Image source @ Visual China
Text | Empty-seeking
"Valentine's Day, a high-class, heart-wrenching and inexpensive gift."
"I recently bought 10 good things for less than 100 pieces."
"Winter turtleneck sweater, these two are enough."
"Oily skin? This cleanser is worth it. “
We have already seen the way to recommend products like the above, but today, this way of recommending is called "planting grass".
Planting grass is one of the hottest marketing methods on the Internet in recent years, and the essence of grass marketing is that one is because of the content explosion of the content platform, and the other is the growth of the brand's demand for content marketing, in this case, this marketing method has exploded.
Whether it is Weibo, Douyin or Xiaohongshu, they all produce and emerge a large amount of content about goods, and are favored for attracting users with content, naturally triggering and promoting users to make purchases.
Grass marketing is characterized by fast, lightweight, low budget, measurable effect, no matter how big the brand is, in what stage, basically can apply this marketing method.
Grass marketing is essentially a kind of content marketing, and grass that is separated from content has no soul, so it is a marketing method that is more brand exposure than sales conversion. However, because in the current Internet environment, the link of grass marketing can be better monitored and measured, so many brands that do grass marketing will pay more attention to its conversion.
In general, grass marketing has both a brand exposure and a sales conversion side, but the former is greater than the latter.
As mentioned above, planting grass is a way to combine content to recommend products, as a marketing, this way is sometimes costless, but most of the time it is cost-free, and the grass planting method without cost can be called natural grassing, and the grass planting method that requires cost is called paid grassing.
01 Natural grass planting = word-of-mouth marketing
When it comes to natural grass planting, I have to mention a relatively old marketing method - word-of-mouth marketing, the so-called word-of-mouth marketing, that is, consumers take the initiative to recommend products to their relatives and friends, this marketing method is spontaneous for consumers and does not involve marketing expenses.
Nielsen's 2015 Global Ad Trust Survey reported that 83% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family, which is the role of typical word-of-mouth marketing.
Word-of-mouth marketing is the natural planting of grass, and the reason why this marketing method has won the huge trust of consumers is because consumers are active, objective, true and not driven by interests when recommending products.
In the absence of the Internet, good goods can promote word of mouth among consumers, thus creating brand influence and good word of mouth. In the Internet era, at the beginning, consumers recommending goods on the Internet are natural ways to plant grass, that is, the relatively pure Internet era, bloggers in related fields when recommending certain products, because they really use, and really feel that the goods are good.
For example, in the age of blogging, knowledge bloggers will recommend book lists at the end of the year that he has read and thinks are worth reading, which is a typical natural way of planting grass. Such a way of planting grass is often mixed with the soft cooperation of some publishing houses today.
The necessary condition for natural grass planting is that the goods sold by the brand must be good goods, it is either cheap and inexpensive, or it is worth the money, and the goods that cannot do this cannot achieve natural grass planting.
Natural grass can bring exposure to the brand, once a commodity is naturally planted by more and more consumers to others, then its brand effect is fission, of course, can also bring huge sales conversion.
If a movie is regarded as a commodity, then it is a typical embodiment of natural grass, and even in the pre-Internet era, a good movie will pass ten or ten hundred among real people, thus creating a high box office. For example, in 1982, Jet Li starred in "Shaolin Temple", which set a box office of 160 million yuan with a dime ticket price.
For brands, the most essential effect of marketing pursuit is to plant grass naturally, and the so-called wine aroma is not afraid of deep alleys, which is the truth.
02 Paid grass farming = advertising marketing
Natural grass cultivation is often unattainable, so the most used grass marketing method used by brands today is paid grass (if there is no special emphasis, the following grass planting refers to paid grass). Since it is all paid marketing, this marketing method must have a certain connection with advertising marketing in the traditional sense.
Advertising and marketing, usually paid to the media, to advertise their own goods, is actually a way to use the media to tell consumers how good their products are.
One of the kinds of advertising marketing is to pay the star as a spokesperson and then advertise, which is actually similar to paying for grass. Relatively speaking, this kind of advertising method is not to say that they are good, but to let the stars testify, for example, Jolin Tsai will say (to the effect), "My hair is soft, because I use fluttering soft every day", Guo Donglin will say, "Tide washing powder, make clothes cleaner".
The most typical case is the overlord anti-shedding of Jackie Chan endorsement, this endorsement is different from most celebrity endorsements, Jackie Chan directly said in the advertisement that he received the psychological process of receiving advertising, and said that he really used it, and the effect was good, and it is still used every day.
The essence of paid grass marketing is no different from advertising marketing, except that brands give money to the media and stars (putting grass content into the information stream), KOL or KOC.
The essence of media and platforms is no different in marketing, and the logic of brands giving money to celebrities and marketing to KOLs is the same, both using each other's influence to achieve exposure and testimony for themselves, thus ultimately promoting sales.
Although the essence of planting grass and advertising is the same, there is still a difference between the two in terms of delivery costs, conversion time of content pointing to sales, and marketing methods.
From the perspective of delivery costs, advertising needs to invest a large amount of money in the short term to quickly affect the minds of consumers, while the cost of planting grass is relatively controllable, can be invested on a large scale, and can also be piloted first, and then expanded investment.
From the perspective of conversion time, the conversion time of an advertisement from exposure to sale is generally long, and it may be as long as days or even months. The transformation of grass is likely to be in points at the earliest, and the longest is generally not more than a few days.
From the perspective of playing methods, advertising and celebrity endorsement marketing is a top-down way of playing, which quickly allows a large number of consumers to get the recognition of the brand with a large-scale advertising bombardment model. Grass marketing is a bottom-up style of play, which usually penetrates into the niche population first, continuously spreads among the target population, and then gradually achieves large influence.
The former is more like the tactic of occupying the central big city first and then expanding the power downwards, while the latter is more like the tactic of encircling the city in the countryside. There is no absolute sense of the two tactics, but it depends on what tactics the brand conforms to at what stage.
Paid grass because of the word paid, so the authority and objectivity of its content are insufficient, today, there are a large number of paid grass content on major content platforms, so that a large number of users can not distinguish whether these contents are real content or advertising.
If a commodity is good enough and can achieve natural grass planting, then it basically does not need to pay for grass planting, but in today's fierce market competition, "wine is also afraid of deep alleys", you do not pay for grass marketing, then it may greet you is a long, difficult to see the future wait.
For most start-ups or small and medium-sized brands, they do not have a large budget to advertise, under the premise of excellent products, if you can influence a group of people with the help of paid grass, and then guide this group of people to form a long-term natural grass, this is nothing less than a reliable social network marketing method.
A number of new consumer brands such as Perfect Diary and Zhong Xuegao have completed the cold start of brand sales with the help of such marketing methods.
03 Advertising, planting grass and bringing goods
So what is the relationship between advertising, planting grass and carrying goods?
First of all, let's talk about advertising and bringing goods. The first step for a brand is to let as many people as possible know, and then to let these people consume, so there is no doubt that the first goal of advertising is always to expose rather than bring goods, but this does not mean that the advertisement cannot carry goods. On the contrary, good goods + good advertising can often achieve a large number of goods.
For example, at its peak, CCTV1 pre-news ads were competed for by a large number of brands, because this prime-time advertisement can achieve the largest exposure in the country and promote a large increase in brand sales. The advertisements in this period have created the success of brands such as Confucius Banquet Wine, Qinchi, BBK, wahaha and so on.
Celebrity endorsement advertising can also achieve this effect, Wang Lihong's endorsement of Wahaha, Guo Donglin's endorsement of tide, Jay Chou's endorsement of Youlemei, are both planting grass and bringing goods, to help the brand achieve exposure and sales conversion.
In a word, the goal of advertising is exposure, but good advertising can definitely bring goods.
Then there's planting grass and bringing goods. Today we usually say that there are two ways to bring goods, one is the content with goods, to kolls on Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Douyin platform to create content and accompany sales links to bring goods, the second is live streaming with goods, to the way that people live on Douyin e-commerce, Kuaishou e-commerce, Taobao live with goods.
Content with goods is planting grass, it is the same as the goal of advertising, one is exposure, the other is sales, but as mentioned above, planting grass with goods conversion time is much faster than advertising.
For live streaming with goods, most of the live streaming goods of mid-waist anchors do not have the nature of forming brand influence, and their goal is to sell goods.
The situation of the head anchor is slightly different, their live broadcast with goods, because there is a huge amount of traffic, and has formed a mind with good goods in the minds of a large number of consumers, so it has both grass and the nature of goods, such as Li Jiaqi, Luo Yonghao, etc. Luo Yonghao has live-streamed the sale of Great Wall Motors, but in fact, the exposure of this live broadcast brand is greater than that of the goods, because there are only 10 half-price cars in the live broadcast room, which cannot bring a large number of sales, but through this live broadcast, the great wall motor brand can achieve greater exposure, which is actually an advertisement.
This is also the reason why many brands are willing to let the head anchor bring goods even if they do not make money.
Therefore, the core goal of planting grass is exposure, the accompanying goal is to bring goods, the live broadcast of the head anchor is both the nature of planting grass and carrying goods, simply put, the head master brings goods = planting grass + with goods, and the live broadcast of the middle-waist anchor is mainly for the purpose of bringing goods.
04 The essence of marketing remains the same: paid grass + natural grass = advertising + word of mouth
Grass marketing is the focus of today's brands, but in essence, it is still not separated from the basic model of advertising marketing.
The model of advertising marketing is to achieve exposure through advertising on the basis of excellent products, so that more people know about the products, and after the initial consumers buy and use them, they are recommended to others to form word-of-mouth communication.
The mode of planting grass is also based on the excellent products, through THE EXPOSURE OF KOLS, affecting some people, and then influencing others through this part of the people, and finally forming word-of-mouth transmission.
So, in the final analysis, the best marketing model for brands is that excellent products + paid grass (advertising) trigger natural grass planting and form a ripple effect.
The ideal state of marketing, if summed up in one word, is word-of-mouth marketing.