"Low frequency + high customer orders", 20 million private domain users, how does Sofia achieve continuous growth through private domain?

How did Suofia, a very successful company in the home furnishing industry in recent years, achieve its goal of going online? This article analyzes Suofia's private domain operation strategy. Let's take a look.

Compared with food and fast-moving consumer goods, durable goods are characterized by low frequency and high customer orders, which also makes the user's consumption chain longer and more complex.

The home furnishing industry is a typical example. Consumers have high requirements on the product's brand image, quality and efficacy, logistics and distribution, design and decoration, purchase scenarios, after-sales service and other aspects.

Therefore, in the past, for a long time, the online conversion rate of the furniture industry was not ideal. However, in the past two years, a company has emerged as a model for the furniture industry to play with private domains.

It is Sofia. Recently, Sofia released a new announcement on its third quarter performance in 2023. The report shows that the company's third quarter performance increased by 20% year-on-year, and its net profit exceeded 900 million yuan.

It is worth mentioning that the total number of fans of Sofia's accounts on various platforms has exceeded 20 million, and the private domain is becoming a new growth point for the brand. Today, we will analyze Sofia's private domain operations for you.

01 Case Background

1. Brand Introduction

Suofeiya Home Furnishing Co., Ltd. is a company mainly engaged in the research and development, production and sales of custom cabinets, cabinets, wooden doors, wall-to-floor integrated cabinets, supporting hardware, furniture and home products, and custom bulk business. The company was successfully listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2011 and is the first A-share listed company in the industry.

2. Market size

According to statistics from Xicheng E-commerce Research Institute, the furniture and building materials consumption market on the Douyin platform grew strongly from January to April 2023. Among them, the sales of the whole house customization category increased by 470% year-on-year, which is 3.5 times the overall growth rate of furniture and building materials, and has huge development potential. The market size of my country's customized furniture industry has increased from 198.2 billion yuan in 2016 to 473 billion yuan in 2022, with an average annual compound growth rate of 15.6%.

3. User portrait

In terms of gender, 56.2% of Sophia's users are female. In terms of age, users under 30 years old account for 37.8%, users between 31 and 40 years old account for 22.5%, and users between 41 and 50 years old account for 19.8%;

02 Traffic Channel Analysis

Sofia has established a private domain matrix with channels such as "official account + corporate WeChat + community" as the core, and has made use of popular public domain platforms such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Weibo, etc. to achieve public and private domain traffic conversion and help brands expand their voice.

1. Private Domain Platform

1) Official Account

After following the "Sophia Whole Home Customization" official account, the welcome message will introduce the brand characteristics, welfare activities and come with a jump link.

After the user clicks the link, he or she can scan the QR code to add a brand welfare officer, who will then invite the user to join the community.

2. Public Domain Platform

1) Video Account

Sofia's video account mainly features brand promotion, product introductions, and situational skits. The homepage has touchpoints for "public account" and "corporate WeChat," and users can click to add the corporate WeChat account. In addition, the account will also broadcast live from time to time to accumulate popularity and increase sales.

2) Tik Tok

Sofia has set up a matrix on Douyin, with a total of more than 5 million fans, of which the main account Sofia Wardrobe | Whole Home Customization has 2.001w fans and 9.878w likes. The content of the account is mainly product promotion, event promotion, and live broadcast promotion.

The home page sets the traffic paths for stores, fan groups and group purchase recommendations, and you can jump to the corresponding page by clicking.

3) Xiaohongshu

Sophia’s account on Xiaohongshu has 549,000 followers and 334,000 likes and collections.

The account mainly promotes new products and brand events, and will set up lucky draws in tweets to increase the exposure of the content and attract users to make offline purchases.

4) Weibo

Sophia has 521,000 followers on Weibo, and 294,100 likes and comments. Weibo will share content such as rewarded interactions, event promotions, and product introductions.

The homepage sets up touchpoints for the fan group. Users can apply to enter after following the account and becoming loyal fans of the account.

03 Private Domain IP Disassembly

Sofia has carefully designed its customer service WeChat and positioned its brand IP as a welfare officer.

Below is a detailed analysis using the corporate IP I added as an example.

1. Personal positioning

Nickname: Design Assistant-Chunchun

Avatar: Young woman (real person portrait)

Role positioning: Brand welfare officer

2. Corporate WeChat Business Card

In each corporate WeChat business card, you can see the video account and working hours of Sofia employees. By informing users of working hours in advance, it can avoid affecting customer perception due to untimely responses during breaks.

3. Automatic welcome message

After adding the WeChat account, the WeChat account will automatically reply with a welcome message, introduce the exclusive benefits of the community, and provide a link to the community to guide users to join the community.

4. Moments content

• Content frequency: Not fixed
• Release time: Unfixed
• Moments content: mainly brand promotion, welfare activities, etc.

04 Community Operation Analysis

Social networking is the most effective and common scenario for promoting activity in the private domain. Sophia increases product exposure and conversion through social networking operations. The following is a detailed analysis:

1. Community positioning

• Group nickname: serial number + decoration owner communication group [Sophia]
• Group positioning: Owners communication group
• Community value: event notifications, experience sharing

2. Community welcome message and group announcement

After entering the group, a welcome message and the latest brand activities will pop up automatically. The welcome message introduces the brand positioning and reminds the business people who join the group to change their nicknames, so as to facilitate better 1V1 customized services.

3. Community Content

It mainly focuses on the promotion of activities, and the combination of pictures and texts is clear and easy to understand. Sophia's community activities are very rich, including real-life cases and experience sharing. There are also lucky draws and live broadcast previews. The community is quite active and the user stickiness is strong.

05 Membership System Analysis

Sophia has established corresponding membership systems on both the mini program and e-commerce platform, both of which are mainly based on the growth-oriented membership + points system. The following mainly introduces the mini program membership system.

1. Growing membership

Enter Sofia's mini program "Sofia Member Center" and register to become a member. You will receive a membership gift package, including a 600 yuan cabinet coupon and one free door-to-door service.

Sofia has established a complete growth membership system, dividing members into 6 levels: Sofia fans, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, and black diamond. The higher the level, the higher the benefits you enjoy.

Taking Black Diamond as an example, users need to accumulate 250,001 growth points to upgrade to this level. They can enjoy 10 benefits such as formaldehyde detection, air conditioner cleaning, and range hood disassembly and cleaning.

2. Points system

Member points can be obtained by completing information, making purchases, etc.

In Sofia's points mall, you can use points plus money to exchange for a variety of gifts such as formaldehyde removers, microwave ovens, electric pressure cookers, range hoods, etc. The basic range is strongly related to whole-house customization to meet the needs of users to the greatest extent.

summary

Finally, let’s summarize the highlights and shortcomings of Sofia’s private domain operations:

1) Strong product promotion breaks the circle: Sofia jointly promotes new products on various platforms, and amplifies product attention through rewarded interactions, situational videos, etc. based on user portraits, so as to quickly break out of the circle and reach more target users.

2) Rich community gameplay: Sofia’s community content has many gameplays. In addition to issuing coupons, there are many welfare activities and case sharing. User activity and stickiness are strong.

3) The IP image is relatively weak: the content of Sofia’s WeChat Moments is almost all product-related content, lacking daily life content, making it difficult to narrow the distance between Sofia and users.

Author: Yan Tao WeChat public account: Yan Tao Sanshou