E-commerce operation: 2 ways to play social e-commerce

This question comes from a supplementary question under a message:

I would like to ask about the operation of social e-commerce . How can we attract other customers to cooperate with us in the early stage? Or how to build your own social system? I'm in the clothing business here, and I'm sorry that my question is rather general, as I'm not very clear about social e-commerce. I think it's similar to WeChat business recruiting offline followers?

In fact, the question itself is not explained very clearly, so let me talk about social e-commerce from my limited perspective.

In my opinion, there are two types of social e-commerce.

• One is social + e-commerce. Social networking is the foundation, and e-commerce is the means of monetization. Utilize the seller’s personal credit and social resources to complete e-commerce monetization.
• The other is e-commerce + social networking. E-commerce is the foundation, and social networking is a means of acquiring customers and promoting decision-making. Utilize the social circles of interested parties or buyers to allow information flows to spread outward, and utilize consumers' experiences and evaluations to promote purchasing desires in consumers' social circles and realize transactions.

When it comes to social networking + e-commerce, what we probably see most often is purchasing on behalf of others, promoting products, KOL endorsements, and selling on behalf of others in friend circles.

E-commerce + social networking, Pinduoduo has already gone public, and Xiaohongshu and the like can almost be included in it.

There are actually two questions in the original question:

• Question 1: How to get customers to cooperate with you in the early stage?
• Question 2: How to build your own social system?

For these two questions, the questioner may be referring to the first type of social e-commerce, that is, social networking is the foundation and e-commerce is the means to monetize.

The first thing to point out is that if you want to do the first type, you don’t necessarily have to choose to do it in the WeChat ecosystem. Because other content social platforms may be able to do this more easily. Here are the reasons:

You are a seller, not a friend. Therefore, WeChat's limit on the number of friends and automatic screening and blocking of friends in the Moments when the number exceeds a certain number will not help in this matter. Therefore, a more appropriate approach is to make the ID you operate an expert in the clothing field on the content platform, which will make it easier to achieve sales. If there is a content platform that can help you quickly accumulate followers, you will have the opportunity to make sales to these people.

The second thing to consider is whether you are selling clothes or services. This is a positioning issue. If you sell clothes, you should target which group of people and sell which brand/style of clothes; if you sell services, who needs what kind of services you provide?

For example: For example, in the women's clothing category, do you deal in all categories and recommend high-quality and low-priced clothing to your users, or do you make dressing suggestions for your users but don't care where the users buy the brands or items involved in the dressing suggestions?

• To sell clothes, you need to find suppliers, who will ask you for supply, or you are a buyer yourself and will stock up, and you make money from the difference.
• When selling services, you need to find the user's pain points. What you sell is not clothes, but the service of providing dressing suggestions based on the needs of different users of different ages in different scenarios. You earn service fees.

Finally, where is the transaction completed? Mini program? Official account? Personal account? Taobao store? App?

The core of e-commerce is the integration of three flows: information flow, capital flow, and logistics flow.

It's very simple to understand:

1. The name of the product, the design of the details page, pictures, comments and displays of the product by purchased users, all fall within the scope of information flow.
2. The flow of funds is very simple. How do you give the user's money to you, how long is the account period between you and the customer, and how do you settle the accounts? These are within the scope of the flow of funds.
3. Logistics is simpler, do we need to stockpile goods? Whether it is in your own warehouse or the manufacturer's warehouse, who is responsible for delivery, how is the tracking and display of logistics information after delivery, and whether it is possible to query logistics information, these are all within the scope of logistics.

Now that these three aspects are taken care of, what remains is how to attract customers.

Here is a story that may help you.

When Chen Tianqiao first bought the operating rights of "Legend", he spent all the hundreds of thousands of US dollars he had accumulated in previous years. However, just having the operating rights of the game was not enough, he also needed servers and bandwidth.

So Chen Tianqiao went to look for Inspur and Telecom. I say I have an international standard contract here and I want to rent your server and bandwidth, but you have to let me use them for free in the first six months. Then I will pay the fee for renting the server and bandwidth after six months and sign a long-term agreement with you.

Then, the deal was actually made. The final result was that Legend was so profitable after it went online that in less than half a year, Shanda paid for the use of the bandwidth and servers and fulfilled its promise to enter into long-term cooperation.

This is a story, but this story was widely circulated within Shanda at the time, so we assume that the story is true. So, you may ask: Was it an international standard contract that impressed Inspur and Telecom and gave them the opportunity to cooperate?

I don't think so, because it is impossible that Inspur and Telecom have never seen similar contracts.

The reason is probably that the payment method proposed by Chen Tianqiao at the time was firstly recognized internally, and secondly, the contract signer took a fancy to the subsequent long-term agreement, so he allowed free rental in the short term.

So, in order for an unknown person to negotiate a cooperation with a supplier, in addition to having confidence in the results of your stage operations and having a plan, you also need some negotiation skills and strategies.

for example:

• Let the other party see the long-term value;
• Ask an influential middleman to promote the cooperation;
• Give the other party some foreseeable benefits, such as cooperation terms that are favorable to the other party.

These methods may help you complete cooperation negotiations.

Some time ago, I saw an interesting account on Zhihu. It initially just answered a funny question, and then was instigated by commenting users to buy the products mentioned in its answer. He then took advantage of the situation and asked these users to add him as WeChat friends, set up a group for crowdfunding, and then took the crowdfunding amount to find suppliers to discuss purchases.

It is not possible to judge whether it will be successful in the end. But this approach is actually feasible.

As for the second question, how to establish social relationships.

The example of the Zhihu account I just mentioned is actually a way to build social relationships.

Of course, you can also use other methods, for example, hang out on some content platforms, communities or even WeChat groups. After a period of operation, after establishing your own personal brand, you can import social relationships to other platforms, such as WeChat, Douyin, etc.

I won’t go into more detail here. I think social relationships are a very natural thing that needs to be accumulated, but there are methods. For example, I’ll give you a more interesting idea.

Suppose I have 100 friends today, and I post a circle of friends saying that I opened a clothing store today, and ask who is willing to help me recommend more people to know about my store. I will give everyone red envelopes according to the quality of the recommendation;

Suppose I have a good reputation in 10 groups today, I will prepare the link of my clothing store or make a nice poster or product link, and send a red envelope of 1 yuan per person to 50 people in each group, asking everyone to help me send the link and poster to the circle of friends...

Suppose I have good video script writing skills. I will write a script, take a selfie, cut 15 seconds and post it on TikTok. Then I will ask my aunts and uncles to forward this video for me. Then I will create a small account to ask questions, such as "Sister, your clothes are very beautiful. Where did you buy them?"

Hope this helps you.

If I have understood you wrong, what you want to do is not social + e-commerce, but e-commerce + social, we will discuss this separately.

Source: Zhangji Grocery Store