Long-term marketing strategy!

In the past, when brands were doing marketing promotions , they may have focused more on leaving a deep impression on users the moment they saw the advertisement. However, in today's fragmented era, because consumers' attention is distracted and diverted by many other factors, brands need to follow long-term strategies when doing marketing promotions to subtly influence consumers.

1. Fragmentation makes big ideas ineffective, and the era of love at first sight ends

Marketing is like falling in love. The essence is to make the audience fall in love with you. To use a more vulgar term, it is called "falling in love with customers."

As for the way of falling in love, in the golden age of advertising, most brands pursued the "love at first sight" strategy . As Leo Burnett and George Louis advocate, brands should influence consumers with "big ideas" so that consumers will have a deep impression when they see the advertisement for the first time.

The Marlboro advertisement produced by Leo Burnett for Marlboro featured an American cowboy smoking Marlboro cigarettes, exuding a rugged, bold and heroic spirit. This advertisement opened up sales for Marlboro and became one of the most classic plans in advertising history. George Lewis is even more famous for his book "The Big Idea in Advertising" (also translated as "The Blue Trick"), and his big creative marketing concept has deeply influenced a generation.

The advocacy of big creativity in advertising has influenced the direction of marketing for decades and has had a huge impact on China. For example, the 2011 Taiwan Public Bank advertisement "Dream Knight" caused a huge sensation. Until 2016, the advertisement "Every Step Counts" co-produced by NB and Li Zongsheng still played the role of great creativity, and its influence in that year contributed significantly to the growth of NB's sales.

But after the advent of the short video era, big ideas have become less and less common. The fundamental reason is the fragmentation of information.

The golden age of big ideas was basically based on traditional media, and the creativity was basically static. The life cycle of a big idea could last as long as a year or even several years. This was to ensure that excellent advertisements reached more people, made them fall in love at first sight, and were repeated and consolidated over a long period of time to occupy the minds of consumers.

But in today's fragmented world, consumers' attention can be shifted at any time. If he falls in love with you at first sight today, he may fall in love with someone else at first sight tomorrow. In such a marketing environment, it is not cost-effective for brands to come up with big ideas for the following reasons.

1) Distracted attention leads to rapid memory decay

In the era of fragmented information, great ideas can no longer be achieved by coverage alone, because in the current environment, consumers' attention is extremely scattered and their memory of information disappears quickly. When you try to reach consumers with excellent ideas, they are likely to turn to other content after just one look.

2) Selective attention and de-advertising

In the era of mobile Internet, consumers have the right to choose content and only focus on the information they want to care about. Consumers will buy memberships to remove ads, click the cross to close ads in information streams, and even click to complain about ads... Consumers' aversion to ads has reached its peak. In such an era, it is even more difficult for ads to reach people.

3) Reach rate questionable, ratings ineffective

The advent of the algorithm era has greatly reduced the initiative of brands. In terms of content acquisition, algorithms directly make choices for consumers. Even if you carefully make an advertisement, if the algorithm determines that the advertisement is not suitable for a certain consumer, the consumer will not see it. This is the double-edged sword effect of the algorithm. The inaccurate judgment of the algorithm may cause you to lose potential consumers that you should have reached, or more decision makers, buyers, experiencers and communicators, who are all indispensable people for brand popularity and the formation of social consensus.

Therefore, in the current marketing environment, brands have fewer and fewer opportunities to make consumers fall in love at first sight through big ideas , and brands can only turn to another marketing model.

2. Brand Marketing : From Love at First Sight to Love Over Time

In this era of extremely fragmented attention, brands cannot expect to attract a large number of consumers with a stunning idea, but must gradually build up their affection for consumers through content and operations.

It's like the love that grows over time in relationship mode.

For example, in the era of Weibo marketing, Durex, which could not do traditional advertising, accumulated a group of loyal fans by continuously producing high-quality content, and maintained fan loyalty through fan operation strategies (selecting the “most fans” every week, which was one of the earliest brands to adopt fan operation strategies in the social media era).

Durex has not come up with any big creative ideas with large coverage, but has relied on small creative ideas to gradually shape its own brand personality and influence consumers.

There are many such cases today. Although not as eye-catching as Durex back then, every brand that does this tries to start by creating content that a small number of people like and attracting a small number of people, and gradually expand their influence over time. Today, most marketing is no longer a one-time deal, but requires continuous and effective reach and communication. For consumers, it is also necessary to continuously provide content and value to influence them little by little.

Today, we can say that there are no earth-shattering confessions, only everlasting emotions of emotion.

So does this mean that in an era of small ideas, big ideas have no chance at all? This is not the case. As I said in "Goodbye, Big Idea", the value of small ideas cannot replace big ideas even today.

Through their insights into society and humanity, they produce content with social value, which can shape the brand image and bring longer-term value to the brand. It brings about the shaping of brand personality, the guidance of social culture, the guidance of consumer consumption trends, the increase of brand premium, and the promotion of long-term income. This value cannot be measured in months or even years.

3. How to do a good job in marketing that creates love over time

The correct marketing method is to effectively combine and match big ideas with small ideas. This is a more effective "anti-fatigue" marketing method in the fragmented era. Specifically, it should be the following solutions:

1. Fighting fragmentation with pan-centralization

In today's marketing environment, the solution is to allow brands and consumers to develop a lasting relationship, but the first impression a brand makes on consumers is still important. The premise for this to happen is that the brand and consumers must first have a positive contact. If there is no first contact opportunity, there is no question of developing a lasting relationship.

At this time, centralized media still plays a role because it can ensure that brands can reach consumers with the highest probability. But today there is no centralized media like CCTV in the 1990s, so it is extremely important to use a combination of media to form centralization. I call this pan-centralization, which is an effective strategy to combat fragmentation.

In recent years, some self-media have proposed the concept of two Weibo, one Douyin, one Focus + CCTV, which implies pan-centralization.

I believe that pan-centralization means achieving full coverage of consumers’ information acquisition channels online and offline to ensure effective reach to consumers. In the current environment, basically the matrix of Weibo, Douyin, CCTV and Focus Media can achieve this goal.

Some people may ask, how rich does one have to be to cover so many media? This is indeed the case. This marketing method requires a certain amount of investment, but the benefits are also guaranteed. You can look at the dominant brands in the market, they basically do this, such as Coca-Cola, Taobao, Nongfu Spring, Yili, etc. Their large-scale campaigns basically cover the online and offline channels of TV + Focus Media + Weibo and Douyin.

There are also such cases for new consumer brands, such as the recent “Name in Your Heart” by Xiaoguan Tea, which covered all the above channels with a long film, forming an effective anti-fatigue communication.

2. Fight forgetting with repetition

The natural enemy of marketing is forgetfulness.

German psychologist Ebbinghaus found that forgetting occurs almost simultaneously with the appearance of information, and is fast at first and then slow. Generally speaking, when consumers see an advertisement, they should follow this rule: they forget the advertisement very quickly in the initial stage, but it will gradually slow down as time goes on. After a period of time, they will almost never forget it.

For marketing, there is no better way to fight forgetting than repetition, but repetition follows certain rules. Usually after consumers are exposed to an ad, they should be exposed to it repeatedly within a short period of time to combat the possibility of rapid forgetting.

At the same time, studies have shown that the appearance of advertising is related to whether competitors' ads appear on the same media at the same time. Repeated advertising is more effective when competing ads appear. In other words, when a competitor's ad appears on a certain media, if your ad does not appear, then your brand memory will be weakened.

That's why Coca-Cola and Pepsi, McDonald's and KFC compete to advertise in similar media. By the same token, you often see targeted elevator advertisements for products of the same category in elevators, such as Yuanqi Forest and Nongfu Spring sparkling water. Regarding this point, I wrote in "Why do world-renowned companies like Coca-Cola continue to advertise in large quantities? 》This has also been explained in the article.

Therefore, in order to deal with forgetting, the natural enemy of marketing, brands not only need to repeat advertising based on the scientific evidence of forgetting, but also use it to fight against competitors' intrusion on consumer memory in order to ensure brand recognition advantage.

3. Fight information fatigue in a subtle way

In the fragmented era, information is becoming more and more numerous and complex, and consumers are becoming more and more tired. At this time, marketing that can subtly and imperceptibly have a long-term impact on consumers is good marketing.

On this point, we should pay attention to Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" theory. His behavioral economics theory had an impact at the beginning of this century and won the Nobel Prize. In the field of marketing, its application is to guide consumers' quick thinking through some designs, so that they tend to prefer and buy your brand in a short period of time. Simply put, it means allowing consumers to choose your products and brands without having to think.

This strategy will not work with one or two advertisements, but should be combined with the principles of psychology and behavioral science over a long period of time, and the setting of one's own products, marketing, channels and other factors will allow consumers' consumption behavior to be influenced unconsciously.

Starbucks’ membership card strategy, The Economist’s pricing strategy, McDonald’s children’s playground strategy...are all successful applications of this marketing method.

I am in "How does brand advertising use people's quick thinking to stimulate buying impulse? 》 I have written about how brands apply fast thinking theory to various marketing designs, so I will not go into details here.

4. Fight uncertainty with certainty

Today, marketing has been around for more than 100 years. We always emphasize the changes in marketing - changes in channels, technology, media, and forms. These changes always make people feel that they cannot keep up with the times.

But few people have noticed that the essence of marketing has not changed in more than 100 years. I have written about this essence in "90% of Brand Marketing Lacks Even Common Sense", which is the correct content based on positioning + high-frequency coverage of consumers.

The correct content has not changed since ancient times, and channel coverage is nothing more than a combination of media. However, 90% of companies cannot do this. They are either influenced by the slightest movement of new concepts in the outside world and try to use a small budget to create popularity on the entire network, or they see that a certain brand is popular and want to copy its route. Most brand owners are trapped by anxiety and change, and find it difficult to make common sense based on the basic principles of marketing.

Whether it is traditional media or new media, TVC or short videos, the essence and means of marketing have not undergone qualitative changes. In the current environment, what is certain is the correct content and channels that have been proven to be effective (such as the pan-centralized channels mentioned above). What is uncertain is the various new concepts. These new concepts are not invalid, but the time is too short. You need to calm down and study whether they are suitable for your brand and whether they can bring certainty. If not, then don't touch them.

4. Conclusion: What is the anti-fatigue model marketing that develops feelings over time?

In today's fragmented era, it is no longer possible for brands to expect a big idea to create a sensation and bring about marketing effects as in the past. Today's brand marketing is more like a love affair that develops over time. It requires establishing a positive first impression and forming a subtle influence and solidifying cognition on consumers through continuous and effective contact, thereby bringing longer-term value.

To sum it up in one sentence, it is actually the long-termism of marketing.

Author: Xunkong

Source: Xunkong’s Marketing Revelation (Public Account ID: xunkong2005)