Micro-business may be different from what you think

First of all, I want to say that social marketing, represented by micro-business, is more like a shot of stimulant. Of course, stimulants are not a good thing. Taking them occasionally can meet temporary needs. If you take them every day, the consequences will be unimaginable.

Let us take micro-business as an example to interpret the underlying logic of social marketing.

Let me ask you a question first. If a micro-business salesperson requires you to pay a fixed salary, would you still do micro-business? of course not. Then why are you willing to pay wages to your own salespeople?

The answer is obvious. Salaries are paid to salespeople because their efficiency is worthy of the wages. Every salesperson's job has a certain scale, and sales of more than 100,000 yuan a month are always possible. Management has proven countless times that the more detailed the division of labor, the higher the efficiency. The full-time model has so far proven to be a highly efficient model. But micro-business practitioners usually can't do it, or you don't have confidence that they can do it. For manufacturers, the biggest advantage of micro-business is that the number of sales personnel can make up for the lack of sales scale of a single salesperson. Thinking about it conversely, from the perspective of micro-business practitioners, how to ensure their own profits when the sales scale is insufficient?

Two ways.

One way is to do micro-business part-time and use your spare time to do it.

In this model, micro-business sales staff have low expectations and can accept a small-scale, low-profit model. The problem is that this model is extremely unstable. It is often enthusiastic for three minutes, and then it is too lazy to do it. Low income naturally brings about low willingness. Moreover, for those of you reading this article, how many of your friends in your circle of friends who are engaged in micro-business do you still have unblocked? Will you be interested in watching his piles of nine-square grids, consuming your traffic and selling his products? Amateur micro-business itself, like the insurance agent system, is a process of monetizing connections. Once the connections are exhausted, it will be unsustainable.

It’s not that they haven’t done a good job. Some people with relatively free work will post some cost-effective products, such as overseas purchasing products, such as fruits, handmade cakes, etc. The update frequency is low and they have a fixed consumer group. . However, these micro-business practitioners have three characteristics: first, sales volume is often very low, and sales of 10,000 per month are already considered outstanding; second, they monopolize all sales profits; third, on an individual basis, there is no Upstream and downstream, they directly obtain the goods and even produce them, and only supply consumers, not downstream. Such micro-businesses are healthy enough, but they basically cannot count on sales.

Another way is to be a full-time micro businessman.

Here, we must first draw a conclusion. Full-time micro-business is actually the Internet version of traditional direct selling.

The boundary between traditional direct selling and MLM is actually not very clear. The state explicitly prohibits pyramid schemes and provides clear definitions, but in practice, there is a lot of room for skirting around. This is not the focus of the discussion. The problem is that the business model of direct selling, from offline to online, embodies some of the same characteristics as MLM.

The first characteristic is that there are few pure consumers. A common feature of direct selling is that the vast majority of products are used by sellers. Direct selling products are expensive, and direct sellers are often at the bottom of the income ladder. This is obviously not a normal consumption, but a forced takeover.

The second characteristic is that the value of the product seriously deviates from the price. Many direct selling practitioners will use Apple mobile phones as counterexamples, denying the serious deviation between price and value, saying that the premium of Apple mobile phones is also very obvious. However, the biggest feature of products such as Apple mobile phones is the lack of substitutes that can achieve equivalent uses. It is a premium based on technology and creativity, and it is a composite commodity composed of products and intelligence. But direct selling products, yes, almost all direct selling products, dare to say that they are composite products of product + intelligence? The most taboo thing about direct selling products is that the effect is intuitively visible. Once the effect is intuitively visible, there will be products with similar or even better functions and cheaper prices to form a comparison. Therefore, the current main sales areas of direct selling are almost all in health and beauty. The effects of almost all products in the entire industry are highly subjective. Basically, any product cannot be compared through blind testing. This is the operating space. Inflated.

The third characteristic is that the sales rejection rate is very high and it relies heavily on the initiative of the sales staff. On the one hand, direct selling products lack brand support and there are no stores to pledge their credibility, so consumers do not trust them; on the other hand, the high premium of direct selling products makes it difficult for rational consumers to be convinced. This makes direct selling salespeople often adopt the method of low self-esteem, high initiative, and repeated visits to strangers, not to mention cheating. This increases the resistance of ordinary people to direct selling, thus forming a vicious circle.

A considerable number of micro-businesses have this kind of characteristics. We might as well call this kind of micro-business that is similar to direct selling, micro-business direct selling.

Micro business direct selling has never been based on the sales performance of a single person. Exactly how many micro-business practitioners there are is still a mystery. After all, in an industry filled with lies, the truth has always been scarce. But by referring to Amway, which has a similar sales model, we can get a rough idea. Amway has global sales of 5 billion US dollars and 3 million sales personnel. The average monthly turnover per salesperson is less than 1,000 yuan. Even if the sales volume of micro-business direct sales is higher than that of Amway, it is impossible to compare with the sales volume of more than 100,000 yuan a month by traditional sales staff.

From the perspective of an enterprise, to achieve large-scale sales, a large number of micro-business practitioners are needed; and from the perspective of micro-business sellers, very high gross profits are required, which is also This is the reason why a facial mask with an ex-factory price of 3 yuan can be sold for 200 yuan through WeChat business channels. According to practitioners in the beauty industry, the production cost of so-called high-end facial mask products usually accounts for 1.5%-2.5% of the total cost, and all other price differences occur in the channels. It goes without saying how cost-effective such a product is, but how many consumers will buy it is another question. There are too many scammers and not enough fools, so who are the goods sold to? Naturally, it was sold to the last seller. In other words, consumption was not due to demand for use, but because of the purchase. The purpose of buying goods is not to consume the goods, but to believe that you can make money by selling the goods.

In this process, what becomes unimportant? It’s the product itself! Therefore, we often see this form of micro-business. A group of micro-business people form a circle. One person gets a product and quickly sells it to the downstream through the circle at a large price increase. The downstream then sells it to himself at a large price increase. downstream, advancing in this way until the price is ridiculously high and all resources are exhausted, leaving them in their hands. In such a circle, ordinary network resources are not important, because according to authoritative research, limited by the processing power of the human brain, a person's normal social circle only has 150 people. In addition, the general purchase intention is not high, and there is nothing to explore. The key resources lie in micro-business practitioners. Through processed payment records, the illusion of a prosperous business is created, and the downstream is also concocted in accordance with the law. Using Du Niang's "Micro Business Order Generator", you will find that micro business fraud has now formed an industry. The total amount of a product is fixed, but only God knows how much transaction volume is generated. Just like everyone involved in MLM has a "Direct Selling Business Address Book", from the first to the last link, the entire micro-business business chain basically circulates in this circle.

This brings up a problem: Although there are a large number of shipments in the micro-business direct sales model, there are not many actual consumers, and the motivation for purchasing is not the product itself. In other words, The product has not developed a reputation and a consumer base has not been established. This resulted in the micro-business direct sales channel neither establishing a normal purchasing channel for the future nor creating brand value. Moreover, in the field of micro-business direct sales, only the first period is the golden period of sales, because there is no shortage of downstream takeovers at this time. When the downstream resources are exhausted, the product loses its sales value and will exit the channel. .

On the other hand, through the layer-by-layer price increase of micro-business direct sales, this product will give relatively rational consumers the impression of poor cost performance. In fact, they may also have doubts about the quality of the product. For example, during the period when facial masks were most popular, the addition of glucocorticoids, which have obvious whitening effects in the short term but lead to skin darkening, hair growth, and ulceration with long-term use, has become the winning secret of many products, which is equivalent to forming a negative reputation and negative reputation. Brand equity, of course, because of the factors mentioned above about the small spread, whether it is positive or negative influence is actually not that great.

Therefore, after so many years of development of micro-business direct sales, we have not seen any brand emerge from micro-business channels. Maybe you have questions and will refute Han Shu, but the rise of Han Shu's brand was indeed achieved through later brand investment and the establishment of normalized sales channels. It has nothing to do with micro-business direct sales. Even traditional direct sales, such as Amway, Perfect, Infinitus, Quanjian, and Tiens, are constantly completing brand communication and washing through large-scale advertising campaigns, hiring image spokespersons, laying out offline stores, and even sponsoring sports events. White. But judging from its current reputation, it seems there is a long way to go before it can be completely accepted by the public, or not be despised by the mainstream crowd.

The above characteristics of micro-business are obvious. It is difficult for part-time micro-business to form large-scale communication and thus difficult to guarantee sales. However, micro-business direct sales can create large-scale sales in a short period of time, but this is a one-time bonus. , in the long term, it can neither bring about the growth of regular sales nor the improvement of brand influence. And there is still a question mark as to how big this one-time bonus will be. What’s even more frightening is that such false prosperity is likely to cause manufacturers to misjudge the market and create long-term expectations for this sales channel. The results will definitely be dismal.

Moreover, the micro-business model is really not suitable for most fast-moving consumer goods. For most fast-moving consumer goods, product quality is very easy to judge, and the price range is not large. It is fine for amateur micro-businesses with low gross profit. For micro-business direct sales, there is no excuse for a premium. It is also very important whether the practitioners are willing to sell. Hard to say.

Can the “Five Tips for Micro-Business” revitalize micro-business?

Going straight to the three major questions about micro-business: "three noes, pyramid schemes, and harassment", industry professionals define "what is micro-business" for the first time. The so-called "V5 items" are as follows:

1. The demand is real and the product quality is guaranteed. Fake goods with poor quality and no warranty are not micro-businesses.

2. Use by yourself or your loved ones. Sharing without experience is not a micro-business.

3. Information control is appropriate. Harassment is not micro-business.

4. Channels are at several normal levels. Unlimited development of channel levels to make profits is not a micro-business.

5. For a better life rather than getting rich overnight. Successful learning and big deceit are not micro-business.

As you can see, the "V5 Article" is really an ideal. Any ideal requires people with faith to persevere, and the "V5 Article" is the opposite for profit-seeking micro-businesses. It is possible to make some money just by doing it, but it seems that the possibility of even making a small amount of money by following it is slim.

Can social communication successfully bring sales?

Yes, but this kind of success cannot be replicated. Because the sales brought about by social communication are not the logic of sales, but the logic of communication. Whether it is products or content, they only determine the lower limit of the communication effect. This lower limit is very low and can range from dozens to hundreds. As for what effect can be achieved in the end, what are the key factors? luck. The biggest feature of social communication is that the butterfly effect is very obvious. The detonation of a certain key point will lead to a large-scale explosive spread of information. The problem is that no one knows where this key point is.

Those social marketing experts will always come up with many successful cases. The problem is that they will never say how many cases they have done in total. In this wave of entrepreneurship, there are always thousands of new brands that you have never heard of that are promoted through social communication methods. There are always a few that have certain effects, thus creating capital for the industry to boast and exaggerate. However, in this model of success, those who survive are not the winners, but can only be said to be lucky survivors. You hear those lucky people who got their start through social communication talking and summarizing their own methods, but you don’t have the opportunity to hear those people who lost everything look back on their own failures.

Perhaps, the difference between the two may just be God’s favor.

For young people with 300,000 to 500,000 yuan to start a business, such a model is worth betting on, not only because they have basically no stock, but also because even sales of 500,000 yuan a year are not enough for them. was a surprise. For those fast-moving consumer goods companies with annual sales of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions, the huge inventory and huge sales demand obviously cannot be entrusted to channels with huge uncertainty.

You will say that Sister Miaosi is really annoying, but you say this is not possible, there are traps, what should we do. In fact, don’t get me wrong. I respect those innovators who have the courage to practice. I just remind everyone not to forget what they should do because of uncertain or currently immature directions. Yesterday a young general manager said to me: "Mr. Chen, you have said twice that in the development process of an enterprise, you always want to find shortcuts. In fact, there are not so many novel and eye-catching ideas and perspectives. Sometimes, companies need to put simple theories into practice. As time goes by, I agree with this sentence more and more. "

So, where is the way out? If you often read Sister Miaosi’s articles, I guarantee you will find the answer.

For more micro-business related articles that may be different from what you imagine, please pay attention to the PHP Chinese website!