7 ways for physical stores to conduct private domain community marketing!

When doing store customer development activities, we often encounter situations where we need to provide training to merchants. Many times, merchants do not understand what the service provider is doing and think that they can just wait for users to come to the store after paying. In this case, if they are doing community private domain customer development services, the effect is often not very good.

For merchants, the higher the degree of cooperation, the better the results will be. In the entire process, the degree of cooperation and effort of the merchants can play a very important and decisive role.

We once did an activity to expand customer base through community fission for several stores, but the highest transaction rate was 20% and the lowest was only 2%. Under the same sales pitch and operation, it is obvious that this is closely related to the cooperation between basic users and merchants.

Therefore, before carrying out community activities, we often provide merchants with a simple community training to let them know the parts they need to cooperate with and the implementation plans in the entire process.

First of all, I will explain to the store owners why they should do social marketing ?

The number of users visiting the store every day is limited, just like raising fish, the pond is only so big, so there can't be too many fish. Therefore, it is actually very important to generate social network traffic. Now some businesses in the market have begun to consciously attract fans to join groups and operate them, but due to the lack of professional operating methods and fixed rules, few of them can do very well. I believe everyone wants to spend less money, invest less experience, and acquire more high-quality and accurate users faster.

Here is an example:

Before 2017, Xibei was mainly engaged in offline membership operations. At that time, the company had a dedicated sales department and customer department to establish communication relationships with the core customer base. At the beginning of 2017, Xibei had only 3 million fans, which was a huge difference compared to the customer flow of its more than 200 stores at the time, so it decided to start officially operating a public account. In mid-2017, Xibei developed online ordering and used WeChat Pay to import offline traffic into the online traffic pool.

In 2018, Xibei began to build a community, using the "official account + community" method to carry out online and offline interactions. In 2019, Xibei’s stores have grown to more than 300, and the number of users on the social network has reached more than 3 million. On average, each store interacts with more than 10,000 customers through the social network. Although there is some overlap between community users and public account users, most of them are not the same. Community users are mainly added one-on-one by front-line store colleagues and customers, with the aim of providing some in-store discounts and services. In 2019, the number of fans of the official account accumulated to more than 20 million. At the same time, Xibei also began to cooperate with WeChat for Business, digitally managing and applying the previously accumulated fans through the CRM system, and established connections with 110,000 users on WeChat for Business in a very short period of time.

To operate a community well, it is very necessary to have professional personnel to execute and process it independently. We have found in past experience that if the community is not operated by a single person, the effect is almost always very weak. Many businesses will fall into a state where they spend too much time and energy on community building, but feel they will lose out if they don't do it.

Here I can share a case activity of a restaurant:

This restaurant is a brand restaurant. Previously, it established two user member groups by attracting public accounts and personal accounts, but found that these members were not active, so I helped him design a member group architecture, and used group buying, flash sale coupons, and tasting sessions to maintain the community. Group buying is to allow users to split, old users to bring new users, and flash sale coupons to consume in the store. Tasting sessions have become members' rights and social scenes, achieving stable growth in restaurant revenue. As a catering community, its essence is actually only one, which is to allow users to move from offline to online, and then back to offline through online.

The picture shows that many stores have started to set up signs to generate their own private WeChat traffic.

By spreading the users you can attract, giving users a reason to help you convert old users into new ones through activities, and repeatedly reaching and stimulating users through WeChat, you can allow users to see and understand your existence frequently.

In fact, I prefer the dual-group approach when building a community. The dual-group approach is often used in community operations. This approach exists in the form of a member welfare group + a flash group. This method will not disturb users too much, but can fully activate users' marketing capabilities during the event. This method is very suitable for private community operations of chain stores or brands.

Specifically, it means : establishing a traffic pool to first attract users from the store to add WeChat and WeChat groups, and then conducting long-term operation and maintenance of the user WeChat group. When marketing activities are needed, users are pulled into flash groups through private chats, WeChat group messages, and Moments posts. The activity cycle is about 3-7 days to promote orders, and then the entire activity ends and the activity group is disbanded.

3. Growth logic: Generate new users online and offline to come to the store, add personal accounts, and stimulate users to come to the store and place orders through activities and long-term personal account operations.

Purpose of flash events: Flash events are very suitable for attracting new users, increasing the number of new transactions, and repeatedly stimulating users to shop in stores. The following is a screenshot of the community activity of a flash mob case.

Next, I will explain how to run a good community activity from these seven front-end directions.

1. Portrait of community users

In the community, for example, a user of an izakaya might be:

Who are the users: Office workers and white-collar workers nearby

Why buy? Because of the party needs

What can the group offer me? Discount promotion information

How to stimulate users to place orders? Red envelope and package activities

If we analyze it more deeply into the implementation of the community, when we build the community, we will first use Japanese culture as the theme of the group, and incorporate socializing, group buying, and sharing methods to encourage users to spontaneously form teams, share, and participate in the community. Then we will use tastings and group gatherings to allow users to connect with each other, so that they have a deeper emotional connection with the store. We often say, socialize first and then close the deal, this is what we mean. This is our basic operating method when we first start building a community: that is, think about your user goals, group purposes, analysis of user purchase reasons, and how to get users to connect with each other.

After doing the first step of analysis, we can use some basic marketing activities to apply the purpose of the activity, the commonly used methods of the community: promotional strategies: limited time specials, limited specials, price anchors, sending coupons, price increase strategies, matching gifts, group discounts.

When organizing activities, you can often use these forms to activate the community.

Here I would like to remind everyone not to send out red envelopes too often. I see many stores that run community groups start by joining the group and sending out red envelopes continuously, and then they don’t say anything. In the end, we are happy to send out red envelopes, and the fun is over, but what is the result? If it doesn't generate any income or results, it's not worth it. It's purely for charity.

When we are building a community, we only use red envelopes when the community is active. In fact, the red envelopes do not have to be big, they must be sent with a purpose. In fact, red envelopes generally have two functions: one is to promote activity, and the other is to sign in. We are not stingy. Generally, we send out check-in red envelopes, and we give out 100 of them for 1 yuan. The main purpose is to confirm how many people are online. If you want to promote activity, you can pack more and send them to a few people, giving the impression that they will be snapped up soon. This will encourage users to continue paying attention and being active. If you want to create a good atmosphere, you can also say something like "if you can't get the item, come again" and so on. This will make users feel lively and will be of great help to the subsequent marketing and closing actions.

I once worked in a community where the brand originally sent out red envelopes, but later everyone was having fun and started sending red envelopes among themselves. I estimate that I sent out about 5, and they sent out more than ten. As a result, the atmosphere in the group was very good and everyone became familiar with each other. When we were doing the transaction conversion action the next day, the transaction rate of this group was significantly higher than that of other groups that did not spontaneously organize the sending of red envelopes. This is the charm of sending red envelopes.

At the same time, we also created a case community with 212 people. 40 red envelopes were snatched up in 8 seconds, and the activity level was quite high.

2. User Stratification

The advantage of user segmentation is that it can determine the source of users and use different words and operations for different targeted users. This operation method is often suitable for brand users with many stores or a large user base.

For example, for users who come frequently, you may only need to provide simple discount coupons to satisfy and activate users. However, for users who come seldom, you need higher discounts or products to awaken the user value, such as 50% off coupons, free gifts, etc.

Precise community operations for users can awaken and activate community users at a lower cost, thereby creating higher value.

3. Label users

Then, based on your stratification of community users, you can start labeling your own community users.

In fact, it is very important to label users, because after completing the WeChat labels, you can start to give users targeted recommendations and group messages. Currently, WeChat already supports batch labeling on the PC side, which is also an innovative measure of WeChat in response to the market, and is very suitable for businesses to operate their own WeChat users.

For example, aunts and young students are different groups, so the products they need and their demands will be different. After accurate analysis of these users, recommended products, content and discounts can also be pushed separately.

4. How to segment users?

User segmentation is a refined operation of user traffic management.

According to the RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) analysis method , which is a digital marketing technology, it mainly analyzes the behavior of paying users and stratifies paying users to achieve the purpose of precision marketing.

【Parameter explanation】

R: The number of days since the last consumption (Recency)

F: Consumption frequency (Frequency)

M: Monetary

You can try to operate it in the following way:

Layer 1: The number of primary users who are in the dormant and churn stages is actually the largest. You can use the combination coupon to wake up. For example: use 1 high-value, low-threshold coupon and 1 low-value, low-threshold coupon to activate users, and provide coupon expiration reminders when the coupons are about to expire. (Two coupons allow users to consume once more, which can increase the chance of users waking up as much as possible)

Layer 2: Users with a medium consumption frequency and an increasing tendency are relatively familiar with our store or brand. This type of user can set up coupons for discounts on purchases above a certain amount or send out coupons of medium value, and use corresponding copywriting according to the corresponding situation, for example: Dear, I haven’t seen you for a few days, so I quietly gave you a coupon for discounts on purchases above a certain amount. Welcome to come to our house and use it!

Layer 3: For mature users or old users with high consumption frequency, focus on the reasons why they do not come. You can arrange for community specialists or customer service to conduct random interviews to understand the reasons for the loss. At the same time, you can also apply for a batch of coupons or gifts as benefits to the other party.

Layer 4: Growing and mature users in the active stage can increase the user's consumption unit price and frequency. Therefore, you can issue some low-value but high-threshold coupons or discount coupons, and push some low-discount benefits or small commodities.

5. The difference between flow and retention

6. How to cooperate with community members to organize a community activity?

Merchants need to understand the content and detailed steps of the event, and guide the store to enter the WeChat account in advance according to the needs. Inform users of the event in advance through posting circles, store notifications, posters, private chats, etc., and pull users into the online community at the same time.

Assist marketing staff to create an active atmosphere within the group, chat with customers in the group, and control the positive atmosphere within the group. Do a good job in promoting and following up on transactions, privately chat or call users who have not completed the transaction, track the reasons for the non-transaction and complete the transaction with the users. Carry out in-store activities to convert users to upgrade orders or purchase products

Here I share a case study of a project we just completed.

This case is a supermarket chain with 32 stores in the county. The purpose of launching online operations is to build a long-term user base, while also having what we call the attributes of attracting new users to the store and old customers to the store.

Before working on the case, we conducted a detailed investigation. In fact, these in-store marketing aspects are very lacking. Apart from the daily promotional discounts and flyers, there are almost no other marketing methods. However, we found that because the clerks and store managers serve customers in the store for a long time, they will add some customers' WeChat. These users are what we call: seed users.

What is a seed user? Seed users are the customers who are in the initial stage of establishing a community or group and can bring you more new users and more consumer revenue through some marketing methods. These customers may be old ladies or mothers, but please remember that seed users must have some special attributes. Either they are good at socializing, or they are very loyal to you, or they open their own stores and have a wide network of contacts. We will label such users. When building a community, the help such users can provide you is definitely not as simple as two people helping one another. There may even be situations where one person can influence a hundred people during an event.

Some people may ask, now that we have seed users, can we start building a group? In fact, this is not the case. You also need a link of communication accumulation and momentum building. We once said that a community needs to pay attention to many details. There must be a reason for a well-operated and active community. The sense of value of the group's existence may be the emotional bond between relatives and friends, or it may be discounts and promotions for commercial interests. But in order to keep customers in the group and continue to be active, we must learn to accumulate potential energy from the beginning so that they can burst out all at once.

Before we carry out a promotion, we usually have to build our own circle of friends and release information about the promotion to warm up the event. This time is no exception. We taught the store clerks how to communicate, displayed posters in the store, and invited everyone to add their personal WeChat accounts. When creating a group, you must not force the group to join. The reason is that if the users are not interested, they will definitely leave the group if you invite them in. Therefore, many times the community we need must be because of some reason that everyone is interested in, so we have to join the community voluntarily.

Benefits and promotional baits are often very useful at this time. Give the event a nice name and then accumulate customers' emotions. Customers will be more willing to join your community and will not leave the group to help you invite friends to generate more new users.

Through invitation scripts and early traffic preparation, we have prepared nearly 5,000 seed users for this event. These users entered the 64 store groups at the same time, which not only played a voluntary role, but also because of these 5,000 people, we accumulated a community of 10,000 people in 6 hours.

Invitation fission is the social gameplay used by this event to activate users. Allow users to invite local friends to join the group and get gifts to be picked up in the store. This method allows users to spontaneously invite friends to join the group, but this gameplay has a very big test of people's skills, that is, how to write the script, how to activate the first batch of invited users, and what kind of thresholds and products to choose for the invitation.

A good community activity should not only be able to stimulate users' sharing energy from the beginning, but also be controllable. We did some data calculations for this event and found that on average each user brought in approximately 2.5 other users. Many of these new users were our target new users for this event and were also new customers who had never been to our store.

Through early warm-up, preparation of seed users, and community invitations, we were able to bring in 15,000 people in the community and more than 2,500 people to the store in 6 hours. These user groups, because they are established based on regionality, have also become the best base for future refined operations.

7. How to keep your users in the group

A long-term community needs to be maintained with care. First of all, you need to establish your own personal IP image, be an emotional and warm person, don't chat with users in a sales tone, make friends with customers (put yourself in their shoes), send more small knowledge to the established customer group, and hold small activities to give back to customers and give users a sense of value. The best ones will receive red envelopes and gifts, group purchases, gifts for liking friends' posts, and offline experience activities. Create a group with a clear purpose, try to chat in the group as much as possible every day, and if no one is chatting, bring your friends in to chat together. If the group is active, it will be easy to close deals.

When I was chatting with a boss a few days ago, he was very puzzled and asked me how the community actually achieves sales and growth? Isn’t it just about adding customers to a group and sending some messages to maintain the service? I believe that many people who have a preliminary understanding of communities will think so. In fact, this is not the case. Many communities are not just for sending messages, but require more to guide and activate users.

Common methods of promoting activity include creating topics, participating in topics, twisting topics, placing bait in chats, using announcements to activate the atmosphere, like-and-draw prizes, chain games, and lucky draws with red envelopes.

Some of the social activities I often use are:

For a group of 3 people, the bill is free or reduced by 3 yuan.

New members come in, scan the QR code to join the group and receive discounts.

1 yuan flash sale coupon, use it over several days.

These are the methods that are more suitable for community flash sale benefits.

Through the above seven methods, stores or brands can start private domain community marketing step by step. However, when running a private community, you must think carefully about the purpose and rhythm of the activities. These two parts will determine whether your operation can support your input-output ratio. Excellent community operation methods will be the icing on the cake and bring you new growth benefits in the increasingly competitive market environment.

Author: Red Masters Association Coconut Green

Source: Red Masters Association Coconut Green