How to do a good job in user operation?

(This article is reproduced from Aunt APP) Among all the operations, user operation is the most complicated. In all the numerous user operations, most people only manage the WeChat group, some strictly do customer service, some are responsible for writing App push, and some are doing activities. Even the editing of some UGC platforms and live broadcast platforms is called user operation. So everyone is confused. What exactly is user operation? What exactly does user operation do? To understand this problem, we need to jump out of all kinds of trivial execution work, switch to the boss's perspective and re-examine the user's operation. First, what is user operation? The boss's goal has always been simple, that is, to increase the value of the company. The value of Internet products depends on the magnitude of users and the value of users. Therefore, the so-called user operation is to enhance the number and value of users through various means, and finally maximize the value of products. In this case, whether it is activities, content, QQ group or App push, it is just one of the means of user operation. Therefore, in addition to the operation of the supply side, such as the business operation of e-commerce, the KOL operation of PGC, and the anchor operation of the live broadcast platform, almost everything else can be put into the basket operated by users. This is why user operations seem to be all-inclusive. Second, what does user operation do? As mentioned just now, there are only two core goals of user operation: user volume and user value. Behind these two core goals are product life cycle and user life cycle. Let's look at a typical product life cycle. The life cycle of Internet products can generally be divided into five stages: verification, startup, growth, stability and decline. Similarly, the life cycle of users can be divided into five stages: contact, use, habit, payment and loyalty. At the same time, users in the latter three stages may enter an undesirable state at any time-a sense of loss. The specific definitions of these stages will be discussed later. What does user operation do? In fact, the work of user operation, on the one hand, is to improve the level of users, on the other hand, it is to promote users from contact with products to die-hard fans through appropriate methods at all stages of product life cycle. Third, how to do a good job in user operation At different stages of the product, the focus and working methods of user operation are very different. Let's sort out the various routines operated by users according to the two lines of products and users. 1. Verification period Verification period refers to the period from product establishment to product listing. It is called verification period because the core task of user operation at this stage is to quickly verify whether the solution is established. The earlier and more detailed the verification, the fewer pits you step on. In this regard, many companies have suffered losses and worked hard to make a product, only to find that the market did not buy it when it was promoted. Companies or fans often ask me, "Brother Long, my product is ready, but you can help me solve the bottleneck in promotion." In fact, it is not the bottleneck of promotion at all, but the product itself. They often skip the verification period directly, or think they have been verified. So, what is the correct posture to verify the product? Verifying a product is divided into three steps. (1) To save an MVP, you must first save an MVP, which is the simplest product. The standard is to realize the core function, save others, and solve them by operational means as much as possible. For example, a comic camera can completely let users send photos to operate, and then UE will manually p-map. For example, breakfast is delivered to the door, and the nearby breakfast can be listed as 1 table, and each SKU corresponds to an id. The user orders food through the id in the WeChat group, pays with the WeChat red envelope, and the operator delivers it to the door after purchase. (2) If there is a user pool before importing users, it can be obtained by sending it to active users. If not, pull them one by one in the circle or forum where users are concentrated. Since it is verification, the most feared thing is user distortion. There are two points to emphasize. First, it costs nothing. Because users who spend money often have impure purposes, which eventually leads to data distortion and loss of verification significance. Second, if the product is a paid product, the user must pay. For example, the example of food delivery just given must make the user pay the bill. Only in this way can the user's real willingness to pay be tested. (3) Observe the data, regardless of what users say. Users often don't express themselves well, or don't tell the truth because of face. Whether the product scheme is established and how effective it is depends on the behavior data. Retention rate, repurchase rate, whether you will actively recommend products. If the retained, repurchased and recommended data are better than the existing competing products, or meet or exceed expectations, then this product is worth doing. Otherwise, it needs to be adjusted in time, or simply stopped. In the verification period, it is equivalent to pushing users from contact to loyal operation, measuring various user data, estimating CAC and LTV, and finding as many problems as possible. The main battlefield of operation at this stage is WeChat group. Due to the small number of users, generally tens to 200, operators have enough energy and 1 to 1 communication. After the test, the operation still needs to maintain the activity of the group through topics and small activities, and reserve seed users for the follow-up product launch period. 2. The initial stage refers to the period from product listing to large-scale promotion. Although we verified the product scheme during the verification period, ladies and gentlemen, there are still many holes in the new product. Therefore, the focus of user operation at this stage is access and use. That is to do a good job in the process of user registration and use of core functions. The data model at this stage is the funnel model mentioned above. (See "Three Steps+Three Models, Minimal Data Analysis" for details) Establish a funnel model, obtain data through team self-test+seed user internal test+a small amount of promotion, find problems through data analysis and user interviews, improve the funnel model, and reduce the churn rate of each step. Until the retention rate of users reaches an acceptable range, they can enter the next stage. Note that the end point of the funnel model must be the core function of the product. For example, the above is the funnel model of wealth management products, and its core function is investment. Different products have different core functions. It is the first transaction of e-commerce; For UGC such as Zhihu and Weibo, it is a relationship chain, that is, paying attention to the big V; For live broadcast, it is to enter the anchor room or complete the first reward. When strangers socialize, it is the first time to chat. If you are also responsible for user promotion, this stage is the best time to modify the budget plan. Through the test, we can have a deeper understanding of business logic, understand user portraits and verify CAC. All these will help you to lock in the main direction and formulate the promotion strategy. 3. Growth period refers to the stage of overall product improvement. The biggest feature of this stage is the rapid growth of user orders. The focus of operation in the growth period is to cultivate user habits. At present, the number of users is growing rapidly, and the operation can no longer communicate and guide users one by one as before. In order to cultivate users' habits, it is necessary to establish a hierarchical system of users and complete guidance with tools. The establishment of hierarchical system often adopts RFM model (see "Three Steps+Three Models, Minimum Data Analysis" for details) and changes according to specific business logic. For example, UGC can be layered according to access frequency, content contribution and areas of concern; E-commerce can be stratified according to the frequency of visits, low purchase price and areas of interest (mobile phones, beauty); Financial management can be stratified according to investment cycle, product preference (regular demand, target period) and single amount. After stratification, users are divided into many quadrants, and there must be a certain quadrant with the best users and the highest value. The job of user operation is to guide other users to this quadrant. There are two kinds of tools used, reach channels and marketing tools. The access channels are mainly push, SMS and email. Marketing tools are generally various coupons, such as coupons for e-commerce, investment red envelopes for wealth management products, and interest reduction coupons for small and micro loans. For users in different quadrants, users can push different contents and issue different types of coupons to maximize the value of resources, which is the significance of user stratification. For example, e-commerce high-frequency access, the purchase unit price is low, and the area of interest is beauty. I can give her some beauty products with high heat and high cost performance, cooperate with coupons, enhance their purchase frequency and develop user habits. For example, I like the 30-day cycle in financial management, and I often log in at the beginning of each month. I can push some better 30-day investment targets at the beginning of each month, but at the same time I will also cooperate with some red envelopes with longer investment time and greater stimulation to see if I can improve their investment time. It should be noted that hierarchical operation is not the ultimate goal. Our goal is to realize the automation of user operation. Hierarchical operation helps us collect enough data, including the growth path of users and the most effective stimulation methods at each growth stage. After these data are productized, it becomes a user growth system+scene promotion. The user growth system can be daily sign-in, membership system or hierarchical system. Generally, it consists of prescribed behaviors and corresponding rewards. In this way, users are guided step by step to develop habits, experience paid products and become die-hard users. Daily sign-in user-level membership system scene push is a supplement to the user growth system. It means that users will automatically trigger push after doing some behaviors, and pushing copies is preset by operation. I looked through the recent tweets and gave you a few examples: product recommendation triggered by searching for "simple wardrobe". The push triggered after purchasing Xiaomi MAX2 guides users to use the new function-mobile phone recycling. The most embarrassing thing is that after Baidu's push point was opened, it was a brief introduction of two basketball courts in Beijing. 4. Stable period. Platform growth has entered a bottleneck, and user orders are relatively stable. At sturm und drang, we pay attention to increment, and when growth is weak, we pay attention to stock. At this stage, the focus of user operation is to pay and prevent loss. Payment at this stage is only for products that get free traffic and realize value-added services and e-commerce. For example, QQ, Himalayan, Zhihu, Iqiyi, Keep and other products. This stage doesn't exist for products like Meituan, Didi and lufax, which have to pay when they come up. A common way to get paying users is to send coupons. Through coupons, users can enjoy several paid products at low prices and form a habit. Scenes of coupon distribution include: user level promotion, sign-in reward, membership rights, event prizes, etc. The key is that this coupon cannot be taken for nothing, and the user must pay the cost. Some operators will feel that it is better to give it directly to users. Let users pay the cost, doesn't it increase the steps and thresholds and reduce the charging ratio? In fact, direct delivery will lead to bad results, such as the proliferation of coupons, extremely low utilization rate, users being spoiled and relying on coupons. Once the coupon stops, the running water will decrease rapidly. After paying a certain cost, users will accumulate sunk costs and cherish coupons more, which will greatly improve the utilization rate and will not have a great impact on future operations. Another key work in the stable period is to prevent losses. The usual practice is to define the drain behavior first. The churn behavior is related to the user's natural access frequency. For example, wealth management products, many users only open them after the target expires, and then buy new targets, which may be opened several times a month or two. Then the loss definition of such products should refer to two factors: retained funds and access frequency. After determining the loss behavior, we can formulate specific recall strategies. For example, users have not logged in, sent text messages or sent emails for 7 consecutive days, 15 days and 30 days. The content often revolves around the core scene of the product. The core scene of Ctrip is travel. The core scene of exploration is strangers socializing. The scene of Zhilian is recruitment. After the product launches new features, potential users who have lost users before can also send a wave of text messages or emails. In fact, although the cost of recalling users is much lower than the cost of acquiring new users, the actual conversion rate is very low, and it is difficult for users who have already lost to recall. A more reliable way is actually to constantly expand new scenes on products and enhance product stickiness. For example, after having the basic IM function, WeChat has continuously launched drift bottles, friends circle and official WeChat accounts. Up to now, we are constantly expanding the use scenarios of products and enhancing user stickiness. In other words, this is to extend the life of the product. 5. The four stages of die-hard loyalty throughout each stage are all based on product cycle clues. And die-hard loyalty is the highest stage of the user cycle. The reason why the diehard is brought out is because it is special. It is what every product is most eager for and what every operation is most concerned about, and it runs through all stages of the product. (1) defines ≠ diehard loyalty. For example, in the ramen restaurant downstairs, they do activities in the US Mission. They order 20 yuan, and I eat it two or three times a week. But I won't go as long as the subsidy is stopped. The best criterion for judging die-hard loyalty is whether to spare no effort to recommend products. It is recommended not to share a link to a circle of friends here. But when a friend asked him which App I should download when I wanted to go out to play, he strongly recommended your App and even taught his friends to use it. The essence of recommendation is that die-hard fans endorse with their own personality and distribute them to friends. It's like a friend lending you money as a guarantee, and the threshold is very high. (2) The cultivation of die-hard fans runs through the whole product life cycle. There are only two ways to cultivate: the sense of respect gained through service; A sense of belonging gained through the brand. The former is relatively easy to do, while the latter is more difficult. The former only needs enough patience. During the verification period and startup period, the products are so poor and there are so many bugs, and die-hard fans still cling to them, just because the user operators will communicate with them one by one and give feedback in time, giving each user the greatest respect. In the growth period, through user stratification, you can still find the most valuable users and continue to operate through WeChat group. However, the cost of cultivating die-hard fans with service is high, the marginal cost is not zero, and the order of magnitude is limited. So when the number of users reaches a certain level, the best way is to gain die-hard loyalty by shaping the brand. For example, before Uber was acquired, many white-collar workers and internet practitioners were loyal to Uber because of its higher marketing requirements; Many people like Xiaomi, because Xiaomi's MIUI is the earliest deep customization Android system in China, and it is an industry changer; Many people like Tesla because it subverts the slow and ugly image of electric cars. However, brand building is a very difficult thing. You see, Aauto Quicker spends so much money, and people still call it low. Let's talk about this part when we talk about the brand. Fourthly, it is concluded that the enterprise value is determined by the user magnitude and user value. All the work of user operation is also carried out around these two points, that is, to enhance the order of magnitude of users and enhance the value of users. At different stages of product development, the focus of user operation is different. Verification period: collect seed users, verify the product scheme, and push seed users to complete the life cycle completely. Initial stage: improve the funnel from contact to use to ensure the retention of users; Take stock of the resources at hand and make a good promotion budget. Growth period: rapidly increase user orders; User stratification, adopting different strategies for different users to promote their transformation to high-value users; Summarize the evolution track of users, launch the user growth system, and realize the automation of user operation. Stable period: increase the order of paying users; Formulate a user recall system; Explore new product scenarios. At the same time, cultivating die-hard users runs through the whole life cycle. In the early stage, we operated peer-to-peer through WeChat group to create a sense of respect; Later, it was achieved by shaping the brand. 5. Have you found out in the future that the essence of user operation is refined operation, providing different services and guidance for different users? Only when there are enough people can we communicate through WeChat peer-to-peer service; When we are short of manpower, we adopt the scheme of user stratification and productization to achieve our goal. Refined operation is a great invention of mobile Internet. Now the new retail of fire is just a combination of online refined operation means and offline scenes. So, what is the limit of refined operation? What is the end of the service? Is to give every user a 24-hour housekeeper. Of course, manpower can't do it, but machines can. The future of user operation is AI. Baidu's pursuit has never changed, that is, being an entrance. And AI is likely to be the next entrance.