Growth Methodology | What is in the underlying framework of fission?

I have read a lot of methodologies about fission logic, but I still don’t know how to get started. This article attempts to abstract the key elements of the fission system, disassemble the fission framework, and deeply explore how to build a fission system. I hope it will be helpful to you.

There are many articles and cases about fission. After reading so many, I still don’t know what the framework of the fission system is. I may forget it after reading it quickly. This article attempts to abstract the key elements of the fission system and see what it looks like after removing the makeup.

Time is limited, so let’s just talk about the framework.

1. Overall View

1. I think the three most important words for growth are: user scale, user value, and cost. The explanations are as follows: (For details, please refer to: What is the overall structural framework of growth)

Growth is ultimately for the commercial value of products, so by looking at the factors that determine commercial value, you can understand where the focus of growth lies.

Business value = (user scale * average single user value) - total cost

Because different products have different business models, and different business models have different definitions of these three indicators. For example, for an e-commerce product, the user scale may be the number of paying users on the site, the single user value may be the average amount of money paid by each paying user on the site, and the cost may be labor cost, traffic delivery material cost, delivery supply cost, etc.

Fission itself is just a means of growth. For a product to start fission, the long-term value of the product itself needs to be established. Value is the foundation, and fission is just a means for the product to amplify its value.

These three indicators can give us a very clear definition of how much money, how many people, how many resources to invest in this channel, and the ceiling of this channel.

Customer acquisition cost: often expressed as CAC, which refers to how much money is needed to acquire a new user.

New users: Pay attention to the caliber of measuring this number of users. Are the new users registered, activated, purchased, or paying users? Of course, once the caliber is defined, it also means that the cost of acquiring customers will change accordingly.

User quality: Generally measured by user behavior. After the user comes, whether he is activated in the product, whether there are some key behaviors, whether there are any payment-related behaviors, etc.

Therefore, through these three indicators, we can basically see whether a channel is good or bad.

Therefore, we can measure the growth channel of fission through these three indicators: first, the customer acquisition cost is lower than that of channel delivery, and the user quality is also higher than that of channel delivery (because the essence of fission is word-of-mouth communication, it has the "endorsement" of old users such as sharers), but the user scale is definitely far less than that of channel delivery;

Because the user scale is limited, fission is generally not a channel for core contribution. So what is the value of fission?

If we consider all customer acquisition channels of a product as a whole, then:

• Fission can reduce the overall user acquisition cost.
• Fission can improve the overall quality of user acquisition.

How to understand it: To reduce the customer acquisition cost of a product, you don’t have to stop the delivery channels with high customer acquisition costs. Instead, you can try to find another channel with low customer acquisition cost but high user quality, and let this channel reduce the overall customer acquisition cost. For example, fission channel, of course, the premise is to find such a channel: learn from others’ experience)

2. How to build a fission system

2.1 Dissecting fission from the perspective of its path

Since fission is a means of growth and serves growth, let’s break down this problem from the perspective of “starting from the end”: the “end” is how many users a fission can eventually bring to the product. Working backwards, we can analyze the entire fission path using “process thinking”: fission => F (launch UV, sharing rate, new user opening rate, number of new user invitations)

As an additional note, if product or operation professionals want to improve their perspective on and analysis of problems, they can try to cultivate "process thinking, refined thinking, closed-loop thinking, and leveraged thinking" when they encounter problems.

That is, the final effect of fission is determined by the following factors: "sharing UV, sharing rate, new user opening rate, and number of new user invitations":

• When the user scale of the product itself is very small, the number of potential sharing users will be very small, and the effect of fission will be limited. Unless the seed users are very loyal or have their own traffic, fission can be tried.
• After we have potential sharing users, how do these users share and what are the sharing scenarios? Fission is referral and word-of-mouth communication. It is necessary to share product links, packaged posters, activities, etc., which can promote products. Therefore, the sharing rate is the second core indicator.
• After sharing, new users are reached. New users have to open the link. Only after opening it can they see and feel the value of the product. Only then will they be motivated to download the product.

Therefore, it is very important to do a good job in the four indicators of fission.

2.2 Fission Framework

Based on the above analysis, we can further abstract the main factors of the fission system:

In general, users do not have the need to share, but operations can be used to motivate users to share.

It should be noted here that incentives are only a means to serve fission and cannot solve the essential problem. What is the essential problem? Is the user motivated to share in a certain scenario? If so, then adding an incentive will be icing on the cake. If not, then adding an incentive will not have much effect. So through this, we can abstract the general framework of fission:

Key factors:

• Sharing scenarios (this will determine how likely users on the product are to see the “sharing population”)
• Sharers (profile of target audience for sharing)
• Sharing motivation (how to "impress" the sharer)
• Shared by (portraits of people being shared)
• Reasons for acceptance (how to "impress" the person being shared)

Auxiliary factors:

• Share Path
• Return flow path (the path from the person opening the link to downloading the app/or accepting the invitation)
• Incentives

This may not be easy to understand, so let me give you an example:

For example, if a reading product has a function of sharing books or chapters, if the people who share are company employees, then the scenario is likely to be only during non-working hours, and the motivation for sharing is strongly related to the type of book itself and the type of people in his circle of friends, because this represents his preferences and his current status. He has to consider a lot before sharing, such as whether to let his boss, colleagues, friends, etc. It may be easier to understand if the book is replaced with a course for career advancement.

Another example: a programming training course for people with low education, with discounts for sharing, the motivation to share will be very strong, the pressure to share may not be that great, and his circle of friends is likely to have people with similar needs (compared to the previous example). But in the same scenario, if the audience is replaced by working people, the motivation to share will be much weaker.

2.3 Incentives for Fission

Let's talk about incentives again. Incentives themselves are only a means. The essence is to look at the long-term value of the product to the user. The carrier of value in the product may be a certain "behavior". The product designs the user path based on the "behavior". After a product's typical user growth path is clear, a complete incentive system can significantly amplify the efficiency of growth through productization.

The object of the incentive system is incentives, which are divided into consumable and non-consumable. Consumable incentives have monetary attributes and need to take inflation into account. Non-consumable ones are generally virtual, such as "titles" and "medals".

The object of the incentive is the behavior that the product wants users to trigger, which can be divided into one-time, continuous, repetitive, creative, periodic, etc. Different behaviors are suitable for slightly different incentives. For example, repetitive behaviors are not suitable for incentives with strong monetary attributes, otherwise how can costs be controlled? Back to fission, the selection of incentives can be tested by selecting products in the mall (the mall is flexible in configuring incentives).

• Cash. The disadvantage is that the risk of cheating is high, and the cost is difficult to control. Because cash has no discount (cash is not like goods, which have a purchase price and can be premium, so the cost is relatively controllable), so cash is generally used for some key incentives, such as first time;
• Standard products. Standard products refer to goods with fair value, which can be converted into cash. For example, electronic products: mobile phones, computers, etc., so these standard products are usually displayed in shopping malls.
• Scarce goods. Scarce goods can have a strong appeal to users. Second, they can reduce costs for the mall. For example, the price of a commodity with IP attributes is usually very high, but the actual production cost is very low. Scarce goods will make the consumption efficiency of tokens higher. Then the ROI will be greater.
• General goods. Generally, they are products that users like very much. General goods are generally popular among a wide range of users.

2.4 Fission Carrier – Design of Sharing Tasks

After the motivation, the next step is to design the sharing task:

How to promote user sharing? In order to improve ROI, the design of tasks must be refined.

Refinement can be divided into several directions:

• Refinement of actions. Early fission generally incentivizes "results". Users must have the final "result" behavior before incentives are given to them. This actually increases the threshold for users to share, so in order to lower the threshold for sharing, there needs to be incentives for the sharing process. For example, the common poster sharing in Moments incentivizes the action of sharing. As long as users share the poster, the poster will be exposed. With exposure, there will be conversions. Knowing the conversion rate, the value of the incentive for this sharing behavior can be quantified.
• Refinement of the crowd. Give different people different incentives. For example, for those who share for the first time, the incentive may need to be stronger to motivate them to complete the first sharing. For another example, the incentives for users who have or have not purchased can also be different. Because users who have purchased have experienced our services and our products. They already have a strong perception of the products. Therefore, their willingness to share is relatively stronger, and the cost of their incentives may not need to be so high. It may be some incentives that make him feel more at home in other ways, giving him some exclusive gifts, and his willingness to share will be stronger. But for users who have not purchased, they don’t understand or know the product. At this time, it would be better to give him more standardized incentives.
• Refinement of task gradient. For example, different incentives are given for sharing once, twice, and three times. The logic is to encourage people with sharing power to share more. For example, when a user has three or five sharing actions, your incentives will become greater. Encouraging people who can share to share more is also a way to increase the sharing rate.
• The design combined with the holiday theme will generally lead to a periodic explosion of the entire fission.

The above is about the indicator of promoting user sharing.

The second indicator is to promote the user's opening rate. (Personalization, visualization, altruism)

• Personalization: When the relationship between the poster and the person who shared it is particularly close, on the one hand, its sharing rate will increase. On the other hand, the opening rate of new users will also increase with a high probability. For example, in the case of referrals in the education industry, parents will post posters with photos of their children and study reports. This is the embodiment of personalization. Why can this kind of personalized poster increase the user's opening rate? Because you share it to your Moments, and your Moments are all your friends, who will have a desire to pry into your private life. When your friends see it, they may feel anxious or have other emotions, which may prompt them to want their children to study, and there is a possibility of conversion.
• Visualization. I won’t say much about this. For sharing like posters and short videos, good visual effects will definitely have a positive effect on the opening rate.
• Altruism. This means that the thing you share must be valuable to the person being shared. The value is reflected through the copy. The role of the copy is to let your friends see this poster, see your circle of friends, and convey the value of this thing.

The third indicator is to promote new users to accept sharing.

• After opening, users may still have to register, log in, and so on. So the return path needs to be optimized. For example, you often see sharing of takeout or taxi coupons in the circle of friends, where you first receive the coupon and then are guided to download, rather than first being guided to download and then receive the coupon. Because after registering first and then receiving the coupon, if you don’t download it, you will feel that you have lost the coupon (psychologically speaking, people are loss averse. For example, Qunar early on seized the market from Ctrip by sorting air tickets, with the lowest price at the front. Once users have seen the lowest air ticket, even if it is only 5 yuan cheaper, most people will choose to buy this one even if it is more complicated, because if they don’t buy this one and buy the more expensive one, they will feel like they are losing out)
• Landing page, whether the content of the landing page is valuable, should be able to clearly and concisely convey to users the value points you can provide. Only when it is valuable, it will be downloaded and returned. (You are sick, I have medicine, and I am professional, buy it quickly)
• Is the incentive for return flow clear? Why did Pinduoduo's early sharing quickly impress users? Because group buying is cheaper. So we see that many referrals and sharing will have new member gift packages. Or you can get membership after downloading. (For example, in group buying, the group leader and old users share, and the group members are new users. New and old users will have their own clear gifts)

In addition, fission also needs to have a good anti-cheating strategy and pay attention to users who are taking advantage of the situation, such as quality monitoring of new users, strategies for inviting the same person online on the same day or over a period of time, etc. The system needs to be able to identify users with cheating risks.

The above is an analysis of fission from an operational perspective. There is also spontaneous fission by users, which is product-function-oriented: (the product itself will make users actively motivated to share)

For example, the common screen-sweeping sharing of NetEase Cloud Music and its year-end listening report will make many people unable to resist sharing. Alipay's "collecting five blessings" (this fission is slowly becoming a Spring Festival element), and the fission methods such as "test" and "game" that often appear in WeChat before, in short, either the fission has social currency attributes for users, or is interesting, or can satisfy their curiosity, etc., which may trigger users' active desire to share.

Finally, let me give you another example: the offline scene itself is also a multiplayer scene. For example, if you play mahjong offline, you need four people to play it. If you play mahjong online, you also need four people to play it. Therefore, the replication of offline multiplayer scenes can also be transferred to online. It has social attributes.