After the product was introduced, it finally passed the trial period. Lao Wang saw the momentum and continued to increase investment. To better promote sales, he launched a marketing campaign in the convenience store system. But after the campaign ended, the data was bleak. Lao Wang was confused again: I invested money in the campaign, but the money couldn't even be spent? Actually, Lao Wang's situation is a common problem many brand owners encounter when investing marketing resources in convenience store systems. This article will answer the question: How can FMCG brands run effective marketing campaigns in convenience store systems? Why don't consumers participate in marketing campaigns? In 18 characters, consumers don't participate because: They don't know, don't care, aren't attracted, it's not fun, they're not eligible, or it's too troublesome. Let's analyze each one. 1. Don't know That is, consumers are completely unaware of the campaign's existence; the information never reaches them. 2. Don't care Consumers are not sensitive to whether there is a marketing campaign (either they have enough money or they truly don't care), so they adopt an indifferent attitude. 3. Not attracted The campaign's incentives are too weak. As young people would say: With this level of incentive, you might as well keep it for yourself and buy QQ Star. 4. Not fun The tactics are too old, always the same few tricks: buy-one-get-one, spend-and-reduce, or add one yuan for an extra item. 5. Not eligible The participation threshold is too high, challenging consumers' willingness and ability to spend. 6. Too troublesome The process is too long and the path is not optimized. For example, when I participated in a campaign at a branded convenience store, the process was: open phone—open app—enter phone number for verification every time—enter officially—find coupon—claim coupon—bring up membership code—bring up payment code. If not for the points that could be used as money, such a long process would really test one's patience. Overall, most brand owners still have a channel-centric mindset and lack a user-centric mindset when investing campaign resources into channels. What is channel-centric thinking? It's over-relying on the channel's natural traffic and its internal operational methods, only looking at campaign result data, but paying too little attention to the process and details of how campaigns are run in convenience stores. What is user-centric thinking? It's giving value to users, satisfying users, achieving users, and making users better. For example, the 18 characters mentioned in this article—"don't know, don't care, not attracted, not fun, not eligible, too troublesome"—none of these make users feel value. Any resource investment that doesn't bring value to users is a rogue act. Brand owners should note that in recent years, many convenience store systems have already proclaimed a major business philosophy shift: "from operating stores to operating users." Why did they operate stores before? Because in the early era of traffic dividends, offline entities had no traffic worries; traffic was constant and predictable, at most moving from my store to yours. Everyone was enjoying the traffic dividend, so all convenience store systems focused on making money from stores through franchising and products. But since e-commerce and internet giants segmented and distributed traffic across various platforms, forming an oligopoly of traffic, physical stores' traffic has been severely divided, leading to cross-border disruptions like "I disrupt you, regardless of you." The entire convenience store industry has realized that the era of traffic shortage has arrived. The old mindset of relying on nature for business is too strong; if they can't solve the problem of fine-grained traffic management in stores, their franchising business will surely be hindered. When there is traffic, operate the store; when there is no traffic, you have to deeply operate existing users and mine value from them. But, having said that we should mine value from existing users, most marketing campaigns commonly exhibit "don't know, don't care, not attracted, not fun, not eligible, too troublesome," which naturally makes users retreat from campaigns. At this point, I believe FMCG brand friends may better realize that the era of traditional FMCG brand play has been disrupted. You need to be closer to the channel, closer to consumers, understand their thinking, and even participate more deeply in the planning and implementation of convenience store marketing campaigns to ensure that the products and marketing resources you invest yield higher returns. How to improve the effectiveness of FMCG brands' marketing campaign resource investment? So how exactly to improve the effectiveness of marketing campaign resource investment? My overall approach is: Brand owners should work with convenience store systems to think from the consumer's perspective, and use high-frequency, multi-dimensional, long-cycle methods to touch and stimulate consumers' minds. Please note: The marketing campaign design ideas I will propose are based on convenience store brands without a membership system. For those with a membership system, I will have a dedicated article in the future. The specific practices are as follows: 1. Pre-warm consumers Now, convenience store brands with a certain scale have both online and offline marketing channels, but jurisdiction may be in different departments—for example, offline marketing managed by operations, online by marketing. Of course, they might also be integrated into one department. If brand owners know that the convenience store system has integrated online+offline marketing channels, they can coordinate with procurement, operations, and marketing departments to start pre-warming on these channels simultaneously, maximizing consumer awareness of campaign details and gradually forming an impression. 2. Let consumers see the product Since you've invested in campaign resources, ensure that participating stores order the product to the store before the specified time and display it in the designated position. 3. Let consumers see the materials The display of campaign materials is very important because consumers' visual habits lead them to notice the campaign through additional marked materials while looking at the shelf. I suggest using wobblers, explosion tags, or different colored campaign labels placed in front of the designated products. Through years of observation, consumers see at most the campaign theme on posters posted at the entrance, but they rarely notice individual products. So, making the campaign details prominent around the single product will yield better conversion. 4. Verbal promotion to consumers Verbal promotion is the most headache-inducing for brand owners and convenience store systems. Except for direct-operated convenience store systems with good execution, most franchise stores are reluctant to speak up. The root cause is that stores don't know how to express it. For example, when there are 20-30 products on promotion in a store, employees can't possibly promote all of them to consumers one by one. In such a case, promoting the overall campaign theme, like "Buy three get one free," is more practical than promoting individual products. Some convenience store systems also install in-store broadcasts connected to their own radio. I think these self-owned radios don't need special programs; as long as they convey the daily campaign information to consumers one by one, they've done very well and can compensate for the lack of verbal promotion by staff. 5. Distribute publicity on public domains Some convenience store systems are doing quite well on public domain new media platforms (Weibo, Douyin, etc.), and their interaction with consumers is also good. Most public domain platforms have no restrictions on the number of posts, unlike WeChat official accounts, so these platforms can promote upcoming campaigns simultaneously across channels. Now many public domain platforms are also supporting local accounts (Weibo, Douyin, Toutiao, Xiaohongshu, etc.), covering local life and providing traffic boosts to local accounts. This is a significant traffic advantage for regional convenience store brands. 6. Repeated reminders in private domains Since micro-marketing became popular, most convenience store systems have dabbled in building private domains. Private domains are basically defined within the WeChat ecosystem. Repeated reminders in private domains can activate consumers to receive relevant information in fragmented time and learn about campaign overviews. Moreover, in private domains, you need to make three waves: The first wave is to tell everyone there's a campaign; the second wave is to continuously emphasize key information lures like limited time, limited quantity, and limited price during the campaign; the third wave is to package the campaign results and tell everyone, making them feel: "Oh, I missed out on a fortune, I must participate next time." 7. Reminders at the payment stage The closed loop is payment. At the payment stage, you can set up a mechanism where buying a corresponding product gives you a coupon for the same product. For example, buying a specific brand of beverage can give you a coupon for that beverage, but the coupon is only valid for that day. Because consumers have already made a purchase, and the coupon's validity is urgent, this scenario's design and conversion effect will be closer to consumers' actual needs, and it can also bring more sales opportunities for brand owners. If you can use the "three axes of fission"—group buying, bargaining, and distribution—that would be even better. There are many mature tool platforms available for integration. 8. Moderately lower the threshold I particularly understand the desire to raise average transaction value when setting up campaigns, but we must face the social reality. Many consumers are actually short on money these days (income has been significantly affected in the past two years, and consumption willingness is low), but they are not short of campaigns (the less consumers spend, the more channels try to stimulate with campaigns), especially with the prevalence of live streaming, which offers daily benefits, discounts, and gifts that empty consumers' wallets. Moreover, consumers are now very discerning and price comparison is convenient. If the threshold is set too high, consumers can easily switch to other platforms or competitors. So regarding threshold setting, in my marketing strategy formulation over the past two years, I don't recommend setting too high a threshold for consumers. If the product itself is good, repeat purchases will naturally occur. If the product is bad, no matter how low the threshold, consumers won't participate. 9. Control campaign duration Consumers' minds are occupied by too much information, and time is fragmented. Once the campaign line is too long, they simply can't remember. So for campaign design cycles, I recommend a "short, fast, quick" rhythm. Time should be short, quick to launch and quick to close. Unless one day, online+offline retail peers collectively realize that we can't keep educating consumers this way and tighten marketing campaigns together, but is that possible? I doubt it. 10. Simplify the campaign process The participation process must be simple, simple, and simpler. All marketing hooks should be embedded in places that reduce operations but enhance sensory experience. For example, as mentioned earlier, when consuming at a certain convenience store brand, opening the membership app took many steps, and there are many points that could be optimized. There's a scary statistic on the internet: every additional step increases user drop-off by 30%. Seeing this data, would you still add steps to your campaign? 11. Timely campaign rewards Campaigns must make consumers feel there are timely rewards. Don't wait until consumers leave to give coupons, rebates, or points, and don't do long-cycle point or stamp redemption activities. These test consumers' memory. What you see is what you get. The more complex it is, the more it hinders consumers' desire to spend. 12. Redo with short video + live streaming Liu Run said in his speech "The Power of Evolution": We must use short video plus live streaming to re-buy all products as soon as possible. Now many convenience store brands have their own WeChat official accounts and communities. The reading logic of official accounts is still mainly graphic-text, and community content is mainly images and micro-essays, but short video and live streaming have become mainstream information channels. Combining the two makes the presentation of products or campaigns more three-dimensional, and live streaming can better strengthen consumers' understanding of products or marketing campaigns through interactive sales, thereby achieving transaction conversion. For example, some convenience stores and brand owners have cross-industry co-branded stores, which are very suitable for using short video + live streaming to help regional consumers understand and interact with them in real time, bringing regional online traffic into offline entities. Final thoughts: Consumers' time is very fragmented, they receive a lot of information, and their consumption paths are unpredictable. Therefore, the logic of designing marketing campaigns that reach consumers across all channels, all scenarios, and all time periods has become an inevitable choice to match new consumption patterns and habits. For FMCG brands cooperating with convenience store platforms without membership systems, I suggest adopting this multi-dimensional, extreme, simple, and fast approach to design marketing campaigns. Every point must be carefully considered; if one point is overlooked, consumers' attention will shift. Whether for FMCG brands or convenience store systems, they are competing for consumers' time and mindshare. About the author: Liu Fang, new retail private domain marketing consultant, personal business brand and private domain consultant, with 17 years of experience in the retail/FMCG B2B industry, columnist for multiple business media platforms, invited new consumer goods private domain traffic mentor for "Wu Xiaobo Channel" 890 New Business School/New National Products Promotion Association (online+offline), and operator of a well-known retail brand's tens of millions of private domain traffic and multiple 100K+ viral articles. Are you "watching" me?