A practical user growth plan!

Using fission to achieve user growth can be said to be a good method currently recognized by the operations industry.

There is no shortage of hot (shen) and (hua) fission cases in the operator’s circle of friends:

• The number of followers increases by 10,000+ per day, and the cost of each follower is less than one cent;
• A single event exceeded 50,000;
• 0 fans base, 20,000+ fans gained in 2 days;
• …

Every time I see such cases, it adds fuel to my anxiety and makes me fall into deep self-doubt:

How do other people carry out their activities? How can we plan a fission event that will sweep the screen?

From 2015 to now, this is my 7th year in fission, and I have been focusing on the fission field of public accounts during this period. The best activity I have ever done was successfully increasing my followers by 60,000+ in one night.

In fact, regarding the fission of public accounts, no matter how the fission process on the market is designed, no matter how magical it is, the essence of the chain is these:

1. Generate exclusive posters on the official account;
2. Friends can automatically bind their superior-subordinate relationship by following the public account through its posters;
3. Continue to attract new users until the required number of new users is reached, and you will be eligible to receive the reward.

(PS: Prize types include physical objects, virtual links, redemption codes, coupons, verification codes, and red envelopes)

These activity links are dead, but each node in the middle is where you can bring out your "light and heat". If you design activities with [user thinking] and polish activity nodes with [detail thinking] , it will be hard for the activities not to become popular. This is also the key to the success of those legendary fission activities of the same industry.

1. User Thinking

Don’t think that the term “user thinking” is outdated.

As an operator, I cannot deny that you have heard it many times, and you may even be so familiar with it that you will roll your eyes and skip it automatically when you see it.

But in fact, there is still a big gap between knowing and doing.

If you can truly apply the four words "user thinking" to every event planning you do, your operational capabilities will definitely grow exponentially.

Specifically speaking of the public account fission activities, [user thinking] is mainly reflected in two key points in your design activities.

1. Is the prize you choose attractive enough?

It is easy to tell at a glance whether you are sincerely distributing benefits or trying to use fake bait to deceive users.

• A 50 yuan coupon that can be used for purchases over 500 yuan.
• I searched the entire internet and couldn't find any cheap towels of that brand.
• A blind box that is said to be worth more than 100 yuan, but actually costs less than 10 yuan.
• …

Ask yourself, can you resist curling your lips and shaking your head when you see these prizes?

In today's world of abundant material goods, everyone has the ability to distinguish between good and bad. Something is not worth as much as you claim it is worth. Repeatedly using this kind of thing to "fool" your users will not only affect the effectiveness of the event, but the most far-reaching result will be the destruction of your account credit. Even if you really do a sincere event in the future, no users will believe it.

At this point, I guess you will say that there is nothing you can do. The budget given by the company is too small, and it is impossible to provide benefits without expecting anything in return.

You are totally wrong. You can solve the problem by changing your way of thinking.

From the user's perspective, the price of the prize is not the most important thing; what matters is its value.

I have seen people successfully attract over 10,000 fans by using a network disk data package at zero cost.

It is because their information packages are practical and clearly categorized, and are very useful tools in the workplace and in life for their specific user groups.

So, in your industry, what is the most valuable thing to your users? Can it be given as a gift, as an introduction to the event?

I’ve seen people who only prepared 5 gifts and ended the event in half a day, and successfully attracted 6,000+ fans in a “short, flat and fast” way.

They are what is called cost-deficient. But even so, we try to spend money wisely and choose truly attractive prizes. Even if the number is small, it can immediately focus on users and stimulate user participation.

So, can you also refer to this idea, even if the number of prizes is less, but ensure that each prize is effective and attractive enough?

I have also seen physical merchants use existing Meituan packages as gifts directly after deducting Meituan’s commission, and guide fans to complete the process of acquiring new customers and then redeem them offline. The 3-day event gained nearly 8,000 followers, and most of them were accurate users.

Giving out all the possible discounts will not have a big impact on the cost for merchants. The key is that it can easily achieve the goal of attracting online traffic and acquiring offline customers, killing two birds with one stone.

If you have a store, can you learn from this idea?

In short, always remember that prize design must not only be effective, but also continuously maintain your brand credibility. After 2-3 events, your account credit value will be established. When you run future events, your users will easily participate in forwarding with their natural credibility, and the cost of persuasion can be greatly reduced.

2. Is the activity threshold you designed just right and feasible?

The activity threshold refers to how many subordinates a fan must pull together in order to obtain the prize you set.

The most ingenious and efficient threshold design method is to make it difficult for users to reach, but they can get it by jumping.

Based on my years of experience in doing fission activities, the simplest way to set the threshold is to set it based on the market price of the prize.

Here are some examples:

• This is a low-cost information package, and the activity threshold can be set to 2, which means you can get it by inviting 2 friends.
• Coupons have relatively high cost elasticity. After all, fans need to make purchases to use them, so the activity threshold can be set lower. For example, if it is a 30-yuan product coupon, the activity threshold can be set to 3, which means that you can get it by inviting 3 friends.
• For physical prizes with very transparent prices, for example, a power bank with a market price of 40 yuan, the activity threshold can be set to 40, which means that you can get it by inviting 40 friends.
• For gifts that are obviously very expensive, such as mobile phones, then don't set a threshold or upper limit. Just distribute them directly in the form of a ranking list. For example, the fan ranked first after the event can receive it.
• …

If you want to make the event more interesting, you can also combine these prizes with each other, combine them according to your own gifts and cost situation, and create prizes with multiple tiered thresholds.

Let’s take an example to illustrate:

• Invite 3 people and get a 30 yuan coupon!
• Invite 15 people and you will get a free lottery ticket!
• Invite 50 people to get membership of the video website!
• The top 3 on the list will receive a super gift package worth 688!

In short, the goal is to maximize the fans' potential to attract new customers, one thing after another, reminding them not to stop and to keep moving forward, as the prize amounts will be bigger. In this way, the effects of your activities will gradually become apparent.

2. Detail Thinking

After establishing the overall framework of the entire activity from the perspective of user thinking, you need to go back to the activity process from the beginning and use [detail thinking] to polish each activity node to near perfection.

The key activity details are mainly the following 7 points.

1. Event tweets

This is the channel for you to publish your event. It is the first step for you to convince your existing fans (your first batch of event seed users) to participate in your event, so it should be detailed and clear to ensure that your fans can understand it.

The gifts, event rules, how to participate, and event time should all be clearly written down. It is best to inform fans in advance of the way the gifts will be distributed, which will indirectly increase the credibility of your event.

2. Event poster

This is your connection point to new fans.

The poster carries the "first impression" of your event. Whether it looks exquisite and whether it fits the image of your user group plays a decisive role in the effectiveness of your event.

Therefore, you should design posters with user thinking in mind, and try to make them conform to their aesthetic tastes as much as possible. At the same time, the posters should highlight your event gifts, so that your users can understand that they can easily get the gifts in just a few steps.

3. Copy forwarding message

For fission activities, the ideal situation is that after fans decide to participate in the activity, they will immediately forward it to help you generate new users.

To achieve this, you need to shorten the process of your user's decision to forward as much as possible, so that he can directly participate in your process without thinking.

The most effective way is to help him think of the forwarding copy while generating the poster, and let him directly copy it and forward it to his friends circle, or send it to his friends, so as to attract more people.

4. Activity prompts

During the fission event, there will be many event copywriting prompts, the most common ones are the prompts for generating posters, the prompts for lower-level friends to pay attention to, the prompts for helping friends, the prompts for completing the first-level tasks, the prompts for completing the second-level tasks...

These prompts are usually customizable, so be sure to make good use of them.

We should have the same feedback mechanism as when we play games, telling fans at every step what to do next and what they will get.

Strong associations and step-by-step guidance are the only way to maximize user engagement and minimize user churn.

5. The leaderboard must be enabled

People will be guided no matter what the circumstances.

The ranking function plays a guiding role to enhance fans' "desire to win". When participating, they can attract new members with a "sprint" and "comparison" mentality, and the effect of your activities will also be boosted.

6. While giving out awards, you can guide fans to add WeChat

Although the prizes are distributed automatically, you can also add an additional customer service WeChat account to guide fans to add WeChat to check the delivery progress, and direct as many fans as possible to your personal account.

This step is not a one-off, but has far-reaching significance.

These fans who can complete the task are people with strong ability to attract new users. Gather them on your personal account. When you organize activities later, you can make them your first batch of seed users and use their strong appeal to quickly launch your activities.

Over time, your fission activities will become smoother and smoother, and you will not need to spend money on promotion at all, because all the promotion resources are in your own hands and are very precise.

7. After the event, you should announce the next event

In the reminder after the event, you can also provide a preview of the approximate time of the next event or the specific event gifts.

This step is to deepen fans' memory of your account, enhance the stickiness between each user and your account, and correspondingly reduce the unfollow rate of your event. After all, there are benefits to attract users, so why would they easily unfollow?

At this point, a fission activity is completed.

From prize design to event copywriting, every step can be regarded as a "hands-on" experience sharing. No matter what industry type of account you are in, you can directly apply it by just changing the copywriting and prizes. The adaptability is quite high.

I hope that next time, you can also write your own fission legend.