How does product operation achieve user growth?

Recently I saw a growth-related topic on Zhihu, which happened to be very relevant to my work, so I decided to organize my thoughts on it.

Internet practitioners should all have this feeling that the cost of acquiring a new user is getting higher and higher, rising from a few yuan to hundreds or thousands, especially in the education industry. This has also given rise to a popular job demand in recent years - growth hacker.

The concept of growth hacking was first introduced from the Western Internet industry. Through some ingenious product designs, it can leverage big opportunities at a small cost, bringing about thousands of users and doubling of performance, with power beyond imagination.

Let me ask you, which boss wouldn’t be tempted?

In the past, new media editors often complained that their boss would post [A guide to increasing 50,000 followers at 0 cost] and [Learn these few techniques, and you can also write 100,000+] in the work group whenever they disagreed with him. They hoped that the editors would read them and increase their followers by 50,000+ the next day, and every article would reach 100,000+.

The same group of bosses, with familiar formulas and operations, started working again. This time, their eager gazes and breathtaking operations were directed at the marketing, product and operations colleagues. As the humble Party B, you can't escape the tyranny of Party A's boss after all. You can only prepare in advance. Who knows, maybe you can really seize big opportunities with low cost, achieve remarkable results, get promoted and get a raise, and reach the peak of your life.

Let’s first understand the path that users go through in the entire product consumption experience. After all, there is an old saying in the Internet industry: come from users and go to users.

7 nodes in the consumption process

When users consume a product, they will go through seven stages : cognition, curiosity, trust, persuasion, expectation, satisfaction, and surprise.

For example: Xiao Ming went to a supermarket and saw a beautiful young lady in the dairy products area. She was setting up a stall to promote milk. There were quite a few people gathered at the stall, so Xiao Ming went closer to take a look. The new product introduced by the young lady is a newly developed product by a major milk factory. It is sugar-free, stomach-friendly and has a good taste.

At the invitation of the young lady, Xiao Ming tried a small cup and found that the taste was indeed good. The young lady also recommended the promotional price to Xiao Ming, saying that it was a good deal to buy a box and that it tasted better after being refrigerated, so he bought a box and took it home.

After Xiao Ming returned home, he put the milk in the refrigerator. After drinking the whole box of the new milk, he felt that it suited his taste and was very satisfied. The next time he went to buy milk, he found that there was a half-price promotion for old users, so he bought another box and posted a picture and text message on WeChat Moments to recommend the product to his friends.

Review the process of Xiao Ming buying and consuming the new milk:

1. Cognitive node: seeing a milk promotion booth in the supermarket;
2. Curious point: A beautiful lady, with many people around her;
3. Trust nodes: developed by large companies and recommended by beautiful young ladies (subconsciously, people think that appearance is determined by the heart, and beautiful people are also kind);
4. Persuasion nodes: The taste I tried suits my taste, there is a promotion now, so it is a good deal to buy it;
5. Expected time: Put it in the refrigerator after refrigeration, the taste is better;
6. Satisfaction point: Drink the whole box and it completely suits your taste;
7. Surprise moment: Promotion for old users, bought another box and posted on WeChat Moments to recommend it to friends.

Growth business segment

Around these nodes of user consumption experience, the company will carry out corresponding businesses: product exposure, activation of customer acquisition channels, stimulation of purchase conversion, provision of product value, and guidance of word-of-mouth communication.

User consumption experience path

The so-called growth means finding opportunities for optimization in these business links to drive the company's overall user and revenue growth. Does that mean we can start optimizing? duckNo need.

Because the company's resources are limited, it is impossible to optimize all opportunities in all business links at the same time. This also involves the judgment of growth opportunities.

How to determine the growth opportunities for your company’s business? Generally speaking, it can be viewed from two aspects: the industrial cycle and the stage of enterprise development :

(1) From the perspective of the industry cycle

It is generally divided into two types: incremental market (emerging) and existing market (saturated). If the industry in which the company is located is still an emerging market with a constant influx of new users, the focus of growth at this time should be on [exposure] and [activation]. If the industry in which the company operates is a saturated market with existing stock, it should focus on [conversion], [providing value] and [word-of-mouth communication].

Just like the previous application market war, Wandoujia finally lost to 91 Assistant. The CEO of Wandoujia reviewed the reasons for the failure: overestimating the role of "user experience" in the incremental market stage of the industry. Before the market was educated, users were allowed to use it first, and then discussions were held on how to make users use it better.

(2) From the perspective of enterprise development stage

It can generally be divided into the nascent stage, growth stage, and mature stage.

In the new stage, focus on storing food; in the growth stage, focus on building high walls; in the mature stage, focus on slowly becoming the king.

Take Didi as an example. In its infancy, Didi and Kuaidi waged a subsidy war to educate and seize the market, and Didi eventually defeated Kuaidi. In its growth stage, Didi invested in Tencent and Weibo respectively, gained the communication advantages on WeChat and Weibo, and defeated Uber. In its mature stage, Didi became the absolute leader in the industry and began to focus on improving product and service experience and expanding business categories.

These are the different growth strategies it adopted at different stages, and ultimately, judging from the results, they were successful.

After determining that the growth opportunity point falls on one or several nodes among [exposure], [activation], [conversion], [value provision] and [word-of-mouth communication], you need to think about what you can do next to improve the efficiency of this link and achieve overall user and performance growth.

Let’s assume a scenario: you are a restaurant owner and your target customers are residents of nearby communities. What can you do to increase revenue and achieve performance growth?

1. User consumption experience path-exposure

User consumption experience path-exposure

Let’s first look at the [exposure] link, which corresponds to the [cognition] node in the user’s consumption experience process. At this node, the company’s business needs to do is to make the target users see you as much as possible.

The strategy is also simple. Try to show up in the activity areas of your target users as much as possible so that they will notice you. The activity area space of target users can be considered from two dimensions: offline space and online space.

Taking the example of a restaurant, in the offline space, you can distribute marketing flyers in the residential areas and vegetable markets near the restaurant; in the online space, you can settle in online food delivery platforms such as Ele.me and Meituan, so that nearby residents can see your store when ordering takeout.

2. User consumption experience path - activation

User consumption experience path - activation

Let's look at the [Activation] stage, which corresponds to the [Curiosity] and [Trust] nodes in the user consumption experience process. In this stage, what the company needs to do is to make users interested in you after seeing you, and further trust you. Add your products to your shopping list.

For the node of [curiosity], in order to make people interested in you, you mainly need to capture the user's "curiosity" and "it's related to me" psychology . There are too many methods to do this, so I can open a separate article to talk about it next time.

At the [Trust] node, we need to look at the user's consumption decision path for the product. For example, spending 3 yuan to buy a bottle of Coke, 30 yuan to buy a cup of coffee, and 10,000 yuan to buy a computer. The reference factors and path length that users consider when purchasing are completely different.

Buying Coke depends entirely on your personal preferences. You may prefer Pepsi or Coca-Cola, iced or room temperature, regular or zero-calorie. Because the cost of trial and error is not high (even if you make a wrong choice, there will not be a big loss), you can make a purchasing decision quickly in a short period of time.

When buying a computer worth 10,000 yuan, in addition to considering one's own personal needs, one will also consider many factors such as user reviews, third-party authoritative evaluation information, and product after-sales service. After comparing prices from three stores, one will finally decide on the purchase.

To gain the trust of users, your products must send positive signals in their consumption decision-making path.

Continuing with the example of opening a store, in order to make customers trust you, you need to take photos of the dishes so that customers can have a clearer idea of ​​what dishes you can provide. You also need to maintain a clean and orderly environment in the store so that users feel that the food you provide is clean and hygienic. If your store is registered on Meituan and Ele.me, you also need to maintain the user reviews and store ratings above to keep your reputation in a healthy state.

3. User consumption experience path-conversion

User consumption experience path - conversion

The [Conversion] business link corresponds to the [Persuasion] node in the user consumption experience process. At this node, the user has put your product or service on his shopping list as a purchasable item. What the company needs to do is to give the finishing touch, to get users to take action now and generate direct purchasing behavior.

The three most common things that stimulate users to buy immediately are scarcity, loss, and bargain.

E-commerce companies are well versed in this and have proven their effectiveness time and again.

• Xiaomi mobile phone hunger marketing: "Limited sales of XX pieces per day, only XX pieces left, hurry up and you'll miss out";
• Taobao Juhuasuan: "Limited time special price, special price at a specified time point, and the original price will be restored after the time limit";
• JD Books: "Order now to get an instant discount of XX yuan, and also receive a gift worth XX yuan."

For community restaurants, you can use [Scarcity] to set limited dishes each day, which will no longer be available after they are sold out; you can use [Loss] to set special dishes for time periods, and the prices of dishes in the specified time period are greatly discounted; using [Taking advantage], you can set discounts for the first XX customers who consume on the day, discounts for consecutive consumption for XX times, and discounts for cumulative consumption for XX times.

4. User consumption experience path - providing value

User consumption experience path - providing value

The [provide value] link corresponds to the [expectation] and [satisfaction] nodes of the user's consumption experience. What the company's business needs to do is to make your service meet the user's expectations at the time of purchase, so that the user feels that the money is well spent, or even more than worth it, which creates a sense of satisfaction and forms a good impression. Every product delivery to a user is a process of fulfilling the user's promise.

There are two commonly used tools here, the Kano model (which helps us decide what services should be provided) and NPS (which helps us measure user satisfaction with the service). Due to space constraints, I will not go into details. You can search for relevant information online.

Continuing with the example of the community restaurant, users’ expectations for consumption are good quality and low price, safety and health, convenience and speed, and a wide variety of dishes to choose from. They focus their energy on these aspects and control the quality.

5. User consumption experience path - word-of-mouth communication

User consumption experience path - word of mouth communication

The [word-of-mouth communication] link corresponds to the [surprise] node of the user's consumption experience. Our business is to provide an experience that exceeds user expectations, allowing users to exclaim “Wow, it turns out it can be done this way!” and, at this surprising moment, provide sharing tools to facilitate users to spread the word.

Fogg's behavioral model summarizes the occurrence of a behavior into three elements: trigger + motivation + behavior cost. In order to make users actively spread our products and services, we need to work hard on these three elements:

• Trigger: The products and services provided exceed the user's expected experience
• Behavioral motivation: creating sharing and spreading motivation (helping others + showing superiority + providing topics for conversation + expressing emotions through it + helping to establish a persona)
• Behavioral cost (ability): The operation path of sharing and dissemination is short and convenient

Finally, here’s a picture to summarize the main points of this article. I hope you will accept it.

Achieve user growth through sophisticated product design

Author: 996 professional social animal

Source: 996 Professional Social Animals