This article is from the public account Li Meng (ID: imslimeng), author Li Meng, and Ai Faner are authorized to publish.

There is a recent saying: Today is the “free era 2.0”, which is the “money era.”

The words are a bit rough and also an insight.

“Free Era” is an old stalk. “Free Era 1.0” just doesn’t charge for money. First, you can watch the news for free (portal), use the search engine for free (Yahoo, Baidu), send email for free, and then go online. Free, free video, free anti-virus software. Later, Google made library data retrieval, mailbox, map, photo management, office software all free.

“Free Age 2.0” started in the last seven or eight years. Not only is 99% of content and apps free, it even found gold directly, and it is not limited to the Internet.

 Free Age 2.0: The Right Pose for Money | Li Meng's Theory of Relativity

Economist F Riedman bluntly said: “It is better to send money directly than social security.”

Send money directlyThe steps are simple and easy to calculate. The government only needs to pay the money directly to the citizens’ accounts, without having to bear a whole set of bureaucratic systems and many welfare institutions. It would be more affordable to pay salaries to civil servants directly.

This view seems ridiculous. Some countries really do it this way.

Finland intends to pay 800 euros a month to its citizens. The price is that many social security will be cancelled at the same time, and the government will save money instead.

In recent years, there is even a popular trend in the world called “unconditional basic income”, which is that the government sends money to the people every month. Switzerland has already begun to do this. This kind of gain is for the purpose of enabling everyone to do their best job according to their own interests.

Going back to the Internet and directly discovering the golden red envelope is already a basic action.

In recent years, financial data released by companies including Didi Taxi, Meituan Takeaway, Ruixing Coffee, Pinduoduo, Qutou Toutiao, and other companies. The words “1 billion subsidies” and “tens of billions of subsidies” are everywhere and it is difficult to find Internet companies that don’t subsidize users anymore.

It is reported that Didi, Meituan, and Pinduoduo all provide users with tens of billions of subsidies every year (such as the Apple mobile phone sold on Pinduoduo, which has fallen sharply by 2,000 yuan and 3,000 yuan, which is almost beyond common sense) The difference is that Meituan is profitable, Didi and Pinduoduo are still on the way.

Many young entrepreneurs hold business plans and say that my product design is better than WeChat and better than Taobao, so I can beat Tencent and Alibaba. Actually, they didn’t understand the world at all.

It’s not that there is something wrong with their product design, but that no matter how good the product design is, it’s useless. why?

The real product is the user and the data.

“Free Times 1.0” has a saying: If you buy a product but don’t pay, then you are the product itself.

“Free Age 2.0” is even more brutal: How much capital do you have to give users a red envelope to start a business?

However, subsidized users do n’t have to send out red envelopes. The key is what kind of vision and pattern do you have:

From a micro perspective, you can test the user ’s pain points, cool points, and psychological defense; in the middle of it, it is a kind of “track deterrence”. I have this strength and determination. You do n’t have to warn potential opponents not to enter this field. From a macro perspective, the huge subsidies instead bring greater profits, indicating that you have a deep understanding and influence of users, which will gradually become your “ecological sovereignty.”

Specifically, how can it be smart to send red envelopes to users?

Subsidizing users is inevitable, and the focus is on the efficiency of spending money.

Tencent CEO Liu Chiping once said that users obtained through subsidies may not be your real users, and they will leave if subsidies stop.

In addition to wasting resources, the bigger blow is that companies may be blinded by false growthAnd fail to do what is really valuable to the user.

For mature stock markets (such as Weibo and WeChat), Liu Chiping’s words are undoubtedly correct.

For more Internet entrepreneurs who have expanded their territories, it is really difficult to precipitate users without subsidies.

How to improve the efficiency of spending money may be a more pragmatic issue.

I think there are at least five aspects to consider:

To settle users, aim at 20% tipping point

Any large tuyere originally originated in the marginal zone.

The concentrated outbreak of the PC Internet started in 2005, when the domestic Internet penetration rate reached 20%, and the outbreak of mobile Internet in 2013 was the same.

Why VR (virtual reality) and blockchain can’t do it temporarily? There may be less than 1% of people who use related technology products around you. At this time, it is useless to subsidize and cultivate users.

In the early days of the rise of the online ride-hailing market, there were at least dozens of online ride-hailing companies in China. When you found that 10% of people around you started to call for cars online, Didi resolutely subsidized users and blocked competitors When the user penetration rate exceeded 20%, the market was completely detonated. After several rounds of fierce battles, Didi became the dominant company.

It all started with Didi at the most appropriate time to radically subsidize users. This was when it was most efficient to spend money.

Subsidy for small and long-lasting businesses, the worst effect

User subsidies in the field of shared bicycles, spent too much money, saw many broken and muddy bicycles on the street, even Aunt Sanitation also shook her head and sighed.

The biggest problem is that the early investment in shared bicycles was very huge (building the headquarters, running supervision, modifying bicycles, and hardware maintenance are very expensive), but the operating income is a long stream of money, and the single income is about 1 yuan.

Each bicycle is an asset. Until the bicycle is scrapped, the cost has not been recovered.

Sometimes, whether a seemingly large business or a large market is worth doing is a particularly simpleDimensions

A senior algorithm engineer at Ant Financial was asked: What is the use of the algorithm?

The engineer gave an example: Alipay subsidizes billions of users every year. Some users don’t care about the small subsidies provided by Alipay. The algorithm can screen out these people without providing subsidies, thereby improving the efficiency of subsidy spending. .

Why is WeChat payment difficult to compete with Alipay in the financial field?

Because the latter has accumulated a large amount of user consumption data, it has advantages in subsidy efficiency and recommendation accuracy.

The two rivals who are tit-for-tat, even if they are evenly matched in all aspects, may be that there are some differences in the efficiency of spending money, which leads to high judgments.

The logic of capital is often more decisive

Now there is almost a consensus among investment institutions: there is less and less opportunity for long tails, and more funds will flow to the head companies and let the head companies Generate stronger scale effects.

A variety of statistics show that startups die too quickly, and the number one reason is wrong demand recognition.

More importantly, how to avoid misjudgement of market demand, investors are not sure.

If a subsidy is used to create demand and allow users to buy products and services that are not needed, the business model is unsustainable. If the subsidy is stopped, users will be lost. If the demand itself exists, the subsidy is only used to encourage users With more efficient consumption methods, users will continue to accept new methods, such as ride-hailing and Internet take-out, after subsidies cease.

Investors are generally more willing to enter the market, where the demand is becoming clearer and commercialization is more mature.

For example, even though Pinduoduo has huge annual losses and huge subsidies, the surge in users (the number of active users has exceeded the 500 million mark) has actually attracted many investors.

It is not so much subsidizing users as it is subsidizing investor confidence.

How to detonate users

In recent years, there have been fun riots almost every year.

For example, the “Ice Bucket Challenge” that was popular all over the world, including Lei Jun, Jack Ma, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and other business leaders have gone crazy; this year’s hottest riot in the country is probably It is a “blind box game” that the “post 90s” and “post 00s” circles are playing.

 Free Age 2.0: The Right Way to Send Money | Li Meng's Theory of Relativity

You may be particularly confused: How can these so-not-technical games attract so many people to follow and follow? go Ape?

American sociologist Mark Granovetter-the sociologist who is best known for inventing the concept of “weak ties”-has proposed a “threshold model of turbulence.”

Unexpectedly, this model of turmoil has been played by Chinese Internet companies (Pinduoduo, interesting headlines).

There are three kinds of people in the world:

The first kind of person dares to try anything new and will act without any incentive; the second kind of person may have an idea, but the defense is too heavy, and he will only play if others play; the third is more This kind of person, who had no idea at first, saw that many people participated, and he followed suit.

The first person ’s psychological threshold is between 0-5, and there are at most 5 people around to play, and he will play; the second person ’s psychological threshold is more than 10, and there are more than 10 people to play, he only Will play; the third person’s psychological threshold is more than 30, that is, seeing more than 30 people playing, close to detonate a commotion, will also come to follow suit.

Red envelopes subsidize users, or other user incentives, mainly for those who need to be guided if their psychological threshold exceeds 10.

The first tester of this turbulent model was Airbnb.

Airbnb’s main business is shared housing. For example, if you have a house in Beijing that is temporarily empty, you can post an advertisement on Airbnb and temporarily rent it to tourists for a few days.

It is extremely difficult to establish this business, because you have to set off two riots at the same time as the landlord and the tenant.

I want visitors to come to your site and check for availability. There must be a lot on your site.Someone who inspired you and changed your life.

Today’s “send money marketing” is like pulling you into a game scene, constantly pulling your needs, and then satisfying you and making you happy.

Some product managers are said to have found hundreds of people at the same time and talked for thousands of hours. Jealous, helpless, venting …

This is no longer a traditional subsidy and incentive for users, but a thorough grasp of the user’s “biological mood curve”.

The ability to make games is actually the ability to grasp the user’s emotional curve.

The most important part of game design is the user’s incentive mechanism.

The “micro will” of each individual as an individual and the “macro action” of integrating into the crowd can be very different. It depends on how you knead all kinds of uncertain refreshments and certain refreshments together to make the users endless pleasure and excitement.

Smart marketing is endless turmoil.