Li Jiaoshou: You can’t afford traffic, but you can afford innovation!

In his previous article, Li Jiaoshou analyzed a problem that most companies are complaining about: Why has marketing become difficult?

Why do we feel that “it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract users’ attention”, “traffic is becoming increasingly expensive”, and “spokespersons are not as effective as before”?

A very important reason is that most people are doing "value-capturing" work rather than "value-creating" work.

"Value-capturing" work means finding ways to continuously compete for existing resources, while "value-creating" work means changing the way resources are used to create new value.

Take hosting a marketing forum as an example. The so-called "value-capturing" work is to constantly find ways to invite big names, rent venues with higher potential, find bigger media, arrange more magnificent lighting, etc. Most of these do not require any real "ideas". They are just competing with other similar forums for the already scarce existing resources (such as the time of big names).

"Value creation" work requires reorganizing the way resources are used, such as finding a unique need, designing a mission that inspires people to participate, and rethinking the reasons why others come to the forum.

The reason why marketing has become difficult is that as the flow of resources accelerates (everyone has more and more equal access to various resources), value-capturing work has become less important, and value-creating work has become more critical. The latter is much more difficult to do - you have to rack your brains to come up with new and different ideas.

So how do we create value?

In marketing activities, we often hear such advice - look at how many consumers there are in the market, look at the actions of competitors, and collect some relevant cases, but we ignore one point, that is, "look at your own thinking and actions."

Yes, to solve the problem of "value creation", you should not look outward (such as collecting information and knowledge), but look inward and study how you think .

When you " think about your own thinking process " internally, you will find that the reason why most of the time you are stuck in routine "value-grabbing" work instead of looking up to "create value" is not because you are not smart enough or because you lack knowledge, but because your thinking is limited by the brain's innate traps.

Here are some common thinking traps that limit our value creation, and their corresponding solutions:

1. Fixed Category Thinking – Fusion of Categories
2. Low-level thinking - raising the level of explanation
3. Link-limited thinking - all-link thinking
4. Assuming Default Behavior – Re-Questioning the Golden Rule

There are two types of restaurants: fast food and full meals. In the past, fast food tried to be more convenient, while formal restaurants tried to be more formal.

But this "fixed classification" can actually be broken, so two important trends have emerged in the catering industry in the past decade or so: the formalization of fast food and the fast foodization of formal meals.

• Fast food has become a regular meal - In the past, fast food (such as KFC or Roujiamo) was too unlike what Chinese people understand as a "normal meal". After eating it, it seemed as if the meal was not normal, so ways emerged to make fast food more like a "normal meal", such as braised chicken with rice.

• Fast foodization of formal meals - In the past, formal meals were served too slowly, the portions were too large, etc., which were not convenient enough, so a way of making formal meals like fast food emerged, such as Waipojia and Green Tea, which serve small portions and quickly.

This is what I call the first way of value creation – breaking fixed categories.

It does not achieve this by acquiring more resources (value capture), but by reconstructing the way existing resources are used - what we have always understood as fixed classifications can generate new value through mutual integration.

For example, the concept of " media productization and product mediatization " that I proposed last year also utilized the idea of ​​"integrated categories".

Most companies divide their external behaviors into "products" and "marketing". Products are responsible for creating value for customers, while marketing is responsible for delivering value (that is, media value).

But in fact, these two categories should also be integrated.

• Media productization - for example, a company's WeChat self-media , many people regard it as a simple marketing method, so they post advertisements all day long, which causes fans to dislike watching them. In fact, we should use product thinking to do self-media. It is not a marketing method, but the product itself (but it is a content product). You need to design what needs these contents should continuously meet (for example, health care self-media can also meet the needs of making people healthier, just like health care products).

• Media productization - Since the company's media (such as self-media) should be thought of as a product, the product should also be thought of as a media, so that the product itself can become the company's media . For example, Weiquan Juice turns the bottle into a medium to convey information.

Most people think that fixed categories cannot be changed, as if the categories we have been taught since childhood are supposed to be like this - for example, restaurants are divided into fast food and formal meals, people are divided into men and women, and places are divided into homes and offices...

But in fact, any classification is something that people come up with in their brains, and it is not fixed.

For example, if you look at the classification logic of ancient people hundreds of years ago, you must find it very funny:

Similarly, looking at the present from the perspective of the future, all the classifications we have now may be ridiculous and need to be broken down urgently.

What you need to do is to rethink these categories and find ways to integrate them.

The method is very simple. You just need to find out: In my industry, are there any sayings like “there are two types of XX”? What trends of integration are emerging now?

Here are some that just came to my mind:

(1) There are two typical business models: 2B business and 2C business

So there are two trends:

• 2B2C - the original B-end business began to be marketed to the C-end. Companies like Alibaba Cloud, Qualcomm, and Ant Financial began to advertise on the C-end, just like Intel did back then, using consumers to control purchasers.

• 2C2B – Products and services originally targeting the C-end begin to be promoted through the B-end first. For example, many people have discovered that instead of constantly advertising, some O2O services might as well get the HR of a large company with tens of thousands of employees to turn it into an employee benefit, which can be promoted instantly.

(2) There are two places: home and office

So there are two trends:

• Working from home - With the emergence of more and more freelancers, more and more people are working from home, so there is a market for products that improve the home office experience.
• Office home-like - With the emergence of more and more overtime-crazed companies, many people regard work itself as a lifestyle, which has led more and more companies to provide a home-like environment (even providing beds) in their offices.

(3) There are two scenarios: virtual and real

In the past, things were either virtual (such as the Internet) or real (such as the shopping malls you saw with your own eyes).

So now there are two trends:

• Virtual reality - also known as VR technology, makes movies, games , etc. more realistic.
• Reality virtualization - what we call AR technology - allows virtual information to be presented in reality.

(PS, someone asked me the difference between AR and VR before, I said one is to make virtuality more realistic, the other is to make reality more virtual, in the future you won’t be able to tell what is virtuality and what is reality)

(4) The entertainment industry also has two categories: drama and reality

Drama is performed on the screen for you to see, and reality is your actual life.

In this case, there are generally two trends:

• The reality of drama - the emergence of a large number of reality shows has made drama more like real life, such as "Running Man" and Lu Yu's new show "Big Shot One Day" (the one where Wang Jianlin proposed the 100 million yuan goal)
• Real dramatization - the emergence of a large number of live broadcast platforms has made the real life of ordinary people more like a drama. For example, you can broadcast your life live on Huajiao Yingke for others to watch.

(5) When white-collar workers take an afternoon off, they also choose between two options: exercise or play games

Naturally, there are two trends:

• Motion-based gaming - making the original game realistically motion-enabled, such as the Kinect in the Xbox, which lets people run and jump in front of the screen.
• Gamification of sports - making running and other original sports have the fun of games. For example, the Zubao APP allows people to "circle land" by running, and they can see how much land they have circled on the phone, which has a gaming effect.

(6) For people at work, are they here for a journey or a training session?

• The training nature of the journey - for example, the Silicon Valley visiting scholar program for entrepreneurs that has been popular in recent years, gives the journey the attributes of training.
• So I think the opposite is also true - training should be journey-oriented. The “Li Jiaoshou 14-Day Change Plan” that I released two weeks ago was designed to create a complete sense of journey. Through different combinations of Day 1 and Day 2, online students can form a complete learning, training, and task experience.

There is no end to writing like this, so you can think about the rest yourself - what are the original classifications of your industry, and is there a trend of integration among these classifications? If so, you can do reverse integration (for example, others turn games into sports, but you turn sports into games) to discover new value creation opportunities.

Also, when you attend a marketing discussion, you will find some people saying:

"Where should we advertise? Which neighborhood is better for ground marketing ? Which spokesperson can help improve conversion rate ?"

This means that when you look at the problem at hand, you think of specific, superficial and local features (similar to which community the ground promotion is in, which is a local part of the entire marketing process), and this is the "low construal level" of things.

Another group of people discussed this:

“What marketing problem do we face now? Is it because we are not well-known enough or because consumers do not trust us enough?”

“What consumer needs are we meeting, and how do we get them to pay for them?”

“What else do we need to do to further align our strategic positioning? What role does advertising play in this?”

“For this purpose, how should the advertisement be designed and where should it be placed to play this role well?”

This means that when you look at the problem at hand, you think of abstract, essential and overall characteristics (such as what consumer needs to meet, which is very abstract and invisible to the eyes), and this is the "high construal level" of things.

One of the important reasons why many people are trapped in following routine behaviors day after day is that they always look at things in front of them with a low level of interpretation .

When a poster advertisement is placed in front of him, he will only consider whether the poster is creative and whether the text is beautiful, instead of thinking from a more abstract consumer or strategic perspective about how the poster actually affects user decisions.

When a pizza is placed in front of him, he will only see the local and specific features of the pizza, so he will say "pizza is just a piece of bread with meat", instead of thinking about pizza from a holistic, abstract and macro perspective (such as why Italians like to eat pizza).

In order to truly "create value", one needs to improve one's "level of explanation" of the things in front of one's eyes, and take a new look at the "why" of the things in front of one's eyes, rather than just staring at the things themselves.

For example, in the past, when people improved dolls, they focused on the dolls themselves, trying to make them more beautiful and better made, but they did not rethink " why users need dolls " (this is a high level of explanation).

But later, a doll maker discovered that little girls liked dolls, and what they really wanted was not to find a playmate with the same personality as them, but to see themselves as adults. So one company innovated and invented dolls in the style of adult women.

This is Barbie.

For example, many brands will look for spokespersons after they become rich, so everyone competes to find more famous and well-known spokespersons, but most people only focus on the "spokesperson" part itself, thinking about how to be more famous, how to lower the price, how to match the tone, etc. (low explanation level), instead of rethinking some high-level explanation questions - " Why do we need spokespersons? What other roles can spokespersons play?"

When you rethink this kind of high-level explanation problem, you will find that you have more ideas. For example, Amap discovered that by recording the spokesperson’s (Lin Chiling) voice into audio navigation, the spokesperson has value beyond “brand endorsement.”

Therefore, when you are looking at something in front of you, if you can not only focus on the thing itself, not only on the part that your eyes can see, but also look at its why, look at a product and action, and what it is for, it will be easier to find more unique ideas.

Many times, our ideas of value creation are limited, often because we regard the product as the whole, rather than a part of the user's mission to complete a certain role.

Suppose you are specializing in fitness instructional videos, you will definitely find that it may not be so easy to become popular, and the real impact on users is limited. It may be difficult for you to understand why, because from your perspective, the user looks like this:

The logic behind this kind of thinking is that we produce fitness instructional videos and then promote them to users.

But Li Jiaoshou has talked about the user perspective many times, so if you analyze it from the user's perspective, you will find that the real logic is this - the video you produce is just a part of the user's task of completing a task.

For users to complete the "fitness" task, multiple links need to exist at the same time. For example, there must be a source of motivation for them, a fitness plan must be formulated, there must be videos and other methods to teach them, they have to do it themselves, and then there must be feedback.

If other aspects are not good enough, and you simply provide "fitness videos", the actual market value will not be high. (Users simply cannot stick to it because they have no continuous motivation and feedback, and are too lazy to make plans themselves)

So later APP software such as KEEP solved this problem. APPs such as KEEP can motivate people (such as the temptation of photos of beautiful bodies), help you with fitness plans, provide videos, and provide feedback, etc., forming a complete fitness chain.

We know that the success of anything is made up of a whole chain of links. When there are limitations in other links, the investment in a single link is almost meaningless. For example, crops need water, air, soil, fertilizer, etc. to grow food. However, providing crops with fertilizer in an environment without water is meaningless, no matter how much fertilizer is provided.

Similarly, you should view your product as a part of a user's task, rather than standing from your own perspective and thinking of yourself as the only part.

Break the mindset of limited links and consider the entire process of how consumers solve tasks, and you will have more room for value creation.

For example, when I was designing the 14-day change plan, I was also thinking about this problem: Sometimes a training course is not effective, not because there is a problem with the course content, but because there are problems in other aspects (such as training, feedback, etc.). So I put more energy into designing training questions rather than the content of the course itself.

Many times, our thinking about value creation is limited because we have long regarded existing things as the default golden rules, even though the rationale for their existence may have disappeared long ago.

For example, in the online gaming industry, the business model is almost always very obvious - let everyone play the game for free, and then set thresholds within the game to stimulate some people to make in-game purchases.

Then, an atmosphere of "studying with the prince" (ordinary players playing with RMB players) slowly formed within the game.

But Overwatch, which was launched last year, broke this golden rule - it required everyone to pay 198 yuan to use it, and there were relatively few in-app purchases after entering the game (in-app purchases would not affect fairness), which was welcomed by many people.

Why can Overwatch break this golden rule?

In fact, a very important reason is that this golden rule has long become unreasonable with the changes of the times, but most people still accept the assumption that "what exists is reasonable."

If you look through the history of online games, you will find that games originally required money (buying game cards), which raised the threshold for gaming and restricted many players from playing.

Later, Shanda's Chen Tianqiao invented a "ruthless trick": making the game free but charging for in-app purchases. By reducing the gaming experience of some ordinary players (being bullied by better-equipped RMB players), more people can come in and play the game, allowing the game's "free model" to prevail.

As a result, domestic game companies competed to imitate it , leading to the current situation.

However, with the emergence of consumption upgrading trends, the "assumption" that made this model reasonable at the time has gradually ceased to hold true - in the eyes of many consumers today, money is no longer the biggest cost.

Game players are getting richer and richer. For them, money is no longer the biggest cost (so many people can afford the initial cost of purchasing the game). On the contrary, they care more about the fairness of the game than money.

This means that the model of sacrificing fairness to allow ordinary players to enter the game may be reduced, while Overwatch allows everyone to pay for fairness.

Therefore, if you go deep into any industry, you will find some rules that have been taken for granted for many years (such as software must be free, e-commerce must focus on speed, etc.). These rules existed at the time for certain reasons, and when these reasons decreased, the original rules became breakable.

This leaves opportunities for value creation.

The reason why many people always follow the rules is because they assume that everything that exists is reasonable, and they forget the prerequisites for the establishment of these golden rules.

So, please calm down and think about the industry you are in: What are the rules that everyone is shouting about, but in fact have long lost the premise for their establishment?

Many times you are unable to "create value" not because you lack relevant information and materials, but because your thinking is limited by some common traps.

For example: fixed classification, low level of explanation, limited links, default assumptions...

If you want to create unique value, you have to start again and think about how you think.