It took 5 years for the 3G portal to grow from 2 users to 100 million registered users and 15 million daily active users.
In October 2009, Guangzhou Jiubang Digital Technology Co., Ltd., located in Zhujiang New Town, Guangzhou, quietly held a celebration. The company's CEO Deng Yuqiang used his mobile phone as a dice and rolled out a string of numbers on the big screen - 100 million. This was Jiubang. The total number of registered users of the 3G portal network operated by Digital Technology reached in October 2009, and the annual turnover is expected to reach 150 million yuan, achieving a turnaround from "burning money" to "profiting".
After the official issuance of 3G licenses in early 2009, there was no shortage of newcomers to the 3G market who were struggling to explore. After several years of exploration, the 3G portal finally found the "little key" to this huge market with great policy influence and erratic market conditions. ”, and its business model has gradually taken shape.
The “Hurricane Effect” of Free Mode
In early 2004, Deng Yuqiang and Zhang Xiangdong discussed building China's largest free mobile phone website in a 6-square-meter cabin on Shipai West Road, Tianhe, Guangzhou.
On March 16 of that year, the 3G portal was officially launched. There were only two people online that day - Deng Yuqiang and Zhang Xiangdong. How to market? This is a big problem. Without that much money and no channels to cooperate with operators, they thought of viral marketing: using themselves as the seeds, they would spread the word to tens and hundreds of people.
They first targeted the student groups and mobile phone players on the Internet who had no Internet experience, posted posts on various mobile phone forums, and invited the moderators of the Monternet forum at that time to become moderators on the 3G portal. These moderators also rely on their special status in the forum to bring a large number of active users to the 3G portal.
"The domestic Internet is relatively easy to form a gathering effect, also called the hurricane effect, that is, users will actively move closer to merchants with high-quality information and content; instead of relying on money to advertise, users will not accept this trick." said Cao Ming, vice president of 3G portal marketing.
It is under this model that the emergence of free WAP has won the support of users. In addition to students, mobile phone sellers have also become their propaganda team. At the same time, they also took advantage of every meal, meeting, trip... They tried their best to participate in all the social activities they could think of and participate in.
In the process of this spread, the 3G portal became the representative of "independent free WAP website". After 8 months of being online, the number of users reached 1 million.
Advertising is content, entertainment is advertising
How do you make money when you have customers?
The founder of Jiubang Technology positioned the website as a "media". According to the traditional profit model of the media, commercial interests must be sought from advertisers. However, in terms of advertising operations on mobile websites, Zhang Xiangdong tried to subvert the definition of traditional advertising.
Starting from March 24, 2006, the 3G portal began to officially operate mobile advertising. Through a link of "Play the quiz game and get a BENQ MP3", BENQ took the lead in opening a special area on the 3G portal to provide the freshest products and brands. Information. "This is the first mobile marketing case in the field of free independent WAP." Zhang Yi, chairman of iiMedia Market Consulting Group, told a reporter from China Business News.
However, this kind of advertising is just an attempt. The marketing manager of a certain brand told reporters that he is not optimistic about mobile Internet advertising because the communication effect is not obvious due to the limitation of screen size.
This argument still has many supporters. In this regard, Zhang Xiangdong said: "This statement is unprofessional!" He countered that mobile advertising has more advantages than traditional media advertising, such as it is "the media closest to people", has the function of integrated media, and has multimedia functions. More powerful and so on.
Zhang Xiangdong, a former journalist, defines mobile Internet advertising as: advertising is content, and entertainment is advertising. At Christmas 2007, the fashion brand Converse used the sponsored interactive game "Help Santa find elk" to log into the 3G portal and make embedded advertisements for game icons. This method attracted more than 4 million user clicks and participation in two weeks. .
“One of the bad impressions that traditional advertising gives people is that it is intrusive. For users under the influence of new media, the forced insertion of traditional advertising is like the preaching of parents to rebellious children. Emphasizing interaction and entertainment and allowing users to participate is already advertising. "One of the important criteria for effectiveness." Zhang Xiangdong said that the best way to do mobile marketing on free WAP is to combine push and pull, first use activities to drive interaction among netizens, and then implant brand products into consumers' minds more frequently.
This advertising model has created a performance that has doubled for three consecutive years. Since it matured in 2008, some mobile phone manufacturers, even mobile operators, and the nine major banks have placed advertisements on the 3G portal. The performance in 2009 is expected to exceed 150 million yuan, an increase of 50%.
"Website + client" combined into flavor viscose
There is no shortage of operators who see the advantages of the independent free WAP model. By the end of 2006, tens of thousands of WAP websites had appeared in China, and several major Internet portals had also established WAP websites one after another, creating serious homogeneous competition.
At this time, the 3G portal network is facing a challenge: how to firmly stick to 10 million users and become loyal users to cope with the competition from giants entering the market.
"At that time, it wasn't that we couldn't make money, what we cared more about was continuing to gain popularity." Zhang Xiangdong said. At that time, what he was thinking about all day long was how to let people know about this mobile website that provided free content in a low-cost and interesting way. .
"We believe that profitability on the Internet must start with user needs. We must ensure a large user base and ensure that they have valuable needs." Deng Yuqiang said that as early as 2006, they began to lay out mobile client software , formulated a "website + client" strategy.
Since its launch in 2004, it has been a daily use to read information online on mobile phones anytime and anywhere. But how can users save money and more conveniently turn on their mobile phones to obtain services on the mobile network? The response speed of the client is obviously more important than the network.
"The package launched by China Mobile is 5 yuan and 30M per month. Using the client to access the Internet can download more information within the limited traffic. Moreover, the operation of the client is easy for users to get used to, thus sticking to customers." IT Technology Deng Yuqiang, who was born in China, has an understanding of client development similar to "Moore's Law".
In June 2006, 3G Portal launched the first version of mobile streaming media player GGTV, which is mainly used to support on-demand mobile TV live broadcasts, mobile movies, and online videos. In March 2007, GGTV had more than 500,000 unique daily active users. In April 2007, 3G Portal announced the launch of a new player GGLive. After installing the software, you can watch programs on demand, and you can also watch NBA, live concerts and other live broadcasts anytime and anywhere.
Directly connecting mobile client products to the portal's forums and news pages to participate in interactions can continuously increase the number of people covered by advertising, thereby achieving advertising effects. Deng Yuqiang believes that this is equivalent to "flavor" plus "viscous glue", which can both attract people and stick them firmly.
Guo Rongcun also contributed to this article
Expert opinion
Uncertain 3G prospects
Zhang Yi, Chairman of iiMedia Consulting Group:
For a long time, 3G portals have placed too much emphasis on advertising as the main revenue model, which I personally do not agree with. In three years, China's wireless advertising may not be able to maintain the current glory of the PC Internet. It is believed that the advertising capacity of a single mobile website determines its total advertising capacity. I suggest that the 3G portal network can take advantage of the massive number of users and expand more revenue models in terms of user-paid products, such as paid reading, mobile games, SNS, etc. Judging from the unquestionable user scale of the 3G portal, it is completely possible to launch charging projects as soon as possible , the income idea is clear and obvious.
Li Xing, Dean of the School of Journalism and Communication, South China University of Technology:
3G has brought huge traffic benefits to mobile operators through free use by a large number of users, but operators only pay event promotion fees. This allocation method is uneconomical for 3G portals. In addition, as a media, there is currently no problem with the 3G portal's model of profiting from advertising, but after all, it lacks advantages in content production, so it is impossible to have strong original content like traditional media. If we only rely on content services to dominate the world, some businesses, such as live video broadcasts, may still be replaced by other media tools. As a media channel, mobile phone’s application direction determines the future. Therefore, more consideration should be given to the general application direction of the future market. For example, mobile search business represents a new force in the market.