In talking to some friends about user growth, I've found that there's a common misconception that when a product hits a growth wall, you need to quickly assemble a user growth team to solve the problem. Does this really work? For many companies, users are everything, which is the basis of company valuation. All business activities of the company are carried out around how to acquire users and improve their LTV (life time value). Given that users are so important, should user growth be the CEO's primary responsibility, or should it be the CEO's direct responsibility? Build a user growth team, set KPIs (key performance indicators) for the team, and then work like a sales team to achieve the goals? In general, not likely! So what should you do about user growth? Before we answer that question, let's define what user growth is. My definition of user growth is: start with the end in mind and use everything you can to get more users to use core product features more often. There are three key words in this definition. First, "more" is about user acquisition. But many people think that user growth is user acquisition, is to attract new people, this is a relatively one-sided understanding. Second, "more frequent" corresponds to increasing the frequency of user visits, but does not necessarily include increasing the duration of visits.

If the purpose of using a product is to solve a problem, such as finding the answer to a problem, a better experience is to let the user find the answer to the problem in the shortest time, rather than making the user spend a lot of time. save time products generally fall into this category. But if the user is using the product to kill time, to find interesting information and things, then it makes sense to ask the user to spend more time on the product. Kill Time products usually fall into this category. Third, "core product functionality" is a very important and often overlooked element. Although people often talk about attracting new people and promoting vitality, if users do not experience the core product functions when using a product, it is definitely a loss for the product and meaningless for users. In order for users to experience the core functionality of the product, they need to be engaged first. Many products have small games designed to attract users. Does this work? Are there other ways to attract users? I'm going to lay it on the line here, and I'll give you a real case study in the chapter "User Growth and Operations Teams." In addition, core product functionality will vary from stage to stage. If the original core product functions can no longer meet the needs of users, and the new core product functions are not developed, the stagnation or even decline of growth is inevitable.

User growth and strategy are in fact highly related, and the focus of user growth is different at different stages of the company or product development, depending on the strategic focus. The relationship between the two is as follows: strategy is the starting point and determines the short and medium term goals; Providing products to satisfy the user base experience is the path, and growth projects are the cars that drive along that path, getting us from one location to another. As for whether we ride in a sports car or a bullock cart, that is not necessarily, which is highly related to the planning and execution ability of growth projects. The growth strategy ensures that the cars on the road will always follow the path in the right direction. But let's recognize that not all cars make it to the finish line. In fact, most cars don't make it to the finish line because so many growth projects fail. Mastering the right growth methodology can improve the success probability of the project and make more cars reach the finish line. Besides, if a car wants to go fast, it needs gas. By gasoline, I mean organizational security. When I talk to a lot of people in the industry, this is something that is often overlooked. Without gas, the car can't run or can only run and stop, so you have to go everywhere to borrow gas. In the same way, without organizational security, growth projects will staccato and slow down.

In talking to some friends about user growth, I've found that there's a common misconception that when a product hits a growth wall, you need to quickly assemble a user growth team to solve the problem. Does this really work? For many companies, users are everything, which is the basis of company valuation. All business activities of the company are carried out around how to acquire users and improve their LTV (life time value). Given that users are so important, should user growth be the CEO's primary responsibility, or should it be the CEO's direct responsibility? Build a user growth team, set KPIs (key performance indicators) for the team, and then work like a sales team to achieve the goals? In general, not likely! So what should you do about user growth? Before we answer that question, let's define what user growth is. My definition of user growth is: start with the end in mind and use everything you can to get more users to use core product features more often. There are three key words in this definition. First, "more" is about user acquisition. But many people think that user growth is user acquisition, is to attract new people, this is a relatively one-sided understanding. Second, "more frequent" corresponds to increasing the frequency of user visits, but does not necessarily include increasing the duration of visits.

If the purpose of using a product is to solve a problem, such as finding the answer to a problem, a better experience is to let the user find the answer to the problem in the shortest time, rather than making the user spend a lot of time. save time products generally fall into this category. But if the user is using the product to kill time, to find interesting information and things, then it makes sense to ask the user to spend more time on the product. Kill Time products usually fall into this category. Third, "core product functionality" is a very important and often overlooked element. Although people often talk about attracting new people and promoting vitality, if users do not experience the core product functions when using a product, it is definitely a loss for the product and meaningless for users. In order for users to experience the core functionality of the product, they need to be engaged first. Many products have small games designed to attract users. Does this work? Are there other ways to attract users? I'm going to lay it on the line here, and I'll give you a real case study in the chapter "User Growth and Operations Teams." In addition, core product functionality will vary from stage to stage. If the original core product functions can no longer meet the needs of users, and the new core product functions are not developed, the stagnation or even decline of growth is inevitable.

User growth and strategy are in fact highly related, and the focus of user growth is different at different stages of the company or product development, depending on the strategic focus. The relationship between the two is as follows: strategy is the starting point and determines the short and medium term goals; Providing products to satisfy the user base experience is the path, and growth projects are the cars that drive along that path, getting us from one location to another. As for whether we ride in a sports car or a bullock cart, that is not necessarily, which is highly related to the planning and execution ability of growth projects. The growth strategy ensures that the cars on the road will always follow the path in the right direction. But let's recognize that not all cars make it to the finish line. In fact, most cars don't make it to the finish line because so many growth projects fail. Mastering the right growth methodology can improve the success probability of the project and make more cars reach the finish line. Besides, if a car wants to go fast, it needs gas. By gasoline, I mean organizational security. When I talk to a lot of people in the industry, this is something that is often overlooked. Without gas, the car can't run or can only run and stop, so you have to go everywhere to borrow gas. In the same way, without organizational security, growth projects will staccato and slow down.