To promote Internet products, are you still using traditional branding methods?

As we all know, the advertising industry has a history of hundreds of years and is considered a mature industry.

However, faced with the Internet, a new species, and the constant emergence of new technologies and new products, experienced brand marketers still feel caught off guard, and this is even more so for Internet entrepreneurs who lack marketing experience.

On the one hand, many people are very "brand conscious" and think that brand is very important. As a result, they set up brand teams or consult marketing experts in order to build a good brand from the very beginning.

However, these experts still have traditional brand concepts in their minds. They have not seriously analyzed the differences between Internet products and traditional products, and they try to create brand miracles out of thin air without considering the products.

For example, they will give you all kinds of seemingly scientific and meticulous analysis right from the start, deducing that your brand tone should be "friendly and warm" or "avant-garde and fashionable", and then give you a logo, slogan and a bunch of other things based on this.

Finally, they design a set of print and video ads that look thoughtful, high-end, and ideological, to persuade you to spend money on press conferences and hard advertising. After all this trouble, I found that the effect was not good.

On the other hand, many people in the Internet industry do not seem to trust the role of brands, especially managers with a technical background.

They often believe that as long as they "accurately grasp the needs, clearly position the product, and perfect the user experience ", they will be sure to win. They will not spend money on advertisements that are "incomprehensible and ineffective."

So, which view and approach is correct? In the Internet industry, is brand important? How to brand Internet products?

To answer this question, let us first review the concept and essence of brand.

Philip Kotler, the "Father of Modern Marketing", defines brand as follows:

A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them, used to identify the products or services of one seller or group of sellers and to distinguish them from those of competitors.

It can be seen that the essence of a brand is to create differences.

I think everyone agrees that a brand and product must be differentiated. The reason is simple - this difference is the reason why users choose you. Without a reason to buy, the product will fail.

Then, thinking one step further, what value can we gain after forming brand differentiation?

For enterprises, they usually get the following two kinds of value:

• Preferred choice: Users will directly choose and buy because of the brand because they trust your brand
• Generate a premium: Even if the products are essentially similar, users will spend more money to buy your product

For users, the benefits are as follows:

• Reduced risk: Users will buy products from familiar brands because they feel they are relatively safe
• Showing taste: If the brand is high-end and famous, it will show the user's taste and grade, making the user feel very face-saving

To put it more concretely, this brand value is the brand driving force .

If the brand driving force is strong, users will use familiar brands and will spend more money to buy them; on the contrary, if the brand driving force is weak, users will not care too much about whether the brand is well-known before using it.

Simply put, compared with products from traditional industries, the brand driving force of the Internet has become smaller.

This is because Internet products themselves (product experience, acquisition costs, potential risks) vary greatly, and coupled with changes in the media environment, this has led to changes in the driving force of this brand.

Below, we will analyze these aspects in detail.

Factors influencing brand driving force - product differentiation

1. The difference in product experience affects brand driving force: the greater the difference, the smaller the brand driving force

Many products in traditional industries have often been developed for hundreds or thousands of years, and the differences between the products themselves have become smaller and smaller.

Therefore, it is necessary to add "added value" to increase emotional factors, influence the mind, and ultimately create differences.

For example, when it comes to football uniforms, the products of various major brands are not very different from each other, and some even come from the same OEM factories. However, there is a huge difference in prices. A set of football uniforms from sports brand giant Nike can easily cost nearly a thousand yuan, which is several times the price of Anta, 361° and the like.

However, if the logo on the clothes is covered, users may find it difficult to distinguish and will not feel any difference when wearing it.

It is precisely because the differences between the products themselves are so small that we have to think about branding . Users must feel that it is different, only in this way can brand driving force be generated.

Therefore, we can see that giant companies such as Nike spend a huge amount of money on brand investment.

On the one hand, it signs contracts with the world's best athletes, and on the other hand, it sponsors top competitions and continuously shoots epic brand image films that feature star-studded casts. These measures are aimed at shaping its king status among global sports brands and making the small check logo on your clothes shine.

Let’s take a look at Internet products. Due to their many characteristics such as “digital form, online update”, even products of the same type have very different ways of using them - the user experience of the products themselves creates obvious differences, so it is insignificant to attach emotions to them.

For example, although both are social products, Weibo and WeChat are very different. If the logo is also covered, users will be able to tell them apart at a glance, not to mention operating them.

The same is true for Tencent’s own WeChat and QQ. Although they are both social products, their brands are indeed very different and their target audiences are also different.

However, these differences cannot be created by setting a brand tone or using advertising. These brand perceptions are deeply rooted in the interactive experience of the product.

2. Acquisition cost affects brand driving force: the lower the acquisition cost, the smaller the brand driving force

Most of the products in traditional industries are physical objects. Even if it is not a physical item, you basically have to spend money to buy it, so you should think twice before purchasing the "brand".

Furthermore, we found that the higher the price, the more brand-conscious users become.

For example, when girls buy bags, they generally don’t spend thousands or tens of thousands to buy unknown brands—even if the materials and workmanship are better than Hermes or LV.

This is because people are vain and need to show off their taste.

Therefore, for this type of product, not only must the brand be well-known, but the price must also be high enough. Everyone knows that Hermès and LV products are expensive (of course, the materials and workmanship are relatively guaranteed), and they look classy, ​​so people will buy them.

On the other hand, if nothing changes with these Hermès and LV handbags and they just drop their prices to 200 yuan each, I believe many people will not buy them.

For Internet products, since they are digital products, a major feature is that they are extremely easy to obtain and most of them are free.

Therefore, everyone does not have too much psychological burden, but just downloads, installs, registers and plays around. It doesn't cost any money, and at worst you can just delete it. It can be seen that people do not care about the brand, nor do they feel that using any product is more honorable.

For example, for the photo editing apps commonly used by girls, you use Tiantian Ptu and I use Meitu XiuXiu , and both are free to download.

Therefore, there is no question of who is high-end and who is low-end, and it does not constitute a "brand contempt chain."

3. Potential risks affect brand driving force: the lower the risk, the smaller the brand driving force

Many traditional industries involve food, clothing, housing and transportation, and are related to everyone's health and safety, so people pay attention to brands.

For example, before buying beverages, medicines, houses, or cars , we will pay attention to the brand, because if we are not careful, it will affect our physical and mental health and personal safety.

Many Internet products are pure information services and do not pose any harm.

For example, Crazy Guess Picture and Face Meng, which were once huge successes, as well as today's popular Kuaishou and Toutiao , are all like this.

For this type of product, people don’t pay too much attention to the brand and can download and use it at will.

Even when using some O2O businesses, they are not sensitive to brands.

For example, when Didi Taxi was first launched, everyone downloaded and used it naturally and confidently without worrying about which company produced the software. How is the brand and is it well-known?

Factors influencing brand driving force - media environment

The greater the advertising power (the more upfront the advertising is and the more unequal the information is), the greater the brand driving force

Before the advent of the Internet, especially when television media was at its peak, the number of television viewers and viewing time were considerable, so television advertising was very strong.

If you are willing to spend money and become the winner of the CCTV advertising bid, you can quickly transform from an unknown small county brand into a well-known trademark known to people all over the country. At the same time, you can indeed earn huge benefits. It is said that investing 200 million in advertising can bring in 1 billion in revenue; investing 500 million may bring in 3 or 5 billion in revenue. This is how brand myths such as Kongfujiajiu and Qinchigujiu were born.

In addition, commodities were not extremely abundant and commercial circulation was not as developed as it is today, so many people were first exposed to a large amount of advertising information and then went to stores and supermarkets to buy them.

Since users have too few channels to obtain product information, when they stand in front of a shelf full of goods, they can only make purchasing decisions based on advertising impressions.

Therefore, the more advanced the advertising is, the greater the brand driving force will be.

However, times have changed.

First of all, with the decentralization of the media, there are fewer and fewer media outlets that can achieve “forced viewing and repeated brainwashing.”

Secondly, users can first come into contact with the product in many situations, such as offline word-of-mouth communication, social media sharing, etc. For Internet products, users can search and download them directly on the App Store.

It can be seen that when advertising is not the first important checkpoint in the user's decision-making chain, the driving force of the brand is weakened.

Another change brought about by the Internet is that information asymmetry is being reduced, and people are knowing more and more "truths" - in fact, eliminating information asymmetry and connecting supply and demand is also one of the main values ​​of the Internet. As we all know, many big brands are Made in China and at extremely low costs.

Now, with the emergence of various e-commerce platforms and "big-brand manufacturer direct connection platforms", users who used to have to pay high prices to buy big-brand clothes can now buy products of similar quality produced by the same generation factory of big brands at only a fraction of the price.

At this time, people will not just focus on the brand.

Revelation and Countermeasures

From the above analysis, we can see that based on the many characteristics of Internet products, the brand driving force is indeed weakening, and the brand's driving force on consumers is also weakening.

To put it extremely, in the Internet age, products determine everything.

Good products will naturally attract users - people will not "flock to and stick to" your product just because it is a product of a big brand, nor will they be "timid and afraid to try" just because you are a small brand.

Therefore, we always put products first.

First of all , the product must be of high quality, that is, it must achieve "accurate grasp of demand, clear product positioning, and perfect user experience." If these requirements cannot be met, no matter how high-end the brand claims to be, it will be in vain. Conversely, if the product experience is perfected, then the brand will naturally emerge - the product is the brand.

Secondly , the brand of Internet products must be established, brand differentiation must be created, and brand driving force must be demonstrated, but the approach must be changed, that is, it must be achieved through products.

It is necessary to implant brand concepts and marketing thinking into products so that the brand and products can become one and integrated.

For example, the reason why the Uber brand is fashionable is largely due to the creativity of the "one-click call" series. They have embedded their brand philosophy into their products. In addition to taking taxis, you can also use Uber to "call helicopters, ice cream trucks, mobile fitting rooms ," etc., making you feel that Uber is omnipotent, full of surprises and novelties.

WeChat red envelopes are similar. Through the product approach, they directly drive the number of WeChat and WeChat Pay users, while also narrowing the distance between WeChat and users and shaping the brand's affinity.

Google has created a brand image that is innovative and technologically advanced through a series of product innovations such as Google Glass, the hot air balloon Internet access project, and the AlphaGo man-machine battle.

Finally , when the brand is big enough, you can use traditional branding strategies to enhance its brand image. But this is only icing on the cake, not a timely help.

Conclusion

The Internet is a great invention that has profoundly affected every corner of the earth.

There are many significant differences between Internet products and traditional products. These differences will have an impact on brand driving force.

From the table above we can see that:

• Traditional products have little difference in experience, while Internet products have great difference: the greater the difference, the smaller the brand driving force
• Traditional products have high acquisition costs, while Internet products have low acquisition costs: the lower the cost, the smaller the brand driving force
• Traditional products have high potential risks, while Internet products have low potential risks: the lower the risk, the smaller the brand driving force

In addition, in the Internet age, the role of advertising and media is also changing. Advertisements are no longer strong and information has become more transparent, which has also reduced brand driving force.

Only by deeply understanding these differences can we grasp the brand context of Internet products.

Those who try to use old brand concepts mechanically and deceive others are doomed to fail.

In the Internet age, please think more.

Please think twice before promoting Internet products.