#头条创作挑战赛#
In the past two years, Caotang has been calling on everyone to expand categories, and many of the businesses that have developed in recent years have been running out by expanding categories.
However, the expansion of the category is a strategic direction, and there are many details that need to be considered in the implementation.
For example, when is it appropriate to expand a category? Which category or categories should be expanded? What are the specific considerations when expanding a category, and how to implement it in a planned and rhythmic manner?
These problems are all practical problems that will be encountered in the implementation, and the starting point of these problems actually points to a more specific problem: how to do a good job in category layout.
In today's article, I will talk to you about this topic.
Market Analysis: Understanding the Fundamentals
Understanding the market is the basic work of entering an industry, and the role of analyzing the market is similar to making a panoramic map of the industry, allowing you to use the "God's perspective" to see the ecological landscape of the industry.
What are the characteristics of this industry? Is there an off-peak season? What is the industry concentration? What is the category concentration? What is the price range concentration? Whether there is a strong brand effect? Whether there is a head effect? and other data can be obtained from the analysis of the overall market.
With such a panoramic map, you can have hills and valleys in your heart, and you can establish a sense of thought and rhythm for actions such as opportunities, entry points, layouts, and rhythms.
From the perspective of analysis, the market analysis can be divided into three steps:
1.1
Data preparation
First of all, the tools you need to prepare:
First of all, you need a business consultant, here it is best to use the professional version, the professional version has a monthly dimension of data precipitation, and the statistical period can be traced back to 3 years.
Secondly, a third-party index conversion tool is needed to convert the exponential data of business advisors into data that is close to authenticity.
Finally, it is to use Excel's batch data processing and perspective capabilities to calculate and visualize the data.
1.2
Market Overview
The first is to analyze the overall environment in which you want to enter the market, and here the focus is on establishing a basic understanding of the industry overview:
1. Market size
The size of the market determines the upper limit of everyone's share. In a small market, the leader is also the staller.
2. Market growth
We can look at the future growth space from the past and the present.
Generally, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) can be used to make a forecast, which is calculated as: CAGR (current value/base value) * (1/number of years) -1.
For example, find the compound growth rate of cosmetics from 2015 to 2021. Among them, the total retail sales of cosmetics in 2015 and 2021 will be 204.94 billion yuan and 402.6 billion yuan respectively. then the compound annual growth rate = (4026/2049.4) * (1/6) - 1 = 11.9%
3. Industry life cycle
The industry life cycle is to determine the introduction period, growth period, maturity period or decline period of the industry through the scale growth rate, technical situation, number of competitors, entry barriers, and production and operation dimensions, which is commonly known as the PLC model.
- Introduction period: at this time, the scale is small, the growth is slow, the technology is still unstable, immature, the number of competitors is still relatively small, the barriers to entry are relatively low, the production and operation needs to improve production efficiency, the development of product standards, according to their own situation, wait and see or participate in the strategy.
- Growth period: at this time, the scale increases, the growth is fast, the technology is gradually stable, relatively mature, the number of competitors increases, the barriers to entry begin to increase, the production and operation can improve the product quality, increase the variety of colors, in the competitive strategy can take the important resources to attack, increase the market share.
- Mature period: at this time, the scale is large, the growth rate is slowing down, the technology is mature, the standardized production, the number of competitors begins to stabilize, the barriers to entry are very high, the production and operation need to strengthen the customer relationship, reduce the operating cost, at this time, it is necessary to adopt the competitive strategy of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, upgrading old products and developing new products.
- Recession period: at this time, the scale declines, the growth rate is negative, the technology is iterated by other industries, and substitutes appear, the number of competitors decreases, the barriers to entry are very low, the production capacity can be reduced in production and operation, and the price advantage can be maintained, and the competitive strategy needs to be withdrawn in time.
4. Industry profitability
We must not only look at whether the market is big or not, but also whether we can make money when we enter the market. For example, you can look at the size of the gross profit margin.
Generally speaking, if the gross profit margin is greater than 40%, it means that it has some kind of advantage, 20% to 40%, which is in a highly competitive situation, and if it is less than 20%, it needs to be avoided as much as possible.
5. Strength of demand
Analyze the strength of demand according to market size = population size× consumption frequency × price paid.
- Crowd size: How large is the overall target demographic. Consumption frequency: whether it is just needed and whether it is high-frequency.
- Pay the price: the willingness to pay the price, the lower limit is the economic base, and the upper limit is the cultural insight.
1.3
Competitive landscape
With the above market profile analysis, we can build a contour of the fundamentals of the industry.
But this time is not enough, the entry threshold of an industry, in addition to the resource barriers of the industry itself, is also closely related to the competitive situation of the industry. Therefore, we also need to analyze the competitive landscape from the following dimensions.
1. Industry concentration
Generally speaking, the higher the concentration of the industry, the more disadvantageous it is for new players, because the head has mastered the minds of consumers and the core resources of the industry. When we analyze industry concentration, we mainly look at CR4 and CR8.
CR4 refers to adding up the market shares of the top four companies in the market. For example, if the top four companies have a market share of 30 percent, 20 percent, 15 percent, and 10 percent, respectively, the CR4 index for that market is 75 percent.
CR8 refers to adding up the market share of the top eight companies in the market.
For the classification criteria of industry concentration, you can refer to the following figure:
Correspondingly, in this way, we can also calculate brand concentration.
2. Competitive elements
After the analysis of industry concentration, according to the company's ability to participate in market competition at different stages (for example, companies with capital, R&D, scale and organizational power will be biased to find markets with entry thresholds, while small teams will prefer to find markets with industry concentration and scattered brand concentration), find the main competitors in the industry, and list the scores of the five-dimensional radar chart from the five key points of brand power, product power, channel power, marketing power and capital power, so as to help us analyze the main competitive factors of the industry.
1.4
Timing rhythm
In addition to the above analysis, it is very important to "do the right thing at the right time", we need to analyze whether the industry and category have ups and downs in the off-peak season, what are the specific fluctuations of the ups and downs, what are the key months and nodes, etc.
If you only know the product, but you don't know what product to sell in what season, then even if you have the best product, you may not be able to break it.
In addition, it is necessary to determine which category you want to sell, analyze which month is better to sell, and then cut into the layout according to the product trend and according to the time node. This is embodied in a store, involving event arrangement, product launch, price strategy, cost planning, etc.
Regarding the time rhythm, we need to focus on two nodes: one is before the peak season, and the other is before the big promotion.
Before the peak season, do a good job in the layout of category supply and the increase of traffic in advance, so as to ensure that there are explosive models to undertake store sales during the peak season, and the overall sales of the store will get twice the result with half the effort.
The warm-up of the big promotion to the whole link of the sprint process is a new round of outbreak, which is conducive to improving the weight of the store and getting more search traffic, especially the operation about 20 days before the big promotion.
Three types of layouts: weaving supply nets
When we do a good job of market analysis, we will have an overall understanding of the industry situation, and we will also have a judgment on the sub-categories, sub-styles, and sub-groups of people to be cut.
The next thing to do is the specific layout of the supply side, which involves the layout of the store, the layout of products, and the layout of operation and promotion.
2.1
Category layout
The key point of category layout is to find the target consumer group and the products that meet the positioning of the target group, which will involve the price band and category.
1. Crowd and price band
One is to delineate the population according to its own supply chain advantages, and the other is to select products according to the mainstream consumer groups of the analyzed categories.
There is no one of these two that is necessarily good or which is necessarily bad, but a specific choice is made according to one's own advantages and circumstances.
It should be noted that in terms of results, we need to match the price of the product with the crowd. For example, we can see through the business staff background where the mainstream price band of products containing a certain material, a certain attribute, and a certain style is, so we can find the product according to the standard to see if we can find it.
You can also look at the mainstream price band of products containing a certain material, a certain attribute, and a certain style according to the supply chain resources in hand, and whether we can sell this price band through the background of the business staff.
2. Category
Here you need to look at the market sales under each sub-category according to the sales of the large plate sub-category, if the sales are high, and you have advantages in the supply chain, this sub-category can be cut in.
Another way is to look at the sub-category layout of the benchmark stores in the competition section of the business staff according to the overall market analysis done earlier, and formulate our own category planning based on the category planning of multiple benchmark stores.
2.2
Product layout
When we have decided which sub-category we want to do, we need to further lay out the product, to be precise, the product structure layout.
- On the new pool: the new products are optimistic and not optimistic, do simple planning, and the optimistic models enter the testing pool.
- Measurement pool: The style of the test is operated at the same time, and the high-quality model enters the next pool, the explosive pool or the dynamic sales pool.
- Popular pool: The popular pool will generally choose about 3 operations, discard 1 or 2 in one cycle, and then discard in the next cycle.
- Dynamic sales pool/potential pool: There is potential to fail to explode the model, continue to observe while doing it normally, the strength is not too large, if Taobao gives the opportunity in the later stage, it happens to be the style that the store is missing, and it will also be put into the popular pool.
To do a good job in product positioning, the next step is to consider the budget, for example, I do store promotion budget 1w. So if there is a potential for explosive models, it is worth vigorously promoting, and my investment budget may account for 70% or 7K.
Some data performance is okay, can only be used as a small hit, my investment budget may account for 20%, 2K, other data performance is not ideal, but can also be singled, my investment budget may occupy 10%, 1K.
2.3
Promote the layout
Good products also need good marketing, and now is an era of "wine fragrance is also afraid of deep alleys", so after completing the layout of the product side, the promotion layout is also very important. In the promotion layout, we need to focus on the following points:
- Subdivide the promotion channels, formulate promotion plans such as keywords, consumer operations, product operations, precise crowds, and activity scenarios, and do a good job of recording and analyzing daily, weekly, and monthly reports.
- The main promotion keyword promotion, the key promotion keyword card position, standard and intelligent multi-plan.
- Before the event, a special advertising plan was formulated, which was divided into a warm-up period and a formal period, and the cost requirements were made.
- Taoke's promotion plans and programs.
- Promotional materials, benefits and copywriting.
- Ongoing optimization of product titles.
Explosive planning: create profit points
The purpose of creating a popular model is actually to make a profit, some sellers think that creating a popular model is to blindly pursue sales and ignore profits, if the store can't make money, then it is very difficult to operate.
If every product is sold at a loss, it will lose a lot of money in a month, so we must formulate a reasonable plan for explosive products, so that the store can continue to operate healthily.
3.1
The premise of hitting the explosive model
It takes a suitable time to hit the explosive style, and generally two months before the peak of product sales, it is necessary to start preparing to create a popular model.
When choosing products, it is necessary to choose products with high market demand, high popularity, high sales, high conversion, and more free traffic, in other words, products that are just needed in the peak season.
In addition, after selecting the product, we need to clarify the operation idea and execute it with an efficient operation rhythm.
3.2
Preparation for the explosion
In addition to timing, working capital, competitive environment, main picture selling point, promotion rhythm, customer evaluation, etc. are all key influencing factors.
In this regard, the analysis of peers is particularly important, and through the practices of peers, we can deduce a lot of useful data as our reference. When analyzing peers, we focus on the following points:
- Cycle analysis: including the market sales trend and recession trend of the same product.
- Page analysis: includes the collection and analysis of information such as the price, title, and sales volume of the same product.
- Traffic analysis: Of course, if a product can break out in the later stage, there must be a lot of natural traffic to support it, so when we analyze it in the early stage, we mainly analyze the traffic channels in the early stage and how to prepare for the operation in the early stage.
- Pain point analysis: including the collection and analysis of the same product's Q&A, buyer show, and evaluation, to find out the negative feedback that the same product is prone to, so as to avoid it in advance.
3.3
The rhythm of the explosive model
1. Title optimization
A benign hit must be supported by continuous organic traffic, and what we need to do in the early stage is to lay a good foundation for search weight.
In the early stage of the product, you can choose accurate long-tail keywords to attract accurate people and quickly accumulate transactions. In the middle and late stages, you can appropriately replace keywords with downward trends and replace them with potential rising words to expand traffic and increase volume.
At the same time, you need to replace those words that don't have authority or display to improve your keyword's Quality Score and improve your rankings.
2. Basic data
Evaluation is particularly important, and popular models will arrange re-exposure pictures every day to maintain evaluations to prevent bad reviews from being placed at the top, which has a greater impact on product conversion and is easy to disrupt the promotion rhythm.
If there is a bad review on the same day, contact and delete it in time, and if the customer does not delete it, immediately arrange several groups of buyers to show it to the top on the same day to prevent the bad reviews from being placed at the top.
3. Marketing points of interest
Use browser plug-ins to collect and analyze the main image and promotion image of the product of your peers, find the composition, copywriting and interest points of the popular product, and then combine the negative review information collected by the peers, buyer show, and ask everyone to design an attractive main picture and promotion map, and constantly test to find the graph with clicks and conversions higher than your peers.
4. Promotion channels
According to the promotion channels and promotion data of peers, calculate the promotion plan and promotion budget of peers, and then formulate their own promotion plan, and make timely adjustments according to the actual situation such as product sales and conversion.
What needs to be paid attention to here is the crowd label, in the early drainage stage, the first thing is to test the accurate crowd first, and in the middle and later stages, when the plan is adjusted, it will be promoted to the people with better labels, so that the label of their store can be strengthened.
Another is that when promoting and distributing, there must be a coordinated play of drainage + harvesting, which must have both the main channel and main plan for drainage, and the main channel and master plan for harvesting.
5. Evaluation and maintenance
A good picture is worth a thousand dollars, and a bad review ruins everything, especially for popular models, you must pay attention to and deal with the bad reviews in time.
The first time the bad review appears, contact the buyer in time to appease and negotiate, and the principle of replying to the bad review that cannot be dealt with is to show the people behind it, and you need to "avoid the important and light", find the point that is beneficial to yourself, dispel the concerns of potential buyers, and at the same time use other ways to brush down the bad review.
6. Inventory management
One of the biggest risks of popular models lies in inventory, so we should set a reasonable inventory cycle and pay close attention to the key factors that affect the sales of popular models, such as weather, events, news events, etc., and try to predict and plan early.
epilogue
Category planning has always been the focus of e-commerce management, as the so-called positioning determines life and death, and indeed many stores that have grown up have found the right time and location in the category.
Today, from the dimension of market analysis, we tell how to look at the industry, how to look at the competition, and how to find the opportunity.
From the three types of layout, such as category, product and promotion, it tells how to weave a supply network for target customers.
From the aspects of the premise, preparation and rhythm of the explosive model, it tells how to make a benign and rhythmic explosive style and the links to be paid attention to in the explosive style.
From the market to the category is to find the right ecological niche, from the category to the product is to take root and find a foothold that can grow.
Hope this article is useful to you.