Users/customers are the premise of business growth for both BAT large factories and SMEs, and the pursuit of user growth has become an eternal theme. However, with the mobile Internet users breaking through 1 billion, the ceiling of demographic dividend is approaching, and user growth is gradually entering a bottleneck period.
According to iResearch's Quarterly Analysis Report on Internet Traffic in China in 2019Q2, the demographic dividend has gradually disappeared in recent years, and the total growth of mobile devices has entered a bottleneck period. The net growth of mobile Internet users in 2019Q2 has decreased by more than 50% year on year; On the other hand, the report also mentioned that the growth rate of total user hours slowed down significantly, and the total number reached its peak. With the rapid rise of short videos, the user stickiness of a large number of applications showed a downward trend, the industry battle situation further intensified, and cross-border competition was also common.
Anxiety about customer sources and traffic now plagues all B2B/B2C enterprises: the current industry competition is increasingly fierce, users are exposed to more and more information every day, and the time to stay on the website page becomes shorter and shorter. With the "double drop" of user growth and duration growth, the traffic cost is bound to be higher and higher.
Faced with the coming cold winter of user growth, what should SMEs do to obtain valuable customers?
The traditional marketing strategy of small and medium-sized enterprises lacks long-term thinking
For many small and medium-sized enterprises, marketing strategies lack long-term thinking, and there is only a vague and general concept of performance improvement. In the process of launching, it is often referring to peer follow the trend of launching, thinking that so much will always be effective, rather than in-depth analysis of the company's target customers and its own positioning, and reasonable layout of the launching channels according to the company's own situation.
Break through the bottleneck of user growth, and make the "combination fist" attack more effective
1. Reasonable distribution of promotion channels
The current brand advertising is not just traditional TV advertising, paper media, etc. The Internet has spawned more forms of advertising, such as the current hot search engine marketing, live broadcast/online celebrity shopping, information flow advertising, community operations, etc.
As of June 2019, the number of search engine users in China has exceeded 600 million, and search engine marketing is still the core means of promoting corporate brands and helping business growth. Search engine marketing is suitable for B2B enterprises, such as service industry, machinery manufacturing industry, etc. If enterprises want to attract investment, they can also choose search engine marketing.
Live broadcast/online celebrity shopping is to use the popularity of online celebrity to let consumers recognize and buy products, so it is more suitable for B2C enterprises; Information flow advertising can be targeted through labels, which is suitable for chain enterprises; Community operation is suitable for promoting products, apps, etc.
In this era of product proliferation, if you want to quickly increase the popularity and exposure, you need to do a good job in channel promotion, use different promotional forms, and play a good "combination punch" to make your brand appear in the eyes of users actively, achieve brand exposure, pass on brand culture, strengthen brand image, and let more users participate in brand activities.
2. Applets become a springboard for digital transformation
At the 2018 China "Internet+" Digital Economy Summit, Ma Huateng said in his speech that small programs are very important digital tools, and many applications of smart retail are closely related to small programs. Ping Xiaoli, general manager of Baidu APP, also said at the Baidu Alliance Summit that Baidu will support developers and jointly build an intelligent applet ecosystem by opening Baidu's global traffic and AI empowerment.
The lightweight of applets avoids the high customer acquisition costs of downloading, registration, verification, etc., plus the features of easy development and deployment, even individual stores can move from offline to online at low cost, which greatly shortens the transformation path from "traffic" to "sales".
It can be seen that the development and use of small programs provides an important channel for enterprises to obtain customers.
3. Improve media matrix and create brand effect
In the era of "product efficiency synergy", enterprises also need to layout online content marketing, improve the media matrix, and create brand effects. In the new media positions such as short video platform, WeChat official account, We Media account, news platform, etc., we will maintain stable updates of high-quality content. Fame and reputation can endow enterprises and products with many special meanings, such as personality and culture, when products are homogenized today.
The marketing is still unchanged, and the brand is in effect. When users search for brands, they can also interact with SEO/SEM, small programs, etc., to achieve a win-win situation between brand effect and passenger flow performance.
Let advertising ecology return to its true nature
The business owners fighting in the traffic competition field should not only worry about the dilemma of "traffic peak", but also face the siege of data fraud and traffic fraud. Xingtian Science and Technology once published an article titled "From traffic fraud to sales fraud, online marketing of small and medium-sized enterprises should finally let the data return to the truth" (click the blue word to view directly), discussing the real event of the fake traffic of bee swarm advertising, which was a hot topic on the Internet some time ago.
At present, a large number of fraudulent marketing means have brought the trust of business owners in online marketing to the freezing point. In such a bad market environment, the authenticity of traffic becomes particularly important.
Only zero tolerance can guarantee absolute truth, and absolute truth can save the precarious flow dividend. In the Internet ecosystem, both enterprises and online marketing teams are part of the traffic ecosystem. Only by sticking to their responsibilities and integrity and resisting actions that damage the quality of search engine results and user interests can we find a breakthrough in the bottleneck of enterprise user growth and usher in a new turn in the cold winter of traffic.
