See how the two skill selling platforms "Tingke" and "Kongjia" operate differently!
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With every opportunity for consumption upgrade, we strive to define a new lifestyle. Driven by the sharing economy, we share houses, cars, cooking skills and clothes. However, there are divergent paths in the market for personal skills, knowledge surplus, interest exchanges, etc. that cannot be standardized. They did not engage in mutual fighting, but they did achieve colorful changes in their operations . By analyzing the products in the two skill service markets, we look at how they reflect their positioning differences and varied operational approaches in terms of market understanding, product planning, operation launch, user operation and growth. Staggered positioning differences We chose "Tingke" and "Kongkong", a pair of CPs that are both favored by capital but have very different styles. Unlike "Zaixing" which focuses on key categories, both are full-category service and skill sales platforms, including divination, consulting, training, and food. However, there are differences in understanding when it comes to platform category planning and user consumption levels. Tingke is defined as a trading platform for freelancers, and its service is aimed at those who hope to untie their careers and institutions and pursue the value of freedom; or those who have deep interest and experience in a certain field. Judging from the service content and average order value, consumers are the type who pursue deeper life needs rather than just solving daily conveniences. The product categories are more dispersed and diversified, focusing on long-tail and medium- and low-frequency personalized services, and the average order volume will not be very high. The definition of space is broader, whether it is professional skills or general services, or even selling time, all fall into the category of services. The threshold for service providers is lower, and they hope to maximize the surplus value of all social groups, and the corresponding consumer types are also more diverse. In category planning, we can see the entanglement between the ambition to cover all categories and the support for the top categories. Operation strategy analysis 1) Dilemma of bilateral initiation This is a business with two sides, service provider and consumer. It is based on the basic principle of service and driven by profit. If you have to choose one side, it must be the service provider. Let’s look at two completely different startup gameplays. 1. Before the platform is launched, tools must be used first The early version of the Tingke APP (2015.6-2015.10) simplified the platform into a store opening tool for service providers, without a browsing entrance for buyers. Service providers can publish their services, showcase their introductions and qualifications through the Tingke APP, and can also publish them on social channels themselves. As a standardized service business card and window, consumers can purchase services through this window. This is very consistent with the Weidian under Pocket Shopping. Sellers are acquired through the Weidian seller version, and the sellers acquire buyers themselves. On this basis, the buyer version of Weidian is developed. We simply divide service providers into two categories: one is freelance service providers who use services as their main source of income; the other is service providers who have surplus skills and time. Obviously, the former type of users have stronger demands for tool attributes. This is the focus of recruiting early service providers. However, in different categories, such as dance training and travel consulting, the traffic channels of service providers are still very different and scattered, which may be in forums, offline circles, WeChat public accounts , etc. Based on long-tail and multiple goals, channel mining is very trivial. In the early version, the seller version of the APP adopted an invitation code registration system, the purpose of which was to operate the user circle where the service provider was located, allowing the service provider to specifically and scarcely invite other service providers within the circle or upstream and downstream. 2. Two-pronged approach Based on the hot categories recommended by Space in the early days, it focuses on several categories such as food, chatting, fortune-telling, hand-made and autograph, and expands the service providers through online recruitment in small groups. Among them, many service providers of gourmet food and handmade products are business types in terms of supply quantity and production, and can be recruited through Taobao stores, WeChat stores, and WeChat businesses. Since the types of consumers are very wide and there are fewer local offline services, there are few restrictions on the channels through which consumers can access them. As sellers flock to the platform, Space attracts new consumers through extensive media coverage (financing reports, television reports, print media, etc.), seller support programs, promotional activities, etc. It is said that in a luxurious place, one can take whatever he wants. Under the invitation mechanism of Space, users can obtain M beans through invitations and daily scheduled collection, which can be used to discount goods. Many people who make money online part-time have developed and they can earn a lot of M beans by widely publishing their invitation codes, which also brings in a lot of new users. In terms of the startup method, Tingke moves forward cautiously, adheres to the set user concept, and deeply maintains and explores the service providers. Based on its grand vision and relatively complete products, Space fully mobilizes media resources to create momentum and adopts the most direct way to expand its user base, with data taking effect quickly. 2) User operations see differentiation After entering the platform's growth stage, it is necessary to rely on the growth of users on both ends to drive healthy growth. It includes several operational aspects: increased exposure, increased interaction, increased orders, growth in operating experience, etc. Services and skills are non-standardized. The subtle demands and judgment criteria of each consumer may be different. The number of services provided by each service provider per unit time is also very limited. How to balance service and operational data will produce different ways of playing. 1. Personalized community experience On average, the service providers on the Tingke APP are all people with deep skills and enthusiasts in their fields, with a high average order value. They target consumers who have upgraded their life needs or are deep enthusiasts at the same time. In order to generate transactions, service providers need to gain recognition from consumers in terms of concepts, experience, qualifications, and personal charm. Such high service requirements cannot be achieved by simple text introduction or price factors. This can be promoted in two ways: one is the stable content output of the service provider; the other is the service experience. From September to December 2015, the hall held online and offline activities called "One Cent Sharing Session". Users pay one cent to register through the service link in the APP, and then add the host on WeChat to invite them to join the group. The sharer is the service provider of the Tingke APP, and at the same time activates the user's payment experience with a low threshold. Through this kind of community approach, users with the same interests can be gathered together, and because the participation threshold is low, even new users can be attracted to participate; sharers can gain exposure and social resources from a target group, converting participating users into users who purchase services. Based on the WeChat community operation in the previous stage, on December 22, 2015, the new version of the Tingke APP launched the "Sharing Session" function. Similar to the WeChat group , users can participate in the service provider's sharing and communicate online in each sharing session. It supports text and voice, and supports replay of each sharing session. On average, 200-300 people participate in each session. In terms of consumer marketing , Tingke combines upstream and downstream services within themes through themes such as traveling and marriage to achieve a one-stop and different service experiences. Expand the breadth of services through integration and increase the depth of user consumption. Centralized sharing is one of the effective means to obtain immediate paid users, while continuous social sharing can establish brand recognition. In WeChat communities, because the sharing guests in each issue are different, different communities must be established separately. Therefore, rapid conversion and subsequent management after the sharing is crucial. The “online sharing session” function solves these problems to a certain extent. However, in terms of operation and conversion efficiency, the community approach covers a limited number of user groups each time, and is not as high-frequency as live streaming apps, so the operational results are relatively slow. 2. Taobao-style Great Leap Forward Compared with the intrusive community operation of the hall guest, the operation of the space provider is simple and crude, but it is fruitful. Judging from the content layout of the APP, from the planning of all categories to the top categories (food, divination, autographs, and chatting), they almost occupy more than 80% of the recommended waterfall flow. There are even many ordinary products that cannot be considered handmade, such as cups, pillows, etc. Space pays special attention to orders and transactions, which are the core KPIs of the entire company. Under such goal orientation, the incentive system for service providers and consumers is about to emerge. On September 15, 2015, Space launched the "A-Class Plan" for sellers, and held an award ceremony on October 28 in Hangzhou Dream Town. With order volume as the most important criterion, sellers are encouraged to attract traffic and increase order volume through cash rewards (4 "Super A" winners receive 50,000 yuan each). The vast majority of these orders are gourmet food, and with such a large volume of orders, it has obviously exceeded the scope of personal service. The number of service providers in Space is more than 10 times that of customers in the hall, and judging from the recommended services, a large amount of homogeneity has appeared. Simply put, apart from data such as orders and attention, most of the services do not show any differences in terms of pictures, introductions, and qualifications, making it meaningless for consumers to refer to the services they choose. For non-standardized services, this is actually a shallow exploration and waste of service resources. The more successful the operational data is, the more advantages are lost. The picture below is the second recommended service on the homepage of Space on July 1, 2016. The service description is simple and rough, and the basic operation of sellers and services is not excellent. On the consumer side, it seems to be following Taobao's marketing style. Through very high-density promotional activities such as "Food Festivals" and "Service Parties", we recruit sellers who offer discounts on a large scale, and use red envelopes and M&M beans to promote sales. This is a contradiction between vision and data. In the pursuit of personal service, the higher the quality of the service, the more limited the quantity that can be provided. However, driven by data and incentives, only institutional sellers or low-quality services can achieve this, and cheap physical transactions have a higher transaction rate than services, thereby obtaining more display resources. As a universal service sales platform, Kongjian has strong seller operation and marketing capabilities with such a large user base, but it must also consider how to balance the mid- and long-tail categories and divide high-quality services to increase the average order value. 3) Traffic channels and cooperation Traffic channels can be divided into full-site, server-side and consumer-side types. Different channels target different users. For example, offline presentations by service providers belong to the traffic on the service provider side, while the traffic on the application market belongs to the entire site (except for some special events). Let’s look at the different ways the two products approach traffic acquisition. 1. AppStore optimization Before December 2015, Kongqi was ranked outside the top 200 in the life category. In late December, it jumped to the third place in the life list. In the past three months, it has remained in the top 20 of the life list. In terms of search term coverage, many popular category terms are covered, such as "hand-painted", with a search index of 5000. On December 16, 2015, Space ranked 234 under "hand-painted", and rose to the second place on December 18, and is currently stable at the second place. Currently, the ratio of iOS to Android among new users in Space is 6:4. 2. Invitation Reward Mechanism As mentioned above, Space encourages users to invite friends to register, and both parties can get 2 M beans respectively. The cost of a new registered user is 4 yuan. In the early days, M beans could be used to deduct unlimited amounts. However, for cheating reasons, after November 30, 2015, the maximum amount that could be deducted with M beans for a single order was 30%. For spaces with low average order value, such new customer acquisition costs are still attractive to users. 3. Product value output cooperation The value here includes valuable users and content on the APP. Let’s take a look at a cooperation case of Tingke. In late May 2016, Tingke teamed up with several campus recruitment public accounts such as "Campus Recruitment Calendar", "Intern Monk", and "Job Hunting Dad" to launch a "free resume modification event". The cooperating official account pushes event information to guide fans to obtain the "exclusive code". Enter the "exclusive code" through the activity page of the Tingke APP. The connected customer service will recommend the user to a suitable HR expert based on the user's situation, and communicate one-on-one online to help modify the resume. During the entire event, these official accounts obtained precise benefits for their fans, utilized the expert resources of the platform, and gained huge amounts of precise traffic. Among them, the single activity picture and text of "Intern Monk" has 7147 readings, and the single activity picture and text of "Job Hunting Dad" has 3802 readings. As a trading platform, it is a channel for service providers to monetize their skills. On June 14, 2016, Zhihu's Zhihu launched the "Public Account Toolkit". Public accounts with value monetization needs can use the toolkit to provide paid question-and-answer services to users. Whether it is the early or current hall guests or spaces, they all have such genes that can help institutions realize skill monetization. Product Comparison As a complete transaction closed loop, the functions of the core links are basically similar. As operational objectives and data volumes change, different products will gradually develop their own reasonable differences. We list several functional differences between the two products. 1) The Ultimate Simplicity and the Ultimate Profundity The starting point of the overall layout of the two products is the same, which is to better present a large number of service providers and provide shopping guides for consumers. Judging from the results, completely different effects appeared. There are 8 simple personalized categories in the service guide for guests, and each category is sorted by default according to the number of purchases. The service recommendations on the homepage are updated regularly by the editor according to the three categories of "recommended, novel, and local". The space accommodates more than ten times the number of service providers, and the layout provides more shopping guide entrances. 1. There are more than 20 category icons at the top of the homepage that require page turning; 2. There are 10 category icons below the "Expert Ranking" in the middle; 3. There are 4 tofu-block shopping guide channels above the recommended services; 4. The grid channel recommends services according to the community, but because there are too few services covered in the area, many are more than 20 kilometers away; 5. The "Expert Circle" channel recommends services based on popular and latest, and for consumers, it is really impossible to distinguish the popular and latest services from the recommended sections on the homepage. We have summarized the setting rules of these shopping guide entrances, which are mainly divided around categories, transaction data, and marketing activities, which leads to overlapping channel types, concentrated traffic of top sellers, and more distinctive services are not displayed. On the basis of conventional classification, we can consider exploring and matching services around life scenarios. The user positioning of Kongji is very different from that of Tingke. Tingke targets deep enthusiasts or freelancers, and the service providers are very aware of their own advantages and special services. Space sells skills to everyone, and many users are not clear about what skills are suitable for sale. By creating more personalized service cases and educational scenarios, users can tap into their own potential and find the skills that best suit them (rather than simply selling their time, which does not help the service provider grow), thereby joining a personalized service ecosystem. Only in this way can Space eventually become a platform for all people, rather than a sales channel for merchants driven by data. 2) Different “postures” of service In terms of consulting functions, the two products also reflect different operating concepts. In the Tingke APP, service providers can check whether to support pre-sales communication. The default status is unchecked. Users can consult and communicate with the service provider and receive online services only after payment. In the blank space, buyers can consult sellers at any time, similar to Taobao, and choose whether to purchase the service after being satisfied with the consultation. There are several factors to consider in the different designs here. First, in terms of functional design, the service description of the hall guests is relatively rich in terms of word count and editorial guidance, and the description of the service is very detailed and orderly. In contrast, service descriptions with spaces have fewer word limits and restricted editing formats. Many service descriptions are piled into one paragraph, which is not detailed and standardized and has poor readability. Directly influence purchasing decisions. (The guest room PC edits the service content, and the space PC supports chat and order management) Second, Tingke and Zaixing have similar ideas and believe that high-quality service providers are the core resources of the platform. With high-quality service providers, consumers will naturally come. Because services are different from commodities, services are scarce or even unique. Therefore, the after-sales consultation function is set up to ensure the effectiveness of service provider communication and avoid invalid consultation. Kongjian adheres to the consumer-first concept similar to Taobao, fully ensuring consumer satisfaction before sales, and improving purchase conversion rates through pre-sales consultation. The differences here can only be adjusted based on feedback from operational data. It is also related to the long-term operational strategy. Personalized services are scarce and the number of services is limited, so it is necessary to balance both ends. Disagreements and contradictions At the crossroads of the skill trading platform, Tingke has a clear and firm positioning, exploring ways to upgrade consumption at both ends in a small and beautiful operation. Space has both capital and operational strength, but is ambitious but hesitant in building the platform's skill ecosystem. There is no need to draw conclusions in the debate on operations, but the goal is not to lose yourself.
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