The "fission" battle between Luckin Coffee and Lian Coffee: Who is the growth king?

Two years ago, when people talked about drinking coffee, most of them thought of Starbucks and Costa, or Nestle, Maxwell, etc. However, even they themselves probably didn't expect that the trend would come so quickly.

I have a friend who loves drinking coffee very much. I often accompany her to buy coffee after work. As a result, I gradually began to like drinking coffee too. Although I no longer order coffee for personal reasons, I still like to buy other drinks from coffee sellers, such as ordering a cup of citrus passion fruit at noon.

Which one did you buy from? It is the “little blue cup” that has been very popular this year - Luckin Coffee .

As the "little blue cup" that is said to be a rival to Starbucks, it has always been accompanied by a lot of criticism and praise, and the most praised is the traffic pool thinking it used in its growth process.

The traffic pool thinking was proposed in the book "Traffic Pool" by Mr. Yang Fei, co-founder of "Little Blue Cup".

Faced with the “little blue cup” that has the added bonus of traffic pool thinking, traditional coffee brands such as Starbucks began to panic. But in addition to Luckin Coffee, there is also Lian Coffee.

Lian Coffee is also a local coffee brand that has become popular this year, and its growth momentum comes from social fission . For example, the pocket coffee shop that has been all over the screen is a masterpiece of Lian Coffee.

One is the "spokesperson" of traffic pool thinking, and the other is a leader in social fission. What sparks will come between them? Will it be a thrilling "battle"?

1. Luckin Coffee’s “Traffic Pool Thinking”

The growth and popularity of Luckin Coffee is not accidental but inevitable. This is because the Chinese coffee market has long been dominated by foreign brands such as Starbucks, which advocate the "third space" and position coffee as a social product.

This is actually very advanced marketing thinking, but Internet thinking may be even better, such as traffic pool thinking.

This article will not elaborate on what traffic pool thinking is, but you can get a glimpse of it through Luckin Coffee’s series of customer acquisition strategies.

Luckin Coffee has three main methods of acquiring customers: precision delivery, IP leveraging, and fission marketing.

The first is the placement. Offline, targeted advertising is placed. For example, you can see Luckin Coffee posters with Tang Wei in the elevators of various office buildings. Online, WeChat ’s LBS is used for precise targeting. For example, you will see Luckin Coffee ads when you browse your Moments .

The second is to take advantage of the trend, using the unique deer head image and blue tone, the World Cup , various film and television IPs, celebrities, well-known companies, and even competitors, to flood the Internet with messages again and again, triggering a trend.

The last thing is fission , which is the core of "traffic pool thinking", because there is a very important sentence in "traffic pool thinking": all products can fission, and all creativity can be shared.

In fact, the price of coffee in China is quite high, and it is not a real mass consumer product. Luckin Coffee saw this and used low prices and subsidies to attract consumption and promote fission.

Here is a brief summary of Luckin Coffee’s fission methods and promotional techniques:

1. First order is free: Download the Luckin Coffee App and get a free drink.

2. Give them a coffee: When friends download the app by sharing the link, they will each get a free drink.

3. 50% off every week : Follow the official WeChat account and receive 50% off coupons through IP implantation every week.

4. Light Meal Storm: Enjoy all light meals at 50% off.

5. Coffee Wallet: When you purchase a drink coupon, recharge two and get one free, recharge five and get five free. During Double 11, recharge one and get two free, limited to five.

6. Get coupons when you place an order: You can get one of 20 coupons when you purchase any product. The discount depends on your luck, and the rest can be shared with friends.

Among these marketing measures, giving TA coffee and giving coupons when placing an order are the main ways of fission.

Sending TA coffee for free is an attraction that entices users to actively share it with their friends. All their friends need to do is download the app, and the threshold is very low. This not only increases the number of users, but also benefits them.

In comparison, the effect of giving coupons when placing an order is better. First of all, you need to share and use gamification methods (slot machines, try your luck) to get random discount coupons. Although there is a high threshold, it is interesting. Secondly, the number of recipients is limited to 20, which is very suitable for sharing in WeChat group scenarios to increase the level of fission.

It can be said that the method of giving coupons when placing an order can not only increase the frequency of sharing and the scale of customer acquisition, but also further stimulate consumption and improve retention .

However, if you study Luckin Coffee's App carefully, you will find that there are slightly more entrances to send TA coffee, and the coupons for placing an order will only be displayed after the order is placed. This shows that Luckin Coffee hopes to achieve user growth through mature social relationships, and sending TA coffee and the social attributes of coffee just fit the bill.

Of course, compared with fission, getting users to consume is the fundamental goal, because only by getting users to continue placing orders can actual growth be generated, and 50% off every week, light meal storm, and coffee wallet are the main means of monetization.

In order to further stimulate user consumption, Luckin Coffee and Pudong Development Bank launched a co-branded credit card, which allows new users to enjoy up to 150 cups of coffee per year, and also introduced preferential measures related to card application.

It can be seen that under the premise of ensuring fission, further increasing user consumption is its latest strategy, which happens to be in line with another classic saying of "traffic pool thinking": find incremental growth with existing stock, and use high frequency to bring high frequency.

After all, if there are not too many retained users and users do not continue to consume with you, all fission methods are meaningless.

2. Lian Coffee’s “social gene”

Compared with Luckin Coffee, the representative of "new retail", Lian Coffee is obviously not as well-known, but that does not mean that its fission method is not clever. On the contrary, Lian Coffee has more "social genes" than Luckin Coffee.

Why is Lian Coffee said to have a social gene? This is mainly because of the screen-sweeping event it planned - Pocket Cafe.

It is said that on the first day of the launch of Pocket Café, the number of clicks reached 4.2 million, and a total of 520,000 coffee shops were opened, of which 10% achieved real sales. Some users even sold 200 cups of coffee a day. It can be seen that this is an activity with amazing fission and conversion effects.

Therefore, we briefly analyze the fission characteristics of pocket coffee shops, mainly the following points:

1. Low operating cost: Based on the mini program , you can open a store with one click at the "café" entrance.

2. Creativity and personalization: Opening an online store satisfies the curiosity of users, while decorating a store meets personalized needs.

3. Active sharing: A store that is carefully decorated by individuals can easily satisfy users’ desire to show off and more easily encourage users to share and spread the information.

4. Gamification: There are tasks such as sharing, collecting likes, and signing in to earn gold beans, as well as redemption mechanisms such as opening treasure chests and gold bean malls, which greatly increase entertainment and make it easier to activate users.

5. Socialization: Various rankings based on the Internet celebrity index, as well as today's recommendations, nearby restaurants, etc., allow users to get in touch with other people and meet their social needs.

6. Distribution incentives : The coffee in the cafe can be sold, and each cup sold can get an accumulative fund reward, which can be used for consumption in friends' cafes. This distribution mechanism further promotes users' enthusiasm for sharing.

7. Celebrities move in: In the early days of the Pocket Café activity, many celebrities opened shops there (such as Wang Ju), which attracted a large number of users to participate and accumulated very high potential energy.

It can be seen that Pocket Café is a typical example of social fission. Gamification, personalization, and social settings are the main driving forces for users to actively share and continuously spread the content, while distribution incentives also stimulate users' desire to invite and sell.

The pocket coffee shop initiated by Lian Coffee has hit the social pain point of users' "opening a coffee shop" very well. This insight into users is the fundamental reason why Lian Coffee has a "social gene".

Of course, in addition to pocket coffee shops, Lian Coffee also has other fission and promotion methods, such as inviting people to open red envelopes, coffee warehouses, group buying, lucky bag grabbing, limited-time welfare clubs, etc.

In fact, these are all relatively conventional means, not much different from Luckin Coffee. In essence, they are still subsidies, but they have obvious effects on users. After all, before the emergence of pocket coffee shops, these were the main ways of growth.

Of course, the emergence of pocket coffee shops has allowed Lian Coffee to find a better way to acquire customers, which has also made competition in the coffee industry more intense.

Summarize

By analyzing the growth logic of Luckin Coffee and Lian Coffee, we can summarize the following two points:

1. Luckin Coffee has developed apps and mini-programs, but mainly relies on the former to provide services. In terms of customer acquisition, it uses a trinity of precise delivery, IP leverage, and fission marketing. Fission uses subsidies as bait and one-give-one-get-one as the main means. Under the guidance of traffic pool thinking, it strives to increase user consumption frequency and find incremental growth with existing stock.

2. Lian Coffee is all in on mini programs, using the social fission of pocket coffee shops as its main means of growth. It pays more attention to users' social needs and has a strong social gene, but it also uses other customer acquisition methods with subsidies as the main means.

In general, Luckin Coffee and Lian Coffee are both relatively excellent local coffee brands in China, posing a considerable threat to foreign coffee brands, especially Luckin Coffee, which has become the second largest coffee brand in China after Starbucks in terms of the number of stores.

The growth logic of Luckin Coffee and Lian Coffee should be studied and learned, because behind it is a more systematic marketing thinking and operation system. If you can learn it, it will be the most valuable thing.

After all, with traffic costs rising today, only a more systematic and advanced customer acquisition mindset is the only weapon to break the growth curse.

Source: Dugushang