How should my flower shop engage amid vast online marketing channels and new tactics?
[Hua11.com Original] In China, the development speed of the Internet is extremely rapid. Various innovative apps and types of gameplay continue to emerge, and new companies and concepts are born every day.
Today, you've just learned to put discount packages on a group-buying website; tomorrow, someone will say that the subsidy on X-Bee is greater. In the morning, you finally understood the concept of "persona" in WeChat's streaming media promotion, and by the afternoon, Douyin short videos will tell you they are extremely popular at the moment.
If you don't promote on these platforms, it seems as if you're out of touch with society and wasting the traffic of the entire country; that famous XX flower shop has also joined their platform. If you haven't, you might even feel embarrassed to greet your peers.
OK, even if you don't take the initiative to learn about these apps, their telemarketers and ground promotion staff will find your contact information through various channels and bombard you with information, making you receive it passively.
Well, the entire Internet industry is vibrant and appears to be on the verge of subverting traditional industries.
But is it really so?
From the perspective of a company's operation, Internet companies are asset-light, mainly intangible assets such as websites, software services, and apps, with the largest expense being human resources.
They are not like traditional industries, which may involve expensive equipment and commodity inventory. Therefore, their transformation speed is particularly fast.
Today, they may still be positioned as an e-commerce platform for a vertical category, such as the single industry of flowers, and tomorrow, they might become a platform integrating the entire upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.
At the same time, the Internet companies you can name usually have external financing. They don't need to survive by their own profitability (many companies without clear business models and profitability are flaunting themselves in the market). They only need to obtain the next round of financing through data packaging (such as the growth of user volume) and the attractiveness of their story to achieve the purpose of survival and development.
Going public is the ultimate goal for many Internet companies.
But the reality is that the Internet industry abounds in "toys," most of which are short-lived. There are very few Internet companies that can truly survive.
If we pay a little attention to the reports and discussions about Internet companies, we will find that their closures and transformation speeds are faster than any other industry (search and read for yourself):
"Is the winter of the Internet industry really coming? How to view the layoff wave in 2015?"
"The list of 'Internet Plus' companies that closed down in 2016!"
"Did many Internet companies start laying off people in 2017?"
Etc.
The time they survive may not even be as long as that of the traditional flower shops next to our vegetable market. :)
Since they can't even take care of themselves, how can they "guide" us on how to operate?
Nowadays, most Internet practitioners, due to their understanding of economic operation rules and years of work experience, have not really participated in the operations of physical entities and many just follow the herd. For example:
- Physical entities are no good; the future belongs to the Internet.
- The cost of physical entities is too high; the Internet is zero-cost/low-cost.
- The traffic to physical entities is too small; online traffic is large.
- Physical entities are inconvenient; the Internet is convenient.
Etc.
Some of the above descriptions are reasonable, but there are two wrong assumptions in all these statements:
1. They think their company = the Internet.
2. They think the customers of their app = your customers.
So, they will list various charts and numbers, and some successful cases to persuade you to buy their services so that you can "join the Internet" and "convert these Internet customers into your customers."
Generally, if it is not a vertical shopping app for a specific segmented group, the conversion rate of these customers will be very low.
One of the reasons is that the original purpose of customers accessing these apps is not to buy flowers. To convert a customer from "never thought of buying flowers" to "buying flowers from you," the psychological conversion threshold is very high.
In addition, "comparison" is also part of shopping, especially in the Internet scenario, where comparison is even easier. If this app is not a shopping platform, then if a customer has a shopping intention, they may even exit this app and switch to a shopping app for comparison and purchase.
Please ignore the myths of millions in sales through a recommendation from a big V on Weibo or a certain internet celebrity generating hundreds of millions in sales in one second during a live broadcast. We are not on the same starting line as them. At least for now. :)
Therefore, back to the question in the title: "Facing the endless Internet marketing channels and new gameplay, how should my flower shop choose to participate?" Is your thinking clearer?
We can join these channels and platforms, but we need to carefully distinguish which ones are useful to us and cannot just listen to the one-sided statements of promoters.
Usually, they themselves are not sure about the conversion rate. If they sign a contract guaranteeing you a 20% conversion rate, then you can consider paying immediately.
Don't use your own money to experiment for the platform.
In the following articles, we have analyzed some platforms. Some can be joined, and some should be approached with caution:
If you are still undecided, then there is a simple principle that can guide you:
Do not participate in new platforms. Long-standing shopping platforms can be joined with appropriate caution and the setting of assessment indicators.
Why do we know this?
Because we have founded mobile Internet companies before. One of them went through the entire process of "starting a small team to develop products -> obtaining angel investment -> obtaining million-level Series A external financing -> expanding the team wildly, burning through the money within half a year -> failing to find the next round of financing -> going bankrupt and closing down."
There were quite a few mistakes made, and many lessons were learned.
It seems that many companies are still following the wrong path we once took.
The business field is like a battlefield. Rather than blindly charging into battle, it may be more prudent to tread carefully and move forward cautiously.
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