This year, Ma Haihua, CEO of Peppermint Health, clearly felt the explosion of social ecological business potential.
His company mainly sells various healthy snack products. Compared with the same period last year, the turnover of these products on WeChat has increased by about 10 times this year. At present, the sales income of Mint Health on WeChat in one month has crossed the threshold of 10 million, accounting for about 20% of the company’s total sales. “The quantity is very fast,” Ma Haihua commented.
At the earliest, Mint Health was just a tool application with 110 million users, and it was known as the Internet for its “large and rich food database”. Since it contains more than 40 kinds of nutrition data and more than 500,000 pieces of food data, it has become a “healthy partner” for many people who exercise and lose weight. After its establishment in 2008, it has successively gathered a large number of users.
But the monetization of tool applications is always a problem. Users are accustomed to using it and leaving, although the frequency of use is high but the duration is limited, such a congenital “defect” makes it lack the potential to realize batches of attention through advertising.
Mint Health has paid attention to mini programs for a long time. When Zhang Xiaolong first shared the mini programs on his mobile phone, the mini programs under Mint were one of them. However, although the early efforts were made, the genes controlled by the enterprise did not find a suitable development path at the beginning.
Ma Haihua divides the journey of enterprises to expand their business value under the social ecology into three stages:
First of all, the “mint food library” is still created following the inertia of tool-based applets, but this also makes it more like the “translation” of functions in the original application to applets. For Mint Health, the mini program is just a new touch point that attracts more users, and it does not dig out more unique value hidden in the mini program itself;
Subsequently, starting in 2018, Ma Haihua began to regard social platforms as a place to provide users with services. Through small programs, WeChat personal accounts and WeChat groups, consumers can get some targeted nutrition guidance and nutrition programs;
Starting from the middle of this year, Ma Haihua has redefined social ecology as a life cycle value management platform. Since target consumers will appear on WeChat most of the time, the company has begun to form a new set of strategies. “From WeChat’s own information flow advertising, to the operation of WeChat official accounts and small programs, to one-to-one corporate WeChat, these pieces have been combined and found to be particularly useful,” Ma Haihua said.
From tool applications, consumer post-purchase services to life cycle value management, the successive progression of the three stages shows that Mint Health has begun to reserve more experience in how to “play” the social ecology; at the same time, This also stems from the rapid changes within the social ecology-it follows the original transaction chain of the company as a reference to build its own business ecology. When the degree of fit between the two becomes higher and higher, the value it can release will naturally become greater.
Simplify the complexity and emphasize value
Compared with other companies that do not have a user base and need to cold start in a small program scenario, the biggest advantage of Mint Health is the 110 million owned by its own App. Total users.
In the Internet ecology, social interaction is always the scene with the largest user scale and the longest stay. Compared with the cumbersome need for people to open the App every time they use it, migrating some services to small programs can obviously provide users with more convenient services. Especially for light-use scenarios such as nutrition and diet management that do not require users to be deeply involved, small programs can obviously provide a better experience than apps in terms of convenience.
It is for this reason that Mint Health has attracted great interest since the appearance of small programs. On almost all high-traffic platforms, Mint Health has deployed its own mini program products; but Ma Haihua also mentioned that compared with other platforms, the user activity and value development of WeChat mini programs are significantly higher. “Most of other platforms are still tool attributes, but WeChat can add social attributes to them,” Ma Haihua said.
The Mint Flower Field is a game function launched by Mint Health in the Mini Program scene. Here, users can accumulate sunshine through various healthy lifestyles, and encourage them to invite family and friends to water the flowers in their flower fields, and even exchange for real flowers after a certain period.
In social scenarios, users sharing with relatives and friends can often occur naturally: on the one hand, WeChat has established social links; on the other hand, this kind of distributionThe sharing behavior does not appear abrupt in the social scene. And this kind of social relationship chain-based operating activities has become a natural source for companies to obtain basic or natural traffic in addition to paying for traffic.
The huge development potential has accelerated the layout of mint health in the social ecology. Mint currently has two small programs in WeChat: In addition to serving Mint Health on the C-side, it has just launched Mint Nutrition Pro for the B-side. This application can help hundreds of thousands of employees in the industry better serve themselves. Customers. The two-pronged approach on the C side and the B side shows that Mint Health attaches great importance to small programs.
Due to the natural monetization problems of tool applications, Mint Health has tried to complete monetization through sales of goods since 2017. At the earliest, the rich product line made the brand’s core value proposition not prominent; since January last year, Mint Health has shrunk the battlefield to the vertical track of healthy food, and the effect of strategic adjustments is immediate. The company’s overall sales last year and this year Both have achieved a growth rate of 200%.
This attempt to reduce complexity and simplify is also applied by Ma Haihua to the operation idea of mini programs: “Mini programs should not increase the burden on customers. If it is too complicated, this threshold cost will be difficult to achieve an ideal retention. Thinking about pursuing daily activity or using time like an app is wrong, we should help consumers solve problems concisely and quickly.”
In Ma Haihua’s view, the mini program must be simple and light enough at the product level to allow users to naturally retrieve and use them when their needs arise for food query and weight management. Emphasis on providing value, not the data itself, this idea has become the key to Mint’s ability to run through small programs.
Based on social ecology, clever use of multi-link capabilities
Simplify the complexity, only in terms of the product level, but this does not mean that the enterprise should be large when it comes to excavating commercial value.
On the contrary, the charm of social ecology lies in its ability to reach different types of consumers through rich links. If you consider the differences of different types of goods themselves, the establishment of diversified links becomes inevitable. The so-called “kung fu is outside the poem”, when different levels of uncertainty are intertwined, in order to make consumers feel simple and brisk, companies need to establish a more complete social marketing strategy that can cope with different situations.
At present, Mint Health has mainly built two types of links on WeChat launch: direct purchase of small programs aimed at direct sales conversion, and enterprise WeChat or official account precipitation focusing on maximizing the value of user life cycle.
In terms of direct purchase, Ma Haihua cites the popular product “Drink before bed” as an example. He mentioned that this product is mainly for two types of consumers: OneConsumers who only have time to exercise at night, but will affect their sleep quality after strenuous exercise; the other is consumers who do not want to exercise but have certain requirements for their body management. Because this product contains conjugated linoleic acid that can promote body fat metabolism, consumers can use the time of deep sleep to achieve better metabolism after drinking before going to bed, so the product itself has a strong target audience Attractive.
At this time, the question before us is how to accurately reach target consumers with product information, which will test the accuracy of corporate public domain launches. However, as a social platform, WeChat’s deep understanding of people has helped Mint Health solve the problem of orientation. For example, the rich tags on the data management platform can make it easier for companies to screen users.
“When we cast ads on WeChat, we will choose tags like sisters fitness, exercise, and sleep at night. It is easy to use some clear points of interest in the material to produce results. For example, our most classic advertisement It is a concept similar to ’30 minutes before going to bed, lying down to win the black technology’,” Ma Haihua said. The quality of the direct purchase chain is nothing more than two-the directional ability of “finding the right person” and the quality of the material of “speaking dialogue”, and these two are also the advantages of the social ecology.
In addition to direct purchases, how to enable target users to settle on corporate WeChat or official accounts to become corporate reusable assets is also the core issue that Mint Health needs to solve when building another link.
In the private domain link precipitation of Mint Health, one method is to recommend nutritionist services to users immediately after placing an order on the mini program. If necessary, users will take the initiative to add nutritionist’s corporate WeChat, which is obviously an effective traffic precipitation path.
In the past, the purchase behavior itself symbolized that the relationship between the company and the consumer reached a certain depth; but the “buy-add company WeChat” chain just turned it over. In the social scene, the purchase behavior is only the follow-up of the relationship between the two parties The beginning of further deepening. Ma Haihua is very satisfied with the efficiency of private domain traffic precipitation. He mentioned that the conversion rate of adding a nutritionist link has reached more than 15%, which is above the industry average.
Besides, attracting users’ attention to the official account is another link. By releasing the message of registering to receive free healthy snacks in public domain traffic, Mint Health integrates the two links of “trial product distribution” and “precipitation traffic” to ensure that companies can establish strong bilateral relations with consumers in a short time. Of course, the end of this link can still reach the stage of adding nutritionist company WeChat for free.
At present, Mint Health has established 120 groups. Ma Haihua mentioned that the average monthly purchase of users in the group has reached 700 yuan. In addition to the blessing of sales growth, these WeChat groups and the precipitated private domain users can also help companies do some product testing and prototype development work, which increases the success rate of new product development.
Of course, on the consumer side, they can also get better consulting services through corporate WeChat and WeChat groups. Ma Haihua believes that consumers should not be disturbed too much, but to play a role that can be smoothly taken over when consumers have problems or needs.
“We just want to be a quiet nutritionist, we are always there; when you need us, we will appear”, Ma Haihua said. Private domain traffic does not mean that companies can intrude into the private lives of consumers at will. Ma Haihua believes that grasping the proper measures will become the key to private domain value development.
The advertising products and back-link capabilities in the social ecosystem are like providing companies with pieces of Lego blocks. The platform only continuously outputs capabilities in it, but it does not provide the only best solution for enterprises. Advertisers need to use their creativity to freely build and tune diverse links according to their own needs.
The next step is to become a “micro” brand?
Although it is also selling goods, the e-commerce gameplay in social platforms and other ecosystems is completely different.
Ma Haihua mentioned that to do a good job in social marketing, it is necessary to highlight social and personality attributes in communication. In short, it must be more “human” to fit the social scene. In terms of social attributes, Mint Health has launched the “Snack Gift Pack” that focuses on the concept of sharing. This product has achieved a better conversion effect on WeChat; in terms of personality attributes, Mint Health is also more prominent through the addition of nutritionists and other links Individual roles. ,
“If it’s just a cold advertisement, it is no different from consumers seeing the product in other channels, and it may even make them feel abrupt,” Ma Haihua said.
In addition to the information display links floating above the water, the social ecology also has more unique places below the water. For example, the company’s WeChat backend can help companies understand the frequency and duration of interaction between users and nutritionists, which greatly improves the efficiency of the company’s entire nutritionist team;
In addition, when nutritionists could only contact users through personal WeChat accounts, companies could not bypass the basic-level employees when distributing information. But now by connecting the company’s WeChat and internal CRM systems, there is no need for nutritionists to operate alone, and brands can understand users more comprehensively and quickly make more appropriate recommendations and responses. In other words, companies and consumers can get closer in the social scene.
Although they have settled in different platforms, Ma Haihua also noticed that different platforms haveWith their own characteristics and advantages. For example, many content communities have natural advantages in “planting grass” for consumers, but they cannot directly promote mass sales conversion; while platform-type e-commerce platforms have good conversion effects, but there is a strong relationship between brands and consumers. It is difficult to achieve barrier-free interaction.
“Only WeChat is a platform, in addition to the communication between the brand and the market, it can also undertake the functions of sample distribution and customer transformation.” Ma Haihua believes that the e-commerce ecosystem embedded in WeChat deserves more attention from brands. In Mint Health, team members even mentioned the concept of “micro-branding” when communicating. In his view, the so-called micro-brands are not search-centric or price-driven. They are a new e-commerce logic with social networking as the core, and they value continuous and long-term contact with users.
In cost accounting, Ma Haihua also discovered the long-term characteristics of social ecology. Once the traffic settles down, the relationship between the brand and the user is mutually owned, not every acquisition of traffic requires a purchase, which is attractive to him. “It can be evened out in about 60 days now. The traffic cost in the social ecosystem is more expensive, but the return can be higher.” He mentioned that if the cost can be recovered faster, then it will definitely continue to increase advertising on WeChat , And finally launch advertising at a consumption level of about one million yuan per day.
In fact, after e-commerce has entered a period of rapid growth, a large wave of emerging brands called Tao brands began to rise around 2006. Companies such as Liebo, Handu Yishe, Yunifang, etc. are more familiar The play of the e-commerce scene finally has its own place in the larger business ecosystem. A similar process is also being staged in the social ecosystem. When the transaction volume of the WeChat mini program GMV was 800 billion yuan last year, it is expected to further increase by 115% this year. The large enough volume and completely different gameplay also allow The rise of Ma Haihuakou’s micro and micro brands is no longer just a false proposition.
“Menthol Health has always adhered to the corporate mission of “make people healthier”, and constantly strengthens the research and development of nutritional products and technology upgrades, and is committed to becoming a nutrition expert within reach of everyone, by providing more young families with With high-end formula food and professional nutrition management services, it has become an influential health consumer company in the world. The realization of this goal is inseparable from the opportunities behind major platform changes.” Ma Haihua believes that the huge and urgently-exploited commercial value of the WeChat ecosystem is being generated in a big break. “This is one thing we want to do next. . “