How to build a community from 0 to 1?

Communities are usually divided into two dimensions: parallel communities and vertical communities .

In the past five years, I have been studying community marketing in vertical fields. During the research process, I found that its monetization model is particularly strong.

So, today I want to share with you the community monetization model in vertical fields.

1. Community economy is an important form of future business

1. Origin of the community

Why do we need to build a community? This needs to start from the origin of mankind.

Tens of thousands of years ago, before concepts such as countries and cities emerged, humans lived together in tribes.

But since the improvement of the steam engine in the 18th century, mankind has entered the industrial age, and the entire human race has undergone tremendous changes! In the past 200 years, the population has increased 14 times and the overall social wealth has increased 240 times!

This means that the wealth created by humans in just over 200 years has caused the human development curve to show a leap trend. But this has brought about the emptiness of the human spirit.

In agricultural society, humans live in groups and help each other; but in industrial society, everyone is a screw in an industrial machine and human nature is suppressed.

Therefore, the Internet came into being. We call it "God's creation". It brings people together again and also brings together the tribal spirit of ancient times. However, the way of bringing people together has changed greatly.

What is the change?

• The tribes in ancient times were groups linked by region, blood, and clan.
• In the Internet era , it is an aggregation guided by values ​​and interests.

2. Characteristics of the tribe

In the Internet age, tribes have several characteristics:

1. Based on shared interests, values ​​and communication styles. If everyone is just a group of people gathered together without any purpose, it cannot be called a tribe.
2. There is leadership. A leader is someone who can transform everyone's common interests into a passionate goal. The tribal leader is the soul of the entire community, and every community needs such a leader. For example, the goal of a community homeowner group may be for everyone to eat better fruits together, or to help children with their homework so that they can do better. Everyone has higher stickiness because of this common goal.
3. Have followers. Followers follow the direction of the leader, so it is said that "a tribe has the power of one command and a hundred responses." Without followers, there is no leadership.

The other three characteristics come from the book "The Crowd". I hope everyone can have a deeper understanding of the characteristics of a group, so as to apply it more effectively and positively in our community economy!

1. "Group unconsciousness" replaces "individual consciousness". When we are individuals, we all have the ability to think independently. However, once we enter a group, in order to fit in and to stand out, we will keep in sync with the group, and we will then enter a collective unconscious state.
2. The intelligence of a group is lower than that of an individual.
3. Groups are easily suggestible and their emotions are exaggerated.

The emergence of these characteristics is related to the living environment of ancient humans. If they were separated from the tribe, their survival would be affected. Therefore, everyone will try their best to live in the group.

2. Community Building

There are three important steps to building a community:

1. How to find the first batch of super users ?

What is a superuser?

Initially, we considered those who followed us and were willing to help us spread the word to be super users. But now, we think that in addition to these characteristics, there should be one more attribute added - willingness to pay for your brand privately.

In 2018, the heyday of self-media passed. After the print media lost trust, self-media also gradually lost trust. The reason for distrust is that people think you are promoting this brand just because you are getting benefits from the merchant. Therefore, everyone is willing to listen to the advice of niche KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders).

The more niche and vertical the KOL advice is, the greater its influence on consumers . Another very important characteristic of this group of people is that they are willing to pay for the brand out of their own pockets in private.

Why look for a super user?

In the process of brand building, there are differences between traditional brands and Internet brands.

Traditional brands’ information communication is one-way. Whether we use television or print media, the wider the coverage, the more people we can reach. Therefore, when building a brand using the traditional model, one must first establish brand awareness; then, based on brand awareness, one must build reputation and loyalty.

The information dissemination method of Internet brands is a network structure.

To build a brand, you first need to get in touch with the brand, then find a group of people who are very supportive of and loyal to the brand, and then use this group of people to influence more people and build the brand's reputation; then continue to expand the brand's awareness based on the reputation.

The change in brand building model has led to a reversal in user building model.

In traditional sales , the classic model is called the sales funnel. First, you need to search for users widely, then accurately locate them among the many users, find and influence the target users , screen out potential users from the target users, then find ordinary users, and finally obtain loyal users.

For Internet marketing , we must first find loyal users, then find and influence ordinary users through loyal users, and then influence potential users through ordinary users, and finally expand and influence our target users.

The "80/20 rule" of Internet marketing means that 20% of loyal fans bring 80% of follow-up consumption. 20% of niche users lead the trend, and the remaining 80% follow the 20% of trend-setting people in consumption. The main source of profit is the 80% of follow-up consumption. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain the 20% core fans, provide these users with various internal benefits, and use the funds originally used for traditional advertising to maintain the 20% core fans in order to obtain the largest source of profit.

Do you need a very accurate user portrait ?

People who lead the trends fall within a range, so we don’t need particularly precise user portraits, it is enough to grasp a general trend.

Taking the marketing of Kaojiang (a restaurant name) as an example, the common characteristics of the marketing entities are: dominated by women; the age group is concentrated between 18 and 24 years old; and they are mainly labeled as eating, drinking and having fun.

Five years ago, the main marketing group of Kaojiang was those born in the 1990s, now it is those born in the 1995s, and the main marketing group for the next new stores will be those born in the 2000s.

We always do marketing around this trend-setting group, regardless of whether they are born in the 90s, 95s, or 00s, because the times are constantly changing.

How to get superuser?

If you want to capture super users, you must first make yourself different from the crowd so that you can spread your ideas easily and quickly, and make super users willing to tell their friends and family about your products or ideas.

Mediocrity is definitely not okay, but what about being very good? No way! Why? Because " very good" is equivalent to having no characteristics or features , and if you want to stand out, the first thing you need to do is to be different, with different ideas and products from others.

This also explains a common misunderstanding at work: they think that if they improve their internal skills and do themselves exceptionally well, they can do business well; if they make products exceptionally well, they can gain recognition from consumers.

The book "Purple Cow" by Seth Godin, a famous American marketing expert, is about making the promoted ideas eye-catching. Choosing "Purple Cow" as the title is an example of being "different".

Because ordinary cows are black and white, even if you say it is a very good cow, it is still black and white, and you will feel visually fatigued when you see it. But if a purple cow appears, your eyes will light up and feel that it is different from others. You will also want to tell others: "I saw a purple cow today!"

How to select super users?

Having achieved “being different”, the next step is how to select super users so as to utilize them and give full play to their advantages?

① The closeness between the identified target customer groups. If they are only willing to help you spread the word, but the relationship between them is actually very loose, there is no great trust, and the communication between endorsers is not close enough, then the information spread out is invalid.

② Do they communicate frequently? If there is no frequent communication, then the stickiness may be low.

③ Do they trust each other? If the super user who helps you spread information is a person with weak trust endorsement, his followers will not have that much trust in the product either.

④ The reputation of the person who is most likely to help you spread your creativity is the key node for helping you spread your creativity. If this person has a bad reputation, it is likely to lower the quality of your product. So, after screening out the “super users”, it all comes back to ourselves: how can we keep our creativity lasting? Can it always lead the fashion? This is related to whether super users are willing to continue to spread your products and ideas.

⑤ How many people are needed to make a brand popular?

The "Rule of 150" proposed by anthropologist Robin Dunbar states that 150 people are the optimal number of people for connecting human groups. (The "150 rule" is inferred from the intelligence and social networks of apes - human intelligence will allow humans to have a stable social network of 148 people, which is rounded to 150.)

So how many fans do you need when you want to create a brand?

Kevin Kelly once proposed the concept of "1,000 hardcore fans". Based on the experience of the catering industry, the number of fans is probably more than 1,000, and 2,000-3,000 is a very appropriate number.

In Chengdu , an internet-famous restaurant can maintain business for five years without worries by maintaining around 2,000-3,000 fans.

But these 2,000-plus people will not become your fans just by adding them as WeChat friends. Instead, you need to have real exchanges or more in-depth communication with them, such as knowing their career development, family situation, etc., and have a closer connection with them.

Therefore, if you want to build a community, want to generate fission, and want to take your brand to the next level, 1,000 fans can give your brand a good initial presentation .

⑥ How to find the first batch of super users: Take the example of the popular Zang Zang Bao from Idala.

When preparing to launch this product, we first had to recruit a small group of users for internal testing, so we planned an "Aidele Internet Celebrity Dirty Bun Fans Tasting Session."

The first step is to design an attractive "recruitment copy ".

After hearing these four sentences, basically everyone wants to give it a try, because they feel that if they don’t try it, they may have fallen out of touch with the popular trend.

The second step is to send invitation letters and create a group to warm up.

Make one-to-one invitations to reflect a sense of dignity and ceremony. Create a group to warm up the event, announce the event preview in the group, pay attention to the schedule of participants, let fans feel that the company attaches great importance to this event, and ensure the fan arrival rate.

The third step is to take 3 high-value photos to record the scene.

High-value photos of live events are very important, so we plan what kind of photos to take in advance. It is required to have at least 3 presentable photos for each key link or detail, such as the production process, fan production process, fan achievement display, fan interaction, product display, event atmosphere, etc.

We hope that the Moments posted by fans will have at least three small topics. Because everyone likes to post " nine-square grids ", fans must be able to collect at least 9 pictures. If 9 pictures are not enough, what can people show off about this activity, and how can they empower this activity in the circle of friends?

Step 4: Fans post feedback on their Moments.

Fan feedback is very important. After the event, they will express their feelings about the event on their Moments. At the same time, in order to enhance their awareness, we will also send these fan feedback to the group.

One of the “tribal characteristics” is: “the group is suggestible.”

What does it mean? Some people may not post on WeChat Moments, but when they see others posting, they will feel that they need to post one as well. Especially when she sees other people’s posts on WeChat Moments expressing how great they are, she will also feel that “this activity was particularly good”.

In fact, everyone lives in a virtual world of their own. The situation at the event site is actually not important. What is important is whether I have a very good experience and whether the event feels good. The response afterwards is particularly important.

Step 5: Follow-up feedback on event gifts.

After the event, we also gave out souvenirs and spread the word through the babies who participated in the event. At that time, we launched a cluster of "Aidele Baby", targeting the post-00s and post-10s, because we need to continue marketing to the next generation. Correspondingly, we also did a lot of work on the process of babies eating dirty buns happily.

⑦ The key to holding high-quality fan events.

The process of the Idala Internet celebrity dirty bun fan tasting meeting is basically the same as the common process for all fan activities, but there are several key points in it that determine whether this fan activity can stimulate community fission with high quality.

The first point: attractive creativity.

If the initiator of an event simply tells everyone that this is a DIY bread event, and there is too much homogeneity and it is available everywhere, why would people come to participate in your event?

At this time, we have to cater to the hot spots in the market. In the case, the "dirty buns" are a very popular product in the market, so everyone is willing to participate.

The second point: the trust endorsement of the convener.

In this case, we did not find a large number of KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) to forward the content, but only two key figures made invitations to the event. The strong trust endorsement from these two key figures is enough to trigger a series of subsequent chain reactions.

The third point: resonance at the same frequency.

"Resonance" is a very core point when building a circle. Because everyone wants to be in a high-quality circle, it is particularly important to render the quality of the people participating in community activities every time an event is held.

We made a special introduction to each of the first batch of participants in the Dirty Bun activity.

For example, the most beautiful boss lady in Chengdu, Xiao Mayu, the initiator of Chengdu's operation circle plan, and Fengwei Map producer, etc., these people are very well-known in the circle. Everyone will feel that I not only participated in the event, but also got to know a group of high-quality experts in the circle.

When inviting people to circles, I will make a vertical circle invitation. That is to say, in addition to my connection with everyone, it is very important that we are people from the same circle and that we can connect with each other and create value for each other. In this way, we will feel that this activity is more valuable.

Fourth point: sense of ritual.

When preparing for an event, special attention is paid to the design and production of invitations, banners, handheld cards, etc., and photos are required to be produced quickly (a frequency of one wave every 5 minutes) to give participating fans a sense of honor.

Fifth point: The scale of the activity is 15-20 people.

Robin Dunbar's sociological research found that groups of about 15 to 20 people are the best groups for establishing emotional connections. An event with a large number of people may have a lively atmosphere, but if there are no links after the event, the follow-up effect may not be good enough.

Offline activities with 15-20 people allow everyone to introduce themselves to each other, get to know each other, and establish emotional connections, which will be particularly beneficial for future development.

Point 6: 150 people caused a small epidemic

To trigger a small-scale epidemic, the optimal number of people is about 150 people, but these 150 people need to be closely connected with each other. Small-scale offline activities can be carried out in batches to connect 150 people.

For example, we previously created a Japanese food brand called Ikedaya. At that time, the brand's sales were declining, so we planned the campaign of "Looking for 300 Japanese food addicts".

Through five fan events with about 20 people, we connected with about 100-150 core KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders), food experts, and food media in the food circle.

After these 150 people spread the word, the popularity of this Japanese food brand increased, and the overall performance of the three stores increased by about 20%. Therefore, about 150 people can revitalize a brand and save a relatively weak brand .

2. How do we keep new members coming into the community?

If everyone does a good job of finding super users, fission will be a natural process. What we need to do next is to go with the flow.

Let’s take the “Dirty Bun” activity as an example.

After completing the first event, we replicated several more events and copied them to several larger branches.

Next, we did a lot of sponsorship activities, such as a book club activity called "Paying Tribute to the Beautiful Things in Life". The Zang Zang Bao booth was the most popular one at the scene, and we also spread the concept of Zang Zang Bao as the activity progressed.

At the same time, we also promoted it on the official account and highlighted the product in stores. This activity continued to ferment and trigger fission.

3. How can a community create a unique culture to increase member loyalty and engagement?

In order to successfully carry out an event, you need to establish a cultural identity.

If we only consider function and business, it will only be popular for a while. Only by going deep into social culture can we truly take root in the essence of business.

① Four elements for building culture (any tribe or community needs four elements to build culture):

• Symbol: Any tribe or community that wants to be recognizable must have its own unique symbol.
• Language system: A group must have its own unique language system.
• Values: People in the community need to have a common value.
• Behavioral paradigm: The community will form a common behavior, similar to the "rules of the underworld". For example, when Double 11 comes, we all go on a shopping spree. If we don’t buy something, we will feel out of touch with society. Through guidance, the Double 11 event turned a shopping behavior into a national culture.

② The cultural case presentation of the baker:

We created the image spokesperson, Jiangjiang Cat, for the Kaojiang brand, and also derived and produced Jiangjiang peripheral products, Jiangjiang constellation wallpapers, Jiangjiang Cat emoticons and Jiangjiang four-frame comics.

In order to market to the post-00s, we also launched an online AI craftsman to upgrade for future consumers.

• Organize a series of offline activities: for example, the 3rd anniversary fan carnival. By posting tweets to promote the venue layout and limited edition 3rd anniversary gift designs, fans are attracted to sign up; fans and high-value customers are screened and personal invitations are sent; at offline events and gatherings, photos can be posted on WeChat Moments. Starting from its third anniversary, Kaojiang began to have its first batch of "loyal fans". They came from all walks of life and served as spokespersons for Kaojiang's offline community promotion.
• Launching service privilege cards: allowing loyal fans of Kaojiang to have service privileges, and allowing more customers to pay attention to their membership level and rights. In addition, the launch of limited-edition Christmas stored-value cards has formed Kaojiang's initial card culture.

3. Key points of community monetization

1. Product

If we want to realize cash flow, having a good product is the basis, but on that basis, we need to differentiate ourselves from other companies. It is far from enough to just focus on making good products.

We want to make products the result of marketing, rather than marketing becoming the result of products. Therefore, your product must first cater to and touch upon the points that consumers are most interested in. For example, we like Zang Zang Bao because it is a popular topic.

Secondly, it is the quality of the product or brand.

For example, we chose Aidele to launch the popular product "Zang Zang Bao" because Aidele has 22 years of industry background, high standards for products, and has its own product base. Therefore, the final quality of the Dirty Zang Bao is very high.

Products are the best marketing, so when marketing a brand, you first need to select the brand and filter out those bad brands.

2. Planning

There are many good products, but only 10% of them stand out, and most of it is related to the way the products are marketed.

So how do you do marketing planning?

First, observe carefully and look for hot spots. For example, I chose the Zang Zang Bao because I observed that it was very popular on Instagram and in first-tier cities, but not in Chengdu, and a Chengdu food expert strongly expressed his desire to eat Zang Zang Bao in his circle of friends.

Next, rapid execution and continuous iteration are required. After capturing the popularity of the Zang Zang Bao, we quickly communicated with the Aidele marketing team and spent three days organizing the first event. We quickly iterated during the event and quickly followed up on any problems that arose during the event.

3. Execution

1. Execution of event planning : Before the event is launched, a rigorous and detailed planning plan should be prepared. For example, in the planning of the Idala Dirty Bun event , we have established very clear implementation standards and very detailed implementation processes. We precisely divide the work into each group, the execution time is accurate to the minute, and we determine the person in charge and executor of each project.
2. Execution by the operation team: During the event, the operation team must perform their duties and take care of every detail.
3. Execution of data verification: Data must be presented after the execution of the plan . If execution does not bring traffic and results, it is useless. It is necessary to analyze the data, including turnover data, month-on-month data, data comparison between stores, including analysis of improvement points, customer sources, etc. Use data to see if there are any problems with event planning and execution, and form a closed loop in order to realize monetization on marketing data.

Social e-commerce is an important form of future business . If you want to monetize your community, you must form a closed loop . From product selection to planning and execution, as well as the entire process, there must be data presentation .

Source: Xu Lu