Decoding: What’s so great about Alibaba’s operations?

 If we ask the operations people a question now: What is the difference between operations, marketing, and planning? I believe that 90% of people cannot answer it immediately. After thinking quickly for a few minutes, they can say a few words about the difference between marketing focusing on resources, operations focusing on content, and planning focusing on creativity. 

The three Internet giants, Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba , represent the highest level of the industry;

There is a saying: For technology, look to Baidu; for products, look to Tencent; for operations, look to Alibaba;

I am lucky enough to join Alibaba as an operations manager. I have not been busy at work recently, and I have been able to get off work on time instead of working overtime. So I want to record my feelings here, so that I can summarize what operations are and what makes Alibaba's operations different.

Of course, the main purpose is to force myself to come up with my own ideas and become a qualified operation dog, woof!

Think about it, what is operation?

I have changed jobs several times in the past few years. The industry has evolved from advertising creative platform, media retail platform to interactive TV channel retail platform. The nature of the positions is the same, creative planning.

To sum up, what I do is actually just one thing: create fun, create selling points, and retain users.

The question is, in my understanding, what is operation? Are the things I have done above within the scope of operations?

The essence of operation is management, finding the right people, saving costs and creating value.

The origin of operation is the user, who is he? What do you want? I will give you whatever you want, so that we can stay and love each other.

Operations cannot be described with words like grand and heroic, or grand and sweeping. Instead, words like silent and imperceptible, and seeing the big picture from the small details are more appropriate.

So, in my opinion, operations has always been a job that pays attention to details. Girls who are delicate, sensitive, and hardworking, quick, and creative are the most suitable for operations (seems to be blackening myself?)

Then I came to Ali. Here, I gained a new understanding of operations.

What do I do at Alibaba?

A. What is the general environment?

My division is a vertical business that Alibaba has laid out in O2O , starting from the catering industry. It intends to start from the catering industry and fully internetize the "eating" related business. There are advantages and difficulties in starting from the catering industry. The advantage is that catering is an industry with rigid demand and high frequency of users; the difficulty is that it is a very complex traditional industry that is difficult to be internetized. The site selection and rental of a restaurant, the chef's handyman, the purchase of raw materials, and the taste of dishes are all extremely difficult to be standardized. At the same time, there are strong competitors (x group, x review);

So where do we start in this industry? The essence of a restaurant is still the quality of food and service. Apart from quality, what businesses care most about is saving costs and improving efficiency.

Therefore, data + tools are our entry point;

Everyone knows that Alibaba has no shortage of traffic. Although it may not be as good as Baidu in terms of technology, it is still one of the three giants and must be respected.

Traffic + Tools = Data

Tools + Data = Marketing

Data + Marketing = Users

Isn’t it amazing? Is there an operational closed loop?

That’s right, these three formulas can tell merchants a complete and wonderful story. Our business is equivalent to recreating a Taobao for catering, allowing merchants to use traffic, tools, and data to open their own stores and do marketing on the platform. The imagination space is truly unlimited.

B. What are my responsibilities?

Let me pause for a moment. The business unit shoulders the strategic mission of the group and has excellent business logic. So when it comes to execution, what are my responsibilities as an operator?

Let me do an analysis and plan first. Only when I have a clear idea can I determine the goals and responsibilities.

1. First, analyze who my customers are

I want to provide support to my business colleagues:

Frontline colleagues are specialized in BD skills, negotiation skills, and offline resource integration. So for them, it would be a great help if they had data on our merchants’ coverage rate in the entire city, the category structure, and which categories, locations, and merchants with the best average customer spending performed.

I want to provide services to merchants:

For example, for merchants in a shopping mall, I can plan an event to let them work together and share resources to serve consumers;

For example, when the weather gets hot, I plan activities for crayfish merchants, provide them with resources, and create buzz.

For example, for merchants with marketing awareness who need to promote new dishes, I provide them with traffic solutions.

I want to provide services to users:

What reasons do users have to consume on our app? There are many reasons, such as great discounts, easy restaurant finding, accurate recommendations, interesting activities... For users, it is enough to get beneficial and interesting information.

So...I was actually in a threesome?

2. Then analyze what I can do under my authority

For partners: decision-making reference + risk warning

My permissions allow me to capture data such as traffic, merchant operations, users, categories, and marketing campaign effectiveness, and I can provide them with data support for decision-making and early warning of risk points.

For merchants: resource integration + content planning

I can plan events, apply for push and App banner resources, create content that surprises them, and help them integrate marketing resources.

For users: decision-making reference + cost saving

I can apply for subsidies based on the data, plan online and offline theme activities for their favorite restaurants, and provide centralized subsidies to the C-end to bring them greater discounts;

It can make content recommendations based on needs and hot topics, providing them with references for decision-making.

Resources: scientific allocation + input-output

Be able to deduce resource matching strategies based on data; allocate resources on the timeline, ensure that resource output meets ROI standards, and whether to support small and medium-sized businesses or create hotspots for large businesses.

The conclusion is out. I do this at Alibaba.

1. Data Operations:

The more important data fields I face include turnover rate, number of users, single merchant output, conversion rate , etc.

Spend 30-40 minutes every day processing key fields, making daily reports, and producing a weekly data report to look at trends, strengths and weaknesses, and progress and regression, and report the phenomena to business colleagues.

Think about the data of this stage for about a month, and compare it with the basic data of competitors and the data of sister cities, and you can often see some reasons.

Data analysis is quantitative, objective, and from the inside out, and can help business managers make more scientific decisions.

My biggest feeling about data operation is that data must be collected and processed by yourself, which will definitely give you a better sense of trends than looking at ready-made reports.

2. Content Operation:

The purpose of creating content is to create, edit and organize thematic content, improve the content value of the App, and thus enhance user stickiness and conversion. At the same time, by combining content with resources and launching it at the right time, the role of the content can be maximized.

A product must be filled with content. The following is some of the content I have been responsible for or collaborated with.

Marketing activities: Information selection, we have done some theme recommendation, hot spot recommendation, discount recommendation, shopping mall recommendation activities, such as "The west wind blows, crab legs itch, how about some hairy crabs?" "Shuiyoucheng restaurant's signature dishes for free", "Beer and lobster", etc.

Recommended content:

In the column, I transform myself into an editor and use my tongue and ears to write stories about food, so that users can see the behind-the-scenes things they cannot see, such as "People with Stories, Interviews with Chefs" and "Unique Sashimi, the Most Sentimental Recommendation in Nanjing". This is also my favorite part. I get to know many restaurant owners and chefs, hear many stories, and understand the efforts they put in behind a dish, which often moves people.

Offline activities : I have tried some simple activities in shopping malls, universities, and office buildings. I didn’t do anything fancy, but this is an interesting dimension that I think can be played out in many different ways.

Cross-industry cooperation: There is no way out by fighting alone. Only by integrating resources from multiple parties can the gameplay be diversified. The ultimate goal is to find a point of entry for cooperation with the other brand and achieve a win-win situation. Examples include the successful cooperation of Guevara, Wanglaoji, Kuaidi Taxi, etc.

3. Resource operation:

Marketing resources are very valuable. In the Internet industry, there are many money-burning subsidy wars, and what is being burned are marketing resources. How are they burned? In addition to the strategic thinking of business managers, operations also play a key role, because we need to use resources reasonably and scientifically under the strategy, so the merchant stratification + resource matching strategy is a very important task.

How to do it?

1) Layering

Time stratification: resource budgets are definitely not enough. Based on the conclusions of data operations, I will be very clear about the natural peak and valley nodes of each month. Based on the conclusions of content operations, I will be very clear about the activity peak and valley nodes of each month. According to the indicator pressure of the city, resources should be allocated to the time points with emphasis, so that they can rush when they are rushing, and they should be stable throughout the month. This principle is very simple (I would say that I often borrow budget from other cities at the end of the month at the beginning?)

Merchant stratification: We provide a standard based on the offline turnover of merchants, the turnover on our platform, the repurchase rate of consumers and other data to stratify merchants, and match different resources to different merchants.

Class A merchants are more suitable for letting go, because they have already been taught everything they can, and they can already dance around the rules (think of the big sellers on Taobao);

Class B merchants are the key support targets because they have the motivation and drive, but lack the methods and resources. We should use resources to guide their growth (imagine that the 20 or so classmates in school are all very awesome now, right?);

Category C merchants are more complicated. They have a large base, no methods, and even no motivation. This is when our business colleagues come into play, with review meetings and training sessions. We gather merchants offline and use plans and cases to make them understand that ideas determine the way out. On this basis, we invest resources in them and help them get started!

Regional stratification: Resources are tilted towards high-output areas, such as shopping malls, hot neighborhoods, and communities with high dining consumption habits.

2) Horse Racing

Horse racing is a local slang within Alibaba, which means a competition for resources under the same rules, and the best will win.

The purpose of stratification is to help us better understand merchants, but resources are always more wolves than meat, so it is important to have a horse racing rule. Under the same rule, merchants who apply better will get resources and enter a virtuous circle.

It is usually formulated based on data such as the ranking of core indicators and the ranking of growth rates. It will weigh the proportion of development and health, and it is best to stimulate motivation without forcing things to happen.

You see, the basis of resource operation is also data. If I don’t have data, I would be a blind man.

4. There are two more points besides the above: creativity and communication:

First add two attributes: scientific creativity and thorough communication

1) Creativity

Creativity must be based on user insights. What are user insights? Isn't it just saying one thing to one person and another thing to another? The final presentation: copywriting , design, and gameplay.

I don't have any experience with these points. I just go with my own feelings. To sum it up in one sentence: what I show to users is not a work of art, because users will not spend time to appreciate the mystery of my careful design. They just want to understand as quickly as possible "What the hell is this? What does it have to do with me? Is it simple or troublesome?" For example: lottery is not creativity, creativity is how to draw a lottery.

Here’s a thinking tool: the famous six thinking hats, and question your own creativity more often.

2) Communication

Internal communication - creativity does not go astray and information does not get lost.

External communication - Customers are always smarter than I think when it comes to ideas, but they are never as smart as I think when it comes to execution.

Execution requires my control! ! ! Don’t think it’s inappropriate. If I don’t control it, the effect will never be what I want (I say this without confidence because I haven’t done well enough myself, hahaha).

I'm going to post a few of my favorite works (see the end) because there are so many experts out there and I'm sorry to show off my poor performance.

5. Other than that

There is also manual work such as material design, printing follow-up, H5 construction, and the online and offline operation of the marketing activity backend system, which I will not go into details.

6. Write here and look back

What I did before: create fun, create selling points, and retain users.

What I do at Alibaba: data first, creating anchor points, using tools well, and serving customers.

What did I realize?

Think clearly about who my customers are. Maybe it’s not just users?

All ideas and creativity must have roots. Why should I bother if not to solve the problem?

Create anchors instead of just buying points. Anchors are a type of hyperlink in HTML. To me, it means that when my customers see my carefully designed anchors, more information will pop up in their minds just like clicking on a hyperlink.

Commit yourself fully. Without commitment, it won’t be difficult.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media information flow

The author of this article is @Pangu's Pan Compiled and published by (APP Top Promotion), please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!