Over the next two days, Miaocha's sales soared.
The 'first cup of milk tea in spring' meme on Renren.com became increasingly popular, in turn driving up the number of Renren.com registrations.
It was no longer limited to spreading on Renren.com.
Instead, it spread through QQ to other universities and communities.
Some students who didn't have computers or didn't like going to internet cafes were also influenced to register Renren.com accounts, and it began circulating on external sites.
The autonomous spread among young people didn't care about Renren.com's coverage; for a time, it was spreading everywhere on Xiaonei.com and Tianya Tribe.
This time, Renren.com once again went viral.
BJ, Qianxiang Company.
Company CEO Chen Yizhou frowned as he listened to his subordinate's report:
"Why is it Renren.com again? I've heard about it several times in a short period. We can even see memes created by other SNS on our Xiaonei.com."
Last October, after Xiaonei.com was acquired by Qianxiang Interactive Group.
By the end of the same year, Qianxiang Company's 5Q Campus Network completed its merger with Xiaonei.com.
Chen Yizhou ambitiously wanted to prove the profitability of WEB2.0 and high-profilely announced the Xiaonei.com plan.
Unfortunately, after half a year of promotion, it once again stalled due to slow development.
This brings us to Xiaonei.com's inherent disadvantages.
In the early days of its venture, Wang Xing mimicked FACEBOOK's model, copying it to rapidly spread within university campuses.
As the saying goes, it succeeded because of university campuses and failed because of university campuses.
When Wang Xing reached one million users, he sold it to Chen Yizhou because he couldn't afford the servers.
Chen Yizhou wanted to develop it vigorously after acquiring it but found himself in a strange loop.
Although it was relaunched in universities in 33 cities nationwide, it only appeared prosperous on the surface, with many users but no way to monetize.
Server costs soared, but it couldn't connect to advertising business at all, and besides advertising, there were no other good monetization methods.
At the same time, it faced encirclement from other SNS social platforms.
In the original timeline, Xiaonei.com was not renamed Renren.com until July 2009, stepping out of the campus scope to provide services to users nationwide.
Chen Pingjiang took a completely different path from the very beginning of his venture.
He seemingly chose the same path as Xiaonei.com, both taking root and rapidly promoting within university campuses.
But Chen Pingjiang had always consciously controlled the pace of advancement to prevent high server costs caused by a sudden surge in registered users.
Otherwise, he could have just launched the "Snatch a Parking Spot" mini-game directly from the start, so why bother with offline promotions and advertising?
It was precisely because he had a team of daring and capable university students that Chen Pingjiang made advertising a success.
Monetization was not an issue for him, at least not for Renren.com at its current scale.
In addition, other sectors like Renren Waimai and catering companies were continuously generating revenue for Renren.com.
If Chen Pingjiang had initially emulated Chen Yizhou's aggressive rush, he would probably have completely failed by now.
Focusing solely on promotion without considering monetization will sooner or later become unsustainable unless there's a constant influx of capital.
And when you want to monetize, just building a sales team can be incredibly arduous, and low advertising fees won't be very effective.
This also shows Chen Pingjiang's shrewdness.
Shu Mang and Wan Yuqian questioned his relentless and irreversible expansion in the Miaocha project, which carried considerable risk, but Chen Pingjiang still went ahead with it.
However, on the Renren.com and Renren Waimai projects, he was as steady as an old dog, incredibly cautious.
The bespectacled subordinate sitting opposite Chen Yizhou nodded:
"We did a background check. The entity is Dongjiang Renren.com Information Technology Co., Ltd., with Chen Pingjiang as the legal representative. It's a campus startup project, currently estimated to have over a hundred thousand registered users, limited to universities within Dongjiang."
Chen Yizhou understood, a look of disdain appearing on his face:
"No wonder we encountered rare coldness when we entered the Dongjiang market in December. But if it's just a university student startup project, it's hard to make it big.
After they painstakingly conquer the Dongjiang universities, they'll probably have to sell it off like Wang Xing, otherwise, they won't be able to afford the server costs. If necessary, we'll just acquire it directly then."
It's no wonder Chen Yizhou was arrogant; Renren.com's current scale was just a small fry to him.
When he acquired Xiaonei.com, it already had millions of registered users, whereas Renren.com currently only has over a hundred thousand registered users.
'Small' isn't even enough to describe it; 'micro' would be more fitting.
The subordinate nodded and said:
"eDoem, Zhanzuo.com, Looface, and Zhongshan's Yiyou are all considerably larger than this Renren.com. Our judgment at the time was also that it wouldn't amount to much; after all, Renren.com only had tens of thousands of registered users back then, and it only grew by a hundred thousand in three or four months, which is too slow."
"Don't spend too much time on this Renren.com. When they can't sustain it, we can just acquire it for a small sum. Our current business focus is still mainly on monetization,"
Chen Yizhou said.
"I quite like the name Renren.com; it's simple and easy to understand."
The subordinate gave a bitter smile:
"As a national SNS, our advertising targets have always been well-known brands, but either they don't align with young student demographics, or the brands are unwilling to pay more.
Mainly, university students' spending power is not high, so everyone looks down on them. They're all small, insignificant deals, which is truly discouraging. Mr. Chen, should we, like Facebook, move beyond the campus?"
Chen Yizhou shrugged helplessly:
"Facebook had already exhausted all American university student users before gradually moving beyond the campus circle. Coupled with a good financing environment there, it could continuously support Facebook's expansion.
But look at China; we have a ton of competitors, and financing is difficult. For now, the only solution is to find a breakthrough. We lack an opportunity to reach users of all age groups."
"Let's first learn from Facebook, conquer all national university resources, and then jump out of the universities."
...
In just three days, the sales of milk tea shops around five universities were halved due to Miaocha's pressure.
On Caida Commercial Street, several milk tea shop owners watched the dense customer flow inside Miaocha with envy.
"Damn it, where did this Miaocha come from? I specifically asked my friends, and no one in Shanghai has ever heard of this brand of milk tea shop."
"Now I can't even sell twenty or thirty cups a day. At this rate, I'll have to close down in less than a month."
"Our shop isn't doing much better. You say their milk tea is so expensive, why are students still flocking to it? They really don't treat their parents' money as money."
"I don't think so. It's just after New Year's, so students have their lucky money. After they've spent it, who will still buy such expensive milk tea?"
"I think so too. They're all some strange flavors. What taro mud boba, what brown sugar boba milk tea, just a mess."
"Students are just looking for novelty. I bought a cup on opening day and tried it; I couldn't get used to it at all. If you ask me, our traditional milk tea is still better."
"..."
Chen Pingjiang stood by, smiling, listening to these milk tea shop owners complain, occasionally interjecting a couple of remarks, causing Shu Mang and others following him to roll their eyes in exasperation.
After walking away, Chen Pingjiang shook his head:
"In half a year, perhaps only 1-2 of these people talking will be left. Miaocha will have devoured the high-end market, and they will inevitably be fighting tooth and nail for the remaining mid-to-low-end market."
Gao Songbin also sighed:
"How do these people do business? They're too insensitive, not even thinking about changing."
Chen Pingjiang chuckled, tilting his head to look at him:
"Not necessarily. On the surface, everyone gathers to complain, but in reality, within a few days, someone will go back and imitate Miaocha's flavors. The one who copies it best will probably survive; those who copy the flavors inaccurately will die faster."
"If they copy Miaocha's products, can we sue them?"
"No need. Winning a lawsuit won't bring much benefit, and the imitators might not even last until the trial begins. As long as we keep running ahead, they can only chase behind us. Their copying speed will never catch up to Miaocha's speed of creating new products."
Chen Pingjiang gave Miaocha's R&D department a strict order: update 30% of products annually, and launch one new product every month to continuously guide consumer taste upgrades.
"How's the progress currently?"
Chen Pingjiang asked, changing the subject.
Gao Songbin frowned seriously and said:
"The efficiency of promoting in office buildings is much lower than promoting within universities, and it's also more difficult. The promotional strategies and experiences we summarized from various universities are completely ineffective in an unfamiliar environment.
Currently, for office buildings, we mainly rely on distributing flyers, with no other better methods. Besides that, we can only organize small events at subway entrances."
After the new semester began, Gao Songbin, after completing promotions at several universities in the urban area, officially entered office buildings for offline promotions as per Chen Pingjiang's request.
Taking this step also meant Renren.com officially moved out of campuses and into society.
But as Gao Songbin said, the results were not very good.
Not only were the information reach and conversion rates poor, but the retention rate was also very low.
Chen Pingjiang had long anticipated this situation and smiled indifferently:
"Even as a publicity method, it's not bad. Currently, Renren.com's circle is mainly students, and it's normal for adults to feel it's childish and not fit in. As more and more people join, the effect will get better and better."
"Yesterday, Renren.com's registered users officially surpassed 200,000. With the stationmasters in place at Jiangning University Town and the milk tea meme going viral, our registered users increased by tens of thousands in just a few days. It's time to launch the campus ambassador program."
Chen Pingjiang planned to successfully capture all universities in Jiangning University Town through this campus ambassador selection.
By then, it would be firmly established, and only then would he fully focus on expanding into the urban area.
"So, should we continue promoting in office buildings?"
Chen Pingjiang nodded:
"Of course. As you said, the promotional methods and effects for campuses and society are completely different. Even for the sake of practice and accumulating experience, we can't stop. Arrange a rotating three-person team to continuously promote."
Developing users in Jiangning University Town and social users are two parallel lines that do not contradict each other.
Both lines are very important, and the latter even represents a trend.
How could Chen Pingjiang easily give up?
"Arrange a stationmaster meeting. Set a time for all our Renren.com stationmasters and invite them to the startup park. After working for so long, they should definitely come and see."
(End of Chapter)
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