How to break the bottleneck of offline traffic? The survival way of physical stores in third-and fourth-tier cities

As the temperature dropped, sporadic new cases began to appear in various places. The offline entities that have just recovered once again recall the fear of being dominated by the epidemic.

In fact, even if there is no epidemic, the days of physical stores in recent years are not easy. Because of the online impact, the decline in traffic has always been the number one problem for offline stores. Although some large-flow business innovations have begun to appear offline in the past two years, there are very few small players who can mediate.

"If you use the mode of burning money to fight online, you will lose one order every time you receive one. This is self-destruction. But if you don't do it, there may not be a single order. What should we do at this time? "

In the recent new wave brand club membership activities, Li, the founder of Zebra Photography, combined with his own trading case, deeply shared the path to break the offline traffic bottleneck of physical stores from thinking to methodology.

Li has been engaged in the photography industry for 20 years and has founded more than 65,438+00 photography institutions continuously. He has rich practical experience in draining customers from physical stores in second, third and fourth tier cities. Zebra photography occupied 75% of the fourth-tier cities from 0 in two and a half years, and summed up a unique practical methodology of shop community.

The following excerpts are some wonderful contents to share with you!

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Finishing Xiaolong

Personally, I have always been a physical store, and I have also encountered the impact of online traffic in the past two years, so today's theme is: How do physical stores in third-and fourth-tier cities break the traffic bottleneck in the era of mobile Internet?

In fact, it is to share our store's actual play and problem-solving ideas with everyone, hoping to bring some thoughts.

First of all, it is an objective fact that physical stores are facing online shocks, especially in third-and fourth-tier cities. Why?

/kloc-when we opened a store 0/0 years ago, the first thing we had to solve was the store problem. Unless you get a first-hand shop from a developer or property, you need a very high transfer fee.

In third-and fourth-tier cities, the transfer fee for a 500-to 800-square-meter shop is 200,000, or even higher. And we have to face this problem every time we open a shop. We paid a transfer fee of 800,000 yuan at most.

But in the last five years, when we opened a new store, we found that the transfer fee gradually disappeared. There are more and more empty shops, even rent-free for two or three years, and the turnover rate of many top commercial complexes is particularly high.

What's the problem? The offline traffic is gone and the store can't be rented out.

So five years ago, we were thinking, how can this industry continue? Is the market really shrinking? Actually, it's not. It's just a traffic problem. How to solve it? This is what I want to share with you tonight.

I have been engaged in photography for 20 years. Before 15 years, as long as you opened a store, you would have achieved something. I don't need too much promotion or operation, and a large number of customers will enter the store.

However, customers' consumption habits have changed, especially after 20 15, a large number of customers are no longer on the road, but in their mobile phones.

Everyone knows this, but the channel cost is too high. Because the traffic of online channels is fixed, what we do online is paid traffic, and we can never compete with the head enterprises. They can raise the traffic cost very high, but we can't.

Tell a very real case, like the physical stores we operate in third-and fourth-tier cities, and some "aircraft carrier" companies with capital background, in order to obtain accurate customer capital, the cost of a customer capital can be increased to 2000 yuan.

Just a name and a phone call will cost 2000 yuan, which we can't imagine.

How do you compete with it? If you use the mode of burning money to fight against it in the channel, you will lose the order every time you receive the order. This is self-destruction, and you must die in the end.

What should we do at this time? If I really give up this channel, do I have more channels to get customers? I believe you can.

In fact, the biggest cost is not the marketing cost, but the store rent and labor cost.

So don't compete with these internet companies. What is the core meaning of a physical store? Is the customer experience and viscosity. The operation mode of Internet and e-commerce is out of reach, especially for our high customer unit price industry, stores are the best endorsement of trust.

Doing a good job in store service is the foundation of our survival. At this time, you will find that there must be potential customers around the customers who clinch the deal, which is the key for us to compete for channel traffic and solve the problem of customers arriving at the store.

Our sales team's first reaction before meeting customers is how to clinch a deal, which is a constant clinch a deal thinking.

The most realistic problem of physical stores is that they only look at the transaction, the results and the performance, which is different from many industries. For example, the Internet industry may need data, downloads, registration and membership.

But for physical stores, the traditional operation mode is to close the deal, and it is best to close the deal as soon as we meet.

I don't think so. Since customers are the same group, there are so many tools to strengthen social relations now, why don't I find potential customers first? As for whether this customer can clinch a deal, solving the problem of communication and fission first is actually the problem of potential customers.

Because we closed the deal as soon as we started, customers would be resistant and the market competition would be fierce, so we could not achieve a closing rate of 100%. If I lose this customer, I will not only lose this order, but also lose the whole potential customer base behind him.

This jumps out of the original trading thinking and produces a new concept called flow thinking.

When we meet a customer, we don't consider whether to make a deal, but let him become a channel of communication and fission, and carry out group fission with potential customers around him in the form of a gift package.

After this action happens, you will find a qualitative change. If the turnover rate remains the same, your growth will come out when the traffic changes from one month 100 customers to 700 to 800 customers.

Similarly, the second change of thinking is from product thinking to customer thinking.

In the process of contacting customers, we must not say how good our products are. Because for Ma Bao, children's photography is only a very low-frequency scene, and she also has various needs such as health education, entertainment and leisure, and parent-child relationship.

So we will integrate many things from friends and businesses in the industrial chain to connect with Ma Bao. In this mode, you will find that the customer and your viscosity are instantaneous.

This is actually related to my third point: from quality thinking to value thinking, it is interlinked. From how good our products are and how good our photos are, what kind of value we can provide to Ma Bao and potential customers.

Because the photo itself is not just what Ma Bao needs. Therefore, our logic is to let her bring in potential customers while generating more value with customers.

Because people are grouped, there must be Ma Bao around Ma Bao, which is inevitable. When your child enters a circle, you will meet many people your age from kindergarten. This circle is very important.

When we get through the circle, you will find that the relationship and group established between this precious mother and you will bring more precious mothers together with families with children. Why? Because we have not been selling products with customers, but are doing value output.

This value output is very meaningful, because for Ma Bao, there are too many needs for children's health, safety and happiness.

When she is in contact with us, she will find that this children's photography can not only take pictures, but also provide many things for early education and amusement. Moreover, we haven't realized this part, which is completely based on the value output and built by friends, so Ma Bao will have a strong sense of value.

At this time, you will find that in fact, you are not short of customers, and there are too many baby mothers who will help us spread and split.

In fact, interacting with users, many traditional stores will like to do offline salons.

But now consumers are lazy, and what can be solved online will definitely not go offline. So don't do too many offline things. Can you solve some problems? Yes, but at the same time there is no way to increase traffic.

So all our interactions are solved online, especially in the community. Why not use corporate WeChat and applets? Because consumers will resist this marketing tool very much, they still want to deal with a real person with flesh and blood and feelings.

The existence of this person is very important, and the output of value is also through this.

In this process, all our communities are created by one customer, which is basically within 40 or 50 people and will not exceed this upper limit. Why?

First, the larger the group, the lower the accuracy of your screening.

Second, the more people in the group, the more junk information there is.

Third, once a WeChat group has problems, its diffusion scope is small, and the negative damage to the brand is minimized.

In recent years, I have been studying and rooting personal micro-signals and micro-signals. There are too many details and the team has taken many detours, so I will spend more time talking about the actual operation of the community.

In the early days, we had to pull a large group of 500 people every time. Later, we found a problem. Only a few people participated in the interaction, and even 90% of them didn't even grab the red envelope. Why?

Because it's too noisy, it looks like a group of 500 people, and 450 of them are set up so as not to be disturbed. For this group, these 450 people are dead fans because they can't see.

So we don't pursue the number of groups, but the effectiveness of this group, and active fans are the core. What is an active fan? It's simple. Try to send a red envelope. If there are more than 300 people in the group, and you send 100 red envelopes, you can't finish them in 5-6 minutes, then it's basically a dead group.

All our groups require no more than 50 people, and about 10% of these 50 people have effective potential customers, which is overestimated. In other words, as long as 5 out of 50 people are interested in us, the spread and fission of 1:5 is completed, which is the core part.

Conversely, why should our physical store be a community? The core is to create private domain traffic. As I told the team, if traffic is in the public domain, anyone can reach for it. If you use the net, others may use electricity or even sprinkle medicine. Finally, a water pump. How do you play?

What is the logic of private domain traffic? I build my own fish pond and do marketing according to our rhythm and market. Just like we are in the photography industry, even if the service is good and the brand power is strong, it is impossible for him to take pictures every month.

So you want to improve the customer and export value, not that I want to get customers today, so I want to promote sales and market. If you don't interact and link with the guests at ordinary times, his impression of your brand is that you only do activities and just want to take money from my pocket.

Especially photography, education, and medical care are not just needed, and not everyone has to spend them. What do we do is nothing more than value output. When there is no marketing, it must be value and brand output, otherwise the first reaction of users is that you are making packaging.

So we set up thousands of groups to create private domain names:

First, objectively speaking, I don't know when the customer wants to take pictures, because it is not just needed, so it is impossible to be accurate;

Second, to be a company with brand power, you can't promote customers frequently;

Third, for customers, he is safe in this group, no one is noisy frequently, no spam, no advertisements.

Because almost all the people in the group are shared and split by customers, it must be acquaintances around him who can share the fission.

So what problem does the store private domain traffic solve? One of the most primitive logics of doing a store is the customer radius. Children's photography radius is 5- 10 km, and wedding photography may be 20-30 km.

How to cover all customers within this radius? This is very important. Our method is to ask customers to help me finish it. Its advantage is that there is no cost, no cost to the group, and no cost to customers.

I built thousands of fish ponds at a very low operating cost. There are not many fish in each pond, but the relationship between these fish is very good, which is very important.

What is the core of this? In fact, it is WeChat.

The biggest difference between WeChat and all other social tools is the strong relationship attribute. The people in WeChat must be people you have had relationships with before. What problem does strong relationship attribute solve? Trust, the most important thing we can do with our customers is trust.

The explosion group mentioned above is to make a deal with these potential customers. This transaction may only be 19.9 or 99, but it doesn't matter. The important thing is that he has given.

What problem does this payment solve?

First, screen customers. He must be local, because we are a physical store, and he must be within my customer base. Otherwise, no matter how favorable you are, no matter how good the brand is, no matter how good the things are, he won't pay the bill because he can't come.

Second, confirm the trust relationship. He can pay you, even if it is a small amount, at least it shows that he believes you. By diverting him to the store through small transactions, you have the opportunity to build greater trust in the back.

So the value of online transactions is not the result, but the spread and fission.

In this section of children's photography, the average unit price of stores in third-and fourth-tier cities is 1.5 million yuan. If this price is traded online by a stranger, according to the experience accumulated by our team in recent years, the transaction rate is 3%-8%, which means that more than 90% of my client's funds will be wasted.

What is the reason why he didn't close the deal? No demand? Obviously not. He won't come to you without asking.

So later we adjusted the online trading mode. After the online unit price was adjusted from 1500 to 99, the transaction rate suddenly rose to 58%.

Do customers really only have 99% demand? When customers make purchase decisions, the sense of security is the first, and this sense of security cannot be solved by words or products. 99 is a very attractive price. Even if there is something wrong with this product, I will only pay 99 in the end.

After this action, we quickly asked him to do brand fission. When she has this need, it is only a matter of proportion whether people around her will also have it.

There must be a profit drive. If you let her spend 99 yuan to get a 599 content, of course she is willing to help you spread it and help you put together a group. But our logic is not distribution, and customers have no commission.

I often emphasize that to do fission through value shaping, we must not make the distribution model of WeChat business. Most customers actually don't want their friends to know that she is making friends' money.

Moreover, we are a physical store and pay more attention to the brand, so we can't make such a big base.

Once the distribution model is made, it is a dead end. You will find that it can't be done, because your customer coverage is limited, and it is impossible to make a model like WeChat business no matter how it is split.

Therefore, physical stores should never treat customers as WeChat business and do distribution.

When the customer fission is completed, the second group transaction is completed. The last thing to do is to invite these online payment customers to the store to further increase the customer unit price, okay? Of course, this is easy to do.

So what is the core of the whole process? Reproduction and fission In the end, trading becomes the weakest point of the whole thing, that is, what we call trading is the result rather than the purpose.

Next, I'll tell you about team performance and execution.

Perhaps the managers of traditional physical stores are more concerned with data quantification, which is of course very important, but what is the core of the implementation level? It's flow thinking. The purpose of doing this is to catch traffic, which has nothing to do with performance. Performance is the final result, not your goal.

If performance is the result of social fission, this matter will go astray again. Because when you are performance-oriented, many practices at the executive level will be deformed.

We have also stepped on many pits and constantly adjusted the KPI and performance of the social sector throughout the promotion process. Today, when building the new brand of our zebra team, we made some improvements:

I. What are quantitative indicators? Is the efficiency of fission. This is our number one project, that is, the store manager responsibility system. The fission of the community, the effective activity of the community and the introduction of new powder through active groups are the core indicators of the store manager.

Second, the special responsibility system. We have a dedicated online customer service staff responsible for docking. These groups must be special groups. We can't let sales or after-sales people do this part-time. Part-time jobs will definitely not fall behind.

Third, standardization at the executive level, including speeches, copywriting and product promotion. Only in this way can it be efficient. At present, there are about 4400 people in the zebra family team, and basically only two numbers are maintained, because everything is standardized.

Many friends ask me, do you often send in groups? I said no, our group is quiet 80% of the time, and the interaction within the group is not frequent, 1-2 times a week. The content of these interactions is standardized and must be a high-value output that customers are interested in.

What is high-value output? It's simple. We will find many friends and businessmen to interact with, and make some things with lower threshold for fans through them. Because these friends' physical stores also lack traffic, we have so many customer groups, and high-value output is to regard ourselves as a platform.

But I don't accept money from my friends, so that businesses with high repurchase rate and insufficient traffic are willing to cooperate with us. The current frequency is about 2-3 times a month, which are basically businesses in the parent-child industry chain and high-frequency service organizations, such as the automobile and beauty industries.

What is the purpose of making these things? Keep in touch with customers. When these things are standardized, you will find it very easy to manage one thing. We maintain the two numbers of these communities, but actually one person is doing it.

Many friends also communicated with me, saying how to do this? Very simple, not complicated. Today, more than 4,000 groups of our single brand are made by one group and two groups.

So if you want to make this system, you should start with every guest. If we want to do this well, only our bosses can take root. You should know what the customers really think and what the team really thinks.

If you only listen to the employee's report, it must be abnormal. I'm in our first 200 groups. Of course, it is very standard now, and newcomers are easy to get started.

In addition, it is data recovery. Our store will resume trading every day and week, and finally the store manager will make a monthly resumption with the company with the data. All our words, copywriting, product promotion, including the strategy of grouping and splitting, are extracted bit by bit.

Finally, the point-to-point return visit system for all community customers.

I often say a logic, customer unit price 1500, customer unit price 99. Which of these two types of customers is more likely to have a sense of customer experience? Obviously, it is a 99 customer. These customers are actually very important, because he is the lowest customer base.

If our operation team wants to maximize market share, it must be the base, that is, the flow. So why do you have to do explosion or low-cost drainage strategy, just to better create a customer experience.

The sense of experience that exceeds customer expectations is for you to create. He spent 99 yuan, and you gave him the service standard and service experience of 1000 yuan. The power of word-of-mouth communication is different.

Actually, just like the competition of Internet e-commerce, why do you want to buy JD.COM? COM bill? Because of the good customer experience, our whole group needs to make millions of purchases in JD.COM every year. Maybe Taobao and Pinduoduo are cheaper, but if you buy this thing back, who can you find to solve it in case there is a problem?

In today's mobile Internet era, when there are too many Internet marketing modules in social e-commerce and community marketing, physical stores can solve the problem as long as they grasp the core of the problem, and the threshold is very low and not complicated.

When you solve all the problems, you will find that the physical store is not particularly difficult.

Q: What is the rising logic from 99 to 1500? What changes are needed in the team and supply chain?

Li: The price from 99 to 1500 is progressive, and 99% of people can accept it.

Then why don't customers pay directly 1500? No demand? Obviously not, customers have needs, but the needs are not so strong. A weak demand, you give him a high price, he will feel that he doesn't just need it or don't believe you.

99 yuan's logic is that I let you experience it first, because what we do is professional and can let customers see the change immediately.

Do not accept the service process, you show him the previous products, and the photos of other people's children have no sense of substitution, so he thinks you are selling in packaging.

If the price is 99, let him take pictures first. When he saw his children taking pictures, this objective feeling was very real. Is it much easier for you to let him pay more value at this time?

Of course, the supply chain and product line are definitely different, and the products of 99 and 1500 cannot be exactly the same. For example, 99 may give him 5, but 1500 gives him 100.

When this photo is someone else's, there is no difference between five photos and 100 photos for customers. But when my children were taking pictures, there was a big gap between the five and 100. This is the psychology of customers.

Q: What is the core of building trust among communities and friends? How to balance?

Li: Actually, it's very simple. You must treat your customers as friends. I often emphasize to the team that if you regard customers as sales targets, it will never be balanced, because customers will always be your mentality of marketing me.

Therefore, when we export value in all communities, it does not bring any benefits, because as long as you bring it, customers will know that we can even publicize the contracts signed with friends in the customer base.

This is your private fish pond. Sprinkle more ingredients and do less marketing, because no one can do marketing except you. Once customers have demand, they will definitely jump out of the group and say how to take photos of your home, whether there are any activities recently and so on.

Q: If low-frequency products are grouped at low prices, how can we improve the repurchase rate of customers and finally achieve profitability?

Li: It's very simple, shaping the expected value of customers.

The photography industry is indeed very low-frequency, and wedding photography is even more low-frequency, but I will not use low-cost drainage in the wedding photography industry, because there is no way, it is a one-time consumption. But we will certainly design many product lines, so that he has an expected value for the products.

When he uses 99 yuan to get something from 500 yuan, he must wonder whether he will get something worth 5,000 yuan or more if he spends 1000 yuan. This is the logic of human thinking.

What mode is used in the health and children's photography section? That's what you said. How can customers who come in at low prices improve their repurchase? Recharge is the traditional pre-sale member.

This mode is especially important for our low-frequency products, such as children's photography. At present, our unit price is 1500, but 30% of customers will recharge to 5000, 8000 or even 10000.

Why? It is because of the whole trading model and the products that shape the expected value.

People must have a budget to consume high-frequency things, but not low-frequency things. For example, decoration, all decoration will exceed the budget, because of the shaping of expectations, when he has more expectations for the future and hopes to get better results, it will definitely be such a result.