The Nine Swords of User Growth Strategy

Product " user growth " is the most troublesome problem for all Internet companies:

1. Without customer acquisition, it is impossible to verify demand and business model;
2. Without verification, there will be no revenue and no data; without data, there will be no financing and no way to continue to expand the market size.
3. Whether it is product, operation, technology or marketing, when it comes to "user growth", many tasks overlap with each other.

There is "user growth awareness" but no "user growth strategy"

Boss A: After seeing X Duoduo’s 100-yuan new user acquisition was very popular, he came running and said, “We also want to use red envelopes to attract new users.” Then he saw X Toutiao’s online earning model was very good, and came running and said, “We also want to use the online earning model.” Then he saw the course posters that were flooding the WeChat Moments, and came running to tell you, “We also want to…”

Over time, everyone worships X Duoduo's "Group Buying" sharing fission as a god; they get itchy when they see X Jiweidian's "Distribution Recruitment", and even get excited when they see various small programs fissioning in the circle of friends and posters flooding the screen.

So what is a “user growth strategy”?

But when you make up your mind and decide that your own product should also "borrow" these routines to achieve user growth, you find that there are always so many things to do and you don’t know where to start; even if you implement it, the effect is not good.

Because you only see the "skin" of these growth methods, but have not considered that behind these growth methods are the "product strategies" and "market layouts" formulated based on the trinity of "product characteristics", "user characteristics" and " market characteristics" .

After a long period of " testing " the market, you will continuously iterate, summarize, and persist in honing in a methodology that suits you and present it to users in different forms. Different user stratification corresponds to different strategies.

Tao gives birth to one, one gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, and three gives birth to all things.

——Tao Te Ching

The user growth strategy you develop must be executable in the long term. You saw that group buying red envelopes were good, so you went to make them; as a result, before you were successful, you saw that other people’s distribution was good, so you decided to also get into distribution… In short, you just do whatever you see, piecemeal, without a long-term plan. This is destined not to be a good “user growth strategy”.

So what are the "growth strategies " that have been proven to be long-term, stable and effective at this stage?

Dugu Jiujian Chapter - User Growth Strategy

Growth methods such as app market placement, advertising placement, and channel placement are not within the scope of our discussion today because they are more dependent on whether you have a lot of money or not.

Dugu Nine Swords First Style: Response Speed ​​and Rule Making

Your circle of friends may often be flooded with "creative marketing" activities of some products. Although they are very helpful for the user growth of the product, it is a pity that the success rate is too low and too much luck is involved. There are very high requirements for every aspect including creativity, planning, copywriting, execution and channels.

Such "creative marketing" and "event marketing" cannot generate stable and sustainable sales, so it cannot be considered a good growth strategy.

Leave it to our "marketing" and "operations" students. Students in other departments have formulated good response plans and can respond and execute quickly.

Dugu Nine Swords Second Style: Information Gap - Integrated Resources

It is widely used in various WeChat public accounts, video apps, live broadcast apps, information products and other products. It is very suitable for content-oriented products to increase user growth. Thanks to word of mouth from viewers, the video website gained nearly one million users in a few months.

Case 1

"XX Research Society" was facing difficulties in financing and was about to declare bankruptcy. In order to increase customer acquisition, it drew a map of various industries and launched the "Industry Map". Then it is released to users through the official account, informing them that these can be obtained for free, but they need to post a sharing poster with the official account QR code to their friends circle and take a screenshot to obtain it.

This simple fission method can attract nearly 10,000 fans to the official account each time, and the entire " cost of attracting new fans " is basically close to 0.

After tasting the sweetness of this type of approach, they developed a user "growth strategy" based on this approach. Subsequently, various content packages were integrated, such as "Easy-to-use PPT Templates", "XX Templates", batch production and batch output, which brought a steady stream of users to the official account.

Case 2

In the fierce battle between the cat live streaming platforms, both sides spared no expense to sign well-known anchors. Because well-known anchors are a scarce resource in the live broadcast industry, and they also have a fan effect. As long as they can be integrated, effective user growth can be achieved.

Therefore, by properly collecting, integrating, purchasing and signing resources on the market, explosive user growth can be achieved. The resources mentioned here do not mean they are really scarce. Scarcity is only relative. After all, the Internet is so developed, what content can’t be found?

But when you integrate, package and edit these resources through some operational means, users can get them all from you with just a few clicks, and then your resources become valuable and scarce to users. This kind of resource is not necessarily data, it can also be people.

User notes: Internet, want to learn, lazy, can get information without thinking. Such as: "Knowledge Planet", "Daily Operation Case", "Knowledge Calendar", "XX Conference"... Do special case analysis when you have time

The third move of Dugu Jiujian: Expanding the traffic pool

This includes opening up user traffic entrances through various means, or establishing a "pool" that can store users for secondary conversions and stratified cleaning of users.

(1) Business expertise - embracing all

• For example: early platforms such as Xbao and 36x achieved a large amount of user growth through the use of vest packages.
• For example: XX Assistant APP includes multiple functions such as antivirus, cleaning, and saving. In addition to the main APP, this APP separates these functions and makes independent APPs for each of them to increase the volume of the application market.

(2) Vest Bag - It's me or me

• For example: when you download XX recruitment APP, you will find that it is his APP when you open it. Then you download another unrelated white-collar APP and find it is the same APP when you open it. When you download an internship and job search APP, you will find that...
• For example: create a few alias packages of competing products and embed your own platform into them.

(3) Cross-border reconstruction: This growth strategy has also been developed in traditional industries.

• For example, whenever a certain chain "Lock Gym", "XX Housing" or "XX House Hunting" opens in a new area, they will create many fake "stores" in that area on Dianping.com. They also make fake addresses and pictures, and say that there is no need for intermediary fees. When users make a call to any of the fake ones, they will be recommended to go to the real store to experience it.
• For example, a restaurant may register multiple restaurants with different names on a food delivery platform, and each restaurant may even serve different cuisines. Some are Sichuan cuisine, some are Northeastern cuisine, and some are home-cooked dishes. But any user who orders food at any store actually orders it from the same store.

(4) Building ponds and raising fish

In addition to broadening the user traffic entrance, building a user traffic pool is also very important. 1 pond will now limit (market, users, positioning).

Apps like XX Zhiyoumai, XXshu, Xhongshu, and xyu are all very classic user growth strategies that attract traffic through content, create pools (circles), and then convert them into e-commerce sales. Now, many small e-commerce companies have also started to build communities. They rely on their own WeChat public accounts to establish different WeChat QQ groups with different "user portraits". Or an APP builds dozens or even hundreds of community circles, which is also creating a user traffic pool.

The most classic one is the fish pond of "X Fish", which uses the "fish pond" to cleanse users.

Dugu Nine Swords Fourth Style: Besiege Wei to Save Zhao - The Drunkard's Intention

This growth strategy is also used in the promotion of some enterprise-level service products. As we all know, enterprise-level service products are difficult to promote, the process is slow, and it takes a long time for users to recognize them. In any case, such a growth promotion strategy will be much better than getting straight to the point with customers right away.

Case A

A maternal and infant platform first built an online maternal and infant micro-classroom. Well-known parenting experts are invited to give lectures to mothers every week. The lectures are free, just share the lecture link and poster. Then these mothers will definitely be happy to listen. In addition, the number of new users, retention rate, registration volume, and attention volume are all very high.

Once mothers are attracted through this low-threshold method, we send operations staff to follow up and convert them to open stores on the platform, with excellent results. Even if users are not converted quickly, such growth strategies can still be used to retain users and buy time for subsequent conversions.

Case B

In order to increase their customer base faster, a third-party APP service did not send salespeople to visit every store and make cold calls like traditional companies do. Instead, they first held a large number of lectures on APP operation and promotion services in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and invited APP experts to give lectures for free. Through such courses, they first attracted target users and then carried out layer-by-layer conversions in the process.

The fifth style of Dugu Jiujian: product benefit driven

Interests are divided into "virtual" and "real" transformations.

• Virtual: levels, points, task system and rights system. Tribal Honor, X-Music's "addiction mode".
• Real: money, goods, and tangible assets are exchanged. Through the internal interest incentives of the product, users are driven to spread the message in a fission-like manner. Including group buying, invitations, old customers bringing in new customers, fission, profit sharing, etc. The most well-known ones in this regard are X Duoduo and X Toutiao, which use a variety of user growth methods such as inviting friends to group buy flash sales and making money by reading news.

Dugu Nine Swords Sixth Style: Distribution

In addition to e-commerce, distribution has now been applied to many fields including online education.

Case A

A certain membership distribution platform, with a membership mechanism of 3999, allows you to bring goods. By cooperating with many internet celebrity moms, promoters told these "promoters" to download purchases with specific channel links. "Pushers" can get corresponding commissions

Maybe you don’t like growth strategies such as distribution, superiors and subordinates, and communication in the circle of friends, but it is undeniable that distribution has increasingly become a means of growth for various products, and is no longer limited to the WeChat ecosystem. Independent apps are also increasingly being promoted in the form of distribution.

Seventh method: budget cost

The online earning model has successfully created a myth. Do you know the story behind it? Is it really breaking even ?

Data-based traceability mechanism: clarifying the advertising effect is the core

The advertising system platform is not only about delivery, but also about improving advertising efficiency, helping advertisers analyze deviations in current advertising strategies and continuously optimize them.

Build a mathematical model for daily active users — set goals (DAU) and calculate costs

Currently: 25,000 old users, with a daily increase of 10,000. The one-day retention rate is 20%, the seven-day retention rate is 7%, and the 30-day retention rate is 5%.

Goal: How many DAUs, how many new users are needed.

Style 9: If you bloom, butterflies will come!

After-sales service...