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China Tobacco’slatest marketingcampaign maximizesonline channels helpretailers developtheir skills andknowledge across arange of topics.
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The “Growing Together with Customers” marketing campaign retailers,helping them to be better equipped to serve the end-consumer.
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Counseling andtraining is providedto retailers throughonline and offlineactivities.
By TobaccoChina Online
There are more than five million retailers in China, and in recent years China Tobacco took many measures to provide high-quality services for retailers to consolidate the foundation of cigarette marketing. The Growing Together with Customers domestic marketing campaign was officially kicked off by China Tobacco in early July 2020.
Highlights of the campaign
The campaign covers five aspects: concept publicity and implementation, popularization of legal knowledge, explanation of marketing policies, learning retail technology, and promotion of platform application, and it strives to make every customer manager become a retailer trainer.
It also clarifies the retail industry’s development trends and explains the industry’s business policies, promotes brand marketing skills, and shares terminal operation skills, etc., aiming to boost customers’ confidence and promote the common development of retailers and the tobacco industry.
Finally, the campaign ensures the establishment of high-quality terminals and a certain level of terminal systems application, supports the effective operation and integrity of the mutual aid group, and verifies the basic information of retailers, aiming to create a competitive environment among retailers and stimulate their enthusiasm and initiatives.
The campaign has now reached the comprehensive promotion stage. Local tobacco commercial companies made personalized attempts in this aspect, especially city- and county-level tobacco companies.
China Tobacco (Henan): online platform for knowledge, skill training
Last September 25, China Tobacco (Henan) Commercial Corporation offered comprehensive training for customer managers and retailers through live-streaming classrooms, online class recording and broadcasting, online Q&A sessions, and video interactivity, so as to continuously improve the professional quality of customer managers and enhance the operating ability of retailers. In order to improve the training they concentrated on the preparation of modular training courses on the basis of in-depth and accurate understanding of the needs of customer managers and retailers, which could be shared through the provincial system. They made good use of high-quality training resources in the industry as well as online platforms like Jinyetong, WeChat, and the so-called “Retail Cloud”, as well as on-site observation, discussion and exchange, and promotion of learning through competitions. Customer managers and retailers were trained at different levels to improve the matching degree of supply and demand.
China Tobacco (Jiangsu): livestream and business skills competitions
The first step was an online marketing competition for customer managers, and 200 contestants were organized to compete in the livestream room. Using various mediums such as keynote speeches, stand-alone crosstalks, allegro, rap, and sitcom, etc., they vividly narrated brand stories and small group stories, attracting more than 40,000 retailers to watch and interact online and receiving over 200,000 entries of comments and thumbs-up.
Next, an online group competition was organized in terms of group construction, operation and management, retail operations, etc. and the Top 100 group members were selected to tell their own stories. The platform users were invited to participate in online voting.
Thirdly, the talent selection activities were organized to encourage customers to innovate in practice.
China Tobacco (Zhejiang): online and offline theme activities
China Tobacco (Zhejiang) Commercial Corporation organized four marketing training seminars this year. Over 2,500 members of marketing personnel from the tobacco business system of the province participated in the study.
They combined various forms of online and offline activities to carry out counseling and training for customers. The training involved industry culture and social credit system construction, introduced the development trends of the retail industry, focusing on the new formats, new models, new trends, and new technologies such as big data and AI. It focused on the role of information technology in the modern retail industry, updated customer business philosophy, explained the industry’s business policy, discussed the needed brand marketing and sales business skills, and increased the level of customer modernization and intelligent management.
They also arranged for marketing personnel to go to the market front line stores. Starting from the hardware configuration, operation processes, function expansion, and supporting measures, they checked the promotion and application of Xiangyitong app, noted the sticking points and difficult issues, and continuously optimized user experience through benchmarking their first-class retail terminal management system in and out of the industry.
China Tobacco (Changsha, Hunan province): growth channel for professional customers
Bauhinia College serves as a training platform jointly built by China Tobacco (Changsha, Hunan) Commercial Corporation and Hunan Universities. Since this year, China Tobacco (Changsha) has launched professional ordinary class, elite class, internal trainer class and franchise store manager class for customers and retailers according to their age, education background, work experience and terminal type, thus building a growth channel for professional customers. During the training period, the instructors together with senior customer managers and professional customer internal trainers gave instruction, and further improved the operation ability of retailers. Until now, 720 people have graduated from the platform.
China Tobacco (Hechi, Guangxi): self-discipline groups
In order to help retailers improve their profitability, China Tobacco (Hechi, Guangxi province) Commercial Corporation has set up self-development and mutual assistance groups to constantly improve the store image for customers. Until now, 125 groups have been established. Retailers with an average monthly sales volume of more than 50 cartons of cigarettes have completed the upgrading and transformation of their showcase cigarette cabinets, and 36.5% of retailers with an average monthly sales volume of fewer than 50 cartons have voluntarily also replaced their cigarette cabinets. To boot, 5 tourism terminals and 12 beautiful village stores have been created.
The agency has built a retailer-oriented exhibition hall and benchmarking terminal store to properly improve its image. Customers can get familiar with the customer managers through field visits, clarify the key points of a good, customer-oriented store layout, master the display rules of cigarette packs and cartons, and understand the functional use of the consumption experience area.
Moreover, customers can watch short, interesting, and simple video courses, and, of course, share their experience anytime and from anywhere using the Gold Retail App, thus providing easy business tips and improving operations for the retailer.
This Growing Together with Customers activity focuses more on the interaction between tobacco commercial companies and retailers. It is not only a marketing move, but also reflects the common interests of China Tobacco and its retailers. This is especially true during the special period of national pandemic prevention and control measures. The launching of this activity reflects the decision of China Tobacco to overcome the difficulties together with their retailers as a united front.