How do Tmall, JD.com, etc. generate off-site traffic?

Whether it is domestic Tmall and JD.com, or cross-border Amazon AliExpress, sellers all have to face the increasing cost of on-site promotion, the increasing difficulty in maintaining traffic growth, continuous on-site advertising, and uncontrollable ROI. If they stop, the traffic will be gone. Add to that discounts and promotions, and we'd be lucky enough not to lose money.

Now, the largest mainstream e-commerce platforms have entered the stock market, and the growth of new users on the platforms is becoming increasingly slow, mainly relying on return visits from old users.

Therefore, e-commerce platforms now pay more attention to the lifetime value of platform users (that is, the total value contributed by the user during the life cycle of the platform). It can be said that the loss of an old user far exceeds the gain of a new user; therefore, the platform must care more about the reliability of the seller's products and services to prevent the loss of users on its platform.

On the one hand, the platform actively introduces sellers and continuously adds new products to ensure that products are rich and cost-effective for users to choose from, making users satisfied.

On the one hand, as the number of sellers on the platform increases and competition intensifies, the platform will give priority to allocating on-site traffic to seller accounts with higher ratings.

All of this means that the cost of on-site promotion will only increase. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly difficult to rely solely on in-site promotion.

Without traffic, there is no conversion and sales, so platform sellers urgently need to open up the Ren and Du meridians and draw traffic from outside the site.

1. Rank sales on the site and build brand outside the site

We all often shop online. Think about it, how many e-commerce brands can we name?

The platform will intentionally weaken the brand attributes of sellers on the platform and only emphasize the buying and selling of goods.

Sellers only sell online and without the user contact and experience of offline channels, it is even more difficult for users to remember the brand.

This results in sellers having no brand influence, no fans, no interaction, and no word-of-mouth publicity.

Sellers can only meet short-term sales performance through price cuts and promotions through on-site activities, which is even more detrimental to the brand itself.

The obvious lack of brand marketing makes sellers extremely passive. There is no premium and they can only compete on price.

On the one hand, sellers need to make good use of the traffic within the site, improve conversions, improve store rankings, and lay a solid foundation within the site. On the other hand, through off-site content marketing and fan operations, we can increase brand influence and word-of-mouth publicity, continuously bring traffic support to the site, and prepare to become a multi-channel brand, getting rid of the risk of relying entirely on the platform.

2. Several key points of off-site traffic diversion strategy

1. Directional drainage

The traffic introduced from outside the site to the platform seller account must be directional traffic. Traffic that is not directional traffic can easily divert traffic to other sellers, because users who are diverted to the platform will compare the prices, review star ratings, etc. of all similar products on the platform, and thus are likely to enter the accounts of competitors with more favorable prices and higher ratings to buy. In this case, the money the seller has earned from diverting traffic will be wasted on others.

It is very important to ensure that the directed traffic can be converted only in your own store. So how can we achieve targeted conversion of traffic?

There are different targeted traffic methods for different buyer types:

1) Impulsive Buyers

Purchases are usually immediate and impulsive, with purchases motivated by low prices and promotions. The goods purchased are generally low-priced items that do not require much time to investigate and compare. They are also not willing to take the initiative to do things other than shopping, such as recommending brands, leaving reviews, etc.

The best way to target impulse buyers is to use off-site deal sites.

Through the deal site, cooperate with the celebrities on the deal site, post product discount information at the top, and click the link to go directly to the platform product purchase page.

Use discounts as bait to attract users to buy directly. The discount is usually 15%-30%.

Commonly used deal sites abroad include slickdeals, dealplus, Retailmenot, Dealgogogo Groupon, etc.

Before a big platform promotion, for example, Amazon will give sellers favorable display positions during the promotion based on the comprehensive performance of their listings in the last three months. The first thing to look at is historical sales.

Therefore, in order to have a good display position and increase sales during the promotion, in addition to increasing the budget before the promotion and doing more PPC on the site, stimulating demand and introducing traffic outside the site can make the listing more popular. If the post releases on the Deal site are well coordinated with the activities within the site, you can achieve twice the result with half the effort.

Be cautious when using deals to attract off-site traffic during big sales, because products for big sales usually have a discount of about 20%. If you also give discounts off-site at the same time, the product may not make any money during the big sales.

2) Experience Buyers

They need a good shopping and usage experience, have high expectations, generally buy durable goods, and prefer brands with technological innovations.

Imagine the shopping scenario of an experiential buyer: the customer learns about the product through online advertising, then uses his mobile phone to search for more information on Instagram and Google, visits the official website, or goes to a price comparison website to quickly compare. If you eventually find that your product has very little exposure, no authoritative media or celebrity recommendations, and the official website lacks brand endorsement, they will basically give up the idea of ​​buying it.

As media and channels have become extremely abundant, the path that influences user purchases is more advanced. Therefore, more marketing emphasis is placed on influencing the user at the discovery and evaluation stage rather than the purchase stage.

It is useless to simply offer discounts and promotions to experience-oriented buyers. To drive off-site traffic, you must coordinate multiple touchpoint experiences such as advertising (understanding and attracting), websites, technical support, sales channels, etc. to establish an off-site sales funnel.

The golden conversion data for users is: the first 5 touches within 2 months.

The 5 touches are the most critical. The goal of a sales funnel is to have as many interactions as possible with potential buyers before, during, and after they make a purchase. The different stages of the funnel may also be shorter or longer, depending on the complexity and price of your product.

More complex or expensive products will require a longer evaluation phase; for simpler, cheaper products the process from awareness to purchase can be accomplished in as little as a day.

Convert users into fans through the sales funnel to build communities and communities. Then, through social group and community user operations, traffic is directed to the platform, and fans complete purchases or leave reviews based on their loyalty to the brand.

Illustration: Marketing sales funnel, simplified diagram of customer scenario path (understand, attract, inquire, act, advocate).

Top Key Touchpoints (for Amazon sellers):

*Google Search Social Media Youtube Video: Official Website: Packaging: PR Media.

Coordinate touchpoints to create a seamless experience for customers.

2. Interactive Marketing

Social groups and communities: Use the sales of regular customers to leverage the platform’s traffic.

Develop your own brand private domain traffic and then direct it to the platform, thereby surpassing the rankings of competitors and leveraging the platform's natural traffic.

This is also a lever we can take advantage of.

How to increase user activity through active interactions within social groups and communities is a common weakness of sellers, who do not know how to operate social users.

They often just repeatedly release product promotions, price cuts, new product information, etc., which lacks interest and is quick and crude.

Here I will briefly talk about how to promote user activity through games.

For example, IKEA challenged fans through Facebook to ask how to improve a bedroom or bathroom for a chance to win a $50 gift card.

While this may seem simple, IKEA personally responded to each review, with a humorous tone and provided links to the relevant IKEA product pages.

Alternatively, you can invite users to try your product for free, or participate in product development together, etc. These are all interactions that increase user engagement.

Remember to use giveaway frequently: including giveaway, contest, etc. It can generate a good sales response in the short term, but there are few long-term benefits and advantages, especially for the brand image. Extensive use will reduce brand loyalty, increase customer sensitivity to price, dilute the brand's quality concept, and prompt companies to focus on short-term behavior and benefits, which is short-termism.

Therefore, you must be cautious when making giveaways and remember not to use them frequently.

3. Low-cost off-site traffic diversion

If you are not careful when attracting off-site traffic, you may fall into the mistake of only using large discounts as bait to attract users.

Remember: content marketing + influencer marketing + KOL > 10 times advertising.

Influencer marketing is applicable to the following categories: beauty, fashion accessories, travel, consumer electronics, home furnishings, sports, and outdoor activities.

Recommended platforms: Instagram, Youtube; influencer marketing can achieve product and sales integration.

Among overseas consumers aged 20-40, only 1% currently believe in advertisements, while 33% trust media reviews.

40% of people will buy a product after seeing a celebrity on YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter use or recommend it. The ROI of influencer marketing can reach 6.5.

1) Micro influncer

Due to some restrictions of Amazon's influencer program, not all influencers can join. Sellers should take the initiative to contact influencers on various platforms to increase product brand exposure and bring conversions.

Among them, the most suitable one for Amazon sellers is Micro influncer. Micro-influncer refers to an influencer with 5,000 to 50,000 fans.

Advantages of Micro Influncer:

① Low cost and high cost performance

Top influencers like the Kardashians charge upwards of $500,000 to promote a post. As for micro-influencers, some of them just send free samples. Sellers can roughly evaluate whether the influencer’s charges are reasonable according to the following prices:

• Facebook: $25 per post per 1,000 followers.
• Instagram: $10 per post per 1,000 followers.
• Twitter: $2 per post per 1,000 followers.
• Snapchat: $10 per post per 1,000 followers.
• YouTube: $20 per post per 1,000 followers.

② High interaction rate

The survey shows that the interaction rate of celebrities with 1,000 followers is about 8%, which is 85% higher than that of celebrities with 100,000 followers. The interaction rate of celebrities with 10 million fans is only 1.5%.

③ Audiences in different segments

Although micro influencers have a small number of fans, they are focused on a certain field and have better loyalty and interactivity.

Little influencers in the fields of beauty, fashion, technology, health, travel, etc. are scattered across various social platforms, posting life-like content in various sub-sectors every day.

When looking for influencers to post for promotion, it is not the same as just contacting them and sending them samples and then ignoring them. The content of the posts by the influencers is the most important. Therefore, you must communicate with the influencers in advance about the content of the post and make it an important part of content marketing.

There are several common forms of content posted by celebrities:

Sponsored post: The influencer needs to praise the product in an enthusiastic tone, @your brand in the post, and finally encourage their fans to interact.

Discount Codes: Providing discount codes for discounted products is always a powerful way to attract user interaction in your posts.

You can also track the sales performance of influencers through custom URLs and unique discount codes.

Competitions, giveaways, competitions to win gifts.

Giveaways, and contests are a great way to increase brand exposure and drive engagement on your posts, thereby increasing the number of views on your posts.

Give away some free products every month and let influencers publish event information in their posts. This is suitable for new products and products priced above $50.

Add the contest rules in your post, such as:

• Tagging friends;
• Liking the post;
• Following;
• Sharing the content;
• Signing up for a newsletter;
• Even creating original content.

Only by making the rules simple and transparent can we win the trust of users and better carry out similar competition activities in the future.

Conclusion

Even if small and medium-sized brands currently have only a few fans, they can start now and continue to accumulate. As long as user community operations are done well, word of mouth will spread and compound interest will continue.

There is a kind of bamboo that only grows 3 cm in the first four years, but in the fifth year, it grows wildly at a rate of 30 cm per day.

The continued returns from off-site traffic are worthy of sellers’ focus on content marketing, sales funnels and community operations.

Author: Uncle Monkey God Talking About Brands

Source: Uncle Monkey God Talking About Brands