Xiaomi's marketing crisis was cleverly resolved by Alibaba

With the full explosion of social traffic in 2016, the way of accessing the Internet in the wireless era has undergone earth-shaking changes.

In the context of consumption upgrading, a buyer's market is gradually taking shape, and the previous "explosive" marketing model is beginning to appear less effective.

The most seriously affected brand is Xiaomi, which was well-known for its "enthusiast" and "cost-effective" gimmicks and pioneered the Chinese smartphone market. While Xiaomi's mobile phones repeatedly set new industry price limits, they also created a sales miracle.

However, since last year, Xiaomi's mobile phone sales have fallen by 12% year-on-year, according to data from market research firm IDC.

Xiaomi, which originally gave up its ability to set a premium for its products, will now face a market environment of consumption upgrading and channel sinking. Perhaps Xiaomi, which is struggling on the edge of profitability, is also a reflection of the current situation of the entire e-commerce industry, which is also an online model.

The race to grab land is a thing of the past, and the development of e-commerce has reached a deadlock

The e-commerce industry has grown rapidly from being a supplement to retail channels to dominating the market today.

But at the same time, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, online retail sales in the first three quarters of last year were 3.4651 trillion yuan, with a growth rate of 26.1%. From 49.7% in 2014 to 33.3% in 2015, the growth rate of e-commerce has been "downward" in the past three years.

In fact, online marketing is suffering from the consequences of its previous land-grabbing operating model.

In the past, behind the "price war" of e-commerce, one is to burn money through financing and subsidize sales, relying on subsidies after financing to drive transaction volume and achieve the so-called high sales volume. The other is to attract customers' attention by selling goods at extremely low prices to achieve the purpose of "fishing sales".

It is conceivable that with such a speed and scale of evolution, only a handful of people will be able to truly gain substantial benefits from the entire e-commerce platform. The more serious problem is that the market bonus period of e-commerce is about to end, and online marketing is about to reach a deadlock.

Fortunately, as the presentation and dissemination of consumer information usher in new changes, the "new retail" ecosystem that focuses on vertical segmentation based on content may lead e-commerce to break through.

Business transformation with accumulated experience and vertical segmentation to create a new e-commerce model

The larger and more mature the business model, the greater the resistance it will face when facing transformation. Just as Xiaomi has never been able to directly develop an offline model, e-commerce also needs a certain amount of original accumulation when facing business transformation.

This is the case with Alibaba. With its keen sense of smell, it discovered the current situation of the expanding gap in consumer demand in advance, and acquired applications such as Moji Weather, Meituan, Didi Dache, AutoNavi Map, Damai.com, etc. in advance. Together with its own content platform, a mature industrial chain that had been painstakingly laid out for many years suddenly emerged, realizing diversified content formats and precise distribution capabilities, and also becoming an important foundation for "new retail".

It was under such circumstances that Alibaba completed its business transformation without difficulty and once again redefined the e-commerce model.

Behind this smooth transformation lies Alibaba's own unique wisdom. On the one hand, in order to cater to the new trend of contentization and fragmentation, Alibaba chose to integrate e-commerce content with general shopping guides, upgrading from vertical industry media to e-commerce cooperation for the entire Internet system traffic. By increasing coverage, it not only expanded the user base, but also refined distribution helped to cultivate a loyal customer base.

On the other hand, Alibaba has organically linked the entire e-commerce environment through the implantation of e-commerce marketing scenarios, forming an inseparable mature industrial chain. At the same time, it will also cultivate an ecosystem suitable for the development of "new retail", and ultimately make up for the adverse effects brought about by the past "land grabbing" model.

Perhaps now is the time for Internet retail thinking to change.

National Media Marketing Summit: Alibaba Mama invests 10 billion to build content alliance

On March 27, Alimama, the advertising platform of Alibaba Group, held its second Media Alliance Summit in Beijing. At the summit, Zhu Shunyan, president of Alimama Business Unit, announced the launch of the 2.0 version of the vertical shopping guide media "Gravity" plan.

It is reported that in 2017, Alimama upgraded its cooperation in data, products and traffic to pan-content cooperation by creating a "content alliance", expanding from vertical media to e-commerce scenario cooperation with full-domain traffic, promoting cooperation with content producers and various media, and transforming more content production into business opportunities.

Facing consumption upgrades, Zhu Shunyan said, "According to the data in 2016, Taobao has completely gone wireless. This is even more extreme in Southeast Asia, where there is no PC terminal. Therefore, both mature and emerging markets must focus on wireless. Last year, there were three obvious trends in wireless media: first, the machine algorithm continued to improve; second, the performance scenarios continued to enrich; and third, content consumption flourished. Based on this, Alimama upgraded the "Universal Gravitation" plan."

Who will be the second growth point of the e-commerce industry?

Unlike the traditional offline sales model, e-commerce is still in the "viral marketing" model in the eyes of ordinary consumers, and they are unable to perceive the overall changes in the e-commerce industry.

With the rapid rise of the "Internet celebrity economy", content production and vertical segmentation will surely become the key to the e-commerce industry's renewed popularity, and this has become the focus of attention for workers in the e-commerce industry. However, in the context of consumption upgrades, who can enjoy the dividends brought by the secondary growth of the e-commerce industry? This has become a question that industry workers have invested more thought and effort in on the basis of achieving "one thousand faces for one thousand people".

Compared with the traditional sales model, the development of e-commerce can only be regarded as a recent rise, but at the same time, China's exploration of online sales models has far exceeded the traditional offline model. It is through this latecomer effect that the change in consumers' views on e-commerce can be reversed. For consumers, the announcement of "Gravity 2.0" is destined to popularize sales scenarios in all aspects of life. At this point, consumers will also usher in a more convenient consumption environment.

Next, the challenge for Chinese e-commerce practitioners will no longer be to control product prices, but to fully understand the concept of "one thousand faces for one thousand people", as well as to have a deep understanding of market conditions and be able to adjust flexibly. In this business transformation, a series of outstanding practitioners are bound to emerge to share the huge resource dividends brought about by the business transformation.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.