Exclusive Marketing Strategy of Meituan – With STP Analysis & Campaigns

About Meituan – 

Source – Meituan

Meituan, Formerly called Meituan-Dianping was founded by Wang Xing in 2010 with its company headquarters in Beijing. This company mostly specialises in operating different apps and websites for different services. The Meituan o2o Business model is a Chinese platform for locally sourced consumer products and other services such as entertainment, dining, travel, delivery and other services.

On September 20, 2018, Meituan was also listed on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. About thirty-five million of them use Meituan’s services every day which makes Meituan one of the world’s largest online and on-demand delivery platforms.

Before starting Meituan, Wang Xing founded Xiaonei and Fanfou, which were based on Facebook and Twitter. Meituan is pretty similar to famous companies such as Yelp, and Trip Advisor, and offers group buying which is similar to Groupon. In April 2021, Meituan somehow managed to raise $9.98 billion through the sale of $billion in convertible bonds and $7 in equities.

Quick Stats on Meituan –

Marketing Strategy of Meituan –

Let’s quickly dive into the Interesting marketing strategy of Meituan and how Meituan attracts its potential clients to use its services.

Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

The target audience was mainly millennials and also people who had high disposable income with them, but now they’ve expanded their market to almost everyone. While segmenting their market they followed various strategies like Dimensions, coordinate systems, etc. 

Initially, they targeted the college campus market since there is high customer density and the distribution for restaurants is simple.

The last marketing strategy of Meituan in this section is positioning, and Meituan is indeed well-positioned in the market to satisfy the needs of its customers while it empowers merchants through o2o integration. It has made its name in the e-commerce market.

Marketing Campaigns

• Bonus Fandom Group

Bonus Fandom Group is one of the marketing campaigns Meituan has been effective in connecting with the target audience. It is a channel provided by Meituan so that the merchants can effectively reach their end customers. Consumers can join the group chat by clicking on the banner that says “ Shop Bonus Fandom Group”. The banner includes advertisements like limited-time offers, and coupons on entering the group chats to attract users, which positioned the Bonus function of the fandom group.

This feature makes it possible for businesses to intuitively reach consumers and combine fun service and fun gameplay to connect with users, thus improving consumer satisfaction. Private traffic helps Meituan and merchants to get in touch with the consumers, which will most likely increase the conversion rates.

• Group buying on Meituan Dianping

This is a really interesting marketing strategy for Meituan. It does not just perform as an agent between customers and dealers, but it also provides promotion services to industry partners. This means that it fulfils both B2C AND B2B customers’ demands. Meituan Dianping got popular due to its group buy offerings which are very similar to Groupon. It offers group buys for a range of categories. 

While Meituan provides services and retail products like Meituan Food delivery, and entertainment services, the retailers can also take advantage of Meituan’s customer database to promote their goods and services.

Meituan Xue is an advanced marketing Strategy of Meituan. In this Marketing campaign of Meituan Dianping, a user can gain access to unlimited online courses on business tips in the food industry by paying for a membership with a monthly, seasonal or annual fee. The courses are taught by industry experts who answer all your queries. It’s like Udemy for food start-ups in China.

The topics of the courses include marketing, management styles, real-life case studies and more. They also offer follow-up consultation services. The users can even purchase data reports with industry-specified statistics.

Social Media Marketing

One of the Marketing Strategies of Meituan Includes Social media marketing. Meituan is active on Social media platforms like Twitter and Linked In. Their Twitter handle has a total of 2,902 followers Whereas their LinkedIn account has a total of 148K followers, which means their more active on Linked In. Their Posts contain Mostly Informational and some Promotional content.

SEO Strategies

Source – UberSuggest 

As per the SEO ranking, it is said that the number of keywords -below 500 is bad, above 1000 is good and 10000+ is amazing. As we can see that Meituan has only 450 organic keywords and it’s considered bad as it’s below 500 keywords. That means the digital marketing of Meituan is not effective enough as it isn’t gaining a considerable number of insights.

Also, the traffic per month is around 10K+ which is said to be average. Hence, Meituan requires to make a lot of improvements in its SEO strategies by putting in more effort to keep the brand thriving in the Google organic SERP results.

Influencer Marketing

Right from the beginning, Meituan has collaborated with other famous companies for their marketing purpose. They have also collaborated with a few celebrities to uplift the marketing strategy of Meituan. Those influencers promote Meituan’s products so that Meituan gains popularity and the sales will also gradually increase through their fan following. 

Although compared to other companies Meituan hasn’t collaborated with many celebrities, it could put more effort into collaborating with more celebrities, YouTubers and bloggers so that its business skyrockets.  

E-Commerce Strategies

E-Commerce is the leading marketing strategy of Meituan, It’s the backbone of this company as it provides its locally found consumer products and retail services through its online website. The company provides a range of services like ordering meals, booking hotel rooms and arranging transport.

Mobile Apps

Meituan is most commonly known for its on-demand food delivery app that has 3.7 ratings and 10L+ downloads, however, its super app welcomes non-F&B service providers and assists in booking services with hotels, local attractions, and other tourism-related businesses. This feature is the best marketing strategy of Meituan.

Content Marketing Strategies

Meituan shares information about its business through various means. News about Meituan investor relations, Meituan Dianping Acquisition is mostly shared on its website through blog and report writing. They also share their thoughts and the latest news on Twitter. Meituan has got a lot of recognition through its blogs and Twitter updates as well.

If you are keen on learning about their CSR report and other interesting news, Check out their website!

The Elaborative Marketing Strategy of Meituan has now come to end. Let us conclude our learning below.

What’s Unique in the Marketing strategy of Meituan?

The major problem with the Marketing Strategy of Meituan, as per our observation, is its lack of effective marketing techniques. They’ve put more effort into making their official site more advanced but they have ignored most social media sites where people are more active. They should emphasize more on generating organic keywords, and use them to their advantage.

They should try paying more attention to using hashtags, the kind of content they post to increase their reach and the number of users they wish to engage with. Meituan is pretty famous in China but it still needs to make people from around the world more aware of it.

As we all know, Digital Marketing has gained a lot of popularity after the pandemic and now it is a very crucial part of every business., As per Digital Marketing statistics, The annual growth rate of Digital Marketing from 2020-2026 is estimated at 9% and it has already risen by 20% in the past two years.

A company’s reputation is very significant and the right marketing strategy could help retain that Image. Through digital Marketing, effective campaigns can be designed and the company can get the exposure that it deserves.

With the increasing demand for digital marketing, learning about this growing field is very important. If you would like to learn more about digital marketing, check out IIDE’s 4-month Digital Marketing Course and 11-Month Digital Marketing Course.

We hope this blog on the marketing strategy of Meituan has given you a detailed insight into the company’s marketing strategies.

If you want such a detailed analysis of other companies just like the Marketing Strategy of Meituan, check out the IIDE Knowledge portal for more interesting case studies.

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