Quick Start on Precision Marketing for E-Commerce

Whether it is traditional offline business or online e-commerce, whether it is a TO B or TO C business model, it cannot simply rely on "good wine needs no bush" to gain customers and sales.

Especially as competition in e-commerce becomes increasingly fierce, as each platform is pursuing the trend of being large and comprehensive to gain user stickiness and economies of scale, the overlap of each other's businesses is becoming increasingly high. Users are being squeezed from both sides, and business growth is becoming increasingly difficult.

The premise of increasing purchases is to promote return visits, so it becomes particularly important to inform users of activities, products and other information on your own platform through various forms of advertising in order to capture users' minds and potential needs.

But at the same time, users are also drowned in various marketing information, and over time they become "numb" and "insensitive" to various marketing information. Therefore, only by improving the "accuracy" of marketing information can they stand out from the crowd and quickly attract users' attention. It can also effectively reduce the disturbance to non-target users and ensure user experience.

From this, we have officially entered the field of " precision marketing ". Next, this article will share from five dimensions: target audience, marketing timing, marketing copy, marketing channels and marketing review.

1. Population Selection

The logic of selecting people in different marketing scenarios is not the same. As far as e-commerce is concerned, marketing scenarios generally include promotional activity marketing, daily product marketing, offer marketing, user care marketing, etc. The scenarios often overlap, so the dimensions of selecting people are often the superposition of the following multiple logics.

1. Promotional activity selection

1) Activities force users

Users who visit, collect, abandon purchases, or search for designated pages or products during the event period.

2) Promotion-sensitive users

It can be identified by selecting dimensions such as orders placed during recent promotions and a high proportion of orders for discounted products.

3) Users who prefer the promotional products in this event

The preference logic is shown below.

2. Product Marketing Personnel Selection

1) Target products force users to

Users who have recently visited, searched, collected, added to cart, and abandoned the product (corresponding brand, related brands, corresponding category, related category).

2) Potential users who purchase target products periodically

Based on user needs and platform data, we mine the purchase cycle of the corresponding product category to select users who meet the cycle purchase conditions.

3. Offer marketing and recruitment

Offer marketing has two dimensions and steps: encouraging users to receive offers and encouraging users to use offers (to simplify the description, coupons are used to refer to offers below). When marketing costs are limited, users who are most likely to receive or use coupons should be selected for marketing, including the following conditions:

1) The scope of application of the coupon matches the user's preferences

When collecting and using coupons, users should be selected who are most likely to purchase the products for which the coupons apply, and who have the highest interest in the coupons.

2) Voucher thresholds match user spending power

Most users will not purchase goods worth much more than they actually need in order to use coupons, so users whose purchasing power is lower than the coupon threshold should be excluded during marketing.

3) The coupon redemption method matches the user behavior

There are various ways to receive and use coupons. There are many ways to receive coupons, such as clicking to receive coupons, signing in to receive coupons, receiving coupons after shopping, etc. There are many ways to use coupons, such as using them directly, using them when purchasing a second order, using them after N days, etc. Different methods should select users who are most likely to meet the conditions of that method.

4. Care about marketing selection

Caring marketing refers to the content of communicating and caring for users rather than directly marketing products or other interest points, such as birthday wishes, holiday wishes (Spring Festival, Women's Day, Mid-Autumn Festival, etc.), user registration anniversary confessions, etc.

Caring marketing can cover target users as much as possible to increase user favorability and improve user stickiness and loyalty, but when marketing resources are limited, active users should be given priority.

2. Marketing Opportunities

The key to marketing for the purpose of sales is to identify the current needs of users, and even create demand for users, thereby promoting user purchases. The timing of marketing is to seize the user's demand period.

1. Identify user needs

1) Real-time behavioral marketing

Based on the real-time behavior of users on the platform, certain rules are set to automatically trigger marketing when users perform specified behaviors and meet the marketing rules, such as shopping cart abandonment recovery, collection price reduction reminders, subscription sale reminders, etc.

2) Recent behavioral marketing

Comprehensively consider the potential demands represented by users’ recent on-site behaviors, and conduct marketing when there are activities for the target products.

3) Cycle Purchase Marketing

Based on the product repurchase cycle, marketing is carried out when users enter the product repurchase period.

2. Create user demand

1) Promotional marketing

During promotional activities, product prices, shopping atmosphere, etc. are more attractive, the perception of marketing content is higher, and the marketing effects at nodes such as event launch, secondary marketing, and countdown are better.

2) Festival atmosphere marketing

February 14th Valentine's Day, March 8th Goddess Day, May 20th Confession Day, June 1st Children's Day, Chinese Valentine's Day, Christmas, etc. are closely related to gift-giving, and marketing is carried out in combination with holiday topic packaging on the site.

3) Identity maintenance marketing

When the user's platform level is about to be upgraded or downgraded, the user is reminded that he or she can upgrade the level or maintain the current level by spending a certain amount of money.

4) User-friendly marketing

Carrying out caring marketing on registration anniversaries, birthdays, and other occasions can stimulate users' favorability towards the platform, thereby increasing their desire to shop. The effect will be even better if combined with exclusive benefits such as coupons.

3. Marketing copy

Marketing copywriting should attract users' attention, convey effective information, and promote user visits and orders. It can be created in three steps:

1. Make the title catchy

A wonderful title can increase the reading rate and click-through rate of the copy. Otherwise, no matter how attractive the marketing information is, it may be ignored by users at the first sight.

The following types of titles can effectively increase the reading rate of copywriting:

1) News editorial titles

From the perspective of a media reporter, turning a marketing advertisement into breaking news generally includes three elements: the news protagonist, timely words, and common phrases used in major news, such as "The favorite lipstick of the sisters who ride the wind and waves is revealed, and it is 50% off today."

2) Friends Conversation Title

Explaining information in a friend's tone can elicit a response from users, and try to use "you" as much as possible to enhance the relevance of marketing content to users. Use spoken language instead of written language to improve the readability of the copy, such as "Congratulations, you have found the best secret to saving yellow skin."

3) Practical tips titles

This type of title often first points out the user's pain points, and then proposes solutions, which can hit the user's heart at once, such as "Too much oil in the summer? This cleanser is very effective in oil control."

4) Surprise offer titles

The most commonly used title format for e-commerce marketing generally combines discounts, full-reduction discounts, buy-one-get-one-free promotional benefits or coupons, free shipping and other user-exclusive benefits, such as "Give you a 99-30 yuan full-category coupon."

2. The main content persuades people to buy

After the title attracts users to the copy, the body of the copy needs to meet users' expectations and give them a reason to buy. for example:

1) Description of usage scenarios

Users often have unclear needs, and marketers can awaken their desire to shop by describing a usage scenario for them.

2) Product selling point description

When users are hesitant due to having too many choices, highlighting the selling points of the product can touch their hearts, allowing them to escape the dilemma of choice and place an order quickly.

3) Explanation of preferential strength

Directly and clearly displaying the discount of the product and highlighting its limited time nature can make users feel that they will lose out if they don’t buy it.

4) User feedback endorsement

Take advantage of users' herd mentality to stimulate shopping desire and lower the psychological threshold for shopping.

3. End with a guide to place an order immediately

When the user is impressed by our copy and is deciding whether to pay for the purchase, he may still want to take a closer look. At this time, we need content that guides him to place an order immediately to help him make the final move.

1) Limited time and limited quantity purchase

Create a sense of urgency when shopping and a sense of surprise that buying is a win, helping users make quick decisions.

2) Legitimate reasons for shopping

Tell users that shopping is not for personal enjoyment, but for other legitimate reasons to eliminate users' inner guilt, such as highlighting health, gift giving, children, personal improvement, etc.

3) Price Anchor

When we shop offline, we often find that the shopping guide will first introduce a model that has very suitable functions for the user but is slightly more expensive; then, when the user is hesitant only because of the price, the salesperson will recommend a lower-priced model to the user, and the user will easily dispel his hesitation and place an order quickly.

This kind of price comparison, first "expensive" and then "cheap", can also be used in marketing copy.

4) Settlement of Accounts

Users will do some calculation when shopping, and will only buy when they feel the value of the product is greater than the price. However, we cannot allow users to do the calculation, as this may cause them to give up the purchase.

At this point, marketers can use another way to help users calculate this account:

1. Amortization: For high-priced durable goods, we can spread the price over every day, so that users will feel that the cost is not much;
2. Saving money: Certain products are used to save other expenses, but the one-time investment is large. For example, buying a water purifier can save the cost of buying packaged water on a daily basis. If we can help users calculate how much money they can save during the use of the product, users will feel it is a good deal and convert.

4. Marketing Channels

Online precision marketing channels generally include push, text messages, public account articles, WeChat template messages, etc. Different channels have their own advantages and disadvantages, and you should make your choice by comprehensively considering factors such as marketing effectiveness, marketing costs, and user experience.

1. push

1) Advantages

Marketing costs are negligible; the site is smoothly managed; and the reach is wide.

2) Disadvantages

The display form of marketing content is relatively simple and easy to be overlooked, and users have a weak perception of it; the reach is limited to users who can receive push, and there is a certain reach funnel.

2. SMS

1) Advantages

Strong channel perception and high reach rate.

2) Disadvantages

The marketing cost is high; the content of SMS is limited to text and the display form is not direct enough; the frequency of communication should not be too high, which can easily affect the user experience.

3. Official Account

1) Advantages

The displayed content is rich and varied, and users have strong perception and good experience; it can form a closed loop with WeChat mini-programs, with a high conversion rate; marketing in the WeChat ecosystem can easily form fission-like sharing and dissemination.

2) Disadvantages

The frequency of sending tweets from public accounts is restricted by WeChat officials; they can only reach users who have already followed the public account, and the reach rate is low.

5. Marketing Review

The overall process of a marketing activity is: setting marketing goals → designing marketing plans → preparing marketing materials → implementing marketing → reviewing and summarizing the activity.

Reviewing is an important part of marketing activities. It can help us understand the completion of goals, effectiveness of plans, reasons for good or bad results and optimization points, summary of the rules of effective strategies, etc. It is a shortcut to continuously optimize marketing strategies and thus continuously improve marketing results.

There are four steps in marketing review:

1. Review your goals

It is to review the original goal of the marketing activity, which is the fundamental problem to be solved by the entire marketing activity.

At this stage, marketers often deviate from the most fundamental goals of marketing activities and focus on marketing methods or other results produced during the execution process. Therefore, the goal needs to be made clear so that all team members can reach a consensus.

The indirect goals of marketing vary, such as increasing the number of orders, promoting cross-category purchases, raising consumption levels, etc., but the direct effects of marketing are nothing more than increasing return visit rate, conversion rate, average number of orders per person, and average order value. It’s just that the statistical scope and main focus indicators of different goals vary.

After setting the goal, we can track the results through ABT.

2. Comparison of results and goals

By observing the differences between the actual results and targets of each indicator, we can identify problems.

The purpose of comparing target differences is to discover problems. We need to know which indicator of marketing effectiveness causes the difference between the final result and the expected target, so that we can focus on analyzing the cause in the next step.

3. Analyze the causes

Find the key reasons for good or poor marketing results in order to form SSC (start, stop, continue).

Through empirical judgment, brainstorming and other methods, try to list as many possible factors that may lead to the problem as possible, and then based on empirical judgment, logical deduction and data verification, separate the true from the false and find the core cause. The factors involved in marketing are nothing more than crowd conditions, marketing timing, marketing content, marketing succession, and marketing channels.

4. Summarize the rules

Reflect on existing problems and develop strategies to avoid recurrence and continuously iterate and optimize

Marketing seems to be emotional, with a large degree of randomness and human dominance, but in fact, the differences in marketing effects can be traced. We must seek the essence through phenomena, dig deep into the core cause and effect relationships and objective laws, and try to attribute the conclusions of the review to things rather than people.

The above are some of my thoughts and experiences as a marketer. I hope it will be inspiring to everyone. You are welcome to correct me and discuss!

Author: Brook

Source: Brook