The Double Eleven War is about to start. What are the routines and methods of JD.com and Alibaba?

While waiting for the arrival of this year’s Double Eleven , let’s take a look at how the e-commerce platform giants Alibaba and JD.com planned for last year’s Double Eleven.

In a blink of an eye, half of October has passed and we are about to enter November. The Double Eleven, the national shopping spree, is coming. Both e-commerce platforms and merchants have already started preparing for Double Eleven early. What surprises will there be on Double Eleven this year? Let's wait and see.

While waiting for the arrival of this year’s Double Eleven, let’s take a look at how the e-commerce platform giants Alibaba and JD.com planned for last year’s Double Eleven. What inspiration can their marketing layout provide to our small and medium-sized businesses, self-media , and operators ?

At the beginning, when people talked about Double Eleven, they often talked about "Double Eleven of Taobao Mall" and "Double Eleven of e-commerce". But the situation changed suddenly in 2017, and no one mentioned e-commerce anymore. Because online and offline are no longer isolated entities. Just like offline stores are deployed online, online platforms are also linked to offline platforms and have become a combination of online and offline.

The keywords of 2017 are "scenario", "retail", "increment", "smart supply chain", "offline", etc. As the 9th "Double 11" for Alibaba and the 8th "Double 11" for JD.com, Alibaba and JD.com compete in terms of business model, positioning, brand alliance, discounts, transaction volume, marketing, online payment, logistics and other aspects.

1. Create a traffic pool

Alibaba accumulated traffic resources through preheating in the early stages of Double Eleven and promotion through various channels , so that it was able to obtain good traffic when the event was officially launched. Although the hot event is on November 11th, the warm-up activity for redeeming coupons has already started on October 15th.

2. Create topics

Topics are the source of traffic. Through the Baidu Index and WeChat Index , we can clearly see that Alibaba started to launch the Double Eleven topic from late September. And after the coupon redemption campaign started in mid-October, the index grew rapidly.

We created the variety show "Life Relativity" in an effort to explain the theme of ideal life that Tmall and its brand merchants convey to everyone from the audience's perspective.

Create two large-scale evening parties: Double 11 Global Trend Festival and Double 11 Carnival Night, which sparked topics

The Tmall Double 11 Global Trend Festival, the kick-off event for Double 11, and the 2017 Double 11 Carnival Night, were both attended by many stars and celebrities. Stars, who have the ability to spread topics, are naturally the focus of the media and fans.

The Double 11 Carnival Night Party lineup is even more luxurious, comparable to the New Year’s Eve Party. Eason Chan, Tony Leung, Wang Junkai, Wang Yuan, Jackson Yee, the Beckhams, Da Zhangwei, Liu Haoran, Lay Zhang, Hua Chenyu, Zhang Jie, Chris Lee, Victoria Song and other 3NH48 celebrities were invited to participate.

3. Advertising

Since the warm-up period in late October, offline advertising has been in full swing, with large quantities of posters and advertisements covering 360 degrees in crowded places such as subways, buses, shopping malls, and elevator entrances, attempting to subtly influence user psychology in high-frequency offline scenarios.

On Weibo, Tmall’s Double Eleven advertisements and hot topics occupy major positions on Weibo; celebrities and KOLs ’ publicity campaigns come one after another.

On WeChat , the Double Eleven "Ghost Story" H5 took a different approach. The 400 million store posters for Double Eleven were completed by AI , which is amazing.

4. Use your own traffic and cooperative matrix traffic

Alipay , Xianyu, Fliggy, Xiami Music, Youku, UC Browser and other large resources within the Alibaba Group are engaged in joint marketing, and each application's opening screen, banner, channel, card, navigation tab, search, etc. are promoting each other.

At the same time, Double Eleven advertisements were placed on various cooperative channels and APP applications, and tens of thousands of brands worked together to create momentum on various channels.

1. JD.com spends a huge amount of money on multi-channel advertising

This includes online platforms such as Tencent's WeChat platform and Toutiao , as well as offline advertising in subways, outdoor, light boxes, bus stops, etc. for pre-heating promotion.

On October 30, JD.com Home Appliances launched its first-ever full-scale advertising campaign targeting 900 million WeChat users, which was featured in the Moments of all Chinese WeChat users.

Such a large-scale investment also attracted enthusiastic responses from major brands such as its allies Midea, Gree, Haier , AUX, Skyworth, Konka, Fotile, and Galanz, and JD.com "expressed their feelings through copywriting ". They all expressed their willingness to work with JD.com Home Appliances to present a very different Double 11 home appliance shopping experience for consumers.

In terms of advertising creativity, the screen is full of “JD red”. JD.com uses this dazzling and penetrating color as its communication concept, making "red" the symbol of JD.com. From last year's "Red Story", "Red Preparation", to "Red Mission", each one has been impressive, and this year's "Red Movement 11" is even more unforgettable.

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JD.com’s slogan is “more, faster, better, cheaper”, among which the “good” product quality is JD.com’s most solid asset. In the minds of many technology geeks, JD.com’s name is equivalent to official authentic products. In this year's Double Eleven promotional strategy, JD.com chose to carry this point to the extreme, and through the line in the advertisement "Only if you are picky enough can you have better things", it directed consumer values ​​towards "being picky".

2. Brand co-branding

JD.com has joined forces with the enemy of its enemy to fight a tough battle. It has joined hands with global commercial giant Walmart to create JD.com advertisements in Tencent WeChat.

On Double 11 in 2017, it was not just JD.com that was fighting, but the JD.com + Tencent + Walmart consortium.

Before Double 11, the two super giants, JD.com and Tencent, jointly launched the "JD-Tencent 365 Retail Solution" that integrates online and offline for offline brands. JD.com explained that it is a future-oriented user-centric, data-based retail theory based on the advent of the big data era, the development of artificial intelligence and the revolution in retail formats.

Cooperating with Tencent, we proposed "*** Marketing", leveraging the huge traffic support of Tencent's e-commerce platform to create a new form of social e-commerce. This model was tried again during JD.com’s 618 event in 2018.

3. Improve cargo supply capacity

On the consumer side, JD.com pre-positioned inventory, built local warehouses in third- and fourth-tier cities, and put predicted merchandise and hot-selling products first. In cities, big data from the consumer end is accumulated and placed in advance in forward warehouses within the city; in rural areas, with the help of more than 1,700 JD Helpers, large home appliances are placed closest to rural consumers.

4. Scene integration that leverages the “home field” advantage

JD.com's 3C Business Unit was officially renamed JD.com's 3C Culture and Tourism Business Unit, announcing JD.com's comprehensive efforts in the two major categories of books and entertainment, and life and travel.

The integration of books, life travel and 3C is based on the adaptation to consumer habits. Users' consumption has become verticalized and scenario-based, and they pursue personalization, specialization, and high-endness. The pursuit of some market segments is that consumers have been continuously leading the market growth. Therefore, it is most appropriate to migrate new businesses to high-end with the help of 3C products.

5. Offline and online integration

JD 3C Culture and Tourism launched its first online and offline joint promotion. Offline, more than 130 JD Homes and 3C stores will simultaneously hold 11 offline fan carnivals. In terms of brand cooperation, around Double 11, JD 3C Culture and Tourism signed strategic cooperation agreements with hundreds of major brands, such as HP, Samsung , CITIC Press, etc., which were basically cooperation agreements based on the *** retail strategy.

6. Acquire users through entertainment value output

JD 3C held a " Honor of Kings " mobile game competition to cover more young users and increase its influence among young groups. It became one of the important parts of the 2017 Double Eleven promotion.

At the same time, JD.com and iQiyi jointly launched the workplace survival guide program "Let's Talk About Jobs", which breaks the traditional marketing order from merchants to consumers and instead uses reverse marketing from consumers to merchants to achieve customized consumer services, further promoting consumer favorability and awareness of the brand.

By deepening brand scenarios to drive user emotions, and taking brand needs as the starting point to reversely promote IP development, we can achieve the "brand + platform" linkage fermentation, maximize the expansion of the influence of core content, and open up a new customized program type for survival in the workplace.

7. Launch of the “JD Home Smart Platform” high-tech

Based on JD.com’s big data, artificial intelligence and fulfillment system, and in conjunction with JD.com’s physical store, it creates an “unmanned mobile store” that is precise, intelligent and can be used in multiple scenarios. It integrates data collection , precise positioning, recommendation, crawling, etc.

Similar to the smart recommendations of "Toutiao", in terms of intelligent recommendations and sales, JD Home Smart Platform can analyze the consumption habits and preferences of customers in the region after accumulating data for a period of time.

8. Using AR

JD.com is currently working with Apple, and in JD.com’s Apple product store, the iPhone X has already used 3D display and AR real-life shopping functions. In addition to AR real-life shopping, JD.com also has AR makeup and AR clothing product lines.

Similarly, JD.com’s AR makeup trial is limited to specific products of certain brands. However, JD Treasure Box has a unified entrance for AR and VR . As Double 11 approaches, JD Mobile moved the VRAR entrance to the top of the second column of the homepage navigation, providing more traffic support.

This entrance not only includes JD.com’s AR products, but also panoramic shopping and VR live broadcast projects. In the top carousel area, there is also ticketing information for the Junji Ito AR comic exhibition and the "Dream Collector" VR film festival.

1. Alibaba's technology and payment are working together

A large number of users visiting in a short period of time poses a considerable pressure and challenge to the platform. In 2015, Alibaba encountered a problem where user access caused the server to crash.

During this Double Eleven, Alibaba carried out technological innovation and generated traffic that could rival 10 Lu Hans , and Alipay provided secure payment protection.

2. JD.com payment quotation escort

JD.com also has its own payment tools and fully guarantees payment security.

Logistics is JD.com's advantage. Its fast and timely delivery service (orders placed before 11 a.m. will be delivered in the afternoon, and orders placed before 4 p.m. will be delivered the next morning) has been recognized by users and has become a trump card of JD.com's e-commerce.

For Double 11 in 2017, JD Logistics made full preparations for the first time, and in September, JD Logistics announced that it would provide merchants with subsidies worth 2.1 billion yuan to provide warehousing, delivery discounts, etc. for JD platform merchants and other merchants to prepare goods before Double 11.

Alibaba has increased its stake in its Cainiao Network and will continue to invest 100 billion yuan in the next five years, on top of the hundreds of billions of yuan it has already invested, to accelerate the construction of a world-leading logistics network and achieve 24-hour delivery in China and 72-hour delivery worldwide.

From the logistics layout of the two major e-commerce platforms, we can see that when doing marketing operations , it is very important to do a good job in short-board operations and provide good security construction. JD.com’s ability to compete with Alibaba step by step is closely related to its powerful logistics.

At 9:04 a.m. on the 11th, Tmall’s Double 11 transaction amount reached 100 billion (total time was 9 hours and 4 seconds); at the same time, the Double 11 data released by JD.com showed that from 0:00 on November 1 to 7:00 on November 11, the cumulative order amount reached 100 billion (total time was 10 days and 8 hours).

In the end, JD.com announced that it had achieved a cumulative order amount of 127.1 billion yuan during the 11-day shopping season, and Tmall's cumulative transaction volume reached 168.3 billion yuan.

According to the data, both platforms have exceeded 100 billion yuan, with Tmall leading the way, but JD.com has made significant progress compared to the previous year's Double Eleven.

From the above information, we can clearly see that Alibaba performed exceptionally well on Double Eleven 2017 and JD.com had a strong momentum. In terms of bottom-line guarantees, JD.com's logistics and Alibaba's Cainiao Logistics both provide ultimate logistics guarantees. In terms of network technology, both platforms are making preparations to meet user needs to a greater extent.

What is most worthy of attention is the gameplay and routines of the two major platforms during Double Eleven. Whether it is Alibaba’s integration and JD’s in-depth development; Alibaba’s form and JD’s story; Alibaba’s style and JD’s heartfelt warmth, they are all choices under a certain formal background to better promote the Double Eleven event.

Source: Operation Second Brother