Film and Television World Life Record

"goodbye!"

Chapter 115 Promotion

The next morning, Li Mu went to the community's fitness corner to practice martial arts, and Fan Shengmei arrived on time as well.

With sparkling eyes and enthusiastic praise, they offered water and towels, their warm and attentive manner making Li Mu feel a little embarrassed, yet he couldn't simply refuse them.

After practicing several sets of punches, they started running. Fan Shengmei actually followed in his footsteps from yesterday and started running behind him.

One lap is over 300 meters, and Fan Shengmei actually managed to do five laps today, which surprised Li Mu. If she put that kind of effort into her work, she wouldn't still be just an ordinary employee.

It can only be said that she was working in the wrong direction, wanting to rely on men for everything and placing all her hopes on them.

That evening, the knocking sounded again, and Fan Shengmei arrived as expected. This time, she had changed her clothes again, a different style, but still sexy and charming.

Li Mu could only sigh that Fan Shengmei's huge wardrobe of clothes had finally found a purpose.

However, he wasn't the type to take advantage and then act innocent. Why did Fan Shengmei dress up so meticulously, changing outfits several times a day? Wasn't it all just for his benefit?

After all, she was a great beauty. Mu Wanqing from Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils once amazed Li Mu. Her pure and beautiful charm made her one of his childhood goddesses.

Now that she's so attentive and dressed so beautifully, giving him a feast for the eyes every day, what else can he say?

She opened the door and let people in. This time, Fan Shengmei actually brought a book. Is she going to take the literary route?

"Mr. Li, I've recently been reading Mr. Yu Qiuyu's 'Cultural Odyssey,' but there are some parts that I don't quite understand. Could you please explain them to me?"

Through their conversations over the past two days, she learned that Li Mu was a top student at Jiaotong University who enjoyed reading. Yesterday, when she came here, she noticed that Li Mu was reading Yu Qiuyu's essays, so today she brought another masterpiece by Yu Qiuyu, "A Cultural Journey," to ask him for advice.

Li Mu was speechless, then thought about his mission.

"Alright! Please, let's go sit on the balcony for a while, have some tea and chat."

"Great!" Fan Shengmei's face lit up with surprise. In the dim light of the night, having tea and chatting with Li Mu was such a rare opportunity, and a major breakthrough for her.

……

For the next few days, Fan Shengmei seemed to be bewitched. She would get up early every day to watch Li Mu practice martial arts, cheer him on, and hand him towels and water. Her attentiveness made Li Mu feel embarrassed.

After watching Li Mu practice martial arts, I went running with him and managed to maintain a daily exercise routine of five laps.

After get off work in the evening, it was also Fan Shengmei's active time. Whenever Li Mu was home, she would always bring some exquisite snacks or delicious treats to visit his home.

That book, "A Cultural Journey," seemed to have become Fan Shengmei's secret manual, which she would often take out to consult Li Mu.

He felt somewhat helpless and speechless. It was just a collection of essays, not written in an obscure style, so why couldn't he understand it and had to ask for help every day?

For a moment, Li Mu was at a loss as to how to respond.

Fan Shengmei was too attentive. Every day, whenever he was in the neighborhood, whether he was going downstairs to exercise or staying at home, she wanted to follow him around like a shadow.

Besides, she's beautiful, and she dresses in different styles every day, which is pleasing to the eye. In front of Li Mu, she's always so obedient and gentle.

Sometimes, looking at Fan Shengmei, who appears both gentle and delicate, Li Mu even wonders if this is really the Fan Shengmei from the show.

That person was quite feisty, completely different from the current style.

In addition, considering the future mission of cracking down on sycophants, Li Mu did not resist contact. He gradually adapted to Fan Shengmei's current style, going from initial curiosity and silence.

These days, the company's various businesses are progressing well.

Thanks to the efforts of over a dozen top experts and hundreds of technical staff, the initial version of Daily Headlines has been developed and is now being rolled out on a small scale with good results. The technical staff is also refining and optimizing the product based on user feedback.

Now that we're at the office, we're starting to discuss how to promote the official version of Toutiao on a large scale.

Operations Director Zhou Jun stated: "Mr. Li, the mainstream recommendation method for mobile software is still advertising."

"For example, Baidu's keyword bidding ranking allows users to buy keywords related to news, headlines, etc. As long as users search for them, the daily headline ad download link will be displayed."

"There are also various other websites, big and small, and all kinds of mobile apps. As long as there is enough traffic and enough target customers, they are all good ways to drive traffic."

"In addition, various app stores, download websites, mobile assistants, mobile managers, etc., have built-in software stores where you can download all kinds of software."

"As long as you pay, you can buy rankings and featured spots on it. If a user wants to download a news app, they can search for it in the app store. As long as they don't have a specific target or name, they can get it to rank among the top search results if they pay money."

"It's the same when you search within categories; as long as you're willing to spend money, you can get to the top of the list."

"These are all the mainstream promotion models at present."

Li Mu nodded and said, "Yes, we must take the promotion of Toutiao seriously. You need to prepare a promotion plan in advance."

"Once the official version is released, we want the software to spread everywhere and become a hit quickly."

Operations Director Zhou Jun sat up straight and said, "Don't worry, Mr. Li, we've already started working on the promotion plan and optimized it multiple times to ensure it won't delay the company's overall strategy."

Li Mu nodded: "That's good. The market competition is too fierce now, and the major domestic internet giants are fighting hard, which has created some opportunities as well as some constraints."

"If you want to rise to prominence, you can keep a low profile in the early stages, take steady steps, further refine your products, and increase your foundation."

"Once the user base reaches a certain scale and attracts the attention of industry giants, it is necessary to expand rapidly, seize the market, and leave the giants with no time to react. By the time they react, it will be too late, and the market will have already been taken over."

Everyone nodded in agreement; they all agreed with what Li Mu said.

Zhou Jun spoke again, saying, "President Li, there is another alternative but highly effective way to promote."

Li Mu asked curiously, "Oh, what method? Tell me about it."

Zhou Jun explained, "In the past two years, it has become popular to promote products and services by pre-installing software on mobile phones."

"By pre-installing the software on the phone, once a user buys the phone, they can use it and thus gain another user."

Li Mu nodded: "This method is indeed good; it is both efficient and quantifiable."

"However, how does the cost compare to other promotional methods?"

Zhou Jun replied, "It's not cheap, but compared to other methods, it's not expensive. The price of pre-installing the software is about three to five yuan."

Li Mu laughed and said, "It's really not expensive. With 20 million units pre-installed, even at the highest estimate, it only costs around 100 million."

"However, too much pre-installed software greatly affects the user experience. How did these mobile phone companies agree to this?"

Chapter 116 Night

Zhou Jun explained, "For the sake of user experience, those foreign brands and the major domestic brands would naturally not do that."

"But the domestic mobile phone market is now a mixed bag, with countless small and medium-sized smartphone brands. They don't care about that in order to survive and make a profit."

"If a phone comes pre-installed with more than 20 apps, it can directly increase net profit by hundreds of yuan, with virtually no cost. Faced with such a large market, those big, powerful brands can resist, but how could small and medium-sized smartphone companies not be tempted?"

"Ultimately, the mobile phone company made a profit, the party promoting the software gained users with low prices, and the users got cheap mobile phones."

Li Mu thought about it and realized that this made sense. In 2015, the mobile phone market was also a mixed bag, with established brands like ZTE, Huawei, Coolpad, and Lenovo, as well as rising stars like Xiaomi, Meizu, Vivo, and OPPO.

Not only that, security companies started making mobile phones; video website companies started making mobile phones; and even English teachers from training centers started making mobile phones.

Countless unknown small brands rushed into the mobile phone market, only to end up in a mess, shocking everyone.

After discussing it for a while, Li Mu made the final decision.

"In this way, the company will initially allocate 50 million to test the effect of pre-installed software. If the effect is good, we will increase investment in this area."

"Perfectly, it complements online advertising."

"Is there anything else you'd like to add, Director Zhou?" Li Mu asked, looking at Operations Director Zhou Jun.

Zhou Jun thought for a moment and said, "I agree with President Li's decision, but there is one more thing to note. Currently, the mobile phone market is dominated by major brands, accounting for at least 60% to 70%, while small and medium-sized brands account for less than 30% to 40% of it."

"We can only pre-install it in this small part of the market, and even this small part of the market is being slowly eroded."

"The number of phones that can have pre-installed software each month is not as many as we imagine. If we want to use this method to promote on a large scale in the future, it will also be affected by the market size and sales volume of these small and medium-sized smartphone brands."

"The more they sell, the more phones will pre-install the app."

This is indeed a problem. If this method is used for large-scale promotion in the future, the shipment volume of mobile phones from these small and medium-sized brands must keep up. If the shipment volume is low, there is nowhere to invest money.

However, it's too early to talk about this now. The current market size is enough for Origin Technology to invest hundreds of millions of yuan, so there's no need to worry.

This is just one method of promotion; online advertising is the mainstream nowadays.

……

After discussing promotional issues, the meeting came to an end. Li Mu then turned to Vice President Liu Tianming and asked, "Have the trademarks for Toutiao and Douyin been registered yet?"

Liu Tianming nodded and smiled, "President Li, we just received news this morning that all registrations have been completed."

Li Mu nodded, looked around, and smiled, "That's all for today, meeting adjourned!"

The meeting ended just like that.

……

That evening, after getting home from get off work, Li Mu took some time to check the market again and found that there had been another large drop. This time, he didn't make much money, just over 100 million in profit.

However, this still put him in a good mood. His career was progressing smoothly, and the stock market was booming, all of which were rare and wonderful things.

He selected a bottle of Romanée-Conti from the wine cabinet, let it breathe for a while, and then went to a small bar that was specially decorated in the room to quietly savor it.

He didn't buy this bottle of Romanée-Conti; it was a gift from Vice President Liu of the investment department on behalf of the company when he visited Huaxin Securities last time. Although it was only produced in 2008, a bottle is still worth tens of thousands of yuan.

Li Mu accepted the gift without hesitation. He had borrowed over a billion yuan worth of stocks from Huaxin Securities and needed to pay more than ten million yuan in interest every month, so a bottle of red wine was nothing to him.

This is also one of the ways Huaxin maintains its major clients.

He was leisurely drinking and entertaining himself when the doorbell rang again. Li Mu frowned, guessing who it was, and reluctantly went to open the door.