Can you become a brand by selling goods online?

Topic: "Can online sales become a brand?"

This is a very interesting topic. If selling goods cannot become a brand, then why are there so many people doing live broadcasts, looking for traffic, and becoming the top in the industry? If selling goods can become a brand, then why do some brands fall behind or even disappear as they sell more?

01What is a brand?

A brand must have an emotional connection with users. If there is a formula to be found, it must occupy at least two of the three dimensions of a brand.

What is the “three degrees of brand”?

In the minds of many marketers, the "three dimensions of brand" are a progressive relationship. Increasing brand awareness is the first step, followed by improving reputation, and ultimately building consumer loyalty.

But in fact, with today's information dissemination and diversified user purchasing links, these three should not be a progressive relationship, but a triangular full-link relationship.

Brands can reach consumers from any of these three dimensions.

A brand that can tell stories and conquer users with its products can easily establish a good reputation and then break through the circle to build popularity. Nowadays, many bloggers create their own brands. Because they have a fan base, the loyalty of their fans immediately brings about product monetization, which is then spread through fans to gain popularity and establish a good reputation through word of mouth from fans. There is more than just one path for brand growth.

It would be terrible if the brands with the highest sales volume still stick to the inherent concept of selling products and increasing their popularity through sales.

Some people believe that if you don’t have offline operations, you cannot be called a brand. In addition to providing a what-you-see-is-what-you-buy experience, offline marketing ultimately achieves the goal of increasing brand awareness through greater exposure on shelf. For new brands, especially followers, their brand awareness cannot compete with that of old brands, but there are opportunities to overtake them in terms of reputation and loyalty.

02Brand awareness

First there must be recognition, then there can be fame. Recognition is the basis of popularity.

When a brand first enters the market, consumers have absolutely no knowledge of it. At this time, the brand’s primary task is to expand its visibility, show up everywhere, become familiar to consumers, and generate purchases.

In the era of traditional media, users’ information sources are very limited, and strong media can help brands become famous overnight. At that time, whoever had the money to become the CCTV bid winner would have the opportunity to rise quickly and become a household name.

Nowadays, if a brand wants to grow rapidly, it must seize every opportunity for exposure and reach consumers in the early stages. A brand’s pursuit of traffic is actually a pursuit of exposure, and anchors and bloggers with a large number of fans can gain exposure and make transactions, killing two birds with one stone.

Content can bring traffic exposure, so off-site content has become a standard for brands to obtain traffic. However, content requires professional capabilities, which leads to uneven traffic acquisition capabilities of brands.

Popularity ranking:

Brand awareness includes brand awareness ranking, which represents the ranking of brands in a category when consumers purchase products in that category. The more brands he can think of, the higher the brand awareness ranking.

For example, when it comes to hamburgers, people will think of KFC and McDonald's, followed by Dicos, and then what? Maybe Wallace.

Speaking of zero-additive yogurt, I easily think of "Jane Eyre", are there any other brands? I can't think of it.

It is easy for people to remember the first place, or even the second place, but many cannot remember the third place. In order to make consumers remember a brand, it either needs to expose it continuously or establish differentiated perception to form a unique "memory mechanism" in consumers' memories.

Therefore, category strategy is a very important part of "positioning theory". Creating new categories and occupying the first place.

For new consumer product startups, you must either build user awareness in a category where there is no brand awareness, or improve brand awareness ranking in a category where there is already brand awareness.

Positioning Theory:

When it comes to brand awareness, we have to mention the "positioning theory". The "positioning" theory actually emphasizes the establishment of brand awareness.

Positioning is actually a kind of "memory mechanism" that establishes consumers' memory of "category = brand". Through advertising, brands can enter consumers’ minds in a simple and differentiated way, build brand awareness, and stand out in a crowded commercial competition environment. Let consumers “ think in terms of product categories and express with brands ” when purchasing.

Positioning theory also determines "brand recall". When consumers buy products in a certain category, their minds will automatically associate it with a certain brand, thus completing the brand association. Therefore, a good name, brand packaging vision, super symbol, and brand slogan are all basic elements that are conducive to "brand association". All of these can be used under the guidance of positioning theory to establish a unified and repeated brand memory, thereby generating brand recognition.

A classic example of positioning theory is “Drink Wanglaoji if you are afraid of getting a sore throat.” The key is that the slogan must be simple, colloquial, easy to understand, and even rhyme and be magical so that consumers will never forget it.

Every theory has its limitations. User connections at the level of emotional values ​​such as reputation and loyalty are the limitations of positioning theory.

Myth:

1. Popularity is not the criterion for judging whether a brand is good or not. A small and beautiful brand relies on its outstanding product strength to gain consumers' reputation and loyalty. In the hearts of a niche group of people, it is a brand.

2. You need money to build a brand:

It has always been easy for a brand to quickly gain popularity as long as it has enough money. Once the "CCTV bid winner", now Perfect Diary and Huaxizi, are engaged in crazy off-site advertising, leaving poorer brands far behind. As a result, many brands stay away when they hear about branding because of their limited budgets. At this time, some sales-oriented marketers appeared and told companies not to build brands in the early stages, but to do it later when they had money.

Live streaming and blogger advertising are favored by brands because they can both sell goods and gain exposure. Moreover, they are vertical experts and have precise users, which greatly improves advertising efficiency and reduces advertising costs.

However, this is a path that is easily copied, and your competitors will use the method of your rise to deal with you, or even make it more sophisticated. You can make consumers impulse buy through live broadcasts and short videos, and your competitors can do the same. Therefore, there is a first-mover advantage in the short term, but not necessarily in the long term.

Last January, I mentioned Haomaido and Wang Baobao at the annual meeting of the e-commerce circle. At that time, Haomaido rose very quickly, catching up with Wang Baobao through celebrity endorsements and a large number of bloggers. I mentioned a point: If Wang Baobao does not take advantage of its leading position to quickly build its brand and continues to compete with Haomaido in sales, it will be very dangerous.

Brand building must be about building user relationships. It is definitely not just about relying on a few co-branded products or celebrity endorsements. In March this year, Haomaido surpassed Wang Baobao and became the No. 1 cereal.

Therefore, you must be clear about your position and do different things at different stages. It is impossible to always stay at the level of popularity and compete with your opponents.

03Brand Reputation

Does fame necessarily mean purchasing power? Of course not, otherwise Nokia phones and Kodak films would not have disappeared.

If you are famous, does that mean you have a good reputation?

Everyone knows "Earl Travel Photography", but not everyone has a positive review of it. H&M is more well-known, but it currently has no good reputation at all. The Tesla owners' rights protection incident that just happened at the Shanghai Auto Show has damaged Tesla's reputation and will definitely affect some consumers from purchasing Tesla.

Awareness is a reason for consumers to buy a product, which can increase purchasing confidence and reduce the likelihood of trying other brands. However, if competitors achieve competitive advantage through product innovation, we especially need to improve consumers’ reputation and loyalty when purchasing our products.

Reputation is an important component of brand building, including favorability and trust. It is the consumer's emotional expression of the brand. Only when emotions are established can it be more lasting. When brands come to me for help with problems, I will not limit myself to giving them marketing and content advice, I will also give them advice on building their reputation.

The main ways to build reputation include: visual, event marketing, story packaging, public relations soft articles, service experience, user operation activities, etc. However, the foundation of good reputation is the product , and definitely not events, soft articles, etc., and we must not put the cart before the horse.

Story packaging:

When Guanxia Fragrance was launched on the market, it expressed its persistent pursuit of quality and its original intention of starting a business through an article on its official WeChat account, which touched people’s hearts and the product was sold out in just one article.

Xiaoguan Tea is also a master of storytelling.

PR soft articles:

By adopting a cow, the founder’s original intention of starting a business is constantly reinforced through public relations: the milk powder he brought back from abroad was detained by customs, and he was determined to produce good milk for the Chinese people, and he packaged stories such as his own cows listening to music to build user favorability.

User operation activities:

Some brands will hold user appreciation meetings, seed user activities, and user experience activities. For example, Lululemon and NIO have established brand favorability with users face to face through offline user experience activities, breaking through the consumer circle, influencing more people and creating a word-of-mouth effect.

In fact, the above-mentioned brands had no reputation at the beginning, but they were able to win the favor of users and then play a very big role in boosting product sales. This is a typical example of building consumer reputation.

04Brand Loyalty

When Xiaomi mobile phone was first founded, it had no popularity or reputation. It relied on the community of enthusiasts to accumulate loyalty to Xiaomi and quickly monetize and break out of the circle. Lao Luo’s fans are extremely loyal, and he even became popular for a short time. However, due to product problems, he failed to gain a good reputation and his popularity was short-lived.

Many internet celebrities and bloggers have very loyal fan groups and good online store sales, but due to lack of marketing capabilities, they are never able to break out of the circle. As a result, they can become a brand in the hearts of a few people, but cannot become a popular brand.

Many people have a view that today's consumers are becoming less and less brand loyal. What this means is that previous consumers have brand loyalty.

As mentioned just now: If your path to building a brand is only about exposure, your competitors will also use the same method to impulsively make consumers buy . This kind of shopping behavior is only impulsive and lacks loyalty. It is not that consumers are disloyal, but that brands, facing the aggressive competitors, have not broken away from it and established barriers of reputation or loyalty. They can only blame themselves, not consumers.

In addition, consumers have always been loyal to a certain category rather than a certain brand. Otherwise, those powerful brands could just expand their business lines frantically and have no worries about sales. Gree mobile phones and Haier mobile phones have also long stood out. Wanglaoji may also make sparkling water.

05 Conclusion

Marketing actions can increase brand awareness. But whether it is brand reputation or loyalty, the root must be the product. Once consumers have used a product that has received a lot of complaints, no matter how hard you try to build up its reputation or how well-known the celebrity endorsement is, it won’t last long.

For a brand, different things have different focuses at different stages. Brand exposure brings about increased popularity, which is an ongoing task, but you should never just focus on exposure.

New brands should not rely on competing with competitors for money or investment to achieve their success, as this will be difficult to sustain. On the basis of product strength, some clever methods to enhance reputation and loyalty must also be implemented simultaneously.

Especially when a brand leads in online sales and voice, it must keep up with offline reputation/loyalty to consolidate its advantages and distance itself from competitors.

There is more than one path to branding, and branding is definitely not just about sales. Founders must ask themselves: If you want to become a brand in the minds of users, are you connecting with consumers emotionally?