With annual sales exceeding 1.5 billion yuan, what exactly did this domestic printer manufacturer do right?

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1. Stay away from price wars and open up new avenues!

As we all know, in previous years, business competition in various industries in China followed the same pattern—price wars, attempting to "crush" competitors and seize the market by offering prices lower than their peers.

Faced with this situation, Guo Jinpeng, the founder of Phomemo, who started in Zhuhai, a hub of the printer consumables industry, and built his business from scratch in the niche category of label ribbons to achieving a 30% global sales share, understood this better than anyone else—

Their own products don't have any technological barriers ; "What you can do, others can do too."

In 2019, he decided to leverage the advantages of existing products, technology, and channels to develop portable printing devices , which turned out to be the second growth engine for Phomemo's revenue.

According to QYR data, the global portable printing device market reached RMB 5.394 billion in sales in 2023 and is expected to grow to RMB 8.926 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.3%.

In that same year, Phomemo's annual sales reached 6 million units, and the company's annual sales revenue exceeded 1.5 billion yuan, making it a well-deserved industry leader.

What exactly did Phomemo do right?

II. Identify the conflicts and satisfy them.

Phomemo develops inkless printers, focusing on hardware R&D that "miniaturizes large products and makes small products portable," while adopting the "Internet + consumer electronics" concept on the software side.

His company has enabled printers and mobile phones to connect and communicate with each other. By combining self-developed software algorithms and improving hardware performance through innovative product design, they have created innovative products with distinctive differences, aiming to provide users with a simple, efficient and fun printing experience.

As of December 2023, Phomemo performed exceptionally well on the overseas education app charts, ranking first in the UK, second in the US and Australia, and third in Canada, Ireland, and Austria.

This achievement is inseparable from Phomemo's meticulous research on its users.

This is simply to understand the needs of users for products and services. As Professor Ye Maozhong mentioned in "Conflict Marketing," "Conflict means that there is a need, and resolving conflict means satisfying the need."

Through in-depth research, Phomemo discovered that the diverse needs of users in various regions for DIY printing are still not being well met, which is the source of the "conflict".

For example, North American users like to print religious cards and holiday greetings, while students focus on various uses such as planners and study materials.

Phomemo addresses these personalized needs by developing printing devices that support various printing materials on the hardware side and by developing customized template functions on the software side.

Furthermore, Phomemo has implemented a diversified strategy in terms of channel layout. On the one hand, Phomemo expands into overseas markets by joining mainstream e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and Walmart, leveraging the platform's traffic.

On the other hand, Phomemo has also built its own DTC website to provide products and services directly to end consumers, further strengthening the connection between users and the brand.

To this day, Phomemo's business website still accounts for 9% of global industry traffic in October, which is quite impressive.

Brand international expansion and the DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) model are inseparable from business websites. Building your own brand website is of paramount importance.

Third, one hand on conversion rate, one hand on precise traffic.

(a) Efficient initiatives with aesthetic appeal

Phomemo targets end-users, while its business website focuses on e-commerce, with the core of its website being how to encourage visitors to make purchases.

As we can see, "Phomemo" is different from other websites I've analyzed before.

On their homepage banner (the red box in the image), they prominently displayed the slogan of their promotion in a large, centered format , highlighting key information with different colors.

Meanwhile, the countdown timer in the banner at the top of the page is larger and thicker than similar banners in all aspects, and it also features a dynamic page-turning effect with numbers switching.

In my opinion, the "Phomemo" business website is a model of a business website that combines aesthetics and promotion. Such a business website is unlikely to have a low conversion rate.

According to SEMrush data, their purchase conversion rate in October was 2.81%.

(ii) Precise traffic: A unique SEO blog collection method

I've previously shared tips on blog editing, and blogs like product guides and usage tips are very popular with users. Phomemo edits its blog in this way, and these types of SEO blogs essentially provide value to users.

Phomemo's blog is divided into several series, including "DIY IDEAS DIY", "KNOWLEDGE", "GUIDES", "BUSINESS TIPS", and "PHOMEMO NEWS PHOMEMO".

It's clear that Phomemo's blog matrix completely prioritizes the user, demonstrating the depth of their user research efforts.

Furthermore, I would like to focus on sharing the UGC model of the "Phomemo" business website blog.

Phomemo is directly soliciting submissions on its official website, so let's get straight to the point:

“Please provide your website or store address to help readers get to know you better. Social media accounts are also acceptable, such as Facebook, Instagram, etc. But all information must be true.”

Translation: Please provide your website or store address to help readers better understand you. Social media accounts are also acceptable, such as Facebook, Instagram, etc. However, all information must be truthful.

Those familiar with Google SEO know the importance of providing "social media accounts," "websites," and "store addresses" for improving the authority of a blog and even the entire website.

We do not know exactly how many real users participated in the call for submissions on their business website.

However, his organic traffic sources will tell us the final, true results—

SEMrush data shows that the top ten keywords from "Phomemo" organic traffic sources are mostly brand-related terms, which is not surprising, as it is due to their effective social media presence.

However, the tenth most searched keyword was "sticker printer," which had 22.2k searches. His business website ranked fourth in the search results for this keyword.

For consumers, social media management should definitely take precedence over SEO optimization, but it is absolutely not advisable to easily abandon Google SEO.

In 2023, when its annual sales exceeded 1.5 billion RMB, the company began to focus on SEO at the beginning of the year, resulting in extremely rapid growth.

Epilogue: Little Creator Has Something to Say

Phomemo has successfully expanded its brand globally through diversified channel layout and innovative product development.

By building its own DTC website, Phomemo not only strengthened its direct connection with end users, but also achieved higher conversion rates and more accurate traffic acquisition.

A business website's efficient promotional design and content closely aligned with user needs not only enhance the user experience but also deliver above-average user conversion rates.

In particular, through a well-planned SEO blog and UGC model, "Phomemo" effectively improved its website authority, ensuring that its brand keywords and related transaction keywords ranked highly in Google search results, further boosting brand exposure and sales growth.

In the context of international expansion in foreign trade, a business website is like a sailboat, a consistent SEO strategy to attract targeted traffic is the sail, and website design that drives user conversion is the fishing gear. Only with all three in place can one go further.