Source | See the truth
During this time, as long as the industry meets, it will inevitably discuss the various possibilities of 2024. Everyone's views are very direct, either conservative, as in 2022 and 2023, or optimistic, thinking that more investment can be increased. We lean towards the latter, believing that 2024 will be more optimistic than expected.
The fundamental reason for conservatism is that the market has been frightened by the past two years. Especially in 2022, in the first quarter of that year, only the perception of the real team itself was seen, and it was almost the most vigorous and hot time for the private domain in the past few years, and many companies continued to increase investment, recruit people, buy systems and tools, and prepare market budgets and operating budgets, hoping to increase the weight in 2022 and let the private domain bring more revenue. In hindsight, it was almost like "cooking oil on fire", and the market was extremely optimistic - what if it was bad? 2021 was the best, and a little thing would soon pass.
Unexpectedly, from the second quarter of that year, things took a sharp turn for the worse. That year, Jianshi insisted on holding an industry conference in Beijing and sold more than 800 tickets, but only about 400 people came to the scene - the news of the epidemic the day before made many friends change their arrangements. Even so, one attendee told me that of the least four industry conferences they signed up for, this was the only one that took place. For the whole of 2022, we have only completed 25%-30% of the work plan.
At that time, the bad environment caused many once-familiar private domain teams, private domain service providers and tool providers to fail to survive that year and the following 2023, becoming the front waves that died on the beach. The situation of start-up companies is reflected in the increasingly empty office buildings around them and the increasingly silent industry groups.
To summarize 2023, almost one keyword is enough for the whole year, "reduce costs and increase efficiency". I always remember a discussion with a senior executive of a listed company in the middle of the year, and the other party asked me a question:
How do you survive at this point in time?
Reducing costs and increasing efficiency is the most direct and effective way (layoffs + efforts to improve human efficiency while reducing market spending).
There is a very profound phenomenon in 2023, which is that many new partners come to talk about cooperation, and the first sentence is: "I'm sorry, there is no budget". It means that through this cooperation, we will first earn money to support the other team, and then earn money to support our own team.
The Xi of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, after two years of strengthening, is estimated to have penetrated into the bone marrow of many companies, and it is estimated that it will continue in 2024.
In this case, why is 2024 still optimistic?
Before talking about this issue, let's talk about 2023. Is the year that just ended really bad?
Not really.
Jianshi focuses on the private domain, so the premise we want to talk about is how the private domain performs. On the contrary, in 2023, the private domain will actually be more valued by the market, which will also play a greater role in supporting revenue growth. For example, the following diagram:
6 out of 10 companies (participating in the survey) believe that the private domain contributes more revenue.
This result appeared in the industry survey conducted by Jianshi at the end of 2023 and was recorded in the "Revenue Jump and Platform Preference: 2024 Annual Survey Report on Global Operation Trends".
At the end of the year, I was chatting with senior executives of several major brands, including multinational companies, and they talked about a very interesting comparison:
The department in charge of the private domain was not considered within the company before. Until 2023, it will begin to change dramatically. In this year, user behavior Xi has changed too much, more pursuit of affordable and easy products, and directly ignore the retreat of product promotion, flat, real, low price, such words are not only common, but also become the actual choice of users. As a result, many of the promotion strategies that used to work well have become useless - but the department must meet the KPIs, the company must achieve growth, and the sibling department can only turn to the private domain department. The private domain department suddenly rose to the same status as fragrant buns.
By the end of 2023, although most SMEs have 3-5 employees in their private domain departments, the number of enterprises with independent private domain departments has accounted for as much as 34% of the survey. Like the marketing department, user operation department, sales department, e-commerce department, etc., the private domain has become one of the basic departments of various enterprises.
We simply asked them:
Which channels are profitable in 2023?
Again, the answer is the private domain.
Because there are no customer acquisition costs, there's no need to run ads repeatedly. And in 2023, the average customer value and repurchase rate of many companies are generally rising, bringing a natural increase in profits.
Especially in 2023, it has been 4 years since the industry entered the private domain on a large scale. If enterprises that have just entered the private domain will pursue conversion in the first stage, and will pursue the increase in repurchase rate and customer unit value in the second stage, then the third stage must be the pursuit of expanded sales, and sales are not only constrained by existing products. In 2023, many companies are in the second phase, or have already set foot in the third phase.
In the "2024 Private Domain Talent Demand and Salary Report", another phenomenon can be seen at the same time:
More companies are recruiting more private domain positions, and more large companies are competing for more high-level private domain talents;
This directly makes the private domain a recruitment position that is still growing positively in mid-2023, especially under the premise of reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
This is the current state of private domain in 2023. The growth play, which was originally born because of "difficult", has solved a greater practical problem in the "difficult" market.
If it is said that continuing to reduce costs and reduce marketing expenses will be a high probability event, then what about the private domain? In 2023, the investment in the private domain will grow against the trend, and will it decrease or continue to increase in 2024?
According to the above-mentioned survey, 75% of enterprises (participating in the survey) have significantly increased their investment in all aspects of the private domain. Enterprises close to this proportion said that they will continue to tilt their investment, including global operations, in 2024.
It's still growing, the profits are good, and it can help other departments' businesses, so why not increase investment?
The minor contradictions are:
Even if large industries continue to increase the number of private domain operation posts, individual enterprises will still subconsciously control the size of the team and not let it be too large. Don't think about the original big team combat model, different teams work together is the right thing. In the private domain sector and private domain, there are not many "costs" that can be reduced, plus the number of people is still increasing, the investment is still increasing, and what can be done is only "effectiveness".
What kind of investment will greatly increase the "efficiency" of the private domain?
The graph above shows where a lot of the new investment is going. But the perception is particularly impressive:
Improve your team's private domain operation skills and invest in your employees.
In the last month of 2023, only the inquiries and requests for help received reached a historical peak.
And the span is very large, including many listed companies and large enterprises, as well as many start-up teams.
In fact, because of this demand, I formed a global growth alliance at the annual private domain conference, thinking about how to catch the new demand. This follow-up still invites more upstream and downstream service providers and experts to work together, and will also release details in the near future.
Among the trends related to "efficiency", there are several other trends that have forced enterprises to increase investment:
One is the AI trend. The efficiency improvement brought by AI to enterprises is so significant that in a survey conducted by myself in the second half of the year, 9 percent (or individuals, or companies, or companies and individuals at the same time) have paid some fees for AI. Later, I felt that this survey was not enough, so a new survey was opened in the past few days, and it is estimated that the results will be released soon after New Year's Day. However, judging from the early results, the willingness to pay is still the envy of countless entrepreneurial fields.
The second is that the global domain that has been shouted for a long time has begun to really start. This word is also a word that is naturally arched out by the market and accepted by the industry. To put it simply, how to do private domains on different platforms at the same time, how to string together users and data from different platforms and channels, and how to combine them with private domain operations.
If you talk a little deeper, you will find that many enterprises have felt that the impact of private domain on the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain is too great, and it has had a substantial impact on business models, product delivery methods, etc. This kind of change may not be as well-known as the popular products, but this change really affects one industry after another, because if you don't keep up, you can only watch others go flat.
The third is that the impact of intimacy on growth is beginning to become more ferocious. As it has been said from the beginning, the private domain is the intimate relationship between the brand and the user (Xu Zhibin: 3 Yardsticks for the Big Leap in the Private Domain). In 2023, many companies will finally begin to perceive that once they have achieved emotional connection and trust with users, a lot of data will rise almost fantastically. If you don't perceive it, then the small unhappiness between Dong Yuhui and Dongfang Selection makes the whole industry intuitively feel it.
It's harder for users to ask for more, but it's also more supportive. In this case, operation + service + product is basically stupid and meticulous, grinding little by little every day. Every time we meet these benchmark case teams in the private domain to get together and chat, the most resonant and hot topic is always how to solve a difficult user operation difficulty little by little.
Fourth, the market where other teams have withdrawn will also support the optimistic judgment of the private domain industry in 2024. As mentioned above, many private domain service providers have not survived the cold winter and have become waves dissipating in the market. We mentioned this phenomenon in an article titled "A Better Day for Private Domain Service Providers!":
The market that is released becomes a reward for the team that perseveres.
This is true for service providers, and it is also true for more brands and merchants. From 2022 to 2023, two consecutive years of cost reduction and efficiency increase have made many companies cut off their unprofitable businesses and make the market less volatile. The team that persevered increased profits and the market as a result.
As a result, when communicating offline, the budgets of these companies have returned to the direction of digital marketing and operation tools and systems that can bring efficiency improvements, as well as the optimization of their own models and the improvement of user operations, which are the most urgent needs for enterprises to improve human efficiency and find identified new opportunities, and are also the key sources of growth in 2024.
This is why it is more optimistic to predict the growth of the private domain in 2024.
The demand for specific private domains at the end of the year confirms this judgment.
In fact, his own planning and arrangement are also made in accordance with this judgment. In the past six months, we have launched more than 50 private domain study tours and more than 6 private meetings + conferences, and have achieved the planning of basic weekly study tours and monthly private meetings. It is equivalent to the delivery of other people's private boards of directors, and here it is the most basic service for real members. In the next 2024, the above data is estimated to double again, and we will invite or enter more private domain benchmark cases/brands. In short, it is a group of people who do things, around a thing worth doing, communicating and improving each other.
At last:
In 2024, many companies may continue to be conservative, but in terms of private domain alone, it is very, very optimistic.
This is the first day of 2024, and I wish you and me both to develop steadily and better.