“What are the two most critical words for ‘growth’? As a result, the audience answered in unison: ‘ Buy volume! ‘”, in 2017, Zhang Ximeng, the founder of GrowingIO, who focuses on business growth, asked the audience at a small meeting. audience. Received such an answer as a result.
Behind this dumbfounded answer, digitalization with “growth” as the core has been hyped by the industry. In the past few years, the concept of digitization has already gone out of the Internet and has attracted the attention of more traditional enterprises. Especially under the catalysis of the new crown epidemic, “digitalization” has sunk to smaller companies and organizations.
However, when people talk about digitization today, they still see the “legends” of big Internet companies and well-known companies that used digitization to successfully transform. It seems that according to the digital template summed up by these large companies, it is possible to reduce costs, increase efficiency, improve competitiveness, and replicate its success.
But the truth is, for small and medium-sized enterprises, in the face of increasingly brutal competition in the market, their current primary business purpose is not to become “bigger and stronger”, but “to survive and seek development.” If companies are regarded as living organisms, digitalization is not to draw an illusory “grand blueprint” for them, but to actually help companies at different stages to enhance their vitality, survive and live longer in the digital economy era ,healthier.
However, how can such “digital vitality” be obtained through digital upgrading? This requires not only trying, but also learning.
Through exchanges with a number of digital pioneer companies and organizations, Geek Park has come up with a set of “digital three-axes”. This set of experiences may allow companies that are on the road to digital to get some reflections, so that digital can enhance their company’s Vitality without being blindly digitized.
Don’t “advanced” blindly, make up for shortcomings
In recent years, digitization has become a hot word. When Zhang Ximeng, the founder of Growing IO, translated “Growing Hacking” a few years ago and was highly praised by the circle, it was the peak of domestic mobile Internet development. From Internet giants to start-up companies, the rapid growth of the industry has made the traditional industries that have always been stable envy.
In the past few years, especially after the epidemic, the demand for digitization of traditional entity enterprises began to explode, and some companies even set up chief information officer or chief data officer positions. A large number of talents responsible for growth and digitization in the Internet industry have gradually flowed into traditional enterprises. Bringing digital thinking into traditional large companies.
Alex Hao used to be a member of Growing IO and worked with Zhang Ximeng to develop and serve clients of all sizes. Now, he also “flows” to a leading dairy company. From “Party B” to “Party A”, Alex’s biggest impression is that for large enterprises, the strong business capabilities of traditional large enterprises make it unnecessary to worry about the urgency of survival, and consider more strategic leadership. The digitalization process is relatively slow (iterative), but a project can easily reach 60 billion.”
Internet companies and traditional large enterprises have abundant funds and can spend a lot of money to conduct trial and error. Many large companies are promoting multiple digital projects at the same time. The expectation of large enterprises for digitalization is to seek incremental markets on the one hand, and to reduce costs and increase efficiency on the other hand, thereby enhancing competitiveness.
For large companies, dataization can be roughly summarized into four stages:
1 Optimize the supply chain and make the “goods” clear;
2 force growth;
3 Optimize and simplify processes to improve efficiency;
4 Optimize staffing and reduce costs;
Large corporations may have traversed all four stages simultaneously. For small and medium-sized companies, especially under the epidemic, “digitalization” is more of a survival need.
Kan Oli, a “former musician” who studied music since childhood and later became a sound mixer, turned into an entrepreneur in 2014. The entrepreneurial project is related to the place he often goes to work – “coffee”. Babit specializes in raw materials and tools such as coffee beans, utensils and chocolate, and has business online and offline.
8 Bit Coffee uses digitalization to manage the national supply chain system｜ 8 Bit
As a coffee practitioner, the company is headquartered in Beijing. In fact, there are “natural shortcomings”, and the cost is much higher than that of its peers. Therefore, the supply chain of 8bit is scattered all over the place, with factories in Yunnan and warehouses in Anhui and Guangdong. It is unrealistic to rely solely on manpower to manage and manage such a large front, so 8 Bit has had to carry out “digital management” since its birth. A large amount of coffee needs to be produced within 5 days, which has high requirements for the supply chain, especially digitalization. It is necessary to place orders in advance, and also consider the problems of commodity logistics. “It is unrealistic to rely on people to use their fingers.”
Due to the connection with offline catering stores, Kan Oli also saw the change in thinking of offline catering practitioners from initially being helpless to quickly accepting digitalization under the epidemic.
“After the closure of dine-in meals in April, the turnover of general traditional catering after the closure of dine-in meals is 15%-30% of the usual, but restaurants with registered riders for takeaway business may maintain about 65% of the previous turnover,” Kan Ou ” All industries are the same, a high degree of digitization can greatly improve your odds of survival,” Li said.
Therefore, the first measure of digital vitality, whether it is a startup company or a traditional small and medium-sized company, should not blindly learn the digital experience of large companies, because on the one hand, it is a “legend” created; on the other hand, each company is different. , there is no immutable digital “template”, copying the work of large companies does not guarantee success.
Instead, what small companies have to do is to analyze themselves first, find out what resources they have at hand, find out the problems that need to be solved, and make up for the shortcomings.
Scatter “eggs” and find “matching channels”
In recent years, various concepts have emerged one after another, from O2O, new retail, live streaming, to private domain and public domain, dizzying for companies.
Large companies may try all of them, but for ordinary small and medium-sized companies, it is difficult to understand these concepts alone. If they want to take advantage of the dividends to use the “wool” of all the outlet channels and platforms, they are often unable to do what they want.
In general, the most mainstream business channels on the market can be divided into four categories:
1. The traditional e-commerce channels represented by Alibaba and JD.com control the mind of the purchase side, and the purpose of the user’s use is clear;
2. The private domain positions represented by WeChat and Alipay are of the same size. Among them, WeChat’s advantages are social attributes and large user scale; Alipay’s advantages are that users are closer to money (payment) and have high conversion efficiency;
3. Live e-commerce such as Douyin Kuaishou, relying on the logic of explosive products, has higher requirements for product selection and advertising content;
4. Community products such as Xiaohongshu that use content marketing to realize order conversion…
For small and medium-sized companies, the most important thing may not be to chase hot spots and “full coverage”, but to find the resources and channels that best match them according to their business, and accumulate and improve user assets through refined self-operation.
Zhao Liang, COO of Tashanji, who specializes in fashionable tea drinks, believes that now that the current population, traffic and platform dividends are gradually disappearing, it is more and more difficult for brands to imagine that they used to be “popular” only by a certain channel. One of the facts that is visible to the naked eye is that the e-commerce activity data on June 18 in the middle of the year is no longer the same as before. The more this moment is, the more attention should be paid to the selection of channels for deep cultivation. “There are more than 40 large and small channels in the market. You need data to reflect which channels are worthy of deep cultivation and investment. There are too many channels, which cannot be well managed and delivered on time. , the favorable rate will drop, and the channel will shrink. ”
At the same time, when the dividends of existing platforms gradually disappear, operators should also take the initiative to find new platforms or platforms that have not been paid attention to before to find “hidden dividends”.
Zhou Cong revealed that Juhui Technology once operated high-end milk products for an agricultural product company, and found that the growth rate of traditional e-commerce platforms continued to decline. Later, the team accidentally opened a small store on Alipay, because the latter has a 2%-5% fee reduction, which reduces transaction costs in the first place. So in November 2020, I started trying to open a small program on Alipay, and in more than two weeks, I got more than 10,000 orders. Moreover, due to the low cost of Alipay public domain traffic, the gross profit is considerable.
The numbers for this year’s June 18 shopping season are hard to please | Internet
Therefore, Juhui Technology has also begun to guide traditional customers to transfer to Alipay, the “new land of happiness”. Because Juhui Technology’s charging model is to charge customers a growth service fee, and Alipay’s exciting growth prospects have made Juhui Technology take a more radical step from the outside world, choosing to “All in” the company’s operating business on Alipay.
Different channels and platforms have different directions for private domain operations.
Zhou Cong revealed that on traditional e-commerce platforms, they are generally called “XX flagship stores”; but on Alipay platforms, they will be called “Welfare Clubs” because Alipay has a strong mind in transactions, and it can be done through the consumption coupon channel and payment completion page. And so on, the coupons can be accurately pushed to the target group, users can receive the coupons and place an order to complete the closed sales loop. And Alipay users are more sensitive to “large-value digital coupons”. In response to such characteristics, targeted promotion of preferential activities during community operations has greatly improved the brand’s conversion rate on the Alipay platform.
Of course, outside the private domain, “global” has also become a hot word in the past two years. In Zhang Ximeng’s view, the whole domain does not refer to omni-channel, but is essentially an advanced user management and experience management method. Whether online or offline, each channel must do a good job of refined operation and management. And continue to observe, which contacts work better? More importantly, the data behind these “domains” must be connected to each other for use by the company. On the one hand, Global Domain helps clarify the complex relationship between channels, on the other hand, it provides users with a more coherent user experience.
Zhao Liang, COO of Heshanji, also believes that a healthy universe is actually not putting eggs in one basket.
“At present, most companies are already digitizing a single channel, and they are gradually launching multi-channel refined operations, but they have not yet entered the global stage.” Zhang Ximeng said that it is indeed difficult, but many big brands have already started to do this. , at least first unify online and offline channel prices, and accumulate unified data and user portraits in the brand database. This is the general direction of future marketing development. Therefore, the second measure of the three-pronged approach to digital vitality is to advise companies not to put their eggs in one basket, to find suitable channels for them, and to exert their efforts efficiently.
Not a “big gamble”, but a “progressive win”
One often sees big companies investing heavily in digitization and achieving impressive results. Or on emerging platforms and channels, some companies “become popular overnight”, as if digitalization is a “gold finger”, as long as they are used, they can be replicated successfully.
However, for small and medium-sized companies, rushing to introduce digitalization like big companies may cause indigestion. One is that small companies cannot afford the “trial and error costs” like large companies; the other is that small companies’ business is relatively simple and does not necessarily require such complex and expensive digital solutions.
Therefore, the digitalization process of small and medium-sized companies should be gradual, from one stage victory to another stage victory, and successfully solve problems in each “closed loop”.
In particular, the digital potential of “small channels and small endpoints”, which are easily overlooked by enterprises, can also bring considerable increments if tapped.
In addition, another point that is easily overlooked by many enterprises is that digitalization is only a tool and does not change the essence of business. Enterprises must build their own digital vitality. No matter which channels are deployed, the core is data, and they must continue to build a self-operation system to accumulate and accumulate. User assets, in addition to the pursuit of user scale, should also pay attention to user repurchase, activity and conversion value, which is the bottom layer of the business.
Zhang Ximeng also reminded that digitalization is a phased construction rather than an overnight success. When a single channel is being built gradually, enterprises do not need to worry too much about the construction problems of the whole domain. They only need to move forward step by step and continue to find a way to activate the vitality of the enterprise, and they will naturally get positive feedback and explore the digital transformation path with the characteristics of the enterprise.
“Soil” for Cultivating Digital Vitality
Above we mentioned three company-level “digital vitality” construction rules, but in fact, digitalization not only requires small and medium-sized companies to make their own reflections and choices, but also requires Internet platforms that provide digital positions and tools for small and medium-sized enterprises to follow up .
Geek Park believes that instead of serving top customers as before, enhancing the competitiveness of the latter, creating a “myth” of growth, and then monetizing the experience to smaller customers. It is better to spend more energy to improve the capabilities of tools and systems, and provide convenient and implementable solutions for those small and medium-sized customers who need more vitality from digitalization.
In this regard, many Internet companies have already participated in providing high-quality digital growth platforms for small and medium-sized customers. For example, Alipay, which was previously considered to be only a payment tool, has been gradually upgraded to an open platform for digital life in recent years. Through the opening of some core public domain traffic and the continuous upgrading and iteration of digital products, it provides new opportunities for the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises. Possibilities, and valuable room for growth.
In a sense, there is still a lot that big Internet companies can do, and there is still a lot of room for improvement. Only by calling on more companies to cultivate the soil of “digital vitality” can we make it more nutritious and help more small and medium-sized companies to complete their digitalization process.
At the same time, it also reminds enterprises that in the era of digital economy, enterprises should be given a frame of reference to take care of their own status at any time, whether they adapt to changes in the environment and change. The digital age is changing rapidly, and the warning of survival of the fittest is still in my ears.
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