Yang Ze, author of "Lean Marketing": The essence of efficient marketing is not to spend money unjustly

With the development of Internet information technology, people's entertainment, consumption, and lifestyle are also changing. In an increasingly complex information environment, the business environment becomes more and more disorderly, and at the same time, the consumer's mind also grows and changes, becoming more and more elusive. In the disorderly development of the overall market environment, it is particularly important to find the law that hits the pain points of marketing.

In the first session of the UMI class on November 6, we talked with Yang Ze, author of Lean Marketing and columnist of 36Kr, about the changes in marketing in the new consumer era.

<h3>Marketing in the New Consumer Era: The essence of efficient marketing is not to spend money unjustly</h3>

There is a famous saying in the advertising industry: I know that half of the advertising fee is wasted, but I don't know which half is wasted. During the mass media period, marketing and advertising are biased towards extensive, and the effect control and accuracy are not refined enough, which inevitably causes waste. Today, the media is vertically subdivided, and there are more and more tools that can monitor the data effect of marketing, and more and more can be done for accurate delivery.

But before that, we first need to understand what marketing is, which is the process of translating a product's selling point into a user's needs. What function of product design is not so important, what the user can perceive is important, marketing is to translate the machine, product language into people can understand, and they are closely related to their interests, can cut to the needs of users is important.

Today we do a lot of marketing effects badly, not because there is no money, but because we waste a lot of money in useless places. It's easy to tell the same group of people about their unwanted needs during the promotion process, and they don't feel it.

Efficient marketing is not about not spending money, but about spending it on key nodes and spending less money on the wrong places. Our resources are always limited, and when you don't know how to reach your target audience, you might as well remember a formula: pressure = pressure÷ surface area. Pressure is the marketing result, pressure is the promotion budget, and surface area is the audience range.

With a limited budget, what we can do to achieve good results is to narrow the audience. According to the age, occupation, industry, preferences, catalyst habits and other labels for subdivision, can also be subdivided from the geographical scope, to achieve refined operation. When you draw a clearer user range, there are natural ways to reach it.

<h3>The core user logic in the new consumption era: niche groups also have the opportunity to explode</h3>

The development of social consumption is also, to some extent, a manifestation of the gradual progression of Maslow's level of demand. It can be roughly divided into four periods:

In the first era of consumption, people have to solve the most basic problems of eating and drinking;

In the second consumption era, materials began to be abundant, and the mainstream of consumption was "big is good", such as buying a car and buying a house are buying large pieces;

In the third era of consumption, from the changes of the Internet and mobile Internet, new consumption forms have emerged, such as e-commerce, takeaway, entertainment and so on. People can more easily meet the needs of food, clothing, housing and transportation, and begin to pay more attention to spiritual consumption;

In the fourth era of consumption, consumption segmentation, people pay more attention to themselves, more fashionable, personalized demand is generated, and the rise of national tide, niche variety shows, and niche content platforms is also the reason. We find that in this era, according to the previous mass marketing methods, it is difficult to impress them.

How to create greater business value by meeting the consumption needs of such people? We did an analysis of this group of people.

This kind of population is relatively niche compared to the mass consumer group, but the niche group has a stronger vitality. There is also a characteristic, strong stickiness, special hugging. For a small crowd, as long as you hit a few of them, the circle belongs to you, which is what we call to influence the core users. Their acceptance is not high, but once they agree, they will have great loyalty. More critically, all small crowds have a chance to explode. As long as you find an organization, cut to one of them, and suddenly explode, there is a new opportunity for explosive growth.

In today's era of dividends disappearing and traffic peaking, opening up subdivisions and niche markets may be a strong breaking point.

<h3>Product form in the new consumption era: content and e-commerce, short link to achieve high conversion</h3>

In the past, the boundaries of content, tools, e-commerce and other products were very clear, and with the advent of the new era of consumption, this boundary was gradually broken, and a new form of content + tools + e-commerce appeared.

The increasing substitution of tools requires content platforms to continue to attract, maintain traffic, and build a moat for user transfer. Traffic needs to be monetized, and e-commerce appears, so many Internet products have begun to do their own e-commerce platforms, and this new form has formed the attributes of short links and high conversions. This is the practice of most Internet companies. Alibaba's e-commerce platform began to do content to attract traffic after doing the opposite, doing e-commerce well, so there was Taobao live broadcast, short video, and cooperation with various content communities, including constantly obtaining traffic from other social platforms.

At the end of the day, it's still competing for traffic, so what's the better marketing method to attract traffic? I think it is to use force to fight, that is, they do not need to cultivate, but through the rapid acquisition of the core user base, let the core users drive ordinary users, affect potential users, and establish a set of influence paths radiated from core users to potential users.

Some time ago, the intelligent marketing platform of Alibaba's innovative business group proposed a new concept: backlink marketing. Breaking the logic of "knowing-interest-desire-action" in the traditional marketing link, the back end of the marketing chain, focusing on the conversion of clues, transactions and other links are pre-positioned, with the direct connection of content, consumers and transactions, to create a very short marketing path, focusing on the conversion of the "show - lead - transaction - re-conversion" link marketing. Let consumers' information acquisition and consumption behavior be seamlessly connected in the same scenario, so that consumers can "touch and go". The front end attracts traffic and builds consumption scenarios through content, while the back link directly converts clues into transactions. Alibaba's set of front-end traffic + post-link marketing model is the key to growth in the stock market.

<h3>Ta said to the marketer:</h3>

With the rapid development of intelligent technology, marketing has become more intelligent and efficient, and the media and tools of marketing have become more and more abundant, but marketing still has to enter the lives of consumers, integrate into the minds of consumers, and establish a connection between brands and users.

The new era of consumption is coming, the new era of consumption will continue to change, how to grasp the essence of marketing in the complex changes? Let's go back to the starting point of marketing: user needs.

Meeting user needs and creating value for users will always be the constant guiding light in the torrent of the business world.