In the current environment of "no promotion, no e-commerce", operators need to drain their brains and come up with various tricks. Although there are many gameplay methods, they never leave their roots. In order to develop phased promotional activities and gameplay more scientifically and efficiently, this article categorizes and analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of a series of mainstream promotional methods and gameplay.

1、 Mainstream gameplay collection:

1. Discounts

2. Flash sale

3. Free of charge

4. Full reduction

5. Full delivery

6. Full return

7. Purchase/Bundle

8. Tie-in sales

9. Free shipping

10. Positive review and photo printing

11. Trial

12. Lottery

13. Points/Membership

14. Group buying

15. Pre sale

16. Crowdfunding

17. Games/H5

18. Cross border cooperation

2、 Expand analysis

Next, we will explain the above gameplay one by one, and analyze the advantages, disadvantages, and usage precautions.

1. Discount (direct discount promotion)

Advantages: Fast, accurate and precise, stimulating consumption in the short term, driving sales and increasing purchase volume; Compared to competitors, it is in an active competitive position.

Disadvantages: decreased profits; Once the price drops, it is difficult to recover to the previous level, which will affect the registration of official streaming activities in the future (which will be lowered by the salesperson); Decreased brand loyalty; Malignant price competition.

Usage precautions: In order to avoid the product being tormented to no profit, it is best to set the price of the product to three levels from the beginning: original price, promotional price, and promotional price. The original price is the daily selling price, the promotional price is used for registering for A/B/C/D level official activity slots and periodic store promotions (such as New Year's Day, Teacher's Day, etc.), and the promotional price is used for registering for S-level promotional activities (Double 11, Double 12).

2. Flash sale

Compared to discounts, flash sales have a greater impact (often within 10 yuan/50% off at half price), and merchants set activity times, flash prices, whether there is a limited quantity and region, and whether free shipping is available.

Advantages: Easy to attract traffic, increase store attention and collection, and to some extent increase sales.

Disadvantages: Most of the fans attracted are junk fans (with a price sensitivity of 100%), resulting in a decrease in profits or even losses.

Precautions for use: When calculating the cost of an activity, it is important to control the amount of UV it can bring and whether it is worth doing a flash sale. In order to facilitate the flash sale activity, it is best to release information in advance, guide customers to collect and add shopping carts, which is more suitable for store products with high daily UV and conversion rates.

For example, the marinated steak set menu, originally priced at ¥ 188, will be sold for 10:1 yuan on Christmas night, with a limited edition of 3 servings.

3. Free of charge

It is divided into limited edition free and limited time free. As one of the promotion methods, it is actually a derivative of free trial, which belongs to free trial. The difference is that free of charge requires first purchase, and the system automatically refunds or directly takes the actual amount=0 when placing an order.

Advantages: Strongly stimulate consumption, follow and add shopping carts, and improve the natural search ranking of products.

Disadvantages: In addition to the system setting of exemption policies on the Tmall platform, the fairness and monitorability of other platforms' exemption policies are not guaranteed, resulting in trust issues.

Usage note: The event releases a free order message in advance, followed by two words: "Credit". Don't drag yourself out of the defendant's fraud.

4. Full reduction

Divided into coupon redemption coupons/system automatic full redemption coupons, multiple levels and levels can be set.

Advantages: Stimulate consumption, especially with coupon based discounts, attracting customers to come back to the store for a second time.

Disadvantages: decreased profits; If the instructions and operations are not in place (such as whether they can be stacked and the customer service personnel are lost in thought), it is likely to have the opposite effect and cause customer dissatisfaction.

Usage precautions: Calculate the overall profit margin of the activity; The specific amount of full reduction should be set based on the average unit price during the event period. It is best to ensure that you can enjoy the first full reduction by adding another item. For example, if the average unit price per customer is 150 and the average selling price per item is 30, the first level can be set to a discount of 10 for every 180 units sold.

5. Full delivery

Consume a certain amount and receive physical goods or virtual coupons, which can be set up in multiple levels and levels.

Advantages: Based on the actual value of the gift, it stimulates consumption to varying degrees and increases the unit price of customers. Creating product differentiation; Enhance attractiveness.

Disadvantages: decreased profits; If the gift is too poor, it will affect the brand and sales.

Usage precautions: Calculate the overall profit margin of the activity, and focus on checking whether it coincides with the full reduction (refer to 4) strategy; Selection requirements for gifts: Do not choose inferior or inferior products; Timeliness, such as not giving away items that can only be used in summer during winter. If considering promoting secondary purchases, gifts such as free shipping cards and large discount coupons can be given to stimulate repeat consumption.

6. Full return

The returned items include cash, coupons, etc. All products or designated products can be set to participate, either manually or automatically by the system.

Advantages: Less impact on brand image; Not triggering price competition among competitors; Stimulate consumption.

Disadvantages: decreased profits; The stimulus intensity is limited and cannot trigger a very strong sense of participation.

Usage precautions: Calculate the overall profit margin of the activity, and focus on checking whether it coincides with the strategies of full reduction (reference 4) and full delivery (reference 5); The difficulty level of implementing "return", if manual operation increases customer service workload and error rate, it needs to be considered whether it is worth doing.

7. Buy Free/Bundle

A disguised form of discount, buying and giving away goods can be divided into buying A to give A (giving the same item as a gift) and buying A to give B (giving other items as a gift).

Advantages: disguised discounts, without a series of problems caused by direct price reductions while stimulating consumption (Reference 1)

Disadvantages: decreased profits; If the bundled products are too poor, it will actually affect the evaluation of the products sold.

Usage note: Calculating the profit margin of a product can support which type of buying and giving (buy A get A or B). The essence of buying A get A is actually a 50% discount, and the discount for buying A get B depends on the gift. If free shipping, do not forget to include the shipping cost.

8. Tying sale

Paired sales are divided into X item combination sales and X item exchange with an additional X yuan.

Advantages: Package sales reduce the amount of single product stacking for consumers to make purchases. Combining drainage products with popular products to transform traffic; Related sales increase conversion rates. Diversion for other products.

Disadvantages: decreased profits; If the matching products are not selected properly, it is easy to have a negative effect.

Usage precautions: If product A is a traffic oriented product, it is recommended to bundle the popular product B with a high conversion rate to convert traffic into orders; When choosing products to exchange for X yuan, it is advisable to choose complementary products with lower unit prices. For example, after purchasing a steak set meal, you can choose complementary products such as knives and forks, pasta, and soup.

9. Free shipping

Free shipping is a psychological comfort for customers: the postage itself is the cost beyond the purchase of the goods, and paying the postage will only increase the cost of this purchase, without affecting the quality of the goods themselves. Therefore, if not paid, it will inevitably save a small portion of the cost; For consumers now, whether to include shipping or not is considered the final determinant of whether to place an order. In fact, businesses all know that wool comes from sheep, but this is consumer psychology.

Advantages: The free shipping strategy, combined with internal related sales within the store, reduces product bounce rates and increases average customer value.

Disadvantage: If you choose a courier company that is too poor due to postage prices, it will result in poor delivery timeliness and insufficient delivery range, which will lead to too many negative and medium reviews and a decrease in ratings, which is not worth the loss.

Usage precautions: The price limit for free shipping standards should not exceed 150% of the unit price per customer. For example, if 70% of the unit price is around 70 yuan, the standard for free shipping is best between 88-98 yuan, and the store should also have corresponding products priced at 18 yuan or above or 28 yuan or above to match it.

10. Positive reviews/post orders

The content of "return" includes but is not limited to: physical goods, coupons, and cash.

User psychology 1: When customers purchase satisfactory products, they may not necessarily give positive reviews, but when they purchase products of poor quality, there is a high probability of receiving negative reviews.

User psychology 2: Buying → Looking at store ratings → Looking at reviews (especially on buying shows) → Placing an order.

Advantages: Improve credibility and store ratings; Improve the conversion rate of new customer purchases; Cultivate shopping habits among users. Accelerate the speed of capital turnover (confirm receipt of goods and the money will be transferred to the merchant's account).

Disadvantages: decreased profits; If customer service is not familiar with this policy, it may attract negative reviews; Too much is not enough, and playing this game with inferior products can actually be more deceitful.

Precautions for use: calculate incentives, not coercion. The evolutionary form of brushing positive reviews. Calculate the profit margin of the overall activity; Customer service needs to be relatively familiar with this strategy and unexpected situations.

11. Trial

Gifts products (usually new products or trial kits) to potential target customers and induces purchases. The trial is divided into paid trial (users who apply need to pay postage) and free trial.

Advantages: Improve the speed of product entry into the market; Targeted selection of target consumer groups; Forming a communication effect, improving brand awareness and affinity; Enhance interaction.

Disadvantage: The cost is relatively high; The effect is poor for products with strong homogeneity or weak personalized colors.

Usage precautions: If the merchant suggests using fast-moving consumer goods, cosmetics, and high consumption products, this policy can be adopted. Other products in the Yang industry should be used with caution.

If it is for postage trial, the value of the trial product must be higher than the postage.

12. Lottery

The prizes can be physical or virtual goods, and merchants can set lottery conditions, gimmick prizes, general prizes, and participating prizes.

Advantages: Covering a wide range of target consumer groups, promoting consumption; Attract new customers to try making purchases, while old customers make purchases again.

Disadvantages: Limited stimulation effect, not surprising if seen frequently; It doesn't have much effect on brand improvement. Increase activity workload (in the early stage, brainstorm to find products, calculate costs, adjust strategies based on mid-term statistics of the number of participants, and later announce the winning list)

Usage precautions: The prize settings are divided into gimmicks, general prizes, and participation prizes.

Among them, gimmicks are eye-catching products, and the amount and number of prizes generally depend on the effectiveness and budget of the event (￥ 199 steak fryer). Participating in the prize, as the name suggests, is set up to stimulate secondary consumption (coupons, vouchers).

There should be a certain guarantee of the authenticity of the lottery results: announcements and other forms should be used to inform participants of the progress and results of the activity.

For example, during Christmas from December 21 to December 26, any friend who places an order can receive a lucky draw opportunity, with first prize XX, second prize XX, and comfort prize XX. The winning list will be made public within 3 working days after the end of the event.

13. Points/Membership

Establish a membership and point system, including exclusive discounts for members, point exchange, etc.

Advantages: Stimulate multiple consumption, enhance brand loyalty, and enhance product competitiveness; Low operating costs;

Disadvantage: Poor attractiveness to new customers; Slow returns require regular maintenance; Due to the long cycle, the effectiveness is also difficult to evaluate;

Attention points for use: issues related to the entire pricing system, whether member discounts can be combined with daily discounts, and the calculation of point exchange discounts.

14. Group buying

Set parameters such as single person or group formation, number of group members, tiered pricing, and time. Single person group discounts are limited, while multi person group discounts are based on the number of people.

Advantages: Strong increase in followers, recently popular "Friend Pinyin" and "U Shopkeeper" have adopted this mode.

Disadvantages: decreased profits;

Attention points for use: If it is in WeChat based group buying (with more social attributes), the selection of products in group buying should pay special attention to user experience and repeat purchase rate, that is, low price while paying more attention to the quality of the product to generate dissemination and secondary repeat purchase. On the platform, the price sensitivity of clustering is greater than the stickiness and sufficiency attributes of the product.

15. Pre sale

Pay the deposit in advance and the final payment will be made later. So it's like ordering the goods now, but the goods need to wait for the unified advance notice time for shipment.

Advantages: The pre-sale production process is more like a job order production process, reducing the pressure on the day of the big promotion period (such as Double 11 and Double 12). Merchants can prepare goods in advance according to the order volume, avoid overstocking, and avoid unnecessary labor and production costs; Increase product exposure, extend sales time, and increase sales revenue.

Disadvantages: Customers generally hope to arrive as early as possible after placing an order, and pre-sales are basically impatient. If the product quality department is good, it is easy to get a negative review; The deposit paid for Tmall pre-sale cannot be retrieved.

Usage precautions: The pre-sale price should be lower than the price during the promotion period.

16. Crowdfunding

Group buying refers to products that are already available on the market, of standard quality, offered at lower prices through group buying, with user reviews to help make purchasing decisions. Crowdfunding is mostly considered as pre-sale, not group buying, which is very different from group buying.

Advantages: A great promotional platform; More easily noticed by the media and potential investors.

Disadvantage: Not suitable for the trial and error stage of startup teams; Fundraising cannot be successful due to high traffic.

Usage precautions: Crowdfunding=1 good story+1 possibility+1 expected product; Packaging is important, and price is not the determining factor.

17. Game/H5

Advantages: Enhanced sense of participation, attracting participation through targeted games, and achieving the goal of promoting product sales. Mainly, it is to preheat the product and market before its launch.

Disadvantage: Being too flamboyant or too low can easily lead to aversion.

Usage note: The entire event design and page design require careful consideration. It is stylish, fun and interesting, and gives consumers a sense of urgency for limited time special offers.

18. Cross border/Joint

Two or more brands or companies collaborate to carry out promotional activities, promote products and services, expand the influence of the activities, enhance their respective brands and services, and adopt the principles of profit sharing and cost sharing for promotional activities. Including mutual diversion, powder exchange, product supply, and so on.

Advantages: Quickly approaching the target, reducing corresponding promotional costs; Targeted selection of target consumer groups to form complementary products.

Disadvantages: Slow coordination issues; The advantages of each product cannot be centrally displayed, which can easily create a vague impression.

Usage precautions: It is necessary to find merchants with peer relationships for cooperation. If one party is at an advantage and the other is at a disadvantage, cooperation is often a weak relationship. The choice of partners can seek complementary products and increase demand.

Example:

Merchant 1 is the product supplier, and Merchant 2 is the movie ticket supplier.

Merchant 1: Buy X products and get X movie tickets. Merchant 2: Buy X movie tickets and have the opportunity to draw X products.