Product Operation Methodology

It is said that a product that is not operated is not a good product, so I have already added this book "The Light of Operation" to my book list (WeChat Reading rating 8.9). I opened this e-book again recently, and I felt that I had come across it too late. First of all, in terms of reading experience, this book is very complete, with each chapter closely connected and very smooth to read, which can be finished in 3 days and 7 hours; secondly, in terms of content, it has both methodology and a large number of case analyses, and completes more than 2,000 words of mind map notes; finally, in terms of emotional resonance, some of the author's mentions about career planning and work mentality also caused me to think a lot. Overall, I have benefited a lot and it is worth sharing and recommending.

This article mainly shares the relevant operation methodologies, which are divided into the following four parts:

1. What is operation. Explain what operations are from the perspectives of macro (planning level) and micro (execution level), and introduce the relationship between products and operations;
2. How to do operations planning. Introduce different products with different business logics and business types, and different core operation ideas. How to determine the operation direction and carry out operation planning;
3. Operational working methods. Introduce some common underlying thinking and practical hard methods in specific operations;
4. ToB security product operation analysis. In combination with the industry I work in, based on the above-mentioned operational planning and execution methods, I have conducted some operational thinking and analysis on to B security products.

1. What is Operation?

(1) Interpreting operations from two dimensions

Definition of operation: The methods needed to help establish better relationships between products and users, which can be interpreted at both macro and micro levels.

Macro: At the operational planning level, it is necessary to combine product form and business type to formulate product operational strategies and complete the construction of an operational system that connects products with users;

Micro: At the operational execution level, through specific methods such as content, activities, and user operations, we can achieve user acquisition, traffic diversion, conversion, and user retention;

(2) Relationship between products and operations

We often say that products are like the children of product managers. If products are the process of giving birth to children, then operations can be said to be the process of raising children, giving them a good education, cultivating various interests and hobbies, learning various skills, and growing them healthily. Whether they are "biological mothers" or "adoptive mothers", their expectations for their children are the same. They hope that their children will become useful people with long-term value to society.

The same applies to Internet product entities. The relationship between product and operation is: product is responsible for defining and providing long-term user value, and operation is responsible for creating short-term value and improving long-term value. The long-term value of many products is often not perceived by users in a short period of time, and operations need to create some short-term value to stimulate user usage and experience, and adjust, iterate, and optimize based on continuous user feedback to improve long-term value.

After having a preliminary understanding of operations as above, we will then introduce some practical ideas and methods related to the planning and execution of operations.

2. How to do operational planning

As mentioned in the previous chapter, operations are methods to help products establish relationships with users. However, for different products, due to differences in business logic, business type, and product form, the construction of the operations system, specific implementation methods, and operations focus will also vary greatly. For example, for to C social products facing consumers, the operations focus may be mainly on acquiring user traffic; for to B service products facing enterprises, the operations focus may be mainly on channel expansion.

How to plan operational work? Here we introduce the core breakthrough points of operations from the two dimensions of business logic and business type. Finally, you can come up with corresponding operational ideas based on comprehensive evaluation.

(1) Business Logic

Currently, there are three main business logics for Internet products: direct sale of goods or services, free + value-added services, and free + traffic + data monetization. Under different business logics, the ideas of operation or maintaining users/customers are different. Please refer to the following table for details:

(2) Business type

The business types of Internet products can be divided into two types according to the frequency of user usage: low-frequency usage services and high-frequency user participation. For low-frequency service types, no matter how good the product is, users will leave after using it each time, so this type of product does not need to spend too much energy on user retention, but instead pays more attention to customer acquisition channels; for high-frequency user participation products, this type of product needs to cultivate user habits and maintain high activity through the AAARR process of attracting new users, promoting activation, retention, conversion, and dissemination (recommended books are Growth Hackers and Traffic Pools).

This chapter mainly introduces different types of products, which can comprehensively consider the strategies and core ideas of operations from the two dimensions of business logic and business type. Then, after determining the general direction of operations, we will introduce what guiding thinking or working methods can be used at the execution level.

3. Operational working methods

(1) General soft skills: four major mindsets

We often feel that those big names are very outstanding. One of their notable characteristics is that they have their own specific way of thinking. They are very good at thinking about problems in terms of depth and breadth, comprehensiveness and detail. Here the author introduces four major ways of thinking: process thinking, refined thinking, leverage thinking and ecological thinking. From the planning of simple activities to business research, the principles behind them are all the same. I personally think that these four ways of thinking are very practical.

Process thinking

When you get a problem, first go back to the process, sort out the entire process of the problem, and then look for a solution from the process. For example, how to plan an event to increase followers of a WeChat public account, which mainly includes event promotion, user registration, waiting for the event to start, event implementation, and event end. What specific things can be done in each link? After sorting out the entire process, it becomes very clear what to do and how to do it.

Refined thinking

Refined thinking is closely related to process-based thinking, which breaks down big problems into countless small execution details. This thinking is often used in WBS management in project management. When you break it down into smaller pieces, you will have a clearer view of your goals and a greater sense of control.

Leveraged Thinking

Leveraged thinking means doing one thing well and then using it as a core leverage point to leverage more things or results to happen. For example, in the early stages of a product, we often first find a group of seed users, give them a better product experience, and after serving them well, use this as a leverage point to encourage them to spread the brand and get more people to use it.

Ecological thinking

The first three types of thinking are more or less understood or used in daily work. The ecological thinking mentioned by the author here is a surprising highlight. The so-called ecology is actually a macro environment in which all roles can contribute to each other’s value and jointly drive development and growth. Whether an ecosystem can be successfully built or not, it is very important to be able to sort out and understand the value relationship between the various roles in an ecosystem.

For example, the community content ecology of NetEase Cloud Music mainly revolves around leading experts KOL, active users and the general public with demand. KOL is the main content producer and creator, active users accelerate the dissemination of high-quality content, and the general public with demand consumes content. There is a close value supply relationship between them.

Due to space constraints, only these four thinking methods and some application scenarios are briefly introduced here. The author of the book has combined a large number of case analyses, which are very worthy of repeated consideration.

(2) Operational hard skills: four major methods

The previous section introduced some common ways of thinking, which can provide a good way to solve problems in some work scenarios. This section mainly introduces the four core hard skills of operations: control of operational indicators, data analysis, content operations and conversion-oriented copywriting.

Control operational indicators

This core capability can apply the process-oriented and refined thinking mentioned above to break down all work tasks surrounding a big goal into extremely detailed and specific ones. For example, the sales operation indicator of an e-commerce website is sales = activity traffic × payment rate × average order value. Activity traffic can be divided into internal website traffic and external channel traffic. External channel traffic can be broken down into search engines, Weibo, etc. Only by breaking down each step into sufficient detail and identifying those with higher priority and lower cost, can we better control operational indicators.

Data analysis

Data analysis is a method that is often used in both product and operation. A book could be written on data analysis alone. Here, the author mainly introduces a general idea of ​​data analysis: first clearly define what indicators are to be evaluated and what dimensions are used to measure these indicators. For example, the number of visits to a website is a metric for evaluating user activity. When we look at it, we can cross-analyze and compare it from different dimensions such as time and region to help us draw conclusions.

Content Operations

Content operation is also a very large topic. Since the product form I am responsible for does not require content operation, I will only introduce the two major elements of content operation here: content positioning and content production. Positioning: Define content boundaries based on product tone, and label the content with a certain style. For example, the content style positioning of Zhihu and Douban is different. Content production generally has four steps: topic planning -> information collection and organization -> content processing and production -> content organization and presentation. For example, the output of this article on my official account is a content operation process.

Conversion copywriting

The so-called conversion copy means that the purpose of this copy is specific. Its significance is to guide users to complete a specific behavior, which is called a conversion. Among conversion-type copywriting, there are two types: short copywriting and medium-long copywriting. Short copywriting is like a title; medium-long copywriting is like a soft article. There are two ways to improve conversion rate with short copy: "hanging out with rich men", which is what we often call chasing hot topics, stimulating users' willingness to click and visit by associating them with events with greater influence; and subverting cognition, which is what we often call "clickbait". There are also two methods of long copywriting: attract attention -> arouse interest -> arouse desire -> promote behavior, generally used for soft-text advertising promotion; bring in context -> cause conflict -> raise questions -> provide solutions. Here you only need to understand some methods that can improve copywriting skills. I will not list case analysis, and will analyze it in detail when it is used specifically.

This chapter mainly sorts out and summarizes the operational planning and execution methodology mentioned by the author. It contains a lot of content and is very deep and substantial. Next, I will combine it with my own products and think more about it to digest it.

4. Thoughts on To B security product operations

The field I work in is the security industry, and the group I face is mainly toB. For this type of security products or services, combined with some of the operational methods and thinking mentioned above, I mainly think and analyze from the following two dimensions.

Business logic and business analysis. The general business logic of to B security products is to sell products or services directly to customers for use. The frequency of use will not be like that of to C products, which belong to the low-frequency business type.

Product operation planning and implementation ideas. Based on the above analysis, I divide the product operation planning and implementation ideas into three main parts: product selection, pre-sales, and after-sales.

Product selection. For existing products, package the products through content operation and copywriting. For exploratory products, you can refer to the process and leverage thinking mentioned in the book, analyze the upstream and downstream relationships of the industrial chain, conduct demand research, and use leading Internet companies as the market entry point to find solutions. The ultimate goal is to form a product solution and prepare for sales.

Pre-sales. That is, the process of selling products or services, there are two ideas: first, market communication can be carried out to improve brand awareness by participating in cybersecurity conferences, offline and online summit forums, etc.; second, the expansion of sales channels, customer visits through sales, etc.

After sales. After the product or service is sold, after-sales service is also a very critical link, which can improve customer satisfaction, increase customer renewal rate or more opportunities to enter the ecosystem.

The above is my sharing of some operational methodologies in the book “The Light of Operations”, as well as my operational thoughts based on my own industry. No matter how much methodological knowledge you learn, the most important thing is to apply the theory to practical work and internalize it as your own knowledge. I hope the above sharing is helpful to you. Of course, I also hope that you can read this book yourself. I believe that you will have a different understanding and find your own golden house in the book...

Author: Slash Product Wang

Source: Slash Product Wang