How to sell popular products in the era of private domain traffic?

What is a hot product? Not only do we need to make good products, we also need to sell them well. Many people know how to make good products, but don’t know how to sell them well.

01. Users are changing, channels are changing

Users are changing. What are those born after 1995 thinking?

Channels are changing, how do you find a sales channel that suits you?

The way of transaction is changing. How can you sell your products well among various sales methods?

In the new retail era, there are three trends in user changes:

• Cognitive interest and specialization;
• Generational differences are growing;
• Internet natives occupy the consumption high ground.

When we study the underlying logic of business, the first thing we must consider is the user, because all innovations in profit models are inseparable from deeper insights into consumer purchasing needs and paths.

As a business entity, age is not a scary thing; what is scary is having an old mentality.

In an ever-changing era, we must be more thoughtful in our choice of channels. We must not only understand what we want to do, but also keep up with the pace of innovators of the times.

When talking about channel innovators, we have to talk about social e-commerce. From the perspective of traffic acquisition alone, social e-commerce is more advanced. We can compare it to a "shared promoter". It solves the problem of consumer trust endorsement to a certain extent.

Before purchase, the user reach rate is relatively low, but in a simple competitive environment, KOLs will make the transition between the three links of cognition, consideration and inclination smooth and efficient, thereby increasing the conversion rate. Although KOLs participate in profit sharing, their sales function is also real.

The following three trends have emerged in the channel evolution of the new era:

• The one who is near defeats the one who is far away;
• From demand guidance to mind interception;
• It is not limited to making transactions, but also to closing loops.

Correspondingly, we should also focus on the following three points:

• IoT device shopping portal, annual fee sales, etc.
• Most of the second-tier e-commerce companies are of the mind-interception type;
• How to achieve good sales in a closed-loop channel.

02. People will become the core of social business

Social e-commerce is the second half of e-commerce, and it has lowered the threshold for e-commerce platforms.

In the new retail era, the relationship between people, goods and places has changed. In traditional e-commerce, "people" go to find "goods" through the "place" of e-commerce platforms, while in social e-commerce, "goods" go to find "people" through the "place" of social platforms such as WeChat.

In social e-commerce, "people" become the carrier of commodity circulation, and the platform is the carrier of display.

Social software has become the core "field", with "people" replacing traditional media and bringing traffic to the platform through "goods".

One of the foundations of social e-commerce is the development of social software. WeChat is currently the largest carrier. As long as WeChat does not charge product traffic fees, now is the bonus period.

In addition to WeChat, Weibo, QQ, Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, etc. can all become carriers.

Social e-commerce is a dynamic fission field that rapidly fissions through the transmission of benefits. KOL is an important node in social e-commerce.

So how do you build your own social e-commerce?

You can build your own social e-commerce by simply selecting a product.

• Build your own brand and products;
• Prepare content that attracts the community;
• Find target customers;
• Create a WeChat group to send messages regularly.

Social e-commerce platforms have the following six elements:

• Brand planning (website positioning);
• Supply chain (commodities);
• APPs and mini-programs;
• Community rules, rebate system;
• Product operation;
• Community operation.

User operation is an important part of social e-commerce. Social e-commerce user operation can be carried out in the following four steps:

• Traffic: Obtain traffic by exposing your brand and products on WeChat;
• Conversion: Attract potential customers to place orders through brand and product materials;
• Repeat purchase: Through brand building, platform tone, good products and services to form word of mouth, and then through the community to drive customers to repeat purchase;
• Fission: Through the sharing and rebate model, we continuously educate members and guide the community to develop fans and convert them into paying members.

Common mistakes in community operations include:

• Just add people but don’t chat;
• Don’t manage fans;
• Just posting without interacting;
• Lack of positioning;
• Inertial thinking and lack of learning.

Getting a bargain is a basic human desire, so we must make full use of human nature in social e-commerce. The core of the second half is to recommend good products to friends, and this is the opportunity.

Social e-commerce is decentralized, and circles are a prerequisite, so you must position yourself well and don’t have to be the same as others. You must think about who you are serving, identify your positioning and values, and form an identity with consumers, which is more important than anything else.

03. Taobao sales are simple, crude and direct

The gameplay in Taobao should be simple and crude, and it does not necessarily have to be fun, because when consumers focus on fun, it will affect their shopping decisions and their attention will be diverted.

The conversion is direct within Taobao, so a simple, crude and direct path is different from the method of transferring traffic from outside Taobao through "two Weibo and one Douyin".

Judging from the data, the post-90s generation has risen, with a high proportion of consumption in the beauty and cosmetics category and a high repurchase rate. Hobbies and interests are very important reference standards for shopping. Consumers are more willing to buy products recommended by their favorite celebrities/KOLs.

Content marketing is now an inevitable choice. Its communication characteristics include networking, strong interaction, and precise algorithms. Its brand path is actually loyalty - reputation - popularity (the same as Xiaomi's approach).

The reason for this path is that the era of content marketing is the era of KOL fans, so the first thing to do is to maintain the loyalty of fans, and then slowly increase reputation and popularity.

There are three main forms of content marketing in Taobao, including pictures and texts, short videos and live broadcasts, and different content marketing forms are used at different stages.

Generally, pictures and texts are used for coverage. For a WeChat public account with the same number of fans, it costs at least 10,000 yuan to publish an article, while pictures and texts on Taobao only cost a few hundred yuan. Pictures and texts can quickly cover the audience at a relatively low cost.

Short videos are generally used to demonstrate product usage scenarios and to motivate consumers; live broadcasts are combined with promotional policies to harvest traffic. For example, if we want to sell sunscreen, we will first publish a lot of pictures and texts to tell everyone that girls must wear sunscreen, otherwise they will age, and that sunscreen is divided into chemical sunscreen and physical sunscreen, and what are the differences;

Then we will make some short videos to compare horizontally, telling you why our sunscreen is better than other brands and what different effects it has;

At the end, they did a live broadcast, saying that it was buy one get one free, and if you don’t buy it, it will be gone, so they could reap the benefits.

We recommend that the investment ratio of the three forms is 3:2:5, of which 5 is used for live broadcast, 3 is used for pictures and texts, and 2 is used for short videos.

The three steps of Taobao marketing: accumulating strength to plant grass (consumer reach) - cultivating grass with quality (consumer influence) - promoting mowing (consumer conversion).

A clear consumer portrait is the prerequisite for marketing. The consumer portrait is a direction, not a result. Don’t assume that all people who buy my products belong to my consumer portrait.

User portraits are divided into two parts: information data and behavior data. Information data is basic static data, which is related to the characteristics of the consumer itself. Behavior data is the consumer's dynamic data, which is related to the consumer's purchasing behavior and daily life.

The brand tone, influencers and consumers must be consistent and the matching must be precise to achieve good results.

04. How can new brands do well in online retail?

The product is very good, but why is it not selling well on major e-commerce platforms?

What new changes do new brands face when entering online retail?

Many new brands will encounter the following three major problems in the early stages of operation:

• Low brand awareness, insufficient brand exposure, and low consumer awareness;
• The unit price of the product is high, the purchase decision time is long, and the consumer's threshold for trying is high;
• Traffic on the Tmall platform is concentrated, the traffic cost for new brands is high, and sales growth is slow.

For example, many new brand products that sell well on Xiaomi Youpin have poor sales on Tmall. This is because the operational success factors for self-operated e-commerce and C-end e-commerce are different.

The differences are as follows:

1. Store display management:

• Xiaomi Youpin: shelf-style, daily maintenance of home page and detail page;
• Tmall: Brand store style, product selection/display/visual pricing/page iteration.

2. Traffic and platform activity management:

• Xiaomi Youpin: a human-based system, private negotiation-based resource acquisition;
• Tmall: Legal system, open and competitive resource acquisition.

3. Sales customer service:

• Xiaomi Youpin: service-oriented, low consultation rate;
• Tmall: Sales-oriented, large number of inquiries/many questions, long consultation time, and picky customers.

4. Supply Chain Management:

• Xiaomi Youpin: order-based, shipped from different warehouses;
• Tmall: full-link, warehouse entry and exit management.

5. Order management:

• Xiaomi Youpin: platform, account-checking management;
• Tmall: Full path, large amount of financial information management.

To build your own brand store, you can start from these two aspects:

• 1. Warehouse management of own warehouses;
• 2. Improve customer service quality, build professional customer service processes, effectively manage customers entering the store, and improve after-sales service.

05. Think in terms of categories and express with brands

In the eyes of consumers, a brand is an expression of the product, a symbol, and a label that reduces the difficulty of choosing.

Difference is the only way for a brand to survive, no other.

A brand is the result of long-term investment. Every link carries out long-term and continuous investment with the aim of keeping in touch with consumers frequently.

In fact, more can be done, for example, involving consumers from the development stage.

There are several ways to build a brand:

Traditional industries: Lose brand awareness - build reputation - maintain loyalty

Internet industry: reputation, popularity and loyalty

Xiaomi's reputation path: Focus on loyalty - reputation - popularity

"Fan economy" refers to private domain traffic , and Xiaomi's fan economy is so large that it is almost public domain.

So how can we use "fan economy" to do brand marketing?

Ultimately, it is about making users feel involved and respected. Xiaomi’s approach is to make friends with users.

1. Take the initiative to communicate with users, and users will feel your sincerity.

“Few companies have established direct communication channels with users, and few users feel that they are valued by companies. So when Xiaomi appeared, users were moved.”

2. When users participate in product development, tolerance will be higher.

"In the early days, the core content of Xiaomi's communication with users was products. We communicated with users from the beginning of design and development. This way, users would be more tolerant and allow products to have flaws because they knew Xiaomi would definitely improve them. There was a sense of co-entrepreneurship."

3. The entire team must communicate directly with users.

"Xiaomi is making friends with its users and letting everyone participate in product development. It's not just about doing internal testing and writing soft articles, but listening to users' complaints and letting all team members communicate directly with users. It's not just about relaying, but there should be some skills and it can't be too stiff."

4. Good copywriting comes from conversation.

Because instead of spending more energy and money on marketing, you might as well invest your sincerity and ask users for feedback on your products. Even in promotion, the user's real experience is the best copywriting.

5. Cultivate KOLs among rice fans, not commercial KOLs, but KOLs among fans.

For example, establishing a membership system, giving honors to members, and giving core members greater trust; giving honors to Mi fans, such as Xiaomi Home VIP; giving the most core and loyal Mi fans the greatest trust, such as the MIUI experience version.

06. Leverage information flow advertising to play marketing

With the rapid development of mobile Internet, a new marketing method has attracted widespread attention from many business owners, that is, "information flow advertising".

The characteristics of information flow advertising are: native content, precise targeting, data tracking, and one swipe.

The mainstream platforms for information flow advertising are generally Tencent, Weibo, Baidu, Toutiao, Douyin, Zhihu, etc.

The advertising formats are generally single image and text, multiple images and text, or video.

To do a good job in information flow advertising, it can generally have the following functions: increasing fans, deepening the value of fans, collecting leads, selling products, etc.

So, how should information flow advertising be done?

1. Choose the right product

• What’s hot and what’s selling?
• What is sold in what season?
• The price of a single item is less than 200?

2. Find the right people

• Large platforms focus on crowd targeting, while small platforms focus on user structure;
• Large platform - large traffic and wide range of people;
• Small platform - vertical traffic and precise audience.

3. Speak in dialogue

• Quickly attract attention;
• Hit the pain points, refine the selling points and promote purchases.

4. Online testing + tracking feedback

To make a hit product, you need to be good at both product development and marketing. Both hands must be strong.

Related reading:

1. Product operation and promotion: How to compete for traffic?

2. Community Operation丨The essence and gameplay of "private domain traffic" in 2019!

3. Product operation: 2 major ways to get started to accurately capture private domain traffic!

4. Promotion and marketing: A brief discussion on vlog’s brand marketing and traffic monetization!

5. User operation: user growth in the post-traffic era!

6. Online marketing promotion: How to spend big money? Fine-tuned operation of large traffic!

7. Is the popular “private domain traffic” really that powerful?

8. 9 thoughts behind private domain traffic, fission, and sinking market

Author: Barn Entrepreneurship Observation

Source: Barn Entrepreneurship Observation