The dangers and opportunities of online marketing during the epidemic

As the holiday time continues to extend due to the 2020 epidemic, will companies or individuals, which are already facing great cost and competitive pressures, suffer large-scale bankruptcies and unemployment due to this epidemic? From the perspective of the Internet, how can we use online marketing to prepare for the future, turn crises into opportunities, and accelerate the transformation and upgrading of corporate diversified operations?

In response to the above issues, let us discuss the “dangers” and “opportunities” of online marketing during the epidemic.

A story: What has the direct-operated e-commerce industry experienced in the past month?

Tencent Advertising has an industry called direct-operated e-commerce.

In the direct-operated e-commerce industry, we rely on Tencent’s information flow, including WeChat Moments information flow ads, Tencent News, and many other information flow ads, to recommend some popular items that users like or are easy to buy through traffic resources. These users are not necessarily heavy users of this e-commerce platform, but they are exposed to e-commerce for the first time through our information flow and media such as WeChat Moments.

After learning about these hot-selling products, users can place orders on the backend of this e-commerce platform. B-side merchants can pay on delivery, and after customers are satisfied with the product after unpacking, they can pay to complete the transaction.

In the time period of 2019 and 2020, the two months of the Spring Festival were taken respectively. The ups and downs of the line here represent the GMB generated by this sub-industry on Tencent's platform. What happened to the performance of these two curves during the Spring Festival period, and what is the story behind it? What experiences can be learned?

Phase 1

The first phase is the first week of the Spring Festival holiday. During the week of the Spring Festival, the overall GMB declined in both 2019 and 2020.

The reasons for the decline can be broken down to the B-end, where changes have occurred in the supply and demand of the C-end. During the Spring Festival, C-end user groups all have the need to stock up, but because many business owners, especially some small business owners, need to stop working, employees have to go on vacation early, and inventory is also limited, it is found that there is a downward trend in GMB during the Spring Festival every year.

Phase II

In the second stage, we will find that an intersection has occurred. The blue line (2019) continues to rise, but the yellow line (2020) drops.

The reason is the outbreak of the epidemic around the Spring Festival this year. Many places began to close down cities, and the suspension of logistics and express delivery had a very big impact on B-end merchants and enterprises. Due to the increasingly strict government control, most residential areas have been closed and there is no human activity.

In fact, more than 90% of the transactions in direct-operated e-commerce are in the form of cash on delivery. C-end users are unwilling to contact couriers during the epidemic.

This creates the difference between 2019 and 2020.

Phase 3

In the third stage, the price continued to rise in 2019, but continued to decline in 2020. Why is this?

Because from the end of January to the beginning of February, from the perspective of C-end users, more communities implemented stricter entry and exit controls, some warehouses of B-end companies were also sealed, and the resumption of work showed a wait-and-see state, resulting in the overall transaction volume of the industry continuing to decline.

Stage 4

After the industry downturn, as B-side merchants and enterprises gradually recover, users will return to normal life, the signing rate will gradually increase, and the cash on delivery capital chain will gradually return to normal.

Merchants and businesses also began to place advertisements and increased the amount of goods they purchased and the amount of inventory they stocked.

Through the short story described above, we can understand how the epidemic affects the C-end and B-end at different stages of development.

We can see that we try to put most of the industries into this picture. In the first quadrant, industries such as online education, online games, network services, and medicine actually have both positive C-end and positive B-end during the epidemic, and these are favorable industries. Of course, there are also some very traditional industries, such as tourism real estate, automobiles, and home decoration, which are negatively affected on both the C-end and the B-end. You can try to put your own industry and the company you lead into this picture and think about it.

More importantly, when you first learn about the e-commerce industry, place your company in this picture and find its position. The location will change according to the development of the epidemic and the passage of time. What kind of preparations does the enterprise need to make according to its position? That's why it's important to build a small model.

Extended thinking of the model: What is the marketing strategy of the enterprise under different influences?

1. How the epidemic affects C-end demand

What is the company’s marketing strategy under different influences? So here are some summaries.

The impact on the C-end can be divided into unfavorable and favorable. Based on these two perspectives, we can make another split and there are several situations:

Demand is stimulated: In one case, demand has been stimulated. For example, online education, online reading, and games are some of the industries where demand has been stimulated under the impetus of the stay-at-home economy.

Suppressed demand: Suppression is like a faucet that is plugged, but there is still water in it. What this means is that the demand itself is needed. After the time-suppressing factor is eliminated, everyone uses a term called retaliatory growth or retaliatory rebound. So it was temporarily suppressed.

Suppressed demand: Of course, in some industries, demand is indeed suppressed. For example, some families have booked New Year’s Eve dinners or had travel plans, but these plans were canceled during the epidemic. So the suppressed demand may disappear under the current circumstances.

2. The impact of the epidemic on B-side demand

From B's perspective, I would like to share this with you.

If you open an offline store. The flow of people itself is also a kind of traffic. You need to acquire customers to get traffic, then you need to convert them into sales. Whether you are visiting an existing store or an online store, you need to convert them into sales, and then you need to fulfill and deliver them.

If we compare the degree of onlineization of the B-side business links with that of the C-side under different demands, we will have a more detailed strategic approach.

The first part is about the stimulated demand. Under such circumstances, we see that many companies are doing a bottom-up reverse thinking. What is this bottom-up reverse thinking?

If the demand in my industry is stimulated now, the first question I might ask is, what solutions do I have? In this special period, can this demand be met through purely online fulfillment and delivery methods?

At this stage, I can do that. I have products and services, or in other words, I have an online method to meet this demand. The second thing I might think about is whether my sales method and sales conversion method can also be online.

My employees may be on vacation now, so can I ask them to work from home?

Can you please ask them to come back? Can I transform the sales process and turn some things that used to be done offline into online ones? So if I can do this, if I have a product, I have an online way of fulfilling and negotiating, but I can make my original offline sales transfer links online, then congratulations, what you want to do is to acquire traffic on a large scale. So this is a very typical strategy.

The second part is the suppressed demand mentioned earlier. At this time, companies need to think from top to bottom.

The first reason is that objectively speaking, there is no demand in essence. Maybe no one would buy a house, a car, or take wedding photos at this stage. That’s indeed not the case now. What can you do to release or collect the needs of these users? Because the needs still exist, they are just suppressed.

If this can really be done, can we follow it?

These users already know there is a need, although there may not be a solution now.

But is it possible to keep in touch and follow up on the updates?

Do your best to push users further down the sales funnel. At the same time, try to find ways to break the whole into smaller parts. For example, you used to invite them to come to the store to have a look. But now you can use online live broadcast to communicate with them and let them understand.

We also see that many car companies and real estate companies are actually doing similar things. They may be transforming the original cumbersome fulfillment delivery and sales methods. First, break it down into smaller pieces and use some of the online methods. You may complete 10 steps first, including the third step or the first three steps. Then you may continue to keep in touch with your potential users. When these constraints are gone, you can quickly convert them.

The third part may also be the industry that has been most affected during the epidemic.

For example, travel, dine-in restaurants, shopping, etc. The first point I want to make is that we need to accept the current situation, cultivate our inner strength, and think about which links in the funnel can be done better to improve efficiency. At the same time, it is recommended that merchants and enterprises make some appropriate voices. Even if your company only has one official account, you can still share some information with everyone to let them know that your company is still alive.

I think this is a critical point for the survival and development or marketing of small and medium-sized enterprises. It must be humanized. Even if you are not doing well now, you can tell everyone your story. One day when you are open for business, you can tell everyone that I am open and need your support. Therefore, at this stage, appropriate voice is actually a way for an enterprise to maintain interaction with users.

Let me tell you a case:

During the epidemic, the first step taken by this educational institution was to start thinking from the bottom of the funnel about what could be done to make this online way of meeting user needs. First find the product and make it. At this time, what he can do next is to improve internal efficiency. This is the point mentioned here. We just talked about the funnel and improving efficiency in each link.

There are also real estate companies. I believe everyone’s screens have been dominated by Evergrande Real Estate’s advertisements recently.

Real estate is actually a temporarily suppressed demand. But Evergrande is the company with the largest sales volume among all real estate development groups in China, and it is also one of the companies that has done relatively well in online operations. The development of these online tools can be completed in a short period of time, so we can see such a trend.

The small program for real estate sales can carry basic information and connect the B-end and the C-end online. From our perspective, we are thinking about a lot of things. If your company cannot start marketing immediately now, then you may really need to work on your internal development first. There are more ways to meet and transform these needs.

Recommendation: Start the digital upgrade of your company’s marketing immediately

Finally, I want to give you some advice:

For small and medium-sized business owners, Tencent should not only be an advertising platform, but also a marketing platform. Let's expand on marketing and talk about the three links in the funnel. In addition to customer acquisition, sales conversion, and fulfillment, there may also be repeat purchases. Companies should also be prepared for digital upgrades and transformations in marketing.

The first is how to make the marketing scenario online. If you currently have no online channels or other channels for acquiring customers, and you have not established a public account, you have not been able to reach your goals. You should create channels for new users and existing users to tell your story, your brand and your products, so you should do these things today.

After completing the online scene, in addition to the user's explanation, a very important thing for merchants is data access, which can understand the user's entire consumption and purchasing behavior, and his preferences. In the third part, we can use this data to better help you with marketing, advertising, and promotion.

Author: Elite Operations

Source: Elite Operations