How to Nail Ground Promotion: A 2020 Playbook
Offline Ground Promotion: One
Why O2O Projects Need Offline Ground Promotion Today
1. The Tangibility of Offline Services: The nature of O2O offline services means that targeted online promotion in specific cities during the early stages tends to be costly. Allowing users to experience genuine, high-quality service is the best way to showcase your project.
2. Building Word-of-Mouth: Early ground promotion allows you to quickly accumulate a base of loyal users and generate organic word-of-mouth. Once you have enough touchpoints, you can combine online and offline promotional strategies.
3. Optimizing Service Processes: Offline service teams typically require a significant period to磨合 and synchronize. Ground promotion helps streamline and refine these service workflows.
Two
Key Capabilities Required for Effective Ground Promotion Staff
First, Strong Resource Integration Skills
Ground promotion generally falls into four main categories: mall roadshows, corporate outreach (office buildings), merchant partnerships, and community promotions.
1. Negotiating Venue Access
(1) Design compelling events to secure venue resources
To negotiate cheap or even free space in a mall, you need to demonstrate clear value to the mall—such as driving foot traffic or boosting average transaction values. This means your promotional activity must be genuinely attractive. If your own products aren’t compelling enough on their own, team up with other O2O companies to co-host the event. You could offer free nail services while also providing free laundry vouchers, free car-wash coupons, and even a box of fruit as a bonus. That’s impressive, right?
(2) Partner with fellow O2O companies to pool venue resources
Would other O2O companies actually join your event? Offering them free promotional space might seem too good to be true, but once you’ve secured a desirable location, many companies will likely be interested. At that point, you can arrange resource swaps—asking partners to contribute their own venues or user bases. If five companies each bring one mall location to the table, you’ve instantly secured five key resources. Following this approach, you can rapidly expand into all your target areas.
2. Negotiating Corporate Perks (Office Buildings)
Start by partnering with one company inside the office building, then ask them to help you liaise with the leasing or property management team. Once you have property management on board, they can help you reach other tenants. If that first company also needs promotion, have them distribute both your gifts and theirs—they’ll be highly motivated to help. The critical factor here is whether the contact you’re working with is reliable and capable of securing buy-in from property management and other companies.
3. Negotiating Merchant Partnerships
Merchant collaborations are relatively straightforward.
(1) Offer complimentary value-added services to enhance customer experience.
(2) Help increase average transaction values by offering incentives like free gifts with purchases over a certain amount.
(3) Arrange mutual traffic exchanges, such as providing your users with the merchant’s coupons.
It’s important that the partnership structure is simple and doesn’t add to the staff’s workload. Ideally, it should actually help them sell more or serve customers better. If the process is complicated, staff may resist, significantly reducing the campaign’s effectiveness.
4. Community Promotions
Community outreach mainly requires winning over property management, which is generally easier than dealing with mall management. A small incentive or gift voucher for the property supervisor is usually sufficient. Refer to the mall negotiation strategy above for detailed guidance.
Second, Master the Fundamentals: Cold Outreach
If you’re new and lack established connections or mentorship, your best option is consistent cold outreach. This is mentally demanding and requires specific skills:
1. Resilient Mindset
You need thick skin. No matter how many rejections you face, you must recover quickly and keep going.
2. Techniques to Improve Cold Outreach Success Rates
When visiting a company, you’ll usually interact with the receptionist first. Ask if the HR or marketing manager is available. There are two possible outcomes:
A. 1% chance: The receptionist fetches the HR/marketing contact. You then explain the free perks available to their employees, along with any participation requirements. After exchanging business cards, the deal is likely done. Most people will participate in free activities as long as you don’t come across as sketchy or fraudulent.
B. 99% chance: The receptionist asks why you’re looking for HR or whether you have an appointment. In this case, pitch the free benefits without mentioning conditions first. If the receptionist is interested, they’ll refer you to HR. If HR is also interested, they’ll meet with you, at which point you can outline the requirements.
If HR isn’t interested and refuses to meet, offer a small group trial to the receptionist and their team. Encourage them to share their positive experience with colleagues. After they’ve tried it, revisit the office and ask the receptionist to call HR back, emphasizing that your team is trustworthy because their colleagues have already had a good experience. HR is much more likely to agree after that.
If even the receptionist can’t be won over, expand your efforts to companies on other floors. Ask those companies to help facilitate an introduction to your target company—recommendations from neighbors significantly increase your chances of success. If you can’t secure buy-in from any company in the building, try negotiating with the property management directly. Still stuck? Try again. Persistence pays off.
3. Follow-Up Before and After Events
Once HR shows interest, always get their business card. Since event timing rarely gets confirmed immediately, add them on WeChat for ongoing communication. Use WeChat to finalize the event schedule, such as having them send an email or verbally notify employees. After the event, ask satisfied customers to refer friends and colleagues to you. Over time, your campaigns will become smoother and your conversion rates will improve.
Third, Handling On-Site Issues During Promotions
The goal of ground promotion is user acquisition, so everything should prioritize the user experience. If a customer complaint arises, address it promptly. If you encounter an emergency and can’t reach your manager, don’t just stare at the customer and do nothing—that will only frustrate them. Remember: one negative review can spread quickly through social networks, and today’s consumers can easily tag media outlets on Weibo to expose poor service. Don’t underestimate a single bad review; mishandling it can escalate into a major crisis. Start by listening to the customer’s concern, then verbally offer a small gift or voucher as compensation. Follow up by reporting to your manager and requesting approval for the gifts. In most cases, your manager will agree.
Fourth, Calculating Ground Promotion Costs
Ground promotion coupons typically offer higher discounts than online equivalents because offline outreach allows you to target specific demographics by location. How do you control these costs?
1. Monitor Customer Acquisition Cost (referred to as Ground Promotion CPA)
Calculate total campaign costs (including the value of redeemed vouchers, venue fees, part-time staff wages, gifts, etc.) divided by the number of new users acquired.
2. Track Repeat Purchase Rate
Since ground promotion often relies on steep discounts or free offerings to attract users, repeat purchase rate is a critical metric. Calculate the cost of acquiring a returning customer by dividing the ground promotion CPA by the repeat purchase rate. If this figure is lower than your online advertising acquisition cost, your campaign is considered successful. Keep in mind that some ground promotion efforts are brand-building rather than purely performance-driven, and demand-supply balance should also be factored in, so this metric isn’t an absolute sole determinant.