I have tried all the methods taught in the book, but why are all the promotions I do useless?

I've read so many books and attended so many classes, but why is it that when I apply them to my own brand and projects, there is no effect?

I have a friend who also studied marketing and now runs a restaurant business. He once asked me, "I have been using various marketing methods to build my brand and promote my business, but why is my business not getting better? Instead, it is getting worse? Is the gap between practice and theory so big?"

This problem has troubled me for a long time when I was working on my own project. I've read so many books and attended so many classes, but why is it that when I apply them to my own brand and projects, there is no effect?

I have tried all the methods taught in the book, but why are all my marketing promotions useless?

1. Development of Marketing Theory

To find out why, we first need to understand the historical development of the marketing theories we use.

The marketing knowledge I learned in undergraduate and graduate studies mainly revolved around the marketing theories of Philip Kotler, who is known as the "Father of Modern Marketing". His masterpiece "Marketing Management" has been translated into more than 20 languages ​​and has always been regarded as the Bible of marketing.

Kotler himself has served large international companies such as IBM, General Electric, AT&T, etc. for many years, and most of the cases he used in his book are from large companies. Therefore, Kotler's theory is very popular among large American companies.

With the development of China's economy, these American brand marketing theories were introduced to China. The cases, advertisements, and wonderful results in the book, coupled with the lack of a systematic marketing theory in China, deeply attracted Chinese companies to American brand marketing theory, and everyone began to imitate and learn from it.

Many start-ups also joined in. They mistakenly believed that these marketing theories were also suitable for themselves. They learned these theories and marketing methods, regarded these cases as examples, and then started advertising. In the end, they found that it did not have any effect and their business was even getting worse.

How come a theory that works in the United States doesn’t work in China?

This is because there are huge differences between large companies and start-ups. Large enterprises have a certain market share and sufficient cash flow. They can spend money to cooperate with 4A advertising companies to deepen consumers' awareness of their brands. The brand effect is a long-term process that requires advertising again and again to accumulate the brand effect. But start-ups themselves lack resources and have tight cash flow. They would like to split a coin into two parts. Even if you come up with a good advertising idea, you lack the funds and resources to produce and launch it.

Therefore, it is not a wise choice for start-ups to carry out large-scale brand marketing promotion.

2. Let consumers help me sell products

If the startup is poor, then the marketing department is even poorer. When I was making phone cases in the UK, I literally didn’t have a single cent of marketing budget.

But precisely because of poverty, I realized one thing: no marketing department of any company in this world has an unlimited marketing budget, and we cannot bear all the marketing and promotion expenses.

Therefore, the marketing department needs a lever to leverage marketing promotion, and this lever is "word of mouth", which requires consumers to help me complete the marketing promotion.

The marketing department not only needs to get consumers to buy our products, but also needs to get them to help us sell our products.

In this case, consumers are not only the main buyers, but also the main body of marketing promotion, while the marketing department is only doing initial stimulating actions.

3. Make products with good reputation and let consumers spread the word

The word “dissemination” puts “transmit” before “broadcast”, which means that “transmit” is more important than “broadcast”. In addition to "broadcasting" content themselves, the marketing department must also design content and "communicate" it to consumers.

So what will consumers say? There are two things that can be spread, "product" and "marketing". "Products" include Modao, Mubu, Yinwei Tea..., and "marketing" includes Xin Shixiang 's Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou , NetEase Cloud Music 's subway advertisements, Thailand's "Spiritual Turnaround" advertisements, etc.

Startups can choose to have a good product or they can choose to have good marketing for consumers to spread. But good marketing requires a lot of money. You will definitely refute me that there are also people who can blow up the entire Internet with very little money. However, there are thousands and thousands of Chinese companies, how many corpses are buried underneath? Don't always think that you must be the lucky one.

Nowadays, many startups are always thinking about marketing, but they don’t think carefully about how to make good products.

What does a good product do?

1. It can promote secondary consumption;
2. It can create word of mouth and bring in new consumers.

I believe your friends must have taken you to those old and small restaurants hidden in very secluded corners. These small restaurants have very poor locations and no advertisements, but their business is very good. Their consumers are mainly repeat customers and word of mouth among acquaintances.

The spread of word of mouth is not only among acquaintances, but with the advent of social media , it can even spread throughout the entire network. Gradually, "word of mouth" has become an important factor in determining the life or death of a startup.

So what exactly is considered a good product? There are two elements here:

1. Distinctive features that differentiate it from competitors;
2. There are no major flaws compared to competitors.

The distinctive feature that distinguishes you from your competitors is to give consumers a reason to buy and stay. When I come to your restaurant to eat, you must have one or two dishes that are your best, right? If not, why would I come again next time and why would I introduce my friends here? Secondly, having no major flaws gives consumers a reason not to leave you. At the very least, other aspects of your restaurant cannot be worse than other restaurants, right? You can't just use your own bowls without washing them while other people's bowls are clean.

These two elements are the most basic and indispensable.

In addition, better products are self-contained. These excellent products can "speak for themselves". For example, products such as "Uber", "Airbnb" and " Keep " are designed to spread themselves. (Please continue to follow "Yi Xi Yao Yan", we will discuss the design of products with self-contained communication in the next issue)

4. Premature marketing is accelerating death

In fact, if a brand or a product is promoted too early at the beginning, it is likely to accelerate its demise.

For example, a restaurant starts marketing and promotion before its dishes are fully developed or its services are fully trained, attracting a group of users. After eating the meal, everyone feels bad and will not come in again even if they pass by next time. What's worse, they may even tell their other friends that the restaurant is terrible.

When an APP is first launched, many functions are not perfect and the user experience is not good. This is normal. At this time, a lot of resources are invested to attract traffic . Users are not related to you and will uninstall and leave immediately if the experience is bad. It will be even more difficult to get them back in the future.

Doing marketing promotion under these circumstances is seeking death and accelerating one's own death.

Therefore, in the early stages of a brand or product, the core goal should not be popularity, number of users or growth rate, but good word of mouth. Word of mouth proves that initial users recognize your brand and products, and also proves that your experience satisfies users. Only then will you have the ability to serve more users.

When I was making phone cases in the UK, I would send follow-up emails to each user to find out whether they were satisfied with my phone cases and treat them as my friends. Only after my phone cases were recognized by the initial users would I carry out marketing promotions. At that time, I had to accumulate the first batch of seed customers one by one. Getting a hundred people to fall in love with you is much more reliable than having ten thousand people think you are okay.

5. How do you know the reputation of your product?

So how do you know the reputation of your product? There is no need for the professional consumer survey approach. Just chat with your users and ask them "How likely are you to recommend this brand or product to their friends? 0 means not recommending it at all, and 10 means absolutely recommending it." Let them score between 0-10.

If they give it 9 or 10 points, then it proves that this is a good reputation. If he gets 7 or 8 points, then he is just playing nice, so you have to ask him where the missing 2 or 3 points are. If the score is below 7, you should reflect on yourself.

For example, if you open a restaurant, you invite your friends to dine there and ask them to rate the food after the meal. Remember to ask in detail those friends who scored 7 or 8 points as good guys where the difference of 2 or 3 points comes from.

This method is simple and practical. I have gained a lot from it. You will find that you can get many unexpected answers in this way.

VI. Goals of each stage

For start-ups, word of mouth from initial users is very important, but there is a problem here. Don’t treat “word of mouth” as a magic medicine. You must understand that “word of mouth” cannot increase your user base from 1,000 to 1 million.

When you have a good reputation and have enough capacity to serve a larger number of users, you need to generate traffic and do marketing promotion to find more users at low cost through advertising.

For example, if your phone case is well designed, made of good materials, and has first-rate after-sales service, users who have purchased it will actively share their newly purchased phone cases on social media. At this time, you can achieve growth by advertising.

At each stage of development, the company must be clear about its primary goals.

In fact, building a good reputation is a common business practice, but people often forget this common sense.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article @邓楞尧 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map