Over the past year or so, we have seen that many content platforms continue to subsidize, such as Penguin, Headline, Big Fish, and various short video platforms, such as Second Shot, Volcano, and Beauty Shot, are also launching various large-scale subsidy policies. The amount of subsidies, some one billion, some two billion ..... I'm afraid too little subsidies will be hated.
In the case of the disappearance of the demographic dividend of the mobile Internet, the cost of pulling new products has increased several times compared with the past. However, these content products still adopt such subsidy policies and efforts when the realization prospect is still very vague. What is the logic to follow? Compared with the previous taxi subsidy and takeaway subsidy, what is the difference between the subsidies for content-based products?
1. Besides traffic, what should subsidies bring to content-based products?
Subsidies will definitely bring traffic, even if it is temporary. But traffic itself is worthless, and the value lies in the relationship between users and products brought by traffic. The distress of pure traffic platform is that its relationship with users is too "short and shallow", so even if it is huge, it can only make money through advertising.
The traffic platform can indeed sell a lot of advertisements, but the relationship between most advertisements and users is actually "short and shallow". There are so many advertisements produced around the world every year that you can leave a deep impression.
To make the relationship with users "lasting and deep", we need to create "interactive scenes" to precipitate these flows, instead of letting them "drift with the wind".
Creating interactive scenes through subsidies, precipitating traffic into relationships, and helping high-quality content creators gain fans and realize opportunities have become the best choice for many content-based products.
Second, after the subsidy, the account system, interactive scenes and relationship precipitation cannot be less.
From "short and shallow" flow to "deep and lasting" relationship, this road is often not easy, and the hukou system is the basis of all this.
In the early days of the PC era, the traffic of Sina, Sohu and Netease accounted for the bulk of the entire Internet at that time. The time to market of these three portals is much earlier than that of BAT, but they are not successful in the precipitation relationship. In the traffic of the three companies, the user's own purpose is to consume content, and it is a common state to leave after reading it. The popular Netease comment area provided a way of thinking, but at that time, Netease's account system was not perfect enough to precipitate the relationship.
Headlines that started with news information tools also have this problem. No matter in the process of consuming graphic or short video content, users are not interested in registering or logging in accounts. Then, when will users have the motivation to actively create and maintain their own accounts? In products with interactive scenes and personal identities as the main body of interaction. For example, Wukong Q&A, a question-and-answer product with strong interactive scene and requiring account system, is an option to enhance the account system and relationship precipitation of headlines.
Because even with strong subsidies, it is not safe to encircle a large number of users' content products. In addition to the problem that the content itself is difficult to make a direct profit, the product itself can be replaced. For example, you have been using a news app. 12 months later, you changed your mobile phone and pre-installed another news app. Most users will start using the pre-installed app directly, and there is no conversion cost.
With the account system and interactive scenes, content products have the basis to leave content creators and users. Quality content and attention opportunities are stimulated by subsidies. Users can pay attention to content creators (PGC content platform) and users can also pay attention to each other (UGC content platform).
With the fan relationship, high-quality content creators have more motivation to stay on this platform and continue to produce content, because fans are the basis for their realization. With the concern relationship, the conversion cost of ordinary users has also increased greatly. It will be troublesome to find and pay attention again, and "changing machines and running" will become "changing machines and downloading".
Only then will the retention rate of content-based products begin to increase, not how many people will leave after the subsidy begins. At the same time, in order to improve the retention efficiency as much as possible and lower the threshold of content production, it is necessary to use both PGC and UGC platforms.
Because the large flow of subsidies is only based on users' consumption of content, and users themselves have not left the content, even if they register to pay attention to their favorite accounts, the barriers are still not strong enough. Those communities with a long history, such as Xisi Hutong, Guo Qiang Forum, Tianya, schools and various blogs, are still active users even without subsidies, because they spend a lot of time and energy making their own content (photos, status and articles, etc.). ) on these platforms.
And if you want users to produce their own content, only by constantly lowering the threshold for use. When users start to leave content in your products, your moat really begins to widen. Therefore, when we see the products such as Wukong Q&A and micro-headlines introduced in the headlines, the logic is very clear. Because this kind of "content standard takes the greatest common denominator" product, for ordinary users, the threshold of content production is the lowest.
For example, the Q&A product itself is a goal-oriented dialogue, which limits the scope and methods of communication between the two sides of the dialogue, making it in a roughly middle position in the three dimensions of understanding difficulty, sociality and communication. Today's Wukong Q&A has attracted more than 654.38 billion users, with an average of more than 30,000 questions and more than 200,000 answers every day. The response rate can reach 90% within 24 hours, which has surpassed Baidu's question and answer products.
Third, why now? What is the current subsidy logic of content-based products?
To sum up, we will see that the subsidy logic of content-based products has been very different from the taxi and takeaway that used subsidies on a large scale at the earliest. For example, taxi products such as Didi Kuaidi are designed to cultivate the habit of users using mobile payment; Hungry, Meituan and other take-away products are all to cultivate the habit of ordering take-away on websites and apps (not telephones).
Then, since there are so many benefits obtained through subsidies, why did forums, blogs, Zhihu and other content products never need subsidies in the past? The frequent use of subsidies on content products may have a lot to do with today's internet competition environment.
1. Platform products attract the party with less supply through subsidies, or both parties subsidize together to achieve the balance of supply at both ends at a faster speed. For example, Didi, passengers don't want to have no drivers, and drivers are not satisfied with having no passengers.
Today's users are more difficult to serve, and if they are slightly dissatisfied, they will uninstall the products. Achieving a faster balance between supply and demand is to provide a better user experience. However, it should be noted that the subsidy here is still a benign strategy, that is to say, if external competition is not considered, after the bilateral market reaches the balance of supply and demand, subsidies are generally not needed, and this platform economy will operate spontaneously and benign.
2. The development of Internet industry has been over-researched. Once any new product is verified, competitors will begin to subsidize users and promote the product with ten or even a hundred times your resources. The era of fully tapping the market demand has passed, and quickly rushing to the beach has become the main theme.
Today's Internet demand and competition analysis has reached a tragic level. Once any idea is proved to be feasible, a group of competitors may have gathered resources and are ready to go. * * * Enjoy bicycles, charging treasures, and no one retails.
The investment director of a big factory said: "When I first entered the business, only a big company like BAT had a strategy department or a war investment department. Now, almost a company with more than 100 employees will set up similar departments or functions, and everyone will keep a wolf-like sense of smell for all new things and trends in the market. When a new thing came out, it was quickly over-researched by the analysts of the strategy department, investment department, VC, PE and HF of various companies, and the speed of information dissemination and digestion exceeded any period. "
In fact, in the early days of the Internet, the phenomenon of product competition was not so exaggerated. Everyone may have heard the story that Ma wanted to sell QQ to Zhang Chaoyang for 600,000 RMB, but we should all remember that it was not until QQ began to make a big profit from the game that we found that this product with a large number of users but no money could be expected to make a big profit.
If Tencent's QQ goes online for half a year, if it subsidizes tens of billions to be an opponent of IM, today's Internet pattern is hard to say. At least such a subsidy scale can meet the psychological price of Mark selling OICQ, and may even overflow many times.
3. If the product development path is correct, subsidies can make the product succeed faster and seize the dividend; If it is wrong, then give the product an early death sentence, or adjust the direction, or melt a sum of money to make a new product.
In the final analysis, the essence of these three articles can be summarized as follows: time is more important than money. Moreover, in this market, VCS is not short of money.
From these three points, we can see a brand-new concept of Internet product development, which is completely different from the past MVP prototype trial and error, small-step development iteration and waiting for explosive growth. For example, Wukong Q&A began to "subsidize" the respondents to the head questions with traffic and money very early, and the monthly fee paid to the signing respondents has increased from the earliest 1 10,000 yuan to the latest 1 10,000 yuan. Moreover, Wukong now allows ordinary users to get cash rewards through red envelopes and other means.
The strength and strategy of this subsidy are unprecedented. It not only satisfies the bilateral balance between supply and demand mentioned in the first principle: in the Q&A community, no one answers questions, which is embarrassing; There was a big v, and no one asked, so he was silent. At the same time, competitors can win the market before they react without too much research, analysis and mobilization of resources. If the development direction is right, then I will ride the dust. If it is wrong, I will save time to develop other products.
Finally, once again, the subsidy for burning money is meaningless, and something must be left after the subsidy. For content-based products, at first glance, subsidies are for obtaining content, especially high-quality content, but the content itself is not an end. I believe that the scale flow, relationship precipitation and community atmosphere brought by content are the purpose of subsidies for major platforms.