Tell a real case of a vertical industry and talk about how to use online to grow business

Nowadays, the Internet is developing faster and faster. How to combine it with vertical industries has become a problem for many companies. So how to use the Internet's online methods to achieve growth and increase sales or user scale? This article makes a detailed analysis through a real and specific case, and is recommended for those who need it.

When consulting for companies, the bosses are all concerned about the same issue: how to use online methods to achieve growth, increase sales or user scale.

Before discussing how to do it, let’s clarify two issues:

1. What problems can the Internet solve?
2. How to combine the Internet and vertical industries, and what is the business model?

As a boss, as long as you think these two issues clearly, the general direction of the company will be fine. Even if you don't do well enough, the result will not be too bad.

Issues such as growth strategies, platform gameplay, and advertising placement can all be handled by relying on the team.

First, let me tell you a real and specific case, and then answer your two questions.

When I was traveling in Hainan, I took a look at local real estate. I saw a host named Dachao on Douyin who was talking about buying houses in Hainan. I left his phone number and a salesperson drove over to take us to see a house the next day.

Overall, when it comes to helping outsiders buy houses in Hainan, they are quite familiar with online customer acquisition and conversion.

(1) The whole process is as follows

The anchor was live-streaming on Douyin about Hainan real estate, and guided the user to leave a phone number. After receiving the phone number, the customer service first filtered out unreliable leads, and then marked them according to factors such as budget and destination, and assigned them to sales. For the sake of distinction, this role is referred to as "agent" below.

The agent contacts the client to view the house offline, usually visiting multiple properties for a whole day.

After selecting a property, the property salesperson will make a quotation first, and the agent will give a lower quotation. After the transaction is completed, the agent will get a commission. In addition, you have to make friends with the customer so that there is a possibility of repeat purchase.

(2) What does this company do?

The company has two bosses, one of whom is Dachao, a native of Northeast China. He first worked as a Hainan real estate anchor in Northeast China, and later moved the company to Sanya.

After live streaming became popular, we also started offline real estate agency services and cooperated deeply with local real estate developers. The company now has more than 100 people, including more than 70 sales people.

When it comes to acquiring customers on Douyin, they are the best in Sanya.

During the Spring Festival, more than 300 houses were sold, with an average of 5 houses sold. The salesperson could earn 5,000 yuan for each house sold, which is more than the real estate sales of the developers, who earn 2,000 to 3,000 yuan per house.

The core difference between the real estate sales of developers and the intermediary of Dachao Company is that the former focuses on the buildings and revolves around the buildings, while the latter focuses on the customers and revolves around the customers. Therefore, the sales of developers are efficient in selling houses, and they only need to receive customers at the sales center, and can receive more customers in a day. However, the sales of Dachao's company will take customers to see N real estates and spend a whole day on one customer.

The advantage of Dachao Company is that it has customer resources and will have repeat purchases.

Foreigners who can buy houses in Hainan are definitely worth tens of millions and have the ability to repurchase. For example, in Beihai, Guangxi, it is easy for them to buy houses that cost hundreds of thousands, and they are all brought there by agents from Dachao Company.

(3) Why not use Lianjia or Woaiwojia?

If you are buying or selling real estate in Beijing, you will generally go to a large real estate agency and consult in person at the store. These real estate agencies also rely on long-term dealings with real estate sources and customers to obtain more information and provide good service and sales work.

But the situation in Hainan is different, there is a particularly interesting phenomenon.

Most people who buy houses in Hainan are from other places, so they can only learn about house purchase information online, such as Baidu search and Douyin. This business model is more suitable for small and medium-sized companies like Dachao that are not large in scale and have advantages in certain aspects (such as live streaming).

It can be understood that buying a house in Hainan is divided into two stages: consultation online, and house viewing and transaction offline.

(4) Why can’t developers do it themselves?

In this chain, Dachao Company is the middleman between customers and developers. It earns the price difference and greatly improves transaction efficiency.

So why can't developers play the role of Dachao themselves? Because the efficiency is too low.

The reason is simple, Dachao serves homebuyers and can show each customer 5-6 properties, while developers can only sell one property of their own.

If you do online customer acquisition like Dachao, because there are few SKUs, the conversion rate is very low and the cost is very high. This is a problem of business positioning and also a problem of efficiency brought by the number of SKUs.

(5) How does Dachao acquire customers online?

Just like other traditional industries that use online logic, it mainly uses search and short video platforms, and others are information flows like Toutiao, or tool products like browsers.

We mainly talk about search and short videos.

1. Search, that is Baidu SEM

This channel is the most accurate and has the best conversion rate because users actively search and have clear needs.

In the past, such real estate websites would collect users’ private information. For example, after I clicked on a real estate website from a search, without any other operation or logging into Baidu, this website could obtain my mobile phone number, location and other information and call me.

Later, there were many complaints, so it was rarely used. But it is definitely technically feasible, it is just a matter of accuracy.

When doing SEM, large companies will encounter some "cross-industry competition".

For example, the target audience of luxury brands in Hainan are tourists from other places who have the spending power. Therefore, Dachao will intentionally avoid the launch time of these luxury brands and choose 9 am and after 8 pm, etc., so as to lower the customer acquisition cost.

2. Short video platforms, mainly TikTok

This channel may seem very profitable for anchors, but in fact it is definitely much more difficult than SEM and takes a longer time. However, Dachao and his team built up the account first, so it was much easier to discuss conversion.

What you must know is that building up account followers and doing live streaming well are much more difficult than conversions.

After talking about channels, let’s talk about customer conversion rate and cost.

The cost of acquiring customers online is 100 yuan, and the definition of acquiring customers is effective leads. The conversion rate from effective leads to final transactions is 5%, which is in line with common perception.

For example, out of 100 valid leads, 20 will be shown the house. Among the 20 showings, 4-5 will be sold, so the conversion rate is 5%. This is how it is calculated.

In addition, they also have some marketing methods, such as group buying.

By accumulating customers with similar needs, Dachao Company can negotiate low discounts with corresponding real estate developers. In this way, customers can get cheaper prices, and Dachao Company can also make a profit as a middleman.

The above is the entire situation of this case.

There are a lot of detailed information, which can give us a clearer understanding. What is more valuable is that this case is representative.

Many vertical industries acquire customers online, and one of the important models is that of Dachao Company. Online is about obtaining information and building trust, while offline is about conversion and transaction.

The key in this matter is not only to play online, but also to integrate offline industry resources to open up a closed loop of the entire link.

Now that the case is over, let’s answer the two questions at the beginning of the article:

01 The Internet solves the problems of efficiency and trust

Dachao Company uses Douyin for live broadcasting, which first solves the problem that outsiders can obtain Hainan real estate information without leaving home. Moreover, live broadcasting, which is highly interactive and instant, is more efficient in obtaining information than traditional media.

For example, Dachao kept answering questions in the comment section in the live broadcast room, such as what is the climate in Lingshui? Will the housing prices in Sanya continue to rise?

Secondly, it is difficult and costly to make home buyers trust a real estate agent.

We can see that intermediary companies such as Lianjia have been actively providing services to community residents, which is to establish a long-term trust relationship. It is difficult to gain trust in this way in a different place.

Live streaming is a new medium for generating trust, because the real, continuous, and heartfelt instant content will make users feel trust and make up for the lack of offline contact.

02 Design an industrial chain of Internet + vertical industries and find your own role

Before the short video platform matured, outsiders could only rely on searches or real estate portals to view houses in Hainan. There was no opportunity for interaction and the cognitive threshold was relatively high.

With platforms like Douyin, companies like Dachao have designed a complete industrial chain: live broadcast → information retention → telephone follow-up → offline viewing → transaction.

More importantly, find your role and value in this chain.

My role is to acquire customers online and serve them well. I have an upstream and downstream partnership with real estate developers. I will not do anything too heavy and I don’t have the ability to do so.

The value is the traffic pool. With a traffic pool of potential customers, you can connect with real estate developers and get better resources. In fact, most of the customers of local real estate projects are brought by agents like Dachao, otherwise they will not be accepted.

These two questions have been answered.

So how can this case in the real estate industry help bosses in other industries? Of course, there are some commonalities.

Here are some suggestions for bosses who want to do a good job online, or ways to think about the problem:

1. Don’t rush to start, first think clearly about how to integrate the Internet + your own industry

Many bosses start discussing details right away. Should they use Douyin or Xiaohongshu, or should they promote a hit product or promote a product that attracts customers? Let’s put these questions aside and answer the two questions I asked at the beginning of the article.

Find your starting point for using the Internet, then design the integration chain, and finally consider the details.

The cases are all ready-made. I have seen many industries doing very well, such as legal consultation, emotional consultation, etc. I will not elaborate on them due to space limitations.

2. The online gameplay is similar, and the one that suits your industry attributes is the right one.

Choose a few of the best service providers to tell you how to use Douyin, Kuaishou, Video Account, and Xiaohongshu, how to play in the private domain, and how to build the system. You will find that this is of course a very professional matter, but in an abstract sense, it is similar.

I don't mean to say this matter is simple.

Rather, I want to express that the difficulty of this matter lies in integrating it into one's own industry practices. It's a bit like organ transplantation, which requires matching one's own native system.

Therefore, the key lies in integration, in the industrial chain of the Internet + industry itself, which is what the boss must build first.

That’s the whole article. I hope it will be of some inspiration to you.

Author: Han Xu

Source: WeChat public account "Operation Dog Work Diary (ID: yunyingriji)"