Currently, retail companies must make good use of social marketing tools, and future retail stores must have a standard configuration of "store + community". In the mobile Internet environment, retail stores must have both stores and groups, and they must learn to do a good job in the new retail model of "store + community".

Groups can help retail companies generate a lot of important value. From a consumer-facing marketing perspective, companies need to plan group operations from three aspects:

From a marketing perspective: The biggest impact of the mobile Internet on retail companies is that it provides the There is no effective tool to connect with customers.

In the era without mobile Internet, the relationship between retail stores and customers was lost. After customers completed their purchases and left the store, companies could not effectively find these customers and could not effectively influence these customers. The result is the continuous loss of customers and the continuous decline in activity.

Judging from the analysis by Yu Ying, Vice President of Carrefour China: Carrefour traffic has dropped by 50% in the past five years. The main reason for the decline is that weekly activity has become monthly activity, and at least 10% of its customers Never go to the store again.

In today's mobile Internet environment, companies can effectively solve this problem with the help of the connection methods provided by the mobile Internet, that is, transform the relationship with customers from a disconnected relationship into a Real-time linked relationships. Through this real-time link relationship, we can effectively activate customers and effectively influence target value customers.

The current mobile Internet has provided a variety of effective ways to link customers: you can establish registration links with target customers through APPs, mini programs, and third-party link platforms; you can use WeChat, WeChat Establish social links with your target customers through groups; you can also establish content links with target customers through content platforms such as public accounts.

Among these, community links are a very important way of connection. Using this hierarchical connection method of the community, interactive social means can be generated and a very effective customer link can be formed.

At present, many companies do not pay enough attention to how to use group methods to do a good job in corporate brand communication and marketing communication, and there are not many overall communication methods and methods.

The new mobile Internet environment has changed the previous marketing communication environment of retail enterprises - the new mobile communication is gradually transforming from mass communication means to niche communication methods, and enterprise-led communication is transforming into socialization The mode of communication is transformed from self-communication to other modes of communication, from a relatively single mode of communication to a richer mode of communication.

In this transformation process, the community has become a very important communication platform. In the current communication environment, how to switch to new communication methods and communication methods to promote better communication of corporate brands and promote better broadcast of all corporate marketing actions, the community will play a more important role.

Two major characteristics of mobile Internet communication:

The main effect indicator of mobile communication is the generation of communication fission, and better communication effects can be produced through continuous fission. This is a marketing communication goal that must be achieved for corporate brand promotion and marketing promotion.

Through the community, the key is to help companies find "seed users" for communication, that is, KOLs who can produce better communication effects. The communication effects of seed users and KOLs can produce 1*1000 the communication effect.

Therefore, using the community method to continuously find seed users, continuously cultivate seed users, and continuously generate secondary dissemination and fission of seed users is the key point for enterprises to plan when planning community marketing. Good big move.

At present, some companies are paying attention to this action, but most of them lack a system.

Groups can sell goods, but the logic of selling goods in the group is different from that of the store. Selling goods in a store is an independent purchasing behavior by customers, while selling goods in a social environment is a herd behavior and group behavior that can produce a fission effect.

For retail stores to implement the new retail model of "store + community", on the one hand, they need to use groups to empower the store's selling function so that it can produce better sales results; on the other hand, they need to realize group selling goods, that is, you can transcend the category boundaries and business district boundaries of the store, broaden the categories, expand the business district, and achieve better sales results.

Therefore, to achieve the above marketing goals, companies need to focus on the new retail model of store + community, realize systematic adjustments to the corporate business philosophy, category management model, procurement model, and operating system, and establish a store-based +New corporate marketing system of the community.

The purpose of forming a group is to effectively solve customer links. Therefore, around this change, companies need to change their business philosophy, and the focus of business operations needs to shift to how to effectively capture customers. Especially for value customers, customer links and real-time online link status are achieved.

The planning, design and layout atmosphere of the store need to be people-centered, effectively enhance the social attributes of the store and have strong social functions. It is necessary to eliminate the traditional store concept of product-centered stores in the past and make customers the protagonist of the store.

The category management concept of the store needs to be adjusted, and the category management model needs to be weakened. Focusing on the needs of valuable customers and combining the market characteristics of the business district, creating hot products will be the main task in the "store + community" environment. means of business.

In the past, the main criterion for measuring an enterprise's operating capabilities was the level of category management. The main indicator was the 20:80 principle, that is, 20% of the products and 20% of the categories contributed to 80% of the sales. In the future, "stores" + community” environment, it may become 2:80, that is, 2% of the products may contribute 80% of the store’s sales performance.

Commodity management and category management in this environment require basic category management + effective hot-selling operations.

Under this new retail model of "store + community", corporate procurement and store operations need to change to a customer-centered work model. The main line of all actions revolves around capturing and activating customers. , the main goal is to increase customer value.

And in this environment, everything revolves around the main line of communication. Purchasing personnel and operating personnel need to focus on their own majors, effectively integrate communication needs, and use communication to amplify the effect. Purchasing personnel, store personnel, operations personnel and all personnel need to have certain communication design and planning capabilities, as well as new marketing capabilities in a community environment.

To do a good job in community marketing, you need to follow the following four steps to do a good job in community operations.

Building a good group is an important foundation for good community operation.

Retail stores have very good conditions for building a group. They already have brand endorsements and a certain stable customer base.

To establish a group, you must first eliminate the psychological barrier: worrying about customers being disturbed. According to research conducted by relevant third-party organizations: nearly 70% of people are willing to receive information push and are willing to establish social links.

The establishment of a retail store group cannot be an extensive group establishment model, that is, pulling everyone into a group regardless of their attributes, consumption capabilities, differences in appeal points, etc. The future of such a group Operations will be very difficult. This is also the main reason why many groups have become dead groups, or some people are active while most people are diving.

Enterprises should establish a matrix for community operations and establish relevant groups based on different customer dimensions.

The following dimensions can be distinguished:

Enterprises must pay special attention to building a seed user group. Such group members will generate very important communication value and will also help stores. Lots of great value.

Enterprises should not only build their own groups, but also combine the actual conditions of the business district and make good use of other valuable communities around the business district: square dancing aunts group, Tai Chi group, baby mom group, and fitness group. wait.

Different group themes should be determined according to the attributes of different groups:

In short, different customer attributes require different groups to be built and different communication themes to be determined.

The number of people in the group should be determined according to the actual situation. Generally, large groups should not be formed. The optimal number is generally around 200 people. It doesn’t have to be 500 people, the key is to bring people with the same attributes together.

There are many ways to establish a group:

After the group is established, the most important action in the operation of the group is how to activate the members of the group, which is your goal customer. The final goal that can be achieved is that the members of the group can generate a high degree of trust and dependence. Eventually, this trust and dependence can be transformed into the actual operation of the enterprise.

The goal of activation is to increase the frequency and activity of target customers in the store, from weekly activity to daily activity, or even to three activity per day.

Seven rules of activation:

(1) Emotional activation: The group must be an emotional space, and the group will complement the relationship between the enterprise and the target customers to a large extent. Emotional link effectively solves the emotional link between the "legal person" of the enterprise, which is an emotionless subject, and the emotional natural person.

Groups should focus on emotion and use emotion to link target customers. In a group environment, it is necessary to use emotions to close the social distance between the company and its goals.

If we do not talk about emotions and it is still a "rigid" sales relationship, we will lose the important meaning of being a group.

(2) Product Activation: When a retail store builds a community, it must ultimately be closely integrated with your product management.

What kind of products are suitable for the group to choose and what kind of product information is suitable for pushing? It is necessary to combine the characteristics of the group: how to create a sense of topic, how to generate members’ cries, and how to create an explosive effect.

The products pushed by the group cannot be a simple product selection, nor can it be information distribution based solely on price.

Product selection is very important. The best product selection goals are: new, strange, special + content. Products must have three novelties: novelty, freshness, and trendiness, and they must have a certain degree of uniqueness.

(3) Content activation: To activate group members, content dissemination is very important. It is necessary to select suitable communication content based on the characteristics of group members. Good content can serve as a glue, a lubricant, an amplifier, and more.

Currently, there are many ways to create content, which can be pictures, text, or short videos. Especially for short videos, their communication effect is very important.

(4) KOL activation: KOL marketing generally refers to social media marketing communication behaviors involving KOLs. It has the communication advantages of group communication and mass communication, and its marketing value is also recognized by the market.

Retail stores should attach great importance to the value of KOL in the social marketing center, and should combine social operations to cultivate their own KOL - food experts, foodies, parenting experts, health experts, sports experts, so that they can gradually play an important role in the community.

Make good use of KOLs around the store business district - square dance conveners, fitness coaches, Taekwondo instructors, senior confinement nanny, famous chefs, etc., so that they can work closely with your community operations. Combine them to maximize their value.

(5) Activity activation: Various innovative activities must be continuously organized. Including activities in the community and various offline activities.

Retail stores must especially combine the outstanding advantage of having a store, combine community operations with in-store activities, and give full play to the advantages of "store + community". It is necessary to organize some valuable experience activities based on the characteristics of community members, such as brand experience, picking activities, parent-child activities, etc., to play the important role of activating members and bringing them closer together.

(6) Red envelope activation: Red envelopes are an important function set up by the WeChat platform to activate group members. This important means of red envelopes must be used scientifically and effectively - what kind of groups are suitable for sending red envelopes, and what Time to send, how much to send? A set of rules must be devised. In particular, it is necessary to combine the actual situation of the group and closely combine the activation of red envelopes with the strengthening of group member relationships.

In a marketing environment, any action must have a clear purpose. The same goes for giving out red envelopes.

(7) Mini program activation: Mini program is WeChat’s main innovative technical tool that uses technical means to establish links, activate group members, and generate greater marketing value. Mini programs can generate systematic marketing value in a group-based environment.

We must start from establishing links, achieve the goal of online linking with target customers through mini programs, and turn mini programs into the main means of linking customers.

How to import relevant marketing actions after linking, enterprises need to configure an appropriate online marketing platform. This kind of online marketing platform can establish more functional values ??that meet the needs of enterprises for online transactions, docking with third-party home delivery platforms, and online marketing.

In the online marketing environment, the company's marketing concepts and marketing methods need to be adjusted. It is necessary to gradually abandon price methods and the traditional unit price theory, and transform to how to increase the number of target customers to the store and increase the number of customers. Purchase frequency and how to generate more effective repurchase rates are the main marketing goals.

There are many ways to activate customers, and more effective ways will be innovated in the future.

Although the group is a very loose organization, a complete set of management rules must be established to do a good job in the group, and it must be managed by dedicated personnel (a group without dedicated personnel can easily fall into chaos). I have observed some groups such as Hema Companies that do well are all managed by dedicated personnel.

It is very important to choose the administrator of this group. After observing a lot of group management, I came to this point: not everyone can manage the group. Many people do not have this kind of social management ability, and many store managers do not know how to manage groups.

This person must have strong social skills, especially the ability to manage acquaintances and semi-acquaintances, and the ability to turn strangers into adults. It must be enthusiastic, delicate, thoughtful, and have a certain tone.

Groups should establish rules: a group without rules will definitely not do well.

The group should determine the theme: the group communication should be centered around the theme. Try not to stray too far from the theme of the group. Not to mention violating political disciplines and breaking the law.

Facing the era of 5,000 friend circles that has entered and more and more groups, we must pay special attention to the following principles when doing a good job in a group: try our best to create value for members and minimize the interruption of spam messages.

The groups of retail stores should be adjusted regularly: First, through the operation of the group, some valuable customers should be gradually screened out and optimized into the company's VIP value customer group, and some ineffective group members who are siphoning off traffic should be gradually removed. Eliminate; the second is to enhance the value of the group and increase its activity through appropriate adjustments.

To give full play to the value of a good group, on the one hand, we must do a good job in the group, and more importantly, we can bring into play the value of group members, especially seed users, and use the means of communication in the mobile environment to generate greater influence through seed users. The fission of marketing communications will generate greater value.

Good communication depends on content. Only good content has communication attributes.

Good communication requires some effective communication methods to facilitate the communication among group members. At the same time, in the mobile Internet environment, with the help of new online transaction methods, communication is playing a greater role. The previous marketing model that separated communication and transaction has now formed a marketing model that integrates communication and transaction.

One of the very important marketing models in the future is: sales through communication, and communication through sales.

Based on the traditional business model of existing enterprises and stores, the simple "store + community" model will produce certain effects, but the complete in-store model is completely product-centered. The business philosophy cannot fully adapt to the new retail model of store + community. It is necessary to make appropriate adjustments to the operating systems of existing enterprises and stores in conjunction with the current social marketing environment and the current mobile Internet communication environment.

Judging from the current traditional stores, most of them reflect a product-centered business model, including: store design layout, department functions, and job settings, most of which reflect the product center and management of products.

To transform the “store + community” marketing model, it is necessary to make adjustments to the store’s operating system.

Their main responsibility is to use current effective means such as communities, links, and communication to effectively capture customers, effectively activate customers, and effectively increase customer value.

In order to create the IP attributes of the store and create the "photography feeling" of the store, we must no longer set customer restrictions influenced by the traditional concept of "no photography". Being able to generate customer photos and automatically distribute to Moments means that the company's marketing capabilities have caught up with the changes of the times and have marketing capabilities in the new mobile Internet environment.

Independent communication that can be generated by customers is the most valuable communication.

Marketing has become the dominant communication in the mobile Internet environment. The marketing model of retail enterprises must be reformed and adjusted, and the marketing system must be reconstructed with new mobile communication as the main line.

Enterprises should establish special communication departments, and stores should set up special communication specialists. The communication department must have strong content production capabilities—that is, it must be able to produce more internal communication within the company and drive valuable content to be spread by seed users and target customers.

The content should be very broad and should not be limited to the products and promotions themselves. It is necessary to combine the communication characteristics in the Internet environment, use "two micro-blogs and one TikTok" as the main platform, and combine relevant communication elements such as public accounts and short videos to build a new communication-led marketing system.

The current marketing transformation of retail enterprises is to build a new marketing system dominated by new communication.

In the face of the new retail market environment, the traditional model of commodity and category management of retail enterprises must be adjusted; in the face of the current communication and marketing environment, enterprises must transform the traditional commodity organization and category management model; in the face of In the new store + community new retail model, companies need to adapt to the commodity and category management model in the community environment.

In a community environment, product organizations must actively innovate the "explosion product" model, and the community itself can create good soil for "explosion products".

Category management and marketing models should be combined with current consumer demand characteristics and actively create scenario-based category innovations. From the original category management model based on the physical attributes of goods to a scenario-based category management model characterized by consumers' daily needs.

Focus on the demand scenarios of target customers, focus on combining marketing needs in the community environment, and promote scenario-based category management and marketing model innovation.

Scenarioization must be the main direction of retail store category change, and this change requires a process. Moreover, sceneization must be a form of expression for thousands of stores and thousands of faces. In the future, the key breakthrough points for seeking enterprise category differentiation and creating new competitive advantages will mainly focus on the main direction of scenarioization.

The traditional chain retail model is mainly characterized by a high degree of unified management by the headquarters. This chain model uses standardization as the main management method. Although standardization brings efficiency to enterprise management, it greatly sacrifices the innovative vitality of the organization.

At present, the result of this chain model is "one store in a thousand stores", and this retail pattern can no longer adapt to the current changes in consumer demand.

I agree with an expert’s point of view: the main feature of current consumption changes is that consumption changes too fast.

Today’s consumer demand has indeed formed a “fast-changing” situation. Faced with the rapid changes in consumer demand and the rapid changes in the market, the main indicator of testing the core competitiveness of enterprises in the future is the innovation ability of enterprises.

Retail companies must re-create a new corporate organizational model, giving stores, managers at all levels, and employees at all levels sufficient room for innovation to innovate and adapt to the constant changes in the market.

Author: Bao Yuezhong (WeChat: bc7180), senior economist, expert of the "Ten Thousand Villages and Thousands of Townships Market Project" of the Ministry of Commerce

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