In today’s digital age, e-commerce traffic operations have become a key area of enterprise competition, especially for the electronic components industry. This article delves into many aspects of component e-commerce traffic operations, hoping to help everyone.
Traffic sources
search engine
In fact, the traffic sources are very wide, mainly some channels that we often come into contact with, such as engine search, vertical platforms, media/self-media, etc.
The search engine is mainly Baidu, which has been introduced earlier, is currently one of the largest and most direct traffic sources, and the competition for paid promotion is relatively large, which is where everyone competes, so there will be obvious vicious competition scenes. And from the perspective of SEM and SEO, it is obvious that as a search engine, customers want to win traffic through SEM. Therefore, in the order of ranking, it is naturally more inclined to pay for promotion results, which is understandable.
In the early years, when the inclusion was still being done, some SEOs could run a number of websites by themselves, and they could make a lot of money by selling Baidu’s highest weight. Therefore, in recent years, the opening of SEO inclusion has become smaller and smaller, and many people have given up SEO natural promotion, which also makes the original SEO personnel unable to find relevant jobs and have changed careers.
Of course, this is not saying that Baidu is not, this is just the result of other people’s corporate strategy changes and optimizations, and if you keep telling the natural words to be included, the requirements for the server will become higher and higher, and the cost will be very high, which is not in the interests of an enterprise.
On the contrary, in recent years, Bing has opened a relatively large opening in order to capture the hearts of more users, and if the website is well optimized, the organic traffic will still have a relatively significant increase, but now it is far from reaching Baidu’s traffic.
What does a product manager need to do?
In the process of a product from scratch, it is not easy to do a good job in the role of product manager, in addition to the well-known writing requirements, writing requirements, writing requirements, there are many things to do. The product manager is not what you think, but will only ask you for trouble, make a request:
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Some people say that there is no point in doing SEO, and the results are too slow to be as fast as SEM. But you have thought that the number of models in self-operated malls without electronic components is very large, and you can’t advertise all words at a high price. Hot words are so fiercely competitive, does your company have so much budget support, and even if your budget is sufficient, if your brand influence is insufficient, the conversion rate will definitely not be high, and it is definitely not cost-effective from the perspective of input-output ratio.
I personally think SEO should still be done, not only for one platform, but also for other platforms together. When the company has not yet occupied the leading position, you may want to invest more money in SEM, but you may not be able to spend it. SEM grabs key words, don’t stop promoting SEO, pay more attention to platforms like Bing or Google, and don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
Vertical platform
The vertical platform currently seems to be the top two non-IC trading networks and Huaqiang.com, and from the perspective of recent years, it seems that the traffic of IC trading networks seems to be larger.
The intention of these customers who pay to do model promotion platforms is very obvious, they are going to trade, so these customers are very accurate, and here they are more pure. As long as you are willing to spend money on consulting sessions, the number of consultation sessions should not be less, of course, this has something to do with the reputation of the company.
Of course, the model rankings on these vertical platforms are also paid, with their own ranking rules, here is not a detailed introduction, but one thing I want to say is that as a vertical platform, do you want customers to compete with each other to spend more money, or to increase services to let customers spend more money, this final result is also different, the customer’s eyes are also bright, can be clearly felt, and will also measure clearly in the heart, decide which platform to invest more money in.
I especially want to mention the positive energy, although it has not become the eldest brother and second brother at present, but it can be seen that it has a lot of actions recently, opening customer stores/forums/exhibition live broadcasts/opening Hong Kong warehouses, etc., in fact, it can be seen that they want to do better, hoping that more customers are willing to come to them to trade expectations. This also reflects to a certain extent how difficult it is to appear in this market, and everyone is doing their best to live better.
media
Here it is said that the media specifically wants to separate traditional media and new media, and there is actually no difference in essence, they are all media for advertising.
New media
Before the new media came out, traditional TV, newspapers, periodicals, outdoor billboards, etc. were very important and effective forms of advertising. The well-known “only brain platinum” and “good teeth, good appetite” are all classics of TV advertising, but now they have suffered the impact of the products of the times.
Nowadays, with the development of the network, 5G has covered many of our regions, and short video platforms are occupying the leisure time of the vast majority of us, which also makes short videos, a hot product, a new advertising center. Nowadays, almost all brands are actively embracing these platforms, and a lot of money is pouring into them, wanting to occupy your and my time. For ordinary bosses who want to advertise, it is no longer far away, we can spend dozens of dollars to advertise our videos, which was almost impossible before.
Not only that, the explosion of short videos has also given many talented people more room to display, and has also created many “civilian rich people”, maybe we have all squeezed into the world of short videos with the heart of being able to get rich, which may also be the magic of short videos.
Therefore, short video should also be a battleground for our e-commerce, but it is not as friendly to To B companies as To C, especially for various subdivided industries, this short video platform is simply love and hate. Love is because it has such a large traffic, because it is so extensive, the personal attributes are too strong, it is difficult to find accurate customers, and it is even more difficult to capture their hearts.
Therefore, we should actively embrace the products of this era, but we must also measure whether it can really bring value to others. Whether it’s a short video or a live broadcast, we still have to be responsible for the results after all, how much gold content we have gained in the number of viewers and fans, whether we feel good about ourselves or deceive ourselves, it’s best for us to use data to speak.
Returning to the point we made earlier: operational results are sometimes difficult to measure with a single data. Therefore, combine various factors to measure the time and money invested in short video to see if it is really suitable for our electronic components industry.
The same is true for official accounts, it seems that every company is building its own official account, because this investment is not much, and even the content can be original without being original by itself, and it can be sent out with a slight modification from other places to capture a group of fans. Especially for consulting accounts, handling has become a routine operation, which is simple and efficient.
However, like short videos, how many of them can be converted into corporate customers, which is carefully measured and evaluated by our To B companies.
In any case, the product of the development of an era comes into being after all, and for the public, we should actively embrace it. For To B companies, I think we should still consider carefully, you can take a step first, and don’t rush to quickly invest a large amount of manpower and financial resources.
Traditional media
Do you feel that traditional media has declined? Maybe this is the feeling we all have when playing e-commerce. As for why there are fewer people watching TV now, as for why there are fewer members to watch videos, another important reason is the rise of video platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Watermelon Video, which have seized the time of many customers.
But this does not prevent TV from still being a very common device in many households, and although the audience for advertising on TV has decreased, I still think it is still a good channel.
It’s just that for our industry, if you invest in TV commercials, the audience is too scattered, or the probability of hitting customers is too small, if the company does not have very strong funds, it is better not to make this choice.
Similarly, paper periodicals such as magazines and newspapers have also been greatly impacted, and the number of audiences has also been greatly reduced. However, there are still some industry-focused magazines, relying on their own teachings as a huge customer base, which are still welcomed by everyone. Precision marketing in this segment is still a good choice.
Let’s talk about some architectural advertisements, it is not uncommon for the exterior walls of buildings in today’s cities to hit LED large screens, and the large screens of subway stations are even more common, so let’s talk about whether these advertisements are worth investing in.
In fact, the place where the LED screen is installed is basically a selected dense place with a dense flow of people, so it is definitely reliable in terms of the flow of people, but we also have to assess the selected place. For example, Shenzhen North Railway Station, I often see some mobile phone brand advertisements, generally exposing their latest mobile phones, and people in the past can mainly look up to see it, whether it is the exposure of this mobile phone or the publicity of the company, it is a good choice.
If you want to choose me for subway advertising, maybe our industry is more suitable for subway stations in Huaqiangbei, after all, this is the place where cyclones gather the most, and many trading companies are concentrated here. In addition, those building screens on Huaqiang North Street are also a good choice, of course, the price here is not cheap, and sometimes it needs to be scheduled, which is also a positive effect, and the effect of the large-screen advertising here should also be good.
To sum up, there is no bad advertising media, some are just a matter of matching or not, more importantly, whether the creativity and presentation effect of the advertisement are excellent, whether the content can grasp the customer’s heart, mobilize the customer’s emotions, and more importantly, whether the company’s own family foundation is rich enough.
Traffic channels
PC
The traffic of our electronic components industry mainly comes from PC, which is determined by To B, and the daily work of purchasing personnel or other procurement-related personnel is still relatively busy, and the efficiency of handling things on the PC side is much higher, so our energy should still focus on the PC side.
In order to make it more convenient for most customers, we are still more willing to make the PC website better, whether it is the unique style of the page, or customer experience, order payment, etc. will put more energy on it, which is the main battlefield for us to win the favor of customers, and it is impossible to give up. It may be said that it is a bit inappropriate to get a good impression, for the customer, he will only feel that whose buying experience is not so good, and those who do well should also be right. So all the optimizations we do are to keep ourselves out of that less friendly ranks.
There is a very important thing on the PC side, that is, the domain name, the domain name of our website should be short, and it is best to be related to the name of the enterprise. For example, I know what szlcsc.com and ic.net.cn stand for, because this is very similar to their Chinese name, which can leave a promotion fee. From this point of view alone, our mall domain name should be as simple as possible, corresponding to the brand’s Chinese name, and not too fancy.
As a mall, I think it’s best for us to let customers come in and quickly find the products they want at first glance. So many customers want different products, so let the search box be displayed as conveniently as possible, and can be quickly searched on every page, and we can also see that most of the friends are the same, which is not worth describing.
Similarly, on the homepage of the mall, we still want customers to see our products at a glance, so that they can give us the impression that this is a mall and nothing else. We can minimize the height of other promotional pages above, and display some models on the first screen to deepen the impression of customers.
So you can see that most of the current friend malls are the same, not because they want to imitate others, but because it is a good way to benefit the customer’s shopping experience. So sometimes the same may not seem so derogatory, it may be a summary of some excellent characteristics.
Mobile
However, we can also see that due to the drive of C-end e-commerce, many people have formed the habit of using mobile phones to shop, and the traffic of mobile terminals in our electronic components industry has also grown rapidly in recent years, and major brands are rapidly promoting mini programs/APPs to obtain more traffic.
Objectively, the number of customers remains unchanged, but the habits of customers are changing, or it may just be necessary to use mobile terminals for a certain period of time, and the number of real customers has not increased. But business competition is so fierce, this change may be followed by others and you don’t, you will lose some opportunities. So when the investment is not very large, I still feel that it is necessary to make a mini program or APP, there is no way to get customers so difficult now, others do it, you don’t do it, you are at a loss.
But we still have to distinguish the priority, the mobile terminal is not the main force for To B enterprises after all, and the turnover on the mobile terminal is far from reaching the level of the PC side, so there is still a distinction in energy. Think of him as a good traffic entry point rather than a source of significant sales.
Structure of flow
Proportion of traffic
We all hope that our mall website will have a lot of traffic, whether it is the free traffic brought by search engine paid promotion or website optimization, or the traffic brought by mini programs, APPs, and official accounts, we always hope that the bigger the better. Of course, most of the traffic actually comes at a price, and we prefer free or low-cost traffic to be larger, which can save a lot of costs.
If we run ads on multiple channels, we naturally want to know that each channel can bring traffic.
When I open Baidu statistics, I will look at the proportion of traffic on a website, whether the main source of traffic is PC or mobile, and what is the number of new visitors and old customers. Baidu’s function is still somewhat useful, although some data is not very accurate, but you can also roughly see how some data is distributed.
We see that some websites have a lot of traffic, and the proportion of direct visits is very high, if there is no special drainage, it means that this website is highly collected, or very easy to remember, recognizable, so that customers can directly enter the URL when they think of them, then this kind of website is undoubtedly very good, at least it saves a lot of search engine promotion costs.
I just said that a premise is that if the traffic is high and there is no additional drainage, such a website is great, but if there is a mall website with links from other places, or if you place advertisements from vertical platforms and forward URLs to customers, it may not be possible. After all, this is no different from advertising on search engines, and the higher the proportion of such direct visits, the more dangerous it may be.
A high customer collection URL rate or a URL that is easily remembered and used by customers is a successful performance of a mall website. Of course, there is another way is that customers click in through SEO promotion, but also a mall website does a good performance, after all, the number of products in the electronic components mall is very large, and the URL of a large number of products can be directly included by the search engine and displayed in front, it is definitely a very huge traffic, and the purpose of the customers who come through this way is very clear, the value is very high, and the proportion of this traffic is very high.
How to maintain a reasonable proportion
When is the right proportion of traffic, in fact, there should be no standard answer to this, only the ideal answer, that is, I hope that the free organic traffic will be higher and the payment will be less. But the reality is that if you don’t even pay for it, basically there should not be much organic traffic. This is not an inevitable connection, but generally slightly larger malls will invest in advertising, and will not only rely on SEO to earn organic traffic. I have never seen any company play like this in this situation just by relying on SEO, at least I have never seen a better mall play like this.
Therefore, the necessary advertising investment and the optimization of the mall’s own structure are our goal to increase the online growth of advertising promotion and organic traffic, and to make paid promotion more efficient with limited budgets. In the case of sufficient manpower, optimize the structure of the mall website as much as possible, and the two are not in conflict.
Promotion method
In fact, we have talked about paid and free promotion many times before, whether it is to promote the brand or strive for traffic, these two parts are mentioned, so here we will talk about something else, some of which we may not be very common, such as alumni associations, such as various interest groups.
The alumni association understands very well that if there are many alumni in a place and are very clustered, then it still has the value of being operated. As for the Guidian Alumni Association, in Shenzhen, which is known as 50,000 alumni, it often organizes some activities, and there will be some small groups in various industries. It will even unite alumni of Chengdian, Xidian, and Hangzhou to hold the Sidian Alumni Association, and sometimes the two posts will be pulled together, so this group is very large.
And many of these alumni are engaged in the trade of electronic components, which is really a very accurate group of people, and it is very worth operating. I don’t know how many large and small groups there are, anyway, I often see some people organizing small gatherings in some groups, but I personally don’t have the awareness to manage this school friendship yet.
There are also many large-scale activities of alumni, and each event will attract some sponsors, I think this can be tried, the reason is that the number of people is large enough, the crowd is vertical enough, and the cost of these activities is generally not too high, after all, it is not for the purpose of profit.
News source I would like to emphasize again that for the purpose of brand promotion, we can find some media that are closer to the industry to put some, preferably the kind that includes inclusion, which can quickly increase the number of inclusions on the website. When we search for this brand, we often see some of its dynamics, and we feel that this brand still has some strength, which is to plant a seed of impression in our hearts.
Moments advertising, I have gone to learn about it, some people say that the fifth of your circle of friends is likely to be a circle of friends advertising, I have tried it a few times, and if you don’t believe it, you can count it. Again, we do To B business, the circle of friends advertising is somewhat too personal, even the legend can be accurately placed, but how accurate this is I think it is not very reliable, after all, relying on the algorithm to identify some of your attributes, I think it is still a little unreliable. Recently, I chatted with some friends, and they said that you are still watching the circle of friends, and we have stopped reading it for a long time. It turned out that I didn’t know that I was already a backward person, and I thought that everyone would still brush it every day. And this feedback is not an isolated case, I have received such feedback many times, it turns out that some people in the company have placed advertisements in the circle of friends before, and the effect is not very satisfactory, the most important thing is that I can’t get some feedback on useful data, and I choose carefully at will.
Flow fluctuations
Our mall relies on web traffic, just like the number of people walking by your store every day. Since there is a change, there should be a judgment, which day there are more people, which day there are very few people, what is the normal reasonable range of numbers? We should have such a concept of numbers to know why it is different and what impact it may have.
The overall traffic is abnormal
If your mall visits UV every working day is about 10,000, to be precise, it is between 9,000 and 10,000, which is usually within this range, then you probably think that it should be normal these days, and there is nothing special.
But one day you suddenly find that the traffic has reached 13,000 or 4,000, then you have to seriously find out the reason, what kind of promotion did you do to bring the traffic? Or is there a sudden change in the market, causing everyone to be looking for goods, so that you can share more traffic.
If there are only 6,000 on a certain day, then you should pay more attention to whether it is close to the holiday. No money for paid promotion? Friends and special large-scale events to steal some traffic? These should be investigated, not for the sake of checking for abnormalities, but to see the reasons behind the abnormalities, it may be some business opportunities or crises, don’t be careless.
Individual product exceptions
The market is constantly changing, and the fluctuations of individual commodities are even more obvious, and some popular models are often priced one day at one price, which has great operability.
In the past two years, we often saw that a certain factory of a certain large factory was either affected by an earthquake, or a sudden fire caused a decline in production, or some countries imposed a chip ban and the like, and finally the natural cause was the rise in the price of certain goods. Even if it is not such a big and serious reason, the fluctuations of the market itself may change greatly. For the mall, you will see that the number of views of these products will have a more obvious change, at this time you should also chase the reason, if you clearly know what the reason is, whether the spot in your hand can increase the price and earn more.
The faster you grasp these news, the more proactive you are, and traders are very sensitive to these winds and grasses, after all, this is the foundation of their survival. So is it possible for us to get feedback on these messages faster?
If we establish a feedback mechanism for abnormal product traffic, we can get the news a little faster. Of course, this is still lagging behind, and there is no channel more advanced, the answer is yes, of course there is.
For example, often pay attention to the dynamics of these large factories to understand which factories produce which models. I have learned about a data company that collects and feedback on the possible risks of components, called SiliconExpert, they specialize in this matter, and also include various parameters of components, but the fee is also a bit expensive, as for whether it is worth buying these services, everyone discretions.
Abnormal traffic of goods not only needs to be detected by us, but also has corresponding enforcement means, such as formulating corresponding price adjustment mechanisms. For example, using these scarce goods to restrict purchases and drain traffic is also a very good choice.
In case the traffic plummets, this situation is also possible, whether we can focus on observing, maybe it is a signal of price decline, we should pay attention to it.
Traffic diversion
PC – mobile
As I said earlier, the number of customers is relatively stable, but customers can choose to access the mall on PC, or they may go out and only use mobile terminals to operate.
Suppose I am out now, I can only use my mobile phone, but I have to make some urgent purchases, at this time I search on my mobile phone, if I only find other homes, I don’t see the entrance of your mall, at this time I can’t buy from you, right?
This is a bit far-fetched just now, but it is indeed possible that this situation may exist, so for this possible situation, should we also carry out mobile promotion? It’s a mistake if others don’t have you, just like a joke someone said: if someone prints the Sunflower Treasure Book in batches in the rivers and lakes, they will ask you if you want to practice, if you don’t practice, others can kill you at any time if they practice; Practice, that’s it, everyone is a master, it doesn’t matter if they are masters, they are self-palace first.
This joke is somewhat meaningful, you follow it, it seems that everyone follows it, and I just said that the PC order is still much larger. You don’t follow, everyone can have more opportunities than you, so you have to follow, after all, in this lack of orders, mosquitoes are meat no matter how small they are.
Vertical platform – self-operated mall
As I said earlier, some companies have placed advertisements on vertical platforms, and some traffic comes from vertical platforms, and from the perspective of traffic, of course, we hope that these traffic can be controlled by ourselves and become numbers that can be analyzed in detail. Therefore, we hope that this traffic can be converted from the vertical platform to the mall, and customers can directly place orders from the mall to eliminate a link in the middle, which is very necessary, after all, one more link will have many more opponents and many changes.
It is not simple to put the traffic of the vertical platform, and it is difficult to change the customer’s inquiry and purchase habits, unless you can give him a reason to have to. Good service? Lowest price? Can you meet more needs? Is there any benefit to the individual? High brand influence? If these are not absolute, can we find some points to start and make more reasonable use of this traffic?
Many customers go to the vertical platform to find goods first, and it is understandable to find a few more inquiries, and the process of self-operated malls should be, go to the vertical platform – search for models – initiate a conversation – self-operated mall. For example, customers who have had historical exchanges, when our goods have a price reduction or a large number of goods arrive, take the initiative to initiate a conversation with customers; For example, customers who have a transaction record are instilled in them the concept of preferential treatment in the mall.
In fact, these are all feasible, take the product inquiry initiated by the customer as an example, relying on the enterprise WeChat or the enterprise, can we register these historical communication events, or rely on technical means when I need to search for the keyword to pick out the customers who have had the keyword chat.
It is also good to instill in customers that there are discounts on the mall, to let the customer have money or some additional benefits in the account, so that the customer remembers you, the purpose of our frequent activities is to let the customer form a memory, and feel that there may be more discounts to buy in the mall. I will introduce the detailed operation of the event in detail later.
Traffic blessing
Brand blessing
A customer visits a mall or vertical platform because he has a deep enough impression of the mall/platform, in fact, the power of the brand is influencing the customer, so the traffic largely depends on the brand. If the brand is big enough, no matter what kind of advertising it is, the effect will seem to be better, and the organic traffic will be larger.
Putting aside the brand’s traffic growth, it is somewhat weak, of course, it is only powerless, but it is not absolutely without means, which will be elaborated below. So in the final analysis, we still have to do a good job in the brand, how to do it should be described in the brand operation section, and students who forget can go and take a look.
A few days ago, I visited again in case of strict selection, and also discussed similar topics, how do we win enough traffic, and in the end we still have to return to the direction of the brand, and the brand building needs to be closely related to the positioning of the enterprise, values, and the accumulation of time, at this point we once again reached a consensus, we are eager for traffic but we can’t forget our roots, down-to-earth doing things is the last word.
Product blessing
As mentioned above, aside from the brand, the traffic is a bit weak, but not absolutely powerless, at least we can still have some actions to do on the product. The number of products in our electronic components mall is very large, and if these products are advertised or the website structure is good enough, it is still possible to be searched in large numbers. Of course, if it is not enough to just attract customers into the mall, whether your mall is trustworthy, whether your commodity prices are advantageous, whether your inventory is sufficient, these are important factors affecting the transaction.
In addition, the product can also give some traffic blessings, provided that the product itself has certain attributes, such as what I just said that I have others who do not have it, or what problems can be solved for him by the information attached to your product, or come with other services, these additional things can last, make customers form an impression, and can also bring traffic blessings to the mall.
Key points
Traffic accumulation
The growth of traffic is not something that can be achieved overnight, but takes time to accumulate, which is the same as building a brand, and it is good if it can show a growth trend every month. If you want to grow traffic rapidly, you have to pay more and more money on advertising, but at the same time, brand influence restricts the conversion of traffic, so if you want to maintain a more reasonable ROI, it is best to be slower, keep advertising at a level comparable to brand influence, and a large amount of money investment will only bring more useless traffic.
Control useless traffic
Useless traffic sometimes not only consumes the company’s funds, but sometimes it may have a negative effect on the company’s brand promotion, so it must be controlled.
It is obviously unrealistic to have no worthless visitors at all, as I just said, once we exceed a certain degree in spending, it is likely to attract some very poor quality, which can be said to be useless traffic, so when we plan to invest in advertising, we should choose the target.
We identify customers and put some labels on them, in fact, in order to use labels more reasonably to achieve the purpose of precision marketing, so we need to put some labels on customers as accurately as possible within the scope of our own control.
For traffic from search engines or other channels, of course, we also hope that the ads we place can reach accurate customers, but this is difficult.
For example, search engines, their customer tags cannot be very accurate, some behaviors of customers are likely to interfere with the judgment of search engines, and they are generally not in this industry, it is impossible to have an in-depth understanding of all aspects of this industry, and label all users according to the habits of our industry.
Another example is WeChat Moments advertising, I have also said before that its C-end attributes are too strong, and it is too difficult for us to select accurate B-end customers, so I personally will not include WeChat Moments advertising in the scope of delivery for the time being.
We can’t completely abandon useless traffic, we can only try to choose some channels that are more in line with the enterprise and more segmented to advertise, so that the company’s money is more valuable.
