Why is it that no one is interested in the product even though we have exhausted all kinds of marketing methods?

I have learned all kinds of clever marketing techniques, but why is my product still not popular?

Big data , psychology, marketing, experience, new ideas... After learning so much, which one should I believe?

Holding "Shoe Dog" and "Positioning" in his hands;

The WeChat public account is filled with messages like “10 hot-selling tips, you will regret it if you don’t read them!”;

He kept repeating Philip Kotler;

Even when I take a break to watch a video, all I see is Jack Ma talking nonsense.

Even if I cannot say that I have read a lot of history and experience on techniques to make a product popular, I have at least seen thousands of them. But why is my product just not very popular? I see that the traffic report and the horizon are moving forward in parallel, and no matter what tricks I try, I cannot make it take off vertically. Walking out of the office of my boss with a sullen face, I was greeted by the ridicule and squeeze from my colleagues, and then looking at my subordinates with their eyes wide open and full of innocence, I really wanted to burn the book, clear the public account, and forget all the marketing knowledge I had memorized in my mind... Then I bought a new book, added a new public account, and started learning again the next day. You know, this seems to be the way to solve the problem.

Why can't I make a leap forward in my performance after learning so many marketing methods? Are the cases in the book made up to fool people? Well, the knowledge and cases are real, but you have overlooked a few small problems:

[Adaptability issues] that new users often encounter

[Compatibility issues] that even experienced people still make mistakes

And I have to tell you some [metaphysical questions]

1. Adaptability Issues

1. Industry adaptability

"Do you understand this industry?" I have asked many people this question. The timid job seekers would tell me: "I will work hard to learn and understand"; the shrewd workplace experts would smile and say "OK", and then guess what I would ask next; the leaders who try to act like spiritual leaders would quote a famous saying: "The more you know, the more you realize your ignorance."

In fact, when someone asks me this question, I will unconsciously say "Of course I understand" in my heart. But before I say it, I will worry that if I ask a tricky question about the industry, if my answer is not perfect, I will be slapped in the face on the spot. Each industry is an independent discipline. Being a product manager or an operations manager , but stepping into different industries is equivalent to trying a new job. The corporate structure has changed, the work content has changed, and even the marketing methods that once worked well have become rusty.

Taking the industries that I am involved in more as an example, the promotion model of the gaming industry is simply a disaster when applied to the medical beauty industry. The regional manager of a chain of plastic surgery hospitals that I was familiar with wanted to make achievements in new media promotion. First, we made a big change in the organizational structure, expanded a full-time WeChat marketing team, and focused on private message marketing in the form of Micro-business. When attracting the initial user group, the supermarket model of scanning QR codes to give gifts was used. After that, the main form of promotion for a long time was forwarding and sending gifts in the circle of friends .

His construction of the WeChat channel model can be said to be simple and direct enough, and several main promotion forms are also commonly used and practical forms in WeChat promotion . However, after using these seemingly practical models for three years, he still suffered huge losses. Especially in the three years when all other channels under his management experienced explosive growth, the WeChat channel was unable to make ends meet.

Apart from other factors, the way his team used WeChat to add new users was out of step with the plastic surgery industry.

(1) In terms of product transferability, it does not have the convenience advantages of industries such as WeChat business and games. The service experience process is much more complicated than that of regular movie theaters and KTVs. The need for initial understanding and face-to-face diagnosis, coupled with the customer's hesitation and consideration, greatly prolongs the transaction timeline. Moreover, WeChat can only be used for simple communication and cannot replace the face-to-face consultation function in the plastic surgery industry. Customers even feel cheated when consulting on WeChat. "I have been talking to you for so long, and you promised to answer my questions, but after all the twists and turns, the final answer is to come to the hospital and let the doctor take a look. What's the point of adding you on WeChat?"

(2) The privacy issues of the product also greatly reduce the effectiveness of its communication model. Chinese people's acceptance of the plastic surgery industry is increasing, but they are not yet open to the point of being proud of it. There aren't many single-person customers in shopping malls. Do you want to tell people who travel with other people: "Your girlfriend needs plastic surgery" or "Your best friend is very ugly and needs plastic surgery"? Even if he agrees with you mentally, can you make a deal? As for the issue of forwarding to friends, if you have a minor plastic surgery, will you tell everyone: "My nose is made with hyaluronic acid"? Fortunately, this is not the andrology and gynecology industry, otherwise advertisers would really face life safety risks.

There is no one method or technique that is effective in all industries.

2. Scale adaptability

“How to make a good pancake” and “How to run a pancake chain” are naturally completely different questions. Using the institutionalized management of a large company to constrain a small entrepreneurial team will naturally drain the enthusiasm of the "comrades-in-arms" who are fighting for their dreams. If small business owners use their shrewd pricing strategy based on customer demand in large supermarkets, the business will definitely be deserted.

A friend of mine once tried to start an online shopping mall in a second-tier city. After a few months of operation, although the number of users was not too large, it did gain a reputation because its prices were cheap and its delivery within the city was fast enough. Seeing that the company's development curve was too "stable", they became a little impatient and prepared an event where all products were sold at 1 yuan a second. The original intention of this activity is not bad. First, although their product variety is not small, the prices are generally low. Even if all of them are sold at 1 yuan, the cost of the activity is not high. Second, the company has been in operation for several months and has a certain amount of inventory. Clearing the inventory through activities can help attract customers, which is better than leaving it there as a silent cost.

As a small young team, we have strong cohesion and high energy. Once an activity is decided, all members will start to execute it immediately. Internet publicity, ground promotion, a few old hands led a group of newcomers to use all the conventional means. With the good reputation of the mall as the foundation, coupled with considerable promotion costs and truly attractive event content, it really caused quite a stir in the target group's circle.

I believe in his marketing skills and there will be no problem in attracting people through events, so I am more worried about the carrying capacity of his website. "We can handle it. For this event, I upgraded the website's capacity again. A capacity of 500,000 is definitely no problem for our company at this stage," he told me with a confident smile. Indeed, as usual, the scattered page views on the mall every day, even if concentrated at the same time point, exploded dozens of times, is still far from reaching the capacity of 500,000 online at the same time. But the problem that was supposed to happen still happened. I don’t know whether to say that he did a good job in promoting his event , or that his website had a good reputation. In short, at eight o’clock in the evening, when he was ready to pay attention to the website’s click curve with great anticipation, the curve was better than expected, soaring straight up... and then it went down. Well, the website went down. Within two months, his website was renamed twice and the team was eventually disbanded. Although the failure was only one reason for the loss of his reputation and there were many other internal reasons, there was no doubt that this failure was the fuse.

Small businesses cannot blindly pursue promotion results, but must also consider their own carrying capacity. On the one hand, on the Internet platform, we must be wary of the hard standards of technical thresholds; on the other hand, we must also consider the soft standards of reception capacity. If we spend a lot of money on an event and the number of customers exceeds the company's reception capacity, and the remaining customers leave in large numbers due to dissatisfaction, then the cost of the promotion will naturally be wasted. Do what you can and do whatever you want within the limits of cost and public opinion. Don't blindly pursue a stunning performance. Like Qin Chi Liquor in the past, in order to compete for the CCTV advertising bid, it made its mark on CCTV, but eventually disappeared from people's sight.

It goes without saying that large enterprises cannot copy the methods of small enterprises. It is not uncommon for many large companies to fail in hunger marketing when they should have widely distributed their products, and for many big managers to borrow a very popular small method on a whim, which ended up causing damage to the company's reputation.

3. Scene adaptability

This is the simplest question and the most common one.

To put it simply, even middle school students know it. When talking about history, the first thing they know is what time, what place, who, what factors (social, political, economic, technological, etc.... How about it, do you find it very similar to the PEST analysis we often talk about), and what happened.

It's complicated. Even large companies will have loopholes when considering issues, and it is inevitable that there will be omissions. McDonald's promoted new products during Ramadan in Islamic countries, which went against local culture. Nike aired an advertisement in China in which James defeated the Chinese dragon. Although the promotional activities were intended to achieve benefits rather than cause harm, they could still lead to serious public relations crises if one is not careful.

Although this type of problem is most likely to occur in multinational companies, if you think about it carefully, there are many companies around us that fail to think carefully and make promotions with negative effects. More than once, I have seen emotional parents of college entrance examination students angrily scolding some outspoken tutoring class promoters in front of the college entrance examination venues. I have also seen many times that some companies’ online promotions were not handled properly when they skirted the rules and ended up being charged with the crime of disseminating obscene audio and video materials.

The emergence of this kind of problem cannot be avoided by the decision-making ability of a wise man alone. On the one hand, it is necessary to do a good job of market research and collect as much information as possible. On the other hand, it requires the brainstorming of the entire team to fill in the gaps. In addition, if conditions permit, conducting experimental placements is also a good idea.

2. Compatibility Issues

1. 1+1=? Can we achieve exponential growth by mixing multiple methods?

I believe that every manager has seen and learned quite a few marketing methods. During actual practice, everyone also wanted to take out their own eighteen weapons and try them out one by one. Can these techniques be stacked infinitely to be effective? The answer is of course no. Just like when you have a cold, you will never take Contac, Baijiahei, 999 Cold Relief, Isatis Root, Kuai Ke, and Gan Kang all at once. As you may have experienced personally, there is growing evidence that using too many marketing techniques can make it difficult to achieve the desired results. Moreover, in some situations, these techniques can cancel each other out, leading to worse results, or even worse than using no technique at all.

Robert Metcalfe used two marketing methods when promoting energy conservation. One was a one-on-one sales promotion. The main marketing concept was "Your energy consumption is higher than your neighbors", just like what we say in regular marketing, "Don't let your children lose at the starting line", "One million customers have been changed by our products", using similar psychological factors; the second was the form of incentives. The main marketing concept was "When you save $100 worth of energy, you will get a $50 bonus", just like what we often use in marketing, "Collect 50 likes to get a free bill" and "Collect 10 stamps to get a free exquisite gift". Both methods have achieved the desired effect when used alone, with the results being similar, and the publicity effect has increased by about 6%.

After observing for a while, he decided to use both methods together: "Your energy consumption is higher than your neighbors, and you can get a bonus if you save energy." For many marketers , they would like to fill the screen and flyers with their advantages. Even if we have read "The Power of Simplicity", writing two advantages would not be beyond our writing scope. A dramatic scene appeared decisively. The combination of these two methods had the same final publicity effect as any other promotion method.

Different marketing methods and promotion strategies face different psychological motivations. Human psychology works in a very subtle way, and it is common to mix various marketing methods together and offset each other. We will introduce in detail the specific impact of the operation of psychological motivation on marketing methods in another article. At the same time, the more marketing methods you use, the more difficult it will be for customers to understand and feel. Moreover, your marketing intentions will become more and more obvious, so obvious that they will touch the customer's psychological warning line.

Of course, as demands become more complex and the niche gradually becomes the mainstream, it is unlikely that there will be no combination of marketing methods. In order to avoid the offsetting effect of the strategy, several things can be done:

(1) The main and secondary points must be clear. Whether it is an advertising slogan, a company’s strategic direction, or a product’s core selling point, the core content must be clear and unambiguous.

(2) Simplify the content and reduce the quantity. Adding warm water to boiling water will lower the water temperature. Adding unnecessary small advantages to a copy that is already persuasive enough, adding small episodes to a strategic direction that is already valuable enough, and adding unnecessary additional functions to products that already have a clear target group will confuse the vision, make understanding difficult, and affect the final effect.

2. X+Y=Z. In a complex decision-making environment, have you controlled the variables?

I am not afraid of comparing products, but I am afraid of too many tricks. Nowadays, the term "craftsmanship" is just a means of using in publicity. It has to be said that in the current market environment, whether it is marketing methods or corporate strategies, it is a good decision for small and medium-sized companies to learn from others. People are tired of the marketing routines in first-tier cities. When they are brought to second- and third-tier cities, they can surprise people with just a turn. Although the business model of large enterprises in the early growth stage has been abandoned by themselves, it already has objective value for other small and medium-sized enterprises.

Borrowing 30% is called borrowing, borrowing 80% is called imitation , and borrowing 100% is simply stupidity. Change is one of the fundamental attributes of marketing. There is no single technique that works in all situations, and no single approach that works for all groups. In marketing experiments, some of the seemingly conclusive answers are conclusions drawn through the fixed variable method. In your life and your company, how many variables and conditions can you control that allow you to completely copy experimental conclusions or classic cases? Moreover, classics are classics because they are difficult to replicate. Even large companies find it difficult to achieve the same good marketing results using the same marketing plans as in the past.

Everyone knows the slogan of Melatonin, but how many people remember how many images Melatonin has replaced to present their advertisements since the beginning? The Coca-Cola brand is indeed deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Who can count how many promotional activities Coca-Cola has to do every year to promote its brand? Has anyone heard that a century-old brand has survived to this day and still uses the marketing method of 100 years ago? Craftsmanship can be passed down for thousands of years, and integrity can be passed down from generation to generation, but marketing cannot. Falling behind will be abandoned, and only change can bring vitality.

Welcoming change is an opportunity. Although there are many variables, there is still room for control:

(1) Keep a steady course and keep your eyes on the starting point. No matter what marketing activities you do or what products you make, you must control the direction and not miss the original starting point in the constant adjustments. In order to solve the problem of difficulty in finding public toilets, you created a product whose core function is to find nearby toilets. This product can solve the practical problems of taxi drivers and salespeople and attract a certain number of users. When you are looking for profit points, if you rent out some online advertising spots, connect with some nearby businesses, and ask them to actively provide toilets to attract traffic, then your direction is relatively accurate. If you see a business opportunity for merchants to move in and want to use existing platforms to move away from finding restrooms and change to an O2O merchant entry platform, then several apps led by Meituan will let you know that you have come to the wrong place. In the bathroom industry, you may be the only leader, but if you change to another field, you may become a loser.

(2) Tighten your purse strings and control costs. Have you noticed that marketing funds are often not enough? When you want to hold an event and prepare according to the predetermined scale, your leader will always give you some new ideas in the process, and your subordinates will often encounter some new problems, and there are always places where money is spent. If you want to do marketing well, you will have to spend money. Money should be spent, but also saved. ① Clarify the priorities and omit the secondary content if necessary. ② Don’t treat all of the leaders’ requests as imperial decrees. Sometimes they may come up with an idea on impulse. If you try to implement all of them, you will soon be abandoned by them. ③Set an upper limit, and cut if it exceeds the limit. Unlimited budget increases are a prelude to losses.

(3) Observe as you go and control the process. There is no need to say much about this issue. No marketer, operator , or product person would be willing to sit back and do nothing about their "children". But it must be said that good process control is the key to getting good results.

3. Metaphysical Questions

1. The secret that cannot be told - the secret of success of successful people cannot be told

(1) Follow the trend of success

You can learn the techniques but you can't understand the key points. By borrowing the marketing methods of large companies and learning the marketing trends that are all the rage, you always wind up following the trends and becoming a contributor to others’ marketing success. What should you drink when you are tired and sleepy? What should you drink if you are afraid of getting a sore throat? What should you accept as a gift? These classic advertising slogans have been imitated by many competitors. Do you know the effect of imitation? Every time you hear an advertisement on TV and feel tired and sleepy, can you think of Dongpeng Special Drink? Every time the advertisement of Dongpeng Special Drink is broadcast, most people who see it will think of Red Bull! And the competition for the top spot in the same city is even more intense. A few years ago, I witnessed a fierce battle between two private hospitals in Shanghai. In the same month, one hospital took the lead in spending 10 million yuan on outdoor advertising, and the other hospital followed suit by spending 8 million yuan on outdoor advertising. Judging from the investment, the results seem to be about the same, but in reality, the one that invested 10 million got the meat, while the one that invested 8 million could only get some soup. In your positioning, you can be a competitor, but in the customer's choice, there is only one best and final choice. The sand and soil that follows a mudslide will make it more powerful; the impurities that follow a tornado will make it more violent. By following the trend, you become an aid to the spread of the initiator’s message.

(2) Immerse yourself in the craze of learning

When studying marketing cases , most of the time we study successful marketing cases. Let's first talk a little bit about success.

The classics in books are always just beautiful stories. As people say, history is written by the victors. The story will tell you that a young man used new marketing methods and eventually became a business tycoon in XX industry. But stories rarely record that a company used the same marketing tactics and eventually went bankrupt. People like to see hope, see tricks that "they feel will work after they use them", and find a sense of success from them, which is why celebrity biographies are so popular.

Unfortunately, no one would attribute their success to luck. Even if they mentioned it, it was just polite self-deprecation. People hope there are shortcuts to success, so they look for patterns in the experiences of successful people, hoping to get the pulse of success. We also hope that there are shortcuts in marketing, so we look for patterns from successful marketing cases, hoping that our marketing will be effective. But Li Ka-shing would not say that his success came from marrying a rich wife, and Jack Ma would not think that Alibaba 's progress was a coincidence. Of course, their talents are indeed outstanding. There are many people who have the same talent, but few of them can ultimately achieve perfect results. Successful people will not tell you some of the elements of their success, and even they themselves don’t know some of the elements.

Luck is the beacon that leads to results. Although we are constantly summarizing our experience and correcting uncontrollable factors, no matter how much we do, we cannot make the success rate of marketing 100%.

Character is the will that controls talent. When a person encounters a problem, talent provides him with multiple ways to solve the problem, but character determines which solution he will ultimately use, leading to different results.

Our marketing team also has a personality, which we also call the team’s personality template. This is not an empty word like the "wolf culture" that many companies are promoting. It is a potential logic that must exist when every team encounters problems that need to be dealt with, a collective attitude towards problems and a normal working mode. It may be dependent on one individual, or it may rely on collective wisdom; it may be offensive or conservative; it may be positive or negative. But as group psychology says, when an individual integrates into a group, his personality will be replaced by the group's personality, and eventually the group will present a more unified behavior pattern, selecting and manipulating marketing methods to move towards the final result. To put it simply: facing the same demand, your team has the ability to create 1,000 different products; facing the same direction, your team also has the ability to create 1,000 different marketing plans, but the character of the team determines that the plans that can usually be presented are only a few types that conform to the team's regular patterns.

2. The secret that cannot be fully revealed: the secret of consumer consumption cannot be fully revealed

Let me ask a question that is somewhat similar to the one at the beginning: "Do you understand your consumers?" Understanding users and discovering their needs are the basic skills of every product manager and every marketer. From not understanding consumers in the early stages of business development, to simply speculating about consumers, then to market research, and then to inference through data, and then to today's big data computing. Our understanding of consumers has deepened step by step, changing business models time and time again. Then, no matter how deeply we understand consumers through technological means, we still cannot truly understand consumers. What we understand is still just the "consumer" model inferred from our data.

(1) “Absolute marketing” does not exist. For every marketer, absolute marketing may be the highest goal to pursue. To put it simply, absolute marketing means: based on your product, through data research, analysis and inference, find a target audience that you think is most suitable, and you are 100% sure to sell your product to him. This can be said to be a dream in the marketing world, but it only exists in hypothesis. No one can do it because no one can understand a consumer 100%.

(2) Data analysis is still in progress. Our understanding of consumers is still evolving. The current research direction is somewhat similar to the history of the development of psychology. After all, both are disciplines that study human thoughts. Today's big data analysis is similar to the SR (stimulus-response) theory proposed by Watson in the middle stage of the development of psychology. The core of psychology research on SR reactions is to study which stimuli will lead to which reactions. Similarly, big data studies which previous behaviors will lead to which subsequent purchase choices. Similarly, the defect of SR response is that it focuses on external behavior and ignores the intermediate variables between physiology and psychology. Big data also has the same defect, which only judges from behavior, but does not know which factors will inevitably cause a certain behavior. The data that our big data can capture can only explain the tip of the iceberg of each individual consumer's behavior. Under the sea, there are still huge unknowns about the basis of his behavior and his psychological processes. I will discuss the shortcomings of consumer psychology and how to effectively utilize existing psychological research results in other articles.

The problems in the three stages are a bit like the span of a novel from martial arts to fairy tales and then to mythology. For the primary adaptability problems, they can be effectively solved by thinking more and paying more attention. When it comes to compatibility issues, the effective way to deal with them is to grasp the focus of work, control the direction of progress, and simplify things. As for "metaphysical problems" and confusions without clear solutions, just follow your feelings. Marketing always creates value in the unknown with asymmetric information. The unknown brings us challenges as well as opportunities.