I heard you want to take advantage of the hot spots, think about it after reading this article

Jiuzhaigou was hit by an earthquake. Just when the whole country was rushing to provide disaster relief, it was discovered that some companies had released posters for blessing. This was a well-intentioned act, but the brand logo was printed on the posters. I was confused when I saw it. I couldn't help but ask, when a disaster occurs, you make a poster to take advantage of the situation? What does it mean?

(I think my coding skills have improved)

1. The current situation of leveraging marketing

1. The status of operators under leverage marketing

With the upgrading of marketing in recent years, leveraging marketing activities can be seen everywhere. There is a phenomenon in the operation industry. As soon as a hotspot appears, some people will dream of using it to achieve great results with little effort. When one hotspot is overused, they will target the next one. As a result, operators often complain of being tired, never turn off their phones, and are online on WeChat 24 hours a day. Their private time is simply being raped.

2. Today's hottest weather can be seen everywhere

Marketing follows hot spots, operations follow hot spots, and products also follow hot spots. Driven by the demand of everyone to follow hot spots, websites have launched hot columns for public consumption, which also help people from all walks of life to take advantage of the trend in their work.

Real-time social hot spots are provided at the bottom of the Baidu search homepage.

Hot topics column on the right side of Sina Weibo

In addition to the hot columns of major websites and products, the morning reports of public accounts and communities are actually a way to obtain hot topics. Hezijun once followed a public account that would push the previous day’s hot news every morning, and it was called "the more you get on, the hotter it gets." Major operational communities will also release morning reports summarizing hot topics every morning. It only takes a few minutes every day to read the hot topics of the previous day.

2. Have you thought before following the trend?

There are so many ways to receive hot spots, but there are only a few hot spots. What hot spots can be followed and in what form can we take advantage of the trend? These are the questions that need to be considered before following hot spots.

1. Is the hot topic you are following helpful to your brand or activities?

During this year's graduation season, NetEase Cloud Music launched the "Graduation Screening Room" event. NetEase Cloud Music presented the three themes of dormitory, farewell dinner, and couples experienced during student days in the form of playlists. Users can enter these playlists and listen to music on related themes. Students are about to say goodbye to their student life and enter the society. NetEase Cloud Music took advantage of this moment to customize exclusive activities for graduates, which touched a large number of graduates. Such a warm event has won NetEase Cloud Music a large number of fans.

2. Will the hot topics you follow be recognized by the public?

When the video of Uniqlo in Sanlitun caused a stir on the Internet, a brand responded quickly and released related posters, attracting a crowd of netizens to watch. Some people even went to Durex’s Weibo to leave a message asking Durex, "Where is your copywriting ?"

Jin Pengyuan, the chief creative officer of Durex, expressed his attitude towards brands taking advantage of the trend, "Hot spots have been treated as standard actions and have lost their meaning. It is a foolish behavior for brands to fail to distinguish hot spots and blindly chase after them." In the divorce incident of Ma Rong and Wang Baoqiang, some brands also took advantage of the situation for marketing. Jin Pengyuan once again spoke out on Weibo, calling for people not to become shit machines on social networks .

If the hot topics you pursue have nothing to do with your brand attributes and cannot be well integrated with your brand, not only will it not bring any benefits to your brand, but it will also cause unpredictable losses to your brand.

3. Let users enjoy the fun instead of enjoying yourself

The hot topics you follow make your activities popular, and the marketing you do makes your brand popular. Don’t think too much, these are all illusions.

1. Leverage trends based on data

In 2017, the culture of mourning was in vogue, and many brands took advantage of this trend. Sugar-free black coffee UCC BLACK is one of them. Taiwan's negative energy UCC coffee has launched negative energy coffee bottles for those busy urban "adults", shouting "some negative energy every day", and also held a black-belly quotes sharing contest. Finally, the marketing of negative energy coffee hit the high point of the post-80s generation, had an exchange with them on the culture of depression, and made them aware of the UCC coffee brand.

Sad culture seems to be a self-deprecating expression of the post-90s generation, but UC big data tells us that those born in the 1990s account for 35.42% of the sad culture, and the real mainstream of sad culture is those born in the 1980s, who account for as high as 50.41%. The data provides strong support for leveraged marketing. The leveraged marketing of the mourning culture for the post-80s generation is not planned for people's self-entertainment, but rather meets the emotional needs of this group. This group is aware of the leveraged marketing activities and even has a sense of involvement.

2. Build momentum first and then fuel it

Baidu Cloud Disk once carried out a bug marketing campaign, where they changed the price of the paid package of the cloud disk to 1/1000 of the original price, creating the appearance of a system bug. They then spread the news on major forums, Weibo, QQ groups, etc. Netizens who got this top-secret news rushed to grab the packages. That night, NetEase Cloud Disk gained a large number of new users.

NetEase Cloud Disk took advantage of the system bug to create momentum for itself, and then spread this unexpected good news to fuel its own activities. Users who heard that there was a bargain came to it after hearing the news, but they didn't realize that they had fallen into NetEase Cloud Disk's trap.

Previously, an operations staff member told Hezijun that his boss felt that marketing through leverage has been overused and was meaningless, so he asked him to create a hotspot himself. He called on all his friends to help, but the hotspot just wouldn't get popular. In fact, not all brands have the ability to create momentum. Before any brand does leverage marketing, it will mobilize a lot of resources to support its own marketing so that its leverage marketing can explode at a certain time. Moreover, those marketing campaigns that seem to have a lot of support may actually be spending more than they earn. If you don't know how to leverage the power of marketing and create a situation for yourself, in the end you will just be a show for others to watch.

Summary: Leverage marketing has indeed become the norm, but blindly leveraging the momentum will not only consume a lot of manpower and resources, but may also cause damage to your own brand. Only by understanding and following the situation can you better leverage it to help yourself achieve your operational goals.