Teach you step by step the effective methods to improve your marketing and copywriting skills

As marketers , we generally have a good habit of learning (although many people are out of fear of being eliminated rather than passion for learning). The mainstream way of learning is passive absorption through purchasing books, subscribing to public accounts , etc.

However, as the famous saying goes, "I have learned a lot of great principles, but still cannot live a good life." There are many articles that we read with great astonishment, but when we return to our desks, it seems that “we can learn them once, but make mistakes when we use them.” We are confused and bewildered that our extensive reading has not improved our marketing and copywriting skills.

This is enough to show that passive reception is inefficient. So what is the effective method that can actually help us improve our marketing and copywriting levels?

"Northern Divine Art" is Duan Yu's unique martial arts in " Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils ", which can absorb the enemy's skills. On average, we are exposed to 1,400 ads every day. About 100 of them will leave an impression on us, as if they were masters of a different level than we were. If we can disassemble, digest, and absorb the nutrition of these advertisements every day, and even help design better advertisements, then our skills will naturally improve every day.

There is also a martial art called "Star Absorbing Art" which is very similar to "Northern Sea Divine Art" and can also absorb the power of others. But the principles of the two are different. "Bei Ming Divine Art" adopts the method of "negative pole to positive pole" to absorb power, so it has higher requirements on one's own power. The stronger your own skills, the more you can absorb. The "Star Absorbing Technique" uses the "hollow" method to absorb, so there is no requirement for one's own skill. However, after absorbing too much, due to the different origins of each, it is difficult to combine them into one, so it is very easy to cause backlash and go astray. Reading a lot is like the "Star-Absorbing Technique" model, which is the root cause of poor results.

Therefore, before absorbing the skills of advertising masters, we first need to have skills similar to the "Northern Divine Art" to disassemble, digest, and absorb the skills of others. Here, we list and tool this set of skills and name it "Six Questions of Beiming". When facing an advertising copy, we need to deliberately ask ourselves and answer these six core questions :

1. What do you do?

2. What's different about you?

3. Why should I believe you?

4. Who is your target customer?

5. What pain points are triggered by users?
6. Who are you going to defeat?

By thinking about and answering these six questions, our goal is not only to evaluate and absorb the advertiser's copywriting skills, but also to examine the rationality of its marketing and strategic strategies . By using the boring time when waiting for the subway or elevator to deliberately evaluate, reflect, and even practice games , our skills will naturally improve. Of course, they are also self-checking tools when we output copywriting, helping us to maintain consistent goals and efficient user conversion from three levels: strategy, marketing, and copywriting .

Next, let’s pick an ordinary advertising copy around us and try our hand at it.

Question 1: What do you do?

What does Moutai do? Liquor

What does Gree do? air conditioner

What does Baidu do? Search Engines

Everyone knows these, so what does "Yonghe" do? If the word "hair transplant" category name (category refers to the last level of classification before consumers make a purchasing decision) was not followed, the audience would probably be confused: " Are I buying a wig? Or hair growth liquid ?" .

It seems common sense to make it clear what you do, but there is no shortage of low-level mistakes. The root cause is still due to narcissistic and self-indulgent thinking. There are mainly two categories: unused category names and self-entertainment category names

1. Don’t use category names, assuming that everyone should know what I do

For example: "South Beauty" is also a relatively well-known brand .

But you are famous, and there are more people who have not eaten your food than those who have. Have you ever thought about how people who have never eaten your food feel after listening to "South Beauty"?

Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisine! So people who wanted to eat Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisine went in and asked, "Oh, Sichuan cuisine," and immediately left and went to the "Jiangnan Chef" next door. Customers who want to eat Sichuan cuisine, unless they are returning customers, most of them will not enter the store, but go directly to "Bashu Feng". So until now, South Beauty still has to tirelessly explain to potential customers that it serves Sichuan cuisine. How costly! Even if South Beauty is famous, can it compare to Haidilao ? Look at the Haidilao sign:

Obviously, Haidilao first assumed that others don’t know what I do. So should South Beauty consider adding “New-style Sichuan cuisine” at the end of its name?

2. “Self-entertainment” category name.

"FOTILE" positions itself as a "high-end kitchen appliance". However, many consumers are confused (kitchen appliances, never heard of them). "Boss" complies with consumers' perception and defines itself as a "range hood", and has occupied the dominant position in the market through differentiated positioning of "strong suction power".

Similar to Fotile, many people in the electrical appliance industry call themselves "white appliances" or "black appliances", which will only confuse most consumers.

Remember PDAs? Translated as "personal digital assistant" and "palmtop computer", which one is better to promote ? The primary task for new innovative products is to address the challenges of consumers' initial perception. Especially for groundbreaking new products, it is necessary to learn good names like "ship", "soy milk" and "peach" that cleverly connect to things consumers already know to enter their minds.

Conclusion: The first question is, “Hair transplantation”. Clear and understandable.

Question 2: What makes you different?

When buying shampoo, which brand do you choose? In the past, we would probably choose one from Head & Shoulders, Rejoice, Pantene, or Vidal Sassoon (in recent years, Procter & Gamble has failed to keep up with the pace of consumption upgrades and has gradually declined). Each of them is unique, occupying the most important mental ports of "anti-dandruff", "smoothness", "nutrition" and "professionalism", almost making it possible to have one suitable for you. In the sedan category, Volvo 's "safety", BMW's "excellent driving experience" and Mercedes-Benz's "superior riding experience" have long been deeply rooted in people's hearts.

Imagine if you are a new brand in a large category (a category with general or high-frequency consumer demand). How can you compete with powerful rivals if you don’t find a strong and distinctive positioning point? You should know that this positioning is equivalent to your home court. As the saying goes, " a strong dragon cannot defeat a local snake ." Only here will you have some advantages over big names. Therefore, the many small brands in the market can only break up the market and break the monopoly of the leaders by constantly differentiating themselves in the minds of consumers.

Conversely, if you are the absolute leader in the category, you want the market to be completely homogenized. Your best strategy is not even to shout "I am the boss" with a loudspeaker, but to undermine customers from other competing categories. For example, as the dominant player in the soy milk category, " Vivian Soy Milk " does not need to strangle its smaller brothers (the space is limited). Instead, it can expand its market share in the soy milk category by launching competitive claims against milk such as "Soy milk is a more nutritious drink for Chinese people."

In this case, Yonghe Hair Transplant did not emphasize how it was different. Is this reasonable?

The key to thinking about this issue is to examine the current status of the emerging category of "hair transplantation". Although there are many people suffering from hair loss and baldness, in the past, more common methods used were using hair growth liquid and wearing wigs. For most people with hair loss, it is still unclear why they should choose "hair transplantation", so why is there a need for differentiation? Therefore, for a new product category that only appears after consumption upgrades, there is a cultivation process. Instead of dividing up a very small piece of the pie, it is better to directly endorse the category and make it bigger.

Therefore, Yonghe did not differentiate itself, but directly attacked the main demand to open up the market space for the category. Of course, as the hair transplant market grows larger in the future, it will be necessary for new market entrants to rely on differentiated positioning to break up the territory of the big players.

Conclusion: For the second question, positioning is not necessary at present due to strategic considerations.

Question 3: Why should I trust you?

Would you invest your money in a financial product just because it promises “ low risk, high returns ”?

Most people won’t, and the reason is very simple: why should they believe you?

But in the past few years, we have seen too many similar advertisements, until the following advertisement came out and dominated the market.

Obviously, the advertiser has grasped the biggest opponent in the minds of consumers, "trust", and used a trustworthy foreign professor (from a famous American business school) to provide double endorsement.

Now more and more advertisers have realized this. For example, there is a row of conspicuous words in this copy: " CITIC Industrial Fund Holdings Company ". In people's perception, "CITIC" is a giant financial group, which also has big IPs such as Guoan Football and CITIC Press. Therefore, with the endorsement of the word "CITIC", Yonghe can easily gain people's basic trust.

If you are a new brand, besides asking big brands to endorse you, are there any other strategies?

Here are three strategies:

1. Prefer objective facts and detailed descriptions . For example: 27 layers of purification, with energy rings, etc.

2. Customers verify by themselves . For example: high-quality packaging, product quality, store density, etc.

3. Effective commitment . For example: free trial, tasting, invalid refund, etc.

Conclusion: For the third question, the “letter of trust” is strong.

Question 4: Who are your target customers?

The target audience of hair transplant advertisements are naturally people with hair loss. Is there any need to ask?

However, for people with hair loss to know about it and pay for it, they need to face a series of challenges:

1. They don’t see it as a problem that needs to be solved;

2. They think it is a problem, but they are not eager to solve it immediately;

3. They think that they need to solve the problem immediately and need to compare which hair transplant is more suitable for them;

What challenge does your copywriting address?

Behind the different challenges are different customer groups, although they all suffer from hair loss.

So which group is this copy targeting?

Through comparative analysis, it was found that the group assumed by the copy was Category 3, that is, people with hair loss felt a sense of urgency to solve this problem. This is the strategy of "Yonghe".

However, for the new category of "hair transplant", a more reasonable strategy at present may be to set the target customer groups as the first and second challenge groups to increase their demand for "hair transplant".

Conclusion: Regarding the fourth question, setting the target customers as people with hair loss who have urgent needs is debatable. Perhaps adding copy for those who are not yet experiencing urgency for hair loss would be more effective.

Question 5: Who are you going to defeat?

If there is no competition, there is no need for strategy and marketing. So essentially, the purpose of your copy is to convert customers away from your competitors. Therefore, if the copywriting lacks competitiveness, consumers will not know why they gave up the default choice and chose us. We can divide competitors into three categories:

1. Brands within the category

In this case, since the advertiser set the target customer group as people who already have an urgent need for hair transplantation, other hair transplant brands are naturally set as potential competition. The language implicitly targeting competitors in the copy is "CITIC Industry Fund Holdings Company", which tells consumers: "We are more reliable."

Intra-category competitive advertising is everywhere. For example, Wanglaoji emphasizes "authenticity", Jiaduobao emphasizes "out of ten cans of herbal tea, seven are Jiaduobao"; Coca-Cola emphasizes "classic", and Pepsi advocates "the choice of young people"; the strategies of all these strong brands are to firmly occupy their home turf to ensure competitive advantage.

To achieve the best results, we need to examine the competitive situation in which the brand is located. If it is a new brand (or a well-known brand entering a new category), and it still lacks consumer recognition and trust, the strategy can be to consider sticking closer to objective facts and easily perceived advantages. For example, Band-Aid was once synonymous with the Band-Aid category. Later, Yunnan Baiyao entered the market with great force and defeated Band-Aid in one fell swoop with its competitive positioning of "getting better faster with medicine", which was based on the objective fact that "there are medicines".

This was the advertisement that Michelin used when it was preparing to enter the Chinese market on a large scale.

After several years of operation, Michelin's safety positioning has been deeply rooted in people's hearts, and it has begun to attack other tire brands at the value preference level, such as durability and cost-effectiveness. So we saw this TV commercial.

The entire advertisement does not talk about the product, but only highlights that family affection (and safety behind it) is the most important thing.

2. Category External Brands

Categorization is the product of business evolution, but we must also see that business is not a strictly rational science. Although categorized thinking improves our thinking efficiency on the one hand, it also limits our thinking on the other. Breaking through this limitation often opens up a space of infinite imagination.

This year, Langjiu adjusted its previous uncompetitive and empty slogan of "collection value" to the highly competitive "one of the two major sauce-flavored liquors in China".

As we all know, the category of liquor has long been divided into two categories: "strong aroma type" and "sauce aroma type". Among them, the "strong aroma type" is represented by Wuliangye, Luzhou Laojiao, Jiannanchun, etc., while the representatives of the "sauce aroma type" are Moutai and Langjiu. But this is just the perception of consumers, and liquor brands are rarely mentioned. This time, Qinghualang cleverly expanded its product category from white liquor to sauce-flavored white liquor. In this way, Qinghualang’s only rival is Moutai (and almost all liquors were rivals before).

Another classic cross-category competition protagonist is "Jianyi".

"Jianyi" stood out from the extremely competitive ceramic tile industry by breaking away from category thinking and directly defining its competitor as marble. After in-depth research, Jianyi found that it is the basic configuration of high-end decoration, but it has many problems such as high price and difficult to guarantee quality. Therefore, Jianyi adjusted its strategy, focusing on the research and development of tiles with marble characteristics in operations , and redefined its competitors in marketing and adopted aggressive advertising language.

3. A thought

In this case, most people with hair loss are still in Category 1 and Category 2, and they do not think they need hair transplantation. Therefore, if Yonghe targets these two groups of people, the idea that "there is no need for hair transplantation" will become a competitor. Only after identifying the opponent can we study how to defeat him.

Conclusion: For the fifth question, since the opponent in the case is set as other hair transplant brands, using "CITIC Fund Holdings Company" is a very effective strategy.

Question 6: What pain points were triggered?

When testing the sixth question, you will find that most copywriting does not have it ( including this case ), but it will be very different if it does.

Well, so far, our previous 5 questions have rationally analyzed our consumers and competitors, and even found reasons for consumers to abandon competitors and buy our brand.

However, our rational reasoning also makes an assumption: consumers are rational.

But the reality is not so, and the makeup of consumers’ brains suggests otherwise.

Neuroscientist Paul MacLean proposed the famous "three brains" hypothesis - according to the order of evolution, the human brain is divided into three different functional areas, and they operate relatively independently:

1. Reptilian brain : The first part to evolve, it controls people's basic desires and instincts, and also controls most of human decision-making. It is dull, impulsive, and completely irrational.

2. Limbic system : It evolved later and controls human emotions, feelings, and long-term memory. It determines what humans "like or dislike". It's sentimental and emotional.

3. Neocortex : The last to evolve, including the left and right cerebral hemispheres, controls all "advanced" abilities such as thinking, language, and imagination.

Unfortunately, most of our decisions are made by the reptilian brain and limbic system, while the neocortex is more responsible for providing rational explanations.

Men will never admit that they buy cars because of the beautiful car models, but the unchanging behavior of car dealers proves the effectiveness behind it.

Our emotions are divided into positive emotions and negative emotions. Behavioral economists tell us that what really motivates people to take action are negative emotions such as fear, jealousy, and indebtedness. There are many research and theoretical results in this area. Li Jiaoshou once summarized this series into 11 major pain points, including:

These pain points trigger different emotions among the audience, and there is one unchanging purpose behind them: to make consumers pay attention to what is unreasonable in their lives first .

When we appreciate an advertising copy, we need to pay attention to if there is any sentence in it that makes us reflect on our lives, or even wonder if there is something wrong with our current lives. So this sentence is trying to capture our "pain points".

Let’s look at an example:

The positioning of "Shuyuan" potato chips is "non-fried". Its target group is young women who like to eat snacks. Its competitors are other fried potato chip brands. But these are not enough to awaken the target population to take urgent action. Unless you hit their pain point - making them pay attention to what's irrational in their lives.

This copy has insight into a dilemma that the target group faces at night: they want to eat, but are afraid that fried convenience foods are unhealthy. When customers are faced with a dilemma in the same scenario, the image from this advertisement comes to mind. Therefore, it is easier to trigger purchasing behavior.

This smart advertisement is not only appropriate for the occasion, but also hits the nail on the head with just a few words.

Back to the "Yonghe Hair Transplant" case, if we set the target customer group as "people with hair loss who do not feel the urgency of hair transplant" and the competitor as those who think "there is no need for hair transplant", how can we design a pain point?

Maybe we can link baldness to "aging", for example, design something like the following:

Conclusion: For the sixth question, the case study did not include any pain point text. But we designed one for them.

Finally, we may find that there are many advertisements that follow completely different routines, such as:

There are many theories to explain this problem. But I won’t go into details here, you just need to remember one sentence:

Don't learn from what others did after they succeeded, but what they did before.

Summarize

The author of this article is @Marketing Flight and it is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services Advertising platform Longyou Century

There are many theories to explain this problem. But I won’t go into details here, you just need to remember one sentence:

Don't learn from what others did after they succeeded, but from what they did before.

Summarize