Understanding e-commerce platform marketing in one article

As a way for brands to convert online sales, the importance of e-commerce cannot be overstated.

Under the influence of the epidemic, offline consumption activities have been hindered, and online e-commerce channels have become more important. Not only daily categories such as food, beauty, and fast-moving consumer goods, but also high-priced goods such as luxury goods, real estate, and automobiles have begun to pay attention to the construction and exploration of e-commerce links.

I believe that in the post-epidemic era, online e-commerce will become a shortcoming that companies (especially traditional companies) must make up. However, the current situation is that most companies know the importance of e-commerce, but do not know where to start e-commerce marketing .

By studying the changes in the e-commerce industry and the gameplay of major e-commerce platforms, Shiqu Strategy Center has issued the "Guide to E-commerce Platform Marketing Gameplay", allowing you to understand e-commerce marketing in one article.

Two key factors affecting e-commerce marketing

The development of the e-commerce industry and model is influenced by two factors:

The first is the disappearance of the Internet’s demographic dividend. This has led to a continuous increase in the cost of acquiring customers for traditional e-commerce. In addition, content such as live broadcasts and short videos continue to erode user time. In order to reduce the cost of attracting new customers, traditional e-commerce has shown a trend of content and socialization, and there have been obvious changes in marketing methods.

The rise of content e-commerce and social e-commerce means that the brand's e-commerce team needs to devote energy to content management and community operations, and transform from the product-oriented e-commerce marketing 1.0 model to the user-oriented e-commerce marketing 2.0 model.

Image source: Shiqu Strategy Center "E-commerce Platform Game Analysis" PPT

The second is that Chinese consumers are undergoing a consumption upgrade. Consumption upgrades have made users’ product choices more diversified, but have also left many gaps in product categories in the consumer goods market. There is a call in the industry that “all consumer goods are worth redoing.”

At the same time, e-commerce platforms are also showing a certain degree of differentiation. For example, in addition to Taobao and JD.com, there are also sinking market platforms such as Pinduoduo, as well as quality e-commerce platforms such as NetEase Yanxuan and Xiaomi Youpin.

Image source: Shiqu Strategy Center "E-commerce Platform Game Analysis" PPT

Due to the differentiation of product categories and customer groups, the positioning and gameplay of different platforms are different. Shiqu has sorted out the 28 current mainstream e-commerce platforms so that brands can choose matching e-commerce platforms for marketing.

The marketing logic of different platforms is different. We can take Shiseido's e-commerce marketing as an example: on the Weibo and WeChat platforms, the brand mainly uses hot content to attract traffic, on Douyin it mainly drives the brand through opinion leaders, on Taobao/Tmall it tries to use KOL social recommendations, on Xiaohongshu it promotes product features, on Pinduoduo it uses group buying, and on Yunji it focuses on reward-driven e-commerce conversions.

Various e-commerce in-site marketing methods and cases

1. Comprehensive e-commerce platform marketing

Comprehensive e-commerce mainly includes e-commerce platforms under the traditional B2C/C2C model such as Taobao/Tmall, JD.com, Vipshop, and Suning. They all originated in the PC era and entered the mobile e-commerce with the rise of mobile Internet.

The characteristic of a comprehensive e-commerce platform is that its model is mature, so brands also have a wide range of marketing tools and marketing products to choose from. However, this also means that the platform's traffic ecology is mature and there is usually no obvious traffic dividend. In addition, almost every comprehensive e-commerce platform has its own "shopping festival", which is also an important annual marketing node.

Let’s take Taobao as an example. There are four main marketing methods on the Taobao platform: hard advertising cooperation, KOL cooperation, self-operated matrix, and marketing IP matrix. Specific marketing tools will be used in different marketing categories.

In fact, Alibaba itself has some relatively complete marketing methodologies. For example, in hard advertising cooperation, we will adopt the AIPL omni-channel marketing model for evaluation and delivery, that is, by connecting the consumer links of "awareness", "interest", "purchase" and "loyalty", we can achieve full-link marketing.

In the hard advertising cooperation, Kaiping Liantou can connect many products of the Alibaba ecosystem to achieve multi-scenario coverage. It also has essential delivery tools for e-commerce marketing such as Diamond Ads and Through Train, as well as channel sales models such as Taobao Affiliate.

The promotion of Taobao KOLs is mainly carried out through Taobao celebrities. The specific content forms include pictures, videos, Q&A, live broadcasts, etc. High-quality content will be recommended to key resource positions through the system, so brands need to have better control and management of content when placing ads.

Taobao's self-operated accounts are mainly in the form of Weitao, brand accounts, and member accounts . With Taobao's support for private domain traffic and high-quality content, self-operated content has also become an important source of users entering the store.

As long as users follow the brand flagship store, they will become fans of Weitao and the brand account by default. Store fans are actually the brand’s most important private traffic pool. Among them, Weitao not only has flexible content formats, but also has a higher opening rate, so brands can focus on it. Common Weitao marketing methods include: building buildings, voting, welfare, group chats, solicitations and other forms, which correspond to different marketing scenarios.

The following is a list of various marketing products in Taobao:

2. Marketing on shopping guide e-commerce platforms

Shopping guide e-commerce platforms mainly guide users to jump to large e-commerce platforms for purchases through content or discount information. Since shopping guide e-commerce platforms exist more as channels, they can also be understood as large Taobao agents.

Common shopping guide e-commerce platforms include What’s Worth Buying, Fanli.com, Mogujie, Yitao, 800Zhe, Shihuo, etc. Compared with comprehensive e-commerce platforms, the marketing tool selection of shopping guide e-commerce is more inclined towards the content end.

The following are the marketing tools of major shopping guide e-commerce platforms:

Let’s take What’s Worth Buying as an example. Brands can cooperate in targeted content delivery through new product information/station shows, topic sponsorship, promotional strategies/explosive albums, discount calendars, and expert reviews.

3. Quality e-commerce/luxury e-commerce platform marketing

Quality e-commerce/luxury e-commerce has emerged due to China's overall consumption upgrade. A typical example is NetEase Yanxuan, which focuses on "big brands from the same factory". In addition, there are platforms such as Xiaomi Youpin, Secoo, and YOHO Youhuo.

The user base of quality e-commerce platforms is still limited, but with the development of the middle class, quality e-commerce platforms can reach more precise user groups.

Let’s take NetEase Yanxuan as an example. Brands can cooperate with NetEase Yanxuan to implement marketing models such as customized products, pop-up stores, and offline exhibitions. NetEase News and Ele.me’s “Sangcha” is a landmark case.

In addition, NetEase Yanxuan can provide coupons as prizes for marketing activities. For example, in its cooperation with Coca-Cola Minute Maid, users can integrate and disseminate the event scene by "taking a photo of the shopping receipt."

3. Social e-commerce platform marketing

Social e-commerce platforms have achieved rapid development in recent years. One type is content-based e-commerce evolved from communities, such as Xiaohongshu; the other type is emerging platforms that have emerged through social gameplay in the sinking market, such as Pinduoduo. It is worth mentioning that Pinduoduo has surpassed JD.com in the number of active users. It can be said to be the second pole of China's e-commerce and has become a major e-commerce position that brands cannot ignore.

Let’s take Xiaohongshu’s marketing as an example. In addition to KOL placement, Xiaohongshu’s marketing is mainly based on one-stop cooperation with brand accounts, through data insight analysis, content marketing, and traffic reach to achieve the final transaction closed loop.

4. Vertical e-commerce platform marketing

Vertical e-commerce platforms usually only market specific categories, common ones include fresh food e-commerce, maternal and child e-commerce, second-hand e-commerce, etc. There are also 2B-oriented platforms such as Zhaogang.com. Generally speaking, vertical e-commerce is relatively small in scale and requires precise matching of brand product categories.

Vertical e-commerce is not complicated at the marketing level, but brands usually need to pay attention to the depth of cooperation and provide multi-dimensional coverage through an in-site integrated marketing approach. Let’s take the Miaya platform, which focuses on maternal and infant products, as an example. The brand can output in-depth value through matrix accounts, expert trials, image authorization, community topics, community activities, etc.

5. Overseas e-commerce platform marketing

In recent years, overseas shopping websites have become slightly weaker under the impact of comprehensive e-commerce platforms. For domestic brands, they usually carry out marketing activities on overseas shopping websites, so we only give a brief introduction to overseas shopping websites.

Overseas shopping users are generally divided into two types: one is more demanding on product quality and is willing to pay a premium to purchase overseas products; the other is more sensitive to price and is willing to pay a low price to purchase overseas products. Brands need to recognize their own user portraits during the marketing process.

The main overseas shopping websites include NetEase Kaola, Ymatou, and Omall. In addition, the overseas shopping sections on Taobao, JD.com and other sites are also important entry points. From a marketing perspective, it is still divided into three methods: hard advertising, content, and self-operated channels, but the important thing is how to customize marketing based on overseas shopping user behavior and scenarios.

Author: Time Fun

Source: Shiqu Interactive