In the past three or four years, the growth rate of the Internet has slowed down significantly and has entered the era of inventory. Platforms began to take control of traffic, and purchasing traffic from platforms became a trend, and the cost of traffic became increasingly high. Therefore, the term "private domain traffic" has become extremely popular in the past two years, and all walks of life want to build channels that can reach users for free and independently. When it comes to private domain traffic, we cannot bypass the concept of community. Everyone wants to build their own community and make money from the community. But how many people have ever thought about what a community is? Why is your community failing to generate conversions?

As a senior duck neck lover, I have joined two communities, one is the community of the Juewei Duck Neck store in a business district about 500 meters away from my home, and the other is the community of the Chunjiang Slow Duck store in front of the fresh food supermarket downstairs from my home. From these two communities with very simple businesses, I found the answers to the above questions and discovered the secret of community operations .

Juewei Duck Neck and Chunjiang Slow Duck near my house

First, let’s give a background introduction to the brands and products of these two communities.

Juewei Duck Neck

One of the two giants of duck products in China, it has expanded from duck necks to "everything related to duck", even to edamame, bamboo shoots, shrimp balls, etc. There are a total of twenty to thirty kinds of products in the store, with flavors including spicy, sweet and spicy, five-spice, etc., and the variety is very rich. According to Meituan, the average cost per person is around 45 yuan.

Spring River Slow Duck

A not-so-famous brand born in Xuzhou. Perhaps because the brand is too small, even the per capita number cannot be found on Meituan. In addition to the common duck products, there is also a very distinctive product: the signature pancake. (Highlight the key points, which will be tested next)

Compared with Juewei Duck Neck stores, Chunjiang Slow Duck stores are at a disadvantage in terms of brand power, product variety and store traffic. However, Chunjiang Slow Duck’s community operation is very successful, far surpassing Juewei Duck Neck. Next, I would like to share my observations on these two communities.

1. New Customer Acquisition Stage

New customer acquisition method: single touch vs. three touches

Juewei Duck Neck’s method of attracting new customers is very simple. A QR code of the corporate WeChat group is posted on the store glass, and consumers can scan the code to join the group. The Chunjiang Slow Duck store requires adding a personal WeChat account "Slow Little Duck" and then being pulled into the group.

Such a small difference, although it seems that you have joined the group, the results will be very different:

Juewei Duck Neck has only one point of contact with consumers. If consumers quit the group, they can never get back.

Chunjiang Slow Duck has three touchpoints with consumers: WeChat groups, personal accounts, and personal account circles of friends. The information coverage has expanded three times. Even if consumers have not joined the group or have left the group, they can still receive information through Moments and personal accounts.

Group positioning: automatic reply & group announcement

After joining the group, there was no reply from the Juewei Duck Neck group, and the group announcement was also blank. The group name was a very ordinary "Juewei Duck Neck XXXX Store VIP Group". At this point, consumers did not know what joining the group was for and what value they could get.

The name of the Chunjiang Manduck group is "Chunjiang Manduck XXXX Community Daily Red Packet Group". After joining the group, there will be an introduction to the group (although it is manual), and the group announcement also contains clear store addresses, phone numbers, group rules, etc. Let consumers know the value of this group as soon as they join it - they can grab red envelopes every day, and it is also a neighborhood mutual aid group.

Screenshots of group name, group replies, and group announcements

Clear and concise group names, humorous automatic replies and group announcements can make consumers understand the value of the group to themselves very directly and bring them closer. Although it is a small detail, it is clear at a glance which user experience is stronger.

2. Activation + Active Phase

The emotionless advertising machine VS the neighbor girl downstairs

As can be seen from the picture above, in the Juewei Duck Neck group, only the group owner and staff are talking. They send out chicken soup every morning, occasionally post discount content and product photos from Meituan, and occasionally remind users not to send Pinduoduo bargaining links. It is very similar to the current situation of most of my friends’ social groups: low activity, used only for posting advertisements, and then gradually becoming a dead group.

Daily life of Juewei Duck Neck Group

The group of Chunjiang Slow Ducks produces hundreds of pieces of content every day. Sometimes I wonder, what the hell, where does a group selling duck necks come from to have so many topics to talk about? After some observation, I found that there are two main factors for the activity of this community:

1. Close relationship with neighbors, chatting about daily life together

Since the store is located at the entrance of a fresh food supermarket in our community, the customers who come to consume are all from the community and surrounding areas, so many people in the group know each other. Even if they don’t know each other, there is a natural sense of intimacy because they live in the same community. Because we live in the same environment, there are many things to talk about and share: the chicken soup I made today is very delicious, whether anyone wants to go fishing together tomorrow, the duck head I bought from the boss today is very spicy, etc. Coupled with the leadership of the lovely store owner, the atmosphere in the whole group is very relaxed and active.

Therefore, this is not only a community for selling duck products, but also a platform for neighborhood communication. This is not only a collection of people, but also a collection of neighborhood relationships .

The daily life of the slow ducks on the spring river

2. Send red envelopes through gamification to guide customers to experience store products

May I ask, when is a community most active? When people are grabbing red envelopes.

Sending red envelopes is a tried and tested method to stimulate activity. However, don’t send out red envelopes simply to promote activity, as this is a waste of money and unsustainable. The red envelope distribution method of Chunjiang Slow Duck Group is worth learning from:

A. Fixed time and fixed point

Make sending red envelopes a fixed daily community activity, and send out red envelopes at 8 o'clock every night. Establish a close connection between the time point of 8 o'clock in the evening and the action of grabbing red envelopes in the group, so that users in the group can form a habit. When it comes to 8 o'clock, they will think of the group and naturally think of Chunjiang Slow Duck's products. In fact, Starbucks used this method eight years ago. At that time, Starbucks developed an APP called early bird. When the alarm rings at the set wake-up time, the user only needs to click the wake-up button as prompted to get a star. If you can walk into any Starbucks store within an hour, you can buy a cup of discounted coffee... Don't underestimate this action, it can make you associated with Starbucks from the moment you open your eyes, and make users form the mindset of "going to Starbucks for breakfast."

B. Use red envelopes as bait to experience the product

Every night, the owner's sister would give out 3-5 red envelopes, each representing a product: a duck head, a duck foot, five yuan worth of diced chicken, and so on. The users who grab the largest and smallest red envelope amounts can go to the store to collect the corresponding products within three days by taking a screenshot.

Each red envelope costs only a dime or even a few cents, so the cost is very low. However, it can liven up the atmosphere in the group and satisfy users' desire for excitement and fun. Most importantly, it can guide users to the store to experience the corresponding products.

Firstly, it allows users who have never eaten it to have a taste, and secondly, since people are already here, it would be embarrassing to only take away a duck foot. It can also boost the sales of other products. The key is that after a few interactions, the relationship becomes closer.

This method of low-cost active users, guiding users to experience core products, and narrowing the distance between the company and users , although simple, can really be said to be brilliant.

Users wait for the red envelopes every day, but they are snatched away in 5 seconds

Conversion stage: How to achieve high frequency + rigid demand

In fact, the above red envelope sending step already involves conversion, but I don’t think this is the key to conversion. Here you can first think about what kind of product is suitable for conversion-based communities?

OK, my answer is - high-frequency, low-priced, and urgently needed products must be one of the most suitable types for building communities .

High frequency means a very high repurchase rate; low price means a very low decision-making cost; rigid demand means that the intensity of demand will not change no matter how external conditions change. Do the duck products sold by Juewei Duck Neck and Chunjiang Slow Duck meet the above three factors?

Don’t rush to answer, let me ask another question - who are the competitors of these two brands?

You might answer, Zhou Hei Ya? Huang Shang Huang? Jiujiu duck? No, their competitors are all products that can fill consumers' stomachs.

In 2016, Luo Zhenyu proposed a concept in his speech at the Shenzhen stop of "Potential Energy Creation": national total time . This concept holds that time is an absolutely rigidly constrained resource. In the second half of the Internet, giants are fighting for users' time. Therefore, the competitor of Duoduo APP is not Himalaya, not Chaos University, but Honor of Kings.

Similarly, what our two research subjects are competing for is "consumer stomach capacity" . Their competing products should be spicy strips, potato chips, grilled skewers, fried chicken, Fuqi Feipian, and hot chestnuts. But, could it be rice or noodles? You may think it is not, because most people think that duck is a snack, a braised dish to be eaten with rice or a dish to go with wine. Therefore, duck products cannot replace staple foods and are not a necessity; there is too much room for snack choices, and duck products can be eaten or not, so they are not necessarily a high-frequency consumption.

So, how can we make duck products a necessity and a high frequency product? I found the answer from Chunjiang Manduck’s community operations.

As mentioned above, one of Chun Jiang Slow Duck’s specialty products is its signature pancake, which is a kind of food that is made by wrapping braised vegetarian dishes and duck meat in a multi-grain pancake skin and then frying it in a pan until both sides are golden and crispy. Although it looks ordinary, it is precisely because of this pancake that Chunjiang Slow Duck has created a product that can be used as a staple food, turning it from a non-essential need into an essential need .

As snacks, duck products can be consumed at a high or low frequency, and it all depends on the consumer’s choice. How to influence consumers' choices and make them give up other snacks and choose your products? Here, the store owner cleverly chose the time to send food photos at 11 o'clock in the morning and 5 or 6 o'clock in the afternoon, solving the difficult problems of "what to eat at noon" and "what to eat at night" for users. When users make random choices, the photos appear in front of them, increasing the probability of being selected . When you get home from get off work, it would be wonderful to have a pancake and two duck heads to end a hard and tiring day.

Unremarkable cross-category products

A simple product plus a simple action can solve the problem of high frequency + urgent needs. As to whether it is a low price or not, that depends on personal opinion.

Conclusion

At this point, you may find that there is nothing profound or clever about Chunjiang Manduck’s community operation. The store owner doesn’t know what community operation is, and has never learned the operation methodology. Just with a passionate heart, he got along well with his neighbors, provided them with the best products and services, won their trust, and gave the originally cold exchange of commercial value a human touch.

In fact, I think that community operation itself is not complicated. The key lies in how to combine one's own business to provide value to users, which can be tangible physical value or intangible emotional value.

By using social networks, you can reach users for free, but you cannot disturb them for free. The value we provide to users forms personal endorsement, which is equivalent to the emotional account of this community. This account is the stock of users' satisfaction and trust in us . Every time value is created, money is deposited into this account; every conversion action is a withdrawal of money from the account. Therefore, maintaining a balance in the emotional account and ensuring there is sufficient balance in the account is the most basic operational logic for all communities and even private domain traffic.

So, what is a community and how can we run a community well? From the Chunjiang Slow Duck community, I got the answer:

Treating users as friends and continuously creating positive feedback for them is the only key to community operation.

Author: Nicole

Source: Nicole