Tencent's conference has 4 insights related to growth

Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Conference focused on the core issue of "growth" and provided a series of solutions and inspirations for enterprises. In the context of the current global economic weakness and intensified industry involution, seeking a second growth point has become a general consensus among enterprises. At the conference, Tencent executives emphasized the growth potential of WeChat ecosystem in retail enterprises, and that enterprises should adhere to the omni-domain business strategy and release the commercial value of data elements through digital empowerment, refined consumer operations and open win-win.

Yesterday (September 5), the 2024 Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Conference officially kicked off in Shenzhen. The conference focused on the core proposition of "growth" and provided enterprise solutions.

In a speech this morning, a senior Tencent executive pointed out directly: At present, the global economy is weak and industry involution is intensifying, and seeking a second growth point has become a general consensus among companies!

This sentence hits the pain point directly and points out the current situation and confusion of many companies.

This statement is not groundless. A survey report conducted by Gartner, an international authoritative research organization, on 416 CEOs in office around the world showed that 79% of CEOs plan to develop new business strategies by the end of 2024 to meet future challenges.

In 2024, the global CEO's attention to growth has reached the highest level in a decade! Reshaping growth in the face of adverse conditions is a must for every company today. Only new growth can help companies hedge against the decline of their original business and survive through the cycle.

Just at yesterday’s conference, Jianshi also saw some inspiration from companies regarding private domain and global domain growth.

Inspiration 1: Retail enterprises still have great business resilience and room for growth in the WeChat ecosystem

At the retail event, Tencent executives revealed a set of data:

In the smart retail business growth competition that just ended, the GMV of more than 100 brand mini-programs increased by nearly 7%; 21 merchants achieved a GMV of over 100 million in the WeChat ecosystem during the competition period, with significant growth in industrial belts and general retail customers; in the video account live broadcast competition, the average GMV increase of merchants reached 116%.

Therefore, for retail enterprises, the WeChat ecosystem is still worth cultivating. For example, we noticed Li Ning’s WeChat gameplay.

As a leading company in the sportswear industry, Li Ning has 7,600 offline stores. By continuously strengthening the construction of public accounts, mini programs, and corporate microblogs, Li Ning has built a brand official website that integrates content, services, and transactions, and has accumulated more than 30 million global users. In order to further improve user experience and operations, Li Ning has also built a consumer operation system and platform support to empower shopping guides.

In the past year, through the online and offline linkage management of WeChat ecosystem, Li Ning has increased the proportion of offline consumers to stores by 120%. Since the beginning of this year, the sales of new products in WeChat ecosystem have accounted for more than 50%, exploring a new path for brand official website e-commerce and driving the growth of Li Ning's business across the board.

In addition, Li Ning has also built a personalized recommendation algorithm based on its own member data and Tencent's massive data and tags, accurately positioning the product selection and recommendation scenarios that are suitable for the mini program, accurately pushing product and event information, effectively improving the mini program conversion rate, and driving the online purchase conversion rate of goods to increase by 50%.

The Li Ning case demonstrates the advantages of the WeChat ecosystem in terms of user connection, social fission, and private domain operations. Through digital tools such as mini programs and corporate WeChat, more and more corporate customers are able to more effectively attract and activate users, improve brand loyalty, and convert private domain traffic into tangible sales performance. Today, the WeChat ecosystem is helping more corporate customers build a second growth curve and achieve overtaking in the digital age.

In addition, Maker Village CTO Qin Xiaoran also said during his sharing, "Now all consumers are fragmented. Once you have users, how can you efficiently reach them? That is the real private domain. Reaching is not just a number. We need to deploy more touchpoints under the WeChat ecosystem. We have currently deployed about 80% of the touchpoints."

Inspiration 2: Enterprises should adhere to the global business strategy and make good arrangements for three internal strengths

"During the period of economic transition, companies should adhere to omni-regional operations," said Chen Fei, senior vice president of Tencent Cloud and head of Tencent Smart Retail, yesterday. In her opinion, omni-regional operations have become an industry consensus, and using "full-region digitalization" to support the implementation of the "omni-regional operations" model will be the key to corporate actions.

If enterprises want to cultivate digital internal strength to support full-domain operations, they need to make three arrangements:

The first is to tap the growth potential of physical stores through digital empowerment.

For example, Zhongshun Jie Rou used Tencent's big data and DRTM to explore high-potential sales points and concentrated its efforts on development, achieving more than 85% business growth in a single month in pilot cities; Luckin Coffee used Tencent's LBS data cube, with the help of algorithms and models to obtain more accurate point recommendations, quickly screen suitable blank markets, and become the top coffee store in the country, achieving high-quality and rapid development.

The second is to carry out refined operations by taking root among consumers through intensive cultivation.

For example, Quanmianshidai uses ecological tools such as Qidian Marketing Cloud, mini programs, and enterprise WeChat to fully connect the data of people, goods, and venues, build a new system that understands users better, and realize personalized communication in front of thousands of people.

So far, Cotton Era has accumulated 53 million global members, with sales exceeding 4 billion yuan in 2023, and the performance of the mini program has maintained high penetration growth. The chairman of Cotton Era said, "We hope that consumers can enjoy consistent products and services no matter where they buy Cotton Era products, and every small link will allow consumers to experience the value."

The third is to release the commercial value of data elements through openness and win-win cooperation.

For example, Jiangnan Buyi and offline shopping malls have jointly built a joint domain mini program mall, such as the "Shenyang China Resources MixC Jiangnan Buyi +" mini program, which connects the content, membership, payment, and activities of both parties to maximize the release and sharing of resources and benefits. At present, the number of Jiangnan Buyi members has exceeded 7.4 million, and the repurchase rate of Jiangnan Buyi direct store mini program members exceeds 40%.

Inspiration 3: Enterprises should use big models to achieve precision marketing and improve user service experience

Many companies spend a lot of money on marketing every year, so how can they maximize their investment and output? They need to rely on the power of big models.

With the technological breakthroughs in big models and generative AI, the understanding and generation of images, videos, and languages ​​have made great progress. The way people communicate with each other and the way people interact with systems may be reshaped, bringing huge room for imagination.

Tencent executives pointed out at the meeting that it seems unrealistic to expect big models to bring about huge changes to general companies in the short term, but using artificial intelligence to reduce costs and increase efficiency in existing business scenarios, improve operational efficiency, and enhance market competitiveness from quantitative change to qualitative change, is a more down-to-earth, steady and reliable path.

Today, the cost of calling big models has dropped to a very low level. If we add the company's unique professional documents and industry data to build smart applications or smart assistants, many companies will be able to improve employee work efficiency and enhance service experience in scenarios such as customer service, marketing, and content creation.

For example, in its cooperation with Honor mobile phones, Tencent Cloud has significantly improved service efficiency and user experience by inputting various instructions for use, troubleshooting and other knowledge of the mobile phones into the big model knowledge engine for training, and then combining it with the digital humans on the large screens of offline mobile phone stores and online customer service robots.

Inspiration 4: Expand the global user base, reduce business dependence on a single market, and enter the international market

Entering the international market, participating in global market competition, and seeking growth through going overseas have become a common consensus among current enterprises. According to a survey conducted by an institution, 90% of Chinese enterprises are interested in expanding overseas business, and nearly a quarter of enterprises list going overseas as one of their top priorities in the next 1 to 3 years.

In the view of Tencent executives, the overseas expansion of Chinese enterprises has changed from the original "product overseas expansion" to the "platform overseas expansion" and "supply chain overseas expansion" models that integrate production and services. In recent years, Chinese enterprises have accumulated rich experience in intelligent manufacturing, industrial chain, lean management, etc., and the rapid transfer and replication of these advantages to overseas markets has also become the primary concern of many enterprises going overseas. Let's take a look at the case of Midea Group.

Midea Group is a leading enterprise in the domestic home appliance industry. It has about 200 subsidiaries and 190,000 employees worldwide, including 30,000 overseas employees. In the past two years, Midea's overseas market revenue has accounted for more than 40% of the company's annual total revenue.

In order to expand into a wider global market, Midea began to build a super smart factory in Brazil this year to produce smart refrigerators, washing machines and other products. The new factory covers an area of ​​more than 70,000 square meters and is expected to have an annual production capacity of 1.3 million units. In addition to being supplied to Brazil, the products will also be sold to other markets in South America.

This factory was designed with a lot of digital production technology and innovative technology in mind, which places high demands on digital infrastructure construction. Building a factory overseas not only requires efficiency, but also compliance with local regulatory, compliance and data security requirements. In order to support the rapid operation of the business, it is necessary to quickly build a digital foundation to meet the production business system's demand for underlying resources.

After integrating multiple solutions, Midea used Tencent Cloud CDC's local professional cluster to build local digital infrastructure, and deployed local computing power in a hardware-software integrated form to meet the regulatory and compliance requirements for local data.

In addition, in the process of Midea's globalization, Tencent Meeting has supported the global collaboration of Midea's 190,000 employees and 200+ subsidiaries. Through a conference number, it connects Midea's employees around the world, closely connects businesses in various regions, and collaborates efficiently. Midea Group's overseas expansion also provides a reference for other companies' overseas expansion strategies.

The above is the feasible path for enterprises to achieve private and global growth that we saw at the 2024 Tencent Global Ecosystem Conference yesterday.