Over the years of working on projects, one recurring question has been how to find the most effective promotional channels. We've been pondering: Where are our users? Where should our channels be? Looking back at 2C projects in recent years, marketing and customer acquisition have almost always revolved around residential communities. Within communities, elevator ads are one of the most familiar channels, with Focus Media and Xinchao being the major players. Besides elevators, another equally important channel is the community store. The author believes that in the future, community stores will become a key consumption entry point.
-01- Where Are Customers? Where Are Channels? I've emphasized this in the Shili Village community: we've been struggling to find the most suitable channels. But we often overlook one point: where are our customers? Many companies rush around like headless flies, thinking they can cast a wide net and catch more fish, but the results are counterproductive. When we worked on the Weimin Charity project for serious illness fundraising in 2016, we thought about where our customers were. At that time, the vast majority of our customers were in hospitals, or at least they would definitely go to a hospital once, especially top-tier hospitals. So our approach was to first select the best top-tier hospitals in provincial capitals, then contract all bus, subway, and convenience store ads near the hospitals, including buses on routes passing by the hospitals. Through this precise customer acquisition strategy, our daily serious illness fundraising applications increased by 100%. So let's think back: where do our users ultimately gather? Where do they ultimately return? Isn't it home after work every day? Community stores carry many daily services for users, which is why community group buying prioritizes developing community store owners as group leaders.
-02- Community Stores Serve Multiple Functions In the past, people viewed community stores as purely places to sell goods, but now they have become more diversified in function.
1. Organizational Capability With the popularity of private domain traffic, many community store owners intentionally funnel community users into their own community groups. They usually recommend products and activities to residents through WeChat groups.
2. Service Capability Store owners with a bit of user-centric thinking will provide services like parcel collection, pet sitting, delivery, and even consignment sales for community residents.
3. Trust Relationships Community store owners are among the few representatives in the community with trust relationships, which may be hard to achieve from a chain store perspective. But for mom-and-pop shops that have operated for years, or community stores in third-, fourth-, and fifth-tier cities, they have a certain trust foundation with residents. For example, in my current community and my hometown's community store, because the elderly often go grocery shopping and gather at the storefront to chat, activities, products, and services recommended by such stores tend to get attention from users.
-03- Marketing Functions of Community Stores Currently, a community store has at least four advertising spaces that can be offered to brands for promotion; the store is the community's promotional hub.
1. Storefront Signage I don't know the regulatory policies of urban management, market supervision, or industry and commerce in each place, but changing storefront signs is at least completely feasible in many places. I've previously given examples of how a fresh food brand and an education brand did storefront sign domination promotions. Including well-known liquor brands like Yanghe, Gujing, and Yingjia, their storefront ads are everywhere in fourth- and fifth-tier rural areas. Users might forget what ads were in elevators, but they will somewhat remember what the community store's sign looks like.
2. Outdoor Displays Our current business includes promotions in township community stores. In one county town, we put up banners, posters, and X-stands in over 80 community stores. In some urban community stores, we also pasted posters on the front and back exterior walls of some stores. This advertising effect is quite obvious; the location is good, and generally anyone entering the store will see it.
3. Window Displays and Racks Salespeople promoting alcohol and snacks should be familiar with this: to secure scarce exposure positions in small stores, they subsidize store owners to provide prime locations for product promotion. For example, the three most common positions: the first shelf, the checkout counter, and the back wall cabinet behind the checkout. That's why when you go to a typical community store, you'll see a certain brand of liquor neatly arranged on the back wall cabinet. Such positions are also fiercely contested in large supermarkets, with high prices.
4. Space Rental Most community stores don't sell breakfast or bread. Because bread products have a short shelf life, but in cities, bread is a must for some users' breakfast and snacks. I've seen a case that is quietly doing well. It's a ready-to-eat bread brand that directly negotiates with community stores to place a shelf, similar to early office snack racks. But it's not self-checkout; it's just a very ordinary small shelf with about 6-8 bread varieties. The store doesn't need to stock or pay, and doesn't worry about bread expiring. They just need to free up space near the checkout or entrance and be responsible for selling. Then the brand sends staff daily to replace and restock. This approach benefits the brand, the merchant, and the customer—a win-win-win.
These are just the four most common promotional channels for a community store, plus the community store groups we mentioned earlier. Some community stores have rest areas, and putting table stickers on tables can also be effective. Although utilizing all these advertising spaces in one store can be costly, think about it: even spending three to five thousand yuan a year is quite cost-effective for many businesses.
-04- The Value of Community Stores Remains to Be Tapped Although we've listed four or five functions and values of community stores, those who truly amplify these advantages are still in the minority, especially as many branded stores, chain stores, and internet supermarkets enter the market in a standardized way.
1. Community Stores Are Not Just for Selling Currently, the vast majority of community stores still operate with traditional concepts, treating the store as a shelf for displaying goods and waiting for customers to come in. Tmall Xiaodian once attempted to renovate offline retail stores and created some model stores. But it was anticlimactic and short-sighted, ultimately just wanting to supply goods to merchants. In fact, community stores can carry far more functions, which is why the trend of community stores + stations has been rising in recent years. It may not be obvious in mainstream cities, but in surrounding counties and third-, fourth-, and fifth-tier cities, community stores that both sell goods and serve as stations with multiple functions are becoming popular.
Let me give another example: take the launch of new or viral products. Community stores are one of the most precise and effective promotional channels. For instance, before Double 11, if your product can be simultaneously launched on the shelves of thousands of stores in a city, even just for marketing, the brand effect is excellent.
2. Expanding Multi-functional Areas We mentioned earlier that some community stores are already trying to renovate, setting aside space for customers to rest. I personally think this renovation trend is necessary, especially as customers become younger. How to make customers stop and stay, how to free up more service and commercial space from existing shelf space. For example, now online and offline products can be almost the same price, and e-commerce platforms want to provide better shopping experiences. So for community stores, could they serve as both front warehouses and delivery points? For instance, small appliances, recent hot viral products. Including Three Squirrels once used Tmall Xiaodian to distribute goods to terminals. When users place orders, can they immediately pick up at the store or have the store deliver to their door? These are areas for industry practitioners to think deeply about. This is also why I say that traditional e-commerce platforms should be nervous about the development of community group buying; community group buying platforms will definitely build their own community stores.
3. Who Will Organize? Renovating space is not a simple or one-off task, but for ordinary entrepreneurs, there are opportunities. As I just mentioned, from the perspective of advertising spaces alone, who will organize and integrate these resources? For example, everyone is talking about the era of consumer goods entrepreneurship, but who has stepped up to say, "I can put your products in all community terminal stores overnight"? Who can help a brand achieve close physical contact with users during major e-commerce promotions? It seems no one? Some have integrated elevator resources, some have integrated resources for setting up stalls in communities, and some have integrated waste collection resources in communities. So the development of commercial resources in community stores not only has window opportunities but also many imaginable spaces.
Source: Shili Village (ID: shilipxl) Author: Tianya Living in Shili Village Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once the tip is adopted.
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