New trends in marketing observation in 2020

In the current environment, no matter whether the company is currently facing problems or is in a good development trend, we need to find more new opportunities in the new environment and in the changes. Next, we will analyze the development and changes in marketing in 2020.

01. Enterprises redefine O2O marketing

The outbreak of the pneumonia epidemic has caused the flow of people and customers to drop to a freezing point, which has also brought offline activities to a near standstill and dealt a heavy blow to the offline physical industry.

With the outbreak of online office, online education, fresh food e-commerce, online medical care and other industries during the epidemic, more companies have realized that online operations have greater flexibility and operability than offline operations in special periods.

In the past O2O model, enterprises realized transaction services after diverting traffic from online to offline. However, many companies choose to end after completing this step.

In fact, it is also extremely important to know how to transfer offline customers back to online. Especially when the traffic dividend disappears, these users can be transferred online to provide secondary value-added services, thereby creating new value.

In addition, many companies currently fall into a misunderstanding, that is, when doing online or offline marketing, the two are just independent events and they do not promote real integration. "Focus on the bottom and neglect the top" or "Focus on the top and neglect the bottom", this uncoordinated marketing approach can easily make you feel overwhelmed when facing emergencies.

The marketing process from "online to offline" is a way for enterprises to acquire accurate users. But in order to maintain these precise users, we need to return from offline to online. In the future, companies will update their focus on the integrated "online-offline-online" approach.

02. Diversification of corporate transaction channels

In recent years, many companies have been considering: Should I go online? Do you want to create a community? Why do it online?

Through the analysis of the structural changes of the entire market, the entire market is divided into three spatial structures: offline, online, and community. This brings very important insights to our system to see the current changes in transaction channels.

Because the entire market structure has changed, it has changed from the single offline market that we are very familiar with to an offline plus online market. In recent years, with the rapid development of WeChat social networking, a new community space has emerged, and the three-dimensional space constitutes the current complete market structure.

Now, if we want to define the entire market, it is definitely not enough to just focus on the offline market, because the market pattern and market structure have changed.

No one should have any doubts about the online market so far. It wouldn't have been possible 10 years ago. Not to mention us, even the big guys like Wang Jianlin and Jack Ma once made a bet. But to this day, no one denies the existence of the online market.

In the current development of the community space, many companies may still have doubts about how to understand and position themselves. However, judging from the overall trend, the community space will definitely become a very important market space in the future.

Therefore, from the current perspective, offline + online + community constitute a complete market structure.

Therefore, as an enterprise, whether it is a brand, distributor, or retailer, when positioning your market structure, you must make a complete system plan in three dimensions. It is definitely not enough to only consider the offline market, nor is it enough to separate the online and offline markets. We must consider organically integrating the three spaces of offline, online and community, which is the reasonable choice for overall market planning now.

And all three channels must be tapped. A single channel may support the development of small businesses. But as a large enterprise, we must pay attention to three channels.

In a three-dimensional environment, there are three delivery methods: in-store delivery, home delivery, and community delivery. Delivery has become a very critical factor in the entire marketing process.

In the future, omni-channel integration will be the main direction. We need to focus on user needs and meet their consumption needs in every aspect through in-store, home and community delivery. This is definitely a very important direction.

03. Online advertising rebounds

If the keyword for business in 2019 was “growth,” then the keyword for business in 2020 is “survival,” and the fundamental basis of survival is to have business to do.

There is a saying in the Internet advertising industry:

• The essence of Internet business is traffic business. Wherever the users are, there is the traffic, and there are the corresponding advertisements. The advertising industry is the industry closest to money and also the industry closest to users.
• Amid the coronavirus pandemic, this industry is facing a test that occurs only once in decades.
• On the one hand, the tertiary industries such as retail, tourism, catering, and entertainment have been hit hardest by the epidemic, and the advertising industry, as an industry providing intermediary services, has also been deeply affected.
• On the other hand, under the epidemic, staying at home to avoid the epidemic is the current living condition of most people. Changes in consumers' daily behaviors will also have an impact on the entire advertising logic.

Agencies with a higher proportion of traditional brand business were severely impacted, while agencies with a higher proportion of performance-based business were less affected. Compared with creative agencies, media agencies have a greater impact, especially those that represent traditional media business. Due to family isolation during this period, the top digital media apps have seen an increase in traffic.

The epidemic has almost brought offline passenger flow to a standstill, but online traffic has experienced a surge. Many people stay at home, and almost all activities are online. Mobile phones, televisions, and computers have become the main ways to obtain information.

According to the website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, during the Spring Festival holiday, mobile Internet traffic consumption reached 2.716 million TB, a year-on-year increase of 36.4%. Mobile data traffic consumption on New Year's Eve and the first day of the New Year increased by 42.1% and 40.8% year-on-year respectively.

For example, online office, online education, online medical care, and even the real estate industry. A few days ago, a real estate developer launched online house viewing and selling, which also achieved considerable results.

As one thing grows, another shrinks. The inability of offline marketing to cope with emergencies also provides opportunities for online marketing. After experiencing this epidemic, I believe that more and more companies will regard online advertising as an important marketing method.

04. Combining advertising with private domain traffic

At present, there are not many private domain traffic options. The company’s own APP is undoubtedly one type of private domain traffic. Offline stores are also a type of private domain traffic. There is also a third-party technology output platform, such as the Zhanglian Business Circle. Using the Zhanglian Business Circle customer development tools can help merchants actively acquire customers in circles and realize private domain traffic, which can be used freely and repeatedly. No need to pay and you can access it at any time.

The most recognized private domain traffic is WeChat. The core of private domain traffic includes two indicators, traffic cost (CAC) and traffic revenue (CLV), which together determine ROI (return on investment).

As shown in the figure above, 2020 will be the first year of the explosion of private domain traffic. If you enter the market now, you can seize the first wave of dividends before the policies of major traffic platforms are tightened. If your competitors have already completed their territory and formed barriers, it will be difficult to enter again.

In fact, behind the rise of private domain traffic is essentially growth anxiety. In the era of traffic dividends, companies only focused on traffic conversion. However, as traffic dividends were exhausted, customer acquisition costs increased and it became difficult to monetize public domain traffic.

Therefore, tapping into the greater value of old users has become a consensus among all companies, and more and more people are beginning to target private domain traffic. Especially in the field of e-commerce.

The end of each marketing campaign is actually the beginning of the next one, and the cycle repeats itself. After this epidemic, more bosses have come to understand that advertising is not the end of marketing, but a new beginning. How to accumulate users attracted by advertising and build up your own private traffic to give the company an extra leg to walk. The key is to combine advertising and private domain traffic.

In addition, once users enter the company's private domain traffic, how to subsequently serve users and provide a good experience is also the core of everyone working with private domain traffic.

According to Hua Ge's observation, more and more platforms are now focusing on tapping into private domain traffic and providing assistance to brands in terms of traffic, conversion, and monetization, such as Douyin stores and WeChat live broadcasts. In the future, platforms that do not support private domain traffic conversion and do not support brand and effect integration will easily lose their advantages in commercial competition.

05. Short video trading platforms become popular

Short videos entered their explosive growth phase in 2017 and are now gradually maturing. Short videos have evolved from an entertainment app into a platform that integrates entertainment, product promotion, and live streaming.

During the epidemic, users' entertainment time at home increased significantly year-on-year, and short videos, mainly on Douyin and Kuaishou, became an important way for people to kill boring time.

As a new traffic entrance spawned by the mobile Internet, short videos have also become one of the few remaining tickets in the mobile Internet era. But being a super portal is far from enough.

With the current very complete capital flow, goods flow and logistics systems, short videos mean the largest flow of people. With strong branding capabilities, grass-planting capabilities and the ability to bring goods, short videos can exert tremendous energy.

Short videos are not only a traffic entrance, but also a trading platform. It is understood that short videos have a high conversion rate. The number of reposts caused by videos is 12 times that of text and pictures. The willingness of users who have watched the video to purchase is 1.8 times that of other users.

Currently, short videos are the only remaining value gap, which contains huge treasures waiting to be discovered by every advertiser. If you miss the opportunity, your users are likely to be taken away by your competitors.

The short video trading platform of the future will be a visual and data-based platform.

06. Listed companies acquire MCNs

Since 2017, top internet celebrities represented by Papi Jiang, Liziqi, Mizijun, Li Jiaqi, and Viya have attracted the attention of the Chinese people, and the MCN agencies behind them have also made a lot of money.

How hot MCN is in the capital market today can be seen from the following examples.

On January 5, the products of listed company Jinzi Ham were shown in Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room. The battle report showed that more than 100,000 packs of Jinzi spicy sausages were sold in 5 minutes in Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room, with total sales exceeding 3 million yuan. The next day, Jinzi Ham’s stock price rose, driving a market value increase of 548 million yuan.

In December 2019, Saturday, the "No. 1 stock of women's shoes", had 13 daily limit increases in 19 trading days, and its stock price rose by as much as 350%. It is reported that Zhang Zemin, the founder and actual controller of Saturday, is an investor in Li Ziqi's agency. Saturday officially denied this "connection". However, Saturday has also been quick to invest in MCN. In August 2018, Saturday acquired an MCN agency - Yaowang Network.

Coincidentally, just a few days ago, A-share listed company Sanwu.com issued an announcement to acquire MCN company Shanghai Wanrui. After the plan was disclosed, Sanwu.com’s stock price hit the daily limit for eight consecutive days. It disclosed the plan on February 11 and hit the daily limit again on February 12.

MCN has demonstrated strong capabilities in e-commerce sales and integrated marketing, especially in an economic downturn, through which users can be found more accurately. According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 8,000 MCN agencies in China alone (some say more than 10,000).

Nowadays, more and more listed companies have begun to acquire MCNs. According to incomplete statistics from Douban Entertainment, there are currently 26 listed companies that have had connections with MCN, with investment, mergers and acquisitions, or self-construction being the main ways. It is foreseeable that there will be more and more MCN mergers and acquisitions cases this year.

However, with the intensification of industry competition and the entry of capital, MCN will also usher in a reshuffle period, and high-quality players will become the final winners.

Author: Elite Operations

Source: Elite Operations