How to operate group buying activities!

Almost all platforms now have “group buying” as part of their marketing activities. There are so many group purchases, and it is so difficult to join a group.

I used to be a user, and now as a product manager, I find that the mysteries involved are much more complicated than I imagined.

Let’s review today what preparations are needed to carry out a group buying activity.

1. Clarify the core requirements of different roles

When making any product, clarifying the user roles is the key, and sorting out the usage scenarios is the core.

1. Event Creator

For event creators, the purpose is to meet customer acquisition needs, that is, to attract more users to buy.

Here, we need to distinguish between group buying activities and ordinary promotional activities. Ordinary activities may just be for promotion, may just be for increasing sales, or may just be for simply clearing inventory.

The core content of group buying activities should be "competing", which means that this is a scenario that requires collaboration of multiple people to complete.

The Internet today is facing the problem of increasing customer acquisition costs while also facing the problem of increasing customer acquisition difficulty. Fast, efficient and convenient customer acquisition is the core concern of merchants.

Therefore, the design ideas of group buying activities need to revolve around the above goals. Otherwise, the more functions there are, the worse the effect will be.

2. Group Leader and Group Members

For group leaders and group participants, their core needs are relatively simple: to purchase high-quality services at a relatively cheap price.

So, for them, price and quality are their common demands.

For a group leader, being able to quickly distribute the activities organized by his group is the core of his concern. Diversity of distribution methods and compatibility of distribution channels are both essential for a good group buying tool.

Basic poster copywriting and direct message sending can basically meet most usage scenarios. After all, everyone’s social circle now basically cannot do without Tencent’s territory. By giving priority to meeting this content, the core demands of the team leader are basically resolved.

For the group members, it is quite simple. With low prices, smooth purchase and guaranteed service, there is basically nothing to worry about. After all, they are all in a circle of acquaintances, and what matters is just favors.

2. Clarify the essential elements of group buying activities

For a successful group buying activity, core content configuration is the key, and the compatibility of the content determines the scalability of the activity.

1. Group buying content

Regarding group buying content, the goal is to let users clearly know what they want to purchase.

Group Name: The name of the group. A good title is half the battle. Choosing a good name can reduce promotion costs and increase exposure opportunities.

Group buying content: What is the specific content of the group buying, is it a product, a service, or something else. To let users know what they want to buy at a glance, sometimes being simple and crude is also a good method.

Group buying rules: some rules about group buying, such as validity period, conditions of use, restrictions, disclaimers, etc.

The above are basic general standards, and we also need to consider industry attributes and differences.

For example, we are in the beauty industry, and group buying activities involve service items and card items, and these contents actually have corresponding time and store restrictions. These all need to be introduced in detail in the group buying activities.

If it is a commodity, it is necessary to clarify the services related to express delivery and self-pickup.

The above contents must be fully considered, otherwise, dealing with after-sales issues will take you a lot of time.

2. Group buying time

In fact, group buying time has two meanings. One refers to the time of the entire group buying activity, and the other refers to the group buying time of each independent group.

The significance of the group buying activity time is to control the cycle of the entire activity. Generally speaking, activities have corresponding budgets, plans, and cycles, which are configured in combination with company plans.

The significance of group order time is to control the time of each group order. After the group leader successfully opens a group, he needs to find enough users to join the group within the specified time. The purpose is also to allow more users to participate and achieve the core goal of competition.

Regarding the relationship between the total duration of the activity and the duration of a single group order, different products have different practices:

One approach is to consider the group formation time. If the remaining time of the activity is not enough to meet the maximum formation time, the group will not be allowed to be formed. For example, if the duration of a single group is 2 hours, then it is not allowed to start a group 2 hours before the end of the activity.

One approach is to start a group as long as the event has not ended, and then each group will still count according to its own group order time.

There is no good or bad between the two methods above. You can choose the one that suits your actual situation.

3. Tiered pricing

Tiered pricing is also a common practice in group buying activities.

Generally, it is necessary to allow users to create multi-tiered pricing. For example: 2-person group/100 yuan, 4-person group/90 yuan, 8-person group/80 yuan.

The purpose of doing this is to give group founders more choices and to select the appropriate number of people to start a group based on their actual abilities. Secondly, it is also to stimulate group founders to choose groups with larger numbers of members in order to attract more users.

However, the number of steps is not random. Too few will make it impossible to choose; too many will make it impossible for users to choose.

According to general standards, 2-3 options are more acceptable to users, which gives them room to choose without being trapped in a difficult choice.

4. Virtual group formation

If there is no virtual group, when the group order expires and there are not enough people, the group will fail and a refund will be made to the users who have paid.

This is of course not what the event creator wants to see, so the virtual group function was created. It is recommended to enable this function by default.

When forming a virtual group, there are two points to note:

User information should be as minimally fake as possible, and avatars and nicknames should be as realistic as possible. Specific rules can be given, and the system can then randomly select values.

Try to disperse the time as much as possible, and don't let all virtual group formation times be the last moment of the validity period. Try to randomly select values ​​between the start and end times of the group formation.

We should also take virtual things seriously.

5. Customer Restrictions

The restrictions on customers are actually to meet the needs of old customers bringing in new customers.

In some cases, users need to acquire new customers through old users. At this time, restrictions can be imposed on the customers who can join the group.

Set up group buying activities so that everyone can participate or only new customers can participate.

One thing to note is that there may be differences in the definition of a new customer. Some are successful orders, and some are successful payments. Try to be flexible and configurable.

3. Understand the auxiliary elements of group buying activities

The core functions are essential, but auxiliary functions are better.

1. Barrage

The purpose of barrage is to increase user interactivity and participation. This is a method that young people love and who wouldn’t want to try it?

Common practice is that the system will provide a set of standard barrage content based on industry data, and users can directly choose to use it.

On this basis, users can create customized content according to their actual needs.

2. Group purchase success reminder

The purpose of successful group purchase reminders is to stimulate users' motivation to buy.

After all, seeing people constantly shopping makes me a little excited.

You can use a combination of virtual group buying and real group buying.

3. Virtual sales

Regarding the issue of sales volume, there are two common approaches: one is not to show sales volume, and the other is to show sales volume.

Not showing sales volume: users will not be aware of it and will naturally not care about sales volume.

Show sales: combine real sales and virtual sales.

The purpose of virtual sales is to increase users' purchasing confidence.

Most people have a herd mentality, and when they see something with good sales, they will naturally feel a sense of security in their hearts. I figured since so many people bought it, it must be good.

4. Check the follow-up effects of group buying activities

Constantly review, regularly upgrade, and continuously optimize.

1. Conversion

By analyzing the conversion data of group buying activities, the overall effect of each activity can be clearly understood.

Moreover, by comparing and analyzing different activities, we can extract the characteristics of successful activities so that we can be more targeted when carrying out subsequent activities.

Regarding the conversion of activities, general indicators are the number of shares, clicks, orders, and payments.

If conditions permit, you can also conduct funnel analysis to find out which link has a low conversion rate and optimize it accordingly.

2. Order status

When looking at the order data of group buying activities, there are two dimensions to look at: one is the group order dimension, and the other is the order dimension.

By looking at the group order dimensions, we can see information such as group start time, remaining time, group members, and group status.

Looking at the order dimensions, we can see information such as payment, user, and amount.

The above is a simple review of group buying activities. If you happen to be planning to get involved in this, I hope it will be useful to you.

Some things I want to say:

The core of group buying activities lies in "grouping" and the foundation lies in "activities".

The core determines the way it is presented and the scenarios it satisfies; the foundation determines the content and process of presentation.

No matter how far we go, we should never forget why we set out.

In the group buying activity, he joins and I join too.

Author: Online tomorrow

Source: Online tomorrow