Full-link analysis of the “Juhuasuan” e-commerce marketing channel!

Each e-commerce platform is divided into different modules with different positioning, which we call channels.

For example, on the homepage of Taobao, the 10 billion subsidies focus on subsidies for genuine products, and are committed to the platform's style and price mentality. The good products and daily good stores focus on word-of-mouth recommendations to improve product retention and daily activity.

This article will share with you how to build, operate and optimize the marketing channels of e-commerce platforms. The marketing channels here include Taobao’s Juhuasuan, JD.com’s JD.com flash sale, Suning’s Suning flash sale, Pinduoduo’s limited time flash sale, etc.

1. Positioning of marketing channels

Regardless of the platform, the marketing channel will appear on the first screen of the platform, which shows its importance.

As the platform's main sales force and conversion platform, the marketing channel gathers the platform's best-selling products, which means products with the lowest price, good quality and obvious promotional strength.

In one promotional activity after another, we focus on hot consumption, explore the source of the most cost-effective goods, and create a mindset for consumers that they will make a profit if they buy and can return the goods with confidence; at the same time, we help merchants and brand owners create hot products in their categories and promote brand innovation and efficiency improvement.

Therefore, the rules of the marketing channel are also the most stringent on the entire platform. From requiring the lowest price (transaction price/page price) in the entire platform in the past XX days when registering for an event, to freight insurance during the event and compensation for high prices after the event, etc., we ensure the quality of the marketing channel step by step.

The platform's most advanced and fashionable gameplay will also be tried out in the marketing channels. For example, when live streaming was popular, Juhuasuan was the first to launch a live streaming exclusive tab on "Xiaojuxing" (originally called Ju TV), vigorously supporting and developing the live streaming business.

2. Marketing Channel Process

1. Backend - Marketing channel registration system

The activities of the marketing channel are mainly divided into three types: hot-selling products, brand activities (aggregation of products from one or more brands) and theme activities (aggregation of similar and related products). Hot-selling items are registered as individual products and displayed on the front desk. They have the highest exposure in the channel and obtain the highest traffic, so the requirements for product selection are also the highest.

Generally, the best products are selected based on dimensions such as past sales, orders, conversion rate and current price comparison.

Brand activities are mainly aimed at large brands to display multiple products of the same brand. For example, the Hongdou brand fully displays Hongdou's different categories of products. The products in brand activities are generally required to be lower than the single product position, mainly to expand the product pool of the marketing channel.

A theme event allows multiple merchants from different categories to participate in the same event. Different merchants can also share the costs, reducing the pressure on merchants to participate in the event. The following is the announcement of Juhuasuan’s merchant registration rules for reference, which involve merchant store ratings, refund rates, credit ratings, etc.

After merchants meet the basic conditions, they can select the activities they want to sign up for based on the activity requirements. After selecting the activity, they can see the specific charging rules and qualifications. Different types of activities have different rules and qualifications.

After understanding the details of the event, you can then select the products you want to register for and the display pits you wish to go to. The displayed products are filtered by the system, and all selectable products meet the registration requirements. The reasons for not being able to select products will be displayed, which is both user-friendly and improves the efficiency of merchant registration.

After selecting the product and slot, you need to fill in the display information on the marketing channel [here refers to Juhuasuan]. Contains information such as the price and quantity of the products participating in the event, material images, selling points and promotional activities.

It can be seen that Juhuasuan’s registration guidance is very convenient and also guarantees the quality of the goods. After the merchant fills in the event information and submits it, Juhuasuan’s storekeeper will review whether the product meets the selection criteria and confirm whether it will be put on the shelves.

The above introduces the merchant registration activity and the positive process of the operation staff reviewing and listing selected products, which is to select products that meet the channel positioning from the existing products.

More commonly, channels proactively initiate promotional activities, such as Father's Day and Mother's Day, and invite qualified products to sign up, which is a reverse product selection system.

For example, the marketing channel needs to launch a promotional activity related to Arbor Day. The marketing department needs to clarify the promotional direction and customer groups, and the category clerk will cooperate to provide corresponding product selections and formulate the following product selection rules.

In the reverse product selection system, enter the corresponding category code, set thresholds for indicators such as sales volume and conversion rate, and send the investment promotion activity to eligible merchants in a targeted manner, inviting merchants to sign up, thereby improving the efficiency of product selection by the operation staff and giving the platform the initiative in product selection.

2. Middle platform - marketing management system

The marketing management system is responsible for all the daily work of the operations manager, which is mainly divided into three parts: setting up investment promotion activities, reviewing and selecting products for listing, and arranging promotional activities.

An efficient, user-friendly and personalized marketing management system determines whether the marketing channel can provide a good user experience and motivate platform merchants to participate in marketing activities. It can be said to be a link between the preceding and the following.

1) Investment promotion activity settings

The operations manager selects products by setting up and issuing investment promotion activities (i.e. the daily activities and big promotion activities of Juhuasuan in the previous screenshot) on a daily basis, which includes two parts: associating investment promotion categories and setting investment promotion thresholds.

The investment promotion category association is to determine the subcategories that need investment promotion, such as nuts and snacks; then clarify the investment promotion threshold, such as the merchant's activity, the merchant's DSR score, the store's star rating, whether there have been any penalties or deductions in the past 30 days and other basic standards, to filter out merchants and products that do not meet the conditions.

The more precise the threshold, the easier it is for the products recruited to meet the needs of the operations clerk. Of course, this also requires the clerk to spend time understanding the industry data and product performance of the category he is responsible for.

2) Review and select products for listing

After the products enter the marketing management system, due to the limited display space on the front end and the principle of selecting the best of the best, the operations manager needs to control the quality and quantity of the selected products.

The marketing management system will have a system audit function to assist in the audit, such as past sales data of goods, social hot trends and industry category performance.

Operations can re-select products based on automatic review, such as supporting merchants with potential but who do not meet the system threshold, or negotiating a bet agreement with merchants to guarantee their sales in the marketing channel and increase the GMV scale of the marketing channel.

The screenshot shows the system audit indicators of a marketing channel. It can systematically improve the audit efficiency and avoid wasting too much time on manual communication of products. This will allow more time to fine-tune the operation of other modules, such as reverse factory customized product selection and arranging promotional node activities.

3. Promotional activities arrangements

The display of e-commerce products is generally divided into four ends: APP, PC, mini program and WAP. The APP is a native page with smooth use, clear display and good user experience. Approved items and brand activities are automatically displayed, which relies more on the performance of the system.

However, in order to meet the needs of promotional activities or the sale of advertising resources, the operations clerk can temporarily build a promotional page (essentially a WAP page) to meet the needs of multi-scenario activities. For example, during the Double Eleven promotion, there are various venues with diverse types and refined displays to meet the promotion needs of operations.

3. Front-end display logic

In addition to fixed resource advertising positions, the display influencing factors within the marketing channel are mainly user preference (recommendation), product/activity comprehensive score and special weighting.

1. Recommend different people

Recommending what you see and what you get means obtaining user preferences based on their long-term and short-term behaviors. The finer the granularity, the easier it is for the products launched to hit the users.

User preferences are continuously updated through recall of user historical preferred categories, preferred brands and preferred products. The real-time performance of the recommendation system is also very high. For example, the data such as clicks, visits, favorites, and purchases generated by users must be recorded and refreshed in real time and fed back to users, so that the frequency of users visiting the channel will increase.

The accuracy of recommendations is also affected by the size of the product pool. The larger the product pool, the more choices users have, and this also places stringent demands on the supply chain capabilities of the marketing channel. If the product pool cannot reflect the user's preferences, users will be unwilling to visit this channel over time.

After obtaining the user's preferred product ranking, certain filtering is required, such as order filtering (products purchased by users within a certain period of time will no longer be recommended), display filtering of sold-out and out-of-stock products, filtering of sensitive products, etc., to ensure user experience.

We often see purchased products reappearing in certain marketing channels, or summer clothes recommended in winter, etc. This is because the filtering layer is not done well, which confuses users.

2. Comprehensive score of products/activities

Recommendations determine the different faces of different people, and the total score of products/activities determines whether they can get more exposure and be ranked higher in the same sub-category.

The first is the basic information of the product, such as clear white background pictures and details pages, clear product selling points and promotional selling points, etc. Belongs to the basic operation of the product.

Secondly, the product’s past sales data, such as sales in the past 30 days, orders in the past 30 days, conversion rate, and fourth-level page UV data. Of course, the better the sales conversion data, the more conducive it is to ranking. This is also the reason why Taobao has derived fake orders.

Finally, there is the price power of the product (the transaction price of this event/the lowest transaction price in the past XX days - sourced from Juhuasuan). The better the price power of the product, the more competitive the price. The main idea of ​​the marketing channel is good quality and low price, so naturally higher weighting is given to products with high price power.

3. Special weighting factors

In order to strengthen the channel’s mind, marketing channels usually require registered products to set up additional services or gameplay. For example, exclusive coupons for the Juhuasuan channel can only be obtained by users through the Juhuasuan channel, which increases the frequency of users visiting the channel.

Products that have Juhuasuan special coupons will also receive a certain weight in the sorting. There are also free returns and free shipping with freight insurance, which will improve the user's purchasing experience and will also affect the weighted display of goods. Merchants will also be happy to set them up in order to obtain higher exposure and traffic.

The e-commerce marketing channel is a small e-commerce platform, including product supply chain, product display and listing, and promotion activities arrangement. A detailed understanding of the marketing channel is helpful in learning the full-link operation of the e-commerce platform.

Author: Bread and Butter

Source: Bread and Butter