Physical Retail Has A Long Way To Go To Get More Returns On Wechat

More than 400 million users bowed their heads every 6.5 minutes on average. Such attention forced the once popular microblog to bow down to WeChat, which also allowed businesses to see opportunities. All kinds of public accounts have been launched on WeChat, especially the physical retail which can't catch the passenger flow.

The influence of WeChat is not only in physical retail. Ma Yun once said to Ma Huateng at the 2013 IT Summit, "Your WeChat scares me." Yintai, which always pays attention to analyzing consumers, has also launched its official WeChat account. In the competition, it is no longer about whether to do WeChat marketing, but how to do WeChat marketing well.

Small input and large output

With the prevalence of new media marketing, more and more official microblogs have gradually caused the "boredom" of many consumers, and WeChat, which pays more attention to privacy, has been popular with consumers since its birth.

Speaking of WeChat marketing, we have to mention that Beijing Chaoyang Joy City has nearly 200000 WeChat fans, more than 40% of the interaction rate, and more than 5000 daily responses to WeChat activities... This effect is a myth beyond Durex's micro blog marketing.

More importantly, the operation team composed of two people should be responsible for both Weibo and WeChat, which is an input-output ratio that no public relations company or media can achieve.

In Hefei, Anhui, a thousand kilometers away, the WeChat marketing team of Lecheng Supermarket, composed of two people, is also writing a story of small investment and large output.

Li Qi, director of the brand marketing center of Anhui Lecheng Investment Co., Ltd., told the reporter that combining Lecheng supermarket members with WeChat fans can better obtain consumer information and preferences, which has a good effect on the improvement of supermarket categories and promotion of activities.

Taking the distribution of promotional information as an example, DM advertising, which was often used in the past, not only cost printing fees and paper costs, but also the labor cost of distributing DM, while the cost of WeChat to distribute a promotional message is almost zero.

Hunan Carrefour has made full use of this. Membership exclusives and promotional ads account for almost 2/3 of its push information, while Shanghai Carrefour accounts for a slightly lower proportion, up to 1/2.

In this regard, industry insiders believe that the WeChat platform can be used to release trend information including video, pictures, voice, text and carefully arranged discount information to fans. At the same time, through interaction with consumers, enterprises can analyze consumers' consumption habits, customer price, frequency, etc., develop personalized menus on different pages, and achieve accurate marketing promotion.

In addition, as a more private communication tool, WeChat has realized two-way communication between businesses and consumers.

Li Qi explained that at present, the WeChat platform of Lecheng Supermarket also acts as a customer service platform. The use characteristics of WeChat on mobile clients determine its connectivity with stores. Consumers are most likely to use it when shopping, and consumer demands and complaints can also reach the enterprise faster and more accurately.

The directory style WeChat of Chaoyang Joy City, a secondary directory composed of "look", "look" and "Lele", corresponds to the basic information, floor guidance, discount activities and other sub directories of Chaoyang Joy City, like a personal guide for fans.

One to two interactions every month can not only test the activeness and effectiveness of WeChat fans, but also make the WeChat account of Joy City more interesting, said Wen Juan, assistant director of the promotion department of Chaoyang Joy City.

In addition, in order to better explore O2O, Le City and Chaoyang Joy City and other businesses have opened up their online and offline membership systems, further increasing the number and stickiness of members.

Content is king

There is never a shortage of good stories, just a shortage of people who tell good stories. How to do WeChat marketing well, marketing expert Liu Weibin emphasized that content is the key.

As the main WeChat planner of Lecheng Supermarket, Li Qi often "soaks" online, trying to dig out stories suitable for Lecheng Supermarket from those interesting jokes.

Li Qi said that the people who use WeChat are generally young, and the special price of fresh food and other products is no longer their focus. They can only actively click on them if they are surprised to find something new.

This seemingly simple truth is not easy to operate. In May this year, the WeChat platform of Lecheng was just established, and the traditional promotion information was used for promotion. The effect was not obvious, the number of clicks was poor, the consumer recognition was low, and the number of fans grew slowly.

Through constant exploration, "The Perfect Wife's Day", "Hefei Aunt's Guide to Buying Food", "Hefei Top Ten Beef Noodles List"... one after another touching and vivid stories are shared with people, making the WeChat arrival rate of Lecheng Supermarket from less than 20% at the beginning to more than 50% now. The number of fans has risen to 7000, and the number of active fans accounts for more than 50%, The number of effective fans reaches 70%.

In August of this year, Lecheng Supermarket launched the promotion message of "no cooling, no price reduction" in response to the hot weather in Hefei, which not only fits the reality, but also "seduces" a large number of people who get cold. The arrival rate of this WeChat message reached 70%.

Yintai Group, which has made good achievements in WeChat, has made its WeChat platform the personal steward of consumers.

"It's 17 degrees tomorrow morning". On September 26, the headline of Yintai Department Store's push message in Hangzhou Chengxi Store was not only a weather forecast, but also a reminder. How can people not click on the weather forecast like "The West Lake is full of water, White Lady, stop making trouble"?

Talking about the weather, talking about matching, commenting on fashion, from parking lot, store navigation to product explanation, the big brand interactive lottery launched from time to time is to firmly grasp the consumers' wandering heart, for example, its WeChat guided "Go to Lijiang with my best friend" activity has attracted wide attention since its launch.

In this regard, the relevant person in charge of Yintai Hangzhou Culture Plaza Store said that the age range of the main users of the WeChat platform was 20 to 35 years old, which coincided with most of the customer groups of our department stores. Compared with the point to face communication mode of microblog, the point-to-point communication of WeChat makes the information transmission more detailed and humanized.

And various cute spokesmen also enrich the content of WeChat marketing, such as Big billed Bird representing snacks in Lecheng Supermarket and Chaoxiaoyue cartoon characters in Chaoyang Joy City.

For the push of WeChat content, industry insiders also pointed out that it is best to push at night, because readers have enough time to read during this time, and the push frequency is not easy to be too high.

Marketing behind social networking

WeChat, which can accompany with food, play and chat, is gradually spreading into the life of the young generation who live in a wide and closed circle. But as a social tool, as Zhang Xiaolong, the leader of WeChat, said, "WeChat is hyped up", while Zeng Ming, the director of WeChat products, expressed his attitude on WeChat public platform: "WeChat is not a marketing tool, and the practice of viewing public accounts as marketing channels is not feasible."

In this case, why do businesses based on public accounts continue to pour into WeChat? Perhaps because Zhang Xiaolong also said, "How you use WeChat determines what WeChat is to you."

Therefore, in the hands of Li Qi, WeChat has become a treasure to lead Hefei cuisine. In this process, Lecheng Supermarket has been pushed onto the stage of performance; In Wang Juan's hands, WeChat has become the butler and companion of consumers, making consumers rely on Joy City; In the hands of Yintai, WeChat has become a fashion magazine again. From T - news to seasonal matching, consumers can actively look for fashion in Yintai Department Store and Yintai website.

However, in fact, many physical retailers have not yet figured out how to do WeChat marketing.

On the WeChat of Wuhan Zhongshang Parity Supermarket, the reporter found that there were only four messages in September, all of which were promotional messages. Wumart Supermarket in Beijing has only 3 poor promotional messages.

In this regard, Fang Jianhua, CEO of Beijing Huaxiajia Culture Communication Co., Ltd., pointed out that the purpose of WeChat operation is to maintain customer relations and spend 99% of the time cultivating customer trust. Don't always think about sales promotion. Take 29 days to train customers in January. One day of sales promotion may be more effective. Please forget about sales temporarily.

Wang Daen, a senior new media marketing consultant, also clearly pointed out that WeChat is a service-oriented marketing tool that pursues experience. Only when consumers have a good experience can they put it down. Therefore, what WeChat marketing needs to do is to bring users an excellent experience and make users feel relieved and comfortable. At the same time, if consumers don't like it, they can immediately cancel their attention. Consumers have the right to make their own choices.

This also explains why Lecheng Supermarket's number of fans could not go up or suddenly decreased when it just launched WeChat.

As a Lecheng based in Hefei, it focuses more on localization. Li Qi believes that since it is physical retail, there must be business circles and fixed consumer groups. It must be realistic to let residents from other cities come to Lecheng to consume. Therefore, how to combine the local characteristics of Hefei to catch the target consumers. So Hefei Aunt bought food and Hefei Noodles list was released one after another.

In addition, Fang Jianhua also pointed out that WeChat attaches importance to interaction, because unlike microblog, it can attract a large number of fans to forward and comment, and only through communication with customers can we gain customers' trust.

From this point of view, there is still a long way to go for physical retail to get more returns on WeChat.