Recently, Qi Xiangdong, the president of Qihoo 360, put forward the idea of "three major battles" by taking advantage of the first anniversary of the 3B War, saying that 360 will start from three aspects: user experience, channel sales and entrance system, and will grow at an annual rate of 10% in the future to fight three major battles in the search field.
The ideal is full, and the reality is very skinny. Liuguang uses the strategy and tactics of the three major battles a few decades ago to see if Qi is always exaggerating and how to fight the three major battles of 360.
Question 1: the experience is hard to mention, and the profit is a headache.
Tactics: mobile warfare, split attack, divide and conquer.
In fact, the hardest thing to do as a search engine is to experience it. It seems that you just enter a few lines of numbers into that small box and then pop up a few pages of answers, but look at the row of fine print on Baidu, news, web pages, post bars, knowledge, music, videos, maps …
For 360, it is obviously not an easy task to catch up with it in a short period of time in terms of content experience, and although the search technology surpassed Soso as soon as it came up, it was a little worse than Baidu and even sogou. At present, the better user experience of 360 is mainly due to the clean pages and few advertisements, especially the medical and health care advertisements, and the commercialization process has not been fully developed.
A big strategic problem faced by 360 is that the experience depends on less advertising, but it depends on advertising if you want to make a profit. Now, the share is small, the awareness is low, and large advertisements can’t be pulled, but small advertisements are often of poor quality. This may be the reason why 360 is eager to acquire sogou, with larger market share, better bargaining position and attractiveness.
Of course, it is not impossible for 360 to introduce competitors who can compete with Baidu in certain fields through opening up. For example, Zhihu in the question-and-answer field, Cool Dog and Cool Me in music, even watercress, petals in the picture field and so on. Through high-quality content in a certain field, users’ brand awareness of 360 search is gradually formed. Instead of opening the browser like this, you use you in the most conspicuous place. As for what you use, it is a comprehensive search anyway.
However, 360 wants to cooperate and open up, but it may not be able to find a willing partner. If one day Zhihu and 360 really come together, friends will be shocked. However, isn’t the Internet world a place to witness miracles?
Question 2: The three-stage rocket is no longer in fire, and the chess is slow and slow.
Tactics: the soldiers are expensive and fast, and the enemy is killed as soon as they are killed.
360 search was able to grab a 10% share when it was first launched, which shocked the whole market. However, this move does not seem to be used by 360, so when Qi Xiangdong talked about the mobile strategy, he still said that he would improve the entrance system of "security guards+mobile assistants+lightning search".
Perhaps both sogou and 360 have benefited from the original three-stage rocket model, but in the field of mobile Internet, it seems that the three-stage rocket really can’t fly much higher. 360 can use security guards to promote mobile assistants, and can use mobile assistants to promote secure desktops and address books, but it cannot directly import traffic for lightning search.
On the one hand, there is a certain similarity in itself, and on the other hand, there is a lack of direct connection between them. When 360 realized this and began to promote 360 mobile browsers, it was a little late.
The mobile strategy must be "fast, accurate, and ruthless". If you aim at the target, you will start, take it by surprise and attack it unprepared. The sweep of WeChat 5.0 surprised everyone who wanted to make a big impact on O2O with a cold sweat. Baidu’s unexpected acquisition of 91 used such strategies and tactics.
360′ s products on the mobile side are not small, but most of them belong to the tool category, lacking killer applications like WeChat. To a large extent, 360 is strategically adhering to the PC-side thinking-paving the road first, then building a car. The problem is that, limited by the characteristics of the mobile terminal itself, the boost that each level of rocket can provide to the next level is limited, and it is too difficult to promote a product that has undergone so-called micro-innovation through the power of channels. On the surface of the mobile terminal, it is a channel. In fact, what is more important is product innovation.
Abandoning channel thinking and developing real killer applications, killing the enemy may be something 360 should consider. But time waits for no one. As the giants have either completed the layout or come up with their own ticket-level products, there are not many opportunities left for 360. Can you grasp it or not? It may be known within one year.
Question 3: channel disadvantages are urgently compensated, and everyone will suffer together.
Tactics: the people’s war depends on the people, and let go of the channel dealers.
In fact, among the three major battles, perhaps channel sales is what 360 needs to do best at present. According to the data of Analysys International, the market share of 360 is only in single digits simply in terms of sales volume. Faced with such a billion-dollar market, even sogou’s revenue in a single quarter can reach 50 million, but 360, which holds 15% of the market, has not benefited much from the search business, which is estimated to be unacceptable to anyone.
Just from Qi Xiangdong’s speech, it seems that the direction of 360 development channel sales is not so right.
Different from sogou and Baidu’s multi-level agency model, Qi Xiangdong said that 360 only has a general agent, which is responsible for all sales in the region. Obviously, the coverage of this model is limited, although we can concentrate on winning high-quality advertisers to make up for the shortage of quantity. However, in the case of insufficient market share and low brand awareness of users, it is obviously not advisable to take the high-end route.
In order to shake the foundation of Baidu, 360 should start with small advertisers. The promotion expenses they can pay are not high, and the price is lower than Baidu’s 360, which can better meet their needs in this respect. Surrounding cities in rural areas and focusing on developing second-and third-tier cities have always been what 360, which boasts itself as a diaosi, is good at. It is obviously unwise to attack others with its own shortcomings.
Letting go of the channel dealers and putting more efforts into the screening of advertising quality may help 360 break the battlefield situation in a short time in a direction that is beneficial to itself.
General Qi’s statement on profit expectation is estimated to scare off a group of channel agents. "Not making money for three years in 360 is the’ snowy mountain grassland’ of the 360 agency system. The troops that can survive these three years can fight first and then be loyal to the 360 ecosystem."
You really need to be able to bear hardships in war. Red rice, pumpkin soup and a pair of sandals are a long journey. It may be difficult for channel agents to make money for three years and rely solely on painting cakes. No one will deny the development of 360, but to what extent, agents have no bottom in their hearts, and naturally they will not really be willing to play with 360 for these three years. Three years without profit is really how much you don’t take agents as outsiders.
All in all, sometimes, the Internet-style thinking may not necessarily be applicable to offline channel sales. Since Qi Xiangdong simplified the future planning into "three major battles", he might as well really study how the "three major battles" 60 or 70 years ago were won by fewer, and perhaps he can get a lot of inspiration from it.
But more often, the predicament is not caused by "unfavorable soldiers and poor war", but by one’s own inherent thinking. Perhaps this kind of thinking is what the enterprise once relied on successfully, but today it will become the fetters of its development. Only when a strong man breaks his wrist and jumps out of prison can he stand on the top of the wave as long as possible.