How can you get users to share and help you acquire customers without spending a penny?

Through user sharing and word-of-mouth recommendations, the quality of customers obtained is relatively high and the cost of acquiring customers is relatively low. However, due to the difficulty of operation and the lack of correct promotion methods, the scale of acquiring new customers through user sharing is not large. So how can we amplify the value of user sharing?

New users acquired through user sharing and word-of-mouth recommendations are low-cost and high-quality, but their scale is often small.

Therefore, in order to get more users willing to share their products with their friends, almost all major Internet companies take the shortcut of spending money to reward users for sharing.

In the past, you would be rewarded 5 yuan for inviting a new activated user, and later you could get a cash red envelope by sharing with WeChat friends. For example, Pinduoduo’s 100-yuan red envelopes, Alipay’s sharing red envelopes, Meituan and Ctrip’s assisted red envelopes, etc. This has become a common practice in the industry.

Although spending money increases users’ motivation to share, it also introduces many problems:

Because users are rewarded for sharing with money, the motivation for sharing is money. The reward money is too little, and not many users are willing to share, so the purpose cannot be achieved. However, the cost of acquiring normal users is higher than that of conventional market channels because the money paid is higher.

In order to control costs and hope that users will share more, many tricks that deceive and harm users have emerged. The most prominent one is Pinduoduo’s 100-yuan red envelope.

For analysis of this activity, please refer to "The Universal Equation for Product Growth: Number of Users = User Motivation/Action Cost". This will not be expanded here.

We have also made many attempts to pay users to share, and achieved the expected results. For detailed case introduction, please refer to "Product Core Working Method: How to Find the Demand Points that Drive Product Growth?" 》 and "The universal equation for product growth: number of users = user motivation/action cost".

However, as long as you pay users to share, you will have to make trade-offs between the scale of sharing, the cost of new users, and the quality of users. There are only three final results of these three problem orientations:

1. We harm users and gain their trust through tricks, but after they share their content, they actually receive very little or no reward. The user eventually gives up.
2. Users hurt us. Although they gave us real money, they only attracted invalid, low-quality, or even duplicate users, and were unable to effectively share value.
3. If the reward is too small and the number of users willing to share is small, the final result will be useless.

It is difficult to achieve a true win-win situation by rewarding users for sharing results through money. Therefore, social sharing must be free and allow users to share, so as to truly achieve the goal of reaching users on a large scale at low cost.

01 So how can we get users to share without spending money?

1. Determine the type of communication

The first type is point-to-point communication

In a certain scenario, a user believes that recommending a product will be beneficial to his friends.

For example, if a friend wants to buy clothes of a certain brand, she usually uses Vipshop, which she finds quite good, so she will recommend Vipshop to her friend.

Or, a friend said she wanted to buy a certain Coach bag, and when she was browsing Vipshop, she happened to see that the bag was on sale, so she would also recommend Vipshop to her friend.

This type of recommendation has no customer acquisition cost, and the quality of recommended users is relatively high, but the scale is relatively small. Users will not recommend a product to their friends for no reason. It is often related to social scenarios. If the volume needs to be increased, other methods except spending money on rewards will not be very effective.

The second type is point-to-point communication

This requires that the product itself has social communication attributes, such as Faceu, which was popular for a while. But more common are social events planned for the purpose of communication. For example, the 100 things you must do in life planned by NetEase News has been all over the screen recently.

When users see such social activities posted by their friends in their Moments, they become interested, open the posts to participate, are inspired, and post them to their own Moments.

This type of activity does not cost any money and can get a lot of reposts and exposure in the circle of friends. The promoted brands are mainly exposed during the process of users participating in activities. This type of activity can achieve zero cash cost, gain large-scale exposure, and the model can be replicated. With a large amount of forwarding and exposure, the goal of attracting advertising traffic can be achieved at 0 cost.

Therefore, various companies, large and small, are tirelessly trying similar plans, but the success rate is very low. The main reason is that the focus of this type of event planning and design is very different from conventional product functions. Without mastering the tricks, the possibility of success is almost zero.

After selecting the type of communication, focus on determining the motivation for communication.

2. The core motivation of social communication

According to the number of users = user motivation/action cost . We need to first clarify users' motivations for sharing social activities.

The core motivation of social communication is social interaction. The core of social interaction lies in two aspects: 1. Receiving, 2. Expressing. Receiving means looking at the circle of friends, group chats, etc. There is expression only when there is reception. When I see a topic that interests me, I will add a few words of my own opinion. When seeing something that makes me angry, I will forward it to my friends to express my dissatisfaction.

There are many motivations for users to express themselves, but there are two main ones that are most closely related to social activities:

1. Content that expresses an image that is consistent with the user's self-positioning is information related to the user's personality. We always want to portray ourselves in a positive light. Therefore, they are always willing to forward content that reflects a positive personal image, such as charity, hard work, etc.
2. Content that can make users feel superior . It is human nature to like to show off, and having a sense of superiority is the basis of showing off. Most of the life-related content in the circle of friends is a show of relative superiority. For example, if a child performs well, he or she may buy a luxury house, visit famous scenic spots, etc.

The above two motivations are not strictly distinguished. In a social activity, personality may be involved, and there may also be a sense of superiority. For example, the left and right brain test that once dominated the Internet. The words convey both a positive personality image and a sense of superiority.

3. After clarifying the motivation, you should also consider strengthening the motivation

According to the number of users = user motivation/action cost. The stronger the user motivation, the more users will participate. The strength of this type of social motivation is related to user emotions.

For example, when we feel angry about a certain phenomenon, we can't help but share it on WeChat Moments to condemn it. When you buy your favorite bag, you will inadvertently take a selfie and post it on your Moments to share your joy. The product strategy we design is to touch users' emotions. The stronger the emotions, the stronger the spread.

The media can trigger users to spread mainly negative emotions. For example, social injustice, illegal power and other phenomena can instantly cause a large number of reposts and become hot topics. But what motivates users to spread social activities are mainly positive emotions, such as happiness, pride, fun, surprise, and recognition. The first criterion for selecting a creative idea is that it must touch the user’s positive emotions, and then consider the specific product strategy to enhance the emotions.

3. Product model of social activities

After selecting an idea that can trigger positive emotions in users, the next step is to design a product around the idea. There are generally two types of product models

Mode 1 is result-driven, with the content centered on the users themselves. For example, the left and right brain test, the 100 things you must do in life, and my office posture during the epidemic prevention period. The flow of this type of structure is:

Results are reached → Attract friends → Scan the QR code to open → Participate in the event → Get results → Feel satisfied → Save results and share with friends.

Taking the left and right brain test as an example, user A shared his test results on WeChat Moments, and user B became his friend. He found the results interesting and wanted to take the test himself. Then I scanned the QR code to enter the testing program. After the test, I saw my results and felt very satisfied. Those high-sounding comments were very consistent with my personality, so I wanted to send them to my friends to see. In fact, I am such a person. Then save the picture and forward it to your circle of friends.

Currently, most of the activities that flood the Moments are of this type. The advantage is that the process is short and focuses on user information. Compared to paying attention to and understanding others, people hope to get the attention and understanding of others.

Mode 2 is interactive guidance, focusing on friends. For example, a friend tacit understanding test, tell me an anonymous comment. The flow of this type of structure is:

Results reach → Attract friends → Scan QR code to open → Participate in activities → Feedback results → Feel satisfied → Initiate related activities according to guidance → Participate in activities → Save results and share with friends.

Taking the friend tacit understanding test as an example, user A shared the interactive invitation page to the circle of friends. Friend B saw it, found it interesting, and recognized the QR code to enter the interactive session. The feedback after the interaction made user B feel interesting and happy, and he was motivated to participate in the activity. Therefore, follow the guidance to continue entering the activity initiation process, set relevant test content, save the results, and finally share them on WeChat Moments.

There are two main differences between the two modes:

1. Mode 2 has a longer process . Friends need to participate in an interaction before initiating their own activities. From the perspective of funnel conversion, with each additional step, the number of users will decrease.
2. The conversion attraction of model 2 in reaching friends is also related to A’s social influence. Because the first half of the activity in Mode 2 focuses on user A. If friend B is not familiar with A, or B has no motivation to interact with A, all activities initiated by A will be ignored by B. But mode 1 does not. The focus of Mode 1 is ultimately on B himself.

Therefore, the transmission efficiency of mode 2 is significantly lower than that of mode 1. But mode 2 is the pitfall that many product managers encounter when planning social activities. If we have selected a creative idea and start planning, we must avoid designing it into Mode 2.

02 Planning Examples

Next, we will use a real case to explain how to plan a social activity that allows users to share without spending any money.

1. Identify your goals

First, determine the goal to carry out a social marketing campaign on WeChat and insert brand soft advertisements into the campaign. Communication type: select the point-to-point communication type, mainly based on users sharing in Moments.

2. Creative Choices

The team conducts creative brainstorming around two social motivations: expressing user personality or embodying superiority, and making users have positive emotions. As long as the team's minds start working, they can always find several eye-catching ideas.

For example, I can test my best dressing style, or anonymously collect dressing styles that suit me, or collaborate with friends on the same painting to test our rapport, etc.

3. After you have multiple ideas, filter them using two screening criteria

Standard 1. Ideas that meet product model 1 are given priority.

This is an objective standard. Easy to compare. You can figure it out by just disassembling the product steps according to your creativity. For example, testing your best dressing style is mode 1. Anonymously collecting my clothing style and collaborating with friends to complete the same painting belong to Mode 2.

Standard 2. Creative ideas that can arouse stronger positive emotions in users are given priority.

For example, testing your own dressing style, as long as the copy is well written, it can generate more identification emotions than drawing a picture with a friend, and it is more interesting than collecting dressing styles anonymously. Because most people's dressing style is relatively fixed, and your friend telling you what he thinks of your dressing style cannot form an interesting interaction. Because clothing style is not like an anonymous impression, it is difficult for the answers to contain content that is unexpected, surprising, and enjoyable to you. So test your best dressing style and stand out among the 3 creative ones.

3. After deciding on the idea, output the product plan

You can also test the dressing style that suits you best and come up with two options.

The first type is a concrete expression, providing users with matching options of tops, pants, shoes, and bags.

After the user makes a selection, he or she uploads an avatar that will be automatically beautified. The system then gives a matching score, which is divided into several levels, with the highest level being 90-100 points. This means that the user has selected the best match. While giving the rating, congratulate the user for choosing their best match. Trigger users' emotions of pleasure and identification, and then let them save pictures and post them on WeChat Moments.

The second type is to present the user with several sets of tops, pants, shoes, and bags.

Choose the one you like best. Finally, based on the user's choice, a perceptual and abstract evaluation of the clothing style is obtained. Of course, the final copywriting result must be consistent with the user's unique and fashionable aesthetic.

It is not difficult to do this. Just set specific and general aesthetic evaluations for the tops and pants you like. As long as they are positive, users will almost certainly think that they are like that when they see them. Naturally, I will share it on my Moments and tell my friends that this is my aesthetic style.

Both solutions can be refined and eventually put online for testing. If you are interested in the specific design, you can verify it yourself. There is only one finishing touch left, which I will not introduce here.

03 Final Conclusion

The main planning steps to get users to share without spending money:

The key to designing a solution is to consider the user's action cost. What we introduced is just the perspective of enhancing user motivation. The focus of action cost is on the key processes of the activity and the design of the interactive UI. I won’t go into details here, but will emphasize three design principles:

1. Reduce the time cost of users. The activity process should be simple rather than complicated. One more step will result in more user loss.
2. Reduce users' understanding cost. The design of the scheme should not only be interactive and easy to understand, but the expression of creativity should also be clear and easy to understand. If users don’t understand what the activity is about, they will be kept out.
3. Pay attention to design, interface design can affect user emotions. It's just like when we stay in a five-star hotel, the clean, tidy and luxurious environment will make people feel happy and comfortable. On the contrary, if we stay in a damp and cold hotel, we will feel irritable and uneasy. Rough and inferior designs will be rejected by users. Seeing a carefully crafted design can make users more immersed in the product process designed for them. Good interaction and interface design is to achieve a state of selflessness. The user knows what he needs to do and completes it smoothly without any questions throughout the process. It’s as if the interaction and interface don’t exist.

So far, we have introduced how to get users to share and scroll down their Moments without spending a penny. If you have any questions, please leave a message to discuss.

Author: Mo Zhiqiang

Source: Mo Zhiqiang