Where does the pricing power come from
1/4, inconspicuous big business
One of my high school classmates has a slight physical disability and has not had a stable job for decades. One year, I went back to my hometown and met him and learned about the current situation. knew that he was setting up a fortune telling stall at the gate of the county park, mainly under the influence of his elders, and knew a little bit of numerology knowledge, but his life was very bleak.
Knowing that he has always liked to dance and ink, I suggested that he have time to open an official account of Yishu metaphysics, post some modernized numerology content, and tell fortunes by the way to earn a little pocket money.
He really opened one later, and I also guided him to a stream at the beginning, but at that time, the WeChat public account had no traffic dividend, and the number of readings of his single article is hundreds to this day.
But last year, he told me that just such a trumpet actually brings more than 100,000 yuan in income a year, especially from 2022 onwards, the number of fortune tellers has increased all of a sudden. Although it is only a drop in the bucket of those metaphysical Vs, after all, they don't have to be exposed to the sun and rain outside, and their income can still exceed 80% of the county.
In fact, I see that the content of his calculations is not fundamentally different from the park gate before, and there has been no progress over the years, it is nothing more than insisting on outputting some numerology jokes like "what kind of people can't save money" and "what kind of child will send you to the end" every day, and I can receive a lot of paid fortune-telling consultations every day.
Following his development in the past few years, I found that online fortune telling, a typical individual economic business, is not simple in space, products are not simple, and it is not simple to do well.
2/4. Pricing power does not depend on "calculation"
The business of fortune telling is a pure handicraft without scale effect (excluding machine self-service fortune telling), and the upper limit is the time you can pay, so the pricing power is very important, and there is no big difference in cost, but the difference between economic hotels, star hotels and luxury cruise ships can be determined.
So what does pricing power depend on?
All businesses depend on the cost performance of the product, but fortune telling products are more special, "sex" is difficult to evaluate, on the surface it depends on whether you calculate accurately, in fact, no one can judge the results. The essence of fortune-telling products is a psychological counseling service packaged in metaphysics (many Western astrologers have psychology degrees), and most seekers are between believing and not believing, often looking for some psychological comfort when facing major decisions or when life is more confused.
So in my opinion, modern fortune-telling products can be divided into primary, intermediate and advanced according to the psychological counseling content included:
Primary fortune-telling is to simply sort out some judgments in the numerology book according to the characteristics of your eight characters, combined with the actual situation of the seeker, and the psychological counseling part is just to simply say a few good words;
Intermediate fortune-telling is to combine the results of primary fortune-telling with modern chicken soup for the soul;
The psychological counseling component of advanced fortune-telling is large, and it is necessary to understand the life dilemmas faced by the seeker from the perspectives of psychological state, interpersonal relationships, marriage and family relationships, life and career planning, social class analysis, etc., and use the results of traditional numerology analysis to package modern life.
Of course, there is a class of top-level products, combining philosophy, psychology and metaphysics, and the appearance and pricing are not scored, but this requires a lot of packaging for numerologists, and the investment and operating costs are very high.
The traditional fortune telling at the entrance of the park and the modern online fortune telling, the customer group is the same, and the results of the delivery are similar, but from the perspective of meeting customer needs, they are two completely different products, with at least four differences.
3/4, the four directions of differentiation
First, distance creates beauty.
Fortune telling requires a strong sense of trust, you set up a stall at the entrance of the park, others feel that you are no different from a small trader, and the pricing power will naturally not go up; on the Internet, although others do not know what kind of person you are, but across the physical time and space, you have many ways to build a sense of trust.
Second, from the park gate to the Internet, customer needs are different.
There is no difference between the two types of channels, the park gate and the WeChat public account, which are both for the general public, the difference lies in their needs.
In the past, at the gate of the park, the customers who pulled in were aimless random consumption, and the demand was not strong, just because you only needed 20 or 30 yuan, he felt that he couldn't buy it and couldn't buy it. Even if you calculate accurately, the probability of others coming back to you is not large, and even if you have a reputation, in a small county, the effect of word-of-mouth diffusion is very limited.
Although the online customers are also the public, the platform has its own method of matching, the WeChat public account can screen the crowd through each reading, and build trust with a period of attention; Douyin is impulsive consumption, relying on artificial intelligence big data to quickly match, at this time, the blogger needs to have a unique temperament by nature, or there must be a team behind him to carefully build a persona, the cost is relatively high, so he can't do it for a long time on Douyin, and finally gives up, or returns to the WeChat public account.
WeChat public account is a pure reading environment, the basic business model is "free content + paid services", after establishing a sense of trust, once a certain content stimulates a certain knot in the reader's heart (such as "what kind of eight characters are easy to meet scumbags"), there will be a specific and strong demand for testing, which brings the third difference.
The third difference is that the products provided and the price system are different.
In the past, at the gate of the park, because it was a random consumption, others wanted to ask where they wanted, and often asked in one breath from the wealth, official luck, family marriage, and no focus, which finally led to the experience of the seeker was very general.
The online fortune telling can use the content to explore the clear needs of the customer's heart, resulting in the network to test the customers are for a specific need rather than general fortune telling, seeking officials and wealth, children and marriages, counting people, things, things, and business, my classmates can design standardized products for general needs, and design non-standardized products for special needs.
In fact, the process and final content of fortune-telling are standardized, but the pricing system is different. A full set of complete fortune telling is priced at 1288, while the price of a standard single item is 368, and special needs are priced individually.
The advantage of this pricing is that customers feel that 368's products are not a waste of money and are easier to place orders based on a specific need. The time cost of a full set and a single service is actually not much different, and it seems that the classmates seem to have suffered a loss, but according to him, there are a lot of repeat customers who seek a single test, after all, those who have counted once, will think of him when they encounter other tangled problems in the future. He will build a file for each customer, and the time cost of the second time is much lower, and the effect is better than the first time.
Fourth, more psychological counseling is incorporated into the results.
If it is offline, fortune telling wants to make a premium, from the studio to the environment to the content to the service to the master's packaging needs to be combined with metaphysics, the cost is very high, not what ordinary people can do, but if it is online, you can learn from horoscope analysis, and now the boundary between horoscope analysis and psychological counseling has been very blurred.
Online customers have time to think clearly and describe their current situation and needs, so that the results of fortune telling seem "more accurate", and also lay the foundation for more targeted psychological counseling content in the future.
If it is well combined with psychological counseling, the biggest advantage is that the repurchase rate is high, and it is a business model that can truly achieve 1,000 iron fans without worrying about food and clothing.
It's a pity that my classmates did a very bad job at this point, and the content given to customers was basically the same set as in the traditional numerology book. I once suggested that he learn modern psychology, but he never positioned himself as a psychological counselor, in his words, he is the life of a small fortune, and it is easy to make mistakes in pursuing a big vision and a big picture.
From the bottom of his heart, he still believes in the fortune he has told himself.
4/4. Clever psychological helpers
Fortune telling, it sounds very mysterious, in fact, the learning threshold is not high, the average person buys some fortune-telling books, studies for a few months, and then helps relatives and friends to calculate, while learning and practicing for a year, basically one or two years can go out to tell fortunes, the reason is still as mentioned earlier, whether you do well or not, not to see if you are accurate, but whether you can meet the psychology of the seeker.
Psychological counselors need a license, and fortune telling is basically relying on a mouth to persuade others, resulting in a low threshold and fierce competition in this industry, but fortunately, the demand is at the national level, and the level of clothing, food, housing and transportation, everyone will have a certain moment to feel the impermanence of fate, feel their powerlessness and insignificance, and want to know their fate.
But this business has high requirements for people, and I think it is reflected in three points:
1. True love: Online fortune telling, the time cost of the initial investment is very high, and it is difficult to make money in the first year or two, so only those who do it purely by hobby can spend this time.
2. The ability to empathize with others: foreigners want psychological counseling at every turn, Chinese do not believe this, but believe in life, in fact, it is still psychological counseling. Understanding the fate of others is essentially understanding the predicament, inner desires, and causes of others.
3. Clever psychological helpers: All commodities have the rationality of existence, but not all rationality are valuable commodities, if the fortune teller cannot provide the function of psychological counseling, it is not much different from a scam.
First published on the WeChat public account of "Thought Steel Seal (ID: sxgy9999)", it tells the concept and method of value investment