If the promotion is ineffective, you need a manual to prevent scams!

After begging for help, drinking and singing and pretending to be a grandson, I finally made some money!

Before rapid development, bottlenecks and stagnation occurred.

What about new customers?

…

I tightened my belt, gritted my teeth and took out the passbook I had hidden under the pillowcase. Damn, I have to do some advertising, some publicity, and unite all the forces that can be united to get more clients and friends!

I spent money with great enthusiasm and looked forward to it with great joy...

What about new customers?

Whose fault is it that the advertisement is ineffective?

Yi Shiwu, who is good at analyzing problems from the bottom-level logic, breaking through marketing difficulties and proposing marketing methodology, works late into the night to analyze "Why your advertising is ineffective" from six aspects: product, strategy, channel , content, implementation and after-sales .

1. Products

1. Differentiated product features do not drive consumers to buy with sufficient interest

For example:

A water cup with a thermometer - a water cup with a sedentary reminder - a water cup with a radio

When smart wearables were gaining popularity, many companies launched water cups with thermometers, and some even advertised them on the Shenzhen subway. They also stated that the best temperature for human drinking water is 35-40℃, so to drink water scientifically, you should buy a thermos cup with a thermometer.

Let’s not discuss whether asking consumers to check the temperature when drinking water is a false demand. Simply adding a little bit of profit motivation will make consumers pay more costs, which is not enough to stimulate purchasing desire , so the advertising will naturally have little effect. On JD.com , the water cups with radio speakers are not cheap, but they sell well. However, in the same store, the water cups with only sedentary reminders and temperature displays have good designs, but their sales are far behind.

2. Product concepts have not been transformed into real core competitive advantages

Gary Hamel, who was praised by The Economist as "a world-class strategic master", proposed in his famous book "Leading the Revolution" that corporate innovation is not the development of new products or the adoption of new technologies as traditionally believed, but the generation of "new concepts."

However, when companies develop new concepts, innovate products and technologies, they need to promptly transform them into real core competitive advantages.

Look at how many companies have been advertising heavily before their innovative concepts have been transformed into core advantages. The most typical example is LeTV . I do not deny that concepts have driven capital enthusiasm, although someone is manipulating this sentiment. The logistics company we serve has set a new industry benchmark, achieving a time efficiency of 6 hours across provinces.

In fact , many concepts have preconditions. It is okay to seize the high ground. When the advertisement is put out and customers come and see a bunch of preconditions, it will damage the brand , but some of the damage is masked by the size . Therefore, the advertising at this time does not have much effect and is equivalent to an image product.

3. Not considering product development strategy and market introduction cycle

The development of new products often has strategic significance, including brand new products, imitation products, improved and upgraded products, etc. Some are life-saving products that are designed to break through market pressure, occupy new markets , and fail; some are designed to maintain a leading position, make strategic defense , and maintain market share .

To maintain market share, leaders can adopt new brands to attack competitors or use short-term flexibility to ensure a stable long-term future.

For example, Johnson & Johnson once lowered the price of its antipyretic and analgesic drug Tylenol to repel its competitors' attacks.

For example, Toyota's Lexus has a very European name due to historical reasons. Many countries are actually very averse to Japanese cars. In addition, in the minds of people in many wealthy Western countries, Toyota is a symbol of cheap and fuel-efficient cars. If you want to be more upscale, your advertisements can’t talk about Toyota.

If you don’t consider speed, accuracy and ruthlessness, and the advertising is delivered too slowly, the effect will not be obvious. Procter & Gamble uses a "single positioning strategy" with multiple brands, allowing each brand to occupy a market segment. In order to fight against its competitors and divide the market, BBK launched the OnePlus phone after successfully launching OPPO and vivo .

The product itself also has a life cycle. At each stage of introduction, growth, maturity and decline, advertising needs to be adjusted accordingly to different market conditions.

• When a product is in the introduction stage of development, it needs market focus and advertising design targeting specific markets and audiences. A small-scale explosion is the best way to introduce the product into the market.
• JD.com’s initiative to launch an e-commerce price war and enter a rapid expansion phase is the best example of when a product enters a rapid development stage. The appeal of advertising must serve the rapid growth of development.

Of course, you also need to give a reason for the price reduction in the advertising content, such as an anniversary celebration or wife’s birthday. Otherwise, it will become like Parkson, and there will be no one in the mall when there is no discount.

When Youlemei and Xiangpiaopiao were competing fiercely, Xiangpiaopiao's powerful advertisement of "more than 700 million cups sold a year, the cups can be connected to circle the earth several times" immediately established the leading position of the industry for the public, and directly made Youlemei faint in the toilet and cry for a long time. Jiaduobao also used this advertising method when competing with Wanglaoji for the market in the later period.

If the advertising and product cycles are out of sync, not coordinated, or not in line with the strategy, your desired effect will be greatly reduced, which leads to the importance of strategy.

2. Strategy

1. Product strategy deviates from psychological appeal

Product strategy is the core of 4P and is the pillar and cornerstone of a company's marketing activities . The presentation of advertising effectiveness is closely related to whether the product meets the needs of consumers and whether the product strategy is correct.

The personalization of current consumer demand has led to the continuous extension of the concept of products. Utility and simple benefits can no longer satisfy consumers, and consumers' expectations and additional demands for products have become increasingly obvious .

In addition to physical characteristics, the behavioral and psychological characteristics conveyed by the product itself affect product strategy and even determine whether the product is successful or not.

Instant coffee and disposable diapers were affected by their product strategies when they were first launched on the market, resulting in poor sales. Instant coffee is inexpensive, easy to brew and saves time; disposable diapers are clean, hygienic, easy to use and eliminate the hassle of washing diapers. However, both products encountered obstacles when they were first launched on the market.

This is like many companies today, where the products do solve pain points, but the sales results are not ideal. It turned out that instant coffee and disposable diapers were generally considered by consumers at the time to mean that consuming such products meant laziness, fear of trouble, irresponsibility, and a makeshift lifestyle. So instant coffee changed its advertising from not requiring washing or brewing and saving trouble to promoting the taste and texture of coffee; disposable diapers began to promote their softer, more comfortable, and drier characteristics than cloth diapers, making both products quickly popular.

The DW quartz watch, which is priced at around 1,500 yuan, does not even have a sapphire mirror. Traditional watch practitioners may not care at all, but so what? The slim DW, paired with a classic canvas strap, conveys a leisurely, elegant, Nordic lifestyle.

Its product appeal is to sell a lifestyle, a labeled emotional expression, which is no different from the badge of a nature conservation association or charity organization that some businessmen wear on their chests.

2. Misalignment between advertising and marketing strategy

A company that started out in Shenzhen had already found that the market in South China was saturated, its products had a high market share, and its market expansion was slowing down. The company adjusted its market strategy and identified East China and North China as the main areas for market development . However, the company did not make timely adjustments when conducting advertising, and its main advertising investment remained in South China , failing to keep up with the pace of market strategy changes. As a not-so-well-known company that serves B-end customers, one can imagine the effect of its new market development.

This is a real case of a company with more than 20,000 employees. Perhaps your company is making similar mistakes. It is crucial for regional companies to go national and be vigilant if they do not want to leave their comfort zone.

3. Advertising strategies have not kept up with the changes of competitors

When Shenzhou Private Car and Didi Kuaidi first entered the market, their main competitors were taxis and even buses. They came up with the concept of private cars to distinguish them from general transportation and this became their market entry strategy.

"Sitting better" has become a demand. In the later stage of market development, consumption habits have been formed, and Shenzhou Private Car has used "safety" as its main appeal point for its promotion, attacking the unsafe factors of Didi private cars.

3. Channels

1. Advertising channels are not accurate or even misplaced

There is no absolutely precise user channel. Although many large companies have launched big data , labeled users, recorded user habits, and made algorithmic recommendations for content, when placing advertisements, you should at least select channels where most of your target customers will gather . There are differences in the consumer groups and advertising channels faced by companies that serve the B-end and those that serve the C-end, and by fast-moving consumer goods and electric massage chairs.

Different consumer groups also determine what kind of audience channels you should choose. The channels that people born in the 1960s and 1990s are exposed to are different. Very popular media may not necessarily reach your target audience.

There are many companies. Those that make furniture have to advertise in a magazine called Furniture, and those that do express delivery have to advertise in a magazine that only introduces express delivery companies, without considering their own business characteristics at all. It is often stupid for a brand that does not franchise directly to spend money in a magazine that consumers basically cannot see.

Of course, some magazines are very bad and the channel in which they are placed may be related to you, such as being placed on high-speed trains and airplanes. However, if a magazine only has three pages of content and the rest are all advertisements, how many people can it attract to read it, and how long can they stay after reading it? Maybe some industry associations or magazines run by leaders need to give some face and reconsider establishing their industry influence.

2. Insufficient insights into consumption time, environment and purchase scenarios

Product sales have peak and off-peak seasons, and media channels also have different periods of traffic . When choosing the correct delivery channel, you must also pay attention to each period on the channel and find the right time to promote your product . When does Taobao have the most traffic? When is the most popular time for soft articles?

Of course, the time periods with heavy traffic are expensive. Don’t forget that the most expensive players in the NBA are those who sit on the bench all year round. The time you choose to deliver your ads through the channels should match the time when your target group is most likely to see your ads. Don’t use new media to push content when your audience is having fun somewhere else or has already fallen asleep.

Whether you choose to sell your products offline (self-built stores, supermarkets, traditional distribution) or online (self-built shopping malls, platform entry, network distribution, self-built distribution in WeChat malls, etc.) determines where your target group will buy and determines the user's consumption environment . Shopping in a mall is closed, while shopping on Taobao is open, making it easy to compare products.

Where your products are placed on the shelf, what products are on the shelf aisles, the distance between your products and the products that are most likely to generate relevant consumption , and even who might be shopping with your target group will all affect the final consumption behavior. Osco Drugs, a pharmacy and convenience store company operating primarily in the Midwestern United States.

The company once conducted data mining and collected information from more than 12 million shopping carts in 25 stores. The data did find that between 5pm and 7pm, many male customers bought both beer and diapers.

Advertisements for the same store placed in different locations in the same shopping mall must be treated differently . For example, the tea shop in a shopping mall, the advertising appeal inside the mall is to guide people who are tired of shopping to sit down and have a cup of milk tea, and the competitors it faces are other leisure places in the mall; the advertisements outside the mall are to attract people from outside to come in and have a cup of milk tea, and the one it needs to compete with is the milk tea shop across the street.

4. Content

1. The advertising content does not match the characteristics of the media channel

WeChat public accounts , Weibo, elevator advertisements, and elevated billboards are completely different, and each media has its own content characteristics. The limit for a Weibo post is 140 characters; new media videos should not exceed 3 minutes, otherwise no one will watch them if they are longer; consumers only spend 3 seconds on elevator ads, and elevated ads may only last for a moment, so your advertising content must catch the eye and gain attention in an instant.

2. Too many and confusing selling points

Too many advantages are equal to no advantages. Look at the roadside signs. How many of them want to write all the business scopes on them? What’s worse, there is no store name at all on the signs, only the business scope, and the colors are particularly eye-catching. Are you forcing people to divert their gaze?

Human memory is lazy, and cognitive load theory holds that the size of the load depends on the amount of information being processed simultaneously in working memory and the connections between existing schemas. In other words: the less information a person processes in the cognitive process, and the closer or more connected it is to existing knowledge and experience, the easier it is to understand and remember.

For example, the two mobile phone brands mentioned above only have one point. When talking about OPPO, many people can immediately think of "charging for 2 hours and talking for 5 minutes". Doesn’t OPPO have other advantages? If I invite Hua Shao to come over and tell you all his advantages, how much can you remember? You can't hear it clearly anyway.

3. The benefits conveyed in the copy are not specific, and the concepts are abstract and difficult to understand

You only know that blueberries are good. When you see the following two copywritings: "Blackwater blueberries, healthy and delicious" and "Eat blueberries, brighten your eyes", which one will better stimulate your desire to buy?

When many home appliance brands are still promoting energy conservation to stimulate demand, the slogan "Midea, one kilowatt-hour of electricity per night" is popular and people can start using it whenever they want.

How do you feel when you see the picture above? Do you know what NFC is? Do you know the difference between Snapdragon processors? Words are abstract, and concepts are even more abstract. When you use advertising to communicate with your target users , you need to stand in the other party's perspective and use nouns that are familiar, understandable , specific and unambiguous to establish a connection with your product, making your product easier to understand and accept and reducing communication costs.

Vivo's recent advertisements no longer say that it uses the latest Snapdragon processor, but instead use "playing games ( Honor of Kings ) is fast" to convey its selling point; when the smoke alarm and the car were first launched on the market, they were compared to "a keen nose placed on the ceiling" and "a horseless carriage", which vividly demonstrated the characteristics of the product and reduced the cost of communication, especially for a new product that needs to be cultivated in the market, it can achieve twice the result with half the effort.

4. Advertising is only about communication, not planning

There are too many media, and we will not talk about things involving combination strategies. We will only talk about the problem of poor effectiveness of single advertising. A beauty salon wants to hold an opening exposure event to attract traffic. It has a budget of 5,000 and wants to find a local big name to promote it. Which one do you think will have a better effect, simply pushing copywriting + opening event discounts, or copywriting + planning a promotion game with the help of friends + opening event discounts?

One friend invites 30 friends to help win prizes. Among the 30 friends, one continues to participate in the event and invites 30 friends to help. This communication effect is not at the same level as the 3% fan reading volume generated by direct push. In addition, the promotion of local accounts is to push articles to you directly. The money is the same, saving time and effort. These are real cases. Are you facing such a problem?

5. It arouses the need to buy, but not the need for you

This set of posters by JD Supermarket explores the pain points of physical shopping, selects representative target objects, and uses scenario-based presentations to magnify the drawbacks of physical supermarkets and stimulate demand for online shopping.

When the audience saw the advertisement, it indeed resonated strongly and inspired them to shop online, so they turned to embrace online supermarkets and chose to buy at No.1 Store, Tmall Supermarket, Rainbow Supermarket, Feiniu.com, etc.

So embarrassing.

This is also a fatal mistake that many advertising designs often make!

There are many online channels, why choose JD Supermarket?

This is the role played by " 100 off for purchases over 199 in all categories, 3 get 1 free across stores, 9.9 yuan flash sales for big brands, saving you time and money to stock up on good products ". It is not enough to just guide online shopping, there are many online supermarkets, and JD.com is having a discount today on its anniversary. You need to let the audience see the benefits intuitively and let consumers know how to make choices.

Because the stay time is limited, you have to eliminate his doubts , cross-category issues, especially postage issues. Of course, you can’t attract the audience with just one chat. Timeliness, logistics, and product credibility are all the result of long-term operations.

5. Landing

1. After consumer demand is stimulated, it cannot be immediately converted into sales

Putting on hold means loss. The smoother the conversion channel, the less loss there will be . Of course, some media have their own limitations, such as large LED screens and elevated billboards. Basically, other media can now achieve direct sales conversion. While advertising Shenzhen local life TV channels, the QR code can be directly displayed on the right side of the TV.

In addition to giving confidence to traditional distributors, elevated billboards can also achieve direct sales conversions, such as the "1 km down from the highway exit" advertisements at many tourist attractions and hot spring hotels; real estate projects near the Chang'an Expressway exit, etc.

When promoting a marketing website, if there are no direct sales inquiries and no sales tracking, the significance of Baidu Business Bridge comes into play. In addition, the landing page design of social advertising and the buying and selling links of WeChat soft articles, all the channels from advertising to landing must be as smooth as silk, and operation simulation, small-scale trials, effect evaluation, feedback and corrections must be carried out.

Usually, most QR code scanning is for downloading APP. Fortunately, more and more companies are starting to directly import the activity interface. Ant Nest, which does tourism, will directly present the corresponding guide in the poster on the QR code landing page, which not only has rich text guide information, but also has a direct and eye-catching product booking entrance, which is conducive to direct conversion (locking in moisture).

2. There is no problem with the advertising channel, but there is a problem with the actual sales.

The strategy is consistent, the channels are precise, the ads are creative, and the conversion path is smooth, but problems arise when it comes to actual sales. The advertisements are very loud, and the food and supplies are sent first, but the troops cannot keep up. When consumers have the desire to buy, they cannot buy your products . There are too few and too small distribution channels for your products. Business expansion and market development are slow. After downloading your APP, they find that there is no merchant in the area, and searches for nearby apartments show that they are not open yet.

In the field of smart wearables, there are some solution companies whose technology is not well polished. As a result, after a large number of customers come in, they either do not have the ability to serve multiple customers at the same time, resulting in service confusion, delayed delivery , and business dishonesty; or there are a large number of bugs in the customer service plan, and the technical service cannot be completed, resulting in termination of cooperation. Of course, this doesn't mean that technology and products have to be polished to perfection before they can be launched on the market. You have to combine the actual situation of your own company and take it slow, which is faster. Budweiser respects its true self.

3. Insufficient promotion around marketing events

This is the reason why a pot of good dumplings was stewed to pieces. This is a problem of marketing implementation itself. The product that was developed with great difficulty won a national award, but the external publicity work was far from enough, and then there was nothing else; the company spent a lot of money on an anniversary concert, but the corresponding promotion was little and single.

Good wine needs no bush, but this probably doesn't work in this era of information explosion. What's worse, companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on making commercials, but the cost of publicity is less than one-tenth of the production cost (these are all real cases, I won't mention the names). This is putting the cart before the horse, with a serious disparity between cost and promotion, and the communication effect is not obvious, not to mention the input-output ratio.

6. After-sales

The impact of after-sales service on advertising effectiveness may involve some special industries. When customers purchase services from printer rental, flower rental, and office equipment rental companies, they are more concerned about after-sales service, which involves maintenance and updates. When buying an air conditioner, of the same level of brand, if one charges an installation surcharge (a water heater bracket can cost 100 yuan) and the other does not charge an installation fee, both will affect people's purchasing behavior; some customers will also consider the number of 4S stores outlets when buying a car.

Some of my friends generally do not buy niche brands such as Apple, Hammer, and OnePlus when buying mobile phones for their parents, mainly because of the after-sales problems.

JD.com’s success as a home appliance mall has a lot to do with its after-sales service. In the early days, when many people bought home appliances online, they would discuss that after-sales service was a problem. In fact, many people don’t know that the after-sales service in the home appliance industry is done directly by the manufacturers, which solves many problems for JD.com.

Therefore, if you want to avoid advertising pitfalls, you need to make the benefits brought by the product satisfy consumers' purchasing desire, and start from the stage when the product enters the market and deeply explore the audience's psychology.

Keep up with the market strategy, select precise channels, use content that is easy to understand and in line with the characteristics of the channel to convey a specific and single selling point, and present it in a dramatic way to maximize the effectiveness, thereby arousing consumers' purchasing needs for you and achieving sales conversion to the greatest extent, so that consumers can have a smooth journey from the moment they see the advertisement until the sale is completed.

Source: Yiwu