Most people who are engaged in e-commerce know the Taobao store "Lemon Green Tea". The average daily PV of the store is more than 500,000, the average daily IP is more than 50,000, and the conversion rate is about 5%. This set of data is not so much the glory of a C2C online store, but more like a miracle in the current Chinese online consumer market. I believe that many people who have just entered the female consumer goods market, especially the cosmetics consumer market, regard them as their benchmarks. There are endless voices of "making lemon green tea second" and "surpassing lemon in X years".
The first step in learning is often imitation. Many of Lemon's practices: updating a large number of products, guiding traffic with hot products, attracting buyers with a large number of low-priced and low-profit products, etc., are regarded as the only way to do business and have been learned by a large number of operators. However, the phenomenon we see is that many people are exhausted and very few can really develop in this model. In fact, any business model has its unique aspects in the development process. It is very blind to copy blindly, and this is especially true in the Internet market, which is developing rapidly and changing, and competition is fierce.
Of course, there must be something worth learning from organizations that have achieved such impressive results. In this regard, my idea is: learning lemon green tea is a required course for everyone who aspires to B2C, but the focus of learning is to see their ideas for successful business operations, rather than to model their models. Why the model can be light? It needs to be light. We must first analyze the four aspects of their marketing model’s growth environment, development context, market characteristics and support points.
First, Lemon Green Tea was founded in August 2003 and can be said to be one of the first sellers on Taobao. At that time, no one on Taobao had accumulated credit, no one had any advertisements, and there were not even tools such as Wangpu and through trains (Note 1). Everyone does things based on passion and ideals. Jack Ma's team's preliminary preparations for Taobao enabled Taobao to develop rapidly as soon as it was launched, which naturally led to the rapid development of the first batch of sellers.
At the same time, 2003 and 2004 were also years when China's macroeconomic development showed an obvious upward trend. The consumption of daily consumer goods, especially cosmetics, increased significantly. The rapid growth of the overall market is undoubtedly a favorable support for driving local sales.
Second, many people say that Lemon is a model of "mom-and-pop shop". In fact, as early as 2004, the couple who owned the store quit their jobs to specialize in Taobao. In March 2005, they established a company to operate the Taobao store in a corporate model. There is no authoritative information, but I believe that they must be one of the first organizations to move from business to full-time and then to operate Taobao stores as a company. Individuals accumulate experience, full-time summarizing experience, and the company develops its experience advantages. This development context is undoubtedly an important factor in their success.
Third, Taobao’s market characteristics: there are many young white-collar workers, impulsive buying behavior, low prices for single items, fast updates of hot spots, etc., which are fully exploited by them. It is precisely by taking advantage of this characteristic and combining it with their own reality that they developed their current product structure and marketing methods.
Fourth, with credibility support, experience summary, product features and other factors, Lemon’s current marketing model is mature and confident. It can be said that now they do not need to go out to find products and funds, but people come to ask them to choose products and get VC. Under such a "strong" situation, it is actually not difficult to find products that are both popular and selling points and are also cheap.
Some people may say that the third point is what we can use. It is true that there are market features that everyone can take advantage of, but there are undoubtedly several other points that underpin this model. Without these supports, if you want to directly implement this model, you may have to burn a lot of money, go a long way, and take a lot of risks.
Let’s take a not-so-appropriate example. It is common knowledge that humans evolved from ancient apes. But can today's apes evolve into humans after hundreds of thousands of years? The answer is impossible. The reason is simple: time has changed.
Lemon's model is difficult to imitate now, but there are too many things to learn from them. Let’s go back to the old topic. The most worthwhile thing to learn about them is their ideas. Thinking determines the way out. I seem to be repeating this sentence recently.
I once communicated with the general manager of Lemon Green Tea on the topic of corporate blog marketing, and one point of view was: a blog article is sometimes more influential than a news report.
The revolution of lemon green tea business model
While most companies are still looking at professional marketing papers, still analyzing Wal-Mart's market expansion model, and still planning to have a strong economic foundation to open chain stores in the best commercial locations, Lemon Green Tea's corporate blog is quietly It's open.
Lemon Green Tea initially hoped to communicate with customers through its blog. Unexpectedly, it eventually attracted the attention of professionals from all walks of life, media, and various groups including its own employees. “Now it has become an important channel for us to deliver information. .” (Lime Green Language)
Many times, the reason why consumers criticize a company or product in blogs is not because they are malicious, but because they lack positive communication channels with the company and are unable to communicate their opinions or complaints to the company. The purpose of companies establishing their own blogs is to create a platform for consumers to interact with the company.
On lemon green tea Taobao stores, corporate blogs and other platforms, blog information is updated simultaneously. Many light-hearted topics, such as tips on using skin care products and outdoor sports for employees, are placed together with the latest official explanation of a certain incident, and the charm of the company is infinitely divergent. Lemon Green Tea has reached a cooperation with Xinzhicheng Blog Marketing Service Center for this purpose.
Lemon Green Tea does more than just blog itself. At the same time, Xinzhicheng launched the "Lemon Green Tea Blog Product Expo" blog website for it. If users have any good opinions, they can write down their opinions at the expo, and these opinions will be valued and points will be awarded. Lemon Green Tea will evaluate the most popular opinions and decide whether to adopt them.
In the change of marketing model, Lemon Green Tea finally incorporated blog marketing into its own sales strategy and made the news public through the blog. This change is almost revolutionary for Lemon Green Tea. With the recent establishment of the Lemon Green Tea blog website, many opinions have come from Lemon Green Tea’s official blog messages.
Regarding the corporate blog, Lemon Green Tea’s marketing public relations staff also told us that they did not expect the response to the corporate blog to be so good after it was launched. The reply rate was high and the interactivity was strong, far exceeding expectations.
Lemon Green Tea currently only allows corporate blogs to operate according to the blog marketing plan. The blog pursues localization. There is a dedicated internal team responsible for this work, and the content is written by key personnel on a regular basis. Of course, they also have to moderate those blog comments and even respond to them. "Some issues that are easily confused can be explained very clearly through the blog." The person in charge of Lemon Green Tea explained.
With the development of the Internet, the corporate sales model has changed from information-centered to people-centered, and the role of people on the Internet has become increasingly clear. Blog is an online media that gives users a lot of space for participation. Its biggest feature is that it gives everyone the ability to create and spread content. It has the characteristics of participation, openness, communication, dialogue, community, and connectivity. Blog marketing by enterprises not only refers to the establishment of business blogs by the enterprise itself, but also includes communication and exchanges with other blogs.
Faced with the ever-increasing and unlimited amount of media, rather than unrealistically trying to manage the vast number of blogs, it is better to do the opposite and form a reverse funnel, allowing bloggers to communicate directly in the interactive position they expect. Therefore, the power of lemon green tea corporate blog is highlighted.
Establish a corporate blog, establish a main channel to comprehensively display the company, remove the official rigid and orthodox impression of the corporate website, increase intimacy, establish a more direct interactive communication channel with users, get closer to consumers, and increase mutual trust. This is a business power meal that lemon green tea gives enterprises.
Lemon green tea gives us a revelation, and also gives companies an opportunity to think: corporate blogs are the simplest and most ordinary but the most complex and greatest business power.
Author: Huichuang Network, www.hainanweb.net.