How to increase online user growth during the epidemic

In special times, shifting from offline to online is certainly a viable option, but what is more important is how to use data operations to understand what users really want after attracting them, establish a long-term "user-centric" digital operation system, and perform refined user operations.

Rather than passively accepting the blow, it is better to embrace change.

First, I would like to share with you a famous book published more than 20 years ago, "Who Moved My Cheese?", which is one of the best-selling books in the world. It tells the story of four little mice in a warehouse full of cheese, who achieved different results through different cognition and choices. It tells us a truth, that is, "change is bound to happen, but the behavior in response to change can make us get different results."

For example, does your company respond quickly to changes in the environment and strive to change, or does it stick to the old ways?

During the pandemic, changes bring dangers but are also full of opportunities. If the business is compared to "cheese", a business that was originally operating well suddenly changes because of a "black swan" event. It is like the warehouse full of cheese mentioned in the book, but suddenly it is emptied, leaving two little mice with nothing to eat.

The environment is always changing. If we want to cope with such changes, we need to have four basic qualities in our consciousness:

• First of all, we must understand that "change" is bound to happen, and coping with change is a basic awareness of the enterprise;
• Second, analyze and track to plan ahead;
• Third, adapt to changes as quickly as possible;
• Fourth, take the initiative to change yourself before changes occur.

Change and self-help are successful only because of doing these things

During this epidemic, we also saw a lot of self-help cases:

1. Lost in Russia cooperated with Xigua Video to break the traditional film distribution model;
2. Xibei mobilized store managers to manage private domain traffic and simultaneously communicated with customers through chef live broadcasts;
3. LV, a representative of the luxury goods industry that focuses on offline operations, launched the "Valentine's Day Real Gift" program, which was distributed to regular customers by shopping guides, successfully driving sales to double in two weeks;
4. Three Squirrels launched the "Golden Rat Brings Blessings" mini program. After it went online, through a series of live broadcasts, it gained nearly 400,000 new fans in one day.

From these cases, we found three trends:

1. Core transformation model shift. The traditional model is to use old channels and old operating methods, but this model has become obsolete. The new model is from seed customers to new seed customers, and then to paying customers. Similar to "Lost in Russia", hundreds of millions of users on the Internet platform can watch this movie at home.
2. Make good use of the "growth hacker" model. The concept of "growth hacking" has been operating in the American Internet circle for 15 years, namely "acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, referral", referred to as the "AARRR model".
3. Build omni-channel service capabilities. It is not about moving offline to online, but that enterprises should not only have offline capabilities, but also online capabilities, and organically integrate the two channels to adopt the most direct global operation model.

Four offline self-help methods form the online operation for the overall users:

1. Through the main operation of WeChat Moments, users can enhance their awareness by posting advertisements, liking, interacting, live broadcasting, etc. in Moments;
2. The sales and service staff who used to operate offline stores directly now have set up online sales groups, and held a series of incentives such as flash sales, instant sales, and red envelopes to transfer offline operations to online;
3. Rapid distribution through mini programs;
4. Live streaming sells goods and completes the online sales conversion loop.

Six ways for offline enterprises to save themselves:

1. Create SKUs for online services. No matter what you sell, it must be "online";
2. Migrate offline users to online;
3. Increase the frequency of interaction. Generally speaking, there are 50,000 interactions in a live broadcast, and the conversion rate may not reach 20% or 30%, but there is a conversion loophole. Increasing users means increasing "potential monetization";
4. Focus on user return. If the user came last time, bring him back online quickly;
5. Old customers bring in new customers to improve the fission capability;
6. To accurately generate user transactions, it is necessary to have a deep understanding of users and user groups.

How to upgrade online multi-channel operations

Nowadays, many companies have many online channels, and they are often not limited to a certain online platform or channel. So how to optimize the operations of multiple channels?

First, connect directly with users. This is the most important capability in the era of digital growth, connecting with users, especially through private domain traffic operations and loyal customer cultivation through WeChat personal and corporate accounts;

Second, use mini programs as e-commerce carriers and complement and integrate with third-party platforms to form a service matrix;

Third, multi-channel marketing. Collect data from multiple channels, accumulate user assets, and better understand users to form customer portraits, which will provide guidance for the next marketing activities;

Fourth, omni-channel marketing. An omnichannel marketing department is not limited to offline and online, but should combine marketing channels to improve results in the best form;

Fifth, technical operation of intelligent marketing platform. This enables us to achieve personalized operations for customers on a large scale and in an automated manner, providing them with different services, goods and products.

However, when operating across multiple channels, you must also be careful not to turn transactions into traffic thinking, but rather user thinking.

If we adopt a user-centric mindset, loyal users, users with brand awareness, and users of self-operated channels often generate several times more revenue and profits than these disloyal users (users who take advantage of the situation). Therefore, direct sales channels are a very important capability for any channel.

When I was working in retail, I found that customers who come to stores are generally more loyal, and generally speaking, their GMV is higher than that of pure online customers. In addition, the gross profit margin generated by purchases made by customers who come to the store is also better.

Secondly, compared with third-party channels, users spend more in the company's own channels and have higher user loyalty.

It is imperative to form a user loyalty management system. The earlier this system is established, the more likely it is to retain good customers on the platform for continued operation.

Platforms and data are just the foundation; understanding users and understanding their needs is the goal.

The essence of digital marketing is to understand users and customers. The most fundamental thing about digital marketing is to provide each customer with the right products and prices at the right time, right place and right channel. The essence of all digital marketing is user-centric.

Through online interactions, we collect and integrate a lot of user data. After these extensive user data are integrated, the company will be able to extract data through online channels, store channels, call center channels, WeChat channels, etc. These data combined together can enhance the understanding of the customer base.

Data insights can bring us four benefits:

• First, improve the efficiency of advertising and marketing, and know which channels will be more valuable in the future;
• Second, improve the understanding of user loyalty and find the most valuable users;
• Third, through conversion-based growth, we can discover good products and make advanced decisions for future product selection;
• Fourth, when we have accumulated user data and understood channel characteristics, we will be able to operate and manage based on the different characteristics of each customer in the future. This kind of operation will help us understand products, channels, and customers in the future.

For example, through push notifications, pop-ups, mini-programs, etc., personalized merchandise information and product information can be launched, and different strategies can be implemented for different customers. This is also a big difference between new economy companies and traditional companies. New economy companies can better understand users and generate more new connections.

How to improve your ability to gain insight into users and data-driven operations

There are four steps involved. If these four steps can be implemented, an enterprise can achieve a successful transformation of old and new driving forces:

1. Digital planning. Planning of digital marketing system and user data system;
2. System construction. Quickly build scenarios for acquiring data and adapt to new trends;
3. Drive our business through the data-driven operating system we build, such as driving channels, marketing strategies, content and customer loyalty;
4. The overall planning, construction and driving are integrated into a closed loop, which feeds back to the entire system and makes it more intelligent.

Take e-commerce retail companies as an example: the user journey (User Journey Map) is divided into four stages: the first stage is new users; the second stage is ordinary users; the third stage is active users; the fourth stage is dormant users among active users.

It is basically divided into four stages, each stage has new links, such as:

1. For new users, consider onboarding, new user tasks, and new customer discounts;
2. For ordinary users, consider clocking in, daily lucky draws, and personalized push live broadcasts;
3. Active users include membership system level growth, membership badges, UGC content, and sharing invitations;
4. Dormant users, through push, SMS, activities, daily promotion briefings, holiday activities.

For example, new users need to scan a code to register and follow, etc. as the horizontal direction, and the vertical direction is the node for measuring the core strategy, such as: the conversion rate of new users, the retention rate of old users, the number of new users, etc. A series of things form a matrix. This matrix is ​​the data-based marketing and data system.

Every new user who becomes a loyal user will go through a series of processes, leaving a series of data points in the business. These data points can be integrated and analyzed to find out what kind of user provided what kind of method at what stage and what kind of output was obtained.

Data assets are formed through systems such as CRM, transaction data, and user behavior data. Data assets are data integration and user tags. User portraits are formed through "user tag behavior" and "purchase possibility". Customer portraits are combined with sales channels to form a dynamic and sophisticated online operation system.

Continuously use and analyze data to form an understanding of users, generate data conversion and changes through refined operations, and these data will feed back into the system to produce better results.

If we successfully establish this mechanism, we will build a long-term "user-centric" digital operation system. Then our channels, customer purchasing tendencies, operation methods, and shared content will be combined together, making our operations more and more intelligent, with fewer conflicts between channels, maximizing efficiency and creating better value and a better user experience for customers.

How to judge your company's data operation capabilities

This model is also very easy to understand, like a Rubik's Cube matrix, divided into data capabilities and online operation capabilities.

Data capabilities: the first type of enterprise may not have data; the second type can see data; the third type can use data, and the third level is the highest.

Online operational capabilities are divided into three levels:

• The first category is lack of online capabilities;
• The second type is to use some rules to uniformly guide online operations;
• The third category is the ability to optimize dynamically in real time through user data and behavior analysis.

Not every square in the formed nine-square grid exists. If some capabilities are lacking, the nine-square grid will be empty, representing the lack of online operation capabilities.

We must be able to use data to carry out online operations. Growing IO proposes that enterprises have five levels.

• The first category is the lack of digital capabilities;
• The second type is extensive data-based operations;
• The third category monitors and adjusts the datafication effects;
• The fourth category provides guidance based on different areas at different stages of the life cycle;
• The fifth category is personalized and precise operations that are targeted at people.

These five categories represent five completely different levels of capabilities for enterprises. Generally speaking, enterprises that perform better in business operations reach the third or fourth level. The fifth category performs best, such as Taobao and JD.com. If you don't have the capability to do so, you can take it step by step and make good use of the data analysis framework to conduct analysis and diagnosis.

Data operations are not only needed by large enterprises, but also by small enterprises.

Data operations seem to require a large marketing team and support system, and it seems that only large companies have the capabilities.

But now there are many online office software, especially SaaS software, which can help small and medium-sized enterprises build such basic capabilities, and the cost will be higher than buying these large software before. For example, if you want to set up a very large operation and maintenance or R&D team, the cost is much lower. Customers can achieve L3 or even L4 capabilities quickly without spending much money.

The epidemic is helping Chinese companies to improve their health

Any enterprise will go through various cycles to a greater or lesser extent. In the short term, it will have a huge impact on some of China's real economies, especially industries with offline physical businesses. This is a current situation that everyone can see. However, in this crisis situation, it will actually enhance the innovation capabilities of various industries, the cohesion of enterprises in various industries, and accelerate the innovation transformation.

In the long run, the epidemic is beneficial to businesses, although there will be some short-term pain. Many companies are aware of the impact of the "black swan", so they need to develop many capabilities, such as live streaming, mini-program operations, product development, customer integration and data-based development, etc., which were not on the agenda in the past two years. They must all be focused on today. In the long run, it is also an inspiration for more reasonable management and efficient operations, especially for cash flow management.

Take advantage of the current situation to quickly "strengthen your body" and enhance your "immunity", and short-term difficulties will always pass.

Author: GrowingIO

Source: GrowingIO