of the 10 billion yuan subsidy also lies in the selection of "standard products", including iPhones, lipsticks, cosmetics, trendy shoes... all big brands; genuine iPhones are reduced by hundreds of yuan, and are the cheapest in all online channels. For heavy iPhone enthusiasts, this discount is so great that it is impossible to refuse, and first- and second-tier users are also easily attracted.

Pinduoduo's refined growth strategy has enabled its products to enter a stage of rapid explosion and continue to expand into more vertical markets.

I have heard of the AARRR model many times, but I still can’t achieve user growth! ! !

When we talk about growth methodology and knowledge points, we always feel that growth is very simple, thinking that as long as the growth hook is designed well, it will be ok. However, the most important thing for growth is still the insight and analysis of users and the design of gameplay.

Why should users recommend and share with you? How can you make users share with you? Only by discovering users’ pain points and giving them satisfaction can the user recommendation engine operate in a closed loop.

Author: Kaka

Source: Kaka's Product Notes