From 1 to 10, a marketing strategy for leapfrogging growth

Recently, the topics of new consumption and Double 11 have continued to heat up, and there are many different opinions on growth.

Too many people have talked about the facts and opinions.

Today we will only talk about the method.

New consumer brands have gone from being popular to being the target of public criticism. On the one hand, this is due to the false prosperity caused by the inherent capital bubble and excessive squeezing of traffic dividends. On the other hand, it is also because the new brands that grew up in 2019 and 2020 have inevitably entered a growth bottleneck period.

After going from 0 to 1, we had seed users and word of mouth, and even made it to the top 10 in the segment. When we were trying to move up, the road suddenly became difficult:

Traffic dividends have peaked, conversion rates have declined, and the cost of purchasing traffic for both Tmall and Douyin is approaching the red line

Building a brand and accumulating brand assets is a long-term battle. It is the right and difficult path, but it will not work in the short term.

What should I do if I’m stuck in this ditch?

Let's take a step back and say that whether it is a Taobao brand or a brand that has grown up from interest e-commerce, as long as they stick to the principle of being small and beautiful, or even if one supply chain can easily make 100 ones, they can survive well.

Not all companies need to reach 10, and not all companies need the effect of branding. For a detailed discussion, see the old article Demonized Growth, Fission, and Community.

However, if you want to enter the club of billion-unit products and billion-dollar revenue, create a viable brand, and obtain large traffic and high premiums from the brand, crossing the growth gap is the only way.

To cross the growth chasm from the growth period of 1 to 10, everything from strategy to organization, supply chain, channels and brands must undergo adjustments or even reshaping to adapt to the new stage.

Without going into too much detail, let’s get back to marketing. From 1 to 10, what kind of strategy can more effectively deal with the growth curse and cross the growth gap?

Let's talk about a method that has been talked about too much:

5,000 Xiaohongshu Koc reviews + 2,000 Zhihu Q&A + endorsement by top anchors = 1 new brand

Is this method effective? efficient.

But how effective is it? At most, we can push the company through the breakthrough stage from 0 to 1. Coupled with a hot track and good products, the first wave of victory is in sight.

Therefore, if we continue to move forward on the basis of initial victory, we will often have an illusion that online traffic is unlimited, and we only need to rely on niche matching driven by big data to always find our own users, from 0 to 1, 1 to 10, 10 to 100, in a rolling growth that is endless.

However, in fact, relying on the matching of grass-roots promotion and precise delivery, after completing step 1, it often falls into the quagmire of slowing growth and cost bottlenecks.

The root cause is:

Even if TA is precisely targeted, the number of individuals who can be triggered to take immediate action by recommendation or planting grass is relatively limited, while the group of people that can be easily captured by traffic algorithms (early bird attributes, willing to try new things, daring to try and fail, and price sensitive) are the targets that almost all businesses are scrambling for. They are willing to throw out all kinds of low-priced olive branches to grab them in the private domain, resulting in a huge oversupply and further diluting the already limited loyalty and stickiness.

In other words, this wave of people constitutes many 1s in new consumption, which seems to be thriving, but its size cannot support the growth from 1 to 10.

When the previous strategy no longer works. In order to achieve growth and maintain a beautiful upward curve, many companies choose to overdraw the vitality of their brand in advance, relying on drastic price cuts to attract customers, and relying on the freeloaders to obtain short-term reports that go against the trend. As a result, the curve does not last long and falls; or they simply brush orders and never return, relying on brushing to exchange weight and platform traffic overflow, and in exchange for natural sales to barely break even on ROI in a short period of time, but it is only to prolong life.

Actually

From 0 to 1 and from 1 to 10, from goals to methods are completely different.

The goal of this stage should be to maintain growth while breaking into the mainstream population and building brand assets.

The specific approach can be summarized in two sentences:

Old product, new users

New products, old users

It seems simple and self-evident, but it is difficult to truly master it without spending money, stepping into pitfalls, and learning bitter lessons.

Here are the methods in detail:

1. Use old products to attract new users

Whether it is the Internet or new consumption, it is very difficult to attract new customers at the moment.

First of all, attracting new customers should rely on core main products (old products) - the products must be of good quality, have a high ceiling in the track, and have room for bargaining in the supply chain and channels. At the same time, they must have a certain degree of popularity in the circle and be able to absorb traffic after promotion, ensuring a positive word-of-mouth effect after purchase.

So how do we convert the mainstream population and do it in a high-profile way?

In fact, spending half a month on integrated online and offline marketing, having a one-month explosion of celebrity micro-endorsement, and two big pulses a year... these so-called high-profile moves are basically equivalent to wasting money ineffectively.

Our answer is:

Maintain high frequency and continuous advertising in a relatively large traffic pool that can be repeatedly reached

Even if the budget is limited, you should carve small pieces of the pie from the large traffic pool instead of investing in n vertical positions.

Maintaining frequency on a yearly basis is not a one-shot deal.

Repeated reach is easy to understand. If the competition in the big track you are in is fierce and you have to seize the minds of consumers, there is no shortcut except repetition. If it is an innovative category, you also have the obligation of market education and need to continue to invest in education costs.

A large traffic pool refers to a position that reaches the mainstream population with high frequency, covering at least tens of millions of people. Only in a large traffic pool can there be a real mainstream population and sufficient conversion space, which can produce a significant pulling effect.

It seems to be everywhere? Don't panic, let's look at two examples:

1. Douyin and Kuaishou information flow advertising

As the largest Internet traffic pool at present, Douyin and Kuaishou have scene planting and consumption closed loop. However, its core information flow advertising, whether brand or bidding, cannot form repeated and high-frequency reach to a single group of people. Because this goes against the logic of content distribution on the platform, in terms of the delivery mechanism, in order to maximize efficiency, the platform desperately encourages continuous planning and creation of new content. If the user does not show strong interest in the material, such as adding it to cart, collecting it, clicking on it, etc., then you will basically not see this material a second time.

Therefore, the users that Douyin and Kuaishou can capture are basically those who show strong interest after watching the grass-planting content once (whether they enter the live broadcast room or like the video). Their size is enough for the brand to cold start from 0 to 1, but it cannot support from 1 to 10.

So is it possible to use the public-to-private approach? First, draw the mainstream audience into the private domain of content, and then reach out to them repeatedly.

It seems logical, but in reality it is not as good as imagined.

First, it takes a long time. Even if you broadcast and stream 24 hours a day, it takes a long time to really stabilize the volume.

Secondly, the funnel is too large, and the logic of watching content and shopping consumption are different - it is not easy to convert the former into the latter, and there are also bugs in the logic of attracting traffic and making money.

For example, in the store’s own live broadcast room, basically a combination of punches (loss-making traffic and money-making profit), but those who take advantage of the traffic-making money and those who pay for the profit-making money are not the same group of people at all. It is difficult for the latter to easily place an order for an unfamiliar brand, let alone pay a premium. Therefore, although it seems that there is a lot of private domain traffic for self-broadcasting, apart from the freeloaders and one-time users, there are not many truly high-value repurchasing users.

2. Live broadcast room of top anchors

The live broadcast rooms of top anchors rely on a wide range of skus to attract as many idle users as possible, use red envelope benefits to retain fans, and then use the advantages of the supply chain and product selection team to obtain preferential prices below the market price, converting users who have precise intentions for brands and categories. The premise of this process is: a sufficiently large traffic pool. So the first point is satisfied.

The problem arises in the high frequency. In the live broadcast room, there are dozens or hundreds of products bombarded without interruption in one night. Coupled with the competition of hand speed and grabbing red envelopes, users have almost no time to remember and recall. If you want to achieve a high-frequency effect, you must ensure that you promote the same product at least 1-2 times a month, and rely on the host’s description and recommendation strength (better than other products). To be honest, it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Even if the requirements for high-frequency sales are met, the host’s recommendation itself is a double-edged sword. It has an endorsement effect, but it will also dilute the memory point of the brand itself. It is easy for consumers to associate brand images that appear on the same media together and categorize them. When a brand’s awareness is far less than that of the anchor, it will automatically be classified as a brand recommended by the host.

For example, Yuze. In fact, in addition to Li Jiaqi, Yuze has also invested a lot in Xiaohongshu, but users only remember that it is a brand supported by Jiaqi. At critical moments, they only trust the anchor, not the brand - because the process is to use the brand premium to discount the trust assets of the anchor and fans.

So what kind of advertising can serve as a traffic pool for high-frequency reach? We used to talk about 6+ frequency control, but now no one controls it anymore. In a fragmented media environment, the frequency requirement is as high as possible.

The options are:

1. Offline-friendly products: physical scenes of life trajectories

In offline contact point layout, channels come first and advertising comes second. Channels are the foundation and basis.

Today, from a marketing perspective, we will only talk about advertising.

Find the life trajectory of target users, deploy offline touchpoints on a large scale, reach tens of millions of users per month, and ensure the frequency of reaching the same individual:

The community reaches the same group of people most frequently. The delivery cycle can be 1-2 months, or alternate months or quarters.

The impact of the business district on the same group of people is roughly measured in weeks, and the campaign should be launched for at least three consecutive months.

Airport and high-speed rail advertising must be purchased on an annual basis in order to achieve the goal of repeatedly reaching business travelers within a year.

TV hard advertising or OTT is not highly recommended as the TV power-on rate is declining, but it is still effective in low-tier cities or among the elderly.

2. E-commerce friendly products: high daily activity, national-level applications

For fixed advertising space in apps with large daily activity, you can choose to buy carousel advertising by CPD or CPT instead of CPM, so as to reach the same group of people, although it seems more expensive.

This is how Apple has always delivered. It seems to cost a lot of money, but it is actually far more effective than a wave of CPM.

It is impossible to buy CPD every day, but you can lock in a large daily active APP, and launch it in different time periods according to your marketing node layout, repeatedly reach out to people with sticky usage, and ensure a relatively high frequency within a year.

3. Bundle big IP

IP content is still the best binder, with both large traffic and high stickiness, achieving high-frequency reach:

Expert IP, a large number of them are scattered all over the place (similar to the 5,000 experts strategy mentioned above), whether it is the top or the middle and lower parts, it costs a lot, but the basic effect is only in the delivery. The correct way to start is: bundle top influencers with large fan base, invest continuously, focus on a significant selling point, repeatedly display, and repeatedly reach fans.

Variety shows + film and television dramas, I won’t say much, it’s 2022, and top content is still selling at a high price, because media that can stably reach a group of people more than 10 times and has rich display space is still scarce.

Some people say that instead of binding someone else's IP, it is better to create your own IP content or image to automatically gain traffic and attention, such as Lingna Belle and Dong Mingzhu's 22-year-old successor.

This mysterious self-confidence is very dangerous. On a scale of 1 to 10, you haven’t even established your brand. You are neither Disney nor Gree. Why do you think a certain brand asset (IP image) can stand out?

The benefits of these media or IPs are not only that they can continuously reach the mainstream population and continuously convert weakly interested users in the general population, but also that they have a spillover and accumulation effect on the brand:

1. Lighthouse effect: let all channels see your campaign and be more willing to play together

2. There is enough time and advertising space to build brand assets. Compared with the fleeting Douyin information flow or the fast-paced introduction in the live broadcast room, it allows users to digest and remember more easily, forming an accumulation of brand awareness.

Speaking of brands, let me say a few more words. The marketing industry is a bit too fragmented now:

Either be a pitcher, manipulate traffic monetization, and use products, supply chain, and content to serve the channel, pursuing maximum conversion in the current period

Either you create a pure brand, it seems that the current definition of a brand is to shoot a micro-film, a viral video, get an endorsement, or make a cross-border effort, and everything will be beautiful.

But the accumulation of brand assets and growth are not contradictory, nor are they separate.

The correct path is:

In a marketing model that can see significant growth in the current period, invest in brands, create consumer influence and premium, and ultimately outperform the returns from channel dividends.

Its logo can be referenced:

The number of searches for brand words exceeds that for category words, and the traffic generated by the brand’s own broadcast room is all profitable

2. Bring old users with new products

If it's important, repeat it three times.

In the growth stage from 1 to 10:

New products are developed for old users, not new users.

New products are developed for old users, not new users.

New products are developed for old users, not new users.

Why not target new users?

Because in the early and mid-stages of development, companies need to polish a new product to expand new customer groups, but they have neither resources nor leverage:
Your resources should be invested in the continued growth and expansion of mainstream big-ticket items, rather than in expanding new customer groups with new products.

Someone said, how about I repeat it from 0 to 1 again? Of course you can. Many traffic operators do the same thing. They create another brand and allocate resources again. But that is not the topic for today. Today we are talking about from 1 to 10. We must give priority to investing resources in the development of core large products.

New products do not consume or dilute resources, but help increase sales or profits.

To achieve this goal, we must let old users, users who can be captured now, pay for new products and act as disseminators of new products.

From the perspective of product design, priority should be given to related products that may be used by the same group of users in the same scenario. You can also start from the core capabilities and assets of the company and find other needs that can meet the same type of users (similar to NetEase Yanxuan, which focuses on food, clothing, housing and transportation for the same group of people).

In terms of pricing model, it is important to distinguish whether the primary goal at the moment is to achieve high profits or to achieve large volumes:

Prioritize high-profit products:

Targeting the post-70s and post-80s generations, we offer more functions and upgraded models. The more versatile, the higher the price.

Targeting the post-90s and post-95s, we offer small packages, more segmented products and single functions. The more professional, the higher the price.

Prioritize increasing sales volume and choose high-frequency, low-priced products:

User purchase participation is low, and old users can almost make decisions based on their trust in the brand and buy it without hesitation (the meaning of the brand is to reduce the cost of selection, and no matter how bad it is, it can't be that bad)

This routine seems easy and effective, but the important thing is to exercise restraint:

(1) Do not forget the mental relevance and do not launch a bunch of unrelated low-priced products that disrupt the mind and turn brand operations into a speculative project.

(2) Do not be blindly confident and easily enter an industry that already has a leading brand (the brand is stronger than the category).

From the channel perspective, in one sentence, we should maximize the capabilities of existing channels and consider channel compatibility at the beginning of product design.

From the perspective of marketing, there are usually three methods based on different definitions of "old users":

1. Existing users

These users are the first and easiest to capture when new products are launched. Here are three things you can do:

Information, benefits and topics

Inform old users of new product launches and provide exclusive benefits as soon as possible. The first two are routine operations and will not be elaborated on. Here is some talk:

We hope that old users will not only become our buyers, but also disseminators.

Therefore, when launching a new product, you need to create topics that they are happy to discuss and easy to spread:

Sufficient trust endorsement - inspire pride

Packaging design with high image quality - automatic image printing

Design topics with strong participation - arouse discussion

For example, for our recently launched smart fitness mirror, we have launched an activity called “If your whole family exercises 300 days a year, you can get the full amount for free.” In addition to stimulating purchases, what is more important is to raise topics and get everyone discussing.

2. Interested old users

The so-called interested old users refer to those who have intention or interest in the product, but no real transaction is made due to product or price reasons.

We can still try again with new products, following the clues that generate user interest:

Direct train or Jingzhuntong targeted off-site users for search users

For users who have already been followed, do a good job of content + targeted fan promotion in the private domain of content

Speaking of private domain, let me expand on this a little bit. In stages 1 to 10, the role of private domain is mainly to stimulate old users to repurchase and try new products, but it cannot play the main role in driving growth:

First, the brand’s appeal and attention are not strong enough to attract enough private domain people;

Second, during the climbing stage, the main products are still under development, there are not enough core SKUs, and the conversion efficiency of the private domain may not keep up (platform types are not included).

The brands that have made it to the top in the private domain are almost all leading or strong and well-known brands, and have already gone through the growth stages of 1 to 10. Back to this point in time, private domains can be nurtured, but don’t rush to squeeze sales:

3. Recognize old users

Users who are already aware of our brand and products - that is, users who have been reached by the original advertisement or channel. Strictly speaking, these users are not our old users, but this type of situation is still worth mentioning.

Because there is a common problem:

Should we use existing advertising media to promote new products?

The answer is:

If the categories of new products and core products are very different, you can do a 2:8 split, with 20% going to new products

If the new product is only slightly different from the core product, or only differs in model or style, there is no need to split it.

If there is a big difference between the categories of new and old products, users who are not converted by the old products (due to insufficient demand, too new category, etc.) may be converted by the new products based on their familiarity with the brand.

However, if the new and old products belong to the same category and only differ in price and packaging, users who were not attracted to the products before will be attracted because of the low price, which is a waste - the conversion can be completely completed in e-commerce stores and live broadcast rooms, so there is no need to waste money on advertising.

You may wonder, old products can attract new users and drive greater growth, but new products attract old users, and it seems that the channel investment is not that great, and the visible growth is not as obvious as the former. So why do it?

Here are the reasons:

First, our current resources are limited. New products attract old users, which does not consume too many resources, but can also contribute to some growth.

Second, it is a long-term investment project

The continued promotion of the main products is an investment in brand assets;

Continuously activating old users is an investment in user assets;

Third, make full attempts to explore the second curve in the later stage.

Finally finished writing.

If you feel that there is too much content, go back to those six words:

Old product, new users

New products, old users

Author: Taro and Cat Talk

Source: Taro and Cat Talk