5 strategic thinking to build a brand with lasting competitiveness

When marketers are making plans, if they do not have a full understanding of their products, the consumption nature of their products, and the competitive situation, it will be difficult to achieve significant results. Whether it is a small promotion or a large brand planning, it is enough to understand the following five aspects clearly.

The editor found that some marketers do not have a full understanding and correct understanding of their products, the consumption nature of their products, the competitive situation, etc. when making plans.

But if you don’t understand these, the results of your promotional activities and brand planning will not be very significant.

Let’s cut to the chase and get straight to the point .

Whether it is as small as a promotional event or as large as a brand planning, you must clearly understand the following five aspects:

• Product Attributes
• Brand awareness
• Competition
• Target path
• Consumer demand

1. Understand your product attributes

For example, a few days ago, in my Knowledge Planet, someone asked a hardware shelf that they wanted to activate customers who had not placed an order for a long time. They were preparing to hold promotional activities and attract orders by offering low prices. Then, they would use other solutions to convert the ordering customers to new products and upgrade them to new product customers.

So, for products like hardware shelves, can price reduction promotions achieve the effect of increasing sales? Of course not.

What is the key to this issue? The reason is that they do not realize the product attributes of hardware shelves.

So, when we analyze business marketing problems, how do we analyze the attributes of the product? Mainly from three aspects:

• Consumption frequency
• Price
• Consumption nature

Take the hardware shelves above as an example. The users of the hardware shelves are shopping malls and convenience stores. For them, hardware shelves are low-frequency, high-priced, and tool- related products.

This means that it is useless to stimulate their desire to buy through discounts and promotions. If tool products are not damaged, why would they throw them away and buy new ones?

Under what circumstances will they buy? For example, replacing the shelves may be more beneficial to their sales, or it may not cost much for them to repurchase, and the best way is to exchange the old for the new.

Why? Because the old one doesn’t go away, your new one can’t come in. In any case, if you want to sell it to them, you must first get rid of the old one they have.

This is why the furniture industry often organizes old-for-new activities. If the old furniture is not vacated, how can new furniture be sold to them?

So, when we diagnose the marketing problems of our own products, you need to understand what the attributes of your own products are?

• If it is a low-priced repetitive consumption product (such as catering), the key is to increase the repurchase rate and the repetitive consumption rate.
• If it is a high-priced, low-frequency or even a one-time transaction (such as a house), then you will not significantly increase sales through large-scale advertising exposure.
• If your product is a tool or a low-frequency product ( such as furniture ), then simply offering a low-price promotion strategy will not be very effective.

In short, design an activity plan based on the attributes of your product and then your purpose.

2. At what stage of awareness is your brand?

When we are doing advertising planning, we need to understand the stage of consumer cognition.

Generally speaking, people go through different stages of cognition from first contact to purchase: unfamiliarity - understanding - comprehension - familiarity - purchase .

If you are a new brand and the public is unfamiliar with you, then you just need to tell others who you are and what you do.

Today I happened to read a book about the advertising strategies of physical stores. The book explains the definition and purpose of "advertising" as follows:

Generally speaking, customers will only take two actions: buy goods from "familiar stores" or buy "familiar goods", and will never buy goods from "unfamiliar stores" or buy "unfamiliar goods".

Therefore, sellers only need to use "advertising" to widely publicize their stores and products, so that they become "familiar stores" and "familiar products" for customers.

However, it is best for everyone to understand clearly what "advertising" is. Except for very few special cases, it will basically not be effective in one go. This can be understood as long as you think from the customer's perspective.

Think about your past experiences. There are not many examples of seeing an advertisement for the first time and immediately thinking, "I want to go to this store and buy this product."

In other words, just through one advertisement, it can neither become a "familiar store" nor a "familiar product" for customers, and it cannot play the promotional role that the advertisement should have.

If the product is extremely cheap, or is on emergency price cut, perhaps a single advertisement will be enough to achieve the desired effect; but if it is sold at the original price without any discount, or at a normal discount, it is quite difficult to achieve the desired effect with just one advertisement.

In other words: don’t expect one or two advertisements to be very effective.

In addition to this stage, when consumers understand and are familiar with your products, you are no longer worry-free. They may make more comparisons because there are many products on the market that can solve your problem. At this time, your advertising should highlight the differentiation of your product.

Tell consumers: Why you should buy from me and why you shouldn’t buy from my competitors.

The last time I saw an advertisement for a used car brand, Renrenche, which is endorsed by Huang Bo, was consciously doing this. The advertisements of other used car brands such as Guazi and Youxin were the same as in the early days, with no major changes.

Therefore, when diagnosing your own marketing, you must be clear about what stage your product is in the minds of consumers. Advertising strategies are also different at different stages.

3. What is an effective differentiation strategy?

In addition to the above product attributes and consumer perceptions, you also need to analyze your own marketing problems from the perspective of your competitors.

H&H has a view that companies should not focus on competitors but on consumers, which is the non-competition theory. Of course, I personally don’t agree with this. I think it is idealized. Competition is real.

So, how do we diagnose our own marketing problems relative to our competitors?

One is to identify the inherent weaknesses of competitors and attack them, and then propose targeted differentiation strategies.

So, if you want to implement a differentiation strategy, what factors should you consider?

There are two main considerations:

1. Does your differentiation strategy increase consumers’ purchase or usage costs? Many differentiation strategies bring troubles to consumers, such as ridiculously high prices that are higher than the product’s value, and excessively high learning costs in use.
2. Your differentiation strategy is difficult for other brands to follow, which means that your differentiation strategy is difficult for others to imitate , or difficult to learn in the short term. This way, you will be in a leading position in the market and have a greater chance of leaving your competitors behind.

For example, Xiaomi chose the differentiated strategy of full-screen phones. The implementation of this strategy did not increase the purchasing cost of consumers (of course the price became higher, but it was also more cost-effective).

At the same time, Xiaomi's full-screen smartphones are about a year ahead of its competitors, so Xiaomi has a greater chance of defeating its competitors and establishing a first-mover advantage.

Some time ago, someone consulted me about "Wuchang rice with a lock". Because there are very few real Wuchang rice on the market, most of them are adulterated, so there came into being "Wuchang rice with a lock".

But I judged at the time that such a product would eventually fail for the following reasons:

1. The price is ridiculously high, ten times more expensive than ordinary high-end rice, and the cost of use is very high. After buying it back to open the lock, you need to call to get the password. It has high costs in both purchase and use.
2. Even if this product is successful, there is no follow-up cost because your competitors can also adopt such a strategy and there is no competitive barrier.

So, under what circumstances can this locked Wuchang rice be effective? Unless you can prove that the real Wuchang rice was replaced during the circulation process - then the strategy of locked Wuchang rice will be effective.

Therefore, when you want to build your differentiation strategy, you have two aspects to consider:

• Does it bring some value to consumers?
• Does it have more advantages over competitors?

4. Think about the right path to achieve your goals

Now think about a question:

Suppose you are the manager of a fast food company and your boss gives you a goal: within six months, increase sales by 18% compared to last year while maintaining profits at the same level as last year. Please come up with a plan to achieve the goal.

Think for three minutes, what would you do? How to think?

Goal: Sales revenue growth of 18%;

Achievable paths: advertising and promotion, price reduction, new product launches, increased takeout, extended business hours, expanded business area, improved services, price increases... and others.

The path from goal to action is our common behavior pattern, but it cannot guarantee the continuity, consistency and concentration between goals and actions.

Because this is a typical trial and error method: select and implement certain measures based on experience, continue if you see results, and try other methods if you don’t see results. Because there is often a lag between taking action and seeing results.

Let’s think about it from another perspective: What is the best path to achieve sales revenue growth?

One possible way to think about it is:

Revenue = Price * Sales Volume

To increase sales revenue, either increase prices or increase sales volume. However, raising prices may lead to a decline in sales; increasing sales may require lowering prices as a means of promotion. Therefore, it is difficult to maintain clarity of thinking if you want to change or increase these two variables at the same time.

Let’s change the perspective. What is the most basic source of income growth?

Obviously the customer. Either increase the number of customers or increase per capita consumption. To increase the number of customers, either increase the frequency of visits from old customers or increase the number of new customers.

If it is e-commerce , then:

Revenue = Traffic conversion rate and average order value

So, we have three most basic paths: increase per capita consumption, increase the frequency of customer visits, and increase new customers. So, which one is the best?

This requires an environmental analysis, that is, an analysis of the "business district" of the fast food restaurant: how many communities and families are within the business district, what the population composition, income structure, how to solve lunch and dinner problems, etc.

The conclusion of the hypothesis analysis is: the business district has good economic benefits, employees have high incomes, there are several high-end communities with high-income residents, they are not very sensitive to prices and don't feel much about price increases, and the merchants can provide better products, environment, and service attitude than their competitors.

Judging from the external environment, it is obvious that increasing per capita consumption is the best path. However, whether increasing per capita consumption is the best path depends on whether the company's resources and capabilities can support the implementation of this strategy.

5. What level of needs does the product meet?

The last thing is demand. Why do I talk about consumer demand last? Because it is the most important, but often overlooked.

We know that marketing is about finding the audience, meeting needs, and getting returns. Therefore, the starting point for creating any product should be consumer needs.

So why do marketers often ignore consumer needs? The reason is actually very simple. The demand is too vague and unpredictable to be grasped.

In fact, I often use a model to think about consumer needs, which is the famous Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory:

1. Physiological needs

Simple needs for survival, such as eating, sleeping, etc.

For example, if street stalls and Shaxian snacks are just for filling your stomach, then your value must be low and the price you set must also be low.

2. Security requirements

Once our survival needs are met, we develop the next need – the need for security. Safety represents "residential safety" and "economic security", etc.

For example, KFC is at the level of safety needs.

3. Love and belonging needs ( social needs)

That is, "wanting to get attention" and "wanting to share with others". At this stage, we begin to have conflicts with others.

For example, if you own a physical store, merchants must greet customers with a smile, “Welcome,” so that customers can have a pleasant conversation with their friends, and of course, it also allows them to show off in front of others.

4. Respect needs

That is, the need to "want to be recognized by society" and "want to be praised and commended."

Merchants' actions must give customers recognition and make them feel valuable, which requires understanding their customers.

5. Self-actualization needs

That is, "becoming your ideal self" is the highest level of need that humans have. It is the need for "dreams" and goals such as "I really want to become such a person."

Think about it, which levels of people’s needs are met by your brand or product? The higher the level of satisfaction, the stronger the sense of value, and the higher the customer's loyalty to you.

So, which level does your product satisfy?

Today I will mainly talk about social needs. One thing everyone should remember is: your product is more than just a consumption function. If it can be related to people’s social needs, then it will be more contagious and sticky.

“Social” includes two aspects:

1. Provide real networking opportunities
2. Provide social currency for people to talk about

Let's talk about interpersonal communication first. My old friend Dashi once gave an example:

His friend opened a muiss bar in Xi'an, but the competition was too fierce and the business was not good. I told him that I would serve whoever paid the highest bill in the bar.

He said that boys paid the most, so Brother Dashi told him that he needed to do something to reduce the cost of boys picking up girls. Later, he launched a theme promotion called "Say 'Come on' to strangers."

What Dashi means is: people come to the bar with the intention of chatting up people of the opposite sex, so you have to better meet this need, take the initiative to provide such chatting activities, and design an action to reduce social costs.

Basically everyone has a need to socialize, so think about what strategies you can adopt to allow people to talk to others without any worries.

Now let’s talk about the so-called social currency, which is actually just a topic of conversation. If your product can provide consumers with a source of chatter, then your product has the potential to be spread quickly.

A real case comes from the sharing of Brother Wang in My Knowledge Planet:

Brother Wang turned a small food stall with a poor geographical location and a daily turnover of less than 2,000 into a popular food stall in the city. The core of this was to create a product with its own communication attributes (see the figure below):

Instead of taking the low-price route, they took the high-end route and created a popular seafood product priced at 588 yuan. You will never see such a product in traditional food stalls. This can become a topic of conversation among people and quickly spread throughout the city. Everyone wants to come and try it.

Finally, to sum up, if you want to plan some effective activities or build your own brand, you must understand the following points:

• Product attributes - understand what your product attributes are, the frequency and nature of consumption, the price of the product, etc.
• Brand awareness - Is your brand still unfamiliar to consumers or does it already have a certain level of awareness?
• Competitive Landscape - Understand your competitors' strengths and weaknesses
• Goal Path - Correctly understand the thinking path to achieve the goal
• Consumer demand——meet consumers' multi-level needs

The author of this article @吾老湿 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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