Text: Wang Zhiyuan| id:z201440
A lot of people haven't recovered yet, and the first quarter is coming to an end, and during this time, I've noticed that many people are starting to take the initiative to talk about business-related issues.
A few days ago, a self-**** person said:
I feel that it is becoming more and more difficult to do purely by relying on commercial single advertising, and I plan to do consulting this year, try to do a paid community, resource docking, and a model of accompanying Party A. You've been working at Party A for 7 years, plus you've been writing for so long, you've experienced both, so, what do you think?
Truly. Ten years ago, the company had money, there were many product advertisements, and as long as you could write around a track, you could make a lot of money.
Now it is different, the channels are large, the rise of AI and SORA, the phenomenon not only changes the business itself, but also redefines the role of advertising companies and self-leading companies in the brand. Therefore, consulting is the trend of vertical transformation in the past two years.
Consider a question:What type of self-counseling is suitable? In my cognition, there are three common types:
The first is good at industry analysis. This kind of self-leading has deep insight and analysis capabilities in a certain industry, such as finance, technology, education and other vertical tracks, and transformation can provide customers with consulting services such as trends.
The second is around personal branding. Generally, the main account is based on IP, and the output content has strong personal views and party attributes, and everyone hopes to transform the content experience into marketing and service units to help individuals or companies provide content power.
The third is to do technical research. This kind of self-digging deep digging technical information is relatively large. Things like data analysis, SEO optimization, programming languages, machine learning, etc., and some are good at exploring the efficient use of various tools, etc.
So, what problems have you encountered in the transformation?
One scenario phenomenon is the "Dunning-Kruger effect". What do you mean? To put it simply, some companies will mistakenly think that they understand the industry after writing a lot of vertical industry articles.
In fact, being good at logical reasoning, expressing opinions, and writing skills does not mean that you really have a deep understanding of the specific details of the industry or the company's business, which is easy to cause two-way misinterpretation.
From Party B's point of view, content business and consulting are completely different.
Each company has a mature process, from topic selection and planning, interviews, writing to content molding and publishing, which mainly solves the problem of content production.
Consulting, you have to use business thinking to solve specific customer problems. If you use creative thinking to ponder the customer's business model, and try to cut in from even one angle of product, channel, promotion (that is, the 4P theory of marketing), you will find that there seem to be various natural gaps.
This is like a liberal arts student suddenly having to engage in "mathematics, physics, and chemistry", and there is a big gap in the middle. Therefore, if you use the logic of content for consulting, you still can't escape the business model of customer linking and matchmaking. There are a lot of such cases on the market, think about it, don't you?
What is the second problem? I call it half-up but not down .
There is a pyramid phenomenon in any vertical self-a**. Simply selling resources, advertising, and selling ** There will always be someone who is cheaper than you, or has a better customer relationship than you.
I have seen a lot of self-leading companies, in such an embarrassing position, there are not many product promotion cooperation received in a year, and they have to support a group of people, and the cost is quite high. If you continue, you will definitely lose money, and if you stop, your previous efforts will be in vain, so you can only try to see if you can transform.
With the number as a unit, or a matrix type of operation from the first, there are three groundbreaking difficulties: first, transform the business process and reorganize all aspects of content production; Second, reduce costs and increase efficiency, can not bring new cooperation to the company, have to save money, third, find new customer needs, which means to recruit new people to come in, develop new business.
This transformation is a change in perception and action. There is no 1 year of stubbornness, and the probability of success is very low. I have a friend who, in order to get out of the cycle of long billing, won less than 10 customers last year, but at least the business scope has been newly expanded.
There is another one that I don't think is necessary. Why?
This kind of relying on the sky to eat, good at using jokes, emotional cool essays to express certain phenomena, seems to be far away from the actual business, but the creative ability can attract a large number of readers.
Similar to the "half-Buddha immortal", the update frequency is high, outsiders read the article is quite simple, the actual creativity, brain circuit level is no worse than that of professional bloggers, this kind of person does not need to pursue a new outlet, find a comfortable position, concentrate on improving skills, and occasionally see if the "crown" is firm.
To be a Party B company to engage in planning will limit yourself, the future, do not worry too much, make products and services better, maintain characteristics and skills, when the enterprise needs to spread, it will naturally be thought of.
Therefore, no matter which category, the reason why we are staring at consulting is because the enterprise has a large degree of dispersion of the advertising business, and the consulting happens to be like an express distribution center, inheriting the ability of comprehensive distribution.
In the above types and problems, there are successful cases of transformation in the early stage to learn from, but in their current form, their path cannot be fully replicated.
The times are different, and there is no new way to follow the old way. Moreover, if you continue to follow the old path, you are likely to fall into the same predicament as them, so you should explore your own path.
At the moment, one of the most versatile models on the market is the paid community.
To put it bluntly:Let's take a look at what resources you have in your hands, and by building a paid community, pull a group of people with common hobbies in, and focus on research around a certain industry and field.
If the fee is higher, it will be called a private board of directors, and it will have some offline study tours, spontaneous gatherings, or integrate its own resources to provide some communication and link services to the company; If the fee is lower, the offline service will be transferred to online, but there are two major problems with this method:
Ongoing issues.
Not a core part of the company's business.
What I've seen and come into contact with is that very few company owners are willing to invest in resource swaps for a long time, even if they are good at socializing, participate once or twice, and end up after finding a valuable link.
Besides, as a self-leading company, you must have continuous energy and contacts to engage in business matchmaking, otherwise you will soon be unable to do it. Think about it, it's okay to say in the first year, but in the second and third years, what will happen to the willingness to renew, and there will be a steady stream of new traffic.
Therefore, when looking for your own path, you have to think about what kind of business model can be sustainable and fit into one part of the main business of the enterprise, so that it can be regarded as a long-term way.
What kind of business is considered a long-term business? This question should be viewed and considered from the perspective of Party A; What similar consulting services do you need? What role should counseling play?
I have worked for Party A for 7 years, and I have met hundreds of experts and consultants with my boss in total. From the initial nodding and asking them for advice, to using the consultant as a tool, and then to doing the external brain for others, the biggest feeling is:
In many companies, consultants don't really play their due value, mainly because the company doesn't know how to use them, or the consultant's performance is almost meaningless, what's the problem?
First, advisors' advice is often not so straightforward.
At that time in 2019, domestic enterprises liked to use some mature foreign models and methods when doing strategic planning, operation management, human resources and financial management.
My boss often asked me to take market analysis courses, such as the Five Forces Model, VRIO Analysis, BCG Matrix, etc. Because you have to pay a lot of money to hire a consultant to give a lecture. So, when you come back, you can share it with everyone and sit down and study it together.
These two years have been different. With the acceleration of domestic development, some people who originally mixed well in the company found that they were not so adaptable to the working environment, so they changed careers to do consulting. This group of people has a lot of practical experience, but they are a little inferior in theoretical knowledge.
For example, in the past few years, the private domain was relatively popular, and every company was building a private domain model. Not necessarily. If you can't help after learning, you may even collapse your business.
In this case, I see some differences between the old and new consultants. The older generation of theorist consultants failed to update the case database in a timely manner, and the emerging consultants have strong hands-on ability, but they may not have enough theoretical depth, and it is difficult to integrate the two perfectly.
There is also a problem, the consultant service fee is relatively high, according to the time, there are still problems after the service has to pay for it, which leads to the company is in a hurry when using the consultant, sometimes, directly throw the problem to the consultant, what do you want to do (how).
However, how to do it will always fail if the market changes at any time.
Therefore, how to use the consultant, the enterprise is very entangled with the individual is also very uncomfortable, the overall consultant personal information database is not comprehensive enough, but also the problem of unreasonable charging arrangements, the accompanying run should be lengthened, at least half a year, otherwise it is difficult to solve the specific problem.
On the other hand, the consultant seems to have a lot of experience and is an intern in the project.
What does that mean?
In 2018, I started to get in touch with private domains, and by 2019, our team had done a good job in social e-commerce and social e-commerce. The first to use third-party plug-ins for WeChat ecological marketing were Ike, Perfect Diary, and later companies such as Daily Youxian and Luckin began to emerge.
According to common sense, I have a lot of experience, after all, I have seen the past and present life of the development of this field, but when I served i do jewelry with Weisheng in 2020, I deeply felt that everyone is a novice when doing projects in a new company.
Because each field is professional, consultants are good at knowledge, insight and approach, and are not familiar with the specific situation of a specific company, so they must not only do research and communication, but also adjust their strategies in a timely manner.
I've also been through this kind of scene:
The plan given by the consultant is almost exactly the same as the one that came up internally, and everyone knows that it is an old routine used by competing products, and there is nothing new when it is used again. But when the consultants were asked why they were doing this, they couldn't answer, wasting time and demoralizing.
Therefore, the company should not over-deify the consulting, to be precise, the consultant is good at refining the basic knowledge of a certain period of time, and when it comes to a new company, the first thing to understand is the specific problems faced by the company.
To put it simply, there are three phases in which a company utilizes an advisor:First, the consultant learns the company's situation; Second, the company learns from consultants; Third, the consultant provides a plan based on his understanding.
If the first two phases go well, the third phase will naturally inspire each other and stimulate new ideas. The problem is that the vast majority of consultations now go straight to the third stage, or the first two stages are compressed and done hastily.
Successful consulting requires not only a complete framework, but also innovation. The framework is the basic skill of the consultant, which is completed with the help of a mature knowledge base and methodology; Project highlights, on the other hand, are usually generated during discussions between the two parties.
This is the way to solve problems with customers. Judging from the historical situation, the method of short-term on-site, pulse-checking, and half-month plan must be slowly failing.
The company does not want the old business to hang up, thinking that while keeping the existing business, it can also develop a new business scope. Therefore, what can be learned from the transformation of the first company to do consulting?
First, let's talk about strategic adjustment.
A self-leading company also has a strategy, and returning to the strategy is a combing of the track of concern, and it is also a process of re-selecting customers.
Some of the self-leaders around me who do marketing insights used to focus on a wide range of topics, such as what kind of changes the rise of AI will bring to the entire industry, how marketers should use AI, and so on.
Now, the perspective can be switched faster than a woman's face. Start researching how a brand grows, which part of the business process is using AI, and even where is AI reducing costs and increasing efficiency? which positions have been adjusted, etc.
This is the return strategy. In other words, the focus has shifted from a macro perspective to the "last mile" that directly reaches consumers. I need to be clear about the type of business I want to serve and where I can make an impact.
In this way, each aspect of the consultation can be focused on the specific business problem, and the more detailed the research, the more specific the customer will naturally be attracted.
Second, work on a problem.
What is a problem? When a person gets stuck at work and can't find a clue, it's a problem. At this time, he may ask for help to see if there is any systematic content that can help him learn.
Content is essentially an advertisement. In the past, most of the time I was writing about the company and the industry, and I was good at helping companies do some publicity, and rarely went deep into the sales level.
I have a friend who used to write some content about the workplace, management, and human resources, but now after focusing on specific problems in human resources, the update frequency is slow but the quality of the content has improved, and there are more customers looking for him, and some have asked him to go to training to help sort out the business process.
That's what business is all about. The same is true in other industries.
For example, can the self-management of operations provide an operational strategy that actually helps customers? Can a user analysis framework be established in a set of effective user analysis frameworks? These are all questions worth pondering.
Furthermore, make a replicable party**.
In my eyes, the company is a high-end service industry. Ideally, as the company grows, we can charge more to our customers. In reality, there aren't many customers who are willing to spend a lot of money, and there are a lot of low-price competitors in the market.
Therefore, it is impossible to smash all the budget on a self-** account, this is the logic of Pinxuan.
The logic of the product is: I have a set of solutions to a problem. This approach provides a stable service to customers and ensures the continuity of business operations. Now, many self-leading companies have not realized how important it is to develop products, so the investment in this area is not enough.
I always believe that Fang ** is the core product research and development system of the company, and it is the key to establishing customer consensus.
Therefore, if you want to gain a foothold in the business circle, you must have a product (a solution to a certain link) from the first company, and then use the product to serve more similar companies.
Understanding this, let's talk about the paid community. What is the nature of a paid community?
It is not to integrate resources, but to find more specific problems after screening customers, and then follow customers to solve specific problems; After solving the problem, I will refine my own consulting method, take the method, and find more customers who need it. This cycle is a healthy growth model for self-leading companies.
To sum it up:
Small but beautiful, it can be better.
In an industry that has lost dividends, only looking at itself from the perspective of demanders is also the way to break the situation. Less macro and more concrete, as soon as it is concrete, it will go deeper, and once it is concrete, it will break through.
**10,000 Fans Incentive Plan