A must-read for operators: The logic behind Keep’s user growth

Despite the increasing number of fitness apps, Keep's position remains unshakable. User needs are constantly changing, and Keep is also exploring its own diversity. What is its growth logic? The author of this article analyzes this and hopes it will be helpful to you.

When I took a walk in the evening, I opened Keep out of habit. I have been using this sports and fitness software for nearly half a year. From course recommendations to schedule reminders, it feels more and more closely related to my life. The intelligent management brings me closer to the platform.

" Self-discipline gives me freedom " is the brand slogan of Keep. It is very rare for contemporary young people to be completely self-disciplined in the impetuous workplace and society. But precisely because of this rarity, this small group of highly self-disciplined people have highly consistent life pursuits and sports concepts, which also provides a solid foundation for Keep's user growth.

1. Target users, extend needs from users, and extend scenarios from needs

According to the prospectus submitted by Keep in 2022, we learned that 76% of Keep's users are under 30 years old, mainly young people aged 20-29, but also some elderly people over 50 years old.

This group of people mainly consists of students, young office workers and elderly people who are about to retire. Their main activities are concentrated in school dormitories, outdoors, office leisure areas and community entertainment centers. Most of them are female users, accounting for 58.5% and male users account for 41.5%.

Secondly, the urban distribution is mainly concentrated in first-tier cities represented by Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and new first-tier cities represented by Chengdu, Chongqing and Xiamen; the average monthly income of the overall users is around 8,000 yuan, which shows that Keep's core user group also has a certain consumption capacity, providing a profit growth basis for Keep's e-commerce transformation in the past two years.

In the "National Sports Life Awards" data report released by Keep, a comprehensive survey and analysis of the needs and scenarios of Keep users was conducted.

Students at school, whose behavioral characteristics are that they like playing games, watching short videos, traveling, dining, and gossiping with friends. They hope to share their life status through the social attributes of Keep and make more friends of the same kind, and to train their abdominal muscles and a good body shape through the fitness courses of Keep;

Office workers, whose behavioral characteristics are long periods of sitting, lack of exercise, overweight, and irregular diet, hope to relieve work pressure and improve their sub-health status through Keep, while managing their body shape and cultivating their temperament;

Retired elderly people are also part of the Keep population. Their behavioral characteristics are that they are already retired, usually play with their children, run in the community, do square dance and Tai Chi. They hope to kill their free time by keeping fit and learn more fitness methods from the coach.

2. Extend from scenarios to communities and meet user needs from communities

Like most vertical apps, Keep’s user base has naturally consistent spiritual needs, but there are great differences in the acceptance of these needs.

Wu is a good comparison case. When facing sufficiently vertical trend users, the solution adopted in the APP is UGC seeding + KOL category assistant training plan. Through the supply of high-quality goods and the traction of highly influential KOLs in the category, it provides high-flow and high-quality product conversion to meet user needs.

The differentiation of Keep lies in the fact that its core does not have the advantage of e-commerce product supply. The focus of users is on the pursuit and sharing of life patterns. Therefore, the solution provided by Keep is topic matrix + community operation . The combination of these two parts makes up for the social needs of users. Sharing experience after fitness, the mental journey after weight loss, and the sense of accomplishment after body shaping can all be shared through participating in interest circles. The rich and multi-dimensional interest circles allow the user groups to be divided more finely and increase the user's sense of participation in the platform.

Secondly, there is the topic matrix with strong communication potential. The participation form of the topic matrix is ​​not uncommon on major platforms. The sense of participation in Weibo topics has educated users to be very mature. Unlike Weibo topics, Keep's topics are all produced by the platform and participated by users, and users cannot actively initiate topics.

This is also the clever design of the platform. For open platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu, there are sufficiently rich and broad fields, and users are given free voice. Social hot spots, field dynamics, and humanistic resonance are all likely to become hot topics, giving users a strong sense of participation.

But Keep's logic is just the opposite. From the perspective of user groups, Keep is essentially a very vertical wave of user groups, and the user scenarios and topics involved are relatively concentrated. Secondly, for the Keep platform, the staged needs and pain points of users during exercise can be collected by the platform's big data.

Therefore, the topic matrix produced by the platform is a high-quality topic that best captures user interest and participation. Its attributes are typical of platform traction + user participation in co-creation and interaction.

3. Establish a phased training plan based on business model and user stratification

The essence of user segmentation is to break down each link of the business model. The value contributed by each layer of users in the entire business chain is different.

Let's take a look at Keep's business model pyramid. The bottom layer is high-quality fitness training courses and intelligent fitness management, which are also the foundation of Keep. The middle layer is a community sharing platform based on PGC content circles and topic matrices. The top layer is a consumer e-commerce mainly based on high-quality sports peripheral products.

The relationship between the three and the user's contribution is that the bottom layer retains core users, provides paid courses, and provides profit growth. The middle layer is active users, cultivates experts in the field, provides high-quality KOLs to the platform, and attracts more civilian users to be active. The top layer of consumer e-commerce, with precise category structure and stable traffic retention, directly contributes to profit growth.

Through the business model pyramid, Keep's user stratification standards have been formed. Let's do a breakdown and divide Keep's user base into the following types.

• Service-oriented, mass sports users: users who enjoy sports services on a daily basis, with the lowest monthly retention rate, the lowest average ARPU value per person, and the lowest content participation, belonging to the early stage of user development;
• Service-oriented, professional sports users: users who provide regular services on a daily basis, with a mid-range to high monthly retention rate and a mid-range to high average ARPU per capita (with course payment and membership recharge consumption points), low content participation, little interaction, and focus on self-training. They belong to the middle stage of user development;
• Comprehensive users of service + content consumption: Comprehensive users, in addition to regular fitness and active retention, also participate in content construction, consumption and recharge, with high monthly retention and high average ARPU value. They are mature users in their life cycle and are the users that Keep, as a platform, most wants to see;
• Content-oriented, mass-participation users: users who actively participate in daily content, some of whom do a little exercise and frequently share their achievements. They also have the lowest monthly retention rate and the lowest average ARPU value. They are also classified as early users like the first type of users.
• Content-oriented, high-quality production users: users who deeply participate in daily content, high-quality content producers, KOLs who are experts in the platform field, have fan groups, have a strong sense of honor and achievement, have a high monthly retention rate, a high per capita ARPU, and are highly dependent on the platform.

Keep also cleverly provides stratified guidance within the APP. From Keep's user authentication system, we can see that Keep first divides mass users into individuals or institutions with special authentication logos. The target orientation is the service-oriented user stratification just mentioned.

Secondly, for users who continuously contribute high-quality content in a designated field, Keep’s certification system is field expert, and this certification goal is aimed at content-oriented users.

4. Establish a closed-loop user connection path from the user life cycle

Based on the concept of user life cycle, we break down the development nodes of Keep user life cycle into potential users, intended users, paying users, loyal users and lost users. A picture will give you a more intuitive display.

• Potential users: Keep provides and recommends free courses suitable for them, as well as knowledge related to exercise and diet;
• Potential users: After learning about their exercise habits and professionalism, we recommend periodic exercise plans and encourage them to participate in communities and circles to pay attention to more professional and vertical content.
• Paying users: At this stage, users begin to accept and gradually become a mature group, and are guided to pay during exercise courses. Paying members have one-to-one diet and exercise packages;
• Loyal users: including paying users, guiding community interaction, community personal certification, increasing traffic support, guiding independent content production, and contributing value;
• Lost users: Through off-site SMS, outbound calls, PUSH and recall gift package stimulation, guide users to participate in more offline activities and events, and attract users to return through group activities.

5. From growth to retention, building a highly sticky user network

The essential factors of community products are users and content. With a strong content operation ecosystem and user stratification standards, the corresponding user growth system is also the core link in the full-link user operation.

Like most community products, Keep's solutions are basically the same. The growth system + medal system are the two major growth system gameplays in the Keep APP. The growth factors of the gameplay cover all active behaviors in the APP, guiding users to obtain different achievement medals while completing tasks.

Virtual space is one of the gameplays of Keep's growth system. Users enter the virtual space through the top of the personal center. Users can create the space environment, task image, and clothing accessories according to their preferences. At the same time, they can obtain vitality coins by completing tasks in the space task board (including completing an exercise, sharing their image, and updating their outfits). Vitality coins can be used to purchase clothing of different colors and styles, allowing for more personalized display and sharing.

The KG level system is the second gameplay of Keep's growth system. The underlying system is to record the growth value of users' use of the APP and exercise behaviors. Each exercise and behavior will accumulate different amounts of growth value. The growth value is related to the growth level, and each level matches different equity incentives.

There are 20 levels in Keep, from KG0 to KG20. The rights and interests corresponding to each level increase step by step. KG0-KG5 are virtual badges and physical badges. KG6 and above will have mall coupons, 3-day memberships, physical T-shirts, peripheral souvenirs, bracelets, hats and other accessory prizes.

The medal system is Keep's achievement system, which is linked to the KG level system. Users can receive higher-level medals as they grow to different stages. Behind the medals are a sense of accomplishment and honor. These two factors happen to be related to the spiritual needs of sports and fitness users. After users earn badges through hard work, they will be displayed on their personal homepage, so that they can better show off their honors and achievements to other users.

Looking back at Keep, we found that the highly vertical spirit pursues consistent users, and the essential core is the practical effect of sports and fitness. All user operation and growth strategies are inseparable from the constraints of the core. User experience and commercialization are not contradictory points in themselves, but from the perspective of platform development and operation, the ultimate user experience is often more vital.

In this regard, one question remains: Is it a correct decision for Keep to vigorously promote consumer e-commerce channels?

Author: Leon; Official Account: Leon New Retail Notes