WeChat is a communication tool for micro-businesses, not a marketing tool

The popularity of WeChat has also gradually brought the term "WeChat business" into everyone's vision. It is convenient to open a store on the WeChat platform, and there is no need to pay a deposit. Everyone can open a store at a very low cost. Therefore, many people also hope to do business on WeChat, and WeChat business has become popular for a while. But how to do WeChat business well? Is it just to post links to stores and products in the circle of friends and friend groups, and do advertising and promotion? It seems that WeChat business that does this is very bad. With so many confusions, I interviewed a WeChat business in Ningbo, Zhejiang, who does facial mask business. This post-90s student Pan told me how he achieved a monthly sales of 1 million. Perhaps his experience will be a good inspiration for friends who do WeChat business.

I came into contact with WeChat business while playing in college

I started trying WeChat right after it came out. I was young and liked fashionable things. There weren’t many WeChat public accounts at the time, so I created one myself. Then, in order to gain followers, I sponsored the school’s literary evening, put my WeChat public account QR code on the big screen, and gave away apples (edible apples, not iPhones) if you followed the WeChat public account! At that time, there were 10,000 people in a university, and I sponsored all the schools in the entire university campus, accumulating a total of more than 70,000 fans. Through these fans, I started selling fruits to fans, and started a fruit business, earning money every month. This was also the beginning of my micro-business. After graduation, in 2012, I sold this WeChat public account with 70,000 followers for 50,000 yuan.

After being fired, he started a facial mask business in a KTV

After graduation, my family asked me to do something stable and let me work in a big company, but I couldn't get up in the morning, and then I was fired by the company without making any money. Because I was very depressed, I took the 50,000 yuan I earned from selling my public account and went to bars and KTVs to find girls to sing and drink with me to kill time. By chance, I met a KTV mommy. She said that how could the girls do business if they didn't take care of themselves? Which customer would want such bad skin? When I heard this, I knew that there was a business opportunity. So I planned to make skin care products. I often went to bars and KTVs. The girls and mommy had a lot of resources, so I started to give facial masks to the girls and mommy. Unknowingly, I gave away nearly 30,000 yuan worth of facial masks with my 50,000 yuan.

At first, I thought that giving away masks like this would not have much effect. But the effect came out in the second month. Many girls started to ask me for facial masks. They kept adding me on WeChat, so I started selling facial masks to them. In the second month, I sold more than 50,000 facial masks without posting advertisements on WeChat Moments like those WeChat merchants, and they were only bought by the girls. WeChat business is a mutually beneficial platform. I gradually turned the girls into my downstream customers and started to act as my agents. Since the KTV girls in the city were using my facial masks, my influence was already quite large. At this time, the boss of KTV, the leader of KTV, contacted me and planned to cooperate with me. He provided me with a venue and did WeChat business with me.

So I launched a series of package sales plans at that time. If you buy my facial mask for 5,000 yuan, you will get a 6-hour KTV box, a box of beer, and a fruit plate and snacks. Because it is the leader of KTV, it has a great influence. My products are displayed in their halls, which gives my products credibility and greatly increases sales.

Beauty salons "undercover" to do sales and expand higher-end customer resources

Later I thought, since the entertainment industry has such strong spending power, then the white-collar workers and the boss’s wife should have stronger spending power. So I chose to find a stable job! I went to a plastic surgery hospital as a sales assistant. In fact, I knew that my purpose was not for the 2,500 yuan salary per month, but to meet some people related to beauty. Because only women with money and free time will go to beauty salons. In 3 months, I went to more than 100 beauty salons in the city.

The habit of giving masks away when buying masks in KTV has not changed. I give them to the boss lady of the beauty salon, rich women and beautiful women. As a result, there are many repeat customers, and the boss lady of the beauty salon also has her own product agent, so I help sell together, so the products gradually began to diversify. So I started looking for agents. Most of the agents I found this time were married old women, and their husbands were very rich. Their husbands had a lot of social activities and were very cunning. In this way, I brainwashed those women that if they didn't take care of themselves, their husbands would run away, so they were willing to spend money on beauty products. Their purchasing power is in the five figures at a time. How to make them become your agents? I told them that if she introduced a new customer, I would give her a box of masks, and if she introduced 10 customers, I would give her 10 boxes.

I think the reason why the agents who don't sell well is that they don't use the products themselves, so I require them to buy and use the products themselves, and then tell the customers about their experience. In this way, a group of unqualified agents were screened out, but the sales volume rose sharply. I don't manage the agents very much. I just tell them that first, they can't sell at low prices, and second, I put my own interests down so that they can make profits. And for agents with high performance, I directly give them iPhones and publicly praise them in the agent group to give them courage and motivation. At present, each agent has a monthly sales of more than 30,000, and the total sales of 30 agents have exceeded one million.

As for how agents sell products? They actually use the same method as me, first giving products to customers for experience, and then going to beauty salons, bars, and KTVs. I have previously accumulated resources of young ladies and rich women and have given them to agents to do the work. Now I spend all my time looking for better products. I have already negotiated with a well-known Taiwanese facial mask company to become the general agent in the mainland, and am moving towards a higher sales target.

Heart of Rock Review:

After interviewing Xiao Pan, who was born in the 1990s, I felt mixed emotions. I had many feelings and inspirations. Perhaps these inspirations may also be valuable to you.

1. The post-90s generation really makes money while having fun. The post-90s generation’s thinking and behavior are indeed very different from ours. They really treat work as play and play as work, and they can no longer tell the difference. This is also worth all parents thinking about their children’s education. Perhaps the previous education method of hoping that their sons will become successful and their daughters will become phoenixes is outdated; and businesses should consider how to make this group of new consumer groups have fun. Companies should put the fun of employees first and let them work happily.

2. Willingness to give is a great wisdom. Xiao Pan has always emphasized that the premise of his business promotion is to give away gifts. For example, when he was doing fruit micro-business, he gave away apples in order to attract attention to the official account. For a student, this was undoubtedly a big "bleed", but the effort always pays off. When selling facial masks, he actually gave away 30,000 of his only 50,000 yuan. This courage is not something that ordinary entrepreneurs have.

3. Circle economy. How to locate a group of people who are interested in you, or people who have the same needs, is a question that businesses must think about. Xiao Pan found a group of women who urgently need beauty products in KTV and beauty salons, grasped their consumer psychology, and focused on providing services to people in this circle. For example, Xiaomi mobile phone is positioned as a phone for enthusiasts, which also divides the crowd and makes the needs clearer. Circle economy is the main direction of future industry segmentation and is worth studying and thinking about.

4. Experience economy. How to sell facial masks better? People who sell facial masks must experience the product first, and then tell the customers their true feelings after the experience. Only in this way can they impress people; let customers experience the product, then tell them their feelings, and improve the product. Therefore, the era of experience economy has radiated from the Internet to traditional industries.

5. The role of WeChat. Xiao Pan did not mention WeChat and micro stores too much during the interview. At the end, I asked him why he did not talk about WeChat and micro stores. He said that WeChat is just a communication tool to help me organize agent groups and communicate with customers. If I post product advertisements in Moments every day, my friends will definitely not be able to stand it. This marketing method is unscientific and unhealthy. Regarding this issue, I also interviewed a larger micro business owner "Li Aishe", who discussed with me in detail the model of everyone opening a store based on the social platform.

First, lower store opening costs, simpler management and communication methods, and more popular Internet and smart phones make it possible for everyone to open a store. At present, there are a large number of store opening tools that can be interfaced with WeChat to choose from, and they are easy to use and everyone can learn them.

Secondly, the Amway model can generate fission by using social platforms. The core of the Amway model is to develop downlines, and convenient social tools such as WeChat and QQ provide help for developing downlines, organizing and managing offline. The essence is to improve the efficiency of developing and managing downlines. The general agent builds a group of 500 people, and each of the 500 people builds a group of 500 people. In this way, fission continues and develops into a very large online sales team. They are bound together by interests, and the purpose is to make money.

Thirdly, you can sell products by simply sharing them in any place where people are, such as WeChat, Weibo, forums, Tieba, QQ groups, etc. Social e-commerce is not concentrated on WeChat, but can be sold anywhere where people are, with just a link.

A few questions to think about:

1. To be a good WeChat businessman, you need to have an excellent source of goods. The premise of obtaining a good source of goods is that you have the ability to convince companies to give you the goods as an agent, and this ability is whether the circle and community you have established have strong enough sales capabilities.

2. Everyone is a businessman. This is not the first idea of ​​community e-commerce. Taobao was also established based on this dream. It is just that social platforms have made transaction efficiency and traffic acquisition costs outstanding, and the entire transaction structure has become flatter. Therefore, the most likely threat to WeChat business is Alibaba's Taobao platform.

3. Micro-businesses are concentrated in consumer goods industries where brand recognition is not strong, such as masks, cosmetics, water cups, clothing and other products with low unit prices and no need for more services, which are exactly the hottest categories on Taobao. However, they cannot be promoted in some industries with high technology content and strong brand recognition.

4. WeChat business seems to be very beautiful, and everyone is a businessman, but in the end it will still form a pyramid structure, with the general agent at the top of the pyramid having the highest revenue, and other stores decreasing according to sales level, and the small WeChat business at the bottom of the pyramid is the most. As more and more participants participate, they will eventually become almost unprofitable and quit the game. WeChat business has not built a sufficiently flat organizational model, although the original ideal was to be completely flat.

5. WeChat business cannot become the mainstream of business, but will only become a form of transaction limited to certain categories. It is also likely to be short-lived, and its vitality remains to be seen.

As the saying goes, the simplest way is to keep things simple. Everything will return to its essence. No matter what era, the essence of business is to pursue profits. If it is not possible to achieve sufficient profits and a reasonable distribution system, it will ultimately be just an illusion.

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.