Nowadays, the global economy is slowing down, and many corporate businesses have fallen into a growth bottleneck. Today we are going to talk about how to find a breakthrough?
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account” Louis Xu Wei “(ID: louisxuwei) , author: LouisX.
Nowadays, the global economy is slowing down, and many corporate businesses have fallen into a growth bottleneck. Today we will talk about several ways of general business breakthroughs.
There are three ways for companies to break through the bottleneck:
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Discover a new blue ocean and quickly enter the occupation niche. (Fast)
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Discover structural dividend opportunities and invest a lot of money to gain advantage. (Dare)
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Deeply understand the industry, gain insights into key points, combine the advantages of the company, and establish long-term advantages. (Coincident)
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Discover a new blue ocean and quickly enter the occupation niche
The first is the most common, the keyword here is fast. In the environment of rapid changes in the industry and the times, some new markets and demands are often generated. At this time, if you see this market quickly enough, you can take a good position and take preemptive actions. Both capital and efficiency are decisive. The advantages. Whether it is the industry in the early stage of reform and opening up, or the PC, the opportunities in various industries/industry in the early stage of mobile Internet have hatched batches of giants. In the early days, BAT and FAG occupied the niche of the industry at a very early stage. This is also the highest probability of success among the three growth strategies.
The so-called occupation of niche. Not only the niche in the blue ocean of the industry, but also the analytical lineIndustry pattern and find its own niche in the industry ecological pattern. For example, Tencent has always been eyeing e-commerce, but it has been squeezed by Ali, because e-commerce has long-term strategic significance for Tencent. Tencent will continue to invest in this piece. Tencent has a unique traffic advantage, and it does not connect with Ali traffic. Therefore, there must be an niche for Tencent’s flow e-commerce under the Tencent flow system. Vipshop, JD.com, and Pinduoduo are all grabbing this niche. Now it seems that Pinduoduo, who knows more about using Tencent’s traffic, has gradually established this niche. Give another example. In the short video industry, Douyin quickly grabbed the top spot in the short video industry market through strong execution. It stands to reason that other short video products will be squeezed particularly severely, and even dominate. But Kuaishou also relies on the rapid growth of Tencent’s ecology. There are many upstream resources that Douyin has to pay a high price to obtain, such as WeChat traffic, music/TV series/game IP, etc. And before OFO and Mobike, Meituan and Hungry, Didi and Kuaidi are the same.
For the blue ocean market of the industry, if there is a chance, it should quickly enter and expand. Here is more about timing: time and space. Let me talk about time first. For example, structural changes in industries/policies, mature development of technology in a certain field, and major historical events may all create good opportunities. In terms of space, it is the “copy to XX” model. The United States has Amazon and China can have JD. China has Ctrip, and India can have make my trip. It is possible to explore the emerging blue ocean market in the dimensions of time and space. But to be honest, this is really difficult. Unless the times change rapidly, the blue ocean can easily be taken over by giants with higher execution power.
During the period of slow development of the industry, more people will choose to “grow” in the ecosystem of giants. Of course, giants also have a choice cost. First of all, the industry must be large enough, within its strategic territory, and achievements must be made to have a chance to be favored by giants. The advantage is that there are a lot of resources to support in the short term, but the disadvantage is that when you grow up later, the giants may limit their rapid development due to business conflicts. “Survival” in the early stage is the most important, and “freedom” in the later stage is the most important.
Discover structural bonus opportunities and invest a lot to gain advantage (dare)
With the rapid development of the industry and society, there will be many structural bonus opportunities. Some entrepreneurs or companies have seen this dividend and dared to invest heavily to maximize the dividend window and quickly run out of business. Here are a few exampleschild. For example, for Internet products in the to C category, acquiring new users at a lower cost is an important part of supporting the company’s early growth. In 14 years, the pre-installed price was only 0.6 to 0.8 yuan, which was very cheap. App stores and mobile advertising are not very expensive. If the company invested its main resources in this area, it would be much more efficient than the latter. Many mobile Internet companies are still relying on seizing a large amount of mobile traffic to gain a place in today’s headlines even when the ecological niche is relatively tight. Today, even if you have a good to C product idea, it is difficult to come out because the cost of acquiring new users is too high, and many companies may fall because they cannot support the cost. To give another example, with the continuous increase of mobile Internet customer acquisition costs and the scale effect formed by Ali Jingdong. In 15 years, everyone felt that the e-commerce industry might not be able to squeeze the opportunities of giants. But most people ignore the huge private domain traffic under the WeChat system, and even Tencent itself may not have thought of how to use it in the e-commerce field. Pinduoduo has emerged, using its understanding of games and human nature to fully excavate the unused “e-commerce traffic” in the WeChat system, greatly improving the efficiency of growth. Here is another point. WeChat has distributed a large number of red envelopes through cooperation with the Spring Festival Gala in 15 years. There are not many red envelopes in WeChat and don’t know how to spend it. Pinduoduo just provided a low-cost solution, and traffic flowed along the way.
Many people will mistake the so-called “wind vent” as an opportunity for dividends. In fact, when something has become a vent, there may be no dividends. Just like the stock market. “Buy on the Rumor and Sell on the News”. This kind of growth opportunity is easier than finding the blue ocean of the industry, but it is also harder. Some companies that have grown up in the post-Internet era, such as Bytedance, use this method for Pinduoduo.
Deeply understand the industry, gain insight into key points, combine corporate advantages, and establish long-term advantages (smart)
If you don’t have the first mover advantage, you can also find opportunities for late strikers. Some companies are often not the first to break into this industry, nor do they have obvious dividends. However, the leading companies have some structural flaws that enable latecomers to finally reverse the battle by establishing a longer-term strategy. Companies running through this model are the most difficult, and they need the most strategic determination. Meituan is a good example. In the Thousand Regiment Battle that year, Meituan was not the first and largest, but in the end only Meituan ran out.Come. why? The trend of group buying from the United States (Groupon) blew to China. Hot money poured in and thousands of regiments rose suddenly. In the end, the Groupon bubble landed, and Meituan finally ran out in the Thousand Regiment Battle. How does Meituan, which is not the number one in the industry, do it? Mainly made several key strategic judgments in the selection of cities and investment. At that time, everyone in group buying would encounter a question: how many cities were opened and which cities?
Start with the end, first make a few strategic judgments.
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There is a clear capital bubble in the group buying industry. Most companies are going to close down. In the end, only a few leading companies will come out. In the later stage of victory or defeat, the input-output ratio is mainly determined. Therefore, Meituan is very cautious in terms of investment, and cash flow is still very good at the end of the competition.
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The only way to control input and output is to “close the city.” If you want to choose a closed city, most companies must close the city at the waist and below. Because the top cities contribute the most to the output and the relative cost is low, and no company can achieve the monopoly of the merchants in the big cities (many merchants), everyone has the opportunity. That is, when the winner is determined, many companies must retreat in small cities.
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Because of the small number of businesses in small cities, it is not difficult to monopolize businesses (the number of businesses is small). Once monopolized, profit can be realized. So Meituan’s judgment at the time was: When the winner is determined, everyone will close the small city, and the Meituan will start making money in the small city.
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Big cities cannot tell the winner, even if the market share is large, they cannot effectively increase ROI.
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The cities in the tail will not affect the outcome, so we must resolutely discard them.
Based on the above judgment, Meituan’s final strategic decision is to focus on increasing investment in cities ranging from 25 to 94. The profit of waist cities feeds back the investment of big cities.
There is another point here, that is, the strategy needs to be adjusted quickly as the situation changes. Many things are difficult to see clearly, so you have to adjust them quicklywhole. Quickly verify the review decision.
Finally, the facts also proved that Meituan was correct. Later, Meituan and Dianping merged, and Nuomi basically disappeared. When many dimensions were not dominant, Meituan finally ran out.
It is very difficult to win strategically. Win more with less, either the strategic cognition is hard-core enough, or the opponent takes the initiative to make mistakes. Many large companies also use the simple and effective defensive posture of “copy” to stifle the possibility of a comeback. But there is definitely an opportunity. You will find a breakthrough if you cultivate good internal skills, have a long-term perspective, and know yourself and your opponent.
Summary
The above three basic ways for companies or entrepreneurs to find growth breakthrough points. But you will find that most projects are done without thinking about it. That is, there is no particularly good strategy, but I still want to take a gamble, and I will get into a certain opportunity. In the end, most of them are struggling in the predicament. Food is tasteless, but it is a pity to discard it.
Most of the time, you will find that choosing what not to do is more important than what to do. The real master is not to send ten thousand arrows, but to sink his heart, spot it, and hit it.