When others are following the marketing trend, what else can you think about?

"Tell me about the most painful thing that happened to you. I'll start with this - you felt very uncomfortable after a breakup, and you couldn't help but contact your ex, only to find out that he/she had a new lover. You quickly went to take a shower to wake up." - XX bathroom brand posted such a Weibo.

"A hit to the knee..."

“Ah, me too…”

After a few hours, there were eight comments and twelve reposts on Weibo.

This is the current situation of many brands doing interactive marketing - spending a lot of energy and team resources to do it just because others are doing it too.

But they don’t ask these questions: What is the premise for such interactive marketing to be effective (one marketing method cannot solve all problems of all companies)? Do the current problems in our company meet this premise?

With just a little analysis, you will find that as a durable product (which means there is no need for daily interaction to increase repeat purchases), as a purely practical product (which means consumers will not view it as an "extension of their own personality" like they do with cars , and thus actively participate in the interaction), and as a product that is mainly influenced by third-party opinions (which means that the main focus should be on influencer marketing), why shouldn't there be interactive marketing for bathroom products?

This means that we are not strategically using certain marketing methods to achieve certain marketing goals, but simply imitating other people's marketing methods to achieve some unclear purposes.

One very important reason is that we try various marketing methods every day, but we don’t understand the prerequisites for this method to work.

This was certainly more feasible in the past, because one only had to invest in Baidu to basically guarantee a 60-point result.

However, with the advent of the fragmented era, almost no marketing method (such as social communication) is considered feasible, and the prerequisites for various methods to be effective are becoming more and more limited - often certain strict conditions need to be met before this method will play an appropriate role.

This is why "imitation of experience" and "paper talk" often coexist, and why people who have referred to a lot of experience and learned a lot of knowledge become "dogmatic" - we don't think about the premise for the validity of a method at all.

Throughout history, many people have talked about Han Xin's "Fight with His Back to the River" - putting soldiers in a desperate situation and inspiring their fighting spirit, as if "putting soldiers in a desperate situation" is an effective method of combat.

Ma Su, a subordinate of Zhuge Liang during the Three Kingdoms period, also talked about this case with great relish, feeling that the soldiers trapped in the mountains were more motivated to fight. You know the ending. Zhuge Liang executed Ma Su with tears in his eyes.

But many people have not asked themselves this question: What are the prerequisites for the tactic of fighting a last-ditch battle?

Then you will find that: Han Xin not only fought a desperate battle, but also ambushed 2,000 special forces in the rear of the enemy and occupied a large camp, putting the enemy in a pincer attack situation; Han Xin also took the initiative to attack and pretended to retreat at the beginning, causing the enemy to relax their vigilance...

When those who imitate Han Xin's experience do not understand the prerequisites for the establishment of the tactic of fighting with their backs to the river, they naturally fall into failure (which is what we call talking about war on paper).

Therefore, for today’s marketers, when faced with countless successful cases to learn from every day, it becomes increasingly important to identify the “preconditions” behind them.

Generally speaking, such identification and judgment should at least include the following aspects:

“We recently held an event and brand awareness has increased” - But how do you know that the marketing goal of “brand awareness” is important at the moment?

For example, I saw an O2O project before, which emphasized brand awareness in marketing and focused on brand image packaging in advertising (because most advertisements do this), but this may not be the problem that this product needs to solve at the moment.

We know that the consumer's complete decision to purchase a product is divided into different steps (needs identification - information search - alternatives evaluation - purchase), and "brand awareness" as a symbol of product differentiation and quality assurance is used to solve the problem of the second half of the decision.

At that time, this category was in the first stage of "demand identification" - consumers had no habit of consuming this category at all, so it was necessary to convert new users through motivational marketing.

After all, when consumers have no motivation for a product category, the marketing goal of brand awareness is meaningless - for example, I have no purchasing motivation for the "sanitary napkin" category, so the brand awareness of sanitary napkins is meaningless to me.

For marketers, marketing activities have various different goals - such as increasing brand awareness, improving brand loyalty, increasing new order conversions, increasing user usage frequency, increasing the net recommendation value of products , etc. Each goal is worth pursuing because there is a relatively clear premise.

In order for us to know that our current goal is correct, we need to be prepared to identify these premises and ask ourselves: If the current goal is correct, what are the premises for its establishment? If any conditions are met,

Hunger marketing, social communication, fear marketing, celebrity endorsements, emphasis on sales leadership... We are faced with various marketing methods or advertising appeals, but in fact each one has relatively strict premises for establishment (not always winning).

For example, after Xiaomi started its hunger marketing a few years ago, a large number of people imitated it. Even those who opened online stores selling cakes had limited-time sales.

However, there is no analysis at all on the premise that Xiaomi’s “hunger marketing” was successful back then - research has found that when a product lacks substitutes (Xiaomi was priced at 1,999 yuan back then), hunger marketing can increase brand preference; but when users feel that there are obvious substitutes for the product, hunger marketing will instead reduce users’ preference for the brand.

(Note: Due to space limitations, the research content will not be discussed in detail, and will be cited in the appendix later)

There are many marketing or delivery channels to choose from now, and in fact each channel has its prerequisites for achieving maximum results.

For example, some time ago I received a text message push from Dingdang Express Pharmacy, telling me to quickly buy medicine, not because I was sick, but because the medicine was on sale.

But in fact, a large number of studies have found that push-type channels are not very effective for practical products (practical products are more suitable for solicitation-type channels, such as search).

Not to mention, medicines are not “products that can be purchased at any time” (like snacks), and the driving force for discounts and promotions is very limited.

Therefore, the channel also needs to ask itself: What are the prerequisites for such a channel to be effective? If this channel doesn't work well, what might be the reason?

In short, in today's society, you will always be faced with almost infinite choices. In addition to "unconscious imitation", you should consciously establish "anti-imitation ability" and constantly ask yourself: What are the prerequisites for the current plan to be established and effective?

We should not be like those generals who blindly imitated Han Xin's fight with his back to the river without considering the premise at that time.

In addition to "not understanding the premise of a method", another important reason for "unconscious imitation errors" is the tendency to blindly prove oneself .

Many times, we learn a certain method not in order to truly improve our behavior, but to first have a certain behavior and then look for corresponding theoretical methods to justify and excuse our behavior.

For example, the most common "lean startup thinking" - a company that makes apps, before launching the app, when asked "what needs does our product meet", evaded the question:

"We are a lean startup. We launch the product first and then see what happens. What era is this? Why are you still thinking so much?"

Then after the APP was launched, it was not iterated according to market demand.

And this is the misunderstanding of the popular theory of "Lean Startup": Many people think that Lean Startup is equivalent to reducing thinking. In fact, Lean Startup does not reduce your efforts in thinking, but only adjusts the stage of thinking - in the past, all thinking and analysis were before the product was released, and after the application of Lean Startup, it is equivalent to putting part of the thinking and analysis work after the product is released.

Therefore, the essence of "Lean Startup" is to allow you to quickly launch products for market testing, and to continuously track the products after launch (putting the energy of prediction into tracking), rather than letting you give up thinking directly.

What most people do is that they are too lazy to think, and when the theory of lean entrepreneurship comes out, they use it as an excuse for not thinking without fully understanding it.

"Don't say I'm stupid, I'm a lean entrepreneur!"

This phenomenon is also prevalent in marketing, which has had a huge negative impact on the judgment of a large number of marketers.

For example, I have met people who both support positioning theory and deny it (even though they may not have studied positioning carefully).

When encountering important market opportunities but unwilling to make self-transformation, the positioning theory is used to say: "The most important thing for an enterprise is to continue to stick to one positioning. If it is always looking for new opportunities, it will distort its positioning and lose its strategic focus."

But once they start to follow the industry trend (for example, if others do live streaming , I will do it too), they suddenly become opponents of positioning theory: "Positioning is now rigid and outdated. Look at LeTV, which does everything but still doesn't survive. I also want to build an ecosystem."

From the beginning to the end, we have forgotten the essential purpose of learning and mastering a certain theoretical method: we want the method to correct our behavior and inspire our thinking, rather than become a tool for self-proof.

Another type of "unconscious imitation error" is to directly take the data as the conclusion (which is equivalent to unconsciously copying the data itself).

Some time ago, when I was working on a complete marketing training method system, I asked people to conduct internal testing of the initial content. Some people gave feedback that the number of words was too long.

Then people on my team said, “The word count should be reduced.”

But I am against drawing such a conclusion, because this behavior is actually: directly imitating the data itself - "too many words" is a data provided by the user, and then we do not make any inferences (looking for the real reason why the user thinks so), but make decisions directly based on the data itself, which is of course wrong.

So I asked, "Now imagine a person who you think is the most mediocre person in your mind. How do you think he or she would view this data?"

The answer I got was: "TA will also come to this conclusion directly."

That’s not right, because if everyone can do it in the same way, why are we better than others?

Then I thought, if Zhang Xiaolong or Steve Jobs saw such data, what would they think?

They certainly won't directly imitate the data itself, but rather analyze why users think so.

Later I found out that the trainees thought the word count was too much not because of the word count itself, but because we defined the user needs incorrectly (we shouldn’t let them read it temporarily before working).

Nowadays, we are faced with massive amounts of data every day and need to make a lot of decisions, but what most people do is to regard the data itself as the answer.

This is equivalent to directly copying other people's results into your own conclusions, rather than using the data as a reference and making your own independent judgments.

So we are flooded with so-called surveys like this:

• I didn’t know which slogan was better, so I sent 10 slogans to the user group and asked everyone which one they liked better and then chose one.

(Well, so what remains are poetic slogans, rather than strategic slogans like "If you're afraid of getting angry, drink Wanglaoji" back then)

• The company has invested in 10 new products and doesn’t know which one to make additional investment in, so it looks at the growth rate of the business and chooses the one with the highest growth and the most profit.

(Well, so Kodak will definitely cut off its digital camera business, because disruptive innovation will definitely have a low growth rate and poor profitability in the early stages)

• I don’t know how to improve the product, so I ask users directly: How do you think the product should be improved?

(Well, in 2007, Advantage McCann conducted a survey, which showed that most people in developed countries could not accept integrated products, and concluded that the iPhone would fail in developed countries)

People who are truly insightful will not take data as the answer without understanding why the data is generated. They will understand why such data is generated, treat the data itself as a phenomenon, and then come to their own answers through indirect inference.

For example, Chrysler previously conducted a survey in the United States, asking consumers what kind of car they wanted. The answers they got were "more luxurious", "better engine", "preferably more fuel-efficient", etc.

But before using such data, you have to ask yourself this question: Why do consumers give such answers?

In fact, as long as you have learned about cognitive psychology, you will know that people cannot directly understand their own desires. Under the rational mode of "answering questions", people will answer the answer that seems most reasonable, rather than the real reason .

(When asked why they chose a certain car, everyone can say that the engine is good, but they may not realize that they were influenced by the car model next to the car)

Later, Chrysler changed its approach and looked for consumers' initial memories of Jeeps. It discovered that many people associated Jeeps with "open spaces outdoors" and "the freedom of Western cowboys." It eventually discovered that American consumers had similar associations with Jeeps as with "horses."

Then, in the new model, the car was made more like a horse by making the headlights round, and ultimately sales increased significantly.

But if you look at the data directly, no one would suggest “I want a car that looks like a horse”.

At this point someone may ask: Why can some people draw valid conclusions from the data, while others have to directly take the data as the result?

I found that an important reason is that most people do not understand the “micro causes” of a thing.

For example, a platform that emphasizes "convenience" and delivers fruits to homes found that the overall conversion effect of Focus Elevator Media was better than that of outdoor advertising in a certain campaign. How should an effective conclusion be drawn?

If we directly judge the data from a macro perspective, the most likely conclusion is of course that "segmented channels are better." But at this moment, your judgment between the two is actually unclear.

If you want to get more effective answers, you have to understand the "micro reasons" of consumer decision-making and see how consumers are influenced in Focus Media and Outdoor.

For example, the Focus Media posters are very close to people in the closed space of an elevator, which is equivalent to shortening the "psychological distance". When people face a "close psychological distance", they are more sensitive to cost information (such as whether it saves effort, money, etc.), and are more likely to consume products with "convenience" as their main selling point.

Outdoor advertising is open and long-distance, which is equivalent to increasing the "psychological distance". At this time, people are more sensitive to benefit information (such as additional functions and value) (so you see luxury goods mainly advertised in long-distance outdoor advertising), which may not be so suitable for products that emphasize "convenience to home".

For example, it is also necessary to analyze the impact of consumers' browsing time, number of repeated browsing times, psychological state during browsing, etc. on consumption, in order to ultimately find better conclusions.

However, if there is no such "micro-analysis" and only general macro data, in most cases all we can do is "copy the conclusions from the data."

In many cases, whether or not a "micro" analysis is conducted has a huge impact on the conclusions and practices, and directly determines whether we directly imitate and copy the conclusions of the data, or make insights based on the data.

For example, pregnant women at that time often suffered from a disease called "puerperal fever" after giving birth, and the mortality rate was very high. After comparing data from various hospitals, a doctor found that the incidence of puerperal fever in the "Second Hospital" in their city was very low at that time.

After a comprehensive comparison of the differences between the two hospitals, we found that the biggest difference is that the Second Hospital uses more midwives to deliver babies, while the other hospitals basically use medical students.

What decision will you make at this time?

I think most people would think the solution is obvious: it must be the inexperience of medical students that causes the illnesses in pregnant women, so a law should be passed requiring all hospitals to use midwives.

If this kind of thinking occurs, it is obvious: no micro-analysis is done, and conclusions are drawn only through macro-data observation.

Why do medical students cause illness in pregnant women? Do you really understand the mechanism of action?

It was not until later that the doctor discovered that the real reason was that medical students often took on the task of dissecting corpses, and they rushed to deliver babies without washing their hands directly after dissecting the corpses, causing the germs from the corpses to infect the mothers.

So the real solution should be: please wash your hands before delivering the baby. (rather than prohibiting medical students from delivering babies)

Such micro-analysis can often help us reduce being misled by data, but it is also often frowned upon.

For example, we learned in high school that the person who revealed the laws of human genetics was Mendel. Through pea hybridization, he discovered the law of inheritance of traits from generation to generation.

However, Darwin, the originator of the theory of evolution, has always been dismissive of Mendel. He believed that it was important to know that species are evolving on a macro scale, and did not think that Mendel's research was meaningful.

But it is undeniable that it is precisely because humans continue to discover the specific microscopic mechanisms of action of various things (and later discovered DNA) that more and more phenomena have been explained.

The same is true for marketing. Now there is more and more data, and the methods are becoming more and more complicated. We also need to understand the micro reasons behind these phenomena more and more.

Nowadays, countless marketing methods, marketing theories and data are flooding our brains. What’s even more terrifying is that these popular methods change drastically every few months or even weeks.

For marketers, there are no longer obvious choices like they did a decade ago (for example, everyone is watching TV, there is nothing wrong with that). Instead, they need to judge or track the effectiveness of various methods more rationally.

In order to be more discerning, when everyone is blindly imitating, you need to:

• Identify the assumptions that make a method work;
• Reduce the tendency of self-justification, and use theory to self-examine rather than self-justify;
• Don't take data as the answer, explore the micro-causes.