How to create a hit product through online operation and promotion?

When it comes to hot-selling products, I believe many people will feel both familiar and unfamiliar. What is familiar is that we participate in other people's hot-selling projects almost every month, just like Tmall will send a message "Thank you for participating in a 213.5 billion project" after letting everyone spend their money on Double Eleven every year. What is unfamiliar is that we feel far away from being a hot-selling project, because those are all other people's hot-selling projects, and you are just participating in them, but you can't make them yourself.

Is it really difficult to create a hit product?

Yes, it is difficult. Most of the time, they are unknown. Many of the hot-selling products you see are created after dozens of failures. Once I chatted with the vice president of Xin Shixiang, and she told me that in 2016, Xin Shixiang was doing event marketing every day. Compared with unknown events, the number of known hot-selling events is extremely small.

Precisely because of its difficulty, it is extremely precious and can help many people make a small investment to gain great returns, become famous overnight, or even achieve a comeback in life. I really hope that today’s sharing can increase your chances of creating a hit product.

Next, let’s take a look at the imitation history of three well-known popular products.

1. Digging into the history of imitation of popular products

1) "Idol Producer" - "Produce 101"

Speaking of Cai Xukun, I think everyone here knows him, right? Even if you haven't heard his songs or seen him dance, you must have heard of this person and some of his jokes.

Cai Xukun appeared on a domestic idol talent show at the beginning of last year. That show was "Idol Producer", which is considered to be the first idol talent show in China. Cai Xukun debuted as the center.

How popular is "Idol Producer"? When it was first aired in January, the number of views exceeded 100 million within one hour of its launch, and it has remained at the top of the ratings for three months. Xiaohongshu, which sponsored "Idol Producer", also ushered in a peak of growth. According to iResearch data, three months after the program was launched, the number of monthly independent devices of Xiaohongshu increased by nearly 40% month-on-month.

"Idol Producer" is modeled after the Korean variety show "Produce 101". Although the show caused some controversy when it came out, it has to be said that it was indeed a hit and boosted the development of the entire "idol market" in the country.

In addition to "Idol Producer", there are also the previously popular "Running Man!" "Brothers", "Longing for Life" and "The Rap of China" are actually all imitations of foreign variety shows.

Stills from "Longing for Life"

2) Tik Tok - Music.ly

Short videos are currently the largest time-increment market. When it comes to short videos, I believe you will think of Douyin like me. At the end of 2018, Douyin officially announced that its daily active users have exceeded 150 million and its monthly active users have exceeded 300 million, and it has successfully snatched 10% of the user time share from Tencent.

But when it comes to who is the pioneer of the short video social platform, Musical.ly is definitely the one. This short video social software was launched in the United States in July 2014. It was developed by a team in Shanghai, China. Only one year after its launch, it surpassed Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and others to become the number one on the US iOS list. It is known as China's first and most successful social product exported overseas.

Musical.ly page

Tik Tok page

By comparing Musical.ly and TikTok, we can easily find that the homepage layouts of the two products are extremely similar. It is not an exaggeration to say that TikTok copied and imitated the homepage of Musical.ly. When TikTok was first launched in early 2017, the person in charge of Musical.ly publicly accused TikTok of plagiarism.

Probably inspired by Tencent, in November 2017, Tik Tok's parent company Toutiao officially acquired the well-known North American short video social product Musical.ly. After the acquisition is completed, Tik Tok will merge with Musical.ly, but both parties will maintain brand independence.

3) Beef Ramen - Lanzhou Ramen

I believe everyone is familiar with Lanzhou beef noodles, one of the three giants of Chinese catering! As long as you have been to Gansu, Lanzhou, Qinghai and other places, you can see this kind of noodle shop in the streets and alleys. In fact, I have eaten it several times. The taste is not as delicious as the legend says, but the gluten is very good.

However, what is more interesting than the taste is that the owners of these Lanzhou ramen restaurants are not from Lanzhou.

Lanzhou has been a Feng Shui treasure land in the upper reaches of the Yellow River since ancient times. It is the transportation and trade center of the northwest and an important industrial provincial capital. The booming business at home makes most Lanzhou people unwilling to open shops elsewhere. Hualong Hui Autonomous County in Qinghai is an agricultural area with a poor economic environment, which forces people to move out. They went to Lanzhou to learn how to make ramen noodles, and then opened shops all over the country.

At first, the ramen restaurants opened by people from Qinghai were called "Beef Ramen". Later, they found that business was better if they called it Lanzhou Ramen, so they simply changed the name of the store to "Lanzhou Ramen". Invisibly, the people of Qinghai not only made money but also advertised Lanzhou Ramen.

Since I am a native of Shaxian, I would like to have a little interaction with you here. Do you think all the owners of Shaxian snack shops are from Shaxian?

More than 80% of Shaxian snacks are opened by people from Shaxian. Because Shaxian is located in the northwest of Fujian, with dangerous mountains and underdeveloped transportation and economy, almost all local people have come out to open snack shops. After the Spring Festival, except for the county seat, the only people left in the towns and villages are basically the elderly and children.

The other 20% are from several counties adjacent to Sha County, with Datian County having the largest share. The economy of this county used to rely mainly on coal mines. After 2010, the coal industry went into recession, and those with little financial resources also started to open snack shops.

Whether it’s people from Qinghai opening a Lanzhou ramen restaurant, or people from Datian County opening a Shaxian snack restaurant, you’ll find that the potential for making a hit by imitating others is unlimited.

Above, I have only randomly listed three cases where products became hits through imitation. In fact, many of the popular products we see, whether they are apps, physical goods, or cultural variety shows, most of them are imitations.

Popular products are all imitated. Why is the probability of success higher when imitating popular products?

2. Why is the success rate higher when creating a hit product through imitation?

How many people think I am asking a stupid question at this moment? Isn’t it common sense that the success rate will be higher if you imitate others?

It is indeed common sense that imitation can reduce learning costs and achieve a higher success rate. It is the basic cognition that a mentally sound adult should have.

However, it seems that not many people understand the real power behind this common sense. Because not many people understand it, only a few people can create popular products by imitating it.

Here I would like to introduce a concept - native demand, which is the real creator of popular products.

Ever since we can remember, what we have been doing during the Spring Festival is sending and receiving red envelopes, so sending/receiving red envelopes is a native demand. Based on this native demand, WeChat red envelopes became very popular in 2013.

Although it is said that the WeChat product managers did it for fun when they were bored, it imitated our practice of sending and receiving red envelopes during the Spring Festival to the extreme, and the entire UI interface is also square in shape.

Next, let’s look at an emotional public account called “Ye Ting” with 20 million followers. When we interviewed the founder, he said that when he started Ye Ting, he had no experience in the Internet and new media, and he was just imitating the late-night emotional radio station he often listened to in college.

It’s just that I seldom listen to the radio now, but I find that the demand is still there. I happen to be good at broadcasting and I also like to share my experience in managing family and relationships with everyone, so I created this audio-dominated public account. The entire content editing process is carried out according to the radio model.

Why is the success rate higher when creating a hit product through imitation? Just because others have succeeded doesn’t mean you can succeed by copying them.

Instead, by imitating, you can hit the original needs of human nature with the greatest probability, and they are all basic needs of the group. Our ultimate object of imitation is not the original creator, but people’s original needs. It is very common, and it has become a hit precisely because everyone takes it for granted.

If you want to create a hit product through imitation, or even surpass the original, what you need to imitate is the original demand, and behind the imitation is human nature. Whether you can find the original needs behind the object of imitation is the biggest variable that can increase your chances of creating a hit product.

3. When creating a hit product, what is more important than dissemination?

Product quality, product after-sales service, product appearance, product spectrum, product packaging….

These are all important, but not more important than communication.

To know the answer to the question, we can go back to the origin of today’s topic - what is a hit product?

In the eyes of many people, a hot-selling product is one that goes viral, sells well, and has high sales. These understandings are correct and quite correct.

Then the question arises again, what exactly does "sweeping the screen" and what does "selling well" mean?

Just because the product data meets the standards does it mean it will be a hit?

Marketing services are now very powerful and data can be created. For example, if you want to have a screen-sweeping effect, it is very simple. Just purchase 50-100 KOLs and post them on WeChat Moments at the same time.

If you want to be on the hot searches on Weibo, Zhihu, or Xiaohongshu, it’s very simple. All you have to do is pay money. Recently we have also discovered that Taobao's best-selling list can be manipulated. You only need to increase the product sales volume to exceed the current number one in the category within a week, and you can be on the best-selling list. The routine is quite shady, so I won't elaborate here.

As for what a hot product is, my understanding after practice is that it has no direct relationship with the absolute value of the data. As long as it meets the following characteristics, it is a hot product.

You can use these three characteristic standards to evaluate the hot products you know, and you can quickly tell which ones are just self-congratulations and which ones are real hot products.

Following the three characteristics of a hit product, let’s talk about what is more important than channel communication in the process of creating a hit product?

Many people believe that the most important thing to create a hit product is to have money to invest in channels, but the reality is that we don’t have money, and the bosses create hit products just to make a small investment for a big return.

How to make a hit product without money? Here I want to tell you a good method, but it does not mean that channels are not important.

When creating a hit product, I suggest that you first position the product. We will not talk about Trout’s positioning theory here. Based on my actual experience, I will talk about how to differentiate positioning and use imitation to increase the probability of creating a hit product.

When creating a hot product, you can differentiate your positioning based on the crowd, region, and time to imitate the hot product. Some friends will feel inspired when they hear this.

Below, I will give a detailed explanation.

First, we should start by positioning the target group and move the popular products of group A to group B. This is easy for everyone to understand, and there are many successful cases of this.

However, does this always work? In fact, it doesn’t. It still depends on the native needs of the group. For example, we saw that the Wall Street Journal App moved our operational skills map idea to the financial field, but it failed miserably. The reason is very simple. Many people trade stocks based on information asymmetry. They don’t want to learn, but you force them to learn. This is contrary to the native needs of this group.

Therefore, when you position yourself as a hot-selling product based on differences in the population, you still have to make sure whether your target population really needs this service.

Secondly, based on geographical positioning, move the popular products of City A to City B. It is very similar to crowd positioning, except that it is more due to the positioning differences formed by physical space. There are also many successful cases of transfer, such as MINISO bringing the MUJI model to China, and it was a huge success.

TouchPal Input Method brought Keep to the United States and gained a considerable number of users. It is said that Lao Gan Ma is also very popular in the United States.

Finally, from the perspective of time, we can position the products by moving the popular products in 2018 to 2019, and moving the popular products in 2019 to next year.

There are many "aunt-style" hit products, which can be iterated and upgraded every year. As long as you see that something is very popular in 2018, and you think you can surpass the original through iterative improvements, you can become a hit in a new time window and can seize new heights in the industry very well.

China has too many people and they tend to forget things; they won’t remember who was number one last year.

Make differentiated positioning based on population, region and time, and use imitation to increase the probability of creating a hit product. It is more important than communication. Only when you have a clear idea of ​​positioning can you determine how to communicate, develop and package the product.

Now circle social networking is an obvious trend on WeChat. After doing differentiated positioning from these three perspectives, it will be easier to become the first in the category and form circle screen-sweeping and word-of-mouth.

4. When creating a hit product through imitation, how to surpass the original creator?

After you have done differentiated positioning, you are already halfway to success. The next step is to imitate in more detail, or even surpass your imitation object, breaking the habit of "always being imitated but never surpassed".

So how can we imitate and surpass the original creator?

“It is difficult to achieve a good effect by plagiarizing without a theoretical framework; if you have a good theoretical framework, you can also infer whether other people’s plans are good activities.”

We abstract the process of creating a hit product from 0 to 1, which should include these 6 links: product positioning - product production - product packaging - product marketing - product communication - product after-sales.

We have discussed product positioning in detail in the previous section. Here we will focus on the other four aspects.

1) Product imitation

This should be the most difficult and the most important. For example, if the hot-selling product is compared to firecrackers, it should be the powder keg. When imitating a product, a relatively obvious way to surpass it is to read the user reviews of the original product and improve the features that have the most complaints.

If you are making physical products, a more cunning approach is to find an original OEM factory. The OEM factory has these process molds, and you can modify them based on them. For example, many products of NetEase Yanxuan are made in this way.

Of course, I think what is more important is to return to the user's original needs and think about which original needs are not met, so that we can surpass them from a higher dimension rather than making minor repairs.

2) Packaging imitation

After the product comes out, you need to package it with selling points. I have seen many people imitate the original in packaging, but we found that many people made jokes when imitating, because they did not have the basic conversion copywriting foundation and could not understand the real purpose behind the other party's copywriting, so there was no question of surpassing the imitation object at all.

When writing packaging copy, just remember a framework: attract attention - generate demand - present service - generate trust - buy immediately. The copy you see is all about implementing and strengthening this framework.

3) Spread imitation

The difficulty is not great, but there is a lot of hidden information. We found that some people, when imitating others, only think about how to do single-point communication, instead of having linear thinking. It is possible that when you see the object of your imitation, it has already become popular, and it has done a lot of preparation and communication work in the early stage, but you just don’t know it.

Currently, there are two approaches to product dissemination: one is to decentralize first and then centralize; the other is to centralize first and then decentralize. If you don’t have a lot of communication budget, it is recommended that you decentralize first and subsidize the costs to users.

Among the companies that have imitated "Operation Skills Map 2.0" in the past period of time, we found that one company imitated the communication very well, including the early warm-up and subsequent closing PR. However, because it was so well imitated, it seemed to have directly copied the title of our article and only changed a few words.

4) Promotional imitation

Many people think that promotion means price reduction. In our practice, we found that the essence of promotion is to make users feel that they are getting a good deal. Simply telling users that there is a price reduction will not make them pay. You must make them feel that they are getting a good deal.

In addition, the sales increase brought about by price reduction is not very obvious, while the price reduction that creates a sense of urgency is more obvious. The essence of giving products a new short-term price through promotion is to position and screen users. Users buy at price, and products are just the carriers of price. Making users feel that the price is not expensive is the key to promotion.

At this point you have learned the angles and levels from which to imitate the hit products in a more detailed manner. It can only help you become a hit product in your industry, but if you want to truly surpass the hit products, it is still a bit difficult to simply copy them.

Apart from the popular ideas and products, I personally don’t think it is necessary to imitate everything else. In fact, in each module, there are players who are better than the original popular products, and there are top-notch and excellent cases for you to learn from.

A higher-level imitation is to find the Top 1 in each module to learn from. Of course, this is more difficult. First of all, you know that it is not easy to break down the imitation into these 6 sections. It is even more difficult to find who is the best in each section. There are no ready-made templates and imitation objects for everyone to use for this matter.

You need to read more and collect more information on your own. Operations require a lot of knowledge.

However, I can share with you the products in each module that I think are doing relatively well at the moment.

But no matter what, if you want to surpass the original hit, you only need to know the key methodologies and principles behind everything, and then practice these methodologies and principles more thoroughly.

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Author: Chen Weixian

Source: Operation Research Society ( U_quan )