For Taobao newcomers, we should choose the most suitable category to cut in. So choosing categories and products today is not only from the perspective of data analysis, but also from other angles to talk to you.
First of all, I want to talk to you about a concept that I often mentioned when I shared it before: competitiveness. I have always adhered to a principle: no matter what optimization, product selection, keywords and shelf time, small and medium-sized sellers should choose the most competitive ones. So how to understand this concept is actually very simple. Let's take the category as an example: for example, you want to make a coat, but what is more suitable for you to cut into T-shirts, shirts, sweaters, sweaters, windbreakers and so on. If you are a powerful enterprise, with strong involvement of traditional enterprises, resources, funds and a team, then there is no doubt that you can directly choose the one with the strongest market demand. You can see this data directly through the business.
Unfortunately, most of us entered Taobao in the state of "three noes": no funds, no resources and no team. Is it appropriate to choose this demand at this time? Of course, you might say that big sellers eat meat and we drink soup. But sorry, you may not even be able to drink soup. At this time, we will introduce the concept of "competitiveness". What does this concept mean? Here you can understand it this way: the average number of orders each baby can get, competitiveness = the total number of transactions/the current number of babies (it is best to use the index of quality babies, which can be obtained in e-books).
Then, it is easy to understand that the more orders each baby gets, the better for you, because as a small seller, the greater your chances, that is to say, the greater the calculated competitiveness value, the better! Many people misunderstand that the greater the competitiveness, the fiercer the competition, which is wrong. After this calculation, the most suitable category for small sellers may or may not be the subcategory with the largest market demand. Similarly, when you optimize the off-shelf time, the best off-shelf time for you may or may not be the time with the largest transaction volume. I will use this concept many times later in this series of articles. Let's deepen our understanding here.
Well, knowing this concept, let's talk about how to cut into the market, how to cut into categories, how to cut into attribute points, and even how to cut into keywords.
1. What you should choose most is actually your favorite and familiar industry.
The clothing industry should be the first choice for many small sellers to settle in Taobao. The reason is simple: easy, big market demand. That's understandable. Then they asked me, Brother Fei, what kind of women's clothes do you think I should make? At this time, I always ask a question (especially female sellers): What kind of clothes do you like?
Yes, you can make any clothes you like. The reason for this is the following：
(1) There must be a group of people in this world who have similar (even the same) preferences with you.
This is also the basis of market segmentation: the relative homogeneity of consumer behavior, for any kind of consumer preference, there must be a group of people who are the same, that is, there will be a circle, and on the Internet, you don't have to worry that this circle is too small. What kind of wonderful style do you like, there will be people who like the same thing as you, and these people are your target customers. So, if you choose the category you want to cut into, first of all, you have drawn a portrait of the crowd for yourself. Your income level, education level, age and so on, these factors are your crowd portrait.
(2) You know the attraction of this dress best.
Why did you choose this dress? What really attracts you? Is it the price, style, material or something else? Your own crowd attribute has actually decided what the selling point of this product should be: because the result of market segmentation is the similarity of consumer behavior. For example, you are a person with good spending power, and your family conditions are OK. When you choose clothes, the style is one thing, but you pay more attention to the quality of clothes, so when you choose clothes, you mainly pay attention to how the details are done, how the materials are used and so on. Ok, so will your target customers, so if you make a detail page, focus on these.
(3) The development trend of the network celebrity era.
You constantly choose products and make suggestions according to your own aesthetics and judgment, and then your target customers begin to pay attention to you: this guy has a good aesthetic and this guy has a good eye! Is the internet celebrity here? This year, you can clearly see that Taobao has changed from selling goods to selling people. He needs these online celebrities to create traffic for him, and needs online celebrities to keep consumers on Taobao, so he will support online celebrities. Follow the trend, why not?
2. Cut into the well-positioned market.
I think this is the key, which is the inevitable result of market segmentation. We will segment the market by various factors, such as age, gender, professional status, education level, income level and so on. Therefore, whether this market segmentation is effective or not will have a very important criterion: response differences. In other words, for the same marketing behavior, the target market you choose should be obviously different from other market segments.
For example, price reduction, some market segments should be very sensitive, and some are not. If everyone is sensitive, then at least in terms of price reduction, your market segmentation is invalid. In other words, after you have subdivided the market in this way, you should not take price war as your main marketing strategy. So, how do we cut into this well-positioned market? In fact, Taobao gave us a good score to a great extent. We search for a keyword: women's shoes, which will appear before the specific search results on the search results page:
There will be many categories on Taobao. Of course, we must admit that the second generation is not a god. They can't guarantee that classification is the most effective. There are so many goods, right? However, the big data support in Alibaba's background still gives Taobao II an inherent advantage over us in market segmentation. For example, in the dimension of "toe type", "round head", "pointed head", "fish mouth" and "square head" will certainly have different reactions to marketing in some "focuses". For example, there are obvious differences between women who like "round-headed" shoes and women who like "pointed" shoes. Is this understandable? Do teachers, civil servants and employees of state-owned enterprises like a rounder head, while white-collar workers of foreign enterprises and private enterprises like a sharper head? Of course, I just throw a brick to attract jade, and the investigation of consumers is a technical job!
3, the selection of categories must look at the trend.
In fact, many categories are seasonal (there are off-season sales in a year), so as to better arrange your operation workflow (yes, many times we just want to arrange our own work, such as when to buy new products, when to make up orders, when to drive for sales promotion, when to start doing activities to pour goods, and so on). Here is a free data tool: Ali Index. There used to be taobao index, but taobao index went offline. Fortunately, Ali Index took over this function.
First of all, I want to explain a problem to you: if you want to look at the market size and make market forecasts, this tool is not easy to use because you can't see it, but if you just look at the trend, it is enough. We just want to look at the trend. Open Ali index with IE browser and directly search for category words. For example, if you want to make sneakers, you can directly search for "sneakers" or go here to find:
Let's take shoes as an example and look at the following data, because after your search, it shows two months by default, but we want to see the trend of one year, or May, and I want to see the trend of June-65438+February. We dragged the small triangle under this trend chart to May last year. Then look at the general trend from June last year to 65438+February. The basis of our judgment here is that if there are no extremely special circumstances, the overall trend is basically the same every year.
Green is the Taobao purchasing index, which basically represents consumers' demand for Taobao+Tmall. We can see the overall trend. From May to1mid-October of 65438+, the demand for this kind of shoes is very stable, and from mid-October to mid-February of 65438+, it is a declining period. However, considering that this period is during the Spring Festival, it is very normal for the sales of various industries to decline before and after the Spring Festival, so in this sense, this category is very stable all year round. More importantly, in May of 16, Taobao's purchasing index increased compared with 15, which means that the industry as a whole is on the rise, which is a good positive signal.
For this category, if we cut in, there is no time node problem, anytime, but not all goods are like this. For example, leather boots:
Looking at last year's data, it is found that May and June are low, and it started to increase slightly in July, and began to increase rapidly in August. From 10 to 10 in the second year, the demand remained strong, and then it began to enter a trough in February, which lasted until July of that year and entered the next cycle.
So if you want to cut into this industry, what is the basic operating rhythm? In May and June, we made preparations and made detailed and stable plans for new projects. The number of through trains began to increase in July, and the promotion investment began to increase in August. After the double twelfth, it should basically be the rhythm of clearance activities.
That's about it. This is why you should look at the trend when choosing products and categories. Also, it depends on your own understanding of this category. Generally speaking, you should look for shops that have advantages for you, and don't always follow the trend to do the categories you like to know. The competition in the big market is relatively small, but so is the competition. The key is to see if you understand the operation of the store. If you don't know, if you really want to learn the operation knowledge, you can put this skirt on the shelf. The middle number is: 403, and the last number is: 4 17, in order.
All right, that's it. It involves specific product selection methods and skills. It should be combined with competitors and some more detailed data. There will be more later. Come on! ! !