Why do most startup marketing fail?

The author of this article will explain the mistakes, misunderstandings and pitfalls that he has made and witnessed. This is not an easy article to write, but a reflective article.

After all, we are all passers-by of the times. At certain moments, we thought we had grasped the pulse of the times, but in fact, we were just lucky to be chosen by the times. All we can do is try our best and give it our all. The rest is up to God's will. As Dr. Sun Yat-sen said:

The general trend of the world is vast and powerful. Those who follow it will prosper, and those who go against it will perish.

Everyone who has received formal training in marketing theory has an obsession with brand, system, and value. These obsessions have made them the heads of marketing, advertising, and public relations departments of large companies, and they have continuously proven that this is an effective method. Until they get into a startup (whether it's the Internet or not, even a small restaurant), it seems like a lot of things fall apart.

Most marketers in large companies are good at positional warfare and legion warfare. Only with enough guns, food, and bases can a complex, continuous marketing strategy that requires large-scale coordination be implemented. If not, please fight a guerrilla war. Don't release the eagle until you see the rabbit, and don't string the bow until you see the enemy. At stage 0, all pretense is bullshit because you have nothing. Everything you do is to build your company's foundation.

A friend worked for a large chicken steak chain for five years. In terms of the number of stores nationwide, it currently ranks first in the country. She said that when they opened the first store, the three founders borrowed money to rent Lamborghinis and Ferraris for delivery, and secretly put environmental protection slogan stickers with their logos and addresses on all the trash cans within a three-kilometer radius in the middle of the night. Without this foundation, everything that comes after, such as franchising, cross-border cooperation, endorsements, etc., are just illusory castles in the air. Every entrepreneur must be aware of:

Starting a business is not like inviting people to dinner, writing an article, painting or doing embroidery. It cannot be so elegant, so leisurely, so gentle, or so kind, courteous, frugal and modest. Entrepreneurship is a riot, a violent action of one company overthrowing another company, a violent action of one company grabbing a piece of the market.

The above passage is adapted from Quotations from Chairman Mao, which I think is very appropriate. You have to realize that all the experience you have gained in the marketing work in the past, even if it is a high-level experience, can not let you let your imagination run wild at this moment, you must first fight a guerrilla warfare. This is the foundation of everything. Don’t feel low. There is no low business in the world, only failed and unprofitable businesses. Don’t think you have no creativity. Creativity is important, but it must be effective first. Only by restraining your excessive desire for ostentation and exaggeration can you touch the golden line of Marketing.

All renewable resources can be measured in money, and all non-renewable resources must be cherished. For example: time. A startup’s marketing plan must be implemented quickly, verified quickly, and adjusted during the process. What we cannot afford to waste here is time. If we miss a month, we might as well graduate early. The significance of marketing from the perspective of time is to shorten the brand communication cycle, speed up the communication process, race against time, and outperform competitors. Therefore, all non-core things that waste time can be skipped first and made up for later.

Wangpin Steak initially focused on first-tier cities. An owner from a second-tier city in Central China saw this business opportunity and quickly opened stores in Wuhan and other cities, making many local people believe that this was the authentic well-done steak. This is the power of racing against time. Of course, this case is suspected of being a copycat. We must save time, skip unnecessary brainstorming sessions, get to the front line, and grasp the essence. Time is a magical thing. If Beijing had not had three snowfalls that year, making it difficult to get a taxi in the capital, Didi might not have grown into a giant so quickly, and the situation in the industry might not be like this.

From another perspective, we need to save consumers time in understanding us. If an advertisement cannot be understood within three seconds, it is a failure. Nowadays, everyone is like an emperor, holding his mobile phone to review memorials. If he can't seize three seconds, then what he will miss is eternity. Therefore, the traditional marketing model of steady progress and patient guidance is no longer suitable for you in the early stages. Once you have a certain degree of popularity, perhaps consumers will take a closer look at what you have planned. You must recognize the stage you are in.

This year, there have been a lot of articles analyzing how Procter & Gamble and Unilever fell from grace, and they all make a lot of sense. But the essence is just one point: the fast-moving consumer goods business ultimately depends on the population structure. If products and marketing strategies fail to keep up with demographic changes, they will be eliminated. In fact, Drucker once summarized it in the nature of the company. Marketers must raise their vision. This is what the saying "If you want to see a thousand miles away, you must climb to a higher level" means.

If he sells the product to the wrong person using the right method at the wrong time, he will not be successful. Remember, Marketing is only one part of business, not everything.

The internal rules and nature of each industry are different. Just as most advertising companies go bankrupt due to payment issues, most real estate companies go bankrupt because of excessive leverage and collapsed capital chains. Most of the so-called platforms crash because they do not have the characteristics of high-frequency repurchase. The majority of beverage companies’ sales occur in the summer, while tea companies have to look at policy trends and whether God will give them any chance of survival this year. If a fruit company cannot sell its fruits in a week, they will rot in the warehouse. On the surface, marketing is the same, but in fact, you must formulate a plan based on your own characteristics.

All successful strategies are ultimately formulated in combination with one's own conditions. Suppose you were very successful in selling cosmetics before and now you want to sell steel. You must first break away from your past thinking path and re-understand your customers and the essence of your current business, rather than applying past experience.

Experience is important, but many times experience is a shackle that blocks your vision and depth of thinking. Let me share an experience of trying to break out of the existing framework. When I feel mentally exhausted, I go to experience a new service or go to a new place. Experience and knowledge are all built up with money. Pianists, painters, calligraphers, all of them are built up with money.

In order to understand the entire money-making method of high-end cruise companies, I went to all the paid places on the cruise ship to exchange experiences as a consumer, and I didn't care even if I was ripped off. I memorized all their rhetoric and found that it really made sense. It was ten times better than the rhetoric of the roadside stores in shopping malls. Why do many people fail to adapt to the marketing environment in startup companies? It’s because they cannot get out of their past experiences and do not acquire new knowledge.

My fitness trainer told me:

To judge a person's athletic level, we mainly look at his sense of rhythm.

The same is true for marketing. It is difficult for a startup to achieve the influence and reputation of a century-old company in just a few years. What century-old stores need to do now is to maintain old customers and prevent brand aging. The marketing of a startup company only needs to increase awareness, sales, and downloads. Don’t try to have a plan that includes everything. That perfect plan only exists on the PPT. If you achieve one goal at a time, you will be a master. If you want to kill three birds with one stone, that is something you can't find easily. You must have a sense of rhythm, know what to do at what time, what to play with what user base, and what to promote under what industry structure.

The marketing director of a beverage company came to me and said: Do whatever you want, become China's Coca-Cola within three years. But actually, this is not very realistic. The success of Coca-Cola is also due to the power of time and the habit formed over the years. If you can cultivate tens of thousands of loyal and addicted fans in three years, it will be a huge success.

Marketing has completely moved beyond the level of pure creativity and emotion, but emotion and creativity must not be lacking. On this basis, we must integrate with numbers and data (not the cookies and so-called big data of the past), not stick to nitpicking, be bold in imagination, decisively embrace change, deeply explore the intrinsic value of numbers, and find real consumers. Purely emotional talents are no longer the main characters in advertising. Reason, sensibility and taste must coexist.

For example, Ctrip currently has 300 million registered users, and the average annual spending of its customers is as high as 15,000 yuan. For him, travel itself is a rigid demand for business travel. It is very important to increase the number of orders in all aspects of travel. Simply relying on copywriting , videos and other means cannot solve the problem here. They use more technologies, such as recording your geographic location through an APP. If you live in Shanghai and suddenly appear at West Lake, you will receive a text message giving you a coupon for a nearby hotel. If you have checked for flights to Beijing tomorrow through the APP but have not placed an order, you will receive a text message to inform you of flight tickets, hotels, lounge coupons, etc. Image social software like "in" analyzes pictures uploaded by massive users and then combines them with brand owners. They call it the "UGCcenter" project, which has deviated from the simple hard advertising model of the past.

This is also the reason why many startups fail in marketing. They either focus too much on emotion or too much on technology. In fact, both must be combined and neither is indispensable.

After all, we are all passers-by of the times. At certain moments, we thought we had grasped the pulse of the times, but in fact, we were just lucky to be chosen by the times. All we can do is try our best and give it our all. The rest is up to God's will. As Mr. Sun Yat-sen said: The general trend of the world is unstoppable. Those who follow it will prosper, and those who go against it will perish. In fact, there are no successful marketers, it’s just that the times give you and me opportunities. Whether you can catch it depends on your luck.

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The author of this article @沈帅波 Compiled and published by (APP Top Promotion), please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!