One case study: 5 essential tools for marketers/salespeople/operators

You have just taken over the marketing work of an O2O driving training platform, and your boss asks you if you have any good ideas that can change the dilemma of product promotion . You quickly dive into product research and gain a deep understanding of the product.

The product you need to promote is an O2O driving learning platform. Its competitor is a traditional driving school, and it has some outstanding advantages:

• One-time fee, preferential price, installment payment supported.
• It takes 4-6 months to get the certificate locally and 45 days to get the certificate in other places.
• The coaches conduct strict assessments and the pass rate for students is over 90%.
• The service is good, you can learn to drive at any time, there are many training venues, one car per person, and if you are not satisfied with the instructor, you can complain, evaluate, or change.

Through understanding the background of the product, you put forward your idea to your boss: we will focus on price, service, time, and pass rate, and use activities, new media , third-party channels , advertising, etc. to tell consumers that we are better than traditional driving schools and let consumers choose us.

But the boss said again, we have used these methods in the past and the results are not very good, do you have any other ideas?

You wonder why none of these methods work?

I don’t know if you have noticed that the solution you proposed is the same as the past practices of this product. Both start from the product and do not take the users into consideration. Any marketing that is separated from users is fake marketing, and such self-indulgent promotion is naturally difficult.

Suppose there is an ordinary white-collar worker who wants to get a driver's license because he will buy a car in the next 1-2 years. He has already learned about the relevant information of this O2O driving learning platform and asked for advice from colleagues and friends around him.

How should we promote this platform at this time?

You need to do this: find demand for your product, determine demand - set marketing goals - associate users

01 Find and determine the demand for the product

Before looking for demand for this O2O driving learning platform, you need to first understand a tool——

According to the demand template tool summarized by Li Jiaoshou, the demands in the market can be roughly divided into 10 types. Of course, these 10 demand templates cannot cover all the demands in the market, but 90% of the demands can be classified into these 10 types .

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Obviously, based on the product attributes of this driving learning platform, the main demands that can be chosen are low price, portability, performance and process experience .

Although some demands that can be highlighted have been found here, the final highlight demands cannot be determined. To determine the final main demand, it is also necessary to consider the consumer's purchase decision stage and purchase scenario .

Because consumers have different needs at different decision-making stages and purchasing scenarios.

For example, a college student wants to get a driver’s license. He compares the information of various driving schools but doesn’t know which one to register with. So he is in the stage of comparing options at this time, and the main demand we need to focus on may be low price . Assuming that this college student has now decided to choose this O2O driving training platform through comparison, then he is at the purchase decision stage, and the main demand we need to focus on may be process experience or performance .

Now let's combine the consumer decision-making model and purchase scenario to analyze what needs we should focus on when promoting the driving training platform to this white-collar worker .

Determine the consumption decision stage: The consumer has learned about the relevant information in advance, asked for advice from colleagues and friends, and has the task of buying a car in the next 1-2 years. Judging from the current situation of driver's license test, it usually takes half a year to a year to get a driver's license. Comprehensively judging, consumers may want to choose a driving school that can get the license quickly and are in the stage of comparing options.

Purchase scenario: White-collar workers in first-tier cities (this O2O driving training platform is located in Shenzhen) are generally tired, anxious, and under great work pressure. They do not have much energy to focus on getting a driver's license. Moreover, shared cars are very popular now, which can provide them with many opportunities to practice after they get their driver's license. As long as they can get a driver's license, nothing else is so important. Therefore, their core demand is "speed".

Therefore, when promoting the driving learning platform to this white-collar worker, the main focus should be on portability .

02 Set marketing goals

Marketing goals are the core of marketing work. Without goals, we have no way to focus actions and allocate resources. Therefore, setting a marketing goal is the basis of marketing work.

Because marketing goals are the basis of marketing work, they must be reliable.

Reliable marketing goals should have these characteristics :

• Pointing to the key challenges of current marketing tasks

• Answers the question of why users don’t buy products (we have to assume that our products are not effective if users don’t pay attention to them and don’t buy them)

• Focusing on users can guide marketing work

To set reliable marketing goals, you only need to do the following 4 steps :

• Find target users

• Determine the target user's consumption decision stage

• Confirm the default selection of the target user

• What are the barriers to action between the user’s default choice and your product?

So how to set marketing goals for this O2O driving learning platform?

The target users and the user consumption decision stage have been determined above. According to the four steps of setting marketing goals, we also need to determine the target users’ default choices and action barriers.

We know that people have an instinct to avoid risks. When faced with risks, most consumers would rather give up one of their preferences than take risks.

O2O driving learning, as an unconventional driving learning model, is similar to the P2P model in consumers' perception and is prone to perceived risks. Also, because the driver's license test is greatly influenced by third-party forces, the O2O driving learning model is not popular, and there are too few users who can endorse the O2O driving learning platform. Instead, most users will endorse traditional driving schools, resulting in users not really believing that they can get a driver's license quickly by choosing the platform, so the target users are more inclined to choose traditional driving schools.

What are the barriers to action for users to choose this platform over the default choice? Finding out the barriers to user action is actually answering the question, “Why don’t consumers do this?”

Before we look for obstacles to user behavior, let’s first understand a tool that influences consumer decision-making:

PMO represents the three forces that influence consumer decisions and is used to analyze which forces influence consumer decisions.

For example, when buying a mobile phone, will consumers listen to their own, a third party, or the brand?

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According to PMO theory, taking a driver's license test has the characteristics of unclear user preferences, high decision-making importance, and easy access to information. It is mainly influenced by third-party forces (word of mouth, friend recommendations) and marketing forces (brand image). However, since the platform has not yet formed a brand, consumers are mainly influenced by third-party forces.

So why don’t consumers choose this O2O platform?

Combined with the PMO theory analysis, when target consumers choose products, multiple people participate in individual decision-making, facing problems such as too many choices, high third-party reference value, and unproven platform capabilities, which leads to high decision-making costs and high trial and error costs for users.

From this we know that the barriers to user action are the high decision-making cost and high trial-and-error cost of choosing this platform.

Faced with this situation, the marketing measures that can be taken are to release capability signals and lower the threshold for action . The options available include seeking brand endorsement, building brand loyalty, word-of-mouth recommendations and trial experiences.

Because seeking brand endorsement, building brand loyalty and word-of-mouth recommendations cannot immediately lead to conversion , the most likely means of converting the user at the moment is trial experience . Therefore, the current marketing goal is to let target users try out the platform’s products.

03 Associated Users

Through the previous analysis, we now know that for this target user, this driving learning platform needs to focus on portability needs, with the aim of allowing users to experience it in order to reduce risk perception and make users believe that they can really get a driver’s license quickly.

So how do you make users want to experience the platform? This requires establishing a connection between the platform and the users. To connect the platform with users, you need to use——

The ladder theory is a tool to connect products and users:

When consumers do not understand the product well enough, they choose to move up the ladder, which is suitable for new products that are not well known by consumers in the market;

If consumers are not motivated enough to buy, they will move down the ladder and choose products that are already familiar to consumers in the market.

The relationship between products and consumers can be understood and remembered using the following picture.

Understanding the ladder theory, we built a ladder for the platform.

• Attribute: Get a driver's license in 4-6 months

• Benefit: Reduce time cost

• Psychological benefit: more time to work and earn money

• Values: Time is money, saving time is saving costs

Since driving school products are familiar to users, we should choose a ladder of psychological interests and values ​​to connect users. Here we choose to output the text at the value layer, the text is as follows:

• Why spend a year to get a driver's license when you can get it in just 4-6 months?

• ×× driving learning platform, try first and then learn, subverting the traditional driving school model.

• The coaches on the ×× driving training platform are strictly selected and provide one-on-one teaching. If you are not satisfied, you can change coaches. You can practice driving at any time and there are many training venues.

Now, we have connected with users and produced copywriting. The only thing left to do is to reach users through some channels.

04 Conclusion

To promote a product, you can follow the action steps of finding demand for the product, determining demand—setting marketing goals—associating users.

When finding and determining needs, you need to consider consumers’ default choices, purchase decision stages, and purchase scenarios. The tools available include ten demand templates and a consumer purchase decision model.

When setting marketing goals, focus on what market forces influence consumers and what obstacles prevent consumers from taking action. The tools that can be used include PMO theory.

In the user association stage, focus on the relationship between the product and the market. The tools that can be used include the ladder theory and the market-brand quadrant diagram.