27 Aug Perfect diary case study
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How private traffic helps perfect diary disrupts the Chinese beauty market?
August 2020
China’s beauty market is experiencing significant growth since the last few years, with international brands accounting for a huge 80% of the market share. However, their leading positions have been threatened recently by the rise of domestic beauty players. The most prominent example is Perfect Diary, a young Chinese makeup brand that is disrupting the market by using private traffic. It refers to the traffic that comes from brands’ own channels where they can have more control compared to public social content platforms and marketplace. Perfect Diary implements it as its brand strategy, which helps generate GMV between 300 million to 500 million RMB in 2019, coupled with 5 million users in their private traffic pool. In this case study, we will discuss how they implement private traffic as a core business strategy to become one of the most influential brands in the Chinese market.
Grow private traffic pool with offline and online touchpoints
Perfect Diary utilizes online and offline models that convert public traffic from the marketplace into their self-developed community (private traffic). For example, in each package sold in the traditional e-commerce platforms, Perfect Diary would insert a promotion card attached with their Wechat official account QR code and use exclusive benefits to incentivize customers to scan the code. After scanning the code, customers will be asked to add a personal account called Xiaowanzi who will give customers access to the community and invite them to enter the private traffic pool.
Following its online model, Perfect Diary had opened 40 brick-and-mortar stores and it is set to open 600 stores in the next 3 years. The key intention behind this ambitious plan is to reach more people and turn them into new customers, who can then be drawn into their private traffic pool. Customers will be motivated to enter the new private traffic pool by scanning a QR code displayed at the store or on the gift card given after purchasing the products.
Create a virtual KOC to develop closer customer relationships
Perfect Diary personifies their brands through a virtual character named Xiaowanzi, who contain similar characteristics with the brand’s target customers (Gen Z). The brand creates hundreds of this character running specific personal WeChat accounts, with the same moments content and profile. Xiaowanzi will not only share high quality content (e.g. product-related knowledge sharing) in their WeChat moments to stimulate purchase intent but also provide exclusive promotion and first access to new products in the WeChat group they are in charge of. Besides, it will address product-related questions and concerns raised by the group members. By doing so, customers tend to consider Xiaowanzi as a real and reliable friend, which in turn, makes them trust the brand and become loyal customers.
Retain customers through engagement tactics
In addition to self-created KOC, Perfect Diary has also integrated external KOCs dedicated to creating high-quality content information regarding a promotion, new arrivals, latest product try-on, etc. These content will be posted regularly in private traffic groups and Xiaowanzi’s moments in order to ensure customer retention of the brand. Each post is attached with a link that provides entrance for customers to the brand’s mini program on WeChat and encourages them to purchase the products.
Conclusion
Perfect Diary provides an excellent model to learn how to gain an edge from the competitive Chinese beauty market. It leverages KOC to establish a trustworthy brand image and stimulate purchase desire. Likewise, it acquires more customers through offline stores and converts them into its continuously expanding private traffic pool. As the customer acquisition cost in leading e-commerce platforms is skyrocketing and the competition becomes increasingly fierce, private traffic as a business strategy would be another option for brands to own the relationship with their clients in China.
This article is the result of a joint effort between Fabernovel Asia and PJdaren
About PJdaren
PJdaren helps some of the world’s largest brands to engage Key Opinion Consumers (KOC) with end-to-end solutions to drive advocacy and sales in China. PJdaren provides brands with a powerful engagement platform to inspire sub-segments of its community of Key Opinion Consumers to create authentic content and conversations in the places that matter most and at scale. PJdaren leverages the power of human interaction to help brands build trust and boost sales.
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