How does Watsons conduct user operations?

The Internet has been developing for more than 10 years, and the traffic dividend has almost reached its peak.

Businesses are becoming more and more anxious about growth, and the cost of acquiring customers is also getting higher and higher. The incoming traffic is difficult to retain, and the retained users are not converted. Under the huge traffic pressure, many companies are looking for solutions.

The importance of paying attention to user operations is highlighted in corporate management. Some brands such as Pop Mart, Perfect Diary, Shangpin Home Delivery, Watsons, etc. have achieved double growth in users and revenue by relying on intensive efforts in user operations .

However, how to build, operate and monetize an enterprise's user operation system is still a thorny issue for many traditional or online enterprises.

The content of the article mainly revolves around three aspects:

1. What is user operation and what aspects does it include? Which industries and companies need to do user operations?

2. Traffic on major platforms is becoming more and more expensive. How should companies choose platforms to reduce customer acquisition costs and achieve user growth? Are there any relevant cases for reference?

3. As "community" is one of the most important forms of user operation, how should we manage operations to achieve efficient conversion?

1. Three dimensions of user operations: touchpoints, layers, and tools

Mantou: There are many opinions about user operation. What do you think user operation is? What aspects does it mainly include?

Generally speaking, operations involve three dimensions: people, goods, and venues. User operation is "people-centered" operation.

In the past, when doing business, the focus of operations was "goods", but in the past two years, the focus of operations has begun to shift to "people". If we break down user operations, we can analyze it from three dimensions.

The first dimension is touchpoints.

What exactly are companies managing when they manage their users? What you manage is actually every touch point with users.

Taking the fast-moving consumer goods retail industry as an example, the product itself, outer packaging, stores, online materials, communities, official accounts, etc. are all touchpoints that contact users. These touchpoints together can be called "brand touchpoints."

What consistent brand information and brand values ​​should these touchpoints present? They are all about managing user touchpoints, and their purpose is to make users perceive the brand.

The second dimension is user stratification.

With so many users, one set of operating methods will definitely not work, and you can't spend corporate resources and energy evenly on these users. At this time, the key logic of user operation is based on user stratification.

It turns out that the core stratification logic for membership in many traditional companies is how much money the user recharges at one time.

In fact, does the amount of money a user recharges really represent their recognition of you? Does it really mean that he is at the top of the consumption pyramid? That may not be the case now.

When we can understand whether the user has forwarded or split our event content, and whether the user himself is an influential KOL, we will find that there are more angles to look at user behavior, and more dimensions to measure a valuable user.

Therefore, from the perspective of doing business, we must consider how to segment users more accurately.

The purpose of differentiation is, on the one hand, to make the company's energy and resources more targeted, and on the other hand, to provide different services to different users, making them feel more refined and considerate.

The third dimension is tools.

In fact, it is about what tools we use to serve users and get closer to them.

I just mentioned that there are many touchpoints with users, and in most of these touchpoints, enterprises are passive. Only when users come to buy products or go to stores does the company have a chance to operate.

So, does the company have some proactive touchpoints? Yes, there are. Private domain is one of the key user operation tools for proactive marketing.

However, in the minds of many business owners, they think that private domain means adding users to WeChat or creating a community, which is not the case.

The private domain is a local battlefield of a user operation system, which also involves brand touchpoints, user grid segmentation, refined operations, transaction purchase processes, how to fission, etc.

The private domain can bring you closer to your users, allow you to provide more diverse services, and capture the users' attention, so you have more opportunities to approach users and form conversions.

Mantou: Which industries and companies should pay attention to user operations?

All retail businesses, as long as they serve C-end consumers, require user operations .

It turns out that many industries with relatively high average order value do not pay enough attention to user operations, such as decoration companies, real estate sales, and automobile retention marketing, because many of them are one-time consumption.

But things are different now. Users are being fiercely competed for, causing all companies to transform into user companies rather than companies that sell goods.

Therefore, even companies with a very high average order value must regard user operation as the main battlefield of business operations. After all, if the cost of acquiring customers is reduced by 1,000 yuan, the annual profit will increase by 1 million yuan.

The decoration market is also facing such pressure. When there are more new houses on the market, it is easier for the decoration industry to obtain a list of owners, and even to buy the list.

It doesn’t matter if there is no list, he can go directly to the community of the new property to sell. In this case, the users are relatively concentrated. Once he gets the list, he just needs to call them one by one to ask. Acquiring customers is much faster than continuous user operations.

But now, the proportion of second-hand housing transactions is getting higher and higher, and the transactions are more scattered, so even if he buys the list it may not be useful.

At this time, user operation is very necessary. He must use this set of online customer acquisition methods and take the referral of old users seriously.

2. Choose the right platform to attract traffic

Reduce customer acquisition costs and improve efficiency

Mantou: You just mentioned online customer acquisition. Nowadays, traffic on major online platforms is becoming more and more expensive. For companies, how can they choose these platforms to attract traffic and acquire customers in order to reduce customer acquisition costs and improve efficiency?

The cost of acquiring traffic is getting higher and higher now, not only because the company's expenses are taken away by the platform, but also because the traffic is becoming more and more dispersed, which increases the requirements for operations.

In my opinion, traffic platforms can be divided into two main categories.

One type is platforms like Taobao, JD.com, and Baidu information flow. These platforms have traffic volumes exceeding 100 million, which can be said to be relatively unlimited.

In this infinite traffic pool, if a brand wants to attract traffic, what is essentially tested is efficiency, the ability to design precise strategies for delivery, and the ability to convert users after they come in.

What companies need to do is to allow users to enter the company's transaction space from public traffic areas with particularly large traffic. This transaction space is not necessarily an e-commerce platform, it may be a social group, WeChat account, video account, etc.

The other type is platforms with limited traffic, such as Dianping, Xiaohongshu, etc.

On such a platform, its traffic is not unlimited, and the top accounts take away most of the traffic. This type of platform actually tests content capabilities, and companies need to acquire customers through high-quality content planning capabilities.

These platforms, which have high requirements for content capabilities, have spawned a new way to acquire customers, which is to find a variety of KOLs to supplement traffic.

However, the key to obtaining traffic does not lie in who the KOL is, but in what the company's content is.

Because on these platforms, the logic of finding KOLs to cooperate with must be "paving the way". In other words, it will not be effective if you find one KOL, you need to find a group of KOLs.

Therefore, it is not so important whether the company chooses the right KOL. It does not matter if 20 of the 1,000 people are wrong.

The key is what content strategies these 1,000 KOLs publish to help companies acquire users.

Mantou: For companies operating different types of businesses, what are the differences in the strategies for choosing platforms to acquire customers?

First of all, in terms of business categories, companies can choose a platform based on the user groups that their categories serve. For example, there are more highly educated people on Zhihu, and female users account for a large proportion of Xiaohongshu users.

Then, there is no need to choose platforms with massive traffic such as Tmall and JD.com , as companies can circle user groups by designing their delivery strategies. Moreover, mature e-commerce platforms have good infrastructure and you just need to follow the platform rules.

Secondly, for platforms with limited traffic such as Dianping and Xiaohongshu, companies can choose platforms that suit their own tone and product logic.

Of course, these are just one perspective on traffic selection. One way for companies to choose a traffic strategy that suits them is to look at their competitors on the platform.

Nowadays, the well-known platforms have quite a lot of traffic. If you are making a paid knowledge product, can’t you promote it on Xiaohongshu? That’s fine, but the traffic will be less. However, you will have fewer competitors there.

In short, there are two delivery strategies:

One is the role of a follower, which will not make mistakes but has a higher traffic cost; the other is the role of an innovator, which may make mistakes but if done right, the traffic cost will be lower.

Therefore, purchasing traffic is essentially an investment behavior. Whether you choose to invest in a way that is higher risk and higher return, or a way that is more stable and has lower return, this is the choice of investment strategy.

The choice of platform depends on the company's traffic strategy and marketing costs.

Mantou: Teacher, do you have any excellent cases to introduce about customer acquisition and traffic generation?

I can give you some examples of where single-point business was done well. For example, Shangpin Home Furnishing, a company in the home furnishing industry.

In the home furnishing industry, the process from traffic acquisition to conversion may take longer than in other fast-moving consumer goods industries. Because the average order value in the furniture industry is relatively high, generally speaking, there will be an effective lead if there is exposure-type traffic—interested users—come to measure the room. Only after obtaining effective leads can there be a chance to close a deal.

Before visiting homes to measure the houses, Shangpin Home Delivery had a very good logic design for the entire traffic path, from exposure to conversion, and it had built a large number of new media touchpoints related to users.

I mentioned earlier that the KOL matrix can be used on content platforms, and the KOL matrix of Shangpin Home Delivery is very powerful. Many of the names in its KOL matrix are those that have created their own IPs.

When searching for design-related keywords on Douyin, half of the top 10 are personal IPs cultivated by Shangpin Home Delivery. For example, "Designer A Shuang" has 23 million fans, and this IP is the largest IP in their group.

This content-based multi-touchpoint matrix can bring them hundreds of millions of traffic coverage. Behind the traffic coverage, there may also be millions or tens of millions of users.

Then the official account contact points of Shangpin Home Delivery are also very well designed. If compared horizontally with other cabinet brands, Shangpin’s official account introduction is the most down-to-earth and gives users the strongest sense of value.

In addition, after following the service account of Shangpin Home Delivery, it will push different content to users in different ways within 24 hours.

For example, provide users with free online design, reference decoration cases, and actively capture user clues, asking users which city or district they are from, etc.

It actually uses these contents and user responses to label them to identify what kind of user this is. This was done by Shangpin Home Delivery, and in my opinion it’s a better place on the front end.

There is also the cosmetics industry. Perfect Diary is doing very well, and many brands in the cosmetics industry are now learning from Perfect Diary's strategy, establishing their own private domains, and creating their own beauty IPs.

Watsons also has some good things to do. Its traffic flow logic is very good and there is no waste of user traffic.

For example, when you open an official account, it will recommend mini-programs and customer service to you. When you contact customer service, the customer service will recommend official accounts to you, as well as various mini-program activities.

When you open the mini program, it will recommend the customer service of the nearest store to you. The design of the rotation of private domain traffic is very good.

In the department store industry, there is a very well-known company called Pop Mart. Pop Mart’s private domain was established when it first started its business.

For example, at that time, many people could not get their favorite dolls from the blind boxes. Their sales and offline store guides would suggest and guide users to join the community and exchange them with other friends who like blind boxes in the group.

Pop Mart’s second-hand market generates sales of hundreds of millions every year, a large part of which takes place in Pop Mart’s various communities.

These communities may exchange blind box dolls, modify dolls, or even create short stories about the CP of different dolls together.

It can be said that Pop Mart not only established its social empire, but also established a new social culture based on this brand.

3. Efficient management of communities: classification, retention, activity and conversion

Mantou: We would like to learn more about the topic of the community. We all know that community is a very important form of user operation. So in the community, how should we classify users and encourage them to repurchase?

It is different in different industries. This is a practical issue, which can generally be based on the splitting of top and mid-level customers.

For top customers, companies can establish a stronger community of interests with them so that they are willing to stay. The community of interests not only refers to sharing money with him, but also depends on the industry the company is in and the products it sells.

If you are selling some high-end products, your community of interests is to establish a stronger value-added connection with your customers.

We have previously served a brand of clothing company whose top customers had annual spending of over 1 million. We gathered these customers together and established a community.

The logic behind managing these top customers is to build their personal influence.

For example, offline, we planned events like the Fashion Awards to award prizes to top customers; invited fashion magazines to interview them; and held offline salons for customers to share their experiences.

As for mid-tier and lower-tier customers, the first decision we need to make is whether or not to operate these customers based on the existing manpower of our brand.

It is easy to add in operations, but for user operators who have strategic thinking ability, subtraction is also important. After all, every company has a rigid boundary - resources are limited.

When dealing with mid-tier and lower-tier customers, it is very important to identify whether they are purchasing customers or customers with forwarding capabilities .

We can use the WeChat for Business backend to label different users, identify users in a refined manner, and provide differentiated content, activities, and products to the ever-refined user groups, so as to drive the growth of mid- and lower-tier customers through operational strategies rather than by resources and energy.

Mantou: What should we do as more and more users leave the community? Is there any way to retain users?

There are many reasons why the community’s attrition rate is relatively high.

The essence behind the reason is not the question of what method can be used to retain users, but whether the company has made it clear to users what the group is used for when building the community.

Users know what the group can do, which is the first factor that keeps the community active for a long time.

Second, if you want to retain these users, you can choose to disband the group, which is the most effective method we use.

If a group has entered a period of dormancy or death, the number of users will only increase and increase at a faster rate. At this time, we will directly announce in the group that this group will be disbanded. If friends still want to continue with us, they can join a new group.

Then we can direct users to new communities. Users who enter a new community will enter a new active life cycle.

The disbanding of a community is also a reminder to users to re-evaluate whether this is a brand they want to continue to pay attention to. If he thinks so, he can join the new group. Therefore, one of the effective ways to keep a community alive is to disband it and rebuild a new group.

Only when old and new users settle, flow in and exit in a healthy proportion can a good ecology be brought to the entire community.

Mantou: What should I do if users are not active and proactive in organizing activities in the community and no one participates?

There are three main factors that influence whether user behavior is positive or not.

First, is he motivated? This is the core factor; second, does he have the ability; third, has he been reminded?

Most of the company's activities take place in groups, and they serve the purpose of reminder. If the event planning is particularly poor, it is just a reminder for users to show their presence, and the results may be negative points. Therefore, an effective activity must first solve the first two problems.

If users have no motivation to participate in the activity, what is your solution?

You don’t need to plan a new event or release all the event content. You can just say that we have an event group recently and everyone can join this event group.

Let activities be activities, and let long-term operations be long-term operations.

When a company establishes a community, it must consider what its goal is. As a merchant, the goal is to sell goods or to retain users. If the group is full of ineffective activities, the group's sales ability will only get worse and worse.

What is inactive activity? Chatting is ineffective activity. It's just pure chatting, and it may seem "prosperous", but it actually doesn't mean much to us.

So don’t worry about whether the group users are active or how many people are chatting. Just look at how many people click on a product link you send. The number of clicks represents the real users.

In short, when building a community, you must avoid being blind. First, you must sort out a feasible business model, have clear operational goals, and identify the target user group. Secondly, you must be able to predict the life cycle of the community and complete our operational goals before it is disbanded.

Author: Mantou Business School

Source: Mantou Business School (mantousxy)