Scan the QR code in the image to register -01- Cocktail-Style Channel Mix If digital tools are to be used as weapons, decision-makers must clearly distinguish two things: are we attacking or defending? Is it the early stage of a war, making key-point breakthroughs, or the later stage, cleaning up the battlefield and maintaining order? It is said that those who hear the gunfire should make decisions, and those at the front should command the battle, but the premise is that you need to know what hill you are attacking: is it a key strategic position or routine standardized sales? Today's problem is not store entry but sell-through. The core of salesperson visits is to provide small stores with a product sell-through solution, not just sell a box of drinks or instant noodles. Moreover, it's not just about optimizing a single troop type to give it digital capabilities, but rather redesigning the channel architecture and model based on changes in consumers and retail. Combine store, people, system, users, and products for strategic combinations, providing product mixes, promotion mixes, and marketing mixes, more like a joint business plan. Whether online or offline, new or old methods, digital tools are auxiliary to strategy. The channel structure has indeed changed: the way consumers transact, the places where transactions occur, and the selectivity of transactions have all fundamentally changed in both quantity and quality. In the past, the single ultra-large-scale channel model created today's brand distribution systems. But this model is slowly shrinking, and channel models are diversifying. At this point, brands may need to consider a cocktail-style channel model, which means combining multiple channels for a single consumer. Social retail: KOL + KOC + C Physical retail: Distributor + Store + Consumer E-commerce retail: TP + Platform + Consumer Each retail method can extend into countless细分 retail types and models, more than you can imagine. Today's problem is that users exist simultaneously in three retail scenarios, like Schrödinger's cat; you cannot predict which retail channel they will transact in. You must ensure that wherever users appear, you reach them across all scenarios, all links, and all channels. But the contradiction is that if you try to cover everything, the marginal benefit of distribution will diminish severely. Efficient and precise distribution is the right approach; what is the core channel, and what to do in each channel, is the core. Take an extreme example: For Yanghe Liquor, which is more important, Jiuxian.com or Xiaohongshu? No matter how consumers consume, there is always a certain range in their consumption scenarios. When you aggregate the consumption ranges of many consumers, certain patterns emerge, and that is the reference for brands to design their channel mix. This is like a cocktail: it's not about pouring all the liquor together, but combining channels based on the weight of user consumption in your own category. The core of channel mix is not whether it is empowered by the internet, but what changes have occurred in consumer behavior. If consumption behavior and consumption logic have not changed, then we look at how much empowerment technology can bring to the industry. We need to build a complete distribution logic based on consumers' consumption logic. For example, beverages: immediate consumption, large consumer base, high channel network density, low purchase volume per outlet, high logistics costs, requiring fine and dense, low-cost distribution. This requires brands to reassess how to use the fewest people to solve higher sales problems as labor costs rise. Planned consumption: users stock up, unit price must be low enough. The past hypermarket model has been disrupted by various online retail formats. Today, consumers' consumption logic has fundamentally changed. In channel architecture design, what to consider may not be the breadth of coverage, but the depth of user operation. -02- Lego-Style User Relationships Many people think that with traffic comes business, but that's not true. Traffic does not necessarily bring business. For traffic to generate business, it must meet three principles: rigid demand, scarcity, and trust. Rigid demand: Why buy? Because the user has a real need (physiological: thirsty, hungry, tired, sick; psychological: social, emotional, being recognized, belonging, safety). Scarcity: Why buy from you? What benefits can you bring? (product scarcity, price scarcity, brand scarcity, quality scarcity) Trust: Why should I believe you? (Taobao's error correction system, personal IP of WeChat sellers or live-streamers, brands) The problem for brands today is not traffic but retention. The more expensive traffic is, the more valuable it is, because you can clearly buy it with money. The problem is that you can no longer do just one deal with a customer in a lifetime; you must do many deals with that customer to recoup your investment. This forces companies to rethink the product itself and retain users by creating value for them. Today, when a consumer completes a transaction with you, it is not the end but the beginning. The moment of consumption is the most critical point: you must give users a different feeling: scene * experience * emotion Consumption becomes the focus of marketing. If the consumption experience is poor, there is no retention, let alone repurchase or sharing. When talking about retention, we must mention operation. Operate products? Operate users? Operate communities? Operate KOLs? It seems all right, but also not quite right. In a sense, it is more like a collection of these terms. The essence of operation is: what kind of relationship do we want to build with consumers? The keywords in the relationship: KOL, KOC, and consumers. Teacher Liu Chunxiong says that relationships are channels, but I think relationships may also be the result of operation. Or the goal, or the product. What kind of relationship you want to co-create with users is the core of your operation. Just like Lego toys, your product seems like a semi-finished product; in fact, this product needs to be realized together with your users. For users, obtaining a beautiful experience after consuming the product, or an unforgettable service, may be the true goal and result. And the product is merely the raw material or sufficient condition to achieve this beautiful experience for users. But operating users is not unrelated to channels, sales, and digitalization; on the contrary, digitalization is the prerequisite for all this. Because with digitalization, you have the ability to reach users, understand them, connect directly with them, interact, and communicate. But we must clearly understand that digitalization is not about wearing new shoes to walk the old path, nor is it about using better technological tools to sell goods, but rather about re-designing our entire marketing system from the consumer's perspective, with the goal of creating value for consumers. That is the core of a company's digital strategy.