3 tips for promoting hot-selling products!

How to make a product a hit? If you want to create a hit product, you must first select the product. So how do you choose the right product? In this article, the author combines his own thinking to share his product selection strategy from three aspects: core ideas, market selection and product selection thinking. I hope it will be helpful to you.

1. Core Idea

Product selection is not about looking at what others are doing to make money and then immediately doing what they are doing. This is called "following the crowd." Profits definitely do not come from following the crowd.

I think we need to have an overall idea. A blind start will 99% lead to a blind end.

What kind of product selection ideas are most suitable for ordinary people?

Answer: Pick on the weak ones!

What's the meaning?

We must choose products that are easier for us to do, with lower costs and less risks.

Let me give you an example. Product selection is like taking the subway. You enter a car at random and find that there is no seat, or even people standing everywhere. What should you do if you want to get a seat? Change to another car and go to the front or back to see if there is any space.

The process of finding a seat is to select products. There will be no seats in crowded places.

Remember, we are "looking for the easy target"!

Next, the second point.

2. Market Selection

Continuing with the previous example, the decision of where to find a seat, whether to go forward or back, or wait here, this decision is market choice.

I divide the market into three types:

1. Red Sea Market
2. Blue Ocean Market
3. Dead Sea Markets

1. What is the Red Ocean market?

Two words can sum it up: "involution". Everyone is doing the same thing, with the same thinking, and the result is extreme involution, and only the best can win.

For example, my classmates and I occasionally have dinner and drinks together. Whenever we talk about starting a business, the first thing they think of is opening a store, either a restaurant, a bar, a milk tea shop, or a coffee shop, which is so elegant.

Excuse me for being blunt, but if you really implement this idea, you will most likely fail and end up in huge debts. It's better to just go to work and live peacefully.

This kind of industry with fierce competition and serious internal circulation is called a "red ocean market"

In the red ocean, most products are "standard products" with no differentiation at all. If you have it, I have it too; if you don't have it, I don't have it either. We are all the same, so in the end we can only compete on price to see who has the lower price.

2. What is a blue ocean market?

There is relatively less competition and a larger profit margin. The market demand may not be as strong as in the red ocean, but there are fewer competitors or the competitors are weaker. Such a market is a "soft persimmon" that is suitable for us to enter and squeeze.

3. What are the Dead Sea Markets?

In a word: ordinary people have no chance to enter at all, and even if they enter, they will die! For example, if you have no money and no background, but want to make mobile phones, cars, or do things that only big capital can do, then what else can you do but the Dead Sea?

Of course, the red ocean, blue ocean, and dead sea that I mentioned are all relative. Relative to each person’s funds, background, and resources, what is the most painful thing in this world?

In some industries, even if you have poor information, you still cannot do business because you have no resources, no connections, in two words: no money.

What others see as a blue ocean may be a red ocean or even a dead sea to you. Due to different strengths, our definitions of red ocean and blue ocean are completely different. The blue ocean business that Wang Sicong can do may be something that ordinary people like us cannot even get through the door.

3. Product Selection Considerations

1. The most important principle

If there is any most important principle in product selection, I think this must be the first one. It is simply "common sense", but many people "go astray" while doing it.

Principle: neither black nor gray .

Never make black or gray products. The risk is too high and you may even get yourself involved.

The Internet is now very popular. Everyone who can access the Internet is online. Ten years ago, the Internet was an incremental market. At that time, there were five types of products that were particularly profitable: medicines, medical care, breast augmentation, weight loss, and height increase. These were called the "five black categories." Even without any qualifications, you could just do whatever you wanted and advertise everywhere on the Internet to increase traffic.

I have seen several brothers who got rich by selling men's products and the black five categories. They made millions or even tens of millions of profits a year. But what happened next? Everyone is used to staying in their own comfort zone, probably because it is too easy to make money, so they don’t want to change track at all, and they are obsessed with it. All their focus is on how to make money and how to do it safely and legally. But they were still caught. Because their sales volume was so large and their performance was so impressive, they received a large number of complaints on 315 and were eventually sent to jail.

You must have seen such news.

So, no matter what product you make or what industry you choose, don’t go for the dark or gray. Even if you just stand still and observe, don’t rush in blindly. Maybe you are rushing into the abyss…

Let me tell you another true story. I know a buddy of mine, a young man born in 1990, who started making red sandalwood products in 2017. There were so many types of products that I can’t remember them all, but they were mostly cultural relics. He made around 10 million in sales every month and around 100 million in turnover a year.

At first glance, don’t you think this kind of product is risk-free and normal? Yes, I thought so at the beginning. By the first half of 2019, all his companies were dissolved and closed. Why?

Because it involved feudal superstition, it was fine if it was small, but if it became big and began to attract local attention, he was decisive and acted immediately to close the business and stop it.

Why does this product involve feudal superstition?

If you are just selling ordinary cultural and artistic products, this is of course not a problem. However, if you work in this industry for a long time, you will find that the average order value is extremely high. Some bracelets even cost hundreds of thousands of yuan per order. Most of the methods used to sell bracelets at a higher price involve "feudal superstition." You must have heard of "consecrated" bracelets.

For example, if I take an ordinary bracelet worth 1,000 yuan to a temple and ask a master to consecrate it, can I still sell it for 1,000 yuan? If it has been blessed by different masters from several temples, and even has videos and photos to record it, can it still be sold for 1,000?

So some products, although seemingly harmless, are prone to "going astray" after they become larger. Once they go astray, risks arise. This is why my first principle in selecting products is: neither black nor gray.

What’s the most troublesome thing about product selection?

You have worked hard in an industry for several years, but end up having to start all over again, from scratch, without any accumulation of your previous efforts.

How to avoid this from happening? Be sure to choose products that are neither black nor gray to avoid major risks.

In this regard, you can read my previous article, which discusses three key risk issues in the process of team expansion: "Zheng Yinuo: What should you do if your employees threaten to sue you? 》

2. A formula for making money

Any money I make is related to the following formula. I recently posted it on the wall and look at it and think about it every day. It will also be my "judgment standard" for future product selection.

What is this money-making formula?

Performance = traffic × conversion rate × average order value × number of repeat purchases;

I believe you must have heard or seen similar formulas. Simple isn’t it? It's very simple. But the simpler things are, the more useful they are, it's true.

A lot of thoughts can be extended from this formula.

For example, a question I have been thinking about recently is, what is important when reselecting products now? What is the most important thing?

If you want to make more money, you need to think in 4 dimensions:

(1) Traffic

Is it possible to get traffic on different platforms, such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Taobao, Baidu, or any other means? Is there any way to continuously get traffic? The essence of Internet business is traffic. Whoever can continue to get more low-cost + accurate traffic can continue to make money.

Let’s not talk about individuals, let’s take a look at what the major Internet giants are doing. Grab traffic!

How does Taobao make money? flow! How does Tik Tok make money? flow! How does Baidu make money? flow! How does Weibo make money? flow! How does Xiaohongshu make money? flow!

The essence is that the big guys wholesale traffic at low prices, and then retail it to various merchants. Taobao Direct Express advertising, Baidu keyword advertising, and Douyin’s Doujia Qianchuan are all forms of retail traffic.

Behind every demand is a group of people and a group of traffic. So starting from the traffic, we can think about which demands have large traffic, which demands have small traffic, which demands have higher traffic consumption capacity, and which traffic has too poor cost performance.

For example, do the traffic for mass consumer goods, daily necessities, food, clothing, housing and transportation, which are daily necessities, become huge? Very big! But is it suitable for ordinary people to do? It is quite difficult because everyone will think of this kind of large traffic demand. You do it, and I do it too. In the end, it all comes down to price. Whoever has a larger volume can make money.

What platform is suitable for this kind of mass consumer goods with high traffic and high demand? I will analyze the different properties of traffic later.

(2) Conversion rate

Thinking from the perspective of conversion rate, what is the most effective way to improve conversion rate?

Low price! Under high traffic demand, low price is likely to be the most efficient means to improve conversion rate. For example, 12 packs of tissues for 9.9 yuan including shipping, a book for 8.8 yuan including shipping, and a garbage bag for 5.5 yuan including shipping, do you think the transaction rate is high? It must be high, 2 out of 10 people will buy it! Where do you see the most of these products? Pinduoduo!

Are there other factors that affect conversion rate?

Of course! Price is the most direct and marketing is the most effective. The transaction rate can be increased by packaging the product's value with soft articles, building personal image, creating a brand, and enhancing trust. However, this method is more suitable for selling non-standard products. Only non-standard products can be sold at high prices and are worth our time and effort to create.

What is a standard product?

You have it, I have it, and everyone can have it. It is a product with unified standards and fixed brands and models. For example: shampoo, Xiaomi mobile phones, Midea air conditioners... and so on. These are all standard products. What does the conversion rate of standard products rely on? In the end, it all comes down to price.

What are non-standard products?

In a word, customers have this demand, but are not sure which specific brand of product they need, and there is no unified standard.

(3) Average order value

With the same effort and the same dedication, why not produce products with a higher average order value? Some products are naturally low-priced and cannot be sold at a high price, while some products are naturally expensive.

Everyone has limited energy and time. Selling clothing, shoes and hats is essentially the same as selling health products. The effort and time required are almost the same, but the returns are very different.

Running a company and opening a small shop as an individual business owner, both of you have to get up at 6 am every day and go home at 9 pm. In fact, the level of worry is almost the same, but the results are worlds apart. Why? Because the average order value exchanged for time is different.

If you have a choice, you must choose products with high average order value. High average order value means that each unit sold is more valuable, which means that the customer has more money, and it means it is easier, because price is the first factor in filtering customers.

Especially when it comes to service products, if the product is delivered in the form of service provided by you personally, the price must be high.

(4) Repeat purchase

Some products will be repurchased, while some products will not. What is the most sigh-worthy business on the Internet?

That means your customers only buy once. The customers you have worked so hard to get will only consume from you once, and may never consume from you again, and may never come to you again. All your energy can only be focused on constantly working hard to acquire more new customers and continuously developing new customers. Your business is a one-time deal.

If I were asked to choose products now, in my mind, the best products are those that can be purchased repeatedly, rather than one-time transactions. To put it bluntly, can your product reuse traffic multiple times? Is each piece of traffic that comes to you a one-time use or is it reused repeatedly?

In 2017, I had a friend who used to make various products, but he would stop doing it within half a year each time because the traffic costs were always getting higher and higher. He needed to constantly acquire customers and compete with his peers, which was very tiring.

Later, he chose a product: cat food, and he has not changed it until now! Cat food may seem insignificant, but it actually has a high repurchase rate.

In 2017 when traffic was relatively cheap, my friend accumulated at least 100,000 customers. Later, even if the competition became fiercer and the traffic price became more expensive, it had little impact on his performance because he had enough old customers to maintain his business. As long as he ensured good product quality, most customers would come to him again and again to buy.

Because he has been focusing on a product, he developed a membership card service, which binds a customer's cat food needs for one year. For example, if you recharge 6999 yuan at one time, you can get cat food and other services mailed to you every month. What is the purpose of developing this activity? Increase the average order value and lock in this customer for one year.

Back to the original question, if we have decided on a product, what factor has the greatest impact on our performance?

The answer is: average order value and number of repeat purchases .

In the stock market environment, everyone’s ability to obtain traffic is roughly the same, and the price of traffic and the difficulty of competition are difficult to increase in a short period of time. But what about the conversion rate? There are many influencing factors, and it is difficult to make a breakthrough or pull away a large gap from peers in a short period of time.

Conclusion: When it is difficult to increase traffic and conversion rate, increasing average order value and repeat purchase frequency is the fastest way to improve performance.

3. Traffic classification

There are two ways to find information on the Internet. One is people looking for information, and the other is information looking for people.

What is someone looking for information?

When we have a clear demand, we will search for corresponding keywords through search engines to find the information we need. The search engine here can be Baidu, Taobao, or Douyin. This is how people look for information.

What is information search?

When we are browsing Douyin and Toutiao, we always feel that the platform knows us very well. It will push what we like. The algorithm recommends corresponding content and advertisements based on your tags and preferences. This is information finding people.

These two ways of finding information can extend to three types of traffic: search traffic, e-commerce traffic, and social traffic. If divided by accuracy, search traffic is the most accurate, without a doubt. For the same product, if I can get search traffic, I will definitely not choose other traffic, because search is really accurate traffic.

It is very simple to understand. When you actively search for a keyword, it must mean that you have an active need and are looking for an answer.

When you are browsing Douyin, you don’t have any clear needs. The algorithm recommends content and advertisements to you, and your consumption is more based on impulse.

Which type of traffic is most valuable?

As mentioned before, search traffic.

Therefore, for some niche needs, the efficiency of acquiring customers through search traffic is the highest, and the transaction rate is also the highest.

The principle is just like selling excavators and selling facial masks are completely different approaches. It is difficult to see advertisements for excavators on Douyin, but it is easy to see advertisements for facial masks. Why?

Because the main form of traffic on Douyin is information finding people and algorithm recommendations, rather than purposeful search for information, this determines that the best-selling products on Douyin must be mass-demand products, such as skin care products, makeup products, and daily necessities. These products with broad demand all sell well on Douyin and are reasonably priced.

The traffic attributes of Douyin determine that whether it is short videos or live broadcasts, they are more "standard products" with mass demand. Products with a price range of 10-150 yuan sell best. If the price is too high, it will be difficult for customers to be "impulsive".

4. How to choose products?

I have written so much above, most of which is about the logic of "selection". Next, let's talk about "taste".

All products are produced based on demand. No one can tell you what specific product to make. Even if they tell you, you may not be able to do it, and you may not believe it. Where do most people's products come from?

When they see what others are doing to make money, they imitate or copy it. Because of past experience, most people choose products within a "very narrow" framework and cannot jump out of it. They can only make that type of product and only choose a specific type of product.

In the concept of demand, there is a person whose name you may have heard of? His name is Maslow. He proposed a pyramid model of needs. He has a book called "Personality and Motivation" which can give you an in-depth understanding of the hierarchy of human needs.

Demand can be roughly divided into five types, from bottom to top:

1. Physiological needs
2. Security needs
3. The need for belonging and love
4. Self-esteem needs
5. The need for self-actualization

When low-level needs cannot be met, it is impossible for people to pursue high-level needs. If they can’t even get enough to eat, how can they talk about pretending to be cool? This is the reason.

This is why I suggest that you do business with rich people, because the needs of rich people are often of a higher dimension. Having enough food is an imperceptible need for them. Once a need is met, they will never ask for it again.

Product selection is based on demand, product selection is based on demand, product selection is based on demand. I must say it three times because it is important.

Maslow's five levels of needs can be roughly divided into two categories:

1. Physiological needs
2. Spiritual needs

Physiological needs, such as food, clothing, housing and transportation, often have low unit prices, and most of them are standard products without much room for premium.

Spiritual needs are often where huge profits are made, and there is enough room for a large premium, which makes it my personal first choice for product selection.

For example, spiritual needs can be further divided by population:

• Men: lust, kidney-tonifying needs, quitting smoking and drinking, hair loss, emotions, etc…
• Women: Most of the demands are about beauty, weight loss, whitening, breast enhancement, freckle removal, eye wrinkle removal, acne removal, vaginal tightening, reproduction, anti-aging, etc.
• Old man: To be healthy. Cervical spine, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, three highs, and anti-aging.
• Child: Be smart. Potential development, exam tips, quick memorization, etc.
• Enterprise: To make money. Corporate management training, performance appraisal software, financial data optimization, tax planning, internal training, etc.
• Individual: The biggest needs are to make money and become stronger. Eloquence training, skills training, entrepreneurial projects, investment and franchising, etc.

Different types of demands can be broken down from different dimensions. The more detailed the planning, the more categories you can find and extend.

There is a core methodology here, and there are several key words that I have a deep understanding of: excavation, exploration, exhaustive enumeration, and traversal . A phrase: quantity works wonders .

The core methodology is: spend time to build enough sample libraries of your own, exhaust the nouns and descriptive words from all walks of life in this sample library, and use these words to explore and extend more products.

It’s a bit abstract to understand, but the more abstract things are, the easier they are to think about. As I said before, people searching for information is the most accurate traffic. So how do people search for information?

If it is in real life, you can get reliable answers by consulting knowledgeable professionals or experienced people. But what about on the Internet?

Through what? Keywords!

Various keywords are the key to connecting people and information. Often a keyword represents a "new world", especially some jargon and jargon. If you don't know it, you really don't know it.

Since keywords are the carriers of demand, if we can dig out enough keywords, we can discover enough "new worlds" that we don't know about.

Let me tell you a story about one of the people in China who owns the largest amount of bitcoins, Li Xiaolai.

How did he discover Bitcoin, a "new world" that almost no one knew about and studied 10 years ago?

About 10 years ago, Li Xiaolai realized the importance of information and was even more aware that different keywords might represent the key to a new world. However, his energy and time were limited, and it was impossible for him to research new information 24 hours a day. Even if he did it 24 hours a day, he would not be able to see much valuable information. So how did he do it?

He used a script to follow more than 18,000 people on Twitter (the foreign version of Weibo), and then used the script code to capture all the Weibo updates from these people every day. There are at least 30,000 Weibo updates from 18,000 people every day. It would take a month to read them all with the naked eye. What should he do?

He used keyword filtering, and through the keyword money, any Weibo content related to money would be automatically saved and pushed to him every day. In this way, for a period of time, the word money and BTC (Bitcoin) appeared very many times. Li Xiaolai wondered why these two words always appeared together, so he searched and found out. I won’t tell the rest of the story. He invested a five-digit amount in Bitcoin at the time. Now the average price of Bitcoin in December 2021 is about 300,000 yuan per piece.

What do I want to illustrate with this example?

I am telling myself and also sharing it with you. Product selection is based on demand, and the carrier of demand is keywords. The most practical and specific way to discover demand on the Internet is to discover keywords!

Do you understand?

I also found that demand flows between different channels . What does this mean?

If you copy something that is popular in channel A and sell it in channel B, it will most likely become popular as well. It’s like, if you take a joke that has been popular on Weibo and record it in a different format on Tik Tok, there is a high probability that it will also become popular. This is the "information gap".

Copy a hot-selling product that suddenly becomes popular on Douyin and sell it on Taobao; take an internet celebrity that suddenly becomes popular on Douyin, such as Zhang, and sell the same product as Zhang on Taobao. It will most likely become popular. This is the information gap, and it is also the product selection methodology used by many guys who want to make quick money.

The Douyin here can be replaced by any platform, such as Weibo, which is often the "upstream" of various news and gossip. It can also be Xiaohongshu, or it can be from abroad. As long as it is between different circles, the larger the circle, the greater the time difference in information dissemination. If this time difference is used well, it is wealth, it is a "product", do you understand?

If we explore the topic of "How to Select Products Better" further, the essence is intelligence mining and intelligence collection capabilities. There are several similar disciplines in this regard. If you are interested, you can study them, called "library and information science", "data science" and "social engineering". In the process of mining massive data on the Internet, if you know some programming, such as Python, it can really greatly improve the efficiency of data screening and mining. Of course, this is for professionals. For ordinary people like us, it is enough to understand the underlying logic.

This is also why there is a saying that programmers who understand marketing and products are amazing, awesome! fry! sky! Because the multi-dimensional competitiveness generated by the integration of multiple different dimensional capabilities is very difficult to surpass, this is the best threshold. At this time, other people's blue ocean market is a red ocean or even a dead sea in the eyes of ordinary people.

Speaking of "social engineering", I remember when I was in school, the Chinese Internet was still in its early stages. There was a type of website that was particularly popular, hacker websites, where all kinds of vulnerability attack software and tools could be downloaded from everywhere. I also liked to study it at the time.

I once used a username to obtain a website administrator's real name, Weibo, Taobao, Alipay, home address, names and phone numbers of related family members, and even passwords of certain forums. I used "social engineering".

If it were now, in 2021, what would be the more ruthless excavation?

As long as they know your information, they may even be able to dig out your ID card. I am sure you have all seen similar news, that the database of a certain website has been leaked again, and all user account passwords and other personal information have been leaked. Maybe everyone just treated it as a piece of news.

I have roughly studied it. Hackers specifically sell the leaked information. There is a "an wang". Okay, stop here. I can't continue to write about this aspect. If I write too much, I will be in danger.

I didn’t expect that I would talk about so much when I only wrote the fourth point. An article has already exceeded 8,000 words. I don’t know how many people can see this. I hope it will inspire you.

Let me summarize. I mentioned the core methodology of product selection earlier, and it can be summed up in two words: accumulation .

It is key to create your own product selection form and spend time to cultivate it every day. Develop the habit of analyzing your peers and outstanding people. There is a book called "Deliberate Practice". As long as you spend time repeating an action, it will become a subconscious behavior after a large number of times.

Product selection is such a skill. Product selection is not a mysterious ability. Believe me, it is just a cumulative process. There is no fancy tricks. It is just the difference between knowing and not knowing, that's all.

So, don’t ask others what products they make anymore. If they tell you, just share it and thank you. If they don’t tell you, it’s also very normal. Most people’s products have no competitive barriers. It’s just the difference between knowing and not knowing. Mastering your own product selection methodology is more meaningful than knowing what he makes.

5. Do private domain

I have written before that if I were asked to choose products, I would definitely choose high-priced products, as the same effort would give me a greater return. But if I want to sell them at a high price, where is the best place to buy them?

WeChat!

WeChat is the best place to build a personal brand and personal price barrier. The same product may sell for 10 yuan on Pinduoduo, 20 yuan on Taobao, and 25 yuan on JD.com. What about in the WeChat private domain? It can be sold for more than 100 yuan because in the closed private domain of WeChat, users have no comparison.

Imagine that when you buy things on Taobao, you will compare. Because there are enough product choices and the price range is rich enough, this means that if too many people make a product, Taobao will eventually become a price comparison platform without any long-term advantages.

In conclusion, no matter what product you want to make in the next few years, try to do it in the private domain if possible, because it is convenient to sell it at a high price and for a long time.

6. Complaint Platform

I originally planned to share 12 points with you, but the article is too long, so I will end by sharing a ready-made trick that you can use right away.

There are many 315 complaint platforms on the Internet, and I often visit them myself. You can find many different types by just searching.

This type of platform is mainly for consumers who encounter disputes after purchasing products and post requests for help and complaints online. We can also work backwards and think, for what kind of products would consumers take the time to complain and describe their experiences?

• This product sells a lot and has huge sales volumes. With large volumes, miracles can happen and naturally complaints will arise.
• The consumption amount is very high, so I have to complain. If you buy a product with free shipping for 8.8 yuan, even if the product is bad, you will probably think about giving it up, after all, you have to pay more for postage.

Therefore, most of the products that can generate complaints on these platforms are those that sell well. Regularly checking these platforms will broaden your horizons and you will often have the thought, "Original people are selling this." At the same time, look at the content of consumers' complaints. If a brand has a lot of complaints, you can find out the product's average order value, main means of acquiring customers, and marketing methods through the comments.

Author: Zheng Yinuo

Source: Zheng Yinuo Methodology (ID: z40676746)