Feeling anxious is a common sentiment of most of marketers’ these days, what marketers do to engage customers has changed almost beyond recognition. With the possible exception of information technology, we cannot think of another discipline that has evolved so quickly, new approaches are appearing every day, boss begins demanding a certain revenue return from every Yuan invested to the marketing department, growth hacking emerged as the times require, has become the lifesaver of many enterprises to break through their development bottleneck.

Growth hackers focus on low-cost and innovative alternatives to achieve explosive growth. "Social fission" is becoming one of the best growth strategies under the circumstances of accelerated increase of online traffic cost, trending topics constantly blow up on our social media, created many brand myths in a very short time. How Social fission becomes the key Breakthrough point of Growth Hacking?

01

What is Social Fission marketing?

The purpose of marketing is to acquire new users, the essence of social media marketing is “fission”, fission marketing is to use everyone’s social relations to amplify impact and energize the growth, just like said by “TaoTeChing”: One is the child of the divine law, after one come two, after two come three, after three come all things. Briefly speaking, the main core of “social fission” is to utilize benefit-driven users, through their social relationship to maximize the growth of users at the lowest cost.

02

Brief history of Social Fission marketing

Social fission 1.0: WeChat red envelope

Example companies：Elema, DIDI, Meiriyouxian, Flower+

WeChat red envelope is a mobile application developed by Tencent in 2014, it changed traditional Chinese New Year greetings amongst friends and family. With the popularity of virtual red envelope, social fission has ushered in a big outbreak. Many companies feel that as long as they give up a few profit they can quickly acquire new users via social media. For example, we receive frequently the virtual red envelopes issued by Didi, Elema, Flower+ but shared by our friends to invite us to try a new service. However, this kind of social fission remains at penetration level 1.

Social fission 2.0: Decentralized users’ fission within penetration level 3.

Example company: Pinduoduo

Pinduoduo’s strategy is addictive and viral, its core purpose is doing everything to push you to share the App with your friends. In order to get the discounted price, active users of Pinduoduo share a deal to their social platform (mainly WeChat) to whip up his friends to join the group buying or help “bargain” for a cheaper price. Attracted by “low price” or “incentive”, the passive users share also the deal after seeing it shared by his friends. The two-level users’ constantly independent fission until the success of the deal. The decentralization of Pinduoduo is to cut off the huge traffic cost, and constantly acquire new users through social fission.

Free products, barging, group buying, incentives for sharing etc. Pinduoduo is truly becoming addictive for many users, according to Walkthechat Analysis, it benefits from the best retention rate (7 days after APP install) from all Chinese e-commerce platforms. 

Source：Walkthechat Analysis

Social fission 3.0: Social fission of traditional business (decentralization + frisson resulted by created, interactive or funny content) 

Example companies: Coffee box, Luckin coffee 

Social fission may have overthrown the traditional advertising, the core of the 3.0 era is to integrate traditional business into the social fission. Coffee Box Launched recently a WeChat mini program "pocket café", which allows users to create virtual shops but sell real coffee, on the first day, the Page view number is more than 4.2 million, more than 520,000 shops were opened, more than 10% realized real sales, the best seller shop sold 200 cups.

The key to success of pocket café for blowing up on social media is because it satisfied a lot of girls’ dream: Open a café of her own. Business-type game mode, Possibility to decorate your own shop and prepare your own menu, beautiful interface, its very fun and fun to share. Furthermore, Sharing can also make money, you can be rewarded for every order realized in your online café. 

An users’ "pocket café”

03

Classic model of Growth Hacking andSocial Fission

AARRR Metrics Funnel Diagram is the classic model of Growth Hacking:

The most important elements of AARRR growth model are:

Firstly, How to acquire users? How to generate seed users in first phase, and let more people finding us through seed users? 

Secondly, how to activate even remain users, let them have continuous perfect experience, even become your fans?

Thirdly, refer other users, not only let them continue to use your products but also share with others?

Apparently, “Social fission” can answer all these questions, which allows bringing more users with much lower cost than traditional advertising and continuing to stimulate them, making them feel close to your brand and even developing a sense of familiarity through continually creating good experience with them. For example, Luckin Coffee is becoming a big threaten to Starkbucks in China with their aggressive fission strategy, and Pinduoduo has the best retention rate among all Chinese e-commerce platforms. 

04

How to do Social Fission?

A．Finding “Source” of fission

1. The “Source” of fission should be a content, which is valuable in reciprocity for its users.The users are always benefit-driven, they are only willing to share something valuable but also altruistic on their Wechat moments. For example, Luckin Coffee’s strategy is to offer an additional free cup for those who successfully refer a friend. This approach generated a bombardment of WeChat Moments posts, and proved to be a viral marketing strategy. Its’ order increased 40% and registered users doubled than usual days.

 Promotion poster of getting a free cup by sharing a free cup 

Benefit-driven fission is a proved efficient strategy, which is capable of creating a brand miracle, Luckin Coffee opened nearly a thousand stores in half a year, became Starbucks’ biggest rival. If we compare Luckin coffee with Starbucks coffee on Baidu Index, we found that Luckin coffee’s fission marketing strategy is much more effective and focused than Starbucks. 

Baidu Index (Luckin coffee and Starkbucks comparing) 

2. The “Source” of fission could be a content, which borrows the hot situation from trending topics(ex: world cup, festivals, trendy film/TV drama etc.), Hotspots mean always traffic, hot IP and social events attract naturally public attention and bring online traffic. Use the topics people are currently interested in as a launching point or inspiration to develop your own content marketing ideas to create newsworthy sensation. For example, roll stickers co created by very hot IP” Forbidden City” with YSL, Dior, Givenchy gained a lot of public attention.

Roll stickers co created by very hot IP” Forbidden City” with YSL, Dior, Givenchy

However, how can the brand find trending topics and find best and unique angle or approach to explore them?

Finding these trending topics on social media rather than looking elsewhere is simply the quickest way to discover and the key is to stay on top of what people care about at the moment and use them to feed your content fire!

3. The “Source” of fission could be a content, which allows users to participate in a fun and interactive way, or helps a certain kind of person to achieve self-realization. That’s the case of “pocket café “of Coffee Box that's been said before.

4. The core of social fission is to get the first batch of seed users, they are the basis of marketing, and the basis of fission marketing. Take the case of Luckin coffee, they offer a free cup of coffee to those who sign up on their app, that is how they accumulate quickly the first batch of users and identify the most active seed users for social fission.

瑞幸咖啡下载APP送咖啡海报

Promotion poster of getting a free cup by signing up on Luckin Coffee APP

B.Tactics of social fission

1. There is a variety of tactics for social fission, per example: Free products, group Buying, ask friends to “bargain”, benefits for referring, IP transmission etc. 

How to ask friends to “bargain” at Pinduoduo APP

2. Develop a Simple high-efficient communication mechanism

We must design a simple but high-efficient communication mechanism, so that people can easily understand the "benefits" of forwarding. For instance, fans only need to forward a poster on his Wechat moments, and they can get a surprise gift from each friend who followed the WeChat Official Account through the poster they shared.

3. Make the fission in a closed loop, self-propagating

In order to avoid users churn, the fission must be in a closed loop. Take example of Luckin coffee, while users download the app, system reminds them right away that they can get a surprise gift if only they share a generated poster with their friends. So that the system has formed automatically a closed loop of self – propagating without necessity of human involvement.

4. Participation of KOLs

KOLs just like a catalyst for social fission, they can make the “source” of fission quickly and widely extended or spread out. Then the intervention of big V can let the whole thing keeps bubbling up. A lot of Big V such as LI Yan, QIN Lan had participated in “Pocket café” communication, had helped amplifier the range of social fission.

Many big V participated in “Pocket café” communication

This is a very powerful marketing model:

05

Conclusion

Social fission is the hottest marketing topic of this year, which allows companies achieving big growth with a very low investment. Why do you try to use it and become a growth hacker of your company?