By 2021, with one billion users accessing the mobile Internet, China has formed the world's largest and most vibrant digital society, and "accelerating digital development and building a digital China" has also been elevated to a national strategic focus in the opening year of China's "14th Five-Year Plan". At the same time, the global covid-19 pandemic has greatly shortened the digitalization process of enterprises.
The wave of transformation is menacing, and how to quickly find a digital transformation path that suits you has become the key to the survival of enterprises. But the road to transformation is long, the project is complex, where should the transformation start? At the same time, lack of experience, limited talent, strategic failure, challenges everywhere, how to achieve and do a good job of transformation? On the road of transformation, enterprises are walking on thin ice.
As a leading digital operation expert in China, Based on years of in-depth research around digital operation and service experience of more than 1,000 benchmark customers, he has researched and written the "SaaS+X, 2022 iClick Digital Operation White Paper" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper").
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The white paper systematically sorts out the background, status quo and trend of digital operation, interprets the concept, technology and system of digital operation, shows the two fulcrums of digital operation "SaaS+X" and the application of multiple scenarios, and discusses how to provide guarantee for digital operation at the organizational level, as well as the assessment method and future-oriented deployment of the maturity of digital operation of enterprises.
I. Concept and System: What is Digital Operation?
In the complete business chain, digital operation is located in the middle link of carrying on from the top to the bottom: upward, grasping the product characteristics and brand needs initiated by marketers, and downward, closely integrating different network service providers and user-side software to radiate end users. Starting from the consumer side and customer interaction field, that is, "digital operation", has been recognized as the best path for enterprise digital transformation in the industry.
Digital operation is not a simple IT system upgrade, but an innovative business model, providing innovative products and services, achieving cost reduction and efficiency, and becoming a new source of revenue growth for enterprises. iCLick summarizes the value and goal of digital operation as "3M", that is: More Users gather customers to attract traffic, More Usage places more orders, and More Subscribers more private domain user subscriptions.
Based on 12 years of experience in digital operation, iCLT proposes the basic system for enterprises to build digital operations, including four core areas: connecting multi-faceted users, connecting multiple content, connecting diverse scenarios, and analyzing data assets.
1. Digital advertising connects multi-faceted users to provide a steady stream of public domain traffic for consumption scenarios;
2. With the help of digital content marketing, diversified content can not only directly bring traffic, but also provide content materials for subsequent diversified consumption scenarios;
3. Various online and offline, public domain and private domain digital consumption scenarios carry sales conversion, and also expand more channels and touchpoints for advertising and content to link users;
4. The above links enrich the precipitation of the first-hand data assets of the enterprise, and can guide the strategy formulation and optimization of these links through analysis and review and model prediction.
Background: Why do you want to do digital operations?
By combing through third-party authoritative data and first-hand insight data, the white paper comprehensively analyzes the necessity of enterprise digital operation through three dimensions: economic trend, marketing format and user.
Megatrends: China's digital economy offers vast opportunities
At the macro data level, China's digital economy has broad opportunities, and the scale of the digital economy continues to grow. In 2020, the scale of China's digital economy accounted for nearly 40% of that year's GDP. In the tertiary industry, which is closely related to digital operations such as retail and catering, the penetration rate of the digital economy is as high as 40.7%, which is significantly higher than that of the primary and secondary industries. Coupled with the huge digital demographic dividend of 1 billion: a digital user penetration rate of up to 71.% and a per capita single-day use time of up to 6.4 hours, the digital consumer market has matured.
New format: enterprise marketing and retail intelligent transformation
At the level of enterprise development, most enterprises have accelerated the digitalization process due to the epidemic, and after research, more than 43.7% of enterprises are willing to invest more budgets for digital transformation, and the expected growth rate is mainly concentrated in 10-30%, and the marketing needs of enterprises have shifted to product and marketing collaboration. At the same time, marketing budgets continue to shift online, and the Internet advertising market continues to grow. With the rebound of advertising budgets after the epidemic, the competition for public domain traffic has become more and more fierce, the value of private domain traffic has become prominent, and the scale of private domain e-commerce has begun to appear. In addition, online retail continues to penetrate, and digital operations have become the source of power for offline intelligent transformation.
New demand: changes in user needs and consumption behavior
From the user side, user contacts are more complex and scattered, enterprises need to connect user data to achieve closed-loop marketing through omni-channel, all-contact, integrated digital operation; consumer characteristics have changed profoundly, more personality, more wise, more autonomous, and put forward new requirements for enterprise marketing. Users' private domain consumption habits are formed, and private domain information has a significant impact on purchase intentions.
III. Methods and Practices: How to Do Digital Operations?
In view of the pain points and changes in the needs of enterprises' current digital operations, iCLT summarized the experience of serving 1,000 benchmarking customers, demonstrated the "SaaS+X" methodology system of enterprise digital operations in the white paper, and through the combination with real customer cases, presented how enterprises in different industries and different business formats can connect multiple "SaaS+X" scenarios to create a digital operation innovation path that is highly adapted to their own business models.
Pain points of digital operations
The surge in demand for enterprise digital transformation has led to an explosion of SaaS product growth. Relying on standardized systems and tools, it seems that in the short term, it can quickly solve the lack of talent, technology, budget and methodology for enterprises to face transformation. However, the reality of the dilemma is that standardized SaaS products face problems such as not matching business needs, employees will not use, poor use, etc., and the changes in technology and tools have not really brought a qualitative breakthrough to the digitalization of enterprises.
As a result, the need for SaaS products has also changed – the ideal SaaS product and service provider should be able to provide both standardized digital operation products and customized system solutions, and be able to provide professional executive teams to be deeply involved in enterprise marketing and operations.
There are two major pivots for digital operations: SaaS capabilities + X services
In view of the pain points of digital operation, iclick put forward a new system of "two major fulcrums of digital operation: SaaS capability + X service".
Within the scope of "SaaS", iCLT provides diagnosis, technology, and training for enterprises, based on a standardized digital operation product matrix, and collects, visualizes and cuts the individual needs of enterprises to customize the most appropriate system solutions for enterprises. iclick digital operation "SaaS" capability matrix: advertising, data operation, social retail.
Within the scope of "X" - iclick coordinates internal and external resources for enterprises, provides executive teams, continuously reviews and optimizes, participates in the entire marketing and operation process of enterprises with nanny-level services, and can even be responsible for the overall hosting of digital operation business. iclick digital operation "X" service matrix: advertising procurement services, content marketing services, e-commerce operation services, consulting and data services.
This puts forward higher requirements for SaaS products and service providers, not only to have technology and products, but also to have a talent team with rich experience in digital operation methods, as well as the ability to open up the marketing full-link business and integrate the resources of the whole industry chain of marketing.
After 12 years of deep cultivation of digital operation, iclick has accumulated from basic advertising delivery, media procurement, data analysis and review, to self-built content production base, incubation KOLs, and then to public domain drainage to private domain, the operation, repurchase and self-dissemination of existing users, and the ability covers the whole link of marketing, realizing data communication, content communication and traffic communication. At the same time, it has high stability in terms of manpower, material resources, funds and resources, and has the ability to provide customers with value-added and accompanying services other than tools. Through integrated service capabilities, we can get rid of the islanding effect for medium and large enterprises that pursue certainty, and better respond to the changing market and environment.
Four major scenarios and cases of digital operation
With the changes in the market and consumers, if enterprises want to increase the double growth of brand voice and sales in time, they need to consider the competitiveness of the product itself, the accuracy of advertising reach, the smoothness of the conversion link, and also pay attention to retaining consumers and forming a solid emotional connection. Enterprises need to connect end-to-end digital services in six major areas, including category innovation, product coefficients, content construction, effect streaming, channel distribution, and private domain operations, so as to form a logical closed loop of the whole process to help brand growth.
iCLT embeds its existing "SaaS" products and "X" value-added services into the six underlying logics of the above brand growth, forming four representative digital operation "SaaS+X" scenarios, and verifying its effectiveness in real application cases.
(1) "Brand content construction and marketing scenario" that seizes the user's mental share by planting grass
KOL content marketing is a relatively new field, and many companies criticize "pits" and "thunder". In this regard, iclick summarized the methodology of the cooperation between enterprises and KOLs, including: KOL cooperation "5 problems" and proposed a "4-step solution", the KOL delivery strategy that different categories and brands can adopt, and how iFans find the right people and content for brands.
Case: In 2020, Fangtai joined hands with Love Click to open the "Good Life Home" project in Xiaohongshu: on the one hand, it jointly used the high-quality KOL matrix to shape and plant grass, turning the content marketing flywheel of the major appliance industry on Xiaohongshu; on the other hand, fully leveraging the official marketing resources of the Xiaohongshu platform to jointly build a deep home grass-growing community with style and design. The overall event achieved good results.
(2) Efficiently obtaining quantities from the public domain to achieve continuous customer acquisition of "global precision effect streaming scenario"
Advertising flow is one of the conventional marketing methods of brands, if brands want to further improve the marketing effect, they must achieve dynamic optimization in the process of advertising.
Case: Lululemon and iClick have joined hands with many different types of media platforms to create a multi-level communication advertising solution, and the professional service team has made efforts to maximize the marketing potential.
(3) Online and offline linkage to promote consumer purchase of "multi-channel digital sales scenario"
Some brands and retail businesses have huge online/offline sales channels, which are self-contained. In the face of the new market competition environment, in order to improve the operational efficiency of various channels, it is necessary for digital operations to open up multiple consumption scenarios.
The white paper shows the multi-channel digital sales management platform developed by iClick, which can effectively open up the core process of multi-channel digital sales.
Case: An internationally renowned beauty group: multi-store cloud, full-time global empowerment of shopping guide services and transaction conversion
(4) "Private Domain User Retention Operation Scenario" that builds brand competition barriers through the cultivation of user loyalty
Many brands have begun to realize the importance of private domain construction, how to promote it sequentially, prioritized and prioritized, and create a unique private domain operation process that matches their own business, so as to maximize the value of private domain? Aiclick summarized the "Private Domain Construction Thinking Map", "Private Domain User Retention and Operation Core Retention Examples", "User Group Hierarchical Step Disassembly", and "Private Domain Post-link Operation Strategy Details Disassembly".
Case: Qiaqia and iCLick integrate global traffic, refine operations, and create a multi-touch private domain system centered on Mini Programs. Qiaqia realizes the outer packaging "one thing and one code" through love clicks, fully integrates the freedom of free traffic; at the same time, it also integrates WeChat ecological traffic (search, Tencent convergence, circle of friends, WeChat pay coupons, brand public accounts and video numbers, etc.) and connects multi-touch data, uses labels and layers to discover core value users, and implements batch or refined differential operations in the back link to achieve traffic precipitation, conversion and fission, while ensuring operational efficiency, improve the service satisfaction and repurchase efficiency of core users. Increase the lifetime value (LTV) of private domain users.
Fourth, how to provide organizational capability guarantee for digital operations?
Digital transformation is not a castle in the sky, but depends on the organization's culture, structure, processes, norms and talents, and the most important factor that determines the effectiveness of the solution is the organizational ability within the enterprise.
How to mobilize the subjective initiative of all people and make them a living force in digital operations? How to clear the way of the way for digital transformation? How to achieve 1:1 implementation of the digital transformation plan to ensure the application effect?
iClick put forward two in place, three principles, and four through, and discussed the guarantee of digital operation from the level of organizational capabilities.
How to correctly assess the present and deal with the future?
The transformation path is relatively consistent with the methodology, but each company is at a different stage of transformation at the moment. How to correctly assess the stage of transformation and development in which you are, find out the reasons why your transformation is not up to standard, and improve it in the right way, the white paper shows the "Enterprise Digital Operation Maturity Model".
Aiclick believes that around the "two indicators" and "six supporting elements" in the maturity model, enterprises at each stage have their own specific tasks, and by completing these tasks, enterprises can slowly improve their digital operation maturity.
2. Planning for the future: the value and construction of the company's own global position
Looking back at the past, the continuous innovation of the market seems to have brought waves of new traffic and new channels to enterprises, but traffic and channels are not eternal, and only the "self-ability" of enterprises is a solid moat for facing future challenges. iclick believes that enterprises need to continuously consolidate their field aggregation capabilities, content breaking capabilities, and data integration capabilities, which together constitute the key capabilities required for the digital operation of enterprises in the future.
Looking to the future, enterprises should deploy the global operation position as soon as possible, and integrate the public domain traffic and private domain traffic, so that the traffic can be traced in a long time coordinate system from being captured in the public domain, entering the private domain, and then to the circulation path of the link after the private domain. In this way, the impact of traffic on the long-term business of the enterprise is more intuitive and controllable.
At the end of the white paper, iclick put forward sustainable business logic, that is, relying on the ecological layout built by the three major platforms of advertising, retail and data, using digital "SaaS" technology and "X" services to connect the global delivery and conversion links, and building a consumer-centric closed loop, which will help brands achieve "operation and sales" on the road of commercial growth in the digital age!
epilogue
How to improve the efficiency of customer acquisition, realize user retention and conversion and maximize the value of user life has become a key proposition for enterprises, so digital operation capabilities have become the core capabilities of enterprises to cope with the present and plan for the future.
However, digital operations is a complex systems engineering that requires:
At the strategic level, accurately assess the maturity and management capabilities of their digital operations, and scientifically plan the advanced path of digital operations;
At the organizational level, ensure the follow-up of internal culture, concepts, organization and collaboration, and form an effective support for digital operations;
At the infrastructure level, build a global operation position and platform, consolidate infrastructure for digital operation, and build a moat to cope with future challenges;
At the operational level, relying on the "SaaS+X" capability service matrix, it connects multi-faceted users, multi-faceted content, and multi-scenarios, and markets the whole link based on data assets.
To complete the scientific layout of this complex system, concepts, technologies, tools, experience, and talents are indispensable. There are many fragmented cases and methodologies on digital operations in the market, but there are few references that are both comprehensive and practical.
In this white paper, there are years of research and insights from iCLT on digital operations, as well as massive cross-industry and full-link best practices, including multi-dimensional knowledge, experience and suggestions on tool methods, practice reviews, organizational planning, strategic layout, etc., which is a valuable system guide for guiding enterprises to correctly plan and land digital operations.