Brands must do these 5 things to stand out!

I believe that many people who do brand marketing often hear the following questions: "How to increase traffic and gain attention", "How to expand the number of customers, sell products, and increase this year's revenue", "How to increase visibility, increase favorability, and gain customer trust", "How to evaluate the work of the marketing department", etc. These are a bunch of meaningless nonsense without any premise. These are not real topics.

If a company does not know where its business will come from, and only has financial goals but no business strategy, and leaves the basic homework to the marketing, branding department or a third-party advertising company, this approach is not only irresponsible to itself and others, but also very impractical.

01 Follow the Golden Circle Rule

The famous marketing consultant Monsie Sinek proposed a "Golden Circle" theory: from the inside to the outside, it is "Why" (purpose, positioning, motivation), "How" (specific operating methods) and "What" (phenomenon, results).

The Golden Circle Theory tells us the correct order to think about problems. Start with Why, find the real purpose and positioning, then analyze the specific rules and operating methods How, and finally get the results you want.

When developing a marketing strategy, you can also use the Golden Circle, starting with Why, then How, and finally considering What.

In summary, first find out why, establish your own core values, then analyze how to do it, grasp the essence and laws of the problem, think about methods and strategies to solve the problem; finally, make overall arrangements on what to do. In the process of applying the Golden Circle, we should focus on Why and always use Why to test How and What.

It is important to know that industry position is very important for a company, so it is necessary to analyze the company's position in the industry.

Know where to attack, which upstream and downstream markets to occupy, and which industry's best resources to attract; the goal is to allow the company and brand to stand at the top of the industry. Only by standing at the top can you absorb 80% of the industry's resources.

The strategic node is from a small top to a medium top and then to a large top.

02 Clear brand positioning

First of all, clear and accurate brand positioning is important. Positioning is important because its purpose is to reach a brand consensus.

As for who to reach a consensus with, it should be emphasized here that China has a population of more than one billion, and it is definitely not a consensus reached with everyone. The book "From 0 to 1" mentioned: "The perfect target market for a startup is a specific group of people, and there are almost no other competitors to compete with them. Any large target market is a wrong choice.

The reality is that many companies have been looking for a market that is large enough and have set the market scope very broadly. However, because the goal is too big and the resources and energy are too few, they often fail before they even get started. This is essentially a very internal consumption-intensive thing.

Take Xiaohongshu as an example:

Looking back at the growth of Xiaohongshu, its brand positioning points to and emphasizes a "community for sharing lifestyles" and its brand slogan is "Mark my life."

Do you still remember the commercial at the beginning of last year? The content of the commercial was that celebrities said "thank you" to the bloggers who shared in the community from the perspective of ordinary people. The communication theme at that time was "What you love is worth sharing with your heart"; because the point that everyone agrees most about Xiaohongshu is that bloggers sharing on it can inspire people.

For example: users can benefit from the life experiences and lessons of some bloggers, and the pitfalls that some bloggers have encountered can also serve as a reminder to themselves. The happiness shared by some people can also make more people feel better after seeing it. For example, the cute couple avatars and daily life of pet cats shared by many bloggers are like a piece of candy in ordinary life.

The core of the Xiaohongshu community is people, and even more so the connection between people. Xiaohongshu respects "individual value" very much. Only by truly respecting the "individual value" brought by bloggers who love to share on the platform can it protect its vision of building a community for a better life.

In the past, brand = concept + symbol + culture + slogan, now brand = person + emotion + personality + taste.

03 Reaching an effective circle consensus

Use products, content, and cases to verify and support your positioning, penetrate the circle and reach consensus.

Good products all have the attribute of self-propagation. Behind the interaction between products and customers, what is essentially the interaction between brand culture and customers.

One form of interaction is how brands use the Internet to communicate with customers. Another form of interaction is to use your products to sang the customer's spiritual world, to help the customer say what he wants to say and express, and to become the customer's confidant and best friend.

For example: Xiaohongshu’s brand user portrait is well known:

• Xiaohongshu platform currently has more than 260 million users
• Over 100 million monthly active users.
• Over 10 million daily active users.
• More than 80% of users are female and they love to share.
• 60% come from first- and second-tier economically developed regions, pay attention to quality of life and have a certain purchasing power.

Xiaohongshu’s celebrity advertising strategy: celebrity recommendation + KOL diffusion + internet celebrity big screen + celebrity recommendation.

The platform model is clear, and relevant gameplay has already reached a consensus among user circles. At the same time, its platform characteristics have the advantage of self-propagation. Various big Vs, KOLs, and user-generated content spread among themselves, forming a circle effect.

There are two reasons why we need to reach a circle consensus:

• If you are unable to grow naturally in the core circle and fail to achieve a 90-point brand, you will need to make timely adjustments or iterations, or even terminate operations.
• It is related to the consumption path. First, build a good reputation within the circle and achieve a 90-point brand. When you promote it to the public, consumers will receive a 90-point brand, rather than a blank brand without any reputation.

On the contrary, if no consensus is reached within the circle and it is pushed to the general public right away, it is equivalent to giving everyone the right to criticize you, and public opinion is uncontrollable. For example, when Gome changed its name to "Real Joy" a while ago, people couldn't understand it and were confused. There were many speculations in the public opinion, and only later did a public relations article explain what "real", "happy" and "happy" meant...

04 Leading the direction of public opinion

The key to a brand being talked about and spread by the public is not to broadcast it, but to spread it.

For example: In the early days, Luckin Coffee often occupied the front page headlines of major media and KOLs with its unique business model and high-profile marketing style. Later, Luckin Coffee was caught up in a financial fraud scandal and its stock price plummeted, but it did not recover. In three months, it accumulated more than 1.8 million private domain users on WeChat for Business, established more than 9,100 user welfare groups, and the number of group members increased by more than 600,000 per month, achieving positive cash flow. It is a benchmark for private domain marketing and has been reported and interpreted by the marketing circle and various media, achieving a gorgeous turnaround.

In particular, one of the important steps in establishing a new brand is to "set the tone of public opinion." When a product has gained a good enough reputation in the core circle and has achieved beautiful natural growth, and has become a good niche brand, it is necessary to consider how to appear in public opinion.

This appearance may not necessarily be in an official form, it may be in the form of third-party public relations, but it must be handled personally by Party A. If you give up the right to set the tone to the media, your label and your IP image will pay a huge price, and it may even easily destroy a new brand.

As a brand, you must pay close attention to public opinion. If a negative tone appears, the brand must either communicate with it in a timely manner or make timely corrections with positive content. The other possibility is that public opinion has not set the tone for the brand, and the brand can then control the rhythm and wait for the right opportunity to break through circle barriers and enter the mass space.

The consensus of the circle is the basis for the public to set the tone. If the brand does not score 90 points in the circle and is an unclear brand, the public tone cannot be set. After the public tone is successfully set, the brand will gain attention and discussion. At this time, consumers will definitely search for the product to see whether the public opinion is true. At this step, it is necessary to select topics and create content from the dimensions of products, companies, industries, users, etc., and shape the brand image in an all-round way from 360 degrees. Your visual effects will become the basis for setting the tone and should be treated with caution and not ignored.

In summary, through a combination of media, we can reach the target users, repeatedly spread the key memory points of the brand, occupy the minds of users, and deepen the brand impression.

05 Expand the scale of communication

The spread of public opinion. We talked about the tone of public opinion earlier. There will be constant media interpretation of your brand. The brand will be constantly discussed, and a consensus will be formed at the public opinion level.

The spread of word of mouth is now also called planting grass.

Nowadays, people believe more in an ordinary beautiful young lady who shows her love for the daily life. She takes a selfie with a cup of a certain brand of coffee and a pretty face. This kind of word-of-mouth sharing that is close to life brings much greater effects than advertising.

Therefore, mass communication is about operating two consensuses: one is the consensus of top-level media public opinion, and the other is the consensus of bottom-level user word of mouth.

Finally, if a brand wants to stand out, it must do the following five things:

• First, we must abide by the Golden Circle Rule
• Second, brand positioning is still very important
• Third, reach consensus within a specific circle
• Fourth, we must lead public opinion and set the tone
• The fifth is to expand word-of-mouth and public opinion and reach a consensus.

Author: Tong Xiaoxiu

Source: Tong Xiaoxiu