Editor's Introduction: The marketing industry is full of strange things, and the reason is that there are some elusive "counter-common sense" marketing logic. The author of this article introduces three "counter-common sense" in marketing: fire, perfection, and quantity, and analyzes it in combination with cases.
Why do our schools always fail to produce outstanding talents? ——This is the famous "Qian Xuesen's Question". Moving to the marketing industry, such questions are only a lot more.
- Why do some brands sell well, while others do not sell?
- Why are people most familiar with one brand's advertising, but always buying another brand?
- Why open up all traffic channels, or get the hearts of consumers?
- Why do you say you love me, but pick up another one when you pay the bill?
- Why do consumers still refuse to place orders when everything is done?
- Why is my idea so great, but everyone laughs and laughs?
- ……
The endless questions and current situations can almost be condensed into a book "The Strange Situation Witnessed in Brand Marketing in Twenty Years". It's just that behind these strange status quos, there are actually some "counter-common sense" marketing logic.
First, counter-common sense: seeking fire, the ceiling is not as good as real
The song of Yang Chun, and the peacemaker will be widowed;
Under the fame, it is actually difficult to match.
This old saying, which is not necessarily completely accurate when put into branding, can also be partially applied.
For example, fame does not necessarily represent sales, such as the old brand "Great White Rabbit", which grew up with one or two generations, and once fell into the dilemma of poor sales and on the verge of bankruptcy. For example, those liquor brands that are the most fiercely drunk on social media, almost no one likes to drink when they ask about word of mouth, and the sales are miserable.
Here we have to mention a concept - "brand potential". Much like the definition of potential energy in physics, brand potential refers to the value difference between consumer perception and brand inception.
Any product has use value, which is the initial value of the brand, and in the transaction process, consumers form their own cognitive value from products, services, etc., and the gap between the two is the brand potential.
The reason for customers to pay for products must be that there is a value proposition in the brand potential that meets the needs of consumers, rather than simply spending the whole time and winning a smile.
If you mention the volume of brand voice, many people's first reaction must be "Durex". Dominating all kinds of hot search lists, large-scale but can't help but make people laugh, posters and copywriting... Brand marketing routines on social media are basically played by Durex.
Durex's marketing strategy is to combine the target group with consumer behavior to form key labels, such as gender, marriage, child or not, age, etc., to build and form more than ten categories of people, and according to the different characteristics of their own different products, fixed-point dissemination, with exquisite copywriting and posters, it has become a passage that consumers are happy to talk about and spread in their hands.
Breaking the stigma of "sex" with creativity and positioning it in a more universal "love" is the key to Durex's massacre.
However, after laughing, when it was really time for consumers to place an order, they turned to Okamoto. Because Okamoto directly tells consumers about its differentiated value on the packaging box: 001, 002, 003. Okamoto emphasizes the core of product value at every step, always really direct, and even "simple and crude" to convey to consumers the product attributes built by relying on technical and technological barriers.
This is in line with their market positioning - mid-to-high-end. In particular, the most popular Okamoto 001 is only 0.01mm, which is hardcore in technology and has a strong sense of user experience.
This makes the entire family planning market appear very paradoxical, the copywriting of Durex next door is crazy, but the mid-to-high-end customer group is in the hands of Okamoto. Why is that? In common sense, the brand always goes with the flow to equate fame with sales, but ignores the core of product strength, user needs, etc., just like Durex is often used by bosses as a benchmark: "My product needs to have such a copywriter."
But back to the consumer's heart, when paying, do you need a paragraph to talk about, or a real product?
For the brand side, "seeking fire" is a delusion, do not have to pursue "Durex brush screen copywriting", do a good job in product quality, combined with brand potential, is the key to development.
Again, it's that saying: Fame doesn't necessarily drive sales, but sales do make it famous.
Second, counter-common sense: for perfection, the multivariate matrix is not as good as a hole
It is said that marketing has no boundaries.
How big the heart is, how big the boundaries of marketing are. However, there is a budget, energy, opportunities, and the marketing boundaries of a brand will always be limited by resources.
To achieve the broadest reach, it is bound to require completeness; to make the most in-depth dialogue, it is bound to require refinement. This raises a paradox: can reach widely and precisely?
It is unrealistic to want to be one. The two can be synergistic, but the premise of synergy is to distinguish between priority and priority.
What an enterprise is most afraid of is to think of everything, and there is no company in this world that can eat all businesses and customers. Generally speaking, the rule of two eights is still valid in business operations, and 80% of the profits of enterprises in a single region are created by 20% of high-quality customers.
This part of the customer is the foundation of the enterprise, and the products and channels that customers pay attention to are naturally the same. Don't waste time and resources on failed products and weak products, which is the advice of many companies that have been misled by the common sense of "seeking perfection" and led to the disappearance.
For the brand side, it is possible to break through by concentrating most of its resources on the direction that can consolidate and strengthen the direction that can obtain long-term advantages, and focusing on one channel.
The cutting-edge brand Myoklando. As a domestic upstart in the cheese industry, Miaoke Lando's domestic market share has exceeded 30%, and it has reached the top of the first cheese brand. But what few people know is that in the earliest days, Miaoke Lando made both milk and cheese, in fact, neither of which was too outstanding.
In 2019, Miaoke Lando determined its own brand positioning and product positioning, focusing on the positioning of domestic cheese and suitable for Chinese people, focusing on cheese products, and cooperating with focus media elevator TV channels with the magic advertising slogan of "cheese will choose Miaoke Lando", sweeping elevator buildings across the country and saturating the consumer's mind.
Since then, the entire Miaoke Lando has ushered in a very rapid growth rate, repeatedly topped the first place in the sales of e-commerce platform categories, and the market share has gradually climbed to more than 30%, breaking the Situation of the Chinese cheese market dominated by foreign brands such as Bagelford in one fell swoop.
This also reflects a counterintuitive: it is better to seek perfection than to specialize.
When the resources of the enterprise are not sufficiently surplus, seeking perfection is often a false proposition, and doing omni-channel and all-category marketing actions actually diverges its own energy.
Multivariate matrices are not as good as force out of a hole. High-coverage, high-reach media such as Focus Elevators are selected by Miaoke Lando to achieve the goal of detonating the brand by means of high-frequency rolling saturation attacks, so that consumers can firmly remember the brand information in a short period of time.
Marketing should be more continuous investment and accumulation. Just like in the ring fight, the random punch is only physically demanding, and after closing the five fingers and punching with force, it directly hits the point.
Greater benefits can be achieved by concentrating limited resources in the most critical target directions. When you occupy the primary position, you may find that it is easy to achieve secondary objectives.
Third, counter-common sense: it is better to seek quantity and please channels than to occupy the mind
Channel is king, which is the best portrayal of the first 10 years of the 21st century.
However, with the rise of offline channels, e-commerce platforms, new retail, live broadcast rooms and other channels, channels are obviously no longer the only choice for brands. Because, there are so many options.
It should be clear that in market competition, the temporary loss of secondary direction or channel is inevitable and even necessary. The accumulation of brand potential energy requires a process, compared with other brands, to obtain a comparative advantage needs to accurately select channels and directions to exert force, in order to obtain differentiated marketing momentum.
It is better to please the channel than to occupy the mind, to cite a new brand very concentrated track: hair removal device.
As a subdivision track category, there are many battlefields for hair removal devices. E-commerce has Taobao Jingdong, grass planting has Small Red Book, content has Vibrato and Kuaishou, and the channel is inseparable from the live broadcast room with goods. Every place is a battlefield, every place needs marketing, and every brand has its own basic disk.
Thanks to social communication and celebrity word-of-mouth marketing, the track of the entire category is extremely hot, but it is always inseparable, and before 2018, no brand really has dominant leadership.
It is in this environment that Ulike has risen. Its brand marketing strategy is summarized as "double micro one shake one focus", online channels with various types of social media as the main content of planting grass, offline channels with focus media centralized media to put brand advertising, continue to accumulate consumer brand awareness and trust, to achieve the effective accumulation of brand potential.
Ulike CEO Pan Yuping
When the players on the same track are still relying solely on marketing models such as traffic advertising and fixing the position of the online promotion platform, Ulike sees a flattering channel, and although the channel-based can bring sales, it cannot help brand building.
When the cost of drainage from traffic pools such as social media becomes more expensive, the growth of branded products will encounter bottlenecks. In addition to the utilitarian benefits brought about by the strong bundling of traffic and sales, there are drawbacks to the accurate push of online channels: it is impossible to make the brand form a wide recognition and brand impression in the mainstream population, unless it is indiscriminately delivered, but the cost is also too high.
Ulike's initial strategy was similar to that of its peers, pursuing more and more completeness online. It has always stayed on the mode of "looking for people". Later, we changed our thinking, with the mode of brand potential accumulation, concentrated on the offline ladder media focus, the Ulike hair removal device brand advantage, through the daily apartment building, office building elevator continues to pass to the mainstream consumer population, "sapphire is advanced" repeated high-frequency broadcast, from many brands to form a high memory point, to create their own brand potential. Ulike's background search data shows that they have crossed over to the "people looking for goods" model.
Temporary local losses are aimed at achieving the ultimate victory and thus eliminating the disadvantages of other losses. Since 2016, the Ulike hair removal device has dominated the Tmall double 11 sales champion for 6 consecutive years, and has occupied nearly 50% of the market share of the Chinese hair removal device industry, achieving brand leadership.
Fourth, the thinking of Party A's finance: anti-common sense is the opposite of routine, and the new common sense remains unchanged in the hearts of the people
The term "common sense" is defined as the everyday consensus that society has on the same thing. But this consensus is not constant, it is vector, and it will always change with social forms, changes in the times, and cultural backgrounds.
Embodied in the contradiction of common sense, it is the key to help us understand the world, but it will be blocked in front of the emerging fingerprint lock, because we can't find the keyhole and doubt life - is this lock installed in reverse, why is there no keyhole?
The marketing environment is complex and changeable, and it is always draped in different materials of coats, it is not easy for people to see its true appearance.
This is a bit similar to inland residents coming to the water's edge, jewelry accidentally falling into the water, based on experience and inertia judgment to fish, always can not be fished, because their common sense judgment is distorted by "refraction", seeing far from the actual situation.
The essence of "counter-common sense" is to stir up the turbidity, brush away the smeared surfaces in various marketing phenomena, and see the real inside behind the window. In this way, we can see the "common sense" under "counterintuitive sense", adapt to this complex world, and become the ultimate response tool for migration with the world.
Contrary to common sense, contrary to routine, and common sense is the essence, and what remains unchanged is the human heart.
Author: Party A Editorial Board; Public Account: Party A Finance
This article was originally published by @A-Party Finance on Everyone is a Product Manager. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
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