The logic, methods and applications behind Evergrande's 25% off marketing event

This article analyzes the reasons why Evergrande’s 25%-off house sale went viral during the epidemic from the user, employee and strategic perspectives. Those who are interested in marketing are welcome to read this.

I have seen many articles about the Evergrande incident on the Internet, but most of them only analyze the phenomenon and fail to sort out the complex routines in all aspects. There may be many people like me who, after sorting out all his operations, will be shocked by the complex logic behind him and applaud.

How did he do it? How are this series of operations connected together? What is the logic behind it? Is there anything worth learning from?

This article explains to you:

01

I analyzed it for a long time, including after experiencing their products, I found that this can be perfectly interpreted according to the ideas and methods of super products, especially the content in the super growth module.

The first and biggest characteristic of this Evergrande event is that it is hot enough - it far exceeds the popularity of marketing events done by most of our industries and companies.

It was on the hot search list twice in a row, and this is not something that can be achieved just by spending money.

The first time I was on the hot search was because of cloud house selling. The epidemic has made everyone see that online business is a crazy opportunity. Everyone started to desperately use the Internet and WeChat Moments to market and share products, but selling houses was too difficult. Evergrande’s breakthrough in selling houses online is itself something worthy of making headlines.

Everything was rising in price during the epidemic, but Evergrande, a real estate company, suddenly offered a 25% discount, which was really surprising.

However, Evergrande has promotions almost every month: Father's Day promotion, Labor Day promotion, 20% off, 28% off... This event is indeed not very large-scale. It is actually a promotion that first raises prices and then lowers them. But none of this matters. What matters is that this set of operations has attracted a lot of attention and a lot of reposts, which is what we need to pay attention to.

This marketing campaign had 55,000 Weibo discussions, 560 million participants, 47,540 houses sold in three days, and total sales of 58 billion.

It is very difficult for us to achieve this effect through advertising and marketing. The reality is that many companies have spent hundreds of millions on marketing, only to have all their money go to waste. Evergrande has achieved the results that many companies dream of.

Through these phenomena, we need to understand the logic behind it: how is the entire complex planning carried out? What holds this complex set of routines together? Suppose I don’t have 300 million yuan, can I learn some things and apply them to my own products, business, enterprise, or industry?

You will never be able to learn all the skills, and you must master the logic and methods behind the phenomena.

We must understand the logic and methods behind it so that we can make it our own and truly integrate it with the enterprise. This is a very important thing, and it is also the original intention of my sharing this time.

02

We need to think and discuss from three levels: user side, employee side and strategic side.

1. User side

On the surface, Evergrande attracted a large number of potential users through a 25% off event, and converted them into home buyers through special promotions. This is a common routine we see, but the Evergrande incident this time is far from that simple - it is divided into three layers from potential users to home buyers, and conversion is done at each layer.

First level: Convert all potential users into free users.

When a company advertises, most people just see the ad and don’t necessarily convert it into sales, and only a small number of people will move on to the next stage. This ratio is really too low, and 99% of the company's resources are wasted as a result.

Is it possible to convert these potential users into free users?

In other words: he did not buy a house and did not pay any fees, but he was able to establish a relationship with the company. It was not a house-buying relationship or a consumption relationship, but they could reach each other. How did Evergrande come about?

During this period, Hengfangtong APP quickly rushed to the top 2 of the APP store, even surpassing Alipay. You may not necessarily buy a house from Evergrande, but you can download the APP. Once you register, you become a free user of Evergrande. During this process, a large amount of traffic was not wasted, and Evergrande also obtained a large amount of user information.

The second layer: convert free users into light paying users.

Through the first level of conversion, Hengfangtong APP accumulated 10 million users in just three days. However, it is unrealistic to expect 10 million users to buy houses directly. This brings us to the second level, converting free users into light paying users.

Evergrande launched a 5,000 yuan subscription fund activity to first raise users' psychological threshold. Compared with the millions or tens of millions that would cost to buy a house, 5,000 yuan is really very little.

Through this subscription activity, Evergrande obtained 500 million yuan in cash in just three days. Although it is a small amount of money for a real estate company, for many businesses, it can help you quickly overcome the situation of tight cash flow.

Ctrip has also been doing something similar recently: pre-order travel products for the next six months in advance and get free refunds when the time comes. Why? It is to raise funds in advance to alleviate the current problem of tight capital chain.

Once you have spent 5,000 yuan, it will be much easier for you to spend more money, right?

The third level: convert light paying users into high paying users.

At this stage, the goal is to facilitate the purchase of houses by those who have paid the subscription fee and turn them into high-paying users. Evergrande has adopted several methods:

• Discount on top of discount : pay 5,000 yuan in advance, and you can get an additional 20,000 yuan off if you buy the house yourself. Evergrande keeps giving you discounts to make you excited: if you miss this opportunity, you may not be able to find it again.
• Step price increase : The promotion is time-limited, with a 25% discount in February and a 22% discount in March.
• Building sales rate : If the house you choose is not good, such as the orientation, location or floor, you can get a 4% discount, which gives you more impetus.

The most important thing is that you don’t have to worry about anything. You can check out without any reason, so you don’t have any psychological burden.

If you are in urgent need of buying a house now, the probability of you buying it will increase significantly.

We have seen that a large number of marketing advertisements in the past all adopted a simple, direct, rough and barbaric approach to achieve the goal in one step. The logic of the entire process of Evergrande's event is very rigorous, and it slowly converts potential users into target users step by step. This breaks the traditional method of rapid conversion from potential users to paying users, which is very worth learning.

As you can see from the picture below, users are converted in levels, from potential users to free users, free users to light paying users, and finally to high paying users.

The logic of all this coincides with the theory of super growth. It is a very complex, complete, closed-loop system.

2. Employee side

What many companies flatter is: employees are employees, and users are God. Many companies are willing to serve their users and will provide them with many services, even licking their lips.

In today's era, we must do everything we can to leverage our power to get users involved, but we must note that participation and interference are two different things.

In the past experience, especially when doing marketing events, all ideas were to quickly make some money and cash in, and we never thought about doing things with users. We want to make users and enterprises form a united front and turn users into employees of enterprises. This is a breakthrough cognition. this

This approach is also divided into three layers, layer by layer:

First level: attracting new part-time employees

If you register for the Hengfangtong APP, you will get a reward of 10 yuan for every new user you invite to register. If the person you invite invites others, you can get an additional 5 yuan reward.

This activity sounds like it has no cost. You don't have to pay anything. Just fill in your information and register, and you can get 10 yuan. How great is that? The more people you attract, the more money you make.

When you register for the APP, you are just its user. When you attract more users for him, you have become his employee. Such a small mechanism design can bring about a fundamental change in your identity.

Second level: Recommend part-time employees

After you start attracting new customers, can you recommend some people who are willing to buy a house?

Evergrande then launched a reward program for recommendations. Anyone who provides clues for buying a house and successfully purchases the house can get a reward of 100 yuan per group. At this level, users have provided clues about people who are willing to buy a house, and this clue is very valuable.

Since February 13, the APP has had 3 million new registered users.

The average cost of obtaining each lead in the real estate industry is 200 yuan, and Evergrande’s total investment this time is only 300 million yuan. Whether you buy a house or not, you have already made a 200% profit.

The third level: part-time sales staff

If you are able to close deals directly with customers, then you become a salesperson. Evergrande will give you a higher transaction reward of 1% of the total transaction price.

From attracting new customers to recommendations and then to closing deals, Evergrande divides external employees into three levels. Conversions at each stage can bring new profits, and each level can achieve self-growth. This is classic viral marketing. In this process, further capabilities are amplified and released through step-by-step promotions, achieving super growth on the employee side.

But beware: not all businesses make good use of their employees —it depends on your judgment of them. Because they are temporary workers, the work is simple and the training they can receive is limited. The work they can do must not be complicated, it must be something within their capabilities.

The core mission is "more clues" and do what they can.

We need to pay attention to how to truly make good use of these people's energy and time, achieve self-growth on the employee side, and bring out their value.

3. Strategic side

Evergrande’s marketing this time is not just a local task handled by the marketing department.

It was a great campaign initiated by the marketing department and completed with the mobilization of resources from the entire company. This battle has a clear strategy and global linkage, forming a complete closed loop. This requires very strong strategic planning and strategic execution capabilities.

A large number of companies can make a very beautiful plan and mechanism, but they may not be able to achieve qualitative differentiation. They have never discussed whether marketing can rise to the strategic level.

Especially when promoting large-scale marketing events, it is necessary to rise to the level of corporate strategy and mobilize resources from all aspects from the top level of the company. What has Evergrande done strategically?

• Marketing side: responsible for advertising placement, selecting delivery channels, and arranging delivery time and rhythm.
• Sales side: answer questions online to ensure that marketing is consistent with all aspects, such as 25% off marketing, whether the prices of all properties have been adjusted.
• Software side: Ensure that the APP will not crash and ensure a smooth experience process.
• Financial side: ensure that the budget is sufficient and settlement is carried out quickly.
• Policy: Policy formulation and communication from top to bottom.

You will find that if any part fails, the losses will be heavy. For example, if the customer service is not good enough, many users who have worked hard to buy the product will be lost.

Evergrande's 25%-off house sale event far exceeded traditional rebate or promotional marketing events. The entire process was flawless and can be called a classic case.

03

We currently understand the logic behind this matter, but what is the method behind it? This brings us back to the theory of super products.

Super products are centered on products, forming a complete closed loop of the organization. They strategically mobilize various departments to focus on the goal of creating super products, and go all out to drive all employees to achieve exponential growth in users and products and obtain high returns.

Let’s go back to the Evergrande incident. There are three important characteristics in super growth: strong stickiness, high conversion and self-growth.

All of this is based on rules and accurate insights into user needs. In the Evergrande incident, user demand insight is to transform users' demand for buying houses into the demand for making money.

Why is there a need to make money?

During the epidemic, everyone stays at home. Not only the boss is anxious, but every employee is also worried about whether they will lose their job or have no money to earn. If you can earn a little more without going out and without taking any risks, why not do it?

Super growth is a complete closed-loop system designed based on precise insights into user needs.

The super product strategy is a systematic strategy with products as the fulcrum, driving all employees of the company with products as the core.

Because products are the reason for the existence of an enterprise, products are also the core and deliverable carrier for providing value to users. We need to drive all employees around the product, operate around the product, and form a core gear to drive the company.

When we talk about this, you may have a question: What are Evergrande’s products? Is it just a house?

It is a large product matrix that includes official accounts, APPs, and sales offices.

Nowadays, people download fewer apps than before. The APPs installed in users' mobile phones are becoming more and more fixed, and downloading an APP has psychological barriers and thresholds for most people. In order to lower the psychological threshold for downloading the APP and the probability of loss, Evergrande first allows users to follow the official account, and you will become a free user.

Then open a page from the official account to download the APP. From a normal logic point of view, doesn’t this lengthen the path? Aren’t users more likely to churn?

No, this is double insurance. If you are too lazy to download the APP, you are at least still a subscriber of the official account.

If you download the APP, you become a user on both ends. Even if you turn off the notification of the APP, you can still push information through the official account.

The official account plays the role of user sedimentation, and the APP is the focus of user operation. Only through the APP can we achieve user fission, house purchase and property recommendation, etc.

The last one is the sales office. Every sales office completes the final stage and makes the home purchase transaction a reality.

These three products together constitute Evergrande’s entire product matrix.

04

Let’s talk about the application of this thing. What should I do if I don’t have 300 million yuan in marketing expenses?

1. User classification

Our users are not all the same and need to be treated differently. Only by classifying users can we formulate different strategies for different types of users to meet their needs and provide them with greater value.

2. Develop marketing strategies separately

Each user level has its own detailed design, and you must not use the same approach to cover all of them.

3. Constitute an overall marketing strategy

When formulating strategies, departments cannot be isolated from each other. They must be coherent and form an overall corporate strategy.

4. Mobilize all departments of the company to take action

Once the strategy is formulated, it needs to be issued to drive the various departments of the company to coordinate in a unified manner.

To help you understand better, let's take an example:

If you run a bakery, the first thing we need to do is to classify users. What kind of users does the bakery have?

• Passing by (traffic user)
• Visited the store but did not make purchase (potential users)
• One-time store visit (low-paying users)
• Stored value members (high paying users)

Before formulating a strategy, you must think carefully: What are the bakery’s products?

When we talk about the catering and service industries, our store is most likely our main product. For a bakery, bread is of course a product, but it is only a sub-product. The more important core product is the store.

How to run this store? This needs to revolve around the user.

What are the needs of the user passing by? He has no needs. The important thing at this time is to catch people's attention, organize activities, and do everything possible to make them take a closer look.

For people who come to the store but don't make any purchases, they just look around and buy nothing. At this time, you should consider arranging a shopping guide to make recommendations to promote consumption. What if he really doesn't want to buy it?

You have to do everything you can to convert him into a free user. For example, give him a coupon and ask him to follow your official account. If he wants, he can leave his cell phone number. However, this process must be done in a way that makes him most comfortable.

What about people who come to the store on a one-time basis? Don't be in a hurry. Slowly cultivate his consumption habits and let him fully experience the value of your bread and this store.

Please note, it's not just the bread, it's also the value of your store. In order to promote repeat purchases, you may need to make various follow-up visits to collect his feedback, explore his needs, understand his preferences, provide him with targeted takeout, and so on.

When you have done all these things, the next step is to find a way to convert him into a stored-value user. When he recognizes your value, what reason is there to refuse this thing?

Most people are reluctant to apply for a card not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t feel your value. I don’t know why they do it because they have no consumption expectations.

Let’s think carefully about what services you can provide to stored-value users? Try every possible way to speed up consumption. Only by accelerating consumption can you turn the deposit into your income, otherwise the user's deposit will only be a liability to you. Only consumption can turn into your profit and accelerate the next recharge.

Can you consider converting deposit users into your employees to help you make recommendations, just like Evergrande did?

100% yes. Try every possible means to get him to recommend new users, give him cash back, and increase his stored value limit. You can design such a mechanism for this layer.

Don't let go of any user. We have let go of countless users and a large amount of user resources have been wasted.

Summarize

The logic we are talking about is to unravel the Evergrande incident, remove the fog, and finally see the essence of the matter. Let us return to our own business, and use the established and applicable theoretical methods to create super products and achieve super growth. More importantly, we can formulate and implement our entire strategy.

The super product strategy is to help companies build a strategic implementation system for super products.

Our original intention is to use this system to allow you to continuously optimize your products and create your own super products. I hope entrepreneurs can step out and refresh their cognition, and understand the practices behind the whole set of logic, so as to drive fundamental changes in your business.

I hope this sharing can give you real help. My sharing ends here. Thank you everyone.

Author: Ai Laosi

Source: Ai Lao Si