0. Preface
If promoting the launch of a product from 0 to 1 is the first step to product success, then how to achieve growth is the 99 steps we still need to explore. This article will talk about some views on growth.
1. How to judge the growth period
Let's briefly review the product life cycle, also known as the "commodity life cycle". It refers to the entire movement process of a product from the time it is ready to enter the market until it is eliminated from the market, and is determined by the production cycle of demand and technology. It is the economic life of a product or commodity in the market movement, that is, in the process of market circulation, due to changes in consumer demand and other factors affecting the market, the cycle of commodity from prosperity to decline. It is generally divided into four stages : introduction period, growth period, maturity period and decline period .
1.1 User Perspective: User Growth Curve
①When a new product is launched, the active user curve fluctuates up and down, and the proportion of new users is greater than the churn rate. The product is in the development and growth stage. After experiencing it, many users feel that they cannot meet the needs and abandon the software, which is the retention of the product at this time. Fairly low; this is when the product life cycle is in the introduction discovery phase. ② The proportion of new users and the loss rate are the same: the same is in the mature and stable stage. When the trend of active users shows a significant upward stretch, the product begins to enter the growth period, and the growth period should be as long as possible. ③When the growth of active users enters a flat period, the product enters a mature period. Enterprises can extend the maturity period through a series of marketing and promotion strategies, so that active users can be stabilized within a certain range and have enough time to make profits. ④The proportion of new users is lower than the user churn rate, the product is in the decline and decline stage, and the product enters the decline period. It is necessary to develop new products/new functions, formulate new promotion and publicity strategies, and start product transformation.
1.2 Operational Perspective: Operational Strategy
- When the product operation focuses on mining user information, defining seed user portraits, and accumulating for more accurate delivery and attracting seed users in the future, the product belongs to the introduction period;
- When the focus of product operation is planned in the direction of attracting newcomers, the efficiency of attracting newcomers is greatly improved, and a large amount of budget is invested in promotion work, the product belongs to the growth period;
- When the product formulates strategies around the effect of revenue realization, and also needs to take into account the active status of users and extend the life cycle of users as much as possible, the product belongs to the mature stage;
1.3 Product Perspective: Iterative Rhythm
- When the product iteration speed is very fast, almost one version per month and new functions are constantly piled up, it can prove that the product is still in the introduction period;
- When the function iteration speed is obviously slowed down, but each update is mainly based on functions, then the product is entering the growth period;
- When the function gradually stabilizes and the details start to be optimized, and the version update time begins to lengthen, it means that it has entered the growth period.
2. Product positioning correction
2B products have entered the growth period, and user portraits must be clearly defined. In general, the user portrait of 2B products is much simpler than that of 2C products, because the target users are certain fixed roles, and there is no multi-dimensional data to build like 2C products. In the introduction stage, according to the feedback after the trial operation of the product, the product positioning needs to be adjusted in time
- Is the product goal off? ——Make money or save money
- Has the target audience changed? ——Abstract user characteristics and portraits
- Has the product positioning been adjusted? ——Describe the blueprint of the product
- Is the value that the product can provide to users promoted? ——Describe the value points brought to users
- What about the user flow? - Assess existing processes
- What is the future direction of business? ——Whether the direction of business development will affect the product
- What is the business model? ——Construct a long-term development mode that can operate in a healthy way**
3. How to drive growth
Sales-led Growth (SLG: Sales-led Growth)
Sales-driven growth mainly means that in a typical customer purchase journey, customers contact sales through marketing channels to watch demos, and sales follow up step by step until product implementation. Only after the sales decision is made can the product start to be released to users and start using.
For enterprises with a unit price of more than 300,000 customers, it is suitable for the growth model of SLG (Sales-led Growth), which drives the growth of enterprises through sales
Market-led Growth (MLG: Market-led Growth)
Marketing-led growth means relying on content marketing to acquire new customers through content on your website, social media marketing, or advertising.
In marketing-led growth, the key is to engage your customers early and get them to remember your services. The goal of marketing-led growth is to let people know about your company's products, get them to your company's website, provide unique content and show them the value you provide.
If you want more customers marketing-led growth, your goal is to create unique content that leads to your product.
To do this, start by thinking about what problem your prospect has. What are they typing into the webpage to find a solution? What keywords are they using? Then, based on their needs, create valuable content that helps people and demonstrates the value of your company's services.
For enterprises with a unit price of 20,000 to 300,000 customers, it is suitable for the growth model of MLG (Marketing-led Growth), which uses the market to drive the growth of enterprises.
Product-led Growth (PLG: Product-led Growth)
PLG is a business strategy. Development logic, design concepts, brand marketing, customer sales, and continued purchases are all condensed by the product in the hands of the user, and delivered to the user through an excellent user experience: the product prism. In the PLG product prism, User Experience acts as a growth engine.
- The team will focus more on improving the value of the product itself: Since the purchase decision depends on whether the end user can quickly perceive the value of the product, ToB's product team will pay more attention to product polishing, including improving user experience and product usability, optimizing new customer Get started with the process and launch core functions that can really solve end users.
- Reduce the cost of customer acquisition: Since the entire process of PLG is mostly completed by end users themselves , there is basically no need for sales and customer service intervention in the early stage, so the cost of customer acquisition can be greatly reduced. Resources spent on sales, marketing, and customer service in these traditional processes can be reallocated to higher value areas.
PLG (Product-led Growth) growth model is most suitable for companies with products with a unit price of 0-20,000 customers, driving the growth of companies through products and services
Experience-driven growth (XLG: eXperience-Led Growth)
At present, the industry has also put forward the concept of experience-driven growth (XLG, eXperience-Led Growth) for the first time. Compared with the first three growth models that are currently hotly discussed in the industry, experience-driven growth will involve more organizational departments of the enterprise, and is beneficial to the entire enterprise. Strategic adjustments will even reshape the business model of the company and bring about a second growth curve.
Customer Service-Led Growth (CS-LG: Customer Service-Led Growth)
Customer service is a connection and interaction point that runs through the entire customer life cycle. In the past, customer service was positioned on a knowledge base to provide standard answers to customer questions. Smart customer service now represents full-cycle customer engagement and long-term customer relationships. The business role of customer service has also moved from the background to the front desk. **High-quality customer service can bring huge economic benefits to the enterprise. ** For example, from finding clues, to establishing private domain traffic, to helping customers choose and conclude deals, and finally to repurchase and cross-selling, all can be completed by intelligent customer service.
Community-led Growth (CLG: Community-led Growth)
CLG is oriented to actively support the interaction between users and provide community value beyond product boundaries to develop business "friends". Use community-driven growth (CLG) to help product-driven (PLG) and sales-driven (SLG), and use KOL and typical customer reputation to drive the growth of SaaS products. CLG is focused on creating a safe space for the saas product community to come together, share value, build relationships, and make the best use of their products/services to solve problems or help achieve goals: the way to market, the center is Sell by leveraging the community.
Event-driven Growth (ELG: Event-led Growth)
The applicability of the event-driven SaaS product growth model has yet to be verified, mainly for compliance and security SaaS products, product growth and important compliance terms, requirements, standards issued by the state, as well as social security, national security, and network security. , equipment security and other important policy orientations are related to business needs. For saas products with strong policy correlation, the event-driven growth model (ELG) is also worthy of attention.
4. How to find the growth levers
4.1 Determining the North Star Metrics
The significance of determining the North Star indicator is that we can find a clear growth direction through the North Star indicator, and determine the priority through the impact of different growth points on the North Star indicator. After the growth experiment is over, there will be a unified evaluation standard. So how do you determine your North Star metric?
Personally, I think you can refer to the several criteria mentioned in the book "Silicon Valley Growth Hacker Practical Notes": whether
it can reflect whether the core value obtained by users from the product can lay the foundation for the product to achieve long-term business goals, whether it can reflect the improvement of user activity indicators, and whether it can Whether it indicates that the company is developing in a good direction, whether it is simple, intuitive, easy to obtain, disassembled, whether it is a leading indicator rather than a lagging indicator.
- Usage-driven : The more users who use the product and the higher the frequency of use, the higher the value.
- Driven by business volume : It is aimed at data products that are deeply bound to the business. Even if the number of users covered is not particularly large, but the business benefits generated by users through the use of the product are high, the product has high value.
- Driven by data volume : The greater the volume of data generated and optimized through product use, the higher the value of the product, such as data governance and indicator platform scenarios.
4.2 Target Disassembly
The most core element driving growth at the current stage has the greatest benefit for completing the North Star target. It is also an application of the 28th principle. The process of target dismantling is actually mapping the user journey, building a growth model, and finding out the best growth levers. **How to find focus among many directions, just look at two things:
- Importance : Relevance to the goal. Find correlation factors and regression relationships
- Room for improvement : Judging how much can be improved
Let’s not specifically talk about how to dismantle indicators here. This is another relatively large topic. Let’s list the dismantling principles and methods for the time being:
1) Principle of dismantling
MECE (Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive): mutually independent and completely exhaustive. It is what we often say "no heavy and no leakage".
2) Disassembly method
① Dichotomy
② Matrix method : RFM, KANO
③ formula method
④ Process method : AARRR, RARRA, AIDMA, Cohort
⑤ Element method : 5W1H, 5W2H, LIFT, HEAR
5. What to do in terms of products and operations
5.1 Product Strategy
#### Strategy 1 Generalization of functions
Status 1: In this period of rapid growth of uv, product managers will get a lot of user feedback and user needs. At this time, the product manager needs to go deep into the target business to understand the current situation and overall picture of business management, so as to design the framework structure and system modules of the system, and expand more business scenarios and business processes. Specifically how to do it:
- Prioritize the general-purpose functions covering multiple scenarios and multiple users to ensure the growth of uv, as shown in Figure 1 and 2. Simply understood, our goal is to make a function with high ROI, but it can gain a group of users.
- **Abstract the process as much as possible, so that the functions can be configured and generalized. **Based on the understanding of the business, turn the real process and scene into an abstract system and module, and change from the real rule change to the abstract data flow. If you can be as configurable as possible, a function can adapt to and satisfy most scenarios. At the same time, if the business process is adjusted, you can adapt it immediately through configuration, which will save you a lot of development manpower and quickly respond to business. .
Status 2: Different modules in a product may be in charge of different product managers. If these general-purpose functions are redesigned and developed whenever these general functions are needed, the following four problems will inevitably be brought about:** low output efficiency of product solutions, unnecessary increase in development costs, risks in product quality, and inconsistent user experience. **How we do it:
- **Exhaustive use scenarios to enhance universality: **Through exhaustive use scenarios, a unified product solution is abstracted. In the general function descriptions of different modules, you can quickly output product solutions by making remarks.
_Example:_The picture upload function can be used in advertising management and evidence management, and is used by operations and customer service respectively. Image uploads in advertising management often have strict restrictions on the image size; but in the evidence management module, there is no limit to the image size. At this time, when we are not designing the image upload function, we should consider a "image size limit" logic and corresponding prompts. Instead of doing a separate image upload function for each scene.
- **Reduce coupling and enhance independence: **When designing general-purpose functions, the coupling between general-purpose functions and modules should be reduced as much as possible. The logic is implemented in general-purpose functions as much as possible, and the modules associated with it realize logic calls through parameter passing, so that they can be connected together at low cost.
Example: In the image upload function, the function of restricting the size of the image should be implemented in the general function of image upload. When different modules call the image upload function, they notify the requirements for the image size respectively. The relationship between the image upload function and the module it is in is just parameter passing.
- **Form a general-purpose function library and call it in a unified way: **The system is modularized and split, and the modules carrying the same functions are prioritized for reuse rather than re-development. While reducing development costs, we are also reducing the cost of acquisition. customer cost.
Strategy 2 Improve system stability
The product growth period means an increase in the number of users and user data. Operators should communicate with the technical team in advance to improve the stability of system operation, and at the same time absolutely guarantee the security of user data. Improving stability can guarantee user reputation.
**Interface Compatibility:** If an interface needs to add a new field, try to set this field as an optional parameter, and the downstream that needs to be used can upload it by itself, and judge which one to call by whether to upload this parameter Business, and this new function will not affect the downstream use of the stock.
Strategy 3 Improve product experience
- **In-depth understanding of usage scenarios:** When designing B-end products, the design requirements are often inconsistent with the user's daily operations, causing users to feel that this functional product is not easy to use. The reason why this situation is often found is that when we design products, we do not know enough about the user's operating habits and business processes.
- One-click completion : B-end products pay attention to efficiency, and let the original complicated and cumbersome processes be handled by the program, which can greatly reduce the pressure of repeated work for users, but it is not simply to transfer offline The entire process is moved online. Therefore, in most cases, functions that can be completed with one key do not need to be performed in several steps.
- **Flat interactive page:** In terms of improving user experience, it is very important to reduce the user's operation difficulty and enable users to use the product quickly. Although the overall interaction requirements of the B-end products are not as high as those of the C-end, the minimum requirement is that each function point can be displayed clearly, and let users know the usage intention of each function button or page.
The introductory book on user experience design Steven krug's "Tianshichengjin", the book mentions how to improve the user's favorability:
- Don't make users think - make the product simple and clear;
- Minimize steps—if steps cannot be reduced, make sure each step is a no-brainer, unambiguous choice;
- Omit redundant text—let the information to be conveyed on each page be highlighted, reduce visual noise, and reduce interference with user judgment and operation;
*The introductory book on user experience design Steven krug's "Tianshichengjin", the book mentions how to improve the user's favorability:
*
- Don't make users think - make the product simple and clear;
- Minimize steps—if steps cannot be reduced, make sure each step is a no-brainer, unambiguous choice;
- Omit redundant text—let the information to be conveyed on each page be highlighted, reduce visual noise, and reduce interference with user judgment and operation;
Interactive pop-up guide
Animated video guide
Bubble Tips Guide
update notice
help tips
notification
5.2 Operation Strategy
The product has entered the growth period, and it is not enough to attract users by product construction alone. At this time, it is necessary to cooperate with the operation and promotion of the product
Strategy 1 Product Value Packaging
The output content of this stage mainly includes several aspects: 1. Product brochures, white papers, etc. 2. Product training manuals, industry solutions 3. Benchmarking case display
Strategy 2 Establish a user service system
- **Pre-sale promotion: **This stage is for users to use the product before
- Because the transaction cycle of b-end products is relatively long, a pre-sales technical manager or customer success manager (CSM) will be set up at this stage to provide many-to-one customer service together with customer service; generally, a user problem handling group will be established to facilitate users in a timely manner. Feedback questions and get them resolved in a timely manner.
- **After-sales maintenance: **This stage is after the user has purchased or used the product
- Assist customers to solve deployment or use problems, so as to support the optimal use of products; timely match user needs, improve operator experience, and provide the latest product upgrade information; timely release new product features and inform them through various channels Users, and then provide relevant training and guidance to users; establish a user problem handling group , so that users can provide timely feedback and solve problems in a timely manner.
Strategy 3 Scale Growth
The strategy is to continuously enhance influence through scale growth and brand building. After the previous model is running smoothly and polished, it is necessary to consider whether it can be replicated to another business line or industry/enterprise, release product information through various channels, and explore other cooperation opportunities.
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