How can the photography industry break through the market through Mayu advertising?

At present, the photography industry has developed to a relatively mature stage and is constantly moving towards specialization and standardization. Data shows that among netizens, those born in the 1980s and 1990s account for as much as 80%. As the industry market scale increases rapidly, the dominant consumer group begins to shift to those born in the 1980s and 1990s:

However, competition among product homogeneity is becoming more and more severe, profit margins are shrinking, and price wars are beginning to spread!

Industry status analysis

1. Large market volume and strong consumer demand

According to statistics, more than 10 million couples register for marriage in China every year. When it comes to marriage, taking wedding photos has become an indispensable part of the marriage. Wedding photography has become a necessity comparable to food, clothing, housing and transportation. Every couple will spend several thousand or even tens of thousands of yuan on taking wedding photos.

In addition to wedding photography, with the rise of the younger generation, the growing market for artistic photos, portrait photos, couple photos and children's photography should not be underestimated. The Ministry of Education alone announced that the number of graduates from regular colleges and universities across the country in 2018 was as high as 8.2 million.

Therefore, the photography industry in general is in high and very strong demand.

2. Five major evolutions of online marketing in the photography industry

1) Embryonic stage: Around 2005, the promotion of community and forum channels became the main channel supporting the entire network promotion.

2) Warm-up period: Around 2009, SEO and SEM search engine channels were highly praised as soon as they came out. In the early stage of search engine channel dividends, the average daily effective customer volume in the photography industry can reach hundreds, the customer cost is less than 100 yuan, and the ROI return on investment can reach 7~8.

3) Testing period: During 2012-2014, when the volume of organic store visits dropped significantly and the operating revenue of search channel decreased, the social channels Weibo Fanstong and Guangdiantong promotion became very popular in the industry. Many businesses began to form their own e-commerce teams and quickly launched a protracted e-commerce war.

4) Transformation period: During 2015, with the continued prosperity of mobile Internet, the product of the times, the mobile advertising channel - information flow advertising - exploded. The channel operations of most merchants began to gradually transform from PC promotion to mobile advertising promotion.

5) Intensified period: From 2016 to 2018, the bonus period of the top information flow advertising platforms gradually disappeared, and more and more companies began to deploy information flow advertising, which directly led to the intensified competition in the industry market environment.

Marketing pain point analysis

As the market capacity continues to grow, it is gradually showing a blowout momentum. As market competition intensifies, more service product forms have emerged, such as the common travel photography. So, how can we seize this big market pie through the marketing of new forms of products? First of all, we need to reflect on the current marketing pain points:

1. Highly homogeneous products

"As the number of photography institutions increases, competition is intensifying, and the homogeneity of products and business models is becoming more and more serious. Along with this comes the transparency of industry costs, which has led to a brutal price war and a declining average customer price year by year," industry insiders pointed out.

2. The new generation of consumption upgrades has increased industry investment costs

Consumer demands are constantly changing, and new forms of services are becoming more and more numerous. Therefore, personalized services such as travel photography and photography studios are becoming more popular, while also increasing the investment in manpower and material costs.

3. Brand reputation highly influences consumer decision-making

With the popularization of mobile Internet, consumer word of mouth has become more important. Service attitude and whether there is hidden consumption can directly affect customer conversion.

Although in most cases, men have the final say in consumer decisions, women's opinions are the main factor influencing men's decisions. At the same time, women have a very emotional way of thinking. Therefore, word of mouth can easily influence women's thinking, and women in turn influence men's final decisions.

4. The cost of acquiring customers on general traffic platforms is rising

"Currently, the photography industry, especially the wedding photography industry, acquires customers mainly through search and mainstream information flow advertising platforms, such as Baidu bidding, Toutiao, etc. However, there are too many people and too little porridge. The effect is good, but it is still quite stressful for some small and micro advertisers." said Ying Xingping, CEO of Zhongshengyuan Network.

The value of vertical platforms is highlighted

Vertical platforms may become the new darling of precision marketing

What is a vertical platform? What advantages do they have? The so-called vertical platforms here refer to platforms that are relatively vertical to the crowd (such as Mayu, Dongqiudi, Autohome, Aiqi Online, etc.) in addition to general traffic platforms (such as WeChat, QQ, Toutiao, etc.).

In other words, people on vertical platforms will have more similar attribute labels. For example, most of the friends who follow us on Aiqi Online are in the field of digital marketing and have advanced learning needs; while the users who follow Mayu are mostly women who are in different stages (teenagers, marriageable, preparing for pregnancy, pregnant, parenting, etc.) and are relatively concerned about their own beauty and health.

Therefore, people on vertical platforms are easier to label, so when we market, we will naturally be more precise.

Next, let’s take the case of cooperation between the wedding photography industry and the Mayu Women’s Advertising Platform to talk about how to fight the vertical population marketing war.

1. What are the advantages of Mayu Women’s Access in the wedding photography industry?

First of all, we need to fully understand the attributes and advantages of Mayu’s audience, as well as their matching and fit with the audience of the wedding photography industry.

1) A purely female traffic platform with a multi-scenario community culture

Mayu is the largest pure female Internet platform in China. It owns many apps including Mayu and Youbaobao, creating a three-dimensional scenario model of "tools + content + e-commerce + advertising", covering the entire life cycle of women's menstrual period, pregnancy preparation, pregnancy, and hot moms. It is the best entrance for female traffic.

2) Dominate the Kingdom of Daughters, covering more than 150 million young high-quality users

The two major apps, Mayu and Youbaobao, currently have over 150 million female users, with a total of nearly 10 million daily active users.

Recent data from iResearch shows that Mayu accounts for more than 95% of the monthly effective usage time of users in the menstrual health industry, with more than 35 million independent devices per month, and has long been ranked No. 1 in the women's and parent-child industry.

Among them, people under 30 years old account for more than 76% in total, which is basically consistent with the age distribution of the audience in the photography industry:

3) Deep learning, redefining the precise audience

The intersection of five major technologies, including deep learning and AI artificial intelligence, depicts a three-dimensional portrait of users and helps us understand women’s hearts. In addition to targeting conditions such as natural attributes and behavioral preferences, unique identity attributes can target users' deep needs and easily target target users, such as the women's menstrual period, pregnancy preparation, pregnancy, and the entire life cycle of hot moms mentioned above.

Menstrual identity: The age of users with menstrual identity is concentrated between 14 and 27 years old, and the keywords in their lives are "beauty", "love" and "food". They like to share their experiences in skin care, makeup, and dressing in their circle, and they also talk and reveal their thoughts to their friends.

Preparing for pregnancy: The age of users preparing for pregnancy is concentrated between 22 and 29 years old, mainly those born after 1990. They are more concerned about nutritional conditioning and pregnancy preparation knowledge.

Pregnancy identity: When women enter the pregnancy identity, the focus of their lives completely shifts from "self" to "the baby in the belly". They become very sensitive and cautious, and need more care and better diet. In addition, pregnant women's needs for prenatal checkups, health, and maternal and child products also change with the stages of pregnancy (early pregnancy, mid-pregnancy, and late pregnancy).

Hot mom identity: After becoming hot moms and having babies, they become more gentle, considerate, delicate, and stable. They like to share their parenting views and value everything about "home, husband, and children."

So how should these status/identity labels for women be applied specifically in promotions?

Let's take a few examples:

1) For photography and portrait products for expectant mothers, we can accurately locate expectant mothers with "pregnant status" based on the audience's identity and interests. At the same time, we can push photography and portrait products or services for expectant mothers in a targeted manner based on their interests such as shopping, parent-child, and home life. Similarly, parent-child photography can be targeted at moms based on the baby’s age, such as 100-day photos, one-year-old photos, etc., for precise delivery.

2) For photo products targeting young people and students, the analysis is also targeted from the two aspects of identity and age, that is, combining labels such as "menstrual identity" and "age distribution". This type of people have their own sense of label identity, are independent and have strong improvisational actions. For them, we can mainly promote the currently popular ancient style photography and literary photography.

3) For wedding photography products, we can use the following methods:

a. First, target the marriageable population in terms of age;

b. Exclude users with identities that are significantly different from the audience of wedding photography products, such as users in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy;

c. Match relevant interest tags.

Therefore, when using Mayu Women's Advertising, we need to further refine the audience targeting by combining the four stages of women's physiological cycle: menstruation, pregnancy preparation, pregnancy, and hot mom. The unique identity label is more in line with the deep needs of female users and touches users on an emotional level.

On the other hand, it is necessary to analyze interest preferences and unique behavior trajectories through big data analysis and e-commerce purchase records to form personalized recommendations and impress users from the demand level.

Corporate Cases

• Advertiser: Paris Wedding

• Industry: Wedding Photography

• Main products: wedding photos, portrait photos, couple photos, travel photos

• Promotion channel: Meiyou Women's Network

• Ad style: open screen, information flow ads

• Advertising creativity:

▼ Splash screen ads ▼

For the sake of brand promotion and to give users a good perception, we chose the fresh style of the flower season to design the splash screen advertising creativity, especially during holidays, when we will increase the investment in splash screen advertising.

▼ Information flow advertising ▼

The creativity is mainly original, creating a beautiful atmosphere for wedding photos, making users feel more involved, and it is mainly aimed at the post-90s people of marriageable age.

Effect data: The average CTR of information flow ads is 2.35%. After using Mayu Women's Channel, the actual transaction rate of ads has increased significantly, which has a lot to do with Mayu's attribute of being a pure female community.

As we mentioned above, in the wedding photography industry, "most men have the final say in consumer decisions, but women's opinions are the main factor influencing men's decisions." Therefore, it is imperative to focus on the female group, identify vertical platforms, and carry out accurate and efficient marketing.

Summarize

Well, the above is what we shared today. To sum up, there are two points:

1) Competition in the photography industry’s pan-traffic platform promotion is intensifying, and online marketing needs to find new ways. Some industries can consider vertical user platforms to tap into more potential audiences;

2) Although vertical platforms are traffic depressions, they also need to be targeted so that the product audience matches the attributes of the platform population, rather than blindly investing.