Revealing the three major pitfalls of hot marketing, new media operators, don’t you read this?

Hot topics are what brand public relations professionals love to hear most. Once a hot topic occurs, familiar brands will quickly jump into the spotlight and hype it up, thus kicking off a nationwide carnival in the marketing field.

Leverage marketing has become commonplace in today's Internet age. As long as there is an attention-grabbing event, your circle of friends will be occupied by various leveraged advertisements. There is nothing wrong with leveraging marketing trends, but how many people are truly “going with the flow” and how many are just “amusing themselves”?

What we usually understand as leveraged marketing is often limited to tracking hot events and constantly conducting brand guerrilla warfare around emergencies. However, the connotation of leveraging is more than that. Generally speaking, it can be divided into two categories:

Leveraging hot topics - using current hot events to continue the topic, and using the timeliness and attention of hot topics to output brand value; this type of marketing by leveraging trends is an uncontrollable factor in brand promotion, such as "The world is so big, I want to see it", "The boat of friendship can capsize at any time" and other popular news.

Symbolic leverage - relying on well-known brands, cultural symbols, etc., and leveraging the public's inherent concepts to output brand value; this type of leverage can be better planned and predicted, and is usually listed in the brand promotion execution plan, such as seasonal leverage of various festival nodes and cultural customs, and various "thigh-hugging" marketing methods that hook up with big brands.

Having said so much, let’s get back to the hot topics. Chasing hot topics is now a necessary skill for new media operations , but the following has to pour some cold water on those who are marketing on hot topics :

1. Don’t try to create a hot topic

Chasing hot topics means that your brand will always be lagging behind and will fall behind the market if you are not careful. As brand operators , of course, everyone hopes to seize the initiative and hope that their brand will become a catalyst to ignite hot spots, thereby bringing brand exposure through subsequent continuous fermentation and upgrading. It would be best to influence the direction of public opinion in advance, but in today's media environment, both the cost of media purchases and the cost of acquiring new users are constantly rising, the degree of attention fragmentation has caused many means of event communication to fail, the duration of hot spots is much shorter than before, and creating momentum and hot spots has far exceeded the budget support and market operation level of ordinary companies. In fact, even the big WeChat accounts on QZMedia, where each article has over 100,000 views, are basically just following the hot topics and have difficulty creating momentum.

Leveraging marketing is not a competition of who can create the original hot spot, but a competition of how the brand can maximize its brand value under the general trend. If the priorities are reversed, it is likely to be a thankless task and the brand will fall into a situation of self-entertainment.

2. There is no point in chasing hot spots in the short term

Hot spots are destined to be short-lived, and many people have questioned whether leveraging marketing has any actual impact on sales. Chasing hot topics is actually a collective self-entertainment in a public opinion environment. Apart from bringing short-term traffic, there is very little in-depth marketing. Think back, how many marketing campaigns do you remember last year? At the same time, according to data feedback from many companies, hot marketing does not significantly promote sales. In fact, chasing hot spots is only one part of the brand promotion line. It is a brand building behavior that improves user relationships and enriches the brand image. Most of them cannot play any role in the short term. Chasing hot spots reflects more of the subtle long-term brand value.

3. Playing around will only ruin your brand

Everyone knows that not all hot spots are suitable for your brand to pursue. Blindly pursuing them will only lead to the destruction of your own brand. This is particularly common in disaster marketing. If the scale is not properly judged, it will lead to consumers abandoning you. In general, there are three dimensions to make trade-offs:

Image Matching:

That is, consider whether the nature of the hot spot itself matches its own brand image and brand concept. When the content of brand promotion is combined with social hot spots, the public will definitely be influenced by the preconceived notions of hot events and look at your brand communication through tinted glasses. For example, “The world is so big, I want to see it” has made almost all travel agencies follow the trend, while educational institutions are relatively conservative; for another example, all major brands are following the Uniqlo incident , but Durex did not; for many vicious social incidents, if a very good combination of points cannot be found in the promotion, it is better not to follow up.

Products matching:

It is extremely difficult to encounter hot events that match your own products. In most cases, a hot event has nothing to do with your own brand products, and the discussion group is far from the target group of the product. This does not mean that we should not pursue it. What we should consider at this time is whether we can combine and import hot events to influence precise users, whether we can bring substantial value to the brand and whether the input-output ratio is acceptable.

Rhythm Matching:

Hotspot marketing serves the brand's overall promotion plan. Although there are many uncontrollable factors, it needs to be carried out according to the brand operation rhythm. Frequent tracking is not only unnecessary, but will disrupt its own promotion ideas. In addition, in some major promotional campaigns and specific industries, strict restrictions need to be made on what content should be released in the market at what stage. For example, on the eve of a major press conference or during a large-scale event marketing , blindly chasing hot spots will distract consumers' attention and affect the overall promotion effect.

In addition, the behavior of chasing hot spots is often the result of zero cost and KPI assessment, but it is very easy to fall into the vicious circle of drinking poison to quench thirst, because most hot events are aimed at the general public. If the product is aimed at a very precise and vertical group of people, it will not only easily lead to a vicious cycle of traffic but no sales, but also incur a lot of manpower costs. Similarly, Jin Pengyuan of Huanshi Interactive once said that when chasing hot topics becomes a standard action, its significance has become less significant.

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

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