Brand marketing method, use these 4 steps!

In life, we often see the success of others and then ask: "Can success be replicated?"

Every day I see news in the media about various startup companies’ financing and underdogs’ counterattacks, and I wonder how they did it and whether I can be as successful as well.

Unfortunately, the media often only reports news about other people's success, but rarely mentions the key factors behind their success.

Obviously we need the ability to see the essence through phenomena. Let's look at what it takes to succeed.

Back to the Three Kingdoms period more than 1,800 years ago, when Liu Bei first started his business, he was ambitious but at a loss and often thought, "How can I succeed?"

Even though he already had Guan Yu and Zhang Fei as his right-hand men, he still had not found the key to victory, so he visited Zhuge Liang three times at his cottage, eager to recruit talented people.

When he first met Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang already had a clear idea of ​​current affairs in his "Longzhong Plan".

Then let's take a look at the logic of "Longzhong Strategy" that enabled Liu Bei to finally counterattack:

First, analyze the world situation and competitors, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of opponents one by one, determine goals, build a team, recruit talents, and also combine strengths.

Times change and everything changes, but the underlying logic of success still applies.

After studying the reasons for the rapid rise of so many brands, I discovered the secret of small brands’ counterattack: this is the leverage success theory.

Whether it is an enterprise or an individual in the start-up phase without deep resources, if they want to quickly counterattack, they must first start by finding their own detailed positioning, focusing limited resources, and building an efficient system around the positioning.

Take enterprises as an example. In the Internet era, how should enterprises position themselves? What kind of system should be built? Who can I borrow strength from? How to innovate?

Leverage Success Theory helps you find the four steps to brand success.

1. SNS positioning (S-segment, N-new, S-simple)

1. Younger

When you are thirsty and buy a drink, you see various brands in the refrigerator in the mall. Which one would you choose?

For me, I will quickly choose what I am used to drinking, such as Pocari Sweat, and I am not willing to try a newly launched brand like Yuanqi Forest.

The ultimate goal of positioning is to make the brand occupy the top two positions in the minds of target users. And what kind of people are most likely to accept new brands? The answer is obviously young people.

The mental space of young people is not like that of adults over 30 years old, where fixed cognition is difficult to change.

Therefore, the preferred target user group for new brand positioning is young people, those born after 1990 in China and Generation Z (young people born after 1995) in the United States.

Understanding young people’s preferences, behaviors, and trends, and targeting young people can help brands grow faster.

In the market, young people are the most active group, leading the market trends in different fields. Older people like me no longer have the time and energy to appreciate the ever-changing fashion culture, and can only follow the trends and rely on the recommendations of young people.

Young consumers are often the first to try new products and are therefore companies' first marketing targets. If young people can accept a product, it will basically be successful in the mainstream market.

2. Verticalization

No vertical, no penetration. Only refined vertical positioning can lead to focus, and lack of focus is the main reason for the failure of many brands.

The purpose of vertical positioning is to find a track that allows you to differentiate yourself and grow rapidly. By mentioning you, the target users can immediately know who you are, what you do, and what you are like. You occupy the top position in the user's mind.

Just like functional drinks, the first thing that comes to mind is Red Bull, when it comes to clearing away heat and relieving summer heat, the first thing that comes to mind is Wanglaoji, and the sugar-free drink is Yuanqi Forest.

In this way, when users have needs in the vertical positioning of the brand, the first brand they think of has the lowest conversion cost. This is the magic of brand influence.

3. Simplify

Fragmented channel information acquisition and ubiquitous brand advertising bombardment have already caused infinite fatigue to the user's brain threshold.

Brand positioning should be simple so that users can accept and remember it more easily.

A few days ago, I went to a shopping mall to buy jeans. The waiter greeted me warmly and asked me what kind I wanted to buy. I said, "I want to buy a pair of jeans, size M."

“Do you want a slim fit, a simple fit, a loose fit, a casual fit? A zipper, or a button?

I was stunned. I was given so many choices that I didn't know which one to choose. The brand provides customers with a wide variety of choices, which indeed brings convenience to different people. However, it also caused new troubles. Things that could have been solved within 5 minutes now have to take more time and energy, and are also full of doubts and anxiety.

Minimalist design is a design style highly respected in Europe and the United States. The role model to learn from is of course Apple.

2. POU system (P-platform, O-occasion, U-user)

To achieve positioning, we need to clearly know which channels the target users use to obtain information and layout our marketing system based on these channels.

The secret is to break through simple price competition and establish emotional ties with users' subcultures through scenario-based and socialized development.

The marketing system of channel + scenario + user maximizes leverage with the most compact coordination and perfect user experience.

Communities and communities grow exponentially through emotional and reciprocal connections and are key to expanding a brand’s mind share.

Case: See how Yuanqi Forest has become a phenomenal brand from scratch with monthly sales of nearly 100 million yuan through systematic marketing.

Although the consumption scenarios of beverages are highly random, Yuanqi Forest has continuously strengthened the social attributes of its product scenarios. Its products have entered convenience stores in first- and second-tier cities. In terms of attracting users, Yuanqi Forest and convenience stores need each other and meet the demands of young people for a healthy and fashionable work and lifestyle.

Its series of products have become the darlings of online shopping platforms, with more than 10,000 orders posted on "Little Red Book", most of which are related to fitness and healthy eating. Whether online or offline, we engage with users through scenario-based interactions to continuously enhance young people’s awareness of brand positioning.

Offline convenience store channels + Xiaohongshu + healthy and fashionable scenario-based marketing + young users = Yuanqi Forest’s exponential growth.

3. Leverage

Small and medium-sized enterprises often face this dilemma: their budgets are not as large as those of big brands, and they cannot have extensive and continuous exposure and publicity in major media.

The traditional HBG brand growth strategy is only suitable for large companies, as small and medium-sized enterprises do not have top resources and media.

The competitors who are ranked higher in the PK in the same industry have no supply chain advantages. Not only are their products expensive, but they are also not very differentiated. Their market share can only be slowly eroded. Others are drinking porridge while they can only drink soup. Are they half-dead? So how to break through?

In addition to what we mentioned earlier about finding your own vertical track and building your own system, it is also essential to learn how to use leverage.

Most rich people have leverage thinking. That is to say, leverage. The principle is that we need to win a lot of resources with the least possible cost. In ancient times, there were examples of borrowing arrows with straw boats and borrowing the east wind.

What leverage can be used against brands? Anything that can be used as leverage to achieve a small gain with a big investment can be used as leverage, for example:

(1) Capital

Capital allows us to quickly trial and error, scale quickly, and reduce time costs.

(2) Platform

If the wind is right, even a pig can fly. The era of fighting alone is over, and the right thing to do is to fly together with a platform that aggregates more resources.

Therefore, in addition to capital, we must also be good at utilizing Internet platforms to find traffic dividend platforms where target users exist.

Sellers who settled in Taobao and Amazon early on have already made a fortune by leveraging the platforms' early dividends. Pinduoduo, which is based on the WeChat social platform, surpassed Taobao in terms of user numbers in just a few years.

(3) Word of mouth

Good user reputation can also be a lever. Word-of-mouth publicity among users helps us acquire users at a low cost.

Marketing is about constantly using various levers to leverage future development with limited funds and resources.

4. Viral Marketing

Give me a fulcrum and I can move the earth.

The fulcrum of leverage success theory refers to creative thinking. For example, viral marketing. When it comes to viral marketing, what people may think of is black technology.

In my opinion, any operation, marketing, and creative method that can make target users addicted, even move them to tears, and attract them to repurchase, and that can lead to fission, can be called viral marketing.

Case: Pop Mart took advantage of human weaknesses and quickly achieved success by selling blind boxes.

As the name suggests, blind boxes mean that consumers do not know what is inside before opening them. They usually contain peripheral items of anime, film and television works, or dolls designed by designers.

This exploration and excitement of the unknown has fascinated and addicted countless consumers, who are rushing to talk about blind boxes, buy blind boxes, and collect blind boxes. Nearly 200,000 consumers spend more than 20,000 yuan each year to collect blind boxes. They are ruthless in buying blind boxes. It is this viral marketing method that has made Pop Mart quickly successful.

V. Conclusion

I often hear this phrase: "This is the worst of times, it is the best of times."

On one hand, traditional industries are in recession, competition is fierce, various costs are rising, and information is fragmented...

On one hand, new media is highly developed, capital and platform resources are abundant, and a piece of hot search news explodes exponentially...

Is success becoming increasingly difficult? No! Quite the opposite!

Success must have an underlying logic. What we can copy in each successful case is not their team, their financing, or their performance, but the underlying logic.

Leverage success theory builds solutions to problems from the bottom up and finds the fulcrum for brand success.

With the leverage of success, any emerging brand can disrupt the industry order.

There is no company that is always successful, there is only the company of the times. Difficulties and opportunities coexist. Let us work together to grasp the key to the success of the current brand.

Author: Uncle Monkey God Talking About Brands

Source: Uncle Monkey God Talking About Brands