How does traffic turn into sales? You must solve these 5 problems!

Suppose there is a chopping board that costs 1,500 yuan (much more expensive than ordinary chopping boards), and the target sales volume is 10,000. How much traffic or exposure do you think is needed?

If calculated based on the general conversion rate, some people would guess that 5 million traffic or 1 million traffic is needed. In fact, the traffic of all shopping malls in Asia is not enough——

This brand of cutting boards has counters in many shopping malls (including e-commerce), but the sales volume across all channels in Asia in 2015 was less than 10,000.

But what’s interesting is that a food KOL (Wen Yi) broke this convention at the time. She published an article on her official account “Wen Yi’s Home Cooking” to recommend this chopping board. As a result, 15,000 units were sold in 10 minutes, which exceeded the annual sales of this type of chopping board in Asia.

This is an example cited by Li Jiaoshou in his article "The greatest value of internet celebrity self-media is psychological arousal."

Why is this happening? Why is it that low-traffic ads are more effective? The article mentions the term " psychological arousal ", which roughly means:

A normal person in a normal mental state would not buy this chopping board - they would only buy a 100 yuan one according to past habits.

In order to make people change their past habits and buy such an uncommon cutting board, it is necessary to arouse a certain psychology in this person, making this person temporarily become "abnormal" and become eager for the "ultimate cooking experience."

Wen Yi’s official account plays this role. No matter if you are a rigorous accountant or a free artist, when you read Wen Yi’s article, you will briefly become a "foodie pursuing the ultimate cooking experience."

Only when this kind of psychology is aroused in you can you break your past habits and buy a chopping board for 1,500 yuan.

I will summarize the core points of Li Jiaoshou's article:

People essentially have " multiple selves " and behave completely differently in different situations. Marketing is about creating such scenarios to change users' psychology, and then selling products based on the evoked scenarios and psychology.

When we choose a channel to place ads, we should not only focus on the amount of traffic in the channel, but also pay attention to the psychological arousal value of the channel - what psychological arousal is generally aroused in users in this scenario?

For example, when fear is aroused, people are more inclined to buy "herd-type products"; when romance is aroused, people are more inclined to buy "differentiated products";

If you appeal to the collective self of others, you will sell more "rational appeal products"; if you appeal to the individual self of others, you will sell more "emotional appeal products".

This is why the effect of the previous 10 million traffic is not as good as the effect of a 100,000+ article on someone else’s official account.

However, today we will not focus on this. I would like to analyze this case with the viewpoints in another article "Traffic Obsession: Why Some Traffic Cannot Bring Sales", because I think it is more targeted and more universal, and can better explain:

Why did you spend so much money to buy a lot of traffic, but in the end there are no sales!

As we all know, there is a pure contact effect in psychology:

The more exposures a product receives, the more users will like it, so a large amount of exposure has directly led to huge sales of many products.

But this is actually limited to decisions with low cognitive involvement (for example, I originally wanted to buy Tide laundry detergent, but after watching the advertisement, I bought Diao brand laundry detergent). For high cognitive participation in decision-making, simply having a lot of exposure will not have much direct effect.

When a product meets the following conditions, it is often considered to be a high-cognition decision-making product, and simple traffic exposure is unlikely to have a practical effect:

1. Decision-making is of high importance

2. Decision-making is highly complex and requires information collection

3. Violate past habits and cognition

At this time, the following five problems must be solved so that traffic can be better converted. Let’s talk about this case in conjunction with “selling chopping boards”.

1. Understanding the Problem

When users are unable to fully understand the product itself, no amount of exposure will be effective.

First of all, there is a threshold for us to understand something. Let’s call this threshold the “user understanding threshold”. This threshold is the critical value that we choose to ignore or pay attention to.

The threshold of understanding consists of two stages: sensory threshold and perceptual threshold. Taking value identification into consideration, the entire information processing process is divided into three major blocks: "exposure", "attention" and "understanding". Only when something is exposed will we pay attention, and then understand.

Therefore, before users receive product information, the amount of stimulation in the exposed area must be at least greater than the "sensory threshold", otherwise they will not continue to read on. Whether the user actually pays attention to the information depends on whether the stimulus is greater than the "perception threshold", and only then will the user slowly understand it.

Back to this example, although the former may have 10 million traffic, this traffic is scattered in various places (counters, advertisements, e-commerce), and users may just glance at it without taking a closer look. Some people see that it is a 1,500 yuan chopping board and immediately think it is too expensive. Such understanding is not thorough. The problems exposed and paid attention to are not solved, so how can we talk about understanding, let alone the subsequent conversion.

However, the articles posted on Wen Yi’s official account are different. Because she is a KOL, she is recognized by everyone and has her own group of supporters. Basically, she directly passes the sensory threshold and perceptual threshold and enters the understanding stage.

If a product is recommended by a celebrity you follow, of course you will take it seriously and the level of importance you place on it is completely different. After reading it, you may also share it with your friends to discuss it together, so that you will have a different understanding.

2. Motivation

The understanding problem has been solved. For products with high cognitive involvement, no amount of exposure will be effective if the motivation problem is not solved.

The key to solving user motivation is to let users focus on themselves before focusing on products - realizing that there is some irrationality in their past behavior, and thus eager to solve it by purchasing products.

For example, a 200-yuan shampoo will be difficult to sell simply by promoting its high quality (because it does not conform to past habits). However, it will be much easier to sell if users are first drawn to some unreasonable aspects of their past: "You use perfume that costs thousands of yuan, but you use a 39-yuan supermarket shampoo."

The same is true in the case of chopping boards. In the counter or on the e-commerce page, when users see a chopping board that costs 1,500 yuan, it is difficult for them to generate strong motivation. And what is the motivation? It’s definitely not as simple as buying a cutting board for cooking. If that were the case, you could just buy one.

In this public account, the opinion leader they trusted gave them an incentive to become " foodies pursuing the ultimate cooking experience ," to cook better, to experience life, and to enjoy life, which was something that the chopping board in the past could not satisfy.

Most people may not easily have this motivation, but those who follow this food blogger account have been "educated" by the operator for a long time and have such values, so the motivation is formed.

This also illustrates one point: high-quality traffic is cultivated slowly!

3. Trust Issues

For products with high cognitive involvement, because the decision is often particularly important to users, even if motivation is generated, the trust issue needs to be resolved in advance.

Without building trust, nothing can be accomplished, let alone getting others to spend money. So, on one side, there are shopping malls, online advertisements, and a wide variety of e-commerce platforms, and on the other side, there is a KOL recognized by everyone. Who do you think you should trust?

Therefore, when we choose channels to generate traffic, some channels may seem to have huge traffic, but the trust in them may not be very good. At this time, you must be mentally prepared in advance and don’t complain about the lack of traffic and why there are no conversions.

For example, Baidu’s search traffic is so huge, but in recent years, due to various trust issues, the conversion rate has become low. You see, they have also been doing a lot of work to build credibility.

4. Behavioral Threshold Issues

Another important reason why products with high cognitive involvement often make users think again and again is that they often have very high behavioral thresholds - the decisions users need to make are too important.

So much so that even if I trust you, it is still difficult to make a decision.

For example, when buying a house, it is impossible to make the decision to buy it simply by glancing at the poster. The general solution is to lower the threshold for corresponding behavior (for example, not buying a house, but viewing a house).

For this case, the behavioral thresholds on the surface are actually the same - a chopping board that costs 1,500 yuan is very expensive , but in fact the thresholds of the two are still very different, because there is also a psychological behavioral threshold.

First of all, on various platforms with 10 million traffic, there will be a large number of other types of cutting boards with lower prices, such as 100 or 200 yuan, which may even be more beautiful than yours. Then you want 1,500 yuan, which is a relatively high psychological threshold.

In Wen Yi's official account, everyone is pursuing high quality and quality of life without other interferences. At this time, the threshold of 1,500 yuan is not considered high. On the contrary, a lower threshold will lower the grade.

Secondly, everyone has a mental account, and different accounts have different spending standards and limits. If you want others to buy something, you have to give them a reason to buy to satisfy this account. This will reduce the psychological guilt of spending money and promote purchases.

For example, Haagen-Dazs ice cream costs 100 yuan. If you buy it for yourself, you may think it is expensive, but if you buy it for your loved one, you will probably buy it without hesitation. Because users classify these two types of expenditure into different psychological accounts, buying ice cream for yourself is "daily snack expenditure", but buying it for a loved one will be classified as "emotional maintenance expenditure", and they are obviously more willing to spend money on the latter.

Haagen-Dazs "If you love her, treat her to Haagen-Dazs"

Looking at our chopping board, it is obvious that Wen Yi is able to do a good job of psychological accounting. This "psychological account" is no longer about buying a chopping board just for the sake of buying a chopping board, but is attributed to "a gourmet pursuing the ultimate cooking experience (for herself)", or "for the health of her family, to better enjoy food, and to express love for her family (for her family)".

In this way, the behavioral threshold is not in the same dimension.

5. Group norms

Finally, when users make purchasing decisions, they often compare them with the general norms of their group. If their current behavior does not conform to the norms of this group, they are likely to give up on the purchase. This is also why you rarely go shopping in empty stores.

So, in the scenarios corresponding to the previous 10 million traffic, what is the group?

In a store counter, the group is passers-by or other people who are also looking at the 1,500 yuan cutting board; on an e-commerce platform, the group may be those in the comments; and for online display ads, there is no such thing as a group.

At this time, most passers-by at the counter did not buy anything, so you will not buy it either; the comments on e-commerce platforms no longer play such a strong role in group norms, and their credibility is getting lower and lower.

Wen Yi’s official account is a community operation in itself. A group has been formed. A group of people with the same values ​​gather together. Everyone understands each other and even compares with each other. This is inevitable. Group norms are fully reflected here.

If someone buys it, everyone will talk to each other, refer to each other, and even think: He bought it, so I can’t not buy it. Once the trend is followed and the herd mentality is formed, nothing else matters. I want to buy anyway, and I want to buy more than you.

To sum up, this is why the effect produced by 10 million traffic is not good.

In short, traffic is not a panacea. If your product requires high cognitive participation in decision-making, you must first solve problems such as understanding, trust, motivation, and thresholds before traffic can produce results.

Of course, this does not mean that certain traffic is no longer acceptable or should not be used. Just discussing the matter at hand and analyzing one point.

Author: Mumu Old Thief

Source: Mumuseo