7 real cases about growth, I wrote them into small stories to share with you

How can self-media accounts achieve traffic growth? How can e-commerce and products achieve customer traffic growth? As a practitioner, the author of this article has exchanged experiences with industry insiders and summarized several reference cases, trying to reveal the secrets of increasing Internet traffic, hoping to inspire you.

I communicated with friends from different industries and got deeper into their business. In addition to helping them with ideas, I also learned a lot.

I wrote some of these cases into short stories and shared them with everyone.

01

The top Vs of Kuaishou are exploring the second growth curve, hoping to integrate online traffic and the industry. We are mainly talking about this.

But I was really interested in how they achieved tens of millions of fans and what they went through. After a few days of in-depth communication and experience, I had my own answer.

In short, there are three main reasons:

1. Platform Bonus

He seized several major platform bonuses, all of which had time windows. For example,

• Give rewards to the live broadcast room to brush up the rankings, the cost is 50 cents per fan
• When live streaming was first launched, the number of fans increased rapidly with each live streaming.
• Magnetic Taurus has just been launched, with few anchors and good delivery effect

But looking back at the so-called bonus, he didn’t consciously try to grab it. There were many accidental factors. For example, when he saw that the live broadcast room data of the emotional anchor was very good, he tried to reward and brush up the rankings.

After discovering the good results, they increased their investment, even overdrawing their credit cards, spending hundreds of thousands of RMB every month, and gaining a large number of fans at low cost.

2. Dare to make decisions

Of course, the so-called correct decisions we see now are all hindsight. At the time, he had no idea at all and it was all accidental.

At first, he didn’t use Kuaishou, he just taught offline. Once he went to a massage parlor to get a massage, and he was chatting with the massage therapist there, and the therapist asked him: “Why don’t you live stream on Kuaishou? I can bring in a few customers every day.”

That's why he tried it, and slowly he got better and better.

3. Be diligent

It’s very simple. They broadcast live for several hours every day and have almost never missed a show in the past few years. The user stickiness is extremely strong.

This is not only a test of physical strength, but also mental strength. No matter whether the recent live broadcast data is good or not, no matter how he feels, or whether he feels unwell, he has to start the broadcast on time, which is really not easy.

I'm sure he's made mistakes too.

For example, if you want to try agency distribution cooperation, you invest several million in recruiting and cooperation costs, but it fails in just two months and the money is wasted.

From his point of view, he was just lucky.

That's true, at least it can't be copied. But knowing his growth process can help me understand it better and gain knowledge that has little short-term value. I like it this way.

Finally, I want to say,

I found that those who succeeded first were all crossing the river by feeling the stones, without any benchmarks to refer to. Once they encountered a bonus, happened to make the right decision, and were diligent enough, they were very close to success.

02

When discussing whether to choose Douyin or Video Account as a customer acquisition channel, most people may prefer Douyin, but I have a friend who is working on Video Account, and his reasons are very convincing.

Why join the video account now?

1. Get free traffic from the video account service provider

The service providers mentioned here are those found by Video Account, and their KPI is to support N e-commerce accounts and achieve a GMV of X million. Therefore, the traffic is equivalent to the official free traffic, which saves costs, and the service providers have more experience in traffic investment.

Of course, not everyone can find this service provider due to information barriers.

2. Video accounts can promote corporate WeChat accounts, making it easier for users to add them

Users all use WeChat and can directly add the company’s WeChat account, which is conducive to gradual conversion in the private domain. This is the advantage of the WeChat ecosystem.

3. The entry threshold of video accounts is low

If you want to sell goods through Douyin live streaming now, you must have a strong supply chain and advertising budget, and the entry threshold is very high. However, Video Account does not require such a large cost.

There are some tricks to increase the number of videos on the video account, which have proven to be feasible, such as:

1. You can use private domain traffic to exchange for public domain traffic. It is basically a 1:1 relationship. That is, if you bring 1 private domain traffic, the platform will give you 1 public domain.
2. The first 30 minutes after the broadcast is very important. Private domain, interaction, and conversion resources are all used in this time period to bring up data.
3. Post more videos in the early stage, 7 videos a day, so that the account can be quickly labeled by the platform and the content can be better distributed;
4. Find the best accounts in this category, copy the content, re-edit and dub it. There is no need to worry about multiple protagonists in the same account. Users will not be aware of it at all, and the video account will not suppress such edited content. The data effect is very good.

These methods are suitable for scenarios where the goal is to sell goods, pursuing conversion efficiency rather than building IP. That being said, some business scenarios can indeed consider trying video accounts, especially those brands that do not have sufficient resources.

03

I was chatting with a friend who works in consumer goods, and he asked me how to increase online sales.

I said, you want to ask me how to sell products online, this is the core issue. Then, I will break it down into two questions: how to choose channels and how to determine sales strategies.

The answers to these two questions come from the product’s selling points or competitive barriers.

But the current selling point of the product is: scientific and professional.

This is not a selling point. No product says that it is unscientific or unprofessional, and consumers will not be able to perceive it.

A friend asked, then what is sentient?

It's like you threw this sentence in my face. Specifically, it's actually a multiple-choice question. For example, choose which target audience to target, which needs to meet, and which function to use to meet them...

These three multiple-choice questions have multiple answers.

The combination of different answers is the different positioning of similar products. The choice of this answer mainly depends on one's own advantages and resources, as well as the understanding and judgment of the market competition situation.

After finishing this set of multiple-choice questions, the problem of how to choose the channel and what the sales strategy is will be easily solved.

This problem can be thought of like this:

1. First, estimate the phased sales target. You can come up with three versions of indicators: aggressive, moderate, and conservative, which are suitable for various situations encountered in the subsequent estimation;
2. Then calculate the sales growth rate and allocate it to monthly/bimonthly/quarterly to set the pace;
3. According to the growth rhythm, estimate how many channels are needed. For example, if you don’t need explosive growth in the early stage and the user portrait matches, you can start with Xiaohongshu + private domain to verify the product channel; if the growth pressure is great and there is sufficient supply chain and funds, then consider Douyin.

Simply put, work backwards from the goal. Otherwise, it will be difficult to determine what to do, the order and priority, and it will be easy to get confused.

04

A friend who makes seafood came to me and hoped that I could get involved and help make an overall plan.

I explained to him: I have always been working in the domestic market and have no overseas experience.

The other party slapped his thigh and said: Brother Xu, it’s the same as in China, there will definitely be no problem!

So I privately consulted friends who make overseas products. The core issue was the differences with domestic products, and how to apply domestic experience to overseas products.

There are still gains.

After talking with several GM-level friends, I came to understand this issue, which can be roughly summarized as follows:

1. The overall gameplay, operation logic, and team division of labor are the same as those of domestic products. It revolves around supply and consumption, with supply relying on institutions and consumption relying on algorithms. There is also a strategic role in the middle, who looks at the data comprehensively and tells the supply side what content to produce.
2. The core difference lies in the cultural differences and economic development levels of different countries/ethnic groups. In the implementation process, we have to face specific and difficult problems, such as the understanding of the content, the changes in the local economic form, and the backwardness of infrastructure such as the network.
3. UGC is basically impossible unless the product scale is very large, so the content supply mainly depends on institutional output, or even the platform itself purchases copyrights and produces content.
4. The division of labor model is that domestic brains come up with strategies and local teams execute them. There is no need to expect domestic employees to understand local culture, just be optimistic about the overall market, and the local team will make specific content judgments.
5. Local agencies can basically only recruit people and have no ability to make money themselves. This is very different from domestic MCNs and guilds.

Next, I plan to go to the local area to investigate and then we can start working on this matter.

05

When chatting with a GM of a content product, I asked him what he thought about the recommendation algorithm capabilities of his product and the differences with TikTok and Toutiao.

He feels that the gap is quite large, but it is not just a technical issue.

Whether the recommendation is good or not can be measured at the level of specific indicators, such as CTR, duration, long-term retention, etc. But what ultimately leads to this result is the overall strength of a company.

for example:

• Issues with content coverage and activity
• Accuracy issues caused by infrastructure capabilities such as data caliber
• Issues such as product brand awareness and user mindset

In addition, there are some underlying technical issues that I don’t understand, which will affect the final performance of the recommendation algorithm.

I said, "Then you push for a solution. What's the problem?" Of course, when I asked, I had the answer in my mind.

After all, GM is not the big boss, so it is difficult for him to push forward the organizational issues here.

Most of the problems listed above are difficult for him to solve independently. If other responsible persons need to assist, it depends on whether the big boss is willing to promote it and whether there is such a business consensus and corresponding corporate culture within the company.

Probably not, otherwise this kind of problem would have been solved long ago. I believe that most companies will encounter this kind of problem.

06

I watched a client's offline activities, and the participants were all groups I had never met before. After spending three days with them, I was deeply touched.

This group consists of small business owners aged 40-50 from third-tier and below cities.

The impression they gave me was that they were more sincere than shrewd, serious and not looking for shortcuts, no longer young but with a strong thirst for knowledge.

I think if I hadn’t come to communicate face to face, I might never understand them. For example, I wouldn’t be able to understand their needs, what they want to hear and understand, and what I can do to help them do business better.

This group is very large and the demand is very strong. As long as you can serve them well, you can definitely make money.

The prerequisite is that you must understand them, but from my experience, it is difficult for those big Internet companies to do so.

Because the employees of large companies are all top talents with high incomes, academic qualifications and vision, this group has never appeared in the analysis reports they are good at writing, because they have never seen it or studied it.

I have already imagined the happy faces of the top talents as they self-righteously apply various models and underlying logic to this group, to analyze it, and to draw logically self-consistent conclusions.

Most people live in their own circle, but they think that this is the whole world.

07

The successful entrepreneurial stories we have heard before all involve partners in the early stages, such as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Entrepreneurship courses also teach us how important it is to find complementary partners, which is definitely true.

But some of the entrepreneurs I met were just one person. Even if the company had achieved a certain revenue scale, it still had a team of dozens of people.

Because it’s so hard to find a suitable entrepreneurial partner!

After all, it is too dreamy for Wang Xing and Wang Huiwen, who were roommates at Tsinghua University, to be entrepreneurial partners. First of all, only a very small number of people go to Tsinghua University. Secondly, it is fate. This is a low-probability event among a minority group and only occurs in areas with extremely high talent density.

Let me give you a counterexample.

I also had college roommates and wanted to start a business with them, but the unavoidable thing was that I seldom saw them when I was in school. After all, going to Internet cafes and playing mahjong all night long was very time-consuming and physically demanding, and they needed to rest.

Of course, I am not a good student, and in this circle, I can’t find any other more suitable partners except these roommates.

The elite group is small, but there are many people trying to start a business, so it is normal to not have suitable partners.

These entrepreneurs without partners independently support their companies, and they handle everything by themselves . When recruiting people, they also care about trust rather than professional ability. After all, employees are there to execute, and they don’t need to give another strategic direction.

You might say this is too tiring, or that it’s hard to scale up.

But this is the nature of entrepreneurship. In the early stages, you will definitely pay attention to every detail, devote yourself to it 24/7, and recruit people you trust as employees.

After all, entrepreneurs also need to grow, and they need to lay a solid foundation before they can build tall buildings in the future.

Author: Han Xu

Source: WeChat public account "Operation Dog Work Diary (ID: yunyingriji)"