Community shipments 5000+? 3 practical experiences to easily start community group buying

Nowadays, community group buying is booming and flourishing everywhere, but when it comes to community group buying, people may have heard less about it. After all, it is much more difficult to do community group buying well.

When talking about community group buying, we must talk about private domain traffic operation, that is, the principle of "three closes and one opposite". "Three closes" refers to geographical proximity, similar interests, and similar ages, and "one opposite" refers to opposite genders. This theory was mentioned in Professor Xu Zhibin's book "Small Group Effect".

Although community group buying has a great advantage in this regard, sales are more often built on a network of semi-acquaintances. Community group buying is more based on similar interests and ages.

If the advantages of community group buying are limited to regional locations, then the advantages of community group buying are also very limited in terms of selecting people.

But the advantage of community groups is that they can make full use of the Internet and personal networks to split and spread, with fewer regional limitations.

Many community group purchases that have successfully transformed often come from former micro-businesses or large agents. We are more meticulous and detailed in terms of hierarchical agency and profit sharing. The advantage is that it is easier and simpler in the start-up phase. There is no need to build from scratch. Instead, you just change a set of methods and replace the once high-profit products with fast-moving consumer goods, thereby accelerating the sales of products.

When doing community group buying, there are a few things to note:

1. Social media tool selection

If you want to do your work well, you must first sharpen your tools. The choice of tools is the first hurdle encountered in community group buying. Many people who want to do group buying will first be stumped by the first step of choosing what tools to use.

In fact, the choice of tools is based on whether your community resources are rich and the foundation is solid. For example, if one store or several stores do it, then manual order collection and submission are not a problem.

Case: When I was helping a chain of stores in a county to start a community group buying business, after recruiting more than 30 group leaders, I manually submitted and collected orders and made deliveries.

Only after the front-end process and product selection are completed, will we start using mini programs to collect payments.

When you start group buying, you can use the chain method , and if you are not going to do a big project right away, you can organize the materials by making good use of the free WeChat Notes Essence function .

In the process of community group buying, the first thing you should judge is not the difficulty threshold given by the tool, but whether you are really ready to create a community private domain sales platform and devote your hard work to it.

There are also some tools on the market that provide group leaders or communities with the ability to start group buying, and you can start by paying a small fee.

2. Community product selection

Product selection is a very important step. I have been emphasizing to people who ask me for advice on how to start a business that a good product selection logic includes: user positioning, seasonality, product cost-effectiveness, and after-sales difficulty.

1. User positioning

User positioning is very important in the product selection process. A good community group buying platform must have its own community positioning. If it sells goods in a large and comprehensive manner, consumers often will not buy it.

For example, the recent rapid growth of group buying, Maimaituan, has been precisely positioned as: leading a new trend of female entrepreneurship in this era . This sentence makes it clear that the leaders of the maimaituan are women who want to start a business, and the users these women sell to are also precisely the women of the era. Such precise positioning directly attracts such users. In product selection and promotion, as long as the positioning is accurate, it is quite easy to capture users.

The most important thing in selling goods is to know who you are selling your goods to and who you want to sell them to.

2. Seasonality

Seasonality is a very easy point to understand. Simply put, it means what kind of things to sell at what time.

For example, it is winter now, so the sales of products such as down jackets, heating blankets, and hand warmers must be good. These categories are selected for sales based on time nodes. During fixed holidays, some similar products can also be sold in advance.

For example, thermos cups, socks, and apples at Christmas, red envelopes and couplets at New Year's Day and Spring Festival, these products are selected according to the seasonality and will definitely not have bad sales at a fixed time.

(The picture shows a Christmas blind box doll sold on a certain platform during Christmas time)

When starting a group purchase, product selection must be clear and accurate. You must predict in advance what products may be needed in the next two months, and push them to your targeted users based on time and holidays.

However, because the group purchase time is limited and the number of group purchase products is not large, you must pay attention to selecting products as concisely and specifically as possible during the solar terms.

3. Product cost performance

If you want to choose a good product, cost-effectiveness is naturally essential.

In the community group buying, because the store + dealer profit-sharing system is eliminated, including store expenses, rent, dealer inventory, and tiered marketing links, the group leader can often get higher profit rebates from the company.

This is why there is an opportunity for community group buying. (As shown in the picture)

But in this process, the cost-effectiveness of the product is particularly critical.

The community we previously coached was doing group buying of laundry detergent. There were only more than 10,000 members in the community, but the 30 group leaders alone sold more than 5,000 bottles.

The price of a product on other Internet e-commerce platforms and the price in offline stores are often used for comparison. Many group buying platforms will write out the prices on JD.com, Taobao, and offline stores for comparison to reflect the price advantages of their own products.

Group purchases often happen because the quantity is large and the goods are shipped at the same time, and many brands and manufacturers are willing to give up their profit margins and give relatively low prices to group purchase platforms. The same is true for the brand of laundry detergent we are talking about. Because there is quantity, there is also price profit margin. Compared with normal offline purchases, the cost-effectiveness advantage is huge.

And because group buying is time-sensitive, once a batch of goods is shipped out, they may be out of stock or may take a long time to be available, so it will not have much impact on the chaotic pricing system.

The cost-effectiveness of the products reflects the capabilities of the group buying platform. Just like a snowball, the greater the sales volume, the more cost-effective products you will get . When you start doing community group buying, it is particularly important to choose high-quality and cost-effective products. When consumers find that buying here is more affordable than buying elsewhere, they are very likely to place an order here next time.

The picture shows a price comparison promotion conducted by a group buying platform:

4. After-sales Difficulty

The difficulty of product after-sales service is something that needs to be considered in the entire group buying industry.

When choosing a product, price advantage is not the only consideration, low after-sales rate is also a very important factor.

For example, I once bought a skirt on a certain platform, but when I got it back I found that the size was obviously too small, so I needed to return or exchange it. At this time, consumers often find it troublesome and choose to return the product, and will not buy similar group products next time.

When choosing products, you must give priority to after-sales convenience and return and exchange rates. For example, if the clothing has sizes, the return and exchange rate may be relatively troublesome. Fresh fruits and vegetables may also have a higher return and exchange rate due to logistics issues.

If you really don't know how to choose products, there is a very good little trick you can try. Look at the social group buying plates of users of the same category as you to see what kind of products are selling particularly well recently. In this way, you can look for similar models or the same suppliers, and it is very likely that the sales will not be too bad.

For example, Mingyi Chupin has established its own industry barriers by adopting a very powerful product selection method: it chooses some brands that are not particularly famous but have very good quality and are suitable for petty bourgeoisie women.

Of course, this may also be related to the founder's thinking, which prefers this light luxury style, which not only attracts better circles of users on the Internet, but also generates higher customer value.

This group of users has higher requirements for quality but is not sensitive enough to price. Cost-effectiveness and user feedback are their great advantages in successful product selection.

3. Empower agents and group leaders

If you want to do community group buying well, it is impossible without your own group leader empowerment system. Empowering group leaders to split and expand their own community group buying plates is particularly important in community group buying.

The Girlfriends Group is such a case:

Starting from the precise positioning of the word "best friend" , the main focus is on the close relationship between semi-acquaintances . This positioning method can not only empower the group leader and make him feel that he is starting a business and making money with good friends in the entire project, but also make the group leader more cohesive and the users coming in more accurate.

Anyone who has operated a community and traffic should know that accurate users are more valuable.

Accurate positioning and empowerment of group leaders, coupled with precise product selection methods, will definitely help carve out a path in the current community group buying frenzy which is based on geographical restrictions.

I started to get in touch with the operation mode of the girlfriends group a long time ago, and found that at the beginning, the girlfriends group did not even have a group leader’s order submission and logistics system.

A group buying community is not determined by tools, but more by product selection and warmth . The seriousness towards users and the enthusiasm towards group leaders.

The Girlfriends Group has done a great job on this detail. Excellent group leaders have the right to enjoy priority trials of products that have not yet been launched, and they only need to provide trial reports and feedback.

Goods that sell well will also be given to group leaders for re-ordering, and their needs will be met as much as possible in product selection.

The quality of product selection also pays great attention to details, with excellent quality and unique trend differences, precisely targeting women and mothers. Even until now, the girlfriends group is still using the method of Essence Notes + group leader taking orders and reporting orders , which cannot prevent the development and growth of this group buying platform.

There is not only one way to do a good community group buying, nor does it require too many resources and capabilities. If you want to start a project, you only need a good source of traffic and good operating experience. In the process of operating WeChat business and community group buying, I stepped on many pitfalls and took many detours. In this process, I summed up and found that every link is actually very important.

From the product selection of the supply chain, the reserve capacity of the middle-office operation materials, the front-end group leader channel recruitment capabilities, external community training and operation capabilities, and after-sales selection are all key points and details.

The following are the positions and actions required to start a community group buying project .

If community group buying has become extremely popular, then you should start a good community group buying platform and find a group of like-minded partners to work together to create good community group products, and carry out refined operations and positioning. There may be good opportunities to make money in the future market.

After all, with a population of 1.4 billion, China's consumer market is still large enough.

Author: Fan Xiaoqing of the Red Teachers Association

Source: Fan Xiaoqing from the Red Teachers Association