How does content e-commerce monetize traffic? 3 steps!

The author analyzes the operating logic of content-based e-commerce traffic monetization through the three-step marketing theory: curiosity, change, and choice. Through relevant competitive product analysis, we compare the advantages and disadvantages of traffic monetization methods of various content-based e-commerce companies, and put forward some of our own views and opinions on traffic monetization.

How can we monetize more traffic? This should be the question that all content e-commerce operators think about the most.

So let’s think about the essence of e-commerce conversion rate?

In 2017, Xiaohongshu began to invite celebrities to join the platform, which actually increased traffic, but the effect was not directly on the conversion rate. The black industry chain of fake Taobao positive reviews that was exposed last year also shows that e-commerce companies are racking their brains to improve conversion rates when operating content.

If we compare e-commerce with the sales process in physical retail, we can find that: in fact, content e-commerce is like a salesperson who wants to attract customers to sell goods, and the conversion rate is the probability of the salesperson's success .

A story about the sales of Audio City is quite enlightening in understanding this issue.

——In the 1990s, there were generally two types of sales in computer malls and audio malls:

The first type of salesperson stands at the door of the store and hands out flyers to everyone he meets: Would you like to buy a speaker? This type of sales accounts for 99%. They seem to be diligent, living in the open air and working hard, but they are just waiting for opportunities. They are called "street sales" and "flyer sales";

The second type of clerk will use product information to attract target customers, such as "Sir, this is made in Germany, come in and have a listen?"

If a customer enters the store, the first question the clerk will ask is: Do you listen to AV or Hifi, sir? ——The purpose is to distinguish whether the customer is an audiophile or just wants to listen casually. After selecting the music and turning on the amplifier and speakers, if the sound is really good, the customer may think that it is really necessary to change the speakers.

Finally, the clerk will offer a little price discount, but whether the customer will buy it at that time may depend on more factors, such as: price, price comparison information currently collected, etc.

The three-step principle of marketing

The three parts of this story actually correspond to the three steps of the classic sales principle:

1. Curiosity: Capture your customers’ attention and interest.
2. Change: Make customers feel the need to buy this product.
3. Choice: Let customers make choices in the moment, buy here and now, and pay for their orders.

Corresponding to the two sales behaviors, they can be compared as follows:

In this way, you can find that the advertising columns added to many e-commerce banners and the product information pushed on the pages are like the "street sales" in audio stores and the flyer guys in street gyms - they flirt with you when you click on the page, which is actually inefficient and affects the user's browsing experience.

Next, we will combine several e-commerce companies that create content and the three steps of marketing to do a simple competitive analysis on e-commerce conversion methods to see what e-commerce companies do when creating content.

• Select Xiaohongshu and Shihuo as direct competitors of content e-commerce;
• Tmall’s grass-roots circle has a large user platform and is also creating content. Dianping.com and Dianping.com are general competitors due to their similar functions.

By comparison:

Xiaohongshu’s way of conversion is: in the stage of arousing curiosity, it uses the celebrity effect to bring in huge traffic, and also plays an extended role in causing changes in users’ shopping.

The conversion advantage of Shihuo lies in its precise traffic connection with Hupu - the traffic users themselves are sports enthusiasts, and the consumer group and traffic source are relatively consistent. Hupu also has an advantage in professional content in the niche areas of trendy shoes and sports brands.

In contrast, Tmall's advantages lie in the powerful e-commerce operation capabilities of the Alibaba platform.

Small and medium-sized e-commerce companies pursue conversion rates, three steps are indispensable

Why are both indispensable?

For small and medium-sized e-commerce companies in the current market, the reason is that the user's mentality, scenarios and needs are completely different in the curiosity-inducing stage and the choice-inducing stage.

In the curiosity-inducing stage, users are still in a "wandering" state, and it is the weak driving force of interest that guides their behavior. At this time, directly introducing the commodity link, strong rational driving factors such as product information and price are extremely inconsistent with the user's psychological needs for "browsing". Unless the user is the target user of the product, it will be extremely difficult to achieve conversion, which will make the user uncomfortable and scare them away.

The link of "initiating change" in marketing is to transition the user's psychology . Use interesting and trustworthy content to introduce products to users, so as to use the characteristics of the products to trigger the target users' desire to buy. For example: After a professional audio store clerk leads a user into the store, he or she will first distinguish whether the user is an audiophile, and then recommend and try out suitable products so that the products can impress the user.

In contrast, the way many content e-commerce companies are built nowadays often only focus on the traffic and product terminals. For example, when image recognition became popular, there were e-commerce solutions that directly imported product links into social images through AI recognition. I believe that these solutions are unlikely to succeed. The reason is: users’ psychological needs for “browsing” and “purchasing” are different, so conversion cannot be directly guided.

There are only a few emotional consumption phenomena in the market that can indirectly skip the link of "triggering change", such as: fan economy and charging scenarios of some games.

Keeping users in the emotional state of consumption is certainly the most ideal state for a company, but most e-commerce companies cannot do it. However, when it comes to the "touch and choose" section, most small and medium-sized e-commerce companies find it difficult to compete with JD.com and Tmall. The reason is that the logistics level and supply chain costs of JD.com and Tmall have been very low, so the residual value of the "trigger selection" link is getting lower and lower.

Therefore, it can be seen that if small and medium-sized e-commerce companies want to share a piece of the pie with Alibaba and JD.com, it is more feasible for them to put in enough effort in the "triggering change" link.

During the product design process, in addition to implementing a three-step layout of functions and processes, users should also be stratified into three steps to correspond to different user mentalities.

Users at the interest layer should receive more push notifications to increase their attention and user time, as well as a small amount of product information recommendations in an attempt to move them to the change layer. Users who stay in the change layer should receive more refined product information and recommendations, and try to push product links to guide them to the selection layer. Seizing the existing target users and striving to advance them is equally important for online e-commerce and offline sales.

The next article will detail the simplified design and process implementation of three-tier user stratification.

Summarize:

1. Use the classic three-step marketing theory: arouse curiosity, cause change, and trigger choice to analyze the basic logic of content e-commerce;
2. Conduct competitive analysis on content-based e-commerce conversion methods to see their strengths and weaknesses;
3. The logic of e-commerce content should be layered and progressive, and push and content marketing should also be carried out in layers to users to achieve precise marketing.

Finally, I will list the typical means of marketing in the three steps of Internet e-commerce today. You are also welcome to add interesting means and methods that you have encountered offline and online, which aroused your curiosity, made you want to buy this product, and made you decide to buy and pay.

Source: Ten Mouth