Keep Competitive Product Analysis

With the continuous development of China's economy and society, people's life concepts are changing, and the awareness of national fitness is gradually awakening; Keep seizes the trend of the times, takes fitness tools as its main function, and is supported by a high-quality content community. It has developed rapidly after its launch, and has accumulated more than 200 million registered users in the past five years, becoming the largest one-stop smart fitness platform in the country; the author of this article conducted a competitive product analysis of Keep, let's take a look together.

This article analyzes the reasons for the success of Keep through a multi-dimensional comparison between Keep and its competitors, and boldly looks forward to Keep's future functional iteration direction and commercial development from the perspective of a product novice.

(Experience environment: product version v6.46.0 / system ios 12.3 / model iphone7 / time August 2020)

1. Market Analysis

1. Industry Background

The development history of the fitness industry in our country can be traced back to the period when New China was founded.

From the first fitness club in the mainland in 1948, to the fitness club founded by the bodybuilding queen Ma Hua in the 1990s, to the rise of the Haosha Group's club chain operation model in the mainland at the end of the century; the fitness industry in my country has gone through half a century from scratch to being ready to take off.

In 2001, the news of China's successful bid for the Olympic Games added fuel to the fitness enthusiasm of the people across the country, and the number of domestic fitness clubs showed a blowout growth.

After the 2008 Olympic Games, the State Council designated August 8 as National Fitness Day. While the country strongly supported the development of the fitness industry, the public's awareness of independent fitness began to take shape.

In 2014, the country's "Several Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Sports Industry and Promoting Sports Consumption" was officially released, and national fitness has become a national strategy; with favorable policies, the traditional offline fitness industry has become mature, and with the gradual strengthening of scientific and technological power, capital has begun to explore new fitness models, and Internet fitness has come into being; the emergence and popularization of various O2O projects, new gyms, smart hardware, etc. are gradually promoting the transformation and upgrading of Chinese people's sports and fitness methods.

2. PEST macro analysis

1) Political environment

In recent years, the development of sports has received strong support at the national level. The government has successively issued several guiding opinions on the development of sports, including "Several Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Sports Industry and Promoting Sports Consumption", "National Fitness Plan (2016-2020)", "Guiding Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Accelerating the Development of Fitness and Leisure Industry", "General Administration of Sports Releases China's Sports Mass Development Report", "General Administration of Sports and National Development and Reform Commission Proposes Further Promotion of Sports Consumption Action Plan" and so on: aiming to promote scientific fitness, improve the level of public sports popularization, build a shared fitness service platform, optimize the fitness structure layout, encourage entrepreneurship and innovation; further meet the people's growing demand for sports and fitness, and improve the physical fitness of the Chinese nation.

2) Economic environment

With the continuous development of the national economy and the gradual improvement of infrastructure, funds have begun to tilt towards the construction of development materials and enjoyment materials; and compared with the traditional service industry, relatively mature companies in the fields of sports technology and smart fitness are more favored by the capital market - consolidating the economic foundation provides a prerequisite for the upgrading of national consumption behavior.

In 2019, my country's per capita disposable income exceeded 30,000 yuan. People's consumption needs have shifted from survival to development, and consumption concepts have also changed. More people have begun to pursue green and healthy consumption concepts, paying attention to spiritual needs and quality of life.

3) Social environment

With the rapid development of urbanization, the pace of life of modern people is no longer the same as that of their predecessors; the higher the society's requirements for work efficiency, the greater the work pressure faced by urban populations.

A 2019 survey report by the World Health Organization shows that only 5% of the world's population is healthy, and sub-health status has long become a common problem for all age groups.

Data from the "Talent Development Report" of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences shows that there are 70 million to 200 million overweight people in China, and about 120 million people with fatty liver disease; obesity has become a huge concern for national health, and exercise and fitness are an effective way for people to improve their health; since the outbreak of the epidemic, people's travel has been restricted, and online sports apps have ushered in development opportunities.

4) Technical environment

The Internet has risen strongly, smart phones have become basically popular, 4G technology has matured and stabilized, and the 5G era has arrived. Various fitness mobile applications have emerged like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. The combination of online technology and offline scenarios is an inevitable trend in the future fitness industry.

In addition, various technology companies are also innovating and deepening their efforts in smart hardware, with the emergence of smart devices such as bracelets, body fat scales, treadmills, etc.; they accurately collect body data, and users' exercise conditions and health conditions can be digitized.

3. Market size

Data from iResearch Consulting's 2019 "White Paper on Development Trends in China's Sports and Fitness Industry" shows that China currently not only has a considerable scale of fitness users, but the growth rate of sports equipment consumption has increased, the scale of sports venues has continued to expand, and the number of fitness coaches should not be underestimated. This shows that China currently has huge market potential and broad prospects for future development. (Data source: iResearch)

Among this type of fitness users, more and more people are beginning to get involved in online fitness models; the data in the table below show that since 2104, the number of online fitness users in my country has been increasing year by year, and the growth rate is extremely fast, although the trend seems to be slowing down at present; but due to its large user base, there is still room for expansion in the future. (Data source: Zhiyan Consulting)

4. Market Status

Judging from the above data and analysis, my country's current fitness industry and online fitness market have huge development potential and have been favored by the capital market; especially in the construction of smart fitness services and technological venues, technology and intelligence are the future development direction of the fitness industry.

There are various types of fitness apps on the market, and their main sports functions are different. They can be mainly divided into fitness, running, walking, and other categories. The control of traffic resources by various manufacturers is relatively scattered. Data shows that a large number of pedometer products are gathered in the field of walking. Such applications account for 34.27% of the traffic in the online fitness app market, while running and fitness categories account for 33.99% and 18% of the market share respectively. (Data source: Zhiyan Consulting)

It should be noted that no matter what the main function of each type of APP was when it was first launched, each company has been expanding horizontally into other sports fields to date; many of the top online sports apps now have fitness, running, pedometers, cycling, and yoga functions, and at the same time, the problem of functional homogeneity has also emerged.

On the basis of having many and comprehensive functions, whoever can provide better content and services in the segmented fields will be able to attract more traffic. Blind benchmarking will only result in user loss.

As the sports mobile application market gradually matures and the growth in user volume has slowed down, companies have begun to seek breakthroughs in user stickiness, and content communities and social check-ins have become a battleground for all companies.

Enriching its own sports function types while optimizing services, strengthening sports community construction, and creating high-quality community content will help it stand out in the fierce competition.

2. Identify competing products

In order to better select Keep's most competitive competitors from among many mobile apps, this article refers to the iResearch Index fitness app rankings, and selects the top six apps based on the number of monthly independent devices, which are considered to be the most recognized sports and fitness mobile apps by online fitness users:

1. Select the indicator

Based on the functional similarity, we first excluded Buduoduo, which uses a walking step counting tool as its main function.

Among the other competing products, a comprehensive evaluation and comparison of the application descriptions, category rankings, and daily downloads of these products on the APP Store in Qimai Data is shown in the following figure:

Judging from the application rankings, Xiaomi Sports is the highest ranked after Keep, which is actually Gudong and Yuedongquan.

Among these three apps, although Yuedongquan has the highest number of independent devices, its performance in the app store has been poor recently. The reasons are worth exploring.

Yuedongquan is an application with walking and running records as its main function. Its slogan is that you can get red envelopes by walking. Red envelopes may be the main reason that attracted many users to register in the early stage. However, the incentive of red envelopes cannot make users truly fall in love with sports. After the red envelope incentive is reduced, some users will be lost. Yuedongquan’s fitness function is not its main functional module, and its user positioning is different from Keep, so it is excluded. (Data source: Qimai Data)

2. Identify competing products

3. Reason for selection

Through product experience, we can find that the basic functions of Gudong and Xiaomi Sports and Keep, namely the sports module, basically overlap. All three include four recording functions: running, fitness, walking and cycling, and also have community functions.

Gudong is more similar to Keep because both of them have a mall module and membership system, and are direct competitors.

The difference between Xiaomi Sports and Xiaomi Sports is that this app is more inclined to bind to Xiaomi smart devices for accurate exercise and health data recording. Its business model is different from the previous two and it is an indirect competitor.

Thanks to the traffic from Xiaomi's smart hardware devices, the Xiaomi Sports APP has gained considerable traffic and user activity; however, after carefully trying the Xiaomi Sports APP, it was found that its function settings are not very comprehensive and the software construction needs to be strengthened.

3. Competitive Product Analysis

1. Product positioning

Keep is a free mobile fitness product with social attributes. Users can use fragmented time to choose fitness courses that suit them anytime and anywhere.

In the early days, Keep focused on mobile fitness tools. Its original intention was to provide fitness guidance for novices, solving the many pain points that hindered most novices from taking the first step, such as not knowing how to exercise correctly and efficiently, the high prices of offline gym cards and coaches, the gym being far from home, not having enough time, and not having motivation.

With precise user positioning, free training courses, high-quality content community and social attributes, it has attracted a lot of traffic. After accumulating a huge user base, the mall module was launched to monetize the traffic and form a complete business closed loop.

Gudong is the first sports APP in China. When it was first launched, its main function was GPS running records. Later, it launched smart hardware such as the Gudong bracelet, and transformed itself into a data platform that combines online sports with smart hardware terminals.

Gudong focuses on the running track and provides a competition platform for sports enthusiasts based on recording data. It has launched online marathons, cycling events and other local activities to create a national sports ecosystem and enhance its social attributes.

It entered the field of smart equipment in 2017 and launched the fitness module in 2018, forming a one-stop sports platform integrating smart equipment, sports social networking and data recording.

Relying on its hardware advantages, Xiaomi Sports provides users with accurate sports data records, and detailed sleep and exercise analysis; its main functional modules only have basic sports recording functions and community functions, but no commercial mall section, which is what distinguishes it from the first two competitors.

2. User analysis

1) User portrait

From the gender ratio of the users, it can be seen that although there are more male users than female users of the three sports apps, the difference is basically not big.

The reason why Gudong has slightly more male users than female users may be based on the initial positioning of the product. Since there are slightly more male users who like running, Gudong has accumulated more male users.

In June 2018, male users accounted for only 38.76% of Keep's users, while more than 60% were female.

The reason is that female users' needs are mainly to lose weight, improve body shape, and they may be able to practice with Keep's professional courses using a yoga mat; while men have relatively higher needs for muscle gain and are more dependent on professional equipment, which may be the reason why there are fewer male users in the early stage.

Keep gradually developed more training content suitable for male users, thereby attracting more male users and balancing the ratio of men to women. (Data source: iResearch Index)

From the age ratio data, it can be seen that the users of various sports apps are still mainly young people under the age of 30; among this group of people, some are in college and have plenty of time to engage in sports and keep fit; some are newcomers and backbones in the workplace and face greater work pressure and need exercise to relieve it.

Xiaomi Sports focuses on monitoring health data by binding with smart devices, but the purchasing power of young people under the age of 24 is not high, so users aged 25-30 are the main users of this application.

As the earliest running record APP to be launched, Gudong may have attracted young people under the age of 24 when it first launched. Now they have moved into the 25-30 age group, making Gudong Sports the one with the highest proportion of users in this range.

After Keep went online, it focused on becoming a younger brand. The free fitness courses and movement training it provides cater to the characteristics of young people's fragmented time and low purchasing power, becoming the starting point for sports and fitness for many students and new employees. The fact that Keep has a higher proportion of young people under the age of 24 can be said to have captured the target users and achieved a successful result of precision marketing. (Data source: iResearch Index)

From the perspective of the geographical distribution of users, the three applications are basically the same, mainly concentrated in first-tier cities; because residents in first-tier cities have higher incomes, higher consumption power, relatively higher requirements for quality of life, and relatively stronger awareness of sports and fitness. (Data source: Analysys Qianfan)

2) User data

The user indicators of the three applications are shown in the figure above.

As of the end of last year, Keep has maintained a relatively high industry monopoly rate compared to its competitors. The speculated reason is that Keep focuses on the fitness module. The targeted courses and high-quality content community have formed a barrier for Keep that is difficult for its peers to surpass; while its user activity is not high because fitness is more difficult to stick to than running.

Xiaomi has higher activity and next-month retention rate, thanks to its smart devices. Functions such as sleep monitoring and data analysis encourage users to use the app more frequently. (Data source: Analysys Qianfan)

As of July this year, Keep has been ranked first on the APP Store's health and fitness list, with more than 20 million monthly active users, and is still growing; Xiaomi Sports' monthly active users have remained basically stable, with a slight decline; and Gudong's monthly active users have fallen significantly.

Judging from the app ratings, the reviews for the current and historical versions of Keep and Gudong are both 4.9 points, while Xiaomi Sports currently has a score of 4.7 and a historical score of 4.5, indicating that there are still many areas that need to be optimized in the user experience of the APP. (Data source: Analysys Qianfan, APP Store)

3. Functional Analysis

1) Functional architecture

Keep pays great attention to its own content construction. The team regards the development of high-quality courses and the production of useful articles as its central task. Therefore, the structure design of Keep's fitness module and content community module is more important.

From movement training to course training, and then to the formulation of exclusive plans, it is consistent with Keep's original intention of solving the entry pain points for fitness novices, and it also reflects a step-by-step process; fitness, running, walking, yoga and other sports modules cover a variety of indoor and outdoor sports scenes, and also reflect Keep's desire to create a one-stop sports platform with rich categories-the value of a "free sports field".

The functional structure of Gudong is mainly divided into several modules: sports, community, information, mall, and me; its focus is on the construction of running functions, including guidance from running coaches, online and offline marathon events, and offline group activities organized by sports groups.

Grasp the pain points that are difficult for users to persist on their own, and use group activities to enhance social attributes to increase users' enthusiasm for exercise, thereby stimulating activity and improving retention.

The content of Gudong community is divided into very fine modules. The UGC content in the sports circle is divided into many modules such as short videos, equipment, running training, events, and the same city. This helps users to accurately locate themselves and find the content they want to watch, thereby improving efficiency and thus increasing satisfaction.

However, there are pros and cons. Such a distribution mechanism may have problems such as logical confusion, information redundancy, and disorganization. How to accurately divide the content and catch the user's attention is an issue that needs to be optimized.

Xiaomi Sports has not developed a shopping mall module and does not have e-commerce attributes. Its main functions are basic sports, training plans and health information modules.

Xiaomi Sports' community construction is weak compared with its competitors, the number of topics is small, and the number of people watching and participating in a single topic is not ideal. The most popular topics are basically related to equipment such as Xiaomi bracelets. The model of relying solely on the inherent advantages of equipment to attract users may not be a long-term strategy. Xiaomi Sports should strengthen the construction of community content. Only by increasing the number of high-quality content can it attract user retention.

2) Function comparison

As a one-stop smart sports platform, Keep has relatively comprehensive functions. It can not only provide users with professional fitness guidance, but also provide warm-up and diet suggestions before and after exercise. Moreover, through the construction of a community platform, it shares many high-quality experts and content with users. In comparison, although Gudong does not have yoga and meditation modules, it is equipped with smart devices to provide users with a swimming record function, which can be regarded as a highlight.

Gudong started with the running module, and has a more complete system construction for offline events and sports groups, and has more advantages in offline activities.

Compared with these two competing products, Xiaomi Sport lacks some basic functions and does not have any particularly outstanding features among other similar functions. It is recommended to continue to strengthen the construction of software functions.

The three apps also have different rules for overseas registration and login:

Gudong only allows registration with mobile phone numbers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, or third-party accounts such as WeChat and Weibo; but after registration, you can log in at any time overseas, and the functional interface remains unchanged.

Xiaomi Sports can only be registered with email overseas, but after logging in, it was found that the functional modules were greatly reduced. The fitness, courses, social and other functions of the domestic version have all disappeared, leaving only the basic running, walking and cycling recording functions.

Keep has done better in terms of internationalization. Not only can you register and log in using mobile phone numbers from all over the world, it also has a dedicated international version APP. It can be seen that Keep has a broad international vision; but the interface and content of the international version of Keep are also quite different from the domestic version. Due to language restrictions, many useful articles cannot be synchronized to the international version. If you want to better develop the international market, you need to continue to optimize the functions of the international version.

3) Functional flow

Fitness Features:

Scenario: Xiao Ming is a new graduate working in a state-owned enterprise. He never works overtime and wants to use his free time in the evening to manage his body. He had never been exposed to fitness during his student days and didn't know where to start. So he downloaded Keep, Gudong and Xiaomi Sports from the App Store, explored various courses, and started his muscle-building journey.

As one of the core functions, the fitness entrances of the three apps are shallow, making them easy for users to discover.

Keep's course selection process is more complete. Taking into account the problem that users who are training for the first time don't know how to choose courses, it sets up a physical assessment to recommend suitable courses, which is more user-friendly. Gudong and Xiaomi Sports directly guide users to choose courses through screening.

Judging from the screening results, after selecting keywords, Keep and Xiaomi Sports search for the intersection of keywords. If there is no completely corresponding course, it will display "Cannot be found"; but Gudong takes the union of keywords. Even if multiple keywords are selected, there will still be corresponding search results. The problem that arises is that the searched courses cannot fully match user needs. It is recommended that Gudong optimize the search.

Running Features:

Scenario: 29-year-old Lily is the fashion editor-in-chief of a high-end magazine. She insists on running every morning to keep a slim figure, relax and relieve work pressure. The running function of the online APP can not only record running mileage, pace and other data, but also provide warm-up and stretching course guidance, which is very convenient.

The running function designs of the three apps are also very simple. If you don’t need to make any pre-run settings, you can directly click the interactive button to start running. From the interface during running, there is no big difference between the three.

Warm-up before running: Xiaomi and Gudong only have a fixed warm-up and a set of fixed movements, while Keep has three warm-up classes, providing users with a variety of choices.

Pre-run settings: Gudong and Keep have more comprehensive functions, while Xiaomi is relatively weak, for example, you cannot choose music or set goals.

Running scenes: In terms of scene selection, in addition to the two conventional scenes of outdoor running and indoor treadmill, Keep provides users with a more diversified fat-burning running courses. Users can choose according to their abilities, such as aerobic fat-burning running, fartlek running, HIIT running, etc.; it even provides fun courses of plot-based fat-burning running, which appropriately reduces the boredom of running and brings immersive fun to users, which is very creative.

Users can share their running experience with friends and gather onlookers to cheer them on, which makes the running more interactive. If they check in the most times on a route, they can become the route director, which brings a sense of honor to users.

Highlight features:

Three parts exercise, seven parts diet - Keep provides a diet record function for its members. Based on the basic information of height and weight filled in by the user and the exercise effect the user wants to achieve, it proposes reasonable diet intake and exercise consumption, and distinguishes between training days and rest days.

The user enters the daily meal intake, and the algorithm assigns a SABC grade to the day's situation based on calorie intake and expenditure, which corresponds to different fat-reducing effects, and gives an evaluation of fat, protein, and carbohydrate intake, as well as which foods are recommended to be eaten more or less.

Users can predict their weight changes in the next week based on the completion of indicators in the past seven days. This function quantifies the exercise effects that are invisible to the naked eye in the short term into data and presents it to users, allowing users to see their own progress or correct their shortcomings, so as to "have a clear idea in mind", touch the user's excitement points and enhance stickiness.

However, one thing worth thinking about is whether the positioning of dietary advice open to member users is accurate?

First of all, Keep's paying users choose to become members only after they have enjoyed a great experience and benefits on this app, and their main purpose of becoming members may be to enjoy training-related benefits such as training plans, intensive course lectures, exclusive courses, etc. Dietary advice should not be a decisive factor in their decision to purchase a membership; in other words, even if diet is not a member-exclusive benefit, they will still purchase a membership.

Dietary recommendations are a fascinating demand and are attractive to ordinary users. With this feature, users can record their three meals a day, which will significantly improve their daily activity and retention. Without this feature, more people may choose to download free diet recording tools such as Mint Health and Food Moments instead of purchasing memberships, which will divert traffic to Keep.

Among the plans recommended by Keep for its members, there is a "Personalized Muscle Building Plan". Users fill in their physical condition and the fitness goals they want to achieve, and Keep will automatically generate a training plan that meets the user's needs. If users are not satisfied with a course in the plan, they can delete or replace other courses.

The high-difficulty courses in this plan have difficulty levels 5 to 7, which exceed the difficulty limit from K1 to K4 in the free course library and can meet the personalized fitness needs of advanced users.

In addition to its outstanding ability to organize events, Gudong's sports team is also one of its special features.

Users can browse sports groups in the same city by location, choose to join sports groups with similar interests and that organize activities regularly, go to designated locations on time to participate in group activities according to the information announced during group activities, and check in online after the activity to complete the activity, thereby increasing their own growth value and bringing honor value to the sports group.

This method enhances the fun of sports, achieves the purpose of exercise, and satisfies personal social needs; users encourage and supervise each other, forming a good sports atmosphere and refined social circle, and word of mouth among users will achieve the purpose of attracting new users, promoting activation, and retaining users.

The problem with this feature is that offline activities are more restricted by time and location, making it difficult to scale up, and any user can create a sports group, resulting in a large number of inactive groups.

This function is also an exciting demand, and its effect on user growth and commercialization is not immediate. It is speculated that the team may not spend a lot of energy on its operation. If the requirements for creating a group are restricted and some promotion is carried out, it will bring a better experience to users.

4. Operational Analysis

1) User Operation

Keep implements an incentive mechanism of levels and virtual badges for ordinary users who only use the platform as a mobile fitness tool. Users can obtain badges by accumulating exercise time to increase their levels, thereby increasing their sense of satisfaction. Points are multiplied by a coefficient of consecutive days to encourage users to persist in exercising. By completing various activity challenges or setting stage goals, users can receive online materials or physical rewards to increase their sense of achievement, thereby increasing user stickiness.

For users with social needs, guide them to share their sports results and experiences on Keep dynamics or third-party traffic platforms, browse other users' dynamics and interact with each other, enhance the community atmosphere and achieve user fission growth.

For fitness experts, Keep recognizes professionals or experts in the field through a certification mechanism. Users obtain special identity tags, which enhances their emotional connection with Keep and stimulates them to continue to produce content.

Gudong was launched in 2011 and is the earliest fitness tool app in China. Its first-mover advantage has accumulated a large number of loyal running fans. In terms of strong social relationships, new users are attracted by directly inviting their contacts or WeChat friends to register, or by sharing their sports results on third-party platforms such as Moments and QQ. In terms of weak social relationships, user activity is increased through sports social circles, such as offline activities in the same city, sports groups, and events. The placement of sports equipment and smart devices on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com, the WeChat SPC Sports Bao walking and earning app, corporate Gudong, Weibo lucky draws and other channels can all drive traffic to the Gudong APP. In addition, the incentive mechanism of the hierarchy system and badge rewards helps users overcome laziness, encourages exercise, and enhances satisfaction, thereby improving retention.

Unlike the first two competing products, Xiaomi Sport has taken a path that shifted from large-scale software operations to commercialization of smart hardware. Xiaomi Sport is backed by the Xiaomi ecosystem and has the inherent advantage of diverting offline devices to online applications. For example, after the launch of Xiaomi Mi Band 5 in June this year, the number of independent Xiaomi Sport devices increased by 130,000 in July, ranking first on the growth list of fitness apps (data source: iResearch Index). When searching for Xiaomi Sport on third-party platforms such as WeChat official accounts, Weibo, and Zhihu, what appears are basically the official accounts of Xiaomi Mi Band, while Xiaomi Sport does not have the channel to independently operate users.

2) Event Operation

Keep's activities are mainly divided into three categories. The first is regular sports challenges, which usually release fat loss or running tasks on a weekly or monthly basis. Users complete the exercise and check in to get corresponding virtual badge rewards, such as "August Running Challenge" and "Weekly Fat Loss Challenge Week 1-4"; the second category is event challenges with celebrities, festivals or anniversaries as the theme, such as "Qixi Love Movement丨Long-distance Love Online Marathon" and "Wang Ziyi Takes You to Get a Good Body", using hot events or celebrity effects to attract users' attention; the third category is theme activities jointly initiated with sponsors, which is also the most common type of all activities, such as "Buick Envision S丨Super S Youth Efficient Shaping Challenge" and "Keepplant Light Games". The combination of event operation and monetization will not produce advertising experience that makes users disgusted. It is a commercialization path worth continuing to explore - if Keep can strengthen the operation of offline activities or events, it should have a greater impact.

Gudong's main activities are various online and offline competitions, which is also its highlight feature that distinguishes it from other sports apps; the competitions are mainly marathon running, supplemented by cycling, mountaineering, triathlon, etc., with a full range of categories and orderly organization, and can combine festivals (thank you to the teacher - Teacher's Day online run), anniversaries (the 75th anniversary of the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression), hot spots (tribute to doctors - Doctors' Day online run) and other elements to create various theme events, stimulate user interest and provide more choices; Gudong organizes users to participate in offline marathon events around the world through the "Event Travel" module, giving users the opportunity to go abroad and participate in international events, but this function is more costly and difficult, and may not achieve the expected results; in addition, Gudong will also use the celebrity effect to hold topic events, such as #张天爱脂肪燃脂进化论, #毒液健身时间, etc.

Xiaomi Sports organizes several running events or check-in activities every month, and participants will receive corresponding badge rewards upon completion. However, the activities are relatively simple in format, and the publicity is not strong enough, making it difficult to attract users.

3) Content Operation

Keep firmly believes that content is traffic, and pays special attention to the quality of courses, articles, and posts on the site. It has cultivated many fitness experts KOL, and regularly and continuously produces high-quality PGC or PUGC content, forming a good community atmosphere and driving UGC output. At the same time, these high-quality content is put on other new media channels, and its influence continues to expand. Since the epidemic, it has developed new content formats, using live broadcasts to narrow the distance with users and enhance the sports experience. In addition, Keep's content areas are divided in detail. For example, the encyclopedia function launched at the end of last year divides entries into 15 categories, and users can easily locate the content they want to see, which is in line with the product concept of "focusing on it, not on it" proposed by the founder Wang Ning. It efficiently answers questions and allows users to form a conditioned reflex of "If you have any questions, find Keep", and attracts user retention through a complete content ecosystem.

Gudong and Keep both focus on in-site course development, PGC content output and UGC experience sharing; in the training module, they customize various selected courses, live courses, private courses, and smart training plans for users to meet their basic personalized needs; in the community module, they recommend various sports knowledge popularization articles, videos, expert experiences, and equipment reviews to users to enhance their sense of gain; they also initiate personalized topics to increase user participation.

The content modules of Xiaomi Sports are also mainly courses and community information. At present, the number of courses is relatively small, the degree of specialization is not high enough, and there is no distinction between paid and free courses; the information content is not dry enough, and the number of user browsing and interactions is obviously inferior to Keep and Gudong; judging from the recruitment description of content operation positions in Huami Technology, Xiaomi Sports insists on focusing on course design, sports plans, and related special activities, intending to seek breakthroughs in the content direction.

4) Summary

Through comparison, we found that Keep has done relatively well in operations, with high-quality content, data accumulation, algorithm recommendations, active community, and publicity and promotion, which promote and accomplish each other.

Gudong lags slightly behind Keep in course development and PGC content production, but offline events are its advantage. It should make full use of vertical communities to accumulate private domain traffic, while increasing content development efforts to make up for its shortcomings.

Xiaomi Sports needs to explore expansion methods other than device-based traffic generation, and increase content and community building to enhance the user experience of existing users.

5. Iterative Analysis

1) Iteration path and strategy

Keep iteration process:

Product upgrade strategy:

From Keep's iterative process, we can observe its positioning shift from a mobile fitness tool to a one-stop sports platform empowered by technology.

The concept of "free sports field" was proposed in 2017. First of all, it is manifested in a rich variety of sports categories, from fitness to running, pedometer, cycling, and yoga, which solve the sports needs of most people in one stop; secondly, the active vertical community makes exercise no longer a boring and lonely persistence. AR, real-time and live broadcast functions have been launched one after another, making companionship and encouragement closer and more real; thirdly, the powerful data center records exercise behavior in all directions, and relies on big data analysis and personalized recommendations to build a good sports ecology suitable for each user by relying on "intelligence"; finally, Keep helps users form a healthy lifestyle, from family KeepKit, to city KeepLand, to life KeepUp, to light meal KeepLite, Keep is creating a healthy lifestyle for contemporary people centered on its own brand.

Gudong Iteration Process:

Product upgrade strategy:

Gudong was initially positioned as a running record tool. In 2012, it began to shift to a software-supported hardware model, and in 2014, it began to explore community functions. Since then, it has gradually transformed into a one-stop sports social intelligent application that integrates sports, social networking, events, knowledge, and smart devices.

Its iterative direction is in line with the overall trend of the online sports and fitness industry, but as the earliest fitness app in China, it has not maintained its first-mover advantage. Instead, it has fallen behind in some dimensions, indicating that the corresponding functional modules need to be optimized; especially the production of knowledge content and the construction of community platforms. Whether it can return to the top of the pyramid depends on how it can make full use of technology to empower product functions, experience and brand upgrades in the future.

Xiaomi Sports iteration process:

Product upgrade strategy:

As mentioned earlier, the reason why Xiaomi Sport has accumulated a huge user base is mainly due to smart devices such as Xiaomi bracelets, and the iterative upgrades of Xiaomi Sport are often also to adapt to the new version of firmware.

From the iterative process, Xiaomi Sports has always attached great importance to the health data obtained from smart devices. It started to build a community platform in 2016, launched fitness courses in 2019 to expand the product category, and optimized the user experience.

However, compared with the previous two competing products, Xiaomi's initiative in upgrading its sports functions is not strong. Relying on its hardware advantages, it can still maintain user growth at present; but in today's society where technology is developing so rapidly and firmware upgrades are quite frequent, breaking through the hardware's technical barriers may happen overnight. If it cannot attract users with its own soft power, it will be difficult to achieve long-term development.

2) Summary

Judging from the iterative history of several APPs, the transformation from tool-type to one-stop smart sports platform is the general trend. Each company has configured basic sports categories, built content communities, and developed smart devices.

In today's era when the demographic dividend is basically exhausted, user retention has become the key. Making full use of technology and data to enrich scenarios, optimize content, and improve experience is the key to success in the next period.

6. Commercialization Analysis

1) Comparison of profit models

The author compares the profit models of the three apps in a table, which is clear and intuitive:

2) Summary

Currently, the profit model of online fitness apps is mainly advertising revenue on the B-side and shopping malls, memberships, and knowledge payment on the C-side.

The advertising side needs to optimize the delivery channels and handle the balance between advertising delivery and user experience. If excessive delivery affects the user experience, it will cause user churn to be more cost-effective.

In terms of malls: Keep and Gudong mainly sell sports equipment and smart devices. Such products are not fast-moving consumer goods, and the repurchase rate is not high, and the unit price does not have obvious advantages compared with professional e-commerce companies such as Taobao and JD.com; therefore, mall modules need to be optimized and upgraded in terms of product quality, service quality and brand building, seek breakthroughs in the upstream and downstream of the product supply chain, and attract traffic to the mall through discounts, coupons, etc.

In terms of member rights: Gudong and Keep both provide mall discounts and open training plans. Currently, Keep's training plans are more personalized. Users can adjust the difficulty of movements at any time according to their physical condition, which is more targeted, but the types of plans of both need to be enriched; Keep members exclusively enjoy the diet record function, Gudong members exclusively enjoy the free live broadcast and equipment trial rights. The two have their own characteristics and can learn from each other to provide better services to members to improve loyalty.

In terms of content: With the improvement of people's intellectual property awareness, more people are becoming willing to pay for knowledge. The content payment forms that have been developed include training plans, high-quality courses, and live courses. Rich types and interesting content are the keys to inspiring users to continue to exercise. If you want to make continuous profits in content, you need to increase research and development efforts, innovate course forms, refine training areas, and develop high-quality training courses suitable for users at different levels.

Finally, fitness mobile applications are constantly exploring new profit models, expanding from online education to offline services. The existing offline services include KeepLand physical fitness space, corporate Gudong group event activities, etc.

In addition, are there other offline services available to develop, such as cooperating with other offline gyms to open up the private training supply chain, realizing online one-to-one online private training teaching, or gamified fitness mode similar to Nintendo's "Fitness Ring Adventure"; it is obviously not easy to find a new monetization model that conforms to product positioning.

4. Analysis conclusion

Through the above, Keep and competitors were compared and analyzed from six dimensions: product positioning, user, function, operation, iteration, and commercialization. This section uses SWOT analysis method to look forward to the future development direction of Keep based on advantages and disadvantages, opportunities and challenges.

1. SWOT analysis

2. Marketing direction

Keep's previous marketing methods are a model in the industry. Some commentators said that Keep is a "fast" company and the APP was officially launched in February 2015.

In terms of financing, the A-round B round financing was completed in the same year, and the C- and C+ rounds the following year. The D round financing was as high as US$127 million in 2018, and the E round financing was completed in May this year. In terms of the number of users, the first 10 million took 289 days, the second 10 million took 110 days, and the third 10 million took only 68 days, and the registered users have exceeded 200 million.

Before the APP was officially launched, the Keep team launched the "Seed Plan" on Weibo, namely the recruitment of experience officers. More than 4,000 inside users put forward many constructive opinions on the improvement and improvement of the initial product experience, creating a good community atmosphere for the APP, and they have also become the first batch of loyal seed users.

Another operation method with significant effect during the cold start period is the "Mineburning Plan". Keep's content team has long invested a large amount of fitness products through channels such as Zhihu, Douban, and Baidu Tieba. It has attracted a large number of fitness enthusiasts to read, discuss and share, forming a brand reputation effect. After the application is launched, these target users quickly became Keep's fans, and the number of users has increased explosively.

In the early days, Keep used WeChat public accounts and Weibo to operate fans, and often cooperated with celebrities and big IPs to promote it. In October 2015, with the popularity of Yang Mi, Lu Han and Zhu Yawen; and the traffic of the evergreen variety show "Happy Camp" was supported by the evergreens. Once the program was broadcast, users increased by one million.

The first advertising film "Self-discipline Gives Me Freedom" launched in June 2016, "Nothing is born like this, but we persist every day" hits the hearts of users and arouses emotional resonance; once the advertisement is put on, the user growth has nearly doubled, and the total number is close to 50 million.

In 2019, the filming of "This Is All Keep" changed its inspirational and passionate style, took an unusual and funny route, and cooperated with popular idols Bai Jingting, Xinpants, and AC; trying to break through the boundaries of sports and the user age circle, integrate sports into life-oriented scenarios, and advocate national sports at any time and anywhere.

In the summer of the same year, "Dear Love" was popular, Keep took the opportunity to launch the "Li Xian's woman cannot lose - present her boyfriend in July" challenge activity, attracting a wave of young female fans, while the monthly active users soared to the peak, reaching more than 25 million.

Recently, in conjunction with the "8.8 National Fitness Day", we have jointly filmed the "Impermanence" quartet documentary in "Human World" and launched the "2020 War Impermanence" online public welfare marathon to ignite the enthusiasm of national fitness and fight the epidemic.

It can be seen that every marketing action of Keep is very clear in its purpose. Through precise operational decisions, the trust foundation between Keep and users can be consolidated and its influence can be quickly expanded, thereby attracting more capital and a virtuous cycle.

Keep's marketing actions are not only for the purpose of attracting new products, promoting vitality and retention of APPs, but in fact every step the team takes is paving the way of its own brand building.

On the future development path, Keep should first ensure the professionalization of the course and the excellent quality of community content, which is Keep's core competitiveness; at the same time, it will continue to maintain high-quality advertising creation and precise channel delivery. The content needs to match the user group and instill in users the concept that fitness is both trendy and urgent need. Advertising that rises to the emotional and value levels is more significant than staying at the functional level.

E-commerce elements can be appropriately added to the publicity so that users can know that Keep can buy; use celebrity influence to let users know that Keep can buy well; take a two-pronged approach to content and publicity to form brand influence, create a Keep ecosystem, improve users' sense of identity with "Keep Intelligent Manufacturing", enhance monetization capabilities, and form a closed loop.

3. Product iteration direction

Based on all the analysis and judgment of the general direction above, the author puts forward some specific, functional and immature suggestions for Keep's future iterative development direction:

Content module:

1) Expand the breadth of the user base horizontally: develop vitality courses suitable for the physical growth of users under 18 years old, lightweight courses suitable for users over 60 years old, and suitable for certain special groups; such as rehabilitation courses that have been injured and injured, healthy weight loss courses that distinguish large or ultra-large size users from bodybuilding needs, etc.; and add corresponding tags to the course classification of all courses to guide users to discover courses.

2) Deepen the difficulty of course content vertically: Keep's paid course module has a total of 115 courses, of which only 4 are K2 (beginners), 3 are K3 (advanced), and the remaining about 94% of the courses are K1 (zero foundation).

Admittedly, Keep's initial target users are fitness users with 0-70 points, but the paradoxical point is: when Xiaobai first embarked on the road to fitness, he is often driven by some internal or external factors; his understanding of his own abilities is not clear, and such people in the exploration stage may not pay to purchase basic courses at the beginning stage, but choose free courses or action exercises that suit him in the training module; when they have a certain foundation and are willing to pay for difficult courses, this module is no longer suitable for them.

Since Keep was launched for more than five years, 200 million users have benefited. In the early stages of bronze and silver players may advance to diamonds or even kings; the existing course library can meet the needs of newcomers, while for old users, Keep needs to develop courses that are more difficult and more stimulating to a certain part to meet their needs for muscle building or fat loss. Otherwise, they may face the flow of these advanced old users to offline gym private training.

3) Enrich the fun of the course form and improve interactivity: Keep has added real-life recording classes for certified experts based on the original official coach's single action demonstration course; the latter has a more active atmosphere and a more realistic sense of immersion than the former, which is equivalent to moving offline coaching courses online, breaking the space limitations.

The arrival of 5G and the rise of live broadcasts have broken the time limits in online classes. The coach's guidance and encouragement can be conveyed to users in real time, which is more motivating; but the current live broadcast format is limited to coaches conveying information to users, and even barrage can only convert user's expression into text feedback, which is still not an advantage compared with the face-to-face tutoring of offline coaches.

So in the future, can we develop a two-way live course form to achieve instant interaction between coaches and users? For example, if the live class is broadcast by 10-15 people, the coach will post the influence of all the class users on the big screen, and provide timely guidance and corrections during class.

Community module:

1) Optimize the exercise incentive mechanism: In the current version, the author found that only the outdoor running mode has the live running function. During running, I received cheering from other users. The only way to cheer is to love, cheering, blowing kiss, cheering, letting go of dogs, and banana peel is to cheer. After the user selects the expression, the system voice prompts the runner-side system "You received a cheer"; the form of cheering can be richer, such as upgrading the emoticon package to a text template, and after selecting the sentence, the runner-side voice plays the text content.

The motivational effect of specific language and text content is far better than expressions. The reason why we provide users with cheering templates instead of allowing users to enter content at will is that, because the cost of choosing actions is lower than the cost of creation, and more people will operate directly on the voice library; the second is that for keyboard warriors to enter negative or funny content that affects movement, it plays a role contrary to the original intention of encouragement.

Therefore, in contrast, among the six existing expressions, whether the appearance of love, blowing kisses, dog release, and banana peel is appropriate? The live running is instantaneous, while dynamic comments and likes are lagging. The former can encourage people in sports, so this live mode should be applied to various sports scenes so that users can realize that they are not fighting alone.

2) Optimize content release and incentive mechanism: In order to enrich the community's high-quality content, the platform usually cooperates with KOL to produce dry posts regularly and give certain rewards; however, the operation team cannot recruit every expert or person with fitness experience and creative desire. It needs to find the right way to stimulate users to actively contribute, which will help form content barriers.

In mid-November last year, v6.30.0 was launched, and submissions were opened at the end of the month. However, the submission entrance could not be found in the current version (it was still hidden too deeply, I didn't find it anyway). It is recommended to place the entrance conspicuously to reduce user operation costs.

In addition, a reward function can be set at the bottom of the article. If the article is really helpful to readers, readers will definitely be willing to pay for it; the author's content is recognized and received material rewards, which will generate the motivation for continuous creation, and the "crowdfunding" method also saves Keep some of the operating expenses of creators.

3) Strengthen the organization of offline activities: Move the community from simple online interaction to offline physical social interaction, such as regularly holding offline marathons and cycling events to highlight the fun of collective activities; contact B-side sponsors and regularly hold large-scale free basic fitness knowledge publicity and exchange meetings, users gain practical knowledge and experience, grasp the direction of fitness, sponsors obtain traffic, Keep expands brand influence, and attracts traffic to online paid courses and offline physical fitness spaces, which is a win-win situation for the three parties.

Commercial module:

1) Optimize mall services and improve product competitiveness: The author has browsed the evaluations related to malls in the APP Store. Most users reported that the quality of the mall’s customer service is not up to standard, the logistics of slow delivery, out of stock, and complex return and exchange processes have led to users’ extremely poor experience of the mall, which affects the use of the application itself.

In this regard, we should strengthen the training of customer service personnel quality, simplify the return and exchange process to improve service quality; at the same time, strengthen the management of suppliers, supervise commodity inventory, adopt quality and price comparison methods for all links of self-operated products, and control costs to improve competitiveness.

2) Cooperate with offline gyms to connect coaching resources: recruit qualified personal trainers in regular offline gyms, add to the resource library for unified allocation after online training, open online private training services within the APP, and guide user training one-on-one through video; this model not only solves the problem of inaccurate user movements and breaks regional restrictions, and solves the problem of mismatch between offline coaches and students' resources.

3) Increase R&D investment and upgrade smart devices: Bracelets are one of the most popular smart products in the sports market at present. They can detect various exercise data such as heart rate and upload them to the APP to adjust exercise intensity.

Currently, the functions that need to be improved for Keep bracelets include improving the accuracy of data monitoring, enhancing battery life, adding GPS positioning functions, synchronizing Apple's health data system, etc.; Keep has also developed APP with treadmills, bicycles, and walking machines to meet a variety of aerobic exercise scenarios. In the future, it can increase the development of smart devices in anaerobic scenarios, such as smart fitness mirrors, which can guide actions through cameras, sensors and artificial intelligence to improve training accuracy in private scenarios.

If you can read this, it is already a great affirmation to the author.

As a product newcomer who wrote a competitive product analysis report for the first time, there must be many immature, incomplete, and even incorrect ideas in the article. I hope that all the seniors of the readers will express their opinions and give them more advice and learn from you.

Author: M.Lamiraud

Source: M.Lamiraud