Mining offline traffic dividends: Is it the “scenarios” that have obsessed offline businesses?

It is an indisputable fact that online traffic is becoming more and more expensive; it is also an indisputable fact that the growth rate of Internet users has stagnated.

In the saying of the second half of the Internet, I think the beauty lies in the word "down": offline.

The O2O trend that started around 2011, although its core is offline services (group buying, food delivery, etc.), they are basically connected to existing stock scenarios , and the user's usage process is basically from online to offline. But this time, the offline project has changed its gameplay. It is more about creating incremental scenarios . The user usage process is from offline to online to obtain the benefits of offline traffic.

Looking back, the online traffic dividend can be roughly divided into two stages.

In the PC era, there were dividends from portal websites, dividends from webmaster alliances, and dividends from search SEM . Until the emergence of smartphones, the scenario shifted and the user ceiling was completely opened.

In the mobile era, there have been bonuses from native apps, app stores , pre-installed apps on mobile phones, and many other small bonuses. The last wave of bonuses is content. It is more efficient to directly write an article with 100,000+ views than to buy traffic.

The popularity of shared bikes has made everyone realize that although advertising at bus stops and subway stations may be much more cost-effective than online traffic diversion, it is obviously not enough to simply use offline marketing and promotion.

Projects that started out offline need to create new user usage scenarios, and do a good job of offline and online linkage to extend the user life cycle in order to fully enjoy the offline traffic dividend.

Moreover, offline projects can also have network effects: an effect that Internet people have long believed only exists on the Internet.

1. Shared power banks : lack of support for high-frequency and rigid demand scenarios

However, unlike shared bicycles, the concept of shared power banks may sound similar at first glance, but the logic behind them is completely different. No matter how frantically shared bikes are spending money to expand their market, when they first appeared, they were supported by rigid demand scenarios ( Mobike 's white-collar workers commuting to work and ofo's university campuses). What's more, these scenarios are high-frequency enough, and the target users are likely to use them between 1-3 times a day.

After many people's research, they found that there are indeed users who need shared power banks, but this is not a common need among most users, but only an occasional need for a few people.

In fact, offline, power bank rental is a very profitable business (but rental does not mean sharing), and the investment can generally be recovered within 6-12 months.

However, this purely offline business, even with the addition of self-service and QR code payment, only makes its original offline service more convenient, but the essence behind it is that it does not form a linkage between offline and online.

In general, products such as power banks, which lack rigid demand and scenario support, are forcibly matured by capital and disguised as shared projects. The actual reason behind this is the excess funds caused by VC funds over-subscribing but unable to find good projects. As a result, a squeezing effect occurs, and everyone will rush in at the slightest sign of trouble.

2. Offline photo printers: offline scenarios and online product linkage

Traditional photo printing shops charge a fee, and in the era when film cameras were popular, it was a good offline business in itself. But after digital photos became mainstream, the way this traditional business was played changed. A large number of printing outlets were quickly deployed, allowing users to print photos for free, but they had to follow a bunch of WeChat public accounts : the user's cost was passed on to advertisers.

Even so, it is still a lucrative business. The hardware cost of a single unit is 3,000 yuan, and the maintenance fee is 300 yuan per month. A single machine can add 50-150 fans per day. Based on the average price of 1.5 yuan per fan, the investment can be recovered in two months. This is much faster than the shared power bank mentioned above and the mini KTV and self-service beverage machine projects that I will mention later.

However, I mentioned in a previous article: "When making a product, whether to make a product with a certain feature as the "starting point of use" or to make a product with that feature as the "end point of use" may make a huge difference."

For example, if the same thing is based on geographic location, the results will be very different when used for check-in, takeout, or stranger social networking ; for example, if the same thing is based on camera, the results will be very different when used for photo editing, live streaming , or video social networking. Therefore, for the same offline photo printer, the results will be very different whether it is used for charging for photo printing, for online fan guidance, or for online linkage based on offline scenarios.

Although digital photo storage has long become mainstream, the continued sales of Polaroid cameras show that users still need exquisite physical photos, especially young users. Because of this feature, photo printers have become an excellent offline traffic point for Internet products that target young users.

In, as a social product targeting young users born after 1995, has found this traffic point. Its offline smart interactive terminals, in addition to providing services such as following its own official account and downloading the app to print multiple photos for free, have built-in cameras that make the location of each machine a flash point, activating the "headshot" scene that was all the rage among students back then. This is a form of social entertainment that is popular among young users and has its own word-of-mouth effect.

At the same time, this is also the offline and online linkage of the camera strategy: the offline flash photo booth scene and the in-app photo sharing, short video live broadcast and AR camera are efficiently linked together.

In terms of user experience, during the whole process, taking photo stickers is free, printing photos is also free, and you are not forced to take other actions. It is just a continuation of the service in the context of photos, beautiful pictures and social scenarios, which drives the download and activity of in's own app. Users can take photos with friends on site, beautify the photos using in’s own filters and sticker tools , and post them in the community.

in not only found the demand for free offline photo printing as a diversion point, but also found an offline social scene as a diversion point.

At the same time, most of in's interactive terminals are placed at the entrances of restaurants, exhibitions, amusement parks and other places where young people go out for leisure on weekends. This not only helps to attract the target users of its own App, but also makes full use of the traffic dividend of the fragmented queuing scene.

By providing such an incremental service scenario, the commercial value is continuously transferred backwards. At first, it was directly charged for printing photos, then it was charged per person for diversion, and later it was provided through online products, so as to obtain as much offline traffic dividends as possible.

Another company that has also entered the fragmented queuing scene is Focus Media. This company, with a market value of RMB 100 billion, focuses on advertising placement scenarios in elevators of office buildings and hotels. in's offline terminals are equipped with large intelligent interactive screens. If it can penetrate into all fragmented scenes such as queuing, and then carry out commercial activities such as traffic distribution, interactive advertising and customized activities, the value of this matter will obviously be much greater than that of the crowd.

3. Unmanned self-service and supply chain reconstruction

Another trend of this wave of offline popularity is that, from a commercial perspective, it reflects the characteristics of unmanned self-service. Of course, there is the factor of soaring labor costs, but behind this, the essence is that some functions in the traditional service supply chain are dismantled and then reconstructed.

Here is an excerpt from an article I wrote four years ago titled "Real O2O is to use the characteristics of the Internet to reconstruct the supply chain of traditional industries":

"What is reconstruction? It means cutting off a necessary point in the supply chain nodes of traditional industries, or reversing the order of two points. This is called reconstruction. Before the emergence of the Internet, most traditional industries had been developed for thousands of years. It was almost impossible to reconstruct any point. They had been optimized to the point where they could not be optimized any more. What everyone was competing for was nothing more than the existing resources at hand, and then seeing who could achieve the highest efficiency at each point.

However, the emergence of the Internet has made the reconstruction of traditional industries possible.

What is happening now is the reconstruction of the supply chain in procurement, production, manufacturing and delivery of various industries. You can take a look at all the business operations of a traditional enterprise, and then list them all out in order. Which parts of these activities can be put online? Which parts can only be kept offline? By leveraging the Internet, we can put as many steps as possible online, eliminate steps that can be eliminated, and swap the order of certain steps (either chronological order or logical order). In this way, we can begin to use the characteristics of the Internet to reconstruct the supply chain of traditional industries. ”

Many of the earliest reconstructions in the Internet industry were based on information services, because this is the advantage of Internet technology itself. For example, portal websites such as Sina have reconstructed traditional newspapers and magazines, with the former providing massive and uninterrupted information aggregation services that the latter cannot match at all. Toutiao has once again restructured itself based on the portal. In addition to leveraging the productivity of the portal's massive content, personalized recommendations have reconstructed the editing model on which the portal relies for its survival.

This wave of offline development also requires mentioning the maturity of two systems, one is logistics and the other is payment. These two basic infrastructures, like water, electricity and coal, make more reconstructions possible.

Mini KTV is a perfect example of reconstruction. It cuts off the four parts that a traditional KTV should have, which actually means cutting off four points in the supply chain:

1. Large storefront;

2. Thoughtful manual service;

3. Optional room models;

4. Centralized geographical location;

Mini KTV only retains the most core part of KTV service: ordering songs and singing. And a new link was added: embedding their services in as many entertainment and leisure venues as possible in a decentralized manner. In this way, it also hits the scenarios where fragmented time needs to be consumed, such as queuing for meals or waiting for people in shopping malls.

The same is true for automatic juicers, orange juice machines, and coffee machines. They eliminate manual services and multiple product choices, providing extremely fast single-product services.

At the same time, although such projects involve supply chain reconstruction, it should be noted that they still provide standardized products rather than services that users must enjoy offline. Similar products are easily available to users at nearby convenience stores and coffee shops, or through home delivery.

Therefore, even if this type of project hits the point of self-service and supply chain reconstruction, its substitutability, or the degree of competition, is still relatively high. KTV is a service that must be completed offline, rather than a standardized product like beverages. The singing process cannot be replaced by standardized products, so services can absorb the benefits of offline traffic better than products.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

This article was compiled and published by @刘胖胖(Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map