Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that from January to April 2019, the sales area of commercial housing was 420.85 million square meters. At the end of April, the area of commercial housing for sale was 513.8 million square meters, which means that if all these commercial housing for sale are digested, it will bring unlimited business opportunities to the general home furnishing fields such as building materials, furniture, and decoration.
Therefore, judging from this set of data alone, there is still a broad market prospect for the pan-home furnishing market in 2019. So why is the ceramic tile market still so sluggish?
Pictures from Caijing.com
✎ Terminal agents’ doubts
First, the marketing methods of the past have lost their effectiveness now.
One of the reasons is that many agents are accustomed to waiting for customers to come to their door automatically, and the passenger flow during the same period is much less than before, which makes many agents helpless.
Why did a large number of customers come to terminal stores to purchase materials in the past, but now many terminal stores are empty? Perhaps, the marketing methods of the past have lost their effectiveness today.
Why will the customer flow in the store decrease? According to data released by Dacai Research, e-commerce intercepted 20% of the customer flow, manufacturers captured 10% of the customer source, decoration companies diverted about 20% of the customer source, and third-party platforms captured about 10% of the customer source. The remaining 40% of customers are covered by finely decorated rooms. In this way, how can the store have a lot of customers?
Faced with such a situation, agents who cannot sit still will choose to take the initiative and actively attract traffic from various channels.
Secondly, it failed to make good use of online channels such as the Internet and e-commerce, thus losing an important retail channel.
Why is the Internet and e-commerce a good retail channel? Let’s take a look at the survey data conducted by Sina Home Furnishing. The data shows that when the new middle class buys home products, more than 40% will choose home furnishing hypermarkets, more than 30% will choose brand specialty stores, and nearly 20% will choose brand e-commerce flagship stores. shop. However, 70% of consumers obtain information through online media, 50% through recommendations from friends, 20% through TV advertisements, 20% through recommendations from decoration companies, more than 10% through outdoor advertisements, and 10% through magazines and newspapers.
It is not difficult to find that the Internet has become an important way to attract traffic. Therefore, it is not enough for some ceramic tile brands to attach importance to network-wide marketing, network optimization, e-commerce platform construction and other channel construction closely related to the Internet. Strange.
By making good use of Internet tools such as Douyin, Toutiao, and WeChat, we have achieved store traffic, which is also a more reasonable result of using Internet marketing.
Through the above questions, it is not difficult to find that the Internet plays an important role in it. The most important prerequisite for embracing the Internet is that you can produce good enough content to attract people.
This is the true purpose of what we often call “content is king” on the Internet.
✎ What is “content is king”?
In fact, for agents, the so-called "content is king" means that as long as the disseminated content can bring customer traffic, it is the "king".
In today’s omni-channel world, to solve the customer flow problem we must not only solve offline customer flow, but also guide online customer flow consumption.
Nowadays, the Internet has penetrated into every aspect of life. It is undoubtedly very important to convey brand information to consumers through the Internet.
Content needs to be output through channels, whichTao also needs content to support it.
For example, an agent’s store is both a channel and content. When someone comes to the store for consultation, it becomes a channel, and the content is represented by the brand's logo, the products on display, the decoration environment of the store, etc.
Today, the role of stores is just a way to obtain customer traffic. As mentioned earlier, obtaining customer traffic from online includes e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, JD.com, mini programs, and APP or specific software. The offline ways to obtain customer traffic include cooperation with home decoration companies, community promotion, cross-industry alliances and other methods that agents are familiar with.
As the Internet invades our lives on a large scale, agents may find that customers have become scattered, time has become fragmented, traffic has become popular, and they feel even more pressure to find orders.
Even so, the consumer market for ceramic tiles still exists. The results of the National Building Materials and Home Furnishing Prosperity Index released by the China Building Materials Circulation Association show that the cumulative sales of building materials and home furnishing stores above designated size in the country from January to April were 285.23 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.06%.
✎“Content is king” actually conveys valuable information
Agents who have been in the first-line terminal market for a long time may find that nowadays, it has become increasingly difficult to convince customers to consume by relying on shopping guides alone. Because of the Internet, information communication has become more convenient, and consumers can use the electronic devices in their hands to distinguish the quality of store products.
All of this will be centered around the content.
Nowadays, agents have become smarter. For example, a manufacturer has launched a new product and has put it on the shelves in its stores. However, when consumers search the manufacturer’s official platform, they find that this new product is not available. Products, more or less, there will be doubts about the brands represented by agents. Therefore, when new products are put on store shelves, smart agents also urge the manufacturers' various official platforms to update new product information in a timely manner.
Of course, for agents who focus on “content is king”, it is possible that the content they disseminate will bring them private traffic. The valuable thing about this kind of private traffic is that it is not restricted by the manufacturer, but the agent itself establishes a good relationship with the customer through the brand it represents, and future business development, business extension and other information will be controlled by the agent. In the hands of merchants.
If you want to bring many benefits through "content is king", you cannot do without continuous brand exposure, promotion, and maintaining user relationships. Among them, it is necessary to bring these contents into the minds of consumers through content dissemination and valuable information content such as products and service systems.
These are of great benefit to improving users’ awareness, reputation and loyalty of the brand, and generating secondary communication between consumers and customers. Of course, the premise is that you provide a good enough product and service system. .
Generally speaking, whether it is "channel is king" in the past or "content is king" now, it remains the same. In the final analysis, the ultimate goal is to attract traffic. It's just that the content display of "content is king" uses Internet products such as Douyin, Toutiao, WeChat, and APP to transmit product information packaged in text, pictures, videos, etc., and ultimately achieve the purpose of attracting traffic.
