The secret of e-commerce experts to make money: follow the trend

"The way to make money in e-commerce is to follow the trend." In the fiercely competitive battlefield of e-commerce, the market and user needs are changing rapidly. How to grasp the trend and achieve profitability? Following the trend is the key secret.

Everyone who does e-commerce probably wants to make money. Although everyone thinks so, the results may be completely different. For example, the recent Double Eleven, everyone has felt the decline in traffic after Double Eleven. I feel that it is very difficult to get links after Double Eleven. In the past, if the profit was 10 yuan, the link bid was 10 yuan, and the link could take off.

Nowadays, even if the profit is 10 yuan and the bid is 20, the link may not get exposure. I once suspected that the platform had changed the algorithm again. Later, combined with the market trend, I realized that it was not the platform that changed, but the market.

So, I understand that under the trend of decreasing platform traffic, the best strategy for us e-commerce is to go with the flow, rather than against the wind, otherwise you will definitely lose completely.

01When the market is so small, you should go with the flow

We should all look at the market. For example, let's say we sell electric mosquito coils. It's December now and the weather is cold. I think there should be few mosquitoes in your homes, except for me in the south, where I was woken up by a mosquito last night. But compared to summer, the number of mosquitoes is pitifully small.

So, at this point in time, if we sell mosquito coils on the platform, how do you set your KPI? Do you set it based on the summer's explosive data of 10,000 orders a day? Are you crazy or stupid?

The order quantity of seasonal products will increase or decrease with the changes in the market. When we set targets for links, we must know that they will be set according to market trends. When the market demand is large, the target will be set high, and when the market demand is small, the target will be set small.

Instead of setting an unchanging goal no matter how the outside market changes, this deviates from the trend of going with the flow and is like hitting a wall. Let me ask you, with the current number of mosquitoes, can the daily order volume of electric mosquito coils be the same as in summer?

The above is an example of seasonal products, which everyone can understand well. Let's take another example that is not so easy to understand, but we also need to follow the trend, such as shampoo with a customer unit price of 150 yuan. When we get this product, how many orders are expected to be sold per day? 10,000 orders? 1,000 orders or 100 orders? As a boss, I definitely hope you can sell 100,000 orders a day.

But is it realistic? Let's open Pinduoduo's shampoo rankings. The trend of the shampoo rankings is that 1,000 orders a day is about the limit, and this is for low-order products. We want to sell products with a high order of 150 yuan. Do you think it's realistic to set a goal of 1,000 orders a day? It's definitely impossible. Do we have to bite the bullet and set a goal of 1,000 orders a day? Unless the boss is crazy.

Normal people will follow the trend and set a goal of 100 orders a day. If you can achieve 100 orders a day with an average customer order of 150, you will be a top-tier company in the shampoo category. So, we should expand our business to the size of the market. Don’t focus on a small category pool. It is wishful thinking and unrealistic to dream of achieving the same number of orders as a large category. You should follow the trend to get what you want.

For example, the overall market demand declined after Double 11. Why did it decline? Because Double 11 was fully released. Therefore, the decline in traffic and order volume after the holiday is a completely normal market development law.

At this time, we should not require to send a few more according to the data during the peak traffic. My suggestion is: don't fight hard when the traffic is low. The best strategy at this time is to post more links and test links, accumulate high-quality links, and don't push too much. When the traffic comes, spend money frantically to grab the volume. Only then can you reap the benefits of a small effort. Everything should go with the flow.

02Follow the trend when facing user needs

During this period of low traffic, we continue to do link-up and link-testing. Although the market demand is less, there are still orders. What do we rely on to seize this traffic? It is to accurately grasp user needs and follow the trend.

Let's take the example of electric mosquito coils. Now is indeed the off-season, but we still have some leftovers that we want to clear out quickly. So how can we clear them out quickly? At a low price.

According to my three-day investigation and research on human nature, I found that people are very sensitive to price when buying things. If a product usually sells for 5,000 yuan, when the company is sluggish and starts to run away, the price will be reduced by 2,000 yuan, and the sales of this product will increase greatly. I am really not talking about some Apple phones and some Mazda cars.

You see, price is very important in user demand, accounting for at least 50% of the weight. So if we only need to reduce the price of electric mosquito coils by half or give them a 20% discount, I believe that even if there is no demand, there will be no worries about the lack of orders.

Of course, not all prices can be reduced, because that means losing money, and what we hate most in e-commerce is losing money. So besides reducing prices, what else can we do to meet user needs? Let’s go back to the 150 yuan shampoo.

This unit price is actually not low. Most shampoos used by people are between 30 and 50 yuan. If you insist on selling them at 150 yuan, how can you sell them? First of all, the user pool you cut cannot be the low-price route. This is to go with the flow.

You should cut into the pool of users that will buy your product. Don't cut into the pool of low-priced users with large traffic just because the pool of low-priced users has large traffic. The result is that even if you get exposure and clicks, you won't get any orders, and you'll be wasting money. Why bother?

So how do you capture the high-priced user pool? Go with the flow. Do you know how to do it? What? No? Let me explain. In fact, any product can be sold at any price. The key lies in whether you can meet the needs of this user pool.

Since users pay three or four times the price of ordinary products to buy the same product, they naturally hope that this product is different from ordinary products, which can be in terms of quality, ingredients, or efficacy. As far as I know, purely functional cleaning products can be sold at one or two times the price of ordinary cleaning products. As for whether they are effective, those who understand will understand.

Then we have to think, under what circumstances would users spend 150 yuan to buy a bottle of shampoo? The answer is to prevent hair loss or other functions that ordinary shampoos rarely have, such as hyaluronic acid care, containing top-grade pearl powder, cordyceps extract, etc. (The above is my imagination, everyone understands this meaning).

The needs of high-priced users are different from the effects and ingredients of ordinary products, so when you make high-priced products, you have to follow the trend and go in this direction, instead of just making a main picture and details like ordinary products. In this way, the link you make is no different from ordinary products, and the price is two or three times higher. Who will buy it?

03Finally

The essence of going with the flow is to comply with market and user demands, and we will talk about the platform demands later. No matter what the market and users are like, we should go with the flow according to the existing rules, increase the order volume, and everyone will win.

Instead of going against the market and user demands, as if you are the only one in the world, the result is that you get no orders and no traffic. In one sentence, the conclusion is: you are just busy in vain. Only execution that goes with the trend is valuable, meaningful and effective. Did you remember this?