How do Zhong Xue Gao, Perfect Diary, etc. achieve user growth?

In the new consumption era, with consumers' strong patriotic enthusiasm and national cultural confidence, domestic brands are rising and developing, creating a "flywheel effect" and helping brands achieve super-linear growth.

It can be said that the past few years have been a time of rapid development for domestic products. Zhong Xue Gao has successfully established itself as a new national trend ice cream from 0 to 1; Chongqing Qingyise Hotpot has broken the traditional hotpot brand image and successfully occupied the minds of young people with a new cyberpunk style; Perfect Diary has gone from obscurity to listing on the Nasdaq with a market value of more than 15 billion, becoming a model for many brands to study on their growth path; and Nayuki Tea has successfully taken the throne of the first stock of new tea drinks in just a few years, and the emerging brand Wang Baobao took only three years from listing to annual sales of 800 million, and so on.

It is not easy for emerging brands to stand out in the fiercely competitive new consumer era. How do these emerging brands leverage the flywheel effect and achieve breakthrough growth from their establishment to their rapid popularity?

Many brands have achieved explosive growth in this era, not because the brands have created a whole new field, but because the brands’ products, communications and other aspects have their own social co-creation marketing logic.

0 1. Unique product strength is the key to a brand’s market expansion

In terms of products, how a brand can differentiate itself from competitors and establish new brand awareness is the key for the brand to gain a foothold in the market. Taking Zhong Xue Gao as an example, we will talk about the role of brand product strength in brand growth.

In terms of product flavor creation, Zhong Xuegao uses precious ingredients such as red grapes from Turpan, ganluo from Ireland, and pink chocolate from Ecuador to differentiate its products from similar products on the market. Coupled with the scarcity of these raw materials themselves, limited quantity has become a selling point of the product.

In terms of product shape, Zhong Xuegao breaks the inherent image of traditional ice cream and adopts a Chinese tile-like shape combined with a hollow carved "回" character on the top of the ice cream, giving the product traditional cultural heritage.

In terms of product naming, Zhong Xue Gao has spared no effort in creating the concept of Chinese ice cream, integrating "tiles and Chinese characters" from traditional Chinese culture, echoing the brand name of Zhong Xue Gao, and successfully allowing the brand impression of Chinese ice cream to enter the minds of users.

It can be said that Zhong Xue Gao has redefined the concept of ice cream, reshaped user perception in many aspects such as product naming, taste and shape, and implanted more precise product features into the minds of users, allowing the brand to quickly grow into an Internet celebrity brand with its own traffic in the product segmentation track.

Basically, brands that have grown up in the new era have all created their own characteristics in the product segmentation track by building product strength. For example, Wang Baobao has successfully entered the segmentation track and become a leader in the industry by relying on its healthy, non-irritating and burden-free "toasted oatmeal" products; Nayuki's Tea, which targets women aged 20 to 35, provides users with a high-quality experience through its innovative form of "tea + soft European bread". The brand has given itself a new product concept by "redefining product attributes" , which is not only refreshing but also becomes the key to the brand's market development and makes the brand an Internet celebrity.

0 2. With social communication, it is easier to help brands achieve the tap water effect

It can be said that product power is 1 and marketing power is 0. The combination of the two can produce twice the result with half the effort. The social communication that brands dream of is open, participatory, and community-based, giving every participant the ability to create and disseminate content. How to build the social communication attributes of a brand?

1. Give your brand social attributes

It emphasizes more on the socialized communication method, which has the effects of diversifying the objects and wide penetration. In the new media era, the brand can quickly increase its popularity, and its social attributes play an indispensable role. With the popularization of social concepts, the widespread use of social functions, and the development of social platforms in line with user preferences, "no social, no communication" has become the law of communication in this era.

Clever copywriting creates a sense of surprise in users’ lives. Zhong Xuegao pays great attention to product details when creating its products. The brand makes the ice cream straw sticks into a limited surprise in users' lives. The clever copywriting becomes a way for the brand to communicate with users, creating an opportunity for users to express themselves and allowing users to spread the word independently on social platforms.

Unexpected visual language creates a social space for all people. In addition to clever copy placement, brands that know how to use high appearance to create visual impact and leave a deep impression also give the brand social attributes. For example, Chongqing Qing Yi Se Hotpot breaks the user's restriction on the color red for hotpot and incorporates the color blue into the brand's operations, making black, white and blue the theme of the brand with a strong visual impact.

This use of visual language to highlight the brand's individuality and uniqueness caters to the personality and fashionable consumption of young users, establishes a space for national social check-in, brings users a pleasant consumption experience, and provides an opportunity for brand advertising.

Use the social language familiar to young people to create social content. In addition to copywriting and visual language, knowing how to create social content that fits users' lifestyle habits is also an important strategy for giving brands social attributes. For example, one important factor that has enabled Perfect Diary to achieve explosive growth is that the brand knows how to use social language that young people are familiar with to mobilize users' enthusiasm, share their experiences on social media, establish a unique brand marketing strategy, and lay the social foundation for attracting users to the brand.

2. Relate the topic to product development

In addition, knowing how to use social topics to build social communication of the brand is also an important strategy to help the brand achieve rapid dissemination. How to make social topics and brands more sticky?

If you want to turn product research and development into a brand communication point and ultimately communicate with users through the product, it is a very boring and difficult task. Brands use products to open up topics and communicate with consumers, achieving emotional resonance between brands and users, which is conducive to the sharing of marketing content.

For example, in the marketing of Nayuki's Tea's Hegemonic series of products, the brand combined the ritual sense of "little happiness" that users desire in their lives with the tea drinks with apricot ingredients in the Hegemonic products, and launched the topic "Today's Little Apricots", achieving a high degree of integration between the brand and marketing topics, and also turning the topic into a memorable communication point for the brand, thus achieving communication between the brand and users.

3. Know how to use social platforms to penetrate topics

Even with unique product attributes and novel marketing concepts, if you want to make the product enter the lives of users and even generate discussion, it is still necessary to penetrate the marketing topics among the user base. That is, under the product-oriented situation, marketing penetration is achieved by creating topics on social platforms, allowing the brand to gradually become an "Internet celebrity" on social platforms.

For example, Zhong Xuegao knows how to conduct marketing penetration on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Weibo, and Douyin, and achieves coverage of the brand logo by having users share how to eat and play with the product. Nayuki's Tea likes to implant its brand marketing into users' lives. By showing off "a sip of good tea and a bite of soft European bread" , it implants the wonderful experience and business methods of Nayuki's Tea into all aspects of users' lives, helping the brand to achieve wider dissemination.

As users continue to participate in creating topics, it also helps brands create fresher new topics and become the focus of users' attention on social media. When users see other people's lifestyles, it is easy to guide new users to voluntarily participate in brand topics, forming interactions between brands and users, thus turning passive acceptance into active dissemination.

Final Thoughts

It can be said that in the new consumption era, all marketing/branding is worth redoing. Whether it is through product flavor design, product styling, or unique communication, the brand wants to attract users' attention, achieve interaction between the brand and users, and trigger user discussion. Once users participate in the marketing scenarios set by the brand, they will also directly participate in it, actively promote the brand, maintain the relationship between the brand and users, and ultimately achieve the goal of occupying the minds of users.

Author: Marketing Strategy

Source: Marketing Strategy