How to attract the first batch of seed users without a budget? ?

The greatest value of operations is to achieve the product from 1 to 100, and from 1 to 100 is what many operators worry about every day. It is also a major purpose for everyone to pay hard to learn various operations courses and add many big names and Vs for consultation every day. How did this seed user come about? Why do I see some products easily attract 100,000 or 1 million users?

Today we will talk about how to attract the first batch of users without a “budget”? This "no budget" does not mean that there is no budget at all, but it means that it is not recommended to spend money on channels . Instead, it mainly comes from core users from free channels , which is a strategic methodology. I am in favor of not spending a large amount of money on market channels in the early stages of a product. It’s not that you can’t afford it, but that spending this money is tantamount to sending your product to the grave as quickly as possible. We all know that the current paid channels mainly include app market rankings, ranking manipulation , points wall , Weibo Fans , Tencent Guangdiantong , etc. As long as you have money, these channels will definitely bring you the first batch of users, but I don’t know whether they are seed users. So spending so much money is a waste of money. What you need to do is to get the first batch of users through small-scale testing. What will you use these users for? The main functions are as follows:

In the early stage of a product, all aspects are not perfect, and the conversion rate and activity are relatively low. At this time, you need core users to accompany you, and be willing to use it and put forward constructive suggestions to make the product better and better. This means that the number of users will grow exponentially (Figure 1), rather than the kind that dies down after a short moment of popularity, with the user growth line suddenly rising to the peak and then falling straight down (Figure 2).

Figure 1

Figure 2

In order to ensure that early users can help you complete some product function iterations and cultivate loyal fans of your products, your free channels are also very important. There are many classic examples of product cold start , and many people are now imitating them . Why doesn’t it work? I think it has to do with many factors, such as product type, environment, product quality and so on . Therefore, it may be better to identify your channel and focus on breakthroughs rather than just picking up a machine gun and firing randomly. For example, Zhihu invites big names to join the community and contribute content. Why doesn’t it work today? For example, Baidu Pie is a chess piece of Baidu in its content layout. However, from last year to now, except for some media reports at the beginning that took advantage of Baidu's fame, they seem to have disappeared now. Why? Same product, same approach. It's very simple. It's related to the users' prior cognition of the product. The first person to try something new will often be remembered, such as Yang Liwei, the first person in my country to go to space. This was also the case for many founding emperors in ancient times. Therefore, Zhihu has occupied a position in the Q&A community, and those who enter this field later will often not be remembered. If they do enter, they will only be accused of imitating and plagiarizing.

Similarly, when we are promoting products, we need to innovate the promotion methods instead of directly using the promotion methods of other products, as this will increase the chances of failure.

1. Be good at grasping target needs and then providing answers

The birth of a product must have its demand value. Otherwise, no matter how flashy and beautiful the UI is, it will not exist for long. So when you promote this product, you have to think about the value of this product? Anyone seeing this think this is nonsense?

This is not nonsense, this is the key point to emphasize, because I have seen many product operators promote their products just for the sake of promotion, and work hard on promotion plans, and then you will see that these promotions are done just for the sake of promotion, and the promotion methods are all Ctrl c, Ctrl v, and then they mechanically start to promote their own products according to the ppt plan, first posting on the forum, and then answering soft articles on Zhihu and other mechanical operations.

Therefore, I didn’t think too much about what problems this product would solve for users, or in what scenarios users would need your product. Because only by grasping the user's usage scenarios can you specifically explore the problems that users are currently facing.

This is the case with Wang Xing and his campus network. When promoting the campus network in the early days, Wang Xing and his founding team entered campuses and started with ground promotion .

question:

For example, the first idea they came up with was about a Student Festival in the school, and this Student Festival was an event organized by the Department of Electronics. It was said that this was a large department with thousands of people, but the auditorium could only accommodate a few hundred people, so tickets for the Student Festival were always hard to come by, and usually six people in a dormitory could only get two tickets.

Answer:

At that time, Wang Xing and his founding team of campus network contacted the Student Union of the Department of Electronics and offered them sponsorship. They spent 1,000 yuan to buy 100 tickets. Then use these tickets to participate in the lottery on the campus website. Every student can participate in the lottery to win these tickets, but there are requirements, which is to register on the campus network, and all registered students must upload their real profile picture and fill in their email address, name, and major. In this way, they got their first batch of 800 seed users.

question:

The second idea was about the students’ winter vacation, but the transportation was not well developed at that time, so many students on winter vacation had to go to the train station in the middle of the night and wait until three or four in the morning to catch the train.

Answer:

So the campus network launched an activity, asking students to fill in their real information, including their school, name, major, and which train station and train they were going to take. As long as 50 people can gather at the same place and at the same time, the campus network will provide a free car to take everyone to the train station. In order to be able to take the bus to the train station, the students took the initiative to promote the campus network and attract people to register on the website.

The rental cost of a bus was 500 yuan a day, and the campus network spent a total of 14,000 yuan to attract 8,000 new users. Moreover, this activity of taking the bus to the station is only available at Tsinghua University, Peking University and Renmin University, so the early registered users were all students from these schools. With the halo of a prestigious school, students from other schools also began to register on this website.

Wang Xing's campus network is a platform for making friends and publishing information, which is designed to solve students' information asymmetry and social needs on campus. Wang Xing and his team are good at digging out students' current problems, integrating their current needs on the campus network, and compiling them into the answers that students need, so they have been successful.

There is also Li Tianfang and his course grid. After Li Tianfang came back from Silicon Valley, he started working on a daily calendar project, but he soon discovered that the demand for this calendar was not as fast as the activity calendar, because many college students were using activity calendars. So they quickly changed direction and spent a week making a simple course schedule where students could put their speeches and club activities. At first this was just a side project , but the user growth of this product exceeded their expectations and far exceeded that of their main product, Calendar. They realized that this might be a larger vertical demand, so they put more energy into it.

Therefore, when we promote our products, we must first figure out what problems the products solve in the current environment, rather than promoting them for the sake of promotion . Campus Network and Course Grid have firmly grasped the problems of college students, and then combined their own products to come up with a solution that is conducive to promoting their products and benefiting users.

2. Invite experts to conduct internal testing. You have to see whether your product meets the needs of experts.

Zhihu's targeted invitations and internal testing have made it the leader in domestic question-and-answer community products. There are countless followers who have imitated Zhihu, but only a few have succeeded. Why is this happening?

We mentioned at the beginning of the article that Baidu's Baidu Pie also imitated Zhihu's targeted invitation of some big, medium and small celebrities who have a certain influence in a vertical circle (with their own fans) to participate in internal testing, but it seems that many big, medium and small celebrities are not buying it. Many people will say, because Zhihu already exists, and now Zhihu's traffic is greater than your Baidu Pie, why would they come to your community? I think this is a factor.

But I think there are other factors, but they are not the only factors, you see! The big names who entered Zhihu later, because they are latecomers, inevitably cannot get as much traffic as the big names who started Zhihu early. Now Baidu Pai can provide you with such an opportunity to become a big name in Baidu Pai, and even divert more traffic to you, but you don’t seem to be interested.

So traffic is not the only factor. I think it has something to do with the attributes of the product and the social currency attributes that the product can bring to you. Zhihu can provide social currency attributes to big names and can bring you a symbol of status, but Baidu Pie, even if you have the huge traffic blessing of Baidu, it does not allow me to show off myself well. But Zhihu can give you that. As long as you spend more time on it, you will definitely be able to satisfy your vanity.

So I think when promoting a product, we should first examine its product attributes and the core value it can provide to users. I think this core value has three points:

The first is traffic, the second is money, and the third is high-end (social currency)

Let’s talk about traffic first. Traffic is valued by many big names. For example, last year’s content entrepreneurship was very popular. Toutiao and Tencent’s self-media platforms Toutiao and Penguin both had large traffic, so many content creators focused on these two platforms. Later, when Baijiahao came out, everyone felt that Baidu’s PC traffic was very large, so everyone also began to flock to Baijiahao. So go wherever there is traffic, this is the unchanging truth for content creators.

At this point, many people may say that if you have a lot of traffic, then why do you need to cold start the product? This is not the way for people like us to play!

Yes, you are right. This is not for products with nothing. It is for platforms with large traffic, such as BAT, Toutiao, Weibo, etc. Because these platforms with large traffic also have many entrepreneurial projects within themselves. When the product is first released, it is also necessary to cold start the product, so they can use the large traffic of their godfather to direct traffic to themselves . For example, WeChat and 360's series of products back then all used existing high-traffic products to drive traffic to their own small products. Including the current Toutiao.

In the future, Toutiao will develop towards socialization and may become a super platform integrating question-and-answer, social networking and information. So we can see that many celebrities have started to settle in Toutiao. When we are browsing the information on Toutiao, we will see that the stars you like and the stars you don’t like are on it. What are these celebrities looking for? Of course, it is the traffic from Toutiao. Some people say that Weibo can also be used. Yes, of course Weibo can be used, but given the traffic inclination and such a large traffic platform, which celebrity would complain that he or she has too much exposure? So now Toutiao has become a Weibo version of Toutiao. Now, Weibo also considers Toutiao to be its most favorable competitor in the next 3-5 years.

After talking about traffic, let’s talk about money. Money is a means used by many products to cold start, such as Weibo back then. When Weibo was cold-launching its product, it also invited big celebrities to join Weibo, but is free always free? Your Weibo wasn’t that popular back then, so why should I join your platform? Therefore, in addition to inviting celebrities for free, Weibo also used large sums of money to invite some celebrities who were relatively famous but refused to join. Who would resist the temptation of being given money? This is giving money directly. Of course, giving money directly doesn’t seem to be able to retain users nowadays, unless your product is really outstanding and innovative. Otherwise, you cannot give money directly. It is the indirect method of giving money. How to give money indirectly?

In this era of content entrepreneurship, everyone wants to make money by writing, so some platforms have invited a large number of celebrities by opening paid columns, paid Q&A sessions, and paid live broadcasts . For example, Duode, Himalaya , Fenda , etc. These platforms don’t have any special features. All I can give you is my users. If my users think your content is good, they will naturally give you money. This is an indirect way of paying you, which is more lasting and more substantial than giving you money directly.

The third thing we’ll talk about is the high-end quality that this product provides to our users – social currency. If you think your product is high-end enough and can satisfy people's vanity, you can invite big names. For example, Zhihu back then was a professional and high-quality elite question-and-answer community; there are also some cool products, such as some design apps, or some apps that provide high-end business information. I think when these products are cold-started, they can boldly use the method of inviting celebrities to participate in internal testing, otherwise they should not use this trick.

Therefore, when imitating Zhihu’s invitation of celebrities to conduct internal testing, they want to see whether their products meet the above three characteristics: traffic (mutual traffic diversion between large platforms), indirect payment, and high quality. Because this trick is not suitable for all products.

3. Provide users with valuable information through activities

This activity may require a budget, but it also seems like a good deal, because you are not personally organizing the event or bearing all the expenses.

Let's talk about the first example.

As one of the major Internet media platforms today, Twitter has recognized from the beginning that the media can greatly promote its development. When a company is in its early stages, any media exposure is an important opportunity for growth. One of Twitter's earliest events was the SXSW conference held annually in Austin, Texas. Co-founder Evan Williams is also a geek. He has attended exhibitions and everyone would wait in the corridor bored until they were ready to enter the venue. So he created some special features for this conference so that everyone attending the conference can go online and follow some "Twitter ambassadors" on Twitter to get news and information about the conference. They rented a large plasma screen directly from the conference organizing committee and placed it in the hallways of the conference to broadcast live all the posts sent by participants on site. Later, the screens in the venue were not enough, so they brought in their own TVs to complete the live broadcast. Speakers at the conference repeatedly mentioned the site, and many well-known technology bloggers who attended the conference also promoted it online. Twitter received a lot of media exposure at this conference. Then it slowly began to come into people's view.

Another example I would like to give is operating helicopters, and I have given this example more than once. I don't take any advertising money from operating the helicopter, but I wouldn't mind if he gave it to me, haha. At the end of December last year, there was a summit that was quite popular in the operations circle, that was the NOMS National Operations Summit hosted by Duiba. This summit mainly focuses on the most cutting-edge practices, thinking and judgments in the operations industry, and discusses the new opportunities and challenges of operations in the second half of the Internet.

Speaking of Duiba, those who run a points mall may not be unfamiliar with it. It is a third-party service platform that helps App developers improve operational efficiency. Its main functions include points mall management tools and activity configuration tools.

At this summit, they invited big names in the field of operations. These celebrities themselves have a dissemination effect and also played a role in fueling the dissemination of this operations summit. The most important thing is that this summit is the first exclusive conference for operators. Before this, the market's awareness of it was blank, but after this conference, operators will recognize that Operation Helicopter is a platform that brings together operators. This time, the cold start of Operation Helicopter has made its presence felt in the operations circle through this offline event .

I have not listed a lot of methods for cold starting a product, because methods are dead, but people are alive. When you see the methods listed by others, you must first see whether this method is suitable for you. It may produce unexpected results on this product, but it may not work when used on your own product.

The three major methods above can be changed at any time. It also mainly explains what products these methods can be used on and what products are more suitable for them. Of course, there are many cold start methods now, but they are all self-developed methods, so you have to examine the product positioning clearly before making a decision.

There are also some common methods, such as lobbying relatives and friends to become the first users of the product, posting on social forums, doing encyclopedia -type brand building, etc. These are what every product must do and are not innovative strategies. Think more about what your target users are thinking and set your answers based on their questions!

Brother Xiaoyu’s new book “The Rise of Operations” will be published soon, so please pay attention!

In addition, I opened a course on "Ting Yi Kuai Ting" - "8 major skills required for content operation in 20,000 words"

This course is suitable for people who:

1. Content operators who want to improve their core competitiveness

2. Internet professionals with 1-3 years of operation experience

3. Those who are preparing to transfer to the operations industry

4. Those who want to work in the operations industry after graduation

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article @艺林小宇 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map