Looking back at the consumer market in 2023, there are many new consumption opportunities and changes. Whether it is the co-branding of Luckin Moutai, or the "dopamine" color that has become popular throughout the season, or the market value of Pinduoduo surpassing Alibaba, even if the economy has cyclical fluctuations, there are still winners in the consumer industry.
In the past year, some companies that have made full use of digital technology have seized the opportunity to take the lead based on the practice of content innovation, experience upgrading, scene transaction and value chain empowerment.
Marketing Innovation: Product as Content
Anita Elberse, a professor at Harvard Business School, once asserted that in the case of uneven market share, the market will be dominated by blockbuster models. "The manufacturing point of the explosion is becoming more and more dependent on amateurs, and the detonation cycle is getting shorter and shorter. At the "Practical Entrepreneur Summit - Consumption Session" held on December 19, 2023, economist Xiang Shuai shared her observations on this year's explosive manufacturing.
The rapid development of technology is making the content market more prosperous than ever, and the influence is no longer spreading from the top down, but spreading in parallel in a network structure. At the level of communication, the authoritative influence of the tower-like society is being distributed to KOCs of all sizes.
Today's consumers are more and more individual, everyone's high point is very different, and the traditional marketing methods of going on TV, inviting celebrities, and advertising are slow and monotonous, and it is urgent to change marketing ideas. MINISO judges that content will become an important means for enterprises to create unique and differentiated positioning, and every consumer company should be a content company in the future, or "product is content".
When a product has content attributes, it can bring its own communication topic, and a good-looking, fun product will trigger spontaneous communication by fans. In one year, Dundun chicken has accumulated 150,000 fans on Douyin, Xiaohongshu and **, generating more than 3 million interactions, and has become an Internet celebrity content product detonated by the creative enthusiasm of fans.
MINISO found that the birth of explosive products is inseparable from the detonation of content marketing. Therefore, the key is to do a good job in the management of "content marketing" and find KOCs that can continue to co-create high-quality content for good products. Among them, considering the amateur nature of KOC, the quantity, quality, and sustainability of the content are the three main difficulties. MINISO found that KOC private domain operation through WeCom can easily solve the above problems: by providing a perfect growth system and gradually motivating, amateurs can transform into professional content creators;Adopting the model of co-creation by the brand, the professional content staff of MINISO will provide KOC with popular topics to help KOC find the traffic password, which effectively improves the quality of the contentAllowing KOC to communicate and discuss with each other in the enterprise WeChat group can stimulate the creative enthusiasm of folk masters, so as to achieve continuous content output.
When MINISO pulls the data of these explosive products internally, it can be seen that the sales curve of products is often positively correlated with the rhythm of content marketing, especially some super popular content with millions of interactions and tens of millions of **, which can directly pull the sales of single products to a stage peak. It can be seen that the content marketing of private domain KOC based on WeCom can really bring intuitive GMV growth to brands.
Service upgrade: from functional value to experience value
All businesses want to provide their customers with a richer and more comfortable experience, which is one of the most effective ways to create and maintain a competitive advantage. From the perspective of market demand, consumers' demand for the functionality of specific products continues to weaken, and they are turning to focus on emotional value. The formation of the popular style is somewhat because it hits the specific emotional needs of the crowd in a specific time and space, and has a link and resonance with consumers.
At Decathlon, it's not just the quality and low price that attracts Chinese consumers. Faced with the long-standing problem of sports equipment eating dust at home, how did Decathlon achieve 75% of its turnover contributed by members, of which the repurchase rate of regular customers reached 60%?The secret is to extend the shopping experience, ignite the enthusiasm of customers after leaving the store, and let the public truly enjoy the joy of sports.
The online private domain operation has helped Decathlon make up for the shortcomings of the check-out experience, which is not a welfare group in a broad sense. In order to avoid resistance caused by the strong sales orientation of attracting members and promoting discounts, Decathlon emphasizes that interest is used to enhance the stickiness of the private domain. In Decathlon's corporate WeChat, there are more than 80 kinds of sports interest communities, customers join because of interest, and the content published is also corresponding to his interests, for customers, there is no invalid information to disturb, it is really helpful.
To turn interest into action, shouting in the group is not enough, Decathlon's store employees turned into "sports ambassadors" and began to organize regular activities in the corporate WeChat group.
As the ambassador of the movement, the clerk will organize group activities regularly, and will also share the wonderful moments recorded by taking photos to the group. With the help of digital tools, Decathlon has been able to deliver these experiences on a large scale, with more than 50,000 events and more than 400,000 participants in 2023 alone.
A good experience can also further enhance the added value of the product.
Bairuiyuan is already the head brand of the national wolfberry industry, but when it was founded 20 years ago, the industry lacked planting standards, and the quality of wolfberries on the market was uneven. Under the search logic, the homogenization of goods is serious, and it is difficult for customers to distinguish what is a good product, so they can only focus on it.
In order to get out of the dilemma that good products can't sell well, Bairuiyuan has set its sights on private domain operations. Decathlon is to make the store staff become the sports ambassador of the community, and Bairuiyuan wolfberry is to let the store's shopping guide become the customer's health consultant, after the customer buys the product, Bairuiyuan will guide the customer to add the enterprise WeChat, and provide customers with free health consulting services in the private domain.
The reason why we want to do private domain is because although the quality of the products of Braiyuan is good, but just by advertising, users will be Xi and brush away when they see the advertisement, and they cannot further understand the product in the end, only by establishing in-depth communication with customers, they may understand that the product is good in the end. Through the circle of friends of enterprise WeChat, Bairuiyuan shows the planting process and processing process of organic wolfberry, and customers are naturally willing to pay for good quality after understanding the good quality of the product.
However, building customer trust in quality is only the first step, customers often forget to eat after buying wolfberry, if not eaten on time and in quantity, the effect of health preservation will be greatly reduced, therefore, for Bairuiyuan, we must find a way to cultivate customers' long-term eating Xi habits. With the help of WeChat's "Subscription Reminder" function, the health consultant can automatically remind customers that customers eat on time, and the effect is naturally good. After having a good eating experience, Bairuiyuan has not only improved the brand favorability, but also gained customer loyalty.
Promote transactions: The increment comes from small and micro scenarios
The weakening of globalization has put pressure on the ** chain, and the community economy aiming at the "last mile of life" is ushering in new business opportunities. "Community-based localized commerce and services are on the rise. This is another observation of Xiang Shuai.
Ubibear, a mother and baby brand that started with a small community store, once faced the attack of large supermarkets, online shopping, communities** and live broadcasts, and its business was not easy to do. How to break through?Ubibear realizes that being close to consumers and seamlessly connecting with consumers' lives is the competitive advantage of community stores.
In order to emphasize that "we are always around", Ubibear has put a lot of effort into the details, delivering to the door, marking the brewing method on the milk powder, and especially emphasizing the convenience of after-sales. But it's not enough to do this, with the help of digital tools, Ubibear has deepened the moat of the community store, customers go home after shopping, and the store can also serve customers through WeChat, "Add me WeChat, if you have any questions, we will reply as soon as possible."
With the increasing number of customers in the private domain, the difficulty of intimate service has increased dramatically. There are more people serving, and it is difficult for employees to match the names of offline guests with the names in WeChat, but if Bao Ma has to reintroduce the baby's situation every time, it will be difficult to maintain the brand image of "intimate and warm". Ubibear found that the "tagging" function of WeCom can just solve this problem. In the label, employees can mark the baby's age, milk powder brand, and even the mother's language Xi, and some brands** can also be directed according to the content of the label.
Timely communication, intimate service, customers have a sense of trust in Ubixiong, gradually, old customers often ask "can you buy some big children's supplies?".Anyway, I'm used to buying Xi at your house". These new needs prompted Ubibear to upgrade from a milk powder store to a mother and baby store, and later developed services such as baby swimming and pediatric massage, and the number of customer orders has also increased steadily.
Empowering the value chain: digital intelligence sharing
Yili is a typical enterprise with a "distribution system", and more than 95% of Yili's business relies on channel partners to cover millions of stores and connect with end consumers. In recent years, in order to truly be consumer-centric, many headquarters brands have adopted the direct-to-consumer (DTC) model to connect directly with consumers. This approach also caught Erie's attention. However, after in-depth understanding, it is found that the centralized DTC model will have a huge impact on Yili's channel partners, which is not consistent with Yili's business philosophy of "long-term cooperation and win-win".
How to find another new model that can not only connect directly with consumers, but also help channel providers get more revenue, and at the same time bring better services to consumers?After two years of practice, Yili found that starting with the shopping guide and cooperating with the private domain operation of WeCom, it kills three birds with one stone. For brands without terminal stores, shopping guides serve both channels and brands. Shopping guides sell Yili brand products in the stores of channel partners, which is not only to help the channel improve sales performance, but also to help the brand serve consumers well.
By recommending the products of their own stores, the shopping guide has created greater business value for both channel partners and Yili brands, and has also obtained more personal returns, and can also provide consumers with a better service experience. After the private domain model is run through, the shopping guide can also attract consumers to offline stores in the enterprise micro community, and can also sell the goods with large inventory in the group in the form of **. The two biggest business problems of the channel - drainage to the store and inventory management have been solved with new ideas, and the store sales have also been brought up, and the brand and the channel have worked together to make the cake bigger, and the scale of the private domain has quickly increased.
For businesses that sell services and experiences, people are the most important thing. In the process of digital intelligence transformation of the value chain, enterprises that cannot realize the digital intelligence empowerment of employees will not only be eliminated by the market, but also unable to win employees.
As a "Top Employer in China" for eight consecutive years, UNIQLO has been exploring and making progress in improving employee satisfaction. UNIQLO proposes that in the whole process of selecting, cultivating, using and retaining talents, we must find ways to let the right people join, let the people who join progress, and let the people who progress stay.
And many of these methods are hidden in the enterprise WeChat: in order to help employees grow, UNIQLO has built a training system in the enterprise WeChat, and put more than 700 training courses on the "enjoy" application of the enterprise WeChat, the enterprise is divided into categories, employees can learn at any time, and they can quickly understand the learning effect through the automatic statistics Xi of the background data. Digital means solve the problems of high threshold, high cost and high risk of change in traditional training. In the employment phase, UNIQLO focuses on helping employees reduce their burden, simplifying the approval process through digitalization, simplifying the payroll process, and returning rest time to employees so that employees can work efficiently.
Employee mobility is a common problem in the service industry, and in addition to providing competitive salaries, it is also necessary to make employees feel cared for, so that enterprises can retain the most important asset of "people". At UNIQLO, the "thank you card" culture creates an atmosphere of mutual help and appreciation. The "thank you card" is placed on the enterprise WeChat, and the thanks can be said in time and conveyed casually, and the effect becomes better. Uniqlo's directors and even CEOs will also use this gadget, which breaks down the communication barriers between headquarters, managers and front-line employees.
As we enter an era of tighter spending, businesses must be able to achieve results in "less" times and build the capacity to drive growth. As new technologies open up new experiences and new channels for business marketing, businesses will be more likely to seize good opportunities during economic downturns.
Chai Hui |Wen.