Arrange Alipay in advance, you will get a new wave of growth opportunities.
Look at business with perspective. Super views, from the frontier observations of new business practitioners.
Text | Special Observer Duan Mingjie
Edit | Cui Yandong
Special Observer Duan Mingjie
In June last year, Alipay just launched a small program “care version” for the elderly. AgeClub received a proposal from the relevant investment institutions of the Ali Department. We hope that we recommend the elderly industry companies, especially the content production startups, to launch Alipay. They can provide With investment support, Alipay has been paying attention to the middle-aged and elderly groups for a long time. With the recent launch of Alipay Senior University, Alipay ’s layout for middle-aged and elderly people is obviously accelerating.
AgeClub research team often finds that the elderly will use WeChat to pay in first- and second-tier cities, but there is no Alipay. Since most of the elderly on the Internet are using WeChat, WeChat has a larger share of Alipay among the elderly In order to expand the incremental market, Alipay is accelerating the investment of resources to attract middle-aged and elderly people. For start-up companies, laying Alipay in advance will gain a new wave of growth opportunities.
Alibaba upgrades “Digital Life Open Platform”, the strategy behind it is a super entrance
When Alipay announced in March of this year that it upgraded from a financial payment platform to an open platform for digital life, public opinion lamented that Meituan will be “hit” because hungry and word of mouth are more important in Alipay, and it is said that Ali ’s internal Invest “no limit”. However, this comparison clearly underestimates Alipay’s ambitions, because Alipay’s real opponent is actually the current super portal of the Internet, WeChat.
QuestMobile ’s “2020 China Mobile Internet Spring Report” just released shows that WeChat ’s monthly active users are 946 million, 35% higher than Alipay ’s 703 million.
If Alipay has developed slowly in the past few years, it is mainly because the Ant Financial Service behind it has focused on Alipay, word-of-mouth, hungry and other self-cultivation and external mergers and acquisitions. In terms of integration, after upgrading to an open platform for digital life in March this year, Alipay was officially given Alibaba’s mission to create a super portal.
Alipay is backed by a strong Alibaba. The advantages are very obvious. The B-end merchants on the supply side are rich in resources, but the weaknesses are also very obvious. They lack their own super entrance and socializing. , Content has always wanted to do but did not do it. Many senior executives of Ant Financial have said that they will build China’s largest ecosystem service system through the Alipay applet, and also help merchants complete the closed loop of content + services. Based on Alipay’s future development strategy, we can understand why Alipay launched the “care version” for the elderly in June 2019, followed by the launch of Alipay Senior University in March 2020. We believe that with Alipay Continuously increasing investment in the middle-aged and elderly sectors will be a good development opportunity for startups to arrange Alipay in advance.
400 million middle-aged and elderly people will be the winner of the duel between Alipay and WeChat
In recent years, young people have been penetrated by various head apps, and 400 million middle-aged and elderly people have become the last incremental space for Internet traffic. According to the “China Mobile Internet Spring Big Report 2020”, the monthly active users increased by 15.71 million in March 2020 compared with last year, of which 61% or 9.65 million came from middle-aged and elderly groups over 41 years old, especially over 46 years old. Between the ages of 25 and 40, there has been no increase in users. And in terms of duration, middle-aged and elderly users are also growing rapidly. The average monthly usage time of users over 46 years old is 162.3 hours, and the gap with young users is getting smaller and smaller.
It should be pointed out that there are still many middle-aged and elderly people in China who have not yet entered the Internet world. According to QuestMobile, there are 153 million monthly active users over the age of 46, while China ’s population over 50 years old is over 400 million and the population over 60 years old is over 250 million. Billion. The 400 million middle-aged and elderly people who have stepped into the Internet and are still wandering outside the Internet are essential for Alipay to become a super entrance and build a digital business world. After ten years of development, the middle-aged and elderly people have become more and more proficient in using smartphones. Especially after the outbreak promoted, from the initial chat, watching news, chasing drama to shopping, grocery shopping, ordering takeaway, they are more proficient in the use of APP, so the educational cost required for Alipay to popularize between them is greatly reduced. Take a look at the recently disclosed data:
· Ali local life: After the “60” during the Spring Festival, the number of orders for online grocery shopping has quadrupled;
· Meituan: Post-60s and post-70s users accounted for 36.7% and 31.5% of the growth of new takeaway customers respectively;
· Quick Hand: In the main app of Quick Hand, users over 46 years old accounted for 4.7%, while the users of Fast Hand Speed Edition accounted for over 46 years old accounted for 8.9%;
Online education: After the Spring Festival in 2020, users over the age of 46 rose from 10.9% on weekdays to 14.5%.
Affected by the epidemic, young people face various risks such as unemployment and falling income, while the pension income of the middle-aged and elderly groups is not affected at all, and will continue to rise every year with national policies, and will become China in the future. The main force of consumption. The strong consumption potential of middle-aged and elderly people has played a huge role in the early development of Pinduoduo, and it has also cultivated a number of vertical e-commerce cases with a revenue of 100 million yuan. For example, Beijing Satellite TV’s own brand WeChat Mall, Tangfang Health Care, has selected through the Youzan platform that its products are mainly health foods with a minimum customer price of one or two hundred yuan, and many single product sales are in the range of 1000-3000 Between the pieces, the number of SKUs is between 100-200, and the annual sales are estimated to reach more than 100 million yuan.
More importantly, WeChat has always exercised restraint in advancing commercial monetization, which has left Alipay with a deep opportunity to integrate internal resources and attack the middle-aged and elderly groups. At present, a large part of the middle-aged and elderly people’s cognition of WeChat still stays in the social and content mental cognition, and has certain acceptance of shopping and payment, and is very strange to financial management. This also leaves Alipay with cancellation fees, financial The mental space of users waiting for more business. After upgrading to an open platform for digital life, Alipay can integrate the rich resources of merchants, finance, data, etc. within the Ali system to provide more accurate, intimate, and colorful consumption supplies for the middle-aged and elderly groups.
The precise operation of the business hours just happens to be deeply integrated with the life habits of the middle-aged and elderly groups, and successful cases have already been made by enterprises. AgeClub has surveyed the membership-based middle-aged and elderly life service platform Huo Club in Shanghai. They and the old-fashioned five-star hotel Shanghai Tower cooperated with the elderly buffet event. On the 15% service fee, you can enjoy a preferential price of 128 yuan after registering a member. The retirement club made a promotion on its own WeChat account, inviting elderly volunteers to experience the buffet in advance, and then took photos, videos, and tweets to introduce the event to other members who did not go. In two days, the sales volume of the buffet has reached more than 1,400, which is the business volume of the hotel during the two-month lunch time. This event also reflects theThe consumption of the elderly has strong social attributes. They don’t have two or four people for dinner like young people. They will invite many friends and relatives to take turns to eat dinner. One purchase is for a dozen or twenty people. In the actual transaction, the separate two-person and four-person packages are the least bought, usually several or four copies at the same time.
In other aspects of local life, there are also many opportunities to develop products for middle-aged and elderly people and improve business performance for businesses.
Last year, word-of-mouth and hungry have released data. Over half of the silver-haired people in Wuhan over the age of 50 choose to spend in the afternoon time of KTV (13:00 to 17:00). The group is nearly 20% higher, and it is the group with the highest proportion of group coupons used by KTV.
The 400 million middle-aged and elderly population and the huge consumption potential it contains will become the winners of the decisive battle between Alipay and WeChat.
What should Alipay do to quickly mobilize 400 million middle-aged and elderly people?
In order to open the huge middle-aged and elderly market, Taobao and Alipay have done a lot of exploration in the past two years. For example, in January 2018, the Taobao family account (now changed to “family number”, which is connected between Taobao and Alipay) and the family version of Taobao were launched to allow children to pay for their parents ’shopping carts, as well as for middle-aged and elderly people More convenient and comfortable. At that time, Taobao also offered an annual salary of 350,000 to 400,000 yuan to recruit “Taobao-senior professional research specialist”, requiring 60 years old and above, good relationship with children, a stable circle of middle-aged and elderly groups, and greater influence in the group (square dance KOL, community neighborhood committee members are preferred), and have 1 year of online shopping experience.
In June 2019, Alipay launched a “care version” for the elderly. The fonts and icons are all displayed in large size, and the functions are mainly used by the elderly, such as phone charge, water and electricity and coal payment, social insurance and medical insurance. Electronic bus card (metro card), online taxi, purchase of discounted goods in supermarkets, etc.
Recently, the “Alipay Senior University”, a life number for the elderly, has also been launched. A piece of content is a series of popular science courses of “15-minute package learning” launched by Jiaxing Library, which has been cultivating elderly education for over 10 years Local KOLs, such as the “3 minute package comprehension” series of mobile phone lessons cooperated by G Sengdong.
Another piece of content is a live broadcast in collaboration with Internet celebrities such as Li Jiaqi and the launch of an “anti-fraud public class” specifically for the elderly. At the same time, online teachers are also recruited at a salary of 1,000 yuan per class. The requirements are: no academic qualifications, no class, no punch card, proficient use of mobile phones, 50 years old and above is preferred.
It is slightly embarrassing though, although we have never heard that WeChat has developed the “senior version”, “care version” or “family version”, the penetration rate and usage time of WeChat in the middle-aged and elderly groups are far higher Yu Alipay, thus in the WeChat ecosystemThe resulting shopping and consumption is likely to be much higher than Alipay. The reason for this difference is that the overall business logic of WeChat is to obtain high-viscosity middle-aged and elderly user traffic through a powerful social and content platform, social fission and expansion through WeChat groups and friend circles, and finally through payment and applets Commercialization of various consumption scenarios. Alipay started from the profit link of consumption and transaction from the beginning, but because there is no strong sticky social and content platform unique to WeChat, the penetration rate and stickiness will be much worse than WeChat. In order to occupy the middle-aged and elderly market, Alipay must make up for the shortcomings in social and content.
New direction of Alipay social network: import the most consumption-capable middle-aged and elderly social network from acquaintance relationship, geographic location, and interests
Social has a huge impact on e-commerce and consumption. It has cultivated many listed companies in WeChat ecosystem, such as Pinduoduo, Yunji, Youzan, and Weimeng. Alipay is never willing to give up this. But in the past few years, Alipay’s social pace has not stopped, but most of the trial and error, such as the launch of the “circle” function in 2016, as a result, a large number of large-scale photos appeared in the “white-collar diary”, “campus diary” and other circles It does not end with the public apology of Peng Lei, the former chairman of Ant Financial. The “circle” at that time was essentially a social interaction of strangers, but this is not suitable for the blessing package that takes local life as the main way of realization. The conversion efficiency of consumption scenarios is very low, and it is more suitable for Momo and Tantan to sell members’ monetization methods. The relationship network based on acquaintances, hobbies, and geographic location is particularly suitable for the social characteristics of the middle-aged and elderly groups, and may become a lever for Alipay to leverage 400 million middle-aged and elderly groups.
In the past year, NewAgingPro, an independent consulting service brand of AgeClub, has conducted a lot of in-depth interviews with middle-aged and elderly people in cities in China.
· Acquaintance relationships , such as family groups, classmates, comrades, colleagues;
· Hobbies and interests , such as senior college groups, square dance groups, model groups, KTV groups;
· Geographic relationship , such as community group, property group, community group purchase group, etc.
And these groups are highly active and the efficiency of transaction-oriented transactions is also very high, suitable for the promotion of various physical goods and local life services. The fission brought by the middle-aged and elderly community has made WeChat live broadcast very hot in a short time. In the past two months, various senior universities have started to broadcast live on WeChat, the content is very extensive, from singing, dancing and other art coursesGoods, electrical appliances and other physical commodities, as well as on-site visits to tourist attractions and well-being residences.
And many live broadcasts have not been launched a few times, and the number of viewers has reached tens of thousands or even 100,000+. This is very high data on Taobao, Douyin, and Kuaishou. power.
In fact, Alipay has been constantly iterating on social activities in the past two years, and it has been quite perfect now. It has various interactive functions such as group chat (common group, toll group), circle of friends, community life, etc. There are no obstacles at the “hardware” level in relational networks. Next, we need to work harder on the “software”, that is, operations. And unlike the tedious entertainment life of the middle-aged and elderly people five years and ten years ago, and the lack of organizational networks, almost every city offline has many ready-made entertainment communities, such as various square dance teams, model teams, and senior colleges.
Online, there are a large number of middle-aged and elderly media matrix and middle-aged and elderly life service platforms with millions of fans. They organize various activities, shopping, travel, and catering online and offline, and some have reached the scale of income. Hundreds of millions of dollars. For these middle-aged and elderly communities and platforms, WeChat is currently the main community carrier, but it does not mean that WeChat is their only constant choice. If Alipay launches a strong operating capability, and introduces the middle-aged and elderly communities scattered throughout the country to its own platform, the GMV brought about by this is unimaginable.
Integrating fragmented content channels to create a Alipay stream of accurate recommendations and thousands of people
In addition to social, content is also the direction that Alipay is working hard to promote. However, compared with the successful case of middle-aged and elderly people who have gathered millions of fans on WeChat ecosystem and used e-commerce and tourism to monetize public accounts, Alipay’s content ecology has always had a low sense of existence. On the surface, this is because the content on Alipay is barren, and the content suitable for middle-aged and elderly people is almost blank. The WeChat ecology is very rich in health care, emotional life, culture and art, as well as album production, short video and other applications, which are basically not found on Alipay. This problem is very easy to solve when the content of middle-aged and elderly people is already very rich. The deeper reason may be that although Alipay has launched enough content distribution channels, such as the life number for merchants, the wealth number for fund companies, the bank number for banks, and small programs for various corporate entities. But fatally, these content distribution channels are scattered in various unknown corners of Alipay ’s complex interface, thereby successfully making it “impossible to find the same content source twice”.
Analyze the homepage of Alipay. In addition to the basic and core functions, the rest of the interface is mainly based on red envelope coupons and product recommendations, revealing a strong e-commerce thinking. And the number of product recommendations on the homepage is limited, and when it is pulled to the bottom, it will display “I have a bottom line”, which is not conducive to middle-aged and elderly users to “walk” and grow grassdemand. If the social network can still get the first-level entrance “friend” at the bottom of Alipay, the importance is not lost to the social content section, but there is no place on the first page and the bottom first-level entrance. What Alipay needs most now is to build a complete and unified content system, aggregate health, wealth management, life and other information scattered around the corners and shopping guide information such as commodities, catering, and tourism, and form accurate recommendations on the home page, with thousands of people and thousands of information flow. Allowing middle-aged and elderly users to develop the habit of opening Alipay to take a look and go shopping at any time, instead of only opening Alipay when looking for discounts, then the consumption promotion effect on the middle-aged and elderly people will be greatly strengthened.
After this problem is resolved, Alipay spends a lot of money every year to do promotional activities, send red envelopes and coupons to get the valuable traffic, in order to truly flow through the Alipay system, to get through from content production, product recommendation to traffic distribution, propagation and fission And then to the closed loop of the merchant’s realization, which reproduces the huge commercial potential displayed by WeChat ecology.
Recommended reading:
The “Super Views” section now launches the “Special Observers” program, inviting entrepreneurs from various tracks, business leaders of large companies and other front-line business practitioners to share your entrepreneurial experience, dry goods, and methodology , Your industry insight, trend judgment, and look forward to hearing your voice from the forefront.
Welcome to contact us, WeChat: cuiyandong66; Email: guanchayuan@36kr.com.