Most companies believe that catching the O2O market means catching the market for the next decade.
In fact, most companies are still at the first stage of O2O – they understand O2O is a must, but don’t know where to start. This awkward situation is quite similar as when e-commerce just emerges. Companies are surrounded by the fear of risk and cannot make decisions among tons of pieces of information.
Therefore, most companies decide to follow the industry leader. They put QR codes in their stores when WeChat O2O is popular. They sign up immediately when Alibaba announces to do O2O. However, they don’t have a clear mind whether they should choose either or both.
A company should always conduct a deep investigation of itself before making any decision. In this case, companies should understand what the purpose is to do O2O? What are the challenges? What platform can help better conquer the challenges?
O2O is a marketing revolution
When an Amway salesman calls you to wish you happy holiday, do you really think he just wants to be your friend and chitchat with you?
For companies, marketing and making profit should be the only mission no matter through e-commerce or O2O. Of course they achieve this goal by selling different products and services. No matter what, any type of O2O follows the only purpose – profit.
The core concept of O2O is to connect online and offline marketing system. Companies sell products online, provide services offline, meanwhile collect customer needs and adjust cost and supply chain accordingly.
Many retail stores have their own CRM systems long time ago. Why don’t they do O2O? It’s because most of them only obtain customers’ basic data such as cell phone, address, ID, etc. The marketing efforts are only limited to cold calls, DM, emails, etc.
The fast-growing Internet leads to mass exposure of numerous types of information. There are even tools to analyze customers’ preferences, buying timelines and buying habits through their Internet behaviors. Therefore, companies can only break through O2O when they obtain the online customer data. In other words, grasping the opportunities of Big Data is the only effective way to change the current marketing mode.
WeChat O2O - customer service
Although WeChat O2O is extremely popular in China now, it still shows that many companies don’t know what the next step is after building up customer CRM through WeChat QR code. Most companies just use WeChat as a cell phone. They switch from sending text messages to WeChat moments; from sending DM to pushing news within subscription accounts. WeChat, for most companies, is still just a communication tool to chat with clients. The best case is to use WeChat as a customer service center. It’s mostly unachievable to completely change the marketing mode through WeChat O2O.
Weitao O2O – customer data bank
Let’s turn to Weitao now and take a look at the value behind its O2O. Weitao is a new platform of Taobao with WeChat-like CRM service. Its biggest value is the Big Data behind Taobao e-commerce over the past decade. It includes every piece of customer data such as purchasing preference, purchasing timeline, post-purchase behavior, etc.
Customer purchasing behavior in Taobao over the past decade is like a priceless “data bank”. Taobao understands a customer head to toe from color preference, size to style when its customer is looking for a coat. Therefore, the key to implementing O2O on Weitao is to figure out how to best utilize the Big Data behind this platform.
