5 formulas to analyze the growth secrets of soul APP

As a stranger social product, Soul has established a firm foothold in the fierce social product competition with its highlights of soul social networking and its excellent product functions and user experience, and has continued to grow rapidly for a period of time. So what insights can we gain from its growth phenomenon? What else can be learned? This article will reveal it to you.

The recent "battle" between Soul, a stranger social app, and Uki has refreshed the views of many investors and media, become a hot topic among the public, and successfully attracted my attention——

How did a product that was established only a few years ago grow from millions to tens of millions of users in just 8 months? How did it frequently appear on the App Stop rankings? What kind of product functions does it have to be disdainfully compared with the "kings" of the stranger social world, Momo and TanTan?

According to third-party data (iResearch data), Soul's monthly active users peaked at 4.636 million in January 2019. From the trend chart, we can see that the monthly active users have been in a continuous growth trend since the product was launched. Under what growth conditions did the product grow so rapidly? What is the reason for the chronic decline in monthly active users in April 2019? These are questions that require analyzing the product and answering them from a growth perspective.

Growth Formula 1: Product Positioning

Soul's official announcement states that Soul is positioned as a "social app for the soul". The product uses a "chemical reaction matching algorithm" to recommend people the user may like with one click, allowing users to reduce loneliness and increase happiness by communicating and interacting with friends they can chat with on Soul.

And functions have always revolved around product positioning. When registering, users need to answer a series of questions. Behind the questions is a set of operating algorithms that generate personal labels for matching and subsequent communication. On the homepage, there are ball-shaped tag attribute matching, soul matching for text communication, voice matching, love bell and video matching function "Facekini", and all these functions revolve around "soul". The tag method will bring strangers closer to each other, reduce the loneliness of communication, and allow matched people to chat with each other better.

In the early stages, many growth officers are disdainful of optimizing product features and planning various operational plans and growth plans, but most of them often ignore the positioning of the product itself. The original intention of growth is inseparable from product positioning. Looking back at the stranger social networking product "Tantan", you may have heard of its name before you heard of it. Tantan has always been positioned as a social method of LBS, and its left and right swiping function has quickly made it explode in the market. Another product that was maliciously reported by Soul is "Uki", which is also positioned as "finding the right person", and most of its functions are also operated around "the same people".

When a product is first created, a differentiated market positioning is envisioned. After the product is in operation, growth officers will often learn from other companies’ growth operations to change the original product appearance and return to their original intentions. Growth centered around product positioning is very important.

Growth formula 2: Marketing driven

Marketing is an essential part of the growth formula. The effect brought about by the popularity of social networks in recent years is that people only focus on discussing content and information that they like . With the emergence of various marketing forms, the original content of users' attention has gradually been broken, and curiosity marketing has become the best way to capture new players and new users.

Here is the marketing timeline I collected for Soul:

After Soul released its product, it invited seed users to cold-start its product through channels such as Douban groups. On the second day after the product was released, overseas users reported on the App Store that they could not register with foreign mobile phones. However, in the early stages of a product, supporting overseas user registration is usually not a high priority requirement in the industry. However, Soul made efforts to meet the needs of overseas users in versions 1.1, 2.1, and 2.3 during this period.

After receiving the B round of financing in March 2018, Soul began to advertise crazily on channels such as Weibo, Zhihu, Douban, and Bilibili. Its slogan of "soul social networking" attracted a large number of new users on these social platforms. At this time, Soul ranked second in the social rankings, second to Momo.

On September 14, 2018, a piece of news titled “Soul can’t log in” quietly climbed to the top of Weibo’s hot searches.

In April 2019, Soul teamed up with iQiyi to show "I Like You, Too" to see the sparks of soul mates in the variety show

From October 3rd to 5th, 2019, Soul's Soul Matching Stickers were launched on the B612 Sticker Channel, which received over one million exposures in three days and was warmly welcomed by trendy young users. When using Soul social stickers, “Soul social matching” will be displayed in the B612 camera selfie screen, and the user will wear a Soul voice matching mask.

In November 2019, Soul and "The Rap of China" collaborated across borders. Star debater Xiao Xiao brought hot debate topics to Soul users and launched the same debate on the site, allowing young people to make their own voices heard.

In November 2019, Soul and "Inception" collaborated across borders to start a fantasy journey in dreams. Soul, a social platform popular among young users, also opened a dream collection hall together with "Inception". Users who record unforgettable dream moments in the square will have a chance to win movie tickets and peripherals for "Inception".

In November 2019, Soul App and "Actors Please Take Your Place" cross-border cooperation to find out what kind of acting skills the post-95s like. Soul App and "Actors Please Take Your Place" cross-border cooperation launched the most unforgettable acting topic on the site, inviting users to participate in variety show interactions, discuss interesting things inside and outside the show, and share their most memorable acting skills.

In February 2020, Soul ads appeared on the keep app’s opening screen, launching soul mates and online distribution.

Growth Formula 3: Ahaha Moments

If a product does not have an "aha moment", then it is not only wasting advertising costs, but also overdrawing the operating team's trust in the product.

From the perspective of product structure, the product is divided into three sections: Planet, Square and Chat. When you enter the product, you will first be taken to a square composed of different UGC contents, where you will find all kinds of unique contents, including videos, pictures, and contents. Of course, the content that makes you stop and pay attention must be verified by data.

Product Growth 1: Planet

Going to the planet page is truly the best feature for Soul to continue to retain and monetize. As can be seen from the picture, the design of the entire section is closely related to the questions and answers before registration. First of all, these rotating 3D dots represent groups with different attributes. Users can choose to start a chat with an interested user. "There are all kinds of flavors and types. This is so customized."

In matching functions such as soul matching, voice matching, facekini matching, and love bell, gender, age, zodiac sign, world outlook, interests, and hobbies are used for matching, which will implant the mind of the "same" person in the user, thereby enhancing the potential trust between the two parties and reducing communication costs.

In addition, these functions have several common features, such as "directly" initiating a chat, "quickly" entering the experience, directly hearing the other party's "voice", and establishing a "communication" channel. These key points are excellent ways for Soul users to get a quick sense of experience.

Product Growth 2: Plaza Community

The best way to retain users is to build a community.

The square section is divided into three sub-sections: Follow, Recommend and Latest. Users can view other users' content in the square at any time. Users can share their location when sending a "moment". At the same time, in the content square, users can also see the content sent by users based on LBS.

User publishing is actually the same as Weibo publishing. The published content will be put into the content pool and will also become the information on the personal homepage. The content will be recommended to a small number of people on the same planet. Within a certain period of time, the system will calculate the proportion of likes and comments received by the information to judge its quality. The higher the quality, the greater the weight, and the higher the recommended ranking will be. This will ensure that high-quality information is pushed to more people.

The purpose of the Soul community is to distract users' attention and enhance the freshness and excitement brought by the traffic of thousands of people. Without the community, all functions are about matching, just like Tantan, which can only stay at that moment, and the APP will be closed at other times, and user loss cannot generate value effect. WeChat Reading, a product that creates a UGC content community, aims to alleviate the boredom of reading, so that reading is no longer just about reading texts that you understand.

Weaken matching, strengthen interaction, and use similar experiences to touch the hearts of "peepers", and such communities are often healthy communities. If C-end products want to grow now, they must build a community.

Growth Formula 4: Tag Matching

Tag matching is the core function of Soul and also its best marketing highlight.

The so-called matching is to classify and label you according to the questions you answered when you registered.

Millions of registered users will form a huge tag pool, and no matter how you match, you will find a "satisfactory" partner.

I will not discuss the calculation method of label matching here, and it is not the point of this discussion. The reasonable characteristics of labels are based on the high point of human nature. Once people achieve this deep connection through labels, single men and women can easily develop "feelings" during continuous communication. No matter who you match with, the awkwardness of chatting between both parties can be reduced to a minimum. You can directly initiate a chat and find common topics with each other.

Speaking of tags, NetEase Cloud Music often releases some summaries at the end of the year or seasonally. These summaries are formed based on the tags generated by your use of music. For example, what time is the latest time you listen to music, your favorite singer is Jay Chou, you have listened to a certain song 32 times in a row, etc. When you post it on your Moments to show off, you are actually attracting the attention of other friends with similar tags, and you will consciously develop a good impression of others.

It is precisely because of this positioning that Soul was able to quickly become popular in the early stages, slowly occupying the minds of users and seizing the word-of-mouth market. Uki, a competitor of Soul, uses "voice control" to capture the minds of users. When you can't see the other person's face, hearing their voice first can also quickly make people enter the heart-pounding moment.

Growth Formula 4: Market Demand

Looking at the current market demand, the field of stranger social networking is still a blue ocean. Most of the people born in the 1990s and 1995s, who were captured by old-fashioned products such as Momo and Tantan, have already entered the marriage hall and are now rapidly withdrawing from the previous army of singles, followed by the class of those born in the 1997s and 2000s. Modern young people tend to choose younger products and pursue more freedom. The user groups of WeChat and QQ are very good examples.

When it comes to stranger social networking, whoever wins the women wins the world. The demand for stranger social networking is often caused by two kinds of demands. The first is to have sex, which does not involve emotions but focuses on physiology and needs; the second is blind dates, which expand one's social circle and find a broader sky and sea.

The two types of stimulating demands often bring more growth. According to third-party data statistics, Soul's female user group is larger than its male user group, and college students have become the mainstream user group, which has created a situation where there are more meat than wolves.

In the first scenario of dating, it is easier to initiate communication through text, audio and video chat, without having to swipe left and right and wait for both parties to agree. The result of having more female users is that if they are not satisfied with the match, they will change it directly. If that doesn’t work, they will close the conversation and make a new match. Just imagine, with such a favorable scenario and clear demand, how can there not be growth?

The second scenario is blind dating. Those who can find their other half through blind dating can be inferred that they have fewer opposite sexes in real life, have weak social skills, or are seeking to develop more resources of the opposite sex. On Soul, soul + three outlooks + appearance = preference is a tool to help screen "scientific" blind dates, and there are indeed many people who can get together. Blind dates have also become a growing trend due to market demand.

Growth Formula 5: Fission and Monetization

Soul is already a "big kid". If it continues to be fed by capital, the capital will be unhappy. Based on the social system, Solu's monetization method is seamless throughout the entire product, but Soul's monetization method is no longer the simple membership recharge in previous products.

Soul has monetized everything where you need it, allowing you to pay. For example, in the face matching (Facekini) function, the system gives a default of three free trials per day. In order to stimulate users to use Facekini, it also specifically distinguishes between free times for men and women. Men have three times a day, and they need to pay after use, while women have seven times a day, and if the match fails, they will continue to be given one free time. This monetization method can largely retain users who have left during the payment process and turn it into a boiling frog strategy, which will firmly trap users.

Are the specific monetization methods worth learning for growth officers? Here is a tip: experience the product for a few hours first. The experience here is not a functional experience like the product manager's research on competing products. Learn to think of yourself as a user, and then check the monetization function points that I listed in the mind map above. This is the greatest respect for operations and growth.

At the moment, there is nothing worth learning from Soul at the fission end. Of course, there are also fission behaviors, such as in the boasting wall, inviting friends to send Sou coins, etc., all of which use the invitation method to generate fission. These fission methods are relatively old-fashioned compared to the current fission methods on the market such as "fight", "help", "cut", "give", "compare" and "exchange".

Soul almost always uses the method of giving money for invitations, which is not very innovative, but Soul's monetization link is relatively heavy, making the internal "currency" more valuable, which also makes fission more tempting.

Now Soul is still continuously placing advertisements and buying traffic. This approach is not recommended for us to learn. No matter how good an advertiser is, if the operation of the product cannot keep up, it is equivalent to doing charity.

Invest time, produce value. Invest your emotions and reap love. Invest in speculation and gain profit. Soul satisfies the interpersonal rewards of social rewards, the information of the opposite sex of prey rewards, and the sense of manipulation and accomplishment of self-rewards.