Detailed explanation of the new business model of customer acquisition in 2020: the competition for stock, closed loop of traffic...

Advertising is a barometer of economic development. Friends who are engaged in marketing and promotion know that although the advertising market has developed very rapidly in recent years, the growth rate has also shown a slowing trend. Especially in 2020, the year of the epidemic, the advertising industry was in a state of "additional difficulties", with some industry insiders even saying that "this year is the most difficult year for Chinese Internet advertising." According to TalkingData data, the proportion of advertisers who tend to increase their marketing and promotion budgets in 2020 fell by 7% year-on-year. The meaning is self-evident.

Internet advertising is mainly divided into two parts: brand advertising and performance advertising. With the development of the Internet advertising industry, advertisers' demand for performance advertising is increasing, and the requirements for performance advertising are also evolving from conventional effects to brand-effect synergy. In terms of performance advertising, the two most typical types of advertising are SEM advertising and information flow advertising . SEM advertising, also known as bidding promotion. Users actively search and have stronger intentions, while information flow ads are recommended by the platform and users browse passively, thus finding people through information. At a time when marketing promotion is constantly upgrading and innovating, companies are using performance advertising, bidding promotion + information flow promotion and integrated marketing, which is the only way for companies to break through performance and increase customer acquisition.

Whether it is bidding promotion or information flow promotion, its development in China has a long history. It has also gone through the germination period, growth period and golden period. Now it can be said to be a transition period. On the one hand, the product itself is being upgraded, and on the other hand, the market structure is also constantly changing. In 2020, will there be more new business models in performance advertising? How can we break through and innovate the “traditional” marketing method of bidding promotion? How can information flow advertising achieve brand and effect integration? Let’s take a closer look at the new business models in the Internet advertising industry in 2020.

This article is divided into 5 parts:

1. Big data precision advertising has become the mainstream, and manual adjustments have shifted to human-machine coordination

2. The competition for incremental growth turns into a competition for stock. Grab the stock or switch tracks

3. Platform traffic closed loop and company data operation closed loop

4. The breakthrough of information flow advertising lies in the crowd and creativity

5. How can enterprises achieve breakthroughs in the new marketing landscape in 2020?

1. Big data advertising makes advertising more accurate

Big data marketing is a marketing method based on large amounts of data from multiple platforms and applied to the Internet advertising industry based on big data technology. The core of big data marketing is to deliver online advertisements to the right people at the right time, through the right carrier, and in the right way. Big data marketing is a trend in the future development of the advertising industry. Today's typical information flow advertising is based on big data technology, and current bidding advertising has also shifted from "traditional" CPC advertising to intelligent delivery, namely OCPC advertising. I will not elaborate on the meaning of OCPC here. Bidding advertising ocpc first appeared in 2018, represented by Baidu. It continued to mature in 2019 and has become the mainstream of the market this year. Currently, all five search engine bidding ads have OCPC. Although the current OCPC is far from being a mature intelligent delivery product, it allows us to see: the future of optimizing complex advertising conversion effects through AI.

CPC advertising is highly controllable, but it is difficult to expand the volume and the cost fluctuates greatly, making it impossible to achieve the goal of balancing volume and cost. Placing ocpc ads allows us to control CPA costs and maintain sufficient volume. This is a very big upgrade to CPC advertising.

The working principle of search oCPC is to anchor CPA (cost per action) to adjust the bid for each click, thereby maximizing CPM (cost per thousand impressions). oCPC undertakes high-intensity algorithms that cannot be completed by humans, and captures higher quality traffic according to the established framework; humans are responsible for feeding the oCPC model with sufficient "feed" and observing "environmental changes" at any time. In other words, although ocpc is an intelligent mode, it also requires artificial "feeding". ocpc is divided into two stages. In each stage, there are things that humans should and should not do. Generally, better results can be achieved if these are mastered well.

Regarding the bidding promotion of ocpc, regardless of whether there is still a bonus at present, it has now become the mainstream of bidding advertising, and it is necessary for advertisers to join as soon as possible. This way you can find good optimization methods early, which will be of great benefit to your own results.

As mentioned earlier, oCPC advertising is adjusted by machine learning, so when it comes to data analysis, we should also follow the machine’s “thinking” to learn, which is very different from traditional CPC advertising. For traditional CPC advertising, we follow the marketing funnel model, analyzing each one from display to transaction. Including display-click-consultation-installation-sales follow-up-visit-transaction, etc. If there is a problem in any link, we should look for the cause and solution from that link. The data analysis ideas of ocpc are different. Although we also need to follow the data funnel, we should pay more attention to the ups and downs of the data. In Baidu's search bidding ocpc product, there is an ocpc diagnostic report. This diagnostic report plays a very important role in account adjustments under ocpc bidding. We can combine the diagnostic report and personal experience to adjust the account, follow the machine learning ideas, fill in the gaps and realize human-machine coordination and product-effect integration.

In 2020, more and more advertisers joined the ocpc camp. Moreover, since the beginning of this year, Baidu's OCPC threshold has continued to decline. Taking the OCPC low threshold as an example, it was previously ≥30 per week, and now it is ≥20 per week. In addition, Baidu also has zero threshold advertising and ecpc. So now we can say that more than 90% of industries can use smart bidding. No matter whether the industry traffic is large or small, there is a solution under smart bidding (ocpc, ecpc, 0 threshold).

In 2020 and beyond, SEM advertising will use big data precision advertising to transform manual adjustments into human-machine coordination.

2. Traffic enters the battle for stock, grab stock or change track

By 2020, the traffic dividend has almost been exhausted. The competition for incremental Internet growth has turned into a competition for existing Internet shares. Incremental competition is mutually beneficial, and competitors can benefit from each other; stock competition is mutually exclusive, and either you or I can’t exist among competitors. The era of bloodshed has arrived.

At this time, there are actually only two choices: either continue to stick to the old business, improve the team's operational efficiency, and fight a bloody path in the red ocean of existing stocks; or chase the trend and quickly turn to the more popular live broadcast and short video tracks.

In the Internet advertising market, whether it is search engine marketing or e-commerce advertising, there has been a situation of small volume and high cost in recent years. This is an inevitable stage in the development of things. Therefore, in advertising in 2020, our first priority is to increase conversions. Do your best to convert every incoming traffic.

Improving conversion rate involves many aspects, the first of which is to achieve refined management of advertising. It is divided into the refinement of channels, the refinement of accounts, and the refinement of landing pages and conversion tools. In the past, when there was a traffic bonus, users might click in to consult or place an order, but now it is different. The audience has a stronger ability to recognize advertisements. As industry practitioners, we need to work hard on the carrier (creativity, pages, conversion tools, etc.) to make the advertisements appear more native and attract more inquiries.

In 2020, short videos are still very popular and live streaming with goods is still in vogue. Live streaming sales, in particular, has attracted many giants to invest in it. Whether it is a giant in the short video field or a leader in the traditional industry, they all come in to get a piece of the pie. Whether it is entertainment stars, internet celebrities, or local government officials, they are all promoting products in this way to achieve the goal of bringing sales. ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, and even Baidu, which has always been "uninterested" in live streaming, are actively returning to the live streaming track. In the market that Internet giants are competing for, as long as you can find the "way", you can be the first to try it out. Live streaming sales will be the major direction for e-commerce platforms to continue to monetize in the future.

In the field of short videos, although Douyin and Kuaishou are still growing wildly, there are still a large number of followers advancing rapidly. Among them, Tencent’s video account is a typical example. Relying on the WeChat ecosystem, Video Account has been attracting public attention since its appearance. With the continuous improvement of content ecology, the traffic and user time are increasing day by day, and it is expected to become the third pole in the short video field. In addition, long video platforms are also developing short videos. These include iQiyi, Youku, and Tencent Video, as well as Bilibili, which exploded the video circle with "The New Wave" in the first half of this year. These platforms have all started to develop short videos, which shows that short videos will remain the mainstream of the video ecology at present and in the future.

New incremental platforms or products are where there are still traffic dividends. For those working in the advertising industry, these traffic dividends must not be lost if they want to deepen their marketing and achieve breakthroughs in performance. Whether it is short videos or live streaming with goods, they are all hot spots, and hot spots also mean huge potential business opportunities and marketing value. This is an opportunity that marketers cannot miss.

Whether it is to grab existing shares or change tracks, on the one hand, we must improve the combat effectiveness of our team, and on the other hand, we must actively accept new things, learn new things, and use new methods to play with new things. In this way, we can achieve a dual improvement in corporate benefits and personal abilities.

3. Platform traffic closed loop and company data operation closed loop

The advent of the era of traffic inventory has led all Internet companies that mainly rely on advertising to start building a closed-loop traffic system. Among them, whether it is Baidu, Tencent, or the popular ByteDance, they are constantly making plans and improving their traffic closed loop. In the layout of the product traffic closed loop, there are mainly three systems: one is the website building tool, such as Baidu Jimuyu and Toutiao Orange website building; the second is the CRM system, such as Aifanfan and Feiyu; the third is the data marketing platform, such as Baidu's Stargazing Plate.

The website building tool realizes website hosting, the CRM system is used for consulting and customer management, and the data marketing platform realizes crowd analysis. These three basic tools connect the three links of the front-end, mid-end and back-end. The entire marketing process is realized, thus forming a closed-loop traffic link. To create a closed-loop traffic flow, whether for active product optimization or passive change, it can be said that the commercial advertising products of current mainstream channels have now almost perfected every link in the marketing process. A single channel product can solve multiple needs.

The same is true for the traffic loop of other platforms. I won’t go into details here. The platform creates a closed traffic loop, which facilitates the integration of the entire link for promotion. Enterprises can also use this to improve their own data operations.

In traditional marketing in the past, our idea was generally to build a website - purchase consulting tools - find someone to develop a CRM system or purchase a third-party CRM system. There are many matters to be dealt with, involving a large division of labor, and the efficiency of tracking work results is low. Now we can use the platform’s full-chain products to connect the front, middle and back ends of the work, greatly improving work efficiency. Especially the CRM link in the backend, which helps us achieve very scientific management. It has comprehensive functions, a perfect allocation mechanism, and can clearly show the effectiveness and ineffectiveness. It can not only realize compensation, but also provide a reference for front-end promotion. This is not an advertisement for the product, but some upgraded products can indeed facilitate telemarketing. So you can pay attention to it.

For enterprises, it is necessary for us to do a good job in the company's data operations. Customer information entry, allocation, follow-up, secondary follow-up, feedback on completed and uncompleted transactions, etc. The more refined these details are, the higher the utilization rate of leads will be and the better the conversion effect will be. Connecting the promotion end with the sales end can not only facilitate communication, but also improve the effectiveness of the promotion end.

To achieve a breakthrough in performance, we must make the "CRM" link of the last mile more refined. This is not only the business of the sales department, but also the business of the promotion department, and it is also an important task for the entire company. By doing data operations better and designing them more standardized, customer conversion in 2020 and beyond will be easier and more convenient.

4. The breakthrough of information flow advertising lies in the crowd and creativity

Information flow is the mainstream performance advertising in the current market, and its share has continued to rise in recent years, especially the short video information flow represented by Douyin, which has seen a significant growth rate. With the rapid development of the information flow market in recent years, the competition in the current information flow advertising market has become increasingly fierce. In the first few years of the development of information flow, the volume was large, the cost was low, and the quality was relatively high. However, since 2019, information flow advertising has also encountered a "bottleneck period". Although the volume is more than that of bidding promotion, it is far less than in previous years, and problems such as rising costs and difficulty in increasing volume have also begun to emerge.

Judging from the current information flow market, it has passed a period of wild growth and is entering a mature stage. Currently, mainstream information flow platforms are constantly upgrading their products and effects. Information flow optimizers on the front line of advertising are the most sensitive to platform upgrades. Whether it is a large platform such as Toutiao, Baidu, Tencent Advertising, or a slightly smaller information flow platform such as UC Information Flow, 360 Information Flow, etc., there have been many small upgrades since this year.

At present, the amount of traffic in the information flow market is still large, but the growth rate is relatively slow. Since information flow advertising is powered by algorithm technology, its delivery is more intelligent and there is no need for too much manual operation, so more can be left to machine algorithms. Judging from the overall effect, the cost performance is high. Currently, companies in the information flow market have also encountered many problems in advertising, such as homogeneity, slow growth, ads that consume too much material, many invalid leads, declining volume, rising costs, etc. To solve the above problems, it is mainly necessary to optimize the crowd and creativity (including pages).

The principle of information flow is to enable information to find people, so the link with people is the core. If you find the right audience, the conversion effect will be good. If you find the wrong audience, it may be a waste of time and effort. Based on the information flow algorithm, we can find people by combining three aspects:

First of all, from the perspective of account data, whether it is search or information flow, data analysis is the core work to improve conversion. By analyzing the background data, we can "borrow a boat to go to sea" and "build a boat to go to sea". The so-called borrowing a boat to go to sea means using the background data to analyze and then make some new optimization adjustments to the advertisements placed in the account; the so-called building a ship to go to sea means that after we have placed it for a period of time, we will organize some good methods and audience packages ourselves and apply them to new channels or accounts.

The second is to comply with the machine algorithm, “feed” the algorithm, and coordinate man and machine well. Like the ocpc of search promotion, the delivery of information flow advertising mainly relies on algorithms. Advertising optimizers must understand the principles of the algorithms and adapt to them according to the logic of the machine. They should do things manually where necessary and not intervene where necessary. In this way, the operation of the machine will not be constrained or deviate. What the optimizer needs to do is to observe the machine's operating logic diligently and coordinate man and machine well.

Finally, we use sales data feedback to find the target audience. The biggest problem with information flow customer resources is effectiveness. When the efficiency is low, our main method is to optimize the population based on feedback from the sales side. For people with good clues, they can summarize their experience by searching for its advertisements and targeting it, and use it as a basis for the next time. For people with poor leads, in addition to making an exclusion package, they also need to provide feedback to the platform in the background to achieve interactive lead effectiveness. For example, for Toutiao Feiyu, we can feedback invalid data to the platform, and the platform will adjust its traffic distribution accordingly. This is also an effective way to find the right audience.

Creativity is a very important part of information flow advertising. The attractiveness of the creative materials represents the click-through rate and eCPM value. Nowadays, many information flow platforms are very demanding on materials, so it is very necessary for advertisers to focus their core work on creative materials. Many businesses now have homogenized landing pages, but materials are a form of creativity, and each company has its own ideas. There are many forms of creative materials, such as large pictures, three pictures, multiple pictures, small pictures, text links, dynamic pictures, short videos, etc. Among these materials, short video material is the most important one. In the research of creative materials, short videos are the main direction.

In video marketing, vertical video is the second half of short video. In short video production, it is generally divided into front-end planning, mid-end production, and back-end editing. If the company has such specialized functional positions, optimizers need to communicate more with short video staff. If there is no such functional department, optimizers need to do more research and study on their own to improve their comprehensive abilities. In future advertising competition, creativity will be the main area of ​​competition. There are many cases where the small team defeated the big team because of good creativity, so the final effect was achieved.

There are many learning platforms for short video creativity, such as Toutiao’s Juleliang University, Baidu’s Marketing University, and Tencent’s Marketing Academy, all of which have a large number of courses. As an industry optimizer, learning how to come up with truly good ideas can be very useful in any aspect of marketing.

Overall, the market has changed dramatically in the past one or two years. From manual to intelligent advertising; from traffic growth to stock; from policy tightening to market structure finalization; from resource integration of various platforms to diversified and refined advertising; from video information flow to short video sales... These changes just prove the saying that the only constant is change itself...

5. How can enterprises achieve breakthroughs in the new marketing landscape in 2020?

In 2020, SEM upgraded and transformed, information flow increased steadily, short videos were in the ascendant, and live streaming was in full swing. ByteDance laid out its e-commerce track, JD.com and Pinduoduo's market share increased, Baidu returned to live streaming and local life, Tencent further increased its content ecology, and Alibaba delved deeply into search and entertainment... Under the new situation, how should enterprises break through?

The first is to do a good job in integrated marketing.

Marketing is divided into many fields. Under the new situation, doing a good job of integrated marketing is the only way to deal with the difficulty and high cost of acquiring customers. Integrated marketing covers many categories, such as: WeChat personal account marketing, SEM, Tmall, JD.com, WeChat public account marketing, Weibo marketing, Tencent performance advertising, information flow, short video, corporate WeChat account, community marketing, WeChat Moments advertising, SNS marketing, SEO, news sources, self-media, other channels, etc.

These marketing methods can be mainly summarized into two types: one is for effect conversion, and the other is for brand exposure. The integration of brand and effect is the long-term trend in the future. Therefore, to do integrated marketing well, we must organically combine the above channels, make them more refined and detailed, and give full play to the power of each channel.

Taking SEM channels as an example, Baidu + 360 + Sogou + Shenma + Toutiao search focus on customer acquisition; news sources + SEO + self-media + SNS focus on brand exposure and assist SEM; information flow channels, Baidu information flow + Toutiao information flow + Tencent information flow + other information flow, focus on forms + consulting customers to increase customer acquisition; brand advertising + contract advertising, do brand building and communication, enhance brand awareness and reputation; video marketing, Douyin + Kuaishou + Bilibili, etc., enhance brand interactivity and promote the brand to more people.

Through integrated marketing, we will layout key areas, deeply cultivate each channel, improve the corporate team and enhance execution. As long as you persevere, you will eventually achieve the effect of brand and effect integration.

The second is to focus on customer acquisition and conversion rate.

There are three main aspects to improve conversion rate: the first is the conversion rate of online customer service, the second is the conversion rate of the page, and the third is the conversion rate of the sales end. Improving the online conversion rate mainly depends on the call-calling skills, improving the sales conversion rate mainly depends on the sales staff and the company's strength, and improving the page conversion rate mainly depends on the advertising staff.

Advertising in 2020, whether it is search terms for search promotion or big data population portraits in information flow, they all carry a variety of needs, and a single page certainly cannot fully carry them. Therefore, we need to use self-built websites and platform-built tools to classify and summarize according to current traffic demands, create multiple pages to meet different demands, and improve conversion rates. In terms of page planning, in addition to having more pages, you also need to combine visitor needs and write texts and pictures that address pain points. The idea of ​​making a page and the planning of the page are very important points. It should be considered repeatedly.

The third is to play on new tracks.

There are many new tracks. Among the new changes this year, live streaming with goods is a new track. Enterprises with the conditions can actively promote live streaming sales first. Companies that do not have the conditions can first market their products and services through live broadcasts or short videos. The form of marketing has changed from websites in the past to self-media and now to short videos. Therefore, new tracks are indispensable. Websites and self-media can convert traffic, and short videos are easier to convert.

The team configuration of short videos is generally divided into three parts: front-end planning, mid-end shooting, and post-editing and production. Among these, the three rings are very important. For a mature team, the configuration is more numerous and detailed. As new tracks in 2020, short video marketing and live streaming are both very good outlets that are worth exploring in depth by companies. Where traffic is growing the most, first come first served will reap the benefits.

Fourth, enhance departmental collaboration capabilities and increase overall combat effectiveness.

The primary goal of marketing is the marketing of the department to which it belongs, but the ultimate goal of marketing is to enable the entire company to become a large marketing team, regardless of departments or positions. Such a marketing team has strong combat effectiveness. All sales companies are basically divided into three parts: the front-end promotion, the mid-end sales, and the back-end service. General marketing mainly focuses on the front end, but this is not enough. Only when the mid-end and back-end are consistent with the front end can marketing be considered a closed loop. At the same time, connecting the three ends will enhance the department's collaboration capabilities and increase overall combat effectiveness.

For advertisers, it is better to enter new channels early rather than late. Dividends cannot exist forever, and the market always belongs to those who try it first. For advertising in 2020 and beyond, only by understanding the market, following market changes, actively embracing market changes, and exploring responses can we make steady progress. Nothing remains unchanged, so the traffic market is changing, and the thinking of every promotion practitioner must also change.

Author: Mubibai

Source: Mubibai