pjbooks Chapter 131 Three Fires of Graduation Season
Chapter 131 Three Fires of Graduation Season
Chapter 131 The Three Fires of Graduation Season
Three days later, the "Graduation Season Special" page on the local life website went live on time.
The page uses dark blue as its main color, and a striking slogan at the top reads: "Graduation doesn't end the chapter, good things stay in Shenzhen."
The three boxes below are arranged from left to right, pointing to secondhand items, renting a home, and job interviews, respectively.
Below each block are brief instructions and two or three real-time scrolling records of successful transactions.
The most prominent location is the "Graduate Exclusive Authentication Channel": Enter your school, student ID, and name, and upload a photo of your student ID.
Once approved, a blue "Recent Graduate" badge will be displayed next to the account, and the credit score will be 30 points higher than that of ordinary new users. There will be special markings on the listing pages of the second-hand, rental, and recruitment sections.
Zhou Bin and his technical team rushed to finish the page during the New Year's Day holiday. The cross-section association recommendation algorithm was tweaked three times, and the accuracy barely exceeded 70%.
A student browsing secondhand postgraduate entrance exam materials will automatically see on the right side of the page listings of shared apartments near the same university with monthly rent under 800 yuan, as well as recommendations for internship positions related to their major at the same university.
The data from the three sectors are integrated at the underlying level.
Early that same morning, Wang Rui led a team to set up an offline service point.
Shenzhen University has set up four locations: the small square next to the basketball court, the entrance of the second canteen, the south side of the library, and downstairs in the senior student dormitory building.
The two locations of Shenzhen Polytechnic are situated on the main road of the dormitory area and in the atrium of the teaching building.
Each booth has two folding tables, a blue tent printed with the local life website Iogo, an old laptop connected to the internet, and a digital camera.
A half-person-high display board stood in front of the tent, with three lines of bold text: "Find secondhand goods, rent a good place, find a job, Tongcheng Life Network can handle it all in one go."
Underneath the display board was a stack of registration forms and several piles of canvas bags printed with the website address of Tongcheng Life Network, which were given away for free to students who came to register.
Several newly recruited young men from the field promotion department, wearing matching orange T-shirts, walked back and forth between the basketball court and the small square, approaching and chatting with students who were setting up stalls.
A bespectacled young man, on a whim, carried an old desktop computer to the service center.
The sales representative, Xiao Chen, took the host computer, placed it on the table, took several photos from different angles, and then wrote down the configuration and price on a sticky note, attached it to the side of the host computer, and took a close-up photo.
"Hey, your account is verified, right? Come on, choose a category: Digital Products, Desktop. Fill in the specifications and price."
Please provide your phone number or QQ number for contact.
The boy crowded around the computer to watch Xiao Chen operate it. After the posting was successful, the page displayed "Posted, awaiting buyer inquiries".
Xiao Chen took a photo of the boy and the computer with a digital camera, took the photo out of the printer, wrote the number and release date on the back, and handed it to him.
"Is that all?"
"Alright. If someone wants to buy, they'll leave you a message on the website or call directly. You can schedule a time to come to the service point to complete the transaction; this place can serve as a temporary inspection point."
Xiao Chen handed him another flyer, "It has links to rent apartments and find jobs. Take a look."
The boy returned to his stall with the photos and flyers.
Less than twenty minutes later, his phone rang. A junior from the same department had seen his computer on the website and asked if he could come and take a look.
The two met at the service point. The younger student tried out the machine and paid on the spot. The bespectacled boy looked at the 1,500 yuan in his hand; he had saved at least half a day of waiting.
This case quickly spread throughout the basketball court. Seeing that the books could be sold so quickly, the students who had set up stalls nearby flocked to the service point, carrying books, lamps, and electric fans.
A girl dragged in a wheeled suitcase filled with clothes and other odds and ends.
A small queue quickly formed at the service point. Two promoters were on hand, one to take photos and register the information, and the other to upload the data. Wang Rui had someone go to the convenience store and bring back several cases of bottled water to distribute to the students in line for free.
On the same morning, the pre-launch post planned by Li Ying was simultaneously released on the campus BBS of Shenzhen University and Shenzhen Polytechnic.
The post is titled "Still spending all day browsing for secondhand goods on the basketball court? Try this, and you can get the three things done before leaving school done in half an hour."
The post included three comparison photos: the left one was a photo taken by Li Ying the day before at a basketball court, showing dozens of stalls in a chaotic manner, with buyers squatting on the ground flipping through old books; the right one was a screenshot of the Tongcheng.com graduation season special page, where textbooks, digital products, and daily necessities were neatly arranged by category.
The caption reads: "My legs are numb from squatting and my hands are aching from flipping through pages, and I still might not find what I want. We offer precise searches by department and category, with online communication and offline verification."
The post also included three short illustrated tutorials: how to quickly post items you're using, how to filter roommate listings near schools, and how to use the "Interview Feedback" section to prepare for interviews with your dream companies.
The post included a link to the graduation season homepage.
Two hours after the post was published, it received over a hundred replies. Several campus ambassadors arranged by Li Ying guided the discussion and answered questions in the post.
By 10 a.m., half of the goods at the stalls that were originally scattered in various corners of the basketball court had been photographed and listed online by the local network's on-the-ground promoters.
On the technical department's monitoring screen, the curve showing the number of posts published in the second-hand section rose sharply upwards. Zhou Bin stared at the backend, instructing operations and maintenance to be ready to expand the server capacity at any time.
The number of products on the special page began to accumulate rapidly.
A girl selling postgraduate entrance exam study materials listed Xiao Xiurong's complete set for 25 yuan. Twenty minutes later, a junior student called to ask if the notes were complete, and the two agreed to meet at the service point on the south side of the library to make the transaction in person.
The female student flipped through a few pages to confirm that the handwriting was neat, and then paid on the spot.
The girl selling books clutched the twenty-five yuan, then took out her used CET-4 and CET-6 practice test sets from her stall and carried them to the service point, asking Xiao Chen to take a picture and upload them.
A boy selling table lamps witnessed the whole thing and squeezed to the front of the tent with his own lamp.
Then came the vendors selling electric fans, tennis rackets, and bicycles —
By noon, the six offline service points had uploaded more than 400 product listings.
The field promoters took turns going to the canteen to quickly eat a few bites of food before returning to work, and the photo paper in the printer was replaced twice.
Online data and offline foot traffic are both rising simultaneously.
Campus ambassadors from Shenzhen University and Shenzhen Polytechnic, wearing orange T-shirts from the local online community, went door-to-door in the dormitories, knocking on each room and handing out flyers, saying, "Seniors, if you have any old things to get rid of, you can take them downstairs to the service point to take photos and upload them online for free. You don't have to spend all day at the basketball court."
Four girls from a dormitory gathered a bunch of postgraduate entrance exam materials, a ukulele, and a nearly new rice cooker, and carried them downstairs to the service point while wearing slippers.
The effects began to become more pronounced three days later.
The average daily number of new posts in the second-hand market jumped from 120 to over 300, nearly doubling.
The supplementary teaching materials section became the most popular section. More than half of the more than 3,000 textbooks, postgraduate entrance examination materials and CET-4 and CET-6 past exam papers that graduates posted on local websites were bought by lower-grade students within two weeks.
A complete set of Xiao Xiurong's books sells for 25 yuan, an English-Chinese dictionary for 10 yuan, and a copy of "Advanced Mathematics" filled with notes for 8 yuan.
These things are worthless to the refurbished machine vendors in Huaqiangbei, but students at Shenzhen University know what a complete set of Xiao Xiurong's past exam questions with notes means.
The rental section has seen increased traffic driven from the secondhand channel.
Many users who are verified as graduates start searching for rental information around the school after browsing or posting second-hand items.
The rental channel editors launched a special "Graduate Student Shared Apartment" section in advance, selecting apartments with reasonable prices and allowing short-term rentals.
Properties near universities are marked with special labels.
Inquiries about housing near universities have increased by 40%, and several real estate agencies have sensed the business opportunity and have proactively contacted the local online platform to request cooperation in launching "discounted rental packages for graduates".
Xiao Liu, a rental specialist at Tongcheng.com, showed the same apartment to three groups of graduates in one day, and it was ultimately signed by the couple who decided first.
When Xiao Liu came back, he told Zhang Ming that students make quick decisions about renting apartments and have clear requirements. As long as the apartment is decent, the price is right, and the location is suitable, they can decide on it.
The synergistic effect of the recruitment section is also evident.
Wang Rui and Chen Jing contacted local companies that had shown enthusiasm for recruiting recent graduates in the "Innovative Enterprises Micro Roadshow" in advance, and set up "Graduate-Friendly Enterprises" labels for them, giving priority to sending job postings to certified graduates.
Meanwhile, the reviews of these companies in the "Interview Feedback" section were manually pinned to the top, including many genuine sharing posts from previous graduates.
A small mobile game company was looking for two art interns. After posting the job for a week without receiving many decent resumes, it received more than 20 resumes in one day after being labeled "graduate-friendly" and included in a graduation season feature.
The HR called Chen Jinglian and said the results were excellent.
Zhou Bin circled one of the data entries in red in the backend.
Among the certified graduate users participating in the graduation season special, more than 30% visited at least two sections within seven days, and 15% of users completed the entire process from "selling second-hand goods" to "finding rental housing" or "submitting resumes".
This group of users had nearly twice the average dwell time and page visit depth compared to users of a single section, and their retention rate of remaining active within three months after graduation was also significantly higher than that of ordinary users.
Taking advantage of the momentum, Li Ying launched a writing contest titled "My Graduation Season in Three Steps" on the Tongcheng.com community, inviting users to share how they used Tongcheng.com to handle matters related to leaving school.
Outstanding sharers will receive 2,000 yuan in mobile phone credit or website membership privileges.
The event attracted numerous submissions, including stories about how they sold four years' worth of books to buy a new phone, how they and their roommates found suitable rental apartments through the website, and how they passed three rounds of interviews and received job offers thanks to the "Interview Feedback" section.
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Li Ying compiled these true stories into a series of posts, which were displayed at the bottom of the special page, further amplifying the event's reach.
A week later, Zhang Ming extracted the data from the teaching materials section and made a review document titled "Online Graduation Season Flea Market: A Precise Matching Path for Second-hand Goods Transactions".
Zhao Ling walked into Lin Feng's office with a complete data report on the graduation season.
Students from Shenzhen University and Shenzhen Polytechnic posted more than two thousand listings for secondhand items through their graduation season promotional materials.
Inquiries about rental properties near universities on the rental channel increased by 40%, while job postings from recent graduates on the recruitment channel increased by 30%.
The number of resumes submitted to graduate-friendly companies increased by an average of over 60%. Cross-platform user visits exceeded 30%.
The retention rate of active users across the three interconnected platforms is significantly higher than that of users from a single platform.
At the end of the briefing, Zhao Ling wrote a three-line summary: Two weeks after the graduation season special was launched, the transaction volume of the second-hand channel doubled, the rental and recruitment sections saw coordinated growth, and the market share in the areas surrounding universities jumped from less than 20% to more than 60%.
After reading the briefing, Lin Feng asked Zhao Ling to package the debriefing documents and standard operating manual together and send them to Wang Peng and Xu Qiang in Rongcheng.
In the email, he emphasized that if Tongcheng Life Network were to enter any new city, it would start by establishing a presence at the local universities. This three-step strategy during graduation season would allow whoever conquers the universities first to control the city's young user base.
Wang Rui obtained a set of comparative data from the Shenzhen University Student Union.
In previous years, the flea market lasted for nearly two weeks from setup to closing. The Student Union's Life Department had to arrange for more than 20 cadres to take turns on duty to maintain order, and there were an average of more than a dozen disputes and complaints every year.
This year, with the online platform Tongcheng.com diverting students, the number of students setting up stalls offline has decreased by nearly half, the venues are not as crowded, and there have only been two disputes and complaints.
The head of the Student Life Department of Shenzhen University Student Union took the initiative to ask Wang Rui if they could continue their cooperation next year, and even planned to recommend them to several other schools in the University Town area.
Zhang Ming asked Sun Hao to make a trip to the industrial park and collect the data on the secondhand market for workers returning to their hometowns at the end of the year.
In two weeks, the inspection points in the employee dormitory areas of several large factories in Longhua and Bao'an districts processed more than 800 second-hand item listings, with rice cookers, electric fans, and bicycles accounting for 70% of the items, and the transaction rate approaching 40%.
A factory worker from Hunan sold his rice cooker and fan to a fellow villager who had just arrived in Shenzhen after the Lunar New Year the day before he was to return home. The two met at the inspection point to exchange the goods. One sold them for 80 yuan and the other saved 70 yuan. They each gave the other a five-star review on a local online marketplace.
Sun Hao said that the factory's administration department has already asked if the inspection point for Tongcheng.com can be set up in the dormitory area permanently.
Lin Feng combined the two sets of data and summarized them at the weekly meeting.
With an online graduation season campaign and six offline service points, a customer acquisition path integrating the second-hand market, rental market, and recruitment sectors was successfully established within two weeks.
The market access to universities has been opened, and the network of inspection points in industrial zones has also been extended to factory dormitories.
The next step was to solidify these proven models and create an operation manual that could be replicated in other cities. He assigned the task of writing the operation manual to Wang Rui and Zhang Ming.
After the meeting, Lin Feng returned to his office and checked the graduation season special page in the backend.
Another transaction has been added to the real-time rolling transaction records: a male student from the Computer Science Department of Shenzhen University sold his old graphics card, with the note "Bought a new one, leaving the old one for someone who is destined to find it, thanks to Tongcheng Life Network".
He closed the background app and started flipping through the financial report Zhao Ling had sent him. The total cost of the graduation season activities was less than 20,000 yuan, yet it generated thousands of new listings, over two thousand verified graduate users, and synergistic growth across the three sections.
Zhang Ming read that sentence he wrote in the debriefing document twice and felt that it could be included in the company's internal promotion methodology.
To achieve great things with minimal investment, one must identify the difficulties faced by a group of people and solve them simultaneously with a single solution.