In 2018, here are 3 essential marketing promotion rules!

Where will marketing go in 2018? Consumption and catalysis have entered the scene-based stage, and users have higher requirements for personalization. How can marketers find the direction of marketing under the deeper market logic?

In 2018, blockchain , Martech, and artificial intelligence surged, and new marketing methods emerged one after another, but marketers' sense of powerlessness continued to increase:

• It has become an open "secret" in the industry that big brands are pushing advertising business to be in-house. The professional balance has begun to tilt towards the client, and agencies are gradually losing their voice.
• New media entered a reshuffle period after the bonus period. The number of readers generally dropped to 2%-5%. It was difficult to add new fans, the cost of traffic acquisition increased, and WeChat official account blocking actions became more frequent. New media people were eager to find a way out.
• There are constant calls for CGO to replace CMO and use Marteh and growth hacking methods to replace the previous marketing model, making CMOs more anxious.

Where will marketing go in 2018? Consumption and catalysis have entered the scene-based stage, and users have higher requirements for personalization. How can marketers find the direction of marketing under the deeper market logic?

1. New media is no longer new. New technology, good content, and resource integration are key.

Consumers' enthusiasm mainly revolves around technology, content, and resource integration. New technologies arouse curiosity, and after people get used to cool technologies, interesting creativity and excellent production are sought after. When the operating standards of brands are generally up to standard, they turn to the competition of resource combinations. Which brand can gather resources to reach the threshold of voice will have the opportunity to dominate the screen.

New Technology: Don’t let technology limit your creative imagination

Just as “poverty limits your imagination”, technology will also limit your imagination of creativity. Martech software is becoming more and more popular. AI and blockchain have also brought great impacts. New technologies have penetrated into daily marketing in all aspects.

(1) Martech is making marketing more effective

Marketing automation (MarTech) is a compound word. Scott Brinker, an authority in the field of Martech, believes that Martech is the integration of marketing, technology and management. The rise of MarTech, or marketing technology, marks the shift of marketers to a "data-centric, result-oriented, and conversion- focused" approach.

MarTech connects AdTech and SalesTech very well, that is, it connects the entire user's purchasing decision-making process, which can optimize consumer experience, manage existing customers, and improve customer conversion.

Marketing is no longer about getting consumers to imagine a product, but about getting consumers to experience it. Marketing technology places special emphasis on consumer experience, and brands' focus on technology-driven growth has expanded from AdTech's precise advertising delivery and programmatic buying to MarTech's self-built traffic pools and refined customer operations .

Investing in your own channels , collecting customer data while cultivating customers will have a cumulative effect and the results will get better and better.

(2) AI may revolutionize the marketing market

According to Tractica Projects, by 2020, more than 3.3 billion devices will be equipped with virtual digital assistants, and artificial intelligence will completely change the marketing market.

Gartner released the 2017 Emerging Technology Maturity Cycle, in which artificial intelligence is one of the three major trends. Cheap, fast, scalable and exponentially growing computing and cloud storage capabilities have made the data and power for the effective use of AI algorithms within easy reach.

Artificial intelligence has a significant impact on marketing technology. It can help marketers discover high-value potential customers from their own fans/members/databases and integrate omni -channel user data to improve user portraits and better understand customers.

(3) Blockchain may revolutionize advertising and solve data exchange problems

Blockchain is a basic technology that is not controlled by any entity. Everyone participates in bookkeeping, which is verifiable and permanently preserved. There is no central ledger and it is not controlled by a single computer. Every agreement, every process, every task, and every payment will have a digital record and signature that can be identified, verified, preserved, and shared.

Blockchain can build a more reliable Internet system and fundamentally solve the fraud and rent-seeking problems in value exchange and transfer. At the same time, blockchain technology has a powerful ability to "reduce costs", which can simplify processes and reduce some unnecessary transaction costs and institutional costs.

Blockchain may disrupt the form of advertising and turn the direct beneficiaries of advertising into users. At the same time, it solves the problem of value exchange. At the data level, it solves the problem of data exchange and the pricing redistribution of the problems generated by data.

Good content: the rise of experience marketing, diversification of content platforms and formats

(1) Technology in the Age of Discovery for content platforms, competition for secondary entrances heats up

As the mobile Internet enters the second half, the WeChat public account ecosystem is basically stable, and the industry currently conforms to the power law.

According to Tencent statistics:

In 2017, 1.8% of public accounts had more than one million followers, and more than 76.1% had less than 10,000 followers.

The Age of Discovery has basically ended, the competition for secondary entrances has intensified, and various vertical communities, audio, short videos , and live broadcasts have emerged one after another.

Based on the principle that brands should go where consumers are, where their attention is, any rapidly emerging platform is worthy of attention, observation, and even advance planning, but it should not be the focus in the short term. At the same time, adhere to the omni-channel strategy and don't miss the bonus period when making some trade-offs.

(2) The content format has clearly shifted from text to images, audio and video

From the 40 million readings of the visual magazine "Thank You, You Love Me", the long-form advertisement of Pechoin , and the long-term dominance of Yeting on the screen, we can see that people are increasingly pursuing sensory and fragmented reading.

Audio content has emerged as a new force. In the past year, 75.5% of netizens have listened to online audio content at least once. This proportion is far higher than our impression and expectations.

Short video marketing is becoming a new brand marketing trend. Taking Douyin as an example, its average daily playback volume exceeds 1 billion, and its monthly active users exceed 60 million. With its novel advertising format, more vivid expression methods and interactive experience, it attracts young traffic and has become a new hot spot in short video marketing.

The chat-based reading format has begun to take root, whether it is the foreign novel Hooked or the news reading Quartz, they have already taken shape, but the first area of ​​penetration is the two-dimensional content centered around the post-00s.

Interactive comments have become a new source of traffic growth. When users read news and information, more than 70% of them often consciously browse page comments. The report shows that in addition to helping judge the rightness and value of the news itself, 55.1% of people simply like to read other people's jokes and complaints.

(3) “ User lifecycle management” becomes a key word in the field of “ content marketing ”

Taking content as one of the core resources of marketing strategy means using user-centric analysis technology, developing personalized content for different users based on the user life cycle journey, formulating user interaction strategies for different channels, and integrating content marketing throughout the user life cycle of different channels.

(4) The rise of content experience marketing

The Experience Economy believes that:

“Goods are replaceable, services are invisible, and experiences are unforgettable.”

Boston Consulting Group found that by integrating technology and data to provide users with personalized experiences, brands can increase revenue by 6-10%, 2-3 times faster than the industry average.

According to the Freeman Global Brand Experience Study, in the next three to five years, one-third of corporate chief marketing officers are expected to spend 21% to 50% of their budgets on brand experience marketing.

2. Lean marketing is the key to success

Technology has disrupted the traditional business environment, and customers are gaining unprecedented power to determine the rules for purchasing goods and services.

Research has found that three quarters of customers currently expect “instant” service, and will receive service within five minutes via online connection. Customers use review apps when shopping, trusting online reviews as much as recommendations from friends. Customers' expectations for service experience are getting higher and higher. They look forward to receiving instant, personalized and convenient services everywhere.

Fine-tuning the operation of high-quality traffic (users) and relying on super users to generate continuous repeat purchases or bring in free traffic has also become a key measure to break through traffic.

(1) Identify and understand key customer journeys, focusing on journeys rather than touchpoints

Focus on the complete, end-to-end experience from the customer’s perspective, covering a range of touchpoints with a clear beginning and end point. Customer journeys are more significantly correlated with business outcomes than touchpoints.

McKinsey survey shows:

When the journey works well, customers are 73% more satisfied with their health insurance than when only the focus is on touchpoints.

Likewise, hotel guests who had a satisfying trip were 61% more likely to recommend the hotel to others than guests who only focused on touchpoints.

(2) Quantify what customers really care about and apply behavioral psychology in interactions

Understanding these journeys by customer segment can help companies stay focused, positively impact customer satisfaction, and begin to redesign features around customer needs. Analytical tools and big data from operations and finance can help organizations analyze what drives customer satisfaction and the actual customer behaviors that create value.

Skillfully shaping customer satisfaction can generate significant added value, incorporating behavioral psychology as a layer in the marketing process to identify the main factors driving consumer perception and satisfaction.

3. Revenue Marketing: Give the Market a Positive Leverage Ratio

Take the B2B market as an example. The essence of B2B is to win customers, but there are four possibilities:

Brand Market Stage = Market (Brandings) + Sales (LeadsGen + Close Leads)

This is what traditional B2B marketing departments do. They only focus on branding and are not even responsible for customer acquisition. The sales team has to find leads and customers to negotiate deals on their own. This type of marketing department is easy to be eliminated. No matter how fast the company grows, the marketing department of this type of B2B company will not grow fast, and there is no leverage ratio to keep up with the company's positive growth.

Recommended configuration by marketing team = PR+Content+Event+Website

Lead Acquisition Stage = Marketing (Leads Gen) + Sales (Leads Gen + Close Leads)

This is the marketing department that is responsible for obtaining leads, but is not responsible for whether the leads are converted into business opportunities. The problem is that after a sponsorship meeting, there may be 200 leads but 0 business opportunities, and 400 WeChat registrations but 0 business opportunities.

The author himself has a lot of such experiences, because Leads in many company marketing departments are not simply regarded as Registers!

OMG ! This is not even considered Raw Leads. Register itself is very easy to complete, and B2B companies will not develop just by registering. And whether it is a Lead is decided by the marketing department. This results in stakeholders making judgments on the standards, which is very unfavorable for cooperation with the sales department, but this type is already an improvement over the most traditional B2B marketing department.

Recommended configuration for the marketing team = Content (including PR) + Event + Social + Digital ( SEM / SEO / Website)

Opportunity creation stage = Market (Opp. (SQL)) + Sales (Opp. + Close Opp.)

Why has the evolution level of Opp. business opportunities improved a lot?

Because whether it is Opp. is determined by the Sales Team, not by the market stakeholders. If it is not Opp., the sales department can call back and tell the marketing department that this is not SQL (Sales Qualified Leads), and it is very difficult for the marketing department to achieve this.

Because friends who understand B2B know that sometimes the most difficult part of sales is finding the right person. If the market has already found the right customer, the rest will be much easier. And often the bigger the order, the harder it is to find the right person.

Recommended configuration for marketing team = Content (including PR) + Event + Social + Digital (SEM/SEO/Website) + SDR (OPP.) + BD + PMM

Rev. Marketing Stage = Market (Direct Small Rev. + Big Opp.) + Sales (OPP. + Close Big Opp.)

At the third level, the market's SDR team directly closes some small orders, and transfers large or complex orders to the sales department. In this way, in addition to answering the question of finding the right person in 3, the market also helps to answer the question of directly closing some small orders.

Recommended configuration for marketing team = Content (including PR) + Event + Social + Digital (SEM/SEO/Website) + SDR (OPP.+Close Small Size Opp.) + BD + PMM

The logic is very simple. Selling itself consists of two steps: customer acquisition and transaction. The more the market can help answer these questions, the more efficient the entire company will be. Many companies spend too much time looking for customers, but the market can fully mobilize the ability to find customers quickly. When the fourth state is reached, the B2B market will be in a perfect positive leverage state.