How Xiaomi Breaks Through Weibo Marketing Bottleneck

According to Li Wanqiang, vice president of Xiaomi, 70% of Xiaomi's mobile phone sales are completed via the Internet, and the remaining 30% are from operators. If further refinement, Xiaomi has 50% of its products through Weibo and forums. Socialization channels eventually translate into purchases.

When Xiaomi won the pot full on Weibo, the problem also followed.

First of all, microblogging activity is declining. Li Wanqiang admitted that “the groups that soaked in one place will be a bit tired after three years. Like female boyfriends, there will be aesthetic fatigue after a long time.”

Tiger sniffing statistics of a group of "millet company" official microblogging data on the side of this point of view confirms this view, alone in the topic of #Miyanmi #, the average number of forwards of the last ten topics is 719 times, and in 8 At the beginning of the month, the mean average forwarding value was 725 times. Considering that there was a 10% increase in fans of Xiaomi's official account during this period, the decline in Weibo’s fan activity was not groundless.

Second, Xiaomi's first fans also entered an interactive fatigue. At this moment, Xiaomi is facing more than just the reduction of Weibo’s attractiveness to users. For its part, the first batch of “fathers” are also entering a period of weakness. Forums or microblogs have been very difficult to hook to a large extent. Their desire for interaction.

Tiger sniffing "Millet's cell phone depression and self-rescue" was mentioned in the article, "The spread of millet cell phones has a strong word-of-mouth effect, that is, the first users of millet, that is, "rice powder" will usually strongly recommend to mobile phones and family friends. It became the second batch of users," Li Wanqiang also confirmed the claim, saying that in the current sales of over 7 million Xiaomi, 42% of users will make 2-5 repeat purchases.

It can be inferred that if the first batch of users is lost, Xiaomi will lose the bond of maintaining second-tier users' purchasing power and emotion. However, Li Wanqiang is not worried about this. "For users of products, all emotional attachments are based on moving products."

Third, the marginal benefits of microblogging marketing may be decreasing. The current millet operations team has expanded from the initial two employees to as many as 37 people (divided into an after-sales group with 24 people and an official account group with 13 people), as Xiaomi will be listed and sold in Hong Kong and Taiwan in January. Therefore, Xiaomi's Facebook and Twitter accounts have already been carried out by two people. The team was composed of more than 20 people in the second quarter of this year. The increase in the number of people in the team has produced a proportional increase in business value. It remains to be seen.

Finally, the negative voice on Weibo is becoming stronger. Competitors frequently disrupt the gas field created by Xiaomi on Weibo. Weibo marketing is no longer the sole weapon of Xiaomi. Since mid-2012, comments and labels on “over-marketing” and “futures mobile phones” on Weibo have been increasingly played on the Xiaomi brand. Lei Jun once said that “Millet was born 90% of the information on the Internet is negative, but this does not affect the actual sales of Xiaomi.” But this is not the case. Otherwise, he wouldn't be angry at Zhou’s paternity on Weibo. At the end of November 2012, with Xiaomi 2 and Meizu MX2 short-sleeved, a large number of Meizu fans flocked to Lei Junwei’s microblogging. Lei Jun closed the comment for the first time since opening Weibo.

How can microblogging marketing be played?

Million Vice President Li Wanqiang is a marketing manager of Xiaomi Marketing. He said: "The difference between the Xiaomi marketing team is that we are doing marketing based on the idea of ​​doing business. The company's marketing team had previous product experience."

According to Li Wanqiang, the operation of Xiaomi Weibo has undergone three phases of changes. In the first phase, the company considered that Weibo was only a marketing platform. At that time, the Weibo team had only 2 individuals, mainly for the official Weibo. Maintenance and prize transfer. In the second stage, it was found that Weibo can be a customer service platform and is a natural customer service channel. Recently, he began to enter the third stage and began to explore the possibility of expanding through Weibo to sales.

The representative product of the "third stage" is the joint sales of Xiaomi and Sina Weibo. The millet official expressed satisfaction with the results. In addition to Xiaomi Mobile's microblog forwarding of up to 2.54 million times, according to Xiaoyu’s mobile phone operation manager Zhong Yufei, the internal platform shows that the number of Weibo exposures is as high as 350 million times. If you follow the Sina’s official 40 million daily active users, each The users who logged in to Sina Weibo on that day saw the scheduled information 9 times on average. This data does not include the exposure of large-sized forwarders such as “Lao Shen” and “Sina Tech”.

Although both parties have their own interests, they all seem happy, but with some key figures, people have to trigger a "water injection" association. In a Weibo monitoring data software, it can be seen that the number of fans of “Xiaomi Mobile” soared from 750,000 to 1.52 million during the event, but the fan activity rate also dropped from 27.6% to 14.9%. : There is a big deviation between this data and Sina's official activity measurement method. That is to say, many of these users are simply registered for buying (recovery) and according to the statistics of the tool, the real active users only increase. With less than 20,000 people, the number of fans of Xiaomi’s mobile phones has declined in the days after the event. At present, the number of fans has been reduced by more than 15,000 in two weeks.

It can be seen that similar socialized e-commerce activities can increase the exposure and the number of fans on a single day, but it can be quickly dispersed and the follow-up effect is not very good.

Earlier, Lei Jun had released the rhetoric of cutting off all offline advertising, but now, in the face of changes in microblogging marketing situation, Xiaomi must explore new ways of marketing beyond microblogging.

The next step is to open up another line or live offline?

In the business-to-business battle of interest, most of the concepts are born for the sake of benefit. When the need arises, the vest that was once put on can sometimes be run faster.

"Enthusiasts" may become a short-term concept for Xiaomi, and the same applies to Weibo marketing. Facing the impending bottleneck of Weibo marketing, what can Xiaomi do in the future battlefield?

Here, the author proposes several suggestions as follows:

First, in terms of social marketing, the reliance on the Sina Weibo platform is reduced.

In December, Lei Jun did not jealousy of having a conflict with the rice conversation (of course, WeChat and Michao are no longer competing at all levels), and on WeChat, they began to become active on WeChat. What kind of signal is this? At present, the official position of Xiaomi is still cautious about WeChat. Li Wanqiang said, “In the top 5,000 WeChat users, we found that there were more pre-sales consultations, but before the team was built, we did not dare to try to promote it.” But no doubt, Xiaomi is paying close attention to WeChat With e-commerce trends.

In addition, taking into account the Qzone platform and other traffic value is also quite considerable, custom trial and error and Xiaoxiaokuaixiao millet may wish to try.

Second, expand campus users. The campus can also be a good foothold for Xiaomi. Currently, Huawei is the best in the campus market. Whether it is the C8650 or the C8812, the sales volume of its single models exceeds that of Xiaomi’s handsets.

Currently millet is no longer independent of 1999 yuan, 1299 yuan style has become the "classic" user's first choice, according to Li Wanqiang introduction, this high and low price will continue to be deployed in 2013. At present, Xiaomi has deep cooperation with operators and can consider how to bring millet prices of around a thousand yuan to the campus when marketing is started. This is undoubtedly the largest virgin land for Xiaomi at the moment. In addition, the rice chat may also be used to make room for it.

Third, it is inevitable to go offline marketing.

In the third quarter of this year, Lei Jun said in a meeting that Xiaomi would withdraw all offline advertising, but recently Xiaomi’s delivery in Focus stated that: Lei always had a remark.

In an interview with Tiger Sniff, Li Wanqiang gave up Lei Jun’s words, “The core idea of ​​Xiaomi: First, it is to create an Internet mobile phone brand. Second, it is always the Internet, and third, if appropriate, join other. When the energy is limited, Xiaomi will choose the best cost-effective Internet channel, but after two years and three years, when Xiaomi’s goal will be 30-50 million units, this time will require the mass media platform. Involvement."

Just as Tiger sniffs that "Lei Jun is a good business," as mentioned - "The integration of the Lei Jun Department will continue." It can be seen that Xiaomi needs to rely on the mass media platform to sell, it will not only be that 3000-5000 Million mobile phones. TV set-top boxes that hit the TV stock market, millet tablets, notebooks, and even smart TVs that may emerge in the future are not enthusiastic fans' willingness to buy. The parents who have become “fans” have become the objects that Xiaomi has begun to consider.

In a recent Spring Festival evening tender, Xiaomi has invested heavily in the advertising position for the “Spring Festival New Year Set 2013”. Of all the companies that purchased Spring Festival Evening ads, Xiaomi may be the only manufacturer who only bought TV ads here and did not have offline channels. This makes the move appear abrupt and weird. The price/performance ratio is not high. For this argument, Li Wanqiang expressed his approval. But at the same time, he also said that the launch was also seen as an experimental one, and to see how low it would be.

Finally, Xiaomi may create offline flagship stores in some cities in 2013. Like Apple, it bears the dual functions of sales service and brand promotion for the general public. We can further imagine that Xiaomi may also open individual cafes in the Xiaomi flagship store and become a gathering place for Lei Jun Investment Company's various communities.