How can you make users remember you through differentiated positioning?

Many people have studied brands, but most of them explore them from the perspective of the enterprise. Today we want to change our perspective and look at it from the user's point of view, from when the user first comes into contact with product information to when they experience the product and finally become loyal to the brand. What exactly happened during this period? What are the rules that will affect his choices and judgments? After understanding these, we can reversely infer which aspects should be used to build the brand so that users can remember you.

Just like the social process of "first sight - understanding - recognition" in reality, users also go through a similar process from first contact with the product to loyalty to the brand:

Identify – Recognize – Acknowledge

Identification

When users first come into contact with a product, they will make a simple qualitative classification of the product in their minds: Who is it for? What is it used for? Sometimes it will also produce a certain feeling, such as high-end, elegant, affordable, convenient, etc. (usually this is the product tone we convey). The above constitutes the user's initial impression of the product, and is also the message we want to convey when building a brand.

Different products have different focuses on promotion. Usually we divide them into two categories:

1. Focus on user attributes, emphasize who the product is for and what kind of group the product represents.

For example, when the liquor market became saturated in 2013, Jiang Xiaobai was born, representing the young consumer group. When it comes to drinking liquor, the first thing that comes to our mind is definitely a group of men between 30 and 50 years old, but the market for young people is still vacant. Jiang Xiaobai took advantage of this gap and launched an overwhelming marketing campaign , making everyone remember the brand.

Another typical marketing case is Clear Shampoo, the first shampoo to come up with the concept of male and female shampoo. When the cleaning market was saturated and Procter & Gamble took the lead, it entered the market by leveraging the segmentation of user groups and became a well-deserved dark horse.

For example, Vivo mobile phones represent young women who love taking selfies; Huawei mobile phones represent business men; luxury goods represent high-end consumers and are symbols of identity and status, so many luxury goods advertisements never emphasize product functions, or even mention them at all.

2. Focus on product attributes and emphasize what it is used for? What are the usage scenarios and functions of the product?

Many functional products, such as washing products, such as Head & Shoulders, focus on the anti-dandruff function; recruitment websites focus on recruitment and job search functions. A video advertisement promoted by BOSS Direct also focuses on the use scenario, which is very vivid, appropriate and interesting. If you are interested, you can search it:

I believe many people have seen Didi’s previous marketing ads, which also focused on product usage scenarios:

3. Focus on user attributes or product attributes?

The specific choice often depends on whether the product has social attributes and whether users will be displayed to others when using the product. For example, mobile phones and clothes are often seen by others when they are used in life. The grade and aesthetics of mobile phones and clothes will also indirectly explain the identity of the user. Therefore, we often focus on promoting the user attributes of such products in marketing, telling them: only people like you are worthy of using me, so that they can have a sense of identity. As for toiletries, you use them yourself. If you don’t tell others, few people will know what products you use, so users will be more concerned about their actual functions and effects. Similar things include socks and belts. Some people may wear all branded clothes, but their belts and socks may be from unknown brands. Since they are not displayed, they don't care about it.

The above is the conventional focus of publicity, but many times in order to leave a deep impression on users during publicity, we will break the routine, bring forth new ideas, and combine user attributes and product attributes for publicity. After all, as living conditions get better and better, there will always be more and more people who are particular about these things. When everyone is focusing on promoting product features, I am focusing on promoting user attributes. So do I stand out from the crowd? A typical case here is Qingyang. This is also the method of differentiated positioning that we will talk about next.

It is said that the first impression is important, and recognition is even more so as it is the first step for users to understand the product. How you promote and introduce your products is directly related to whether users will remember your products and leave an impression in their minds. In this process, it doesn’t matter how we interpret our products. What is important is what cognitive laws users have at this stage, and conforming to users’ cognitive laws is what we need to focus on at this stage.

How to make users remember you?

1. Only when you are different can users remember you!

Industry competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and there are more and more similar competing products. However, when making choices, consumers will only choose from two or three brands they remember. They will not remember more than that. The more market information there is, the fewer brands people can remember, until finally they only remember the leading brands in a certain category, that is, one brand leads a category.

The possibility of finding opportunities in the same red ocean is no longer great. If you want to find opportunities, the only way is to open up new blue oceans, which is what we often call differentiated positioning. In "Positioning", Trout said that we should look for new categories and vacancies, and some articles also mentioned the need to discover new dimensions. But how to discover and find it? But they didn't give an answer.

At the beginning of the identification stage, we mentioned promoting products based on user attributes and product attributes. In fact, this is the answer, and market segmentation also follows the same principle. Most user attributes and product attributes already exist. Whether you divide them or not, they are there. The key is whether you pay attention to them or not. When you notice their existence, new positioning can be created through deliberate division and reorganization.

1. Divide by user attributes and look for unoccupied slots. Such as: gender, occupation, age, hometown, geographical location, identity, hobbies, labels, zodiac sign, school, etc. New vacancies can also be found by combining multiple user attributes.

• For example, Tantan is a social app that focuses on young people based on user geographic information. Currently, most of its users are college students. It is a combination of "user geographic information + age attributes + strangers".
• For example, Maimai also has a social function, but it is a combination of "industry + position + real name".

The successful marketing examples of Jiang Xiaobai and Qingyang shampoo mentioned above also found the market by identifying gaps in user age and gender.

1. Divide by product attributes and look for unoccupied spaces. Such as: product functions, usage scenarios, product ports, product models, ingredients, size, price and other product attributes.

• For example, alcohol is divided into beer, liquor, wine, and cocktails based on taste and ingredients.
• For example, Didi Taxi’s marketing advertisements are targeted at different usage scenarios.
• General Motors opened up the market for small cars, medium cars, and large cars by dividing the cars according to their length and size.

The method of finding vacancies by product attributes is a common practice in the market, so there are basically no vacancies in the attributes of many products. No, it should be said that before the emergence of new technology, there are not many vacancies in product attributes. Once new technology is born, new product attribute vacancies will be created, which will then bring about a large wave of vacancies. Just like the rise of smart phones, it has brought about many mobile application products.

3. Combination positioning of user attributes + product attributes

Based on the combination of user attributes and product attributes, new attributes and positioning are generated. This is also the most obvious differentiated positioning. User attributes and user attributes, product attributes and product attributes can be combined, but the more similar attributes are combined, the smaller the market will be. Anyone who has studied sets should understand that they are intersections; and the combination of user attributes and product attributes is the union.

Tencent’s QQ and WeChat are both social networking services. Why does Tencent insist on developing WeChat when it already has QQ?

At that time, smartphones were on the rise and new differentiation had emerged in product attributes. Users' attention shifted from PC to mobile. If we simply moved QQ from PC to mobile, it is very likely that WeChat would be replaced by other mobile social products today, such as MiTalk. In order to strengthen the differentiation of positioning, WeChat combines user attributes with the original product attributes, namely: acquaintances + mobile + social. Weibo, Momo, etc. are all engaged in stranger social networking, but the "acquaintances" market in user attributes is still blank. So combined with the latest attribute: product port - mobile terminal, we have WeChat that we use every day now.

The Clear shampoo we have repeatedly mentioned is also a good marketing case. The combination of product function + user gender can be said to have caught P&G off guard. Unfortunately, Clear won the marketing battle but lost in product function. After all, it is a product without social attributes. For men, the function of removing dandruff and oil is more important than identity recognition, isn’t it?

2. With the help of existing knowledge, users can remember you!

Use things that have already formed cognition in the user's mind to help users understand and remember. That is to bind memory.

As usual, let’s take the example of a brand name. If we want to develop an education and training APP to help college students obtain a teacher’s certificate, what kind of name would be more appropriate? It’s called XXX Education? (In fact, many similar teacher qualification examination training apps are named this way). Mucang Technology has a relatively well-made APP called Driving Test Guide, which is an application to help college students obtain a driver’s license and has a high market share among college students. So why don’t we name our APP Teaching and Examination Guide? On the one hand, when thinking of the Driving Test Handbook, one will think of the Teaching Test Handbook, which can take advantage of its popularity among college students; on the other hand, just by looking at the name, users can know what it is for, which has greatly reduced the user's cognitive cost compared to a certain education provider. Why not?

When Oreo was first promoted in China, the country was making great efforts to improve the health of primary and secondary school students. At that time, many primary schools would prepare milk for students during the morning breaks. Of course, some schools with less favorable conditions used soy milk. One cup per person, bring your own cups.

It was in this environment that Oreo launched its classic advertising slogan: "Twist, lick, and dip." The dip was milk. Even now, children often drink milk, and when they drink milk, they are more likely to think of Oreos.

Not only that, existing knowledge can also help us position ourselves.

This is the fourth method of differentiated positioning: leverage the leading product in the market and bundle it with it so that users will remember you, which is called associative positioning .

The second strategy: The book “Positioning” talks about a case in the U.S. car rental industry. Avis Car Rental, unable to shake its leading position as the number one in the market, began to promote its number two position in the industry: Avis Car Rental was only ranked second! Why choose us? Because we work harder!

In fact, it was not really the second in the market at that time. The market share of American Car Rental was almost the same as itss. However, after it began to establish its second position in the industry, Avis, which had been losing money for 13 consecutive years, finally started to make a profit.

The same principle applies to 7UP's non-cola strategy. When cola was all the rage, 7UP promoted its drink as non-cola and emphasized that it was different from cola. Even though it did not say what it was, at a time when cola was the mainstream drink, admitting that it was not cola was already a very innovative positioning. Saying what you are is a kind of positioning; saying what you are not is also a kind of positioning, isn’t it?

There is a classic formula in communication studies:

Audience memory = audience familiarity with the content / ease of remembering the content

Taking advantage of the user's existing knowledge means increasing the numerator in this formula. Next, let's see how to reduce the denominator.

3. Follow the user's memory order to help users remember you faster!

There is a fixed order in which users think of products in their lives. Only when they are in a certain situation will they have needs, and then think of solutions to their needs, which are our product functions, and finally think of the brand.

For example, if I missed the bus on my way to work, in order not to be late and get the perfect attendance award for this month, I thought of taking a taxi and then turned on Didi.

I was hungry on my way home from get off work and wanted to eat something to fill my stomach, but I didn’t want to eat too much because I had to go home for dinner. In order to solve the hunger problem, I thought of Snickers.

Scenario - Need - Function - Brand

In order to conform to the user's thinking order and facilitate user association, our advertising slogans can also adopt this order. Tie a situation, need or function to a brand name. like:

If you are afraid of getting angry, drink Wanglaoji!

If you want to decorate your house or find furniture, just go to Ganji.com!

I won’t accept any gifts this year, and if I do, I’ll accept Melatonin!

It can be found that the slogans of many products are like this.

The shorter the user's association path is, the faster the user will think of your product. Otherwise, by the time he or she gets to the specific functions, he or she may have already thought of many other options. This is why more and more product advertisements are using scenarios to bind brands , such as the Snickers advertisement and the Didi advertisement mentioned above.

4. Easy to remember and associate, catchy and story-telling

Catchy advertising slogans and promotional slogans can also help users remember. If you can explain what your product does in one sentence, don’t use two sentences. This is the case for all good advertising slogans. The ultimate goal is also to reduce users’ memory and cognitive costs.

A good brand story not only draws us into the story, makes us believe in the product concept and leave us with a deep impression, but also helps us strengthen our self-image. Steve Jobs' demanding requirements for the ultimate experience and Stephen Chow's pursuit of perfection in acting make us full of expectations for their products.

Cognition

It is the process of users understanding the product, during which users will gradually develop a further understanding of the product.

What constitutes our perception of a product? There are three points: cognition after self-experience, word-of-mouth influence and official publicity.

Self-experienced knowledge > Word-of-mouth influence > Official publicity

The quality of the product and the user experience determine your perception after self-experience: Is this product good? Is it suitable for you? After using it, you will make your own judgment. This impact is greatest during the cognitive stage. Even if a product is recommended by his favorite celebrity, if it is really not suitable for him, the user will gradually give up using it.

In addition to marketing promotion , optimizing product quality and user experience, a startup brand also needs to build its own word-of-mouth system. The opinions of celebrities, influencers , experts, friends, and reports from third-party media will all have an impact on users' cognitive judgment.

Therefore, when we build a brand, we will invite celebrities or big Vs who have representative rights in a certain field to endorse and promote our products. Invite experts to analyze products from a professional perspective, plan events for hype, and trigger third-party media coverage . Of course, all this will be disguised as happening naturally. This is also something that companies need to pay attention to when building their own media. Try to use official propaganda as little as possible, because among these three, users trust the official one the least.

Official publicity also has its own mission. On the one hand, it can convey the brand's concept and tone, such as Durex 's hot marketing ; on the other hand, it can prove the company's strength, such as official websites and media reports, which is also a guarantee of product quality for many users.

at last

Recognition, that is, being loyal to the brand, is also the ultimate goal of everything we do above.

Conclusion

We have spent a lot of space explaining the cognitive rules of users in the identification stage. Among these three stages, the importance of the identification stage is self-evident, not only because it is the stage for creating the first impression of the product, but also because many people are still confused about positioning or have misunderstandings.

Since the rise of the Internet, we have moved many offline and traditional theories and techniques online and integrated them with products and operations . Unfortunately, we operators know very little about many theories and techniques of traditional marketing.

Especially the positioning in the identification stage, it seems that everyone is emphasizing positioning, and it seems that every company says that it has a positioning. But the reality is that in many Internet companies, the products do not have a clear positioning, there is only imitation . When I see others do it, I follow suit. After all, only a few companies have truly differentiated positioning. When it was our operations staff's turn to take over, the product form and functions had already been determined, and many products were highly homogenized, without differentiated functions and positioning. In the end, the only ones who have to bear the blame and bear the pressure are us, the hard-working operations staff.

Therefore, we focus on positioning in this article. If we want to differentiate our positioning, we have other options except waiting for the emergence of new user groups and technologies. If you have learned about permutations and combinations in mathematics, I believe you will be able to discover something from the division and reorganization of existing user attributes and product attributes.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article @谢金钟 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!