What is the logic behind CCTV's bombardment of WeChat business?

Today, major media are forwarding a message that "CCTV reveals" micro-business pyramid scheme ":showing off wealth and developing offline through friends circle", and WeChat business has once again become the target of public criticism.

As early as the Spring Festival Evening of 20 15, the sudden emergence of Wechat business Dark Horse Sibu Group won the golden advertising resources of CCTV Spring Festival Evening at a cost of 250 10000 yuan, and claimed that it would invest more advertising funds in CCTV channel in the next year, which would bring social recognition to its distributors and help Wechat business caught in the whirlpool of "pyramid selling" to be rehabilitated by CCTV's credibility and communication power. As the saying goes, "milk is a mother." However, after the New Year, CCTV bombed the poison mask of WeChat merchants, flaunted wealth and pyramid schemes, killed cooked food, etc., leaving a lingering shadow on WeChat merchants who wanted to use CCTV to clear their names.

It stands to reason that CCTV should take into account the existing and potential incentives of "spending money to buy roads" in WeChat business and show some mercy to it, but in fact, the problems of counterfeit goods and malicious fraud that broke out one after another in WeChat business ecology have become social cancer.

1: Wechat business grew wildly in the early days, with uneven entrants, and the ecological environment needs to be reshuffled. Some vicious WeChat business gangs are dying, over-amplifying potential problems and becoming industry troublemakers;

2. Traditional retailers hope to take advantage of the transformation of WeChat business, and more and more new entrants hope to start businesses through WeChat business under the stimulation of their dream of making money. However, the WeChat business has passed the dividend period, and those who join in the fun will only go hungry everywhere and reveal hidden problems. The WeChat business can no longer make big money by hiding.

3. The social platform WeChat circle of friends has become the hardest hit by public opinion due to the influence of vicious screen brushing and marketing. However, on the issue of WeChat business, WeChat is ambiguous and ambiguous, and the technical platforms such as micro-stores are weak, which cannot effectively solve the immediate problems.

As a matter of urgency, CCTV can only expose the ugly problems hidden in the WeChat business ecology again and again under the banner of "universal education". Different from the "conflict of interest" between the Transportation Bureau and taxi software, CCTV has no motives and reasons for "little people" under the background of entrepreneurial tide, and the problems of WeChat business ecology itself have led to such a situation that mice cross the street and everyone shouts. Taxi software can force taxi reform. No matter how fast the WeChat business develops and how promising the prospects are, it is difficult to get rid of the public's cold eyes on the premise that many issues such as marketing model and profit model have not been "transparent". So, what's wrong with the ecology of WeChat business?

Marketing model: from screen brushing to brainwashing

Let's do a questionnaire survey. Nine times out of ten people around us are disgusted with selling things in the circle of friends, but this does not mean that social platforms cannot cut into e-commerce. The public will not blindly resist exclusion. The problem lies in the marketing model of WeChat business. The original WeChat marketing method was simple:

The first step is to add as many WeChat friends as possible to keep the potential audience in captivity; The second step, take rare products (overseas purchasing), high-frequency products (masks) and other products to repeatedly brush the screen to enhance the impression; Step 3: 1 provides continuous pre-sales and after-sales services to 1, starting with acquaintances. Compared with the traditional B2B e-commerce platform sales, this sales model has huge social platform traffic and fragmented time occupation, and has the foundation of word-of-mouth infection and acquaintance trust. In the bonus period of WeChat business, there are concepts, imaginations and advantages, which have been popular for some time.

However, with more and more people doing WeChat business, most of them are college students, housewives and other grassroots people. Without the guidance of scientific marketing methods, they viciously screened the screen, making WeChat friends circle the hardest hit area for advertisements. In addition, users of social platforms have passed the fresh period and their tolerance has declined. When they see this kind of advertisement, their first reaction is to block it first, no matter whether the product is good or bad. This leads to the loss of most end consumers in the business chain of WeChat business. Take the WeChat 5000 friend restriction as an example. If you are a screen dog, you might as well use the group test of friends to see how many real friends there are. Even if there are, they are acquaintances and peers. This part of the audience is simply not enough to support the benign ecology of WeChat business sales. Since the product can't affect the end audience, there is no way to distribute goods in large quantities. It is better to use chicken soup with a successful mind, constantly show off wealth, and constantly hold meetings to mobilize people who want to do WeChat business, which has evolved into a brainwashing "MLM" marketing.

"Brainwashing" most people who want to make a fortune in WeChat business is an inherent routine of pyramid schemes, and it is also the root cause of blind rejection by the public. Doing business only needs to talk about products well, that is, constantly drying up trading records, shouting the stupid slogan of monthly income of 65,438+10,000, and it is strange not to be labeled as pyramid schemes. If the screen is still a real potential audience, it is just a poor marketing method. Speaking of brainwashing, the nature of WeChat business has completely changed. Although it is not a pyramid scheme, it is too difficult to prove that it is not a pyramid scheme under the irrational cognition of mainstream social values. Of course, many brainwashed WeChat business practitioners don't think that "training", "swearing-in meeting" and "showing off wealth" are brainwashing behaviors.

Profit model: from killing to grading

It stands to reason that social platform, as a high-frequency community scene, will definitely be extended by e-commerce, because pure e-commerce platform sales connect merchants and consumers, without emotional and personalized connection, persistent and repeated impression infection, and no emotional infection shared by friends. However, businesses on social platforms have these advantages. A friend will use the weekend to make some delicious cookies, and acquaintances in the circle of friends will snap them up after seeing them. He is in trust, in emotional connection and in personalized charm, which is the natural pride of WeChat business. But the problem is that the place with business opportunities will never be pure land. If you do business, you have to consider expanding your audience, increasing sales and improving profit margins, which brings three problems:

1: The acquaintance relationship no longer exists, and each of us has a limited social circle. There are only a handful of classmates, friends and relatives who can have a trust relationship. It is obviously not enough to do business by this acquaintance. Once the circle of relationships has expanded to thousands of people, even the trust relationship between friends in the circle of friends based on acquaintances no longer exists.

2. Pyramid structure hierarchical agent, once there is no support of trust relationship, circle of friends marketing has no advantage compared with e-commerce platform, and the only instant chat has become a drag. If strangers ask questions privately through WeChat every time they buy products, this workload is very large, so it is better to look at sales data and comments directly. In this case, the only way for WeChat to expand its business is to shift its target and take the development of agents as the direction. In this way, from the general agent to the first-level agent to the second-level agent and then to the final end customer, it is a pyramid structure, without reference indicators such as professionalism and credit, as long as you take a certain amount of goods. In this way, for the average generation, there is no need to consider whether the product is sold or not. As long as the products are pledged to the first-class and second-class agents, they will make money, and they can also make the largest sales without considering various problems before and after sales. But this kind of agency mode is nothing more than changing positions, and the people at the top of the pyramid benefit, but the people at the bottom of the pyramid become victims, which is no different from pyramid selling. Moreover, creating information barriers and engaging in intermediary forms are also contrary to the general direction of information transparency on the Internet.

3. WeChat business is a scarce resource. The reason for this is that products suitable for WeChat business are particularly scarce, and there are not many products with high unit price, high profit and many repeat customers. Wechat business is like an oasis in the desert, with harsh living environment and scarce vegetation, but once it grows up, the audience will be highly dependent. Many traditional retailers, seeing the potential of WeChat business, have put forward the slogan of "transforming to WeChat business", using WeChat business as a new media marketing channel to make a living for their products. However, they are not sure whether their products are suitable for WeChat business, and even think that raising the price on the basis of the original value and grading sales are WeChat business, which completely muddies the clear water pool.

Trend Prospect: From Autogenesis to "Self-extinction"

Since the existing ecology of WeChat business is morbid, should it be banned? Obviously not. If Tencent has already started, the reason why WeChat does not express its position on WeChat business is because:

1: wechat is very helpless. Wechat business is an entrepreneurial direction. From physical store entrepreneurship to Taobao store entrepreneurship, these two entrepreneurial economic forms are mature and saturated, and WeChat business based on social software platform is another emerging entrepreneurial direction. It is this trend of social e-commerce that has propped up the huge valuation and imagination of WeChat. Moreover, extending e-commerce on a social basis is a natural extension. As an all-round life service platform, what WeChat can do is to optimize the ecology, which is impossible. Wechat business is also an e-commerce model derived from the social platform ecology, which is a natural business form based on the huge flow of people in the circle of friends and the fragmentation time. Wechat didn't expect the development speed of WeChat business to be so fast, and Wechat couldn't figure out the future development potential of WeChat business. At present, we can only turn a blind eye.

2. From spontaneity to self-destruction, since it is a WeChat business ecosystem, it is doomed to be difficult to control. What the future can develop into can only be adjusted by our own system. As a platform, what WeChat can do is to formulate rules for positive guidance. As for what the WeChat business will become in the future, it can only be left to fend for itself. Of course, as an ecology naturally derived from social platforms, the "self-destruction" here cannot be completely extinct, just in the dark. What will the future look like? If we jump out to see the way out of social e-commerce, it should be a community ecology based on trust, emotion, transaction, continuous consumption, brand premium and finally orderly operation. Imagine that there was pyramid selling and brainwashing propaganda in business at that time, and there was no chaos driven by bad interests such as product quality and whether the product reached the audience in order to increase sales. A product expert with a deep understanding of products and charming personality will be the core of this community ecology. He will influence a large group of fans to make decisions and consume through his own experiences and sharing, thus forming a closed-loop transaction.

However, can this day come? Since it is a business, in the initial stage of barbaric development, there is no one who does not pursue the maximization of interests. It is conceivable that WeChat business will face the challenge of ecological optimization.