With 520,000 stores opening a day, how can brands achieve social fission?

On August 1, Lian Coffee launched the "Pocket Coffee Shop" mini program , achieving rapid expansion of the brand by selling real coffee in a virtual store.

According to information revealed by Lian Coffee on the Internet, the PV (page views) of "Pocket Cafe" on the first day of its launch exceeded 4.2 million, and the cumulative number of online cafes opened exceeded 520,000, of which more than 10% of the cafes achieved real sales, and the best-selling user sold more than 200 cups on the same day...

With it, you can have your own little cafe in just 3 steps:

1. Decorate the shop - choose the shop background, personal image, shop decoration, etc. according to your preferences;

2. Organize the menu - select coffee categories and put them on the shelves. Note that each coffee shop is only allowed to put 5 drinks on the shelves;

3. Put the products on the shelves for sale - After the store is decorated and the products are put on the shelves, the cafe is successfully opened. All that remains is to share your store and invite friends to like or buy coffee.

Pocket Cafe not only allows you to open your own cafe, but also uses the fission method to make you do distribution fission unconsciously like playing a game...

The key reasons why Lian Coffee's mini program was able to attract a large number of users in a short period of time are as follows:

Social fission is the core, and gamification settings promote sharing

The so-called social fission is actually viral marketing , which is to make users willing and motivated to actively spread information through some settings to influence their friends around them, and then gradually expand the scope of influence.

This is reflected in the "Pocket Cafe"'s gamification settings. It opens a virtual cafe and adopts common business game modes to beautify and decorate the store, update products, and increase the internet celebrity index... Since the interface is relatively beautiful and the gameplay is relatively novel, users will not feel "embarrassed" when sharing and are more willing to share for fun.

But even if the interface is nice-looking, why would users spread it? After all, sharing this kind of game is quite childish.

The answer to this question is also the brilliance of Lian Coffee’s marketing campaign : because you can make money by sharing, it is actually a variation of a distribution mechanism.

Combined with the early establishment of the "Growing Coffee" mechanism, once someone orders coffee in your online cafe and consumes it successfully, you will be rewarded with 0.1 cup of growing coffee. This means that if 10 people consume 10 cups in your cafe, you can get a cup of coffee for free.

0 cost to open a store + 0 cost to maintain + real offline marketing , this point itself is very attractive. At the same time, combined with the improvement of the Internet celebrity index, more decorative props will be unlocked, and it may even be possible to be on the list...gradually induce users to continue to "play".

This distribution mechanism cleverly takes advantage of users’ trust in their acquaintances: “Someone I know has consumed at this coffee shop and shared his experience, so the product should be good. Also, if I order coffee at the shop of someone I know, maybe I can attract their attention.”

Trust + interaction , most people are therefore more willing to try a brand product that is relatively unfamiliar to them in the early stages.

In addition, we can also use the "Nearby Shops" function to visit other people's cafes located nearby. These cafes may be opened by acquaintances or strangers. This setting further enhances its social interaction attributes.

Celebrity IP support

As early as the end of May this year, Li Dan from Tucao Conference had already started "making things happen" with Lian Coffee. Li Dan personally took the lead in recommending new products by writing stories.

This time, with the launch of "Pocket Cafe", Lian Coffee continued to invite Li Dan to participate in the launch of the celebrity cafe, and other celebrities also joined in. This is equivalent to upgrading the virtual store to IP and maximizing the traffic of public influencers.

Among them, the names and introductions of the celebrities’ coffee shops are very personal, and some people will specifically look for a celebrity’s coffee shop to consume.

Lian Coffee's marketing director Zhang Hongji once revealed that Lian Coffee has finalized cooperation with more than a dozen celebrities, and will launch new celebrity coffee shops in batches every week.

The interactive topic in the tweet on the day the mini program was launched asked which celebrity people would like to see join the celebrity cafe, which also attracted a lot of comments and attention from users.

From online to offline, Lian Coffee still holds on to the IP traffic of celebrities . For example, a celebrity quote printed on the small tissue that comes with the coffee box may also become a point for users to spread and share.

For example, our office tried the products of Xia Lian Coffee the day before yesterday. When receiving the tissue, a colleague saw Wang Jianguo’s words printed on it. His first reaction was novelty: “Hey, isn’t this Wang Jianguo from the Tucao Conference?” Just imagine, if it were used in daily life, many people would find it interesting and choose to share these things on WeChat Moments .

In essence, all of the above is actually a new type of fission that utilizes personalized IP + Lian Coffee’s supply chain back-end support.

Lightweight mini-programs lower the consumption threshold

"Pocket Cafe" is completed through a mini program, which truly realizes its "pocketization". The lightweight mini program can be used and closed at any time, perfectly fitting people's human nature of pursuing "convenience and ease" .

Zhang Hongji also explained in an interview the purpose of Lian Coffee using mini programs: "Lian Coffee has always insisted on being infinitely close to users. Since users now spend more than 80% of their time on WeChat , it is the most reasonable choice for us to provide services to them on WeChat."

Sharing method is more in line with audience preferences

Another thing worth mentioning is the sharing format of "Pocket Cafe". In addition to link sharing, there is also picture sharing . The picture format breaks the limitation that the mini program can only be shared to "people" but not to "circles".

In addition, the content of the picture can display the content more intuitively. The link can be clicked directly, but it increases the entry threshold for other users due to caution. The picture shows that the mini program code adds a step of long pressing and scanning the code to open it, but because it is an action made after personal choice, in the end, regardless of whether the content is of interest to the user or not, at least the user will not feel disgusted.

Lian Coffee ’s insights into human nature are quite accurate.

Developing a unique idea: "Coffee to find people"

In 2014, Lian Coffee only used the WeChat service account entrance to respond to online order demands, and had dedicated personnel queue up at Starbucks to pick up the goods, which were finally delivered to users.

It seems like you are "making wedding dresses for others"? In fact, Lian Coffee just found a blank track that almost no one cared about at the time - coffee delivery, reconstructing the consumption scenario of "people looking for coffee".

Lian Coffee, which has been lurking for more than a year, has accumulated a large amount of user data based on its standardized delivery services, and even mastered the upstream coffee quality control standards and production processes, and began to transform itself into an independent coffee brand Coffee Box.

Become a coffee takeaway brand that provides instant delivery services directly to users based on more than one hundred coffee production workshops hidden in the city.

Smart use of mini programs

As mentioned earlier, in order to be closer to users, Lian Coffee has not yet developed an independent App. All of its business, including a daily sales peak of more than 100,000 cups, is achieved through service accounts and mini programs.

On the one hand, this greatly saves development costs. On the other hand, in China's Internet ecosystem, there is no other environment more suitable for attracting new users and spreading the word than WeChat.

In terms of the development of mini programs, the recent "Pocket Cafe" is actually only the second stage. The first stage was the group buying game launched at the beginning of the year. According to the data provided by Zhang Hongji:

Within 3 hours of the launch of the mini program "Lian Kafe", nearly 100,000 people successfully completed group buying without any external promotion . The first day's PV was nearly 3 million. The mini program also attracted nearly 200,000 consumer users to Lian Coffee’s service account, more than two-thirds of whom followed it after successfully group buying.

The traffic growth is amazing, which is mainly due to the careful preparation and control of the Lian Coffee team in every aspect of the product :

1. Preliminary preparation

Before the mini program was officially launched, Lian Coffee conducted multiple tests on the mini program internally, during which it repeatedly overturned the design, optimized the rules, and strictly screened the products for group purchases...

2. Step-by-step setting of group buying parameters

Currently, the number of groups that can be formed is mainly 2, 3, or 5 people. The main dimensions considered are the actual situation and difficulty of user participation, which meets the needs of scenarios such as couples , friends, and teams. In terms of difficulty, it is relatively reasonable for one person to lead 1, 2, or 4 people in different scenarios.

In terms of price setting, group buying categories are divided into two categories : "only new users can join the group" and "both new and old users can join the group" .

Among them, the price of the product "only new users can join the group" basically hovers between 1 or 5, which is equivalent to letting new users try it out. However, when you start a group or join a group, you will find that you actually need to pay an additional 5 yuan service fee.

This may be due to the idea of ​​cost control, but from the perspective of consumers, when they first encounter this kind of experience, they will still have a slight feeling of being "cheated", because most people have actually formed the inertia of thinking that they can buy goods at such an ultra-low price without understanding it clearly. Therefore, such a setting will actually slightly create the risk that users will not want to make repeat purchases.

However, the ultra-low group-buying price may indeed become a catalyst to fully attract user participation. However, the price and overall mechanism setting need further study in the actual reference process.

In addition, the mini program also provides functions such as saving red envelopes, grabbing lucky bags, and growing coffee, which is equivalent to gradually shaping the genes of social interaction from an early stage.

Build relationships with KOLs and create brand influence through cross-border marketing

KOLs (key opinion leaders, i.e. people who have a say in the industry, including those who have a say on Weibo) who have worked with Lian Coffee include Papi Jiang, Li Dan, Jiang Cha Cha and others.

When it comes to selecting KOLs, Lian Coffee does not simply look at who is popular and has the most traffic. Instead, it considers the degree of match between the brand's positioning, tone, audience, taste and other factors, and ultimately selects those who are more in line with its target audience, thereby achieving more precise marketing.

Through analysis, you will find that the target audience of Lian Coffee is mainly young people born between 1985 and 1990 who are active on the Internet. If we divide the demand more finely, it is a group of white-collar workers who have demand for coffee, mainly in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Comparing with the KOLs that Lian Coffee has found, most of their works are humorous in style, and most of them are young people who are keen on fun and interesting things. They have a lot of overlap with Lian Coffee, so they naturally become the targets of Lian Coffee.

By using this method of finding audience overlap , we can find suitable KOLs more accurately, and the sales performance and brand influence they bring are both amazing.

According to the data provided online, Mojito sold more than 10,000 cups in a 30-second short video by Papi Jiang on the first day of its launch; Long Island Iced Tea sold more than 3,000 cups in one morning in Li Dan’s story (note that Long Island Iced Tea is alcoholic)...

Lian Coffee started out as a delivery company for Starbucks. Later on, it made a successful comeback and established its own coffee brand. Today, people often compare it with Starbucks and Luckin Coffee.

During this period, Lian Coffee mainly relied on the management's unique insights into marketing ideas and their steady and aggressive approach to social positioning.

When most people were focusing on the offline store experience, Lian Coffee chose to provide auxiliary delivery services . In the later period, it transformed into an independent coffee brand Coffee Box that "appears" to have offline stores. In fact, it has formed a coffee production workshop based on more than one hundred hidden in the city, providing instant delivery services directly to users.

The transformation from "people looking for coffee" to "coffee looking for people" reflects the leaders' courage in business innovation and choice, which is quite admirable.

In addition, looking back at the path that Lian Coffee has taken since its establishment, you will find that it has always been centered around the positioning of "social". Not to mention whether the choice of this positioning is biased, it is already very difficult to continue exploring and digging deep around one point.

Recently, Starbucks has officially announced that it will officially join the delivery business in September, and Luckin Coffee has also joined the delivery business...

As the three models converge in the future, who will be the first to break the deadlock? Is it Lian Coffee, which opened 520,000 stores overnight, Starbucks, which has long dominated the coffee market, or Luckin Coffee, which has the money to give discounts without blinking an eye? I'm determined to eat this melon~