A few days ago, I saw a question sent to me by a fan on the backstage. His general idea was as follows: "I am in the hairdressing industry and have read many of your articles, but you talked about many marketing strategies, such as occupying

A market segment, cost-benefit analysis, analogy to known information, etc., don’t seem to apply to me, what’s going on?”

Why do some marketing methods seem to malfunction in the hairdressing industry and are no longer useful?

Here, we first need to know the essential difference between these industries and other industries.

Hairdressing is an industry with a high marginal delivery time (marginal delivery time: the extra time you need to pay for each additional customer).

Each barber's time is rigid. Even if his skills are top-notch in the country, he can only serve a limited number of customers in a day, and other customers can only be given to competitors.

Industries with relatively high marginal delivery times are collectively called service industries.

Similar industries include catering, consulting, repair, offline training and other industries.

When it comes to services, it naturally leads to products.

One characteristic of products is exactly the opposite of services: short marginal delivery times.

For example, in the beverage industry, due to the existence of economies of scale, the factory no longer has to spend separate time on production for each additional bottle of beverage sold - the factory produces enough beverages at one time, and the total production time has been amortized.

In fact, some products are extremely standardized and virtualized, so that the marginal delivery time is close to zero.

For example, for Didi, for every additional passenger, the extra time Didi spends on it approaches zero—because private car drivers bear the time cost of picking up and carrying passengers for it.

For another example, if you obtain the virtual knowledge in the APP, for each additional copy sold, the author does not have to spend any more time for it, and the marginal delivery time approaches zero.

On the contrary, if it is an offline education institution, the same course needs to be taught again by the teacher for each group of students, which makes the marginal delivery time very high.

The so-called market concentration refers to whether, in an industry, "a few companies have a large number of users and earn super high profits, while the remaining companies struggle to survive", or whether it is "the gap between the best and worst companies"

Not much, most companies earn average profits”.

The former is called a centralized market (for example, the only food delivery platforms are Meituan and Ele.me), and the latter is called a decentralized market (there are so many restaurants across the country).

The key factor that determines whether an industry is in a centralized market or a decentralized market is what we mentioned earlier - marginal delivery time.

"Products" with a short marginal delivery time can often be copied quickly and establish wider use or awareness (such as Coca-Cola sold all over the world, Didi private cars promoted nationwide); while "products" with a long marginal delivery time can

Service", the ability to radiate outwards is often very limited (for example, no one may know about a famous restaurant near your home in another city). Based on the above logic, maybe you already understand why some methods are not applicable at all.

Traditional service industry - because many marketing strategies are designed to solve the problem of product promotion that "quickly builds widespread awareness", rather than services.

(Traditional service industries often need more specific methods such as sales, local promotion, channels, pricing adjustments, eye-catching or consumption-promoting activity development, rather than more marketing strategies) Then, someone should ask - I

We are indeed in the service industry. According to what you said, we can only make average profits now. Is there any way to become better in the industry?

Of course there is.

If the marginal delivery time of services can be significantly reduced while product quality is guaranteed, transaction efficiency can be improved and greater profits can be obtained.

So, the question comes back to, how to reduce the marginal delivery time of services?

It's very simple, improve the standardization of services.

Modularize the service itself to reduce marginal delivery time and improve efficiency.

For example, my grandma's "Mapo Tofu", which costs three yuan a portion, is to break down the product production flow into modules (such as tofu cutting, dipping, cooking, etc.), and then proceed on each module.

Through optimization, the quality of "Ma Po Tofu" no longer depends on the chef, but on tools and processes, which ultimately greatly improves the speed of serving.

(ps: Anyone can make a delicious plate of Mapo Tofu under this process. This is the result of modularity) Another example is the traditional suit customization company, which is similar to a workshop-style operation.

Depending on the body data, several tailors are generally responsible for the entire process from fabric cutting to sewing.

The lead time for suits is generally about one month.

The large-scale reverse customization of Red Collar Group has achieved the miracle of completing suit production within 7 days.

This is because Red Collar decomposes the suit production process into N modules (such as buttons, pockets, sleeves, shoulder width, swallowtails, etc.). Under each module, there is standardized control of professional equipment. In each module

After production and optimization are completed, they are finally spliced ??together.