Deconstructing private domain traffic: How to manage store private domain?

"Commodities first appeared in the Xia Dynasty, more than 4,000 years ago; the earliest restaurant appeared in the "post station" run by the Shang Dynasty more than 3,000 years ago; the earliest department store appeared in Paris in 1852. These undoubtedly prove that offline retail is the oldest business model. Stores, as an indispensable part of offline retail, have their own irreplaceable core value.

In 2019, store operations must not only provide good products and services for traditional operations. In the new era, we also have to do a good job in customer private domain operations. ”

Overview of store private domain

1. What is store private domain traffic ?

In the Deconstruction of Private Domain Traffic Series (Part 1), I mentioned that “Private domain traffic is to use personal or product endorsements to realize the monetization of the acquaintance economy.”

Private domain traffic is a kind of user thinking and also a channel for direct communication with users. The private traffic of a store means building a closed loop of private traffic belonging to the store.

It has the advantages of free reach, secondary operation and fission. For now, the lowest-cost way is to use personal WeChat accounts and Moments to build a private traffic pool for stores. However, using third-party systems or building your own systems is costly and not suitable for general mass stores, so it will not be discussed in this article.

2. What problems exist in store operations?

Many store owners may not be very clear about the concept of private domain traffic, but they have already tried to apply it in their own operations. So, what problems are currently facing store owners in their operations?

1) Not knowing how to manage private domain traffic

For many shop owners, opening a shop is just for a living or to make more money. The vast majority of people are not clear about where their customers come from, nor do they know how to manage their customers. Usually, just wait for customers to come.

Slightly better store owners, especially those in the restaurant business, will open stores on Meituan and Dianping and support takeout.

Of course, there are also people who try to create a personal WeChat account, but they only use WeChat as a sales channel. For example, in a supermarket near a community, the owner will tell you that you can add WeChat to order goods and have them delivered to your door.

2) Wrong business model

Taking personal WeChat accounts as an example, many store owners will never contact customers again after they add WeChat, unless they actively contact them due to needs. The community surrounding services mentioned above can still have a certain effect due to the necessity of errand running in certain scenarios.

However, other service forms, such as catering or entertainment facilities in commercial areas, will only result in the loss of most users.

3) Failure to form a closed-loop operation

Regarding closed-loop private domain traffic management, it is mainly reflected in two links: the diversion link and the fission link.

The traffic diversion links generally show exaggerated sales and disconnected services. For example: When a customer books a hotel online, the hotel advertises that the decoration, facilities and services are all very good. When I actually arrived at the store, I was transported back to 20 years ago. Many people have experienced this, which occurs in cheap hotels in the country and some old hotels in Hong Kong.

For example, customers ordered a buffet online, but when they arrived at the restaurant, they found that the variety of dishes was insufficient and there were serious quality issues, and they also had to endure cold service from the waiters.

The fission link is mainly manifested in the fact that the store owner has no fission awareness or does not know how to plan fission activities, resulting in an incomplete fission link and affecting the customer experience. For example: A customer knows that a certain restaurant is offering a "free meal" promotion, but when he actually arrives at the restaurant, no waiter knows the details of the promotion.

The problems with private domain operations of stores are far more than these. But the core difficulty mainly comes from the fact that store owners have no awareness of managing private domain traffic. Next, I will explain to you how to build a store’s private domain traffic operation system.

Find the right position and reshape cognition

The core of store operation is products, and the core of product brand lies in positioning. How to capture user awareness and create products and brands is the first step in building private domain traffic for stores. It should be noted that the "product" here does not refer to the actual product sold in a narrow sense. It refers to products in a broad sense, including "items" that users can directly purchase with money, as well as services and environments that users can experience.

1. Rebrand

When talking about brands, many people think of the name. Taking the author as an example, "Product Matangdui" is my personal IP, that is, my personal brand. For this article, "Deconstructing "Private Domain Traffic"" is the brand of this series.

For a store, a brand is not just a name, but also represents the values ​​and original intentions that the store owner conveys to customers. As for current stores, signs are generally composed of "name" + "function".

For example, "Auntie Wang's Noodle House" and "Brother Li's Restaurant" can be seen in the streets and alleys. Of course, a good brand must also be memorable, convey the owner’s story and have differentiated characteristics.

For example: Among the "Auntie Wang" and "Brother Li" all over the streets, the effect will be much better if you give it a name that highlights heritage and craftsmanship.

2. Find the right product positioning

Product positioning has four core points: users, scenarios, needs and value. For stores, the main thing is to highlight differentiated products or services.

• Find different users, solve differentiated scenario needs, and form a monopoly in a small range. For example: In the early years, local people in Guiyang generally opened shops later, so everyone could only meet their breakfast needs at home. When people from Sichuan and Hubei arrived, they seized this opportunity and opened breakfast noodle restaurants, steamed bun shops, etc. around the community.
• Find the unmet needs of the same user groups and create differentiated products. For example: Nowadays, many Sichuan restaurants only serve the same few dishes all year round. People who go there often feel that they are very authentic and still taste the same old flavor. But you can’t eat the same old flavors every day. A friend of mine who runs a restaurant in Mianyang not only sells classic Sichuan cuisine, but also creates his own new cuisine by combining Sichuan cuisine with other dishes. It not only solves the "authenticity" problem, but also retains people who want to try new things.
• Find the virtual needs of the same user groups and form differentiated services. For example: Early milk tea shops were generally located on the streets, renting a storefront and offering similar products. Later, many people began to highlight service, combining milk tea and bookstores to create book cafes, etc. This type of store is larger than the earlier ones and does not have strict requirements on location. Nowadays, milk tea has spawned many new categories, such as maid shops that focus on maid services and "Internet celebrity" shops carefully designed for selfie enthusiasts.

You will find that, unknowingly, "consumption" has become a new-age enjoyment, which is also a signal to store owners. Otherwise, you will have to keep running a “black” shop and earn hard-earned money.

Build a private domain traffic foundation

For details on the theory and construction system of WeChat personal accounts and community building, please see "Deconstructing "Private Domain Traffic" (Part 2) | How to Create a WeChat Private Domain Closed Loop? 》. The following mainly combines the private domain of the store to explain how to implement it in practice?

1. Create a personal store account

The personal WeChat account is where you establish direct relationships with users. It is also the best place to showcase shop owners and stores, so it needs to be carefully designed.

1) WeChat personal account four-piece set

The personal WeChat account is where you establish direct relationships with users. It is also the best place to showcase shop owners and stores, so it needs to be carefully designed.

• Avatar: It is taboo to use people or scenes that have nothing to do with the store in the avatar. Do not use simple store photos or signboards. It is best to use photos of the store owner or manager working hard in the store, or photos of the goods purchasing at the place of origin. In this way, while highlighting the person, you can also highlight the owner's professionalism or craftsmanship.
• Nickname: For now, the best name is: "Brand + Store". If the sign has this function, you can also use the sign name directly. Of course, if the store owner’s name is unique or well-known locally, you can also use the name directly to enhance the personal endorsement effect.
• Personal signature: A personal signature needs to be memorable and convey brand value. For example: a label of a supermarket, "XX supermarket, only sells fresh ingredients!"
• Background image for Moments: The background image can include store owner information, business stories, store photos, etc. But it is important to control the aesthetic sense to a certain extent so as not to make people feel uncomfortable.

2) Personal character building

The creation of the store owner's personal image is mainly reflected in the refinement of personal stories and the output of external image. Personal stories are extracted, mainly selecting typical personal stories of store owners in their entrepreneurship or life, highlighting tenacity, responsibility and positive energy. As for the output of a personal account’s external image, this is a long process. It is necessary to maintain a high-quality service attitude when serving every customer, try to think from the customer's perspective and solve problems for him.

3) Personal WeChat Moments Product Line

To build a Moments product line, you need to develop a content system based on the store owner’s content and publish no more than three posts a day. Take a store owner as an example: "30% of the store's value output (source control, service attitude, etc.); 15% of product sales (customer consumption in the store, feedback after use, etc.); 10% of jokes (complaints related to the industry or the owner, mainly teasing); 10% of entrepreneurial experience (entrepreneurship insights, annual summary or valuable suggestions); 20% of new products (new product promotions or activities)". This sample is for reference only. Store owners need to create content lines based on their specific circumstances.

2. Building a store community system

The construction of store communities mainly includes three aspects: community management norms, daily content system, and community activation and new customer acquisition.

• Community management norms: formulate group rules so that customers in the group have laws to follow. Mainly explain the prohibited terms, community service content, and benefits for active users, etc."
• Daily content system: mainly publishes content related to store products. For example: a fresh food supermarket can release promotional products and launch new products. You can also publish some production photos of the product’s place of origin to highlight its safety and hygiene.
• Community activation: In addition to using product discounts to promote activity, you can also introduce robots, such as the current WeChat group robots, which can tell jokes, sing songs, etc.
• Community attracting new members: There are two main ways to attract new members to the community: link conversion centered on personal accounts and WeChat group fission attracting new members. The link for personal account conversion is relatively long and will be explained in detail below. To attract new members to WeChat groups, it is recommended to focus on services and supplement them with promotional activities.

Private domain conversion link design

There are two private domain conversion links: the first is store traffic conversion centered on stores, which is mainly achieved through online and store promotion to accumulate consumption in stores. Second, through cross-industry cooperation within a 3-kilometer radius of the store, an external precise traffic sedimentation pool is built. Below, we will conduct a case analysis taking a restaurant as an example.

1. Store conversion path design

1) Off-site promotional content

Off-store promotional content includes both online and offline parts.

• Online part: Online traffic-generating platforms such as Meituan and Dianping.com mainly use attractive group meal selling point packaging and offer super discounts, and need to continuously accumulate store image through positive reviews. For food delivery platforms such as Meituan Waimai and Ele.me, the main thing they need to do is to package food delivery products that are cost-effective and profitable. The selling points can be to highlight health, taste, large portions and careful packaging. Previously in a product group, a friend sent a small card that he received with his takeaway food, which said “Add the store owner on WeChat and receive a 2 yuan red envelope.” This is also a good way of promotion, and it can also retain targeted takeout customers.
• Offline part: mainly store signs and windows. The store sign needs to be redesigned based on the store brand and product positioning reconstructed above. And add a sentence that is easy to remember to highlight the highlights and core values ​​of the store’s brand and products. The window can display some ingredients and their origins, dishes and some activity pictures to catch customers' attention.

2) Customers enter the store

Ten seconds after a customer enters a store, they will know whether the user is shopping in the store. After all, store design is the primary productive force.

• Shop assistants’ attire: Shop assistants should all wear aprons or uniforms with the store’s brand logo, and waiters need to wear protective masks to highlight the store’s formality, safety, and hygiene.
• Actively greet and guide: When a customer walks into the store, a waiter should take the initiative to step forward and say a standard welcome. When guiding customers to their seats, you need to quickly determine customer needs and recommend hot-selling or discounted products to increase user favorability. Example: When the author went to Beijing at the beginning of the year, he had dinner at a small ramen restaurant one day. There were not many people there that night. When I entered the store, the three shop assistants greeted me in unison, and when I left, they also wished me well in unison. It has been such a long time since I last visited the store, and although there were not many people there, they left me with an unforgettable impression.
• In-store material display: The store can use backdrops or posters to inform customers of the store’s standards and safety from food procurement to processing. Example: In order to highlight the "green" concept, a fast food restaurant in Shenzhen pasted a large ranch poster on the wall at the entrance, which is a bit like the green lawn desktop of the XP system back then. Although it cannot change the taste of food, it can make people happy and enhance appetite.
• Store hygiene: The store should strictly control hygiene conditions and keep the store clean. In terms of smell, there should be no lingering smell other than the smell of the food. Example: Hotpot restaurants usually have a strong smell of residual oil smoke, so the air should be kept fresh at all times.
• Store atmosphere: Any romantic restaurant will play some songs, especially Western restaurants, Japanese restaurants, etc. Some pastoral, campus or classical songs can also create a relaxing and pleasant atmosphere. If the store has the conditions, it can also publicize the story of the founder or owner. It is recommended to use promotional videos as the main content.

3) Customers are seated

Customer seating is the most important part of private domain conversion. There are many ways to promote users to convert to personal WeChat accounts. The details are as follows:

• Bait with posters for adding fans and fission: On each dining table, there should be posters for guidance and gifts such as adding personal WeChat today, taking photos and sharing on Moments, and inviting friends to join WeChat groups, so that customers can check them while waiting. Recommended gifts are dishes, discounts or small gifts of the store brand.
• Guidance on conversation skills: When serving customers, waiters can first spend 1-2 minutes to quickly guide table sharing to further improve conversions. It should be noted that the wording should be controlled within the range acceptable to customers, excessive promotion should be avoided, and customers' fear of being harassed later should be dispelled.
• Automatic reply after adding: In order to prevent customers from feeling the rigidity of the robot, when setting up the automatic reply script, you must humanize yourself to introduce who you are and what value or service you can provide to customers in the future. If a customer requires human service, it should be intervened quickly.
• Automatic grouping mechanism: Robots can be used to guide users to actively choose to join a group and then pull them into the group. Never group customers directly, which will affect the customer experience.

4) Customer dining

When customers are dining, this part mainly highlights the essence of products and services, and through differentiated services, enhances user favorability and improves retention. Example: Patrol waiters can be set up in different areas of the hall to avoid customers being unable to find waiters when they need them. In order to better meet the needs of customers, it is also necessary to set up "errand runners" who mainly take over the unfulfilled needs of front-line waiters.

5) Checkout

At present, the best way for restaurants to retain customers is still the membership recharge system. During the user checkout process, promotional signs should be set up and waiters should provide guidance in wording to encourage users to recharge and become VIP members. As for membership benefits, it is recommended that users enjoy them mainly in reality, with virtual enjoyment as a supplement. For example: recharge 1,000 yuan and get 200 yuan for free; recharge 1,000 yuan and become a VIP member, and get a special dish for free every time you make a purchase thereafter, etc.

6) End of meal

After the meal, be sure to visit the customer again. Even better, you can return the call via WeChat or phone when it is convenient for the user. The main purposes of return visits are: 1) to understand the user's consumption experience in order to improve their favorability; 2) to obtain suggestions to optimize services and dishes; 3) to understand the user's later consumption desire and ability to determine whether they can be developed into VIP users.

7) Build a VIP system

The VIP system needs to develop VIP services that encourage users to continue consuming and renewing their subscriptions based on the situation of the month. In addition, we must also focus on the basic information management and relationship maintenance of VIP customers. Compared with unstable individual customers, VIP customers are an important source of revenue. It should be noted that many stores do not support VIP refunds. I believe stores should make reasonable refunds within a certain range to improve customer referral capabilities. If customers do not want a refund, they can also transfer their membership to friends or other people. To manage VIPs, you can use some WeChat management tools, such as ChatDog. Please note that you must not use a new WeChat account to operate, as it is easy to get blocked.

2. Build an external traffic sedimentation pool

The store’s external traffic sedimentation pool is mainly used to build a stable traffic channel source within three kilometers of the store. The solution is as follows:

• Ground promotion: When a store is accumulating seed customers in the early stages, it can conduct ground promotion in front of the store or at the entrance of a nearby community. After the customer base has become somewhat stable, you can plan ground-marketing activities and let customers or the society work part-time to become ground-marketing staff.
• WeChat group: Taking department stores as an example, you can join nearby high-quality local life WeChat groups. Includes: nearby community groups, 58 city WeChat groups, local new media traffic groups, etc.
• Cross-industry cooperation: mainly traffic exchange and mutual promotion. Restaurants can attract traffic from hotels, Internet cafes, entertainment venues, etc.

Customer activation and relationship management

The customer activation and relationship management of the WeChat personal account system mainly rely on WeChat groups and Moments for information transmission and initiation. Take activities as an example:

• Online activities: When planning an event, you need to set up packaging bait product highlights, design activities and fission posters, formulate traffic-generating words for WeChat groups or add personal accounts, offline service experience composition, standardized employee training, etc. Shop owners who have the conditions can also conduct small-scale MVP verification in groups to continuously optimize the solution.
• New product launch: A new product launch is a special type of activity, which mainly uses seed users to create a sense of participation and develop products that users like. After the product is launched, attention should be paid to providing feedback to seed users to increase their continued participation.
• Offline activities: For restaurants or fresh food stores, the store owners can organize and take customers to visit the origins of raw materials and experience rural life. It should be noted that national laws stipulate that any organizer of an event, whether it is a profit-making or non-profit event, must bear responsibility, which is related to the right to be held responsible for accidents. To avoid disputes, store owners can make prior agreements or invite everyone for collaborative purposes rather than organizing activities to avoid responsibility. Of course, no matter what, the store owner must treat customers in a safe and responsible manner.

In addition, in order to ensure the smooth development of each operation and activity, employee training and business learning are also indispensable topics for every store owner.

Conclusion

This article explains how a store owner should build his or her own private domain traffic system from the perspectives of store products, private domain construction, and private domain conversion. There will be subsequent sections on enterprises and individuals, which will be explained with case studies, so please continue to pay attention.

Store management, as the industry with the most transparent cost prices and gross profits at present, still competes on product supply chain prices, payment terms, transit rates, breakage rates, store locations and management levels. The management of private domain traffic only involves the operation link. Without other links as a foundation, private domain traffic management will be meaningless. No matter how the market changes in the future, products and services remain unchanged, and everything is based on business operations.

This article is just to give store operators some ideas. Using the craftsmanship of a century-old store to make products and adopting new methods or strategies to operate the business is the way to ensure a store’s everlasting success.

Author: Richard.du

Source: Official account "Product Hemp Candy Pile"