The fourth quarter is the harvest season for domestic trade factories: the three nodes of Double 11, Double 12, and New Year's Day are connected together, and procurement decisions are released in a centralized manner.However, the customer acquisition action must start 45 days before the node-Double 11 traffic starts to climb in mid-October, and purchases for the New Year's Day will be finalized in mid-December.Wait until the node starts advertising on the same day, and the budget is spent on triple the cost. This article gives a four-quarter customer acquisition calendar, arranging the actions by week.
1. Why must we have to advance 45 days
Two reasons. First,The fermentation cycle of search and content: Whether it is Short Video or search Q & A, it takes 2-6 weeks to accumulate ranking and trust after the content is released. There is basically no traffic dividend for the content posted on the same day. Second,Procurement decision chain: It usually takes 3-6 weeks for corporate procurement to go from making demand, price comparison, proofing to placing an order. Customers who make inquiries during the week of Double 11 usually have transactions in December-so every batch of inquiries in the first half of the fourth quarter, all correspond to orders for the New Year's Day and even the beginning of next spring.
Customer acquisition calendar for the second and fourth quarters
| time | node | core action |
|---|---|---|
| Early October | Holiday Return to Work Week | Take stock of holiday clues and follow up 48 hours a day; sort out the list of high-interest customers throughout the year |
| Mid-to-late October | Double 11 water storage period | Release the Double 11 event page and content; add search keywords; warm up text messages from old customers |
| Early November | Double 11 detonating week | Live broadcasts/Short Video are released centrally; time-limited policies force orders; customer service schedules are full |
| Late November | Double 12 and year-end renewal | Recall unsold clues for secondary follow-up; initiate annual framework agreement negotiations |
| Early and mid-December | Water storage during the New Year Festival | New Year Festival activities are scheduled; annual rebate policy for channel merchants is released |
| Late December-January | New Year's Festival and its closing | Holiday gift boxes and replenishment orders; annual review and next year's budget fixing |
3. Channel division of labor: What do search, Short Video, and private domains manage?
- Search (Baidu/Douyin Search) is responsible for "catching demand."Purchasing customers search with clear questions, and the budget focuses on product terms, manufacturer terms, region + category terms. Before the fourth quarter, the landing page will be updated to the latest activity policy, and the inquiry form will be placed on the first screen.
- Short Video are responsible for "manufacturing needs."Production line real shots, process comparisons, and selection guides worked best in the fourth quarter-buyers are picking suppliers, and seeing the factory content naturally adds points. Keep 2-3 updates every week, and nodes are encrypted in the first two weeks to update every other day.
- The private domain is responsible for "catching and repurchasing."All clues coming from all channels will be added to WeChat within 24 hours, and labeled and layered according to industry and scale. The year-end replenishment notices of old customers and the annual policies of channel operators are all smuggled into one-to-one point-to-point access to the domain, and the conversion cost is much lower than that of public domain advertising.
4. List of content materials prepared in advance
Node content does not mean that the node is written on the same day. These materials were prepared in early October and used repeatedly throughout the fourth quarter:
- Real shot videos and atlas of production lines, equipment, and finished product warehouses (one shot for one season).
- Three types of customer testimony: major customer renewal, difficult order resolution, and the transaction process of the first cooperation.
- A comparison chart: The differences in key parameters between your product and similar products in the market.
- A one-page explanation of the Double 11/New Year's Day event policy, with unified customer service and business guidelines.
- Talk about common purchasing issues: minimum order quantity, delivery time, customization process, after-sales terms.
The three most easily trampled pits in the fifth and fourth quarters
- The content advance amount is not enough, and the node will only post activities on the same day.This is the most common mistake. Activity pages, grass planting videos, and search Q & A are posted at least 2-4 weeks in advance, and the node is doing harvesting instead of sowing on the day. The criterion for judgment is very simple: two weeks before the node, can you find yourself under your target keyword?
- There is no layer of inheritance when clues come in.After the node traffic is amplified, all clues are crowded into one group and queued back, and high-intention customers and casual visitors receive the same response speed. The correct approach is to divide the resources according to the three levels of "old customers-clear inquiry-general consultation." The first two levels respond within 2 hours, and the third level is maintained in the data pool.
- Just focus on getting new ones and forget the wallets of old customers.For the replenishment and annual framework needs of old customers in the fourth quarter, the conversion cost is only a fraction of that of new customers. Check the list of old customers before December: how much you purchased this year, how much you expect next year, and what categories are still missing. The output of one-on-one interviews often exceeds expectations.
A final reminder: The fourth quarter is also the fixing period for next year's cooperation. Channel merchants and purchasers mostly finalize the list of suppliers for next year in December, and prepare long-term cooperation tools such as "Annual Framework Agreement" and "Rebate Policy" in advance. In the fourth quarter, they won not only orders, but also positions for next year.
common problems
1. Small budget factories, should we still participate in Double 11??
Yes, but change the game. If you have limited budgets, don't compete for traffic with big factories on the same day of the node. Move the budget to the search for long-tail words and the activation of private domain old customers 2-3 weeks before the festival. A large part of the transactions on the same day at the node are customers who have been planted with content before the festival. The advantages of small factories are fast response and customization, which is highlighted in the content and is effective in price competition.
2. Should we invest our budget in the fourth quarter on gaining new customers or promoting repurchases??
Look at the customer structure. If there is still room to double the annual purchase amount of existing customers, the input-output for promoting repurchase will be higher than usual: year-end replenishment, next year's framework agreement, rebate policy, and a set of combined costs controllable. The focus of attracting new customers is on high-intention words on the search end, and the widespread traffic of Short Video is left to brand exposure.
3. What is the difference between the customer acquisition logic of the New Year Festival and the Double 11 Festival??
Double 11 is more about "price comparison hoarding", and customers are sensitive to prices and make quick decisions; New Year's Day is more about "holiday supply", and customers are concerned about delivery time and supply stability (pre-holiday logistics outages are a hard constraint). The content of the New Year's Festival should highlight the earliest delivery time and reminders of off-peak orders. In policy design,"early ordering and priority scheduling" should be used to replace simple price cuts.
--Qihang AI Foreign Trade Research Institute·Let China Intelligent Manufacturing Set sail to the sea| Foreign trade customer consultation: 180-0327-6609
