Can marketing really do more with less money?

There are some things that you cannot think about too much, or you will gasp when you think about them, for example: the apps we commonly use are almost 10 years old, and they are almost all old babies. There haven’t been new apps widely used by the public for a long time. what does that mean? The Internet has not had any new traffic for a long time. Basically, everyone is competing for existing traffic. The result is that big brands take over everything, while small brands are struggling to survive. Why?

As platform tools become simpler and traffic becomes more stable, traffic optimization tasks that involve weighting and guessing algorithms are becoming more and more difficult.

A friend of mine who works in e-commerce in Hangzhou asked me while smoking a cigarette why Douyin has no traffic. A friend in Shanghai said to me while drinking tea: Mr. Zhao, you should pay more attention to Focus Media. We have invested a lot recently and the results are good.

When a businessman says “it’s OK”, it’s basically a show-off that can hardly be covered up.

What does this mean? Wasn’t it because offline traffic was too expensive back then that everyone switched to online? Are you going back now? Is this marketing parody logic?

Wang Xing, president of Kantar Research, believes that the core of current marketing is Weibo, Douyin and Focus Media. The integration of marketing investment requires both brand power and publicity power. These two efforts can always work miracles.

There are two completely different brand trends emerging in the market. One is the shift from offline to online, doing homework for the Internet, holding on to core offline media such as Focus Media, and developing WeChat and Douyin online. The other option is to move from online to offline. The Internet is no longer working because the cost of acquiring customers is too high. When you move offline and encounter Focus Media, it seems that there is some way to get offline traffic!

But in fact, the world is advancing in waves and rising in spirals. It is not suddenly online or offline. For example, the improvement of marketing is a comprehensive effect of the superposition of brand power and the expansion of publicity channels.

The essence of spending less money and getting more done is actually to operate skillfully, waste less money, and avoid detours.

Next, I will use Focus Media as an example to explain the logic of offline digital delivery. After all, there is nothing else to invest in offline now, only Focus Media. I hope that after reading this, you can invest in Focus Media as well as Direct Express and Douyin.

01. Does the concept of marketing cost-effectiveness exist?

Marketing cost-effectiveness, formerly known as small budget and big creativity, is now called ROI. The underlying logic is all about taking shortcuts. Of course, there are ways to make a small profit with a big investment, and this happens at a high frequency. Otherwise, how could there be viral videos, public account articles with over 100,000 views, and best-selling products? Those who understand can’t speak, and those who don’t understand are so anxious that they jump up and down.

Some people say that hot products are random, but from the era of print media to the TV era dominated by CCTV, to the TikTok era, and to the Focus Media era, every era has had brands that became popular overnight and star products with astonishing sales. Decades have passed, and if a hot product has not randomly come to you, it does not mean that it does not exist.

Some people think that cost-effectiveness is a false proposition. For example, why should the most talented employees in a company get the lowest salary? This is a sophistry. In the field of marketing, cost-effectiveness is Occam's razor of subtraction.

For example, the differentiated selling points are obvious, like Yuanqi Forest focusing on the audience and launching the 0-calorie, 0-fat, 0-sugar soda water that tastes good and does not make you fat. Its sales volume soared from more than 200 million to more than 2 billion in one year.

For example, Meijia Landou, whose creative performance is brainwashing, has increased its revenue from more than 100 million in 2018 to 800 million in 2019 and then to 2 billion in 2020 with a magical song at the entrance of Focus Media’s elevator.

For example, Xiaoxiandun, the category pioneer, accurately positions its fresh bird's nests, insists on stewing them on the same day, and uses cold chain delivery, with a short shelf life of only 15 days. It initially gained popularity through Xiaohongshu and grew to an annual revenue of 200 million yuan. It then used Zhang Ziyi as its spokesperson and used Focus Media to break out of the circle. In just two years, its annual revenue reached 2 billion yuan.

Therefore, when you make an investment, you must firmly believe that the input-output ratio can indeed be continuously improved, but the method to improve the input-output ratio may not be hidden only in the "investment" link.

02. Media is not divided into online and offline, but only into traffic size and delivery is only divided into accurate or inaccurate

When the traffic is sufficient, it is called a blue ocean, like turning on the tap to water the land, and miracles can happen with great effort. However, with more competitors, users’ attention is distracted and traffic is insufficient, so the market turns to targeted delivery, guessing what you might like, and interest-based e-commerce.

The era of extensive advertising has long been outdated. Now, it is all about cross-screen linkage and integration of online and offline. Focus Media puts out a magical advertising film, and then the data flows back to Tmall Data Bank. Through-train ads are then used to follow up with users who have seen Focus Media, which can often increase the conversion rate by 30% to 60%. Putting 20%-30% of the traffic budget on Focus Media can not only help the brand break the circle and attract new customers, but also increase brand awareness and recognition, which can enhance the conversion rate of online performance advertising and can also exchange for traffic from Tmall. From a mathematical point of view, even if there is no qualitative change, there will be a quantitative effect improvement.

Just like the Ulike laser hair removal device that we often see on Focus Media recently, it achieved 150 million during the 38th Festival last year. This year, Focus Media broke through the circle during the 38th Festival, with sales of more than 300 million on Tmall alone, and its reputation has soared. It is transforming from an Internet celebrity brand into a public brand widely recognized by the public.

03. Three things you must do to achieve high marketing output

Improving marketing awareness means having an overall understanding of marketing and local micro-management. Not only can you do it yourself, but you can also pass it on, help and lead. For example, if you invest in a niche market, you must know the following three elements:

A. Choose the right time

For example: Vatti range hoods became famous for their “refund marketing” during the France World Cup. Although there were some minor flaws in the prize redemption process, the previous gambling-style advertising creativity itself was eye-catching enough. At a time when everyone’s attention was on the World Cup, how could these peripheral players who did not get sponsorship spots take advantage? By achieving great heights, good performance and new ideas, Vatti + Focus Media has taught brand veterans a lesson.

Timing (World Cup) + scenario (building elevator) + good idea (refund if winning) was clearly a marketing campaign lasting more than a month, but it turned out to be a classic marketing event of small wins over big.

B Focus on the city

The spread of event effects may be uncertain, but there are many examples of certainty in investing in targeted media with a small budget. For example, the internet-famous restaurant Kaojiang in Chengdu has focused its advertising on Chengdu. Every day when people go downstairs to eat, the targeted media screen will remind them: If you don’t eat hot pot in Chengdu, eat Kaojiang. It’s very popular. There is also Lao Xiang Ji, which was recommended by Xiao Yueyue. When it opened a store in Nanjing, its elevator advertisements were displayed in Nanjing. When it moved to Beijing, its advertisements penetrated into the three-kilometer area around the new store in Beijing.

Let’s take a look at the IBABY constant temperature sleeping bag, which ranks first on the entire network. It is even more typical. The brand has a limited budget, so it does not pursue full-scale development. Instead, it adopts a sparse approach and has always adopted a focused and niche strategy, concentrating on penetrating a few cities. As expected, it has taken the steps to become the "first", with revenue rising from 30 million a year to 150 million a quarter.

B Choose the right scene

Scene triggering creates a scene imagination for users, bringing a strong sense of immersion. Its core is to trigger and awaken the psychological needs of consumers in specific scenes and trigger consumption impulse. For example, Safeguard is a brand with stable sales. How to increase the sales? During the flu season, Safeguard used Focus Media’s elevator advertisements to promote the idea that the button you just pressed has a lot of bacteria, and you should wash your hands with Safeguard before going upstairs to eat.

Another example is that Juewei Duck Neck stated in the Focus Media office building elevator advertisement that there is no such thing as overtime work without Juewei Duck Neck. Ele.me broadcasts Xibei and other big-name takeout products on the Focus Media screen: The pain of overtime work must be compensated with a big meal! Hua Xizi constantly changes the scene theme in the Focus Media screen: If you want to send flowers on Valentine's Day, it is better to send Hua Xizi. On 520, it launched the Heart Lock Lipstick, asking boys to give it to girls to express their love: lock love for a lifetime, and be together forever!

Making good use of targeted advertising is about creating scenarios and inducing potential demands. Good scenario advertising content can proactively create buying impulses. What does it mean? Significant reduction in costs and proactive growth in business.

04. From digital streaming to digital audience segmentation, the benefits of full digitalization

It is always said that half of the advertising budget is wasted. To put it bluntly, the data is not transparent and the feedback is not timely. By the time we react, the money is all gone.

After so many years of development, especially after Alibaba invested 15 billion yuan in Focus Media, the online and offline data have been completely connected, thus realizing the digitalization of omni-channel marketing. The benefits of doing so are obvious. When offline media such as Focus Media began to digitize, the data became more and more visual, quantifiable and optimizable.

Digital segmentation can be summarized as "opening up the six meridians" with the help of Alibaba. The cloud-based content updated in real time, enabled by Alibaba Cloud, is accurately distributed based on property data and Alibaba data. Through the location data of business districts, you can select communities around terminal sales points. Through house prices, you can match different grades of products with different buildings. Through Alibaba shopping data, you can judge the purchasing interests of different communities by category, and thus select communities with a high concentration of potential customers.

For example, Feihe milk powder can choose communities around maternal and child chain stores for precise placement and diversion, or it can choose high-end real estate projects with a value of more than X million yuan to place Feihe organic milk powder, and it can also choose communities with a high probability of purchasing maternal and child products for precise placement.

At the same time, every time a Focus Media brand is exposed to someone, the data will flow back to the brand's data bank, so that the effect can be quantitatively evaluated, such as how many people are exposed by the advertising, and how many of them are converted into interested people. When the brand assets accumulate to a certain level, Tmall will follow up with the exposed and interested people to complete the sales loop. By connecting the data of Focus Media and Tmall, the barriers between product and effect will be broken, shortening the cycle from "product" to "effect".

Summarize

Marketing itself requires continuous cost reduction and efficiency improvement, and in this process, digitalization will help transform occasional "explosive products" into a marketing necessity. The increase in inevitability means an increase in the "explosive product" rate, which means the continuous optimization of the input-output ratio.

There is no YYDS (eternal god) in marketing, but there must be a methodology. Don’t believe in metaphysics, please believe in mathematics. The better you use segmented media, the better you will understand the masses.

Author: Zhao Yuanyuan

Source: Zhao Yuanyuan