This sanitary napkin brand ran 112 public account advertisements in three and a half months and achieved sales of 6.1 million!

I am Zhang Xiaoer, co-founder of Qingshenghuo sanitary napkins. In 2014, my partner Tian Cheng and I became girlfriends and founded the brand Qingshenghuo, which mainly sells sanitary napkins that are easy to use and do not cause allergies. In just over a year, Qingshenghuo has grown from zero to a valuation of 70 million, with a user repurchase rate of an astonishing 40%, a referral rate of 15%, and a conversion rate of 18% on WeChat public accounts . This was something we did not expect.

Qingshenghuo has appeared many times in Youzan’s brand recommendation section

According to Xinbang statistics: 1 out of every 7 major WeChat accounts is engaged in content e-commerce , and public accounts seem to be gradually becoming a relatively accurate delivery channel for content e-commerce. However, when we asked our friends in the e-commerce circle about the topic of public account launches, the conclusion we got was often: either they had never launched one, or the results were dismal.

So, is the so-called content e-commerce a trend or a bubble? Is there a way for brands to generate sustainable profits by investing in large-size products?

Qingshenghuo can be regarded as a brand with a large number of domestic advertising campaigns, a relatively wide coverage, and a good control of input-output ratio. In recent months, we have also achieved considerable results in WeChat self-media advertising . I have summarized my experience over the past few months and would like to share it with you.

Let me first talk about our achievements in the past few months. First, we have created several small miracles:

An article with more than 10,000 views sold more than 2,000 orders, with a ROI of 1:16;

Sell ​​more than 8,000 orders a day and clear out the warehouse;

Our article, which usually only has about 30,000 readers, has now been promoted to over 100,000 readers.

However, these are individual cases, and it is impossible for every campaign to achieve such good results. So let’s take a look at the average data over a few months.

We started to launch large-scale WeChat public account advertising in mid-May, and the statistics are as of August 31st. Over the past three and a half months, Qingshenghuo has launched 112 WeChat public account advertisements, with a total advertising investment of approximately RMB 1.2 million, directly generating sales of approximately RMB 6.1 million, and an average ROI of over 1:5. Our average order value is less than RMB 80, and we average 1,000 orders per day, excluding weekends.

The averaged data may not be as cool as the previous ones, but the more valuable experience is that it is continuous and replicable. In my opinion, any success that cannot be replicated is not a success, it is just a coincidence.

Based on our practice and thinking over the past three months, we have found that in order to achieve good investment results, we must do well in three aspects: products, content, and channels. Among them, products are the foundation, and content and channels are the core. Let me analyze them one by one below.

product

The product is a threshold. What product you make and what brand you have basically determine whether the strategy of placing WeChat self-media advertisements will work. I simply classified the products into the following categories: 1. New categories, new brands. 2Old categories, new brands. 3Old brands, new categories. 4Old brand, old product.

Among them, I think the best thing to do is to create new brands in old categories, in other words, niche independent brands in mass consumer goods. The most difficult things to do are old brands and old products, because consumers are already familiar enough with the brand and products, and it is difficult to generate a sense of freshness and the desire to try them.

For example, Qingshenghuo makes sanitary napkins, which is already a very mature and conventional product category. However, Qingshenghuo has made a brand new upgrade in both packaging and product quality. In addition, this is a brand founded by two boys, so naturally there are points worthy of attention. Just imagine, if you saw Mimi Meng promoting Seventh Generation on a public account, your desire to buy it would not be strong.

content

Content and channels are of paramount importance. They have both independent and complementary parts. Let’s talk about the content first. In the past, we have seen a lot of content that seemed to have no trace of advertising. We were watching it with great interest, but suddenly, advertisements appeared out of nowhere.

I call this form of advertising "magic twist". The most classic advertisement in my memory is the one that Gu Ye made for Alipay . At first, we thought this form of advertising was very special and were happy to spread it. But as time went on, when everyone did this, readers actually became indifferent to it.

What's more, this form of advertising often results in readers only thinking that the advertisement is well-made, but they will not pay for the products in the advertisement, or even remember who the advertisement is being made for. (Just imagine, Gu Ye and Xue Zhiqian have run so many advertisements, how many brands can you remember?)

It is not difficult to see from the two completely different comment styles that readers' attention is completely different for different forms of content design. Therefore, unless you are only looking for brand exposure and have no intention of earning back the advertising fees through sales directly converted from the article, this kind of content design with a surprising twist is strongly not recommended.

So, how should we design effective content?

First of all, starting from the needs of readers, there are many factors that influence consumers' product purchasing behavior, including product quality, function, price, usage scenarios, brand power, emotional identification, other people's opinions, etc. After several attempts and explorations, Qingshenghuo has summed up two effective content structures.

1. Storyline

Reference case " Book List : This big boy made a sanitary napkin, and men are competing to use it to express their love! Women rush to use it to show their affection. 》

The logic of this clue is: the first half tells the true story of why the founder of Light Life, a big boy, chose to make sanitary napkins and the hardships he experienced in the process of making sanitary napkins, winning the readers' emotional resonance. The second half describes what kind of product was finally made and what kind of experience girls will get from using the light life product, allowing consumers to almost truly feel the joy after getting the product.

It is then endorsed by the blogger and his team's real usage experience, and finally a relatively preferential welfare policy is set up for the blogger's fans to promote conversion. The advantage of this structural setting is that even though readers know that this is a promotional article, they are still willing to read it carefully and generate secondary dissemination.

2. Product Line

Reference case "The Evolution of the Goddess: Group purchase | Breathable pure cotton sanitary napkins, no fluorescent agent, zero allergy"

The logic of this clue is simpler: the blogger starts by introducing in detail the brand and product's functions, quality, price, applicable scenarios, etc., and combines it with corresponding discounts to encourage readers to purchase and experience it. Although this clue is simpler and more direct, it requires the blogger to have stronger credibility and introduction ability. After all, talking about products is not as interesting as telling stories.

In the long-term advertising on large accounts, we also found another problem: from the perspective of bloggers, they always think that advertising is harmful to fans, and hope that the advertising content is as little as possible. In fact, there is a misunderstanding here: whether it hurts fans has nothing to do with the length of the advertisement, but with the quality of the advertisement. An excellent advertisement can actually win more recognition from fans than a mediocre article.

Booklist is a very typical case. This was the first time that Qingshenghuo and Booklist cooperated. The first sentence of the article stated that it was an advertisement. At that time, the average reading volume of the book list was 40,000 to 50,000, but after our advertisement was sent out, it exceeded 100,000+, which means that many more people than usual eventually forwarded this "advertising article".

channel

How can you screen out the high-quality channels that suit you from the total number of public accounts exceeding 10 million?

1. Look at the field : Based on brand characteristics and product categories, public accounts that focus on LOHAS, literature, emotion, and value output are the main scope of light life delivery. The user groups of this type of public accounts are both emotional and rational, they pursue a quality life, dare to try new brands, and accept new lifestyles. The public accounts endorse and support the brands, and the conversion rate is guaranteed.

2. Number of readings & number of fans : For the same 20,000 readings, the account opening rate of the account with 100,000 fans is better than that of the account with 1,000,000 fans, which means it has stronger stickiness. So, don’t blindly believe in the number of fans. Fans without stickiness are just a number.

3. Number of likes on the article & number of likes on the first comment : Clicking on an article counts as 1 reading number, but we may close many articles without even finishing them. If we like the article at the end of the article, it means that we have scrolled to the bottom of the article, and we can basically conclude that we have finished reading the article. Therefore, if the article has a high number of readings but few likes, it means that either the fans close the article halfway through, so you need to rethink whether the content is readable enough. Generally speaking, the number of likes is 1% of the number of views, which is a healthy ratio.

4. Number and quality of comments : Since we have to screen a large number of accounts every day, it is impossible to read every article carefully. Therefore, reading reviews is a more efficient method. If you find that there are a large number of comments and the content of the comments is thoughtful, it can be seen that the fans resonate with the content of the article. This shows that the content quality of this blogger is relatively high and he is a potential partner.

It should be noted that the number of followers, readings, likes, comments, etc. of a public account can all be brushed. Qingshenghuo once encountered a public account whose indicators seemed very good. However, after actually cooperating with it, it was found that behind the 100,000+ reading volume, there were only 80 UVs entering the store, and only 8 people finally made purchases.

This is the account with the most water in it that Qingshenghuo has encountered among more than 100 large-scale cooperating accounts. I hope others can avoid such "pitfalls", and I also hope that Tencent can strengthen the supervision and governance of public accounts that brush data.

There are generally two forms of cooperation between Qingshenghuo and official accounts: one is to pay a one-time promotion fee, and the other is to share the profits based on actual sales .

When estimating the input-output ratio of advertising expenses, we generally calculate a parameter called "single reading cost", that is, the cost of one reading number. Among these 112 large accounts, the lowest for Qingshenghuo is 0.15 yuan and the highest is 1.1 yuan; the average is about 30 to 50 cents per piece; if it exceeds 70 cents, we will consider it very carefully. In general, the lower the cost per read, the higher the ROI.

The advantage of the profit-sharing model based on actual sales is that risks are controllable, but the difficulty is that many big players did not accept this form of cooperation in the early days. In fact, for products with high conversion rates, if the cooperation is based on sales sharing, the income of the official account will often be much higher than the advertising fees. For example, the Goddess Evolution mentioned above has over 17,000 views, sold over 2,000 orders, and generated sales revenue of nearly 50,000 yuan.

Therefore, after Qingshenghuo started cooperating with various large accounts, many self-media also took the initiative to find our official account and invited us to cooperate with them on a profit-sharing basis. Self-media that are confident in their ability to monetize their fans are happy to accept this form.

Finally, in addition to the direct conversions brought by the content, what else have we gained in these three months:

1. In March this year, the official WeChat account yunyingdashu, which operated the uncle , had only 50,000 users. Without any mutual promotion, the number of fans of the service account exceeded 100,000 as of August. Moreover, Operation Uncle is one of the few brand service accounts that outputs high-quality content, with an average open rate of 30% for its tweets.

2. Qingshenghuo has also tried to carry out joint promotions with some brands that match its tone. In a recent tie-in sale, Qingshenghuo and a shampoo brand were combined and sold more than 2,000 sets on the same day.

3. More cooperation resources: After three and a half months of large-scale advertising, the Light Life brand has achieved more than 5 million exposures, including various self-media, high-quality brands, high-quality e-commerce platforms, etc. They took the initiative to find Light Life and reached more different forms of cooperation with us.

4. The most valuable thing is the thinking involved. There is logic behind every innovative model. The number of large sizes is limited, but once the logic is understood, more innovative ways of playing can be extended, and this is the most valuable asset of light life.