Text: Chen Yan. Edited Gale.
What kind of academic qualifications and communication skills does a shopping guide need?
The role of shopping guide has existed since China's consumer market entered the era of free trade. Since the development of the consumer market, when the thousands of faces of consumers are displayed in front of every retailer, it is important to focus on consumer-centric digital transformation, including the role of shopping guides.
The new digital transformation of retailers is not only about serving customers who arrive in store, but also about keeping records and establishing online connections to achieve a higher probability of repeat purchases.
So, back to the opening question, is the brand owner's answer to recruit a shopping guide with higher education? Obviously not, which means higher costs. However, by doing a good job in digital transformation, brand owners can manage this position that directly affects sales at the lowest cost.
Chow Tai Fook is a well-known jewelry and fashion industry in China, with more than 50,000 offline shopping guides. All of them have been connected to WeCom. In the jewelry industry, due to the high unit price, similar competing products are even clustered in the same area, the role of shopping guide is particularly important.
They need to meet the customers first-hand, keep them online as much as possible, and the brand can also do the follow-up in-depth operation.
In 2019, Tencent proposed the concept of smart retail in the retail industry. It was also in that year that Chow Tai Fook fully embraced smart retail. Zhang Daihong, senior director of e-commerce at Chow Tai Fook, said that Tencent's smart retail has enabled Chow Tai Fook's more than 50,000 sales to achieve a digital upgrade.
So far, Tencent Smart Retail has been serving the retail industry for 5 years. The consumer market has also undergone tremendous changes. In the era of stock, there are more and more channels for commodity trading, consumers have become "more and more picky", and private domain operation has become the key after the traffic bottoms out.
But what remains constant is that whoever understands the contemporary consumer will be able to do business. Tencent's C-end gene has also become a powerful weapon for Tencent's smart retail service brand.
The time of the consumer market is set back another 20 years, and the information channels are single.
First, the transaction channel is single.
Since the 90s of the last century, it is the era when TVs, VCDs and other products began to be popularized, and brands saw business opportunities from them, and one after another magical advertisements were born. For example, the pair of "famous" uncles and aunts in the TV advertising industry have occupied most of the TV stations with ecstatic dancing and first-class advertising words for ten years.
At that time, the information channels were not well developed, and most people would unconsciously think of the name of the brand when they wanted to give something during the New Year's holiday. It can be seen that in the era of TV commercials, it is possible to create a popular product through first-class advertising.
The current situation is different, and the market has entered an era of thousands of people. Rather than passively receiving information, consumers have the ability to understand product information through various channels, and will take the initiative to make purchase decisions according to their own needs.
They are not only pursuing the product itself, but also have more dimensions of value needs. For example, when you walk into a tavern, you not only want to drink craft beer, but also have the social desire to sit down and meet friends; Buying a bouquet of flowers and a scented candle is a yearning for a better lifestyle; Pay attention not only to product quality and performance, but also to brand image and service experience.
When a seller's market fully enters a buyer's market, how do brands respond?
Naturedo Group (formerly Jialan Group) is the head brand of beauty and skin care in China, and Naturetang's industry status in those years also illustrates the strength of the brand in disguise. It's just that under the two-way attack of overseas brands and cutting-edge brands, domestic beauty is no longer facing the rivers and lakes of the past. It's not easy to capture the hearts and minds of a new generation of consumers.
Times have changed, and the brand management model must evolve to "global management".
However, for brands that mainly focus on offline channels, there are many difficulties in building a private domain at the beginning, the shopping guides in the stores and commercial buildings have never used digital tools, and dealers also have doubts about the digital upgrade of the store.
By 2020, Naturetang Group specially found Tencent Smart Retail, a professional foreign aid, to assist. Taking the digitalization of shopping guides as an example, Naturetang Group and Tencent Smart Retail have jointly developed a training program, developed targeted BA competitions, and set up digital retail classes. The company has also created a set of double points system to provide two-way rights and interests for BA and customers, and shopping guides can get additional commissions and rewards by trading.
With the help of WeChat Work and related tools, shopping guides have finally realized the integration of online and offline; On the consumer's side, it is actually the mini program that makes them feel that the boundary of the scene has disappeared.
For example, when it comes to buying ** jewelry, consumers can only go to offline stores to buy it, if they fancy a ring, and feel that some aspects are not suitable, there are only two options left: one is to ignore the shortcomings and buy it, and the other is to change stores to see others. In short, no matter how you choose, you can't be completely satisfied.
Now in the WeChat ecosystem, Chow Tai Fook has launched a product called "Chow Tai Fook Customization", which can be customized online to meet personalized needs by clicking on the mini program. This also helps Chow Tai Fook's online and offline scenes to seamlessly connect and achieve a whole closed loop.
Relevant data show that "Chow Tai Fook Customization" is hundreds of millions of revenue a year, and the increment is also very fast.
In addition, Chow Tai Fook has incorporated trays for guests to display and try on jewellery – also known in the industry as "smart customer trays" – as part of the digital technology build-up.
The "Smart Shopping Plate" can identify the label information on jewelry items and pass the relevant data to the brand for summary analysis, such as the frequency of products and elements, and the success rate of conversion purchases. This first-line retail information can help Chow Tai Fook better grasp fashion trends and design and develop products efficiently.
Brands such as Nature Hall and Chow Tai Fook have proved with practical actions that in the era of thousands of people, every consumer deserves to be treated with care.
After understanding and respecting the current consumers, retailers will have follow-up private domain operations.
But at the same time, what puzzles many businesses is that even if they attract traffic in various channels, they have attracted consumers, but there are problems in the follow-up in-depth operation.
Essentially, they can't deeply connect with consumers in the digital age.
* The channel model of merchants and distributors has a history of nearly 100 years, and this model has achieved many channel companies in the past, such as the sports industry. Taobo has more than 6,000 directly-operated stores in more than 300 cities across the country, and has established strategic partnerships with more than 10 sports shoes and clothing brands.
However, the growth of the business channel model will also bring a series of problems. From **, wholesale, distribution to retail, the more complex the channel links, the more difficult it is for brands to directly and quickly obtain consumer feedback. Especially for some emerging brands or brands that need to reposition and repackage, it is simply impossible to achieve rapid growth by simply expanding channels or strengthening sales.
Even if the channel has accumulated a large amount of data in the early stage, due to the low degree of digitalization and the relative independence of different channels, the judgment of the market relies more on experience and cannot accurately understand consumer needs. After a long time, the users in their own traffic pool will naturally not be retained, or they will change from "live fans" to "zombie fans".
For Taobo, a revolution in digital transformation has almost become a must.
Last year, Taobo connected to Tencent's smart retail system and achieved qualitative changes in the refined operation of users. With the help of the latter,On the basis of the huge membership data in its own system, Taobo Sports has obtained more fine-grained, multi-scenario and multi-dimensional user insights and member insights to help them better understand consumer behaviors and trends.
The improvement of user management efficiency has also allowed Taobo to have a more complete operation idea and operation strategy, and at the same time has a clearer positioning for each scenario of Tencent's ecosystem, using the community to promote user activity, satisfying user services with 1v1, acquiring customers with the public domain of the first number, completing transactions with small programs, forming high repurchase with members, and building a closed loop of private domain traffic through a complete set of combinations.
In fact, the journey of Taobo Sports is also a microcosm of China's business history, from the past offline channels are king, and gradually moving towards the global integrated operation, opening up data links, emphasizing digital business thinking, and intensively cultivating the business model.
For the platform side and the brand side, the channel will always iterate, but the essential logic is to explore the more efficient logic of people, goods and yard interaction, and use digital management and tools to bring higher benefits. Under a complete link, the brand's deep link to users and high-quality services are also realized.
After entering the stock era, finding new increments has become a common proposition in various industries.
The traffic dividend is coming to an end, and now it is a more complex, more varied, and more competitive market. Under the competition of involution, enterprises need to master enough sensitivity and response speed to open up the positive cycle of growth.
Yili, from the fifties of the last century, only composed of 95 professional cattle raising households in the "Hohhot Huimin District Cooperative Dairy Farm", has developed into a leading enterprise in China's dairy industry that cannot be ignored, it can be said that to this day, is the result of keeping up with the times. For many years, Yili has been rooted in the offline and connected to countless consumers through stores, and now, for this traditional enterprise, it also needs to expand and increase the amount through the combination of public and private domains.
Looking back at the history of retail development, global operation is not a new concept, and it has not been able to be truly practiced for a long time because of the lack of basic conditions. Over the years, many leading retail companies, including Yili, have accumulated enough private domain digital assets with the company of Tencent Smart Retail, and their digital capabilities have become more and more powerful, which provides first-mover conditions for global operation.
I have to say that in WeChat's huge user ecosystem, there are many links to achieve public-private domain linkage. Just like Yili, since last year, it has made an in-depth layout of the ** number, especially during some big promotion activities such as 618 and Double 11, relying on content marketing and interactive gameplay, it has attracted many users in the public domain, and these users have been further introduced into the fine operation of the private domain.
At the same time, Yili takes the ** number as a contact point, public domain drainage, private domain operation, and realizes the interconnection of WeChat ecology. By mobilizing more than 30,000 offline shopping guides as a community, classification and more refined operations are carried out. Now the shopping guide is not only to send ** information in the community, but also to send 5 seconds and 15 seconds of short ** to communicate with users in a more vivid form of content.
In addition, in order to solve the problem of shortage of content operation professionals, in October last year, Yili and Tencent launched a star anchor training program, with a total of more than 600 people participating in a 21-day professional training and actual combat.
Under the linkage of public and private domains, Yili broke the traditional marketing model and brought unexpected joy to the company. According to data provided by Erie,During the doubling period, the GMV of Yili's mini program increased by more than 300% year-on-year, and the group also had a brilliant performance in the operation of the first number and live streaming, and the GMV of the company currently ranks at the head of the industry, and its liquid milk category has created about 400 million yuan of revenue in the private domain.
At a time when many brands are suffering from traffic anxiety, the huge, stable, and active traffic of WeChat's ecosystem is obviously a position that many brands cannot ignore. For Tencent's smart retail, if it is said that the digital upgrade has been completed with merchants in the past five years, then in this stock era, it has become a new goal to help merchants embrace the whole domain and find new increments.
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