How do new brands break out? Understand these 5 points

After the cotton incident, new domestic brands represented by Li Ning have attracted much attention. As of March 25, Li Ning has soared 10.74%, and has been on the rise all the way. On the one hand, this is the credit of competitors, and on the other hand, domestic consumption and new consumption have led to the steady rise of the brand.

There are many new faces in the Top 100 Most Promising New Brands in China in 2020 announced by a certain platform. We have seen many popular brands rising rapidly, and there are also some unfamiliar new faces who are making a fortune quietly and winning the favor of target users.

Changes in consumer objects, consumption methods, and consumption scenarios have led to changes in a brand’s growth path.

Doing the following five things may help a new brand to explode and grow:

01 Channel layout - deep penetration

During the embryonic stage of a new product, there must be a good channel to create a good brand. For brands with different budgets, how can they enter the channel reasonably? Here are 3 suggestions. Budget and investment are the most basic preparations for a brand. For those who don’t have a budget and want to get something for free, just stand aside.

• Low-budget brands: Become a main channel that is suitable for your own category and has the highest degree of match with yourself. Because the brand is in the early stage, your funds, staff and energy are limited. You can only focus on the first major shipping channel before doing other auxiliary work.
• Mid-budget brands: One main channel + multiple auxiliary distribution channels.
• High-budget new products: 30% of the investment is placed on channel construction, with mainstream e-commerce platforms + non-mainstream new media traffic platforms fully laid out. Tmall, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Douyin and Kuaishou are all included.

Tmall, as a brand benchmark store, sets the standard. Through the synchronous traffic construction of new media platforms, internal horse racing is carried out on the channel side; one person is responsible for one channel, and if there is no volume after 3 months, the essential problem will be found out.

If the quality of the channel itself is not good, just pass the channel directly; if the quality of the channel is good but the operator cannot produce results, optimize and adjust the personnel to achieve the goal.

All channels have clear purposes and are familiar with platform rules, so they can fire the first shot efficiently. During the startup phase, three types of people are needed to quickly break through.

• Traditional platform pioneers, including Tmall’s driving and activity traffic acquisition, JD’s express, etc.
• New media traffic miners, including new traffic depression platforms such as Kuaishou, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili;
• Multi-channel pioneers, such as: the popular spicy chicken community group buying channel, the live broadcast channel that has been popular for several years, and the vertical channels in the same category, etc.

02 User psychology - guiding decision-making

As consumption upgrades, user psychology is also upgrading; the product clearly meets user needs, but users are unwilling to buy it. Even if they admit that the product experience is indeed good, they just won’t pay for it. Why?

There are many factors that influence user decisions. Basic product needs have long been unable to support diversified user needs. The top level of Maslow's needs is self-realization and self-transcendence, which sounds abstract but is correct.

This easily explains why some products seem expensive and difficult to use in the eyes of ordinary people, but still sell well; because they meet the needs of the target group and minimize decision-making costs.

What psychological barriers influence consumers’ purchasing decisions?

① Perceived risk: product functions do not meet consumer expectations.

For example: worrying about whether the 2.0T car you bought has enough power and whether the power meets your psychological expectations.

② Economic risks: The value of the product does not match the price, the product is priced too high, or the product quality does not meet expectations.

For example: You find a handbag you particularly like while shopping, but you are worried that you have overpaid for it, so you end up not buying it.

③Time risk: Product failure may cause consumers to bear the opportunity cost of finding another satisfactory product in the same period.

For example: using Didi to call a car, but worrying that the time wasted and the car did not arrive. When shopping for clothes online, you worry about the wrong size and wasting time on returns and exchanges.

④ Social risk: Being ridiculed and alienated by others due to a wrong purchasing decision, and buying this product is embarrassing.

For example, if you buy an Apple phone on Pinduoduo, you will always have the illusion that you are buying a fake.

⑤ Psychological risk: The risk of customers’ emotions being hurt due to wrong decisions.

For example: luxury consumer goods, luxury restaurants, etc., am I wasting money?

03 Category and population - clear positioning

In order for a new product to become popular, we need to have three positionings in mind at the moment we are ready to do it - user positioning, product positioning, and consumer scenario positioning. We also have a clear execution path along the three positionings and a powerful promotion system.

User positioning, regarding the user value ranking, there is such a saying - unmarried women > married women > children > elderly > pets > men.

Which type of people should we target? And in the process of user positioning, we must understand that the consumer group and the purchasing group are often different; for example: the consumer group of maternal and child products and online education products is children, while the decision-making purchasing group is mothers.

Let’s take a look at the ice cream aristocrat Zhong Xue Gao. The price of ordinary ice cream is 2-5 yuan, and the high-end Magnum and Madiel are only about 10 yuan, while the price of Zhong Xue Gao is about 20 yuan, which is really shocking.

But it doesn’t matter. In terms of population positioning, Zhong Xue Gao has targeted high-end consumers and those who are willing to try this price. People who dislike the high price and are ignorant of the brand are naturally not their target users.

There are three types of people hidden behind the high price.

I want to try what such an expensive popsicle tastes like, this is the experience-oriented type of person who is eager to try; I want to know why it is so expensive, this is the skeptical and exploratory type of person. I agree with the brand concept and am willing to spend 20 yuan to buy an ice cream. I am a supporter of the brand whose minds are occupied by it.

Product positioning and scene positioning are actually integrated. In an era of product oversupply and information overload, purely preconceived thinking patterns have become increasingly ineffective. Carefully soliciting or examining the needs of your customers is the basis for positioning your own products.

What does it mean?

It is necessary to shift from the product perspective to the user perspective, from functional needs to more "heart-wrenching" needs, and it is also necessary to extend from Maslow's first level to the fifth level.

For example, Dongpeng Special Drink is a refreshing drink that is often consumed by long-distance drivers. Its ability to carve out market share from competitor Red Bull is inseparable from the optimization of its own product scenario details.

What are the characteristics of Dongpeng Special Drink? Refreshing and anti-fatigue.

It is suitable for long-distance drivers to refresh themselves. They can take a sip when they feel sleepy or smoke a cigarette to refresh themselves. The transparent lid can be used as a cup to drink beverages first, and then as an ashtray to flick ashes. They will feel energetic instantly.

When you smoke, opening the car window to flick the ash is too windy and noisy, so using this small cover is very suitable for flicking the ash. This scenario product optimization makes people sigh at the clarity of its positioning.

04 Growth Path - Clear and Traceable

The growth gossip model keeps users having “aha” moments at all times.

"Ahaha Moment" is already a consensus concept in the growth circle, referring to the point at which a product has the greatest sense of value to users.

A product has an engine to drive user growth only if it has an “aha moment”. With an aha moment, growth takes care of itself.

The user's life cycle is broken down into eight parts: cognition-contact-usage-first order-repeat purchase-habit-sharing-churn. In fact, it can be understood as an upgraded version of the funnel model.

Awareness: The process from users not knowing your product to knowing it. Brand is the first step in building awareness and is a long-term traffic pool.

Contact: The process of encounter between product and user, also known as “traffic”, the first A in Aarrr.

Usage: The process from a user's need for a product to their taking action.

First order: The first time a user pays for a product, and also the first OKR.

Repeat purchase: Users who purchase products repeatedly and multiple times are commonly known as high-frequency users.

Habit: Users will use and purchase without external incentives and are called loyal fans.

Sharing: Users are willing to introduce products to others, commonly known as self-propagation.

Churn: User activity gradually decreases and they no longer use or purchase the product.

There are response strategies for every stage of the user's life cycle. We always focus on the aha moment, break down the entire process of the user's life cycle, and find points that can be improved. Through data-based experiments and continuous iteration, we can complete the process of the North Star indicator.

Let’s take Zhong Xue Gao as an example and look at the brand’s growth from the eight parts of its life cycle.

During the cognitive contact stage, Zhong Xuegao invited celebrities popular among young people such as Tong Liya, Zhou Yiwei, and Ao Ziyi to endorse the brand. The first step is to spend money on branding and let more people know about it.

During the first order phase, the design is very Chinese in style, with a unique tile-shaped design, a simple tile appearance, and a Huizi pattern on the top, which is very traditional Chinese culture.

The clerk must tear open the product packaging and hand it to the consumer to see if the product has any defects, such as broken, melted, deformed, etc. Whether it is the clerk or the store manager, they can decide whether to throw the product away or sell it to the consumer.

In the repurchase habit sharing stage, adhere to the logic of high quality. When the user's economic conditions are limited, he will tend to prefer cost-effectiveness. When conditions improve, he will turn to good products.

Those who have bought it even felt proud to have bought such an expensive ice cream. They had unknowingly turned it into a social currency that was far more valuable than the product itself.

05 Private Domain Carrying - Compound Interest Growth

A brand can quickly become popular if the above four basic layouts are completed.

If you want to achieve sustained growth and survive the test of time, you must do a good job of private domain support. Private domain is the foundation of a brand’s endurance running and a reservoir for its self-operation, long-term returns and long half-life.

The popularity of private domains is actually like new buds growing on old trees. It is a long-term process. For brands, private domains are like a marathon and are a friend of time.

So, how can a new product better enter the private domain?

Brand private domain operations require internal support from the enterprise and the four-force methodology: organizational power, commodity power, operational power and product power. In fact, the private domain largely coincides with the growth hacker concept of that year.

• "Organizational ability": collaborate with the merchandise department, mainstream e-commerce platforms, planning department and other departments to initiate a traffic pool based on old customers. Learn how to build a system suitable for your target users and retain the brand's old users.
• "Product power": A single hit product may be the initial sales demand, but a diversified product structure, multiple price points, and multi-scenario SKUs are essential. You have to think clearly from the beginning about which 20% of products generate 80% of the revenue.
• "Operational strength": the frequency of daily activities, the quality of content push, user response speed, user conversion plan, the breakdown of every aha moment, and every change in settlement data are all manifestations of operational strength. True knowledge lies in the details.
• "Product Strength": Pay attention to the basic performance of the product, information architecture, whether the core functions are sound, and quantifiable data; the product vision that carries private domain transactions, the size of transaction resistance, activity stress resistance testing, etc.

Remember, there are no shortcuts in the private domain. Only by sticking to the mentality of sticking to details, being altruistic to users, and being compounding to yourself and the brand, can you achieve great success over time.

Author:zhrayan

Source: Black Box of 炏 (zydsgj)