Where does the contribution of “brand planning” lie?

As you know, I have been taking on some brand planning cases on a daily basis in recent years. Some are the entire brand planning process, while others are just a small part of brand building, such as coming up with a brand name.

Recently, I came into contact with a founder of a skin care product company. I sent my business introduction, regular quotations and some past planning proposals to this friend. When asked again two days later, the founder said that she had discussed it with the company's formulator and product manager and felt that the content was very empty. This makes me a little sad, because when a startup company doesn't have a person in charge who understands marketing, it is actually very difficult to explain many things about the brand to the other party. Because even if the other party understands the logic, in fact, a lot of marketing work requires the internal marketing manager of the company to consider implementation and execution later. There is actually a long way between understanding and being able to do it.

Of course, the other party feels that it is "relatively empty". After thinking about it, I think it also reflects another problem, that is, many company founders are actually not very clear about what value the brand planning position or profession can contribute to the brand.

So in today’s article, I would like to talk specifically about the profession and position of “brand planning” and what it can do in the entire marketing work.

Before discussing this big topic, we still need to help some students with less solid foundations to establish some basic concepts.

So in the first part, we will talk about "What dimensions should be paid attention to when building a new brand" (this is a big topic, so today I will just share some of my small opinions);

In the second part, I will talk to you about what to pay attention to when establishing a new brand based on the actual operations of some platforms in recent years;

In the third part, we will point out which tasks in the system framework of the first part are the daily contributions of the brand planning profession or position.

I hope that by sharing these three parts, I can help all bosses establish a basic framework concept for brand building. This way you can know more clearly when you need to find a brand planner and what services and value the other party can provide.

Part 1: New Brand Building Thinking Framework

After reading many marketing books and developing some marketing plans, I developed a framework for my own marketing. Of course, if you want to know more about what benefits "brand planning" can bring to the brand, you can skip this part directly.

As shown in the figure, an inverted triangle means that for a brand, the competitiveness of the product itself is the foundation of the brand. Brand is not only the result of all the advantages of the entire enterprise, but also the goal that the enterprise pursues in terms of profit. Let’s talk about it in detail below.

1. Products

Whether it is an Internet product, a physical retail product, or a B-side solution. All products are the result of entrepreneurs discovering unmet user needs in the market and proposing valuable solutions.

For example, many people have hair loss problems, so BAWANG created BAWANG Anti-Hair Loss Shampoo. For example, it was discovered that contemporary young people have the desire to quit sugar and lose weight, so Yuanqi Forest launched sugar-free sparkling water. For example, it was discovered that contemporary Internet professionals looking for jobs want to communicate directly with founders, so Boss Direct Hire entered people's minds with this concept and large-scale investment. For example, various consulting companies in the field of brand planning have been able to quickly enter the vision of various entrepreneurs by leveraging people's trust in publications.

For any enterprise, products are the cornerstone of its survival. Although a good product may not guarantee an overnight success, a bad product will definitely not last long.

Of course, based on the above consensus, we will also find a problem. In reality, we have noticed that many entrepreneurs have paid extremely high attention to the product itself. It’s not that it’s wrong to focus on something, but when there are 100 things to do in marketing itself, but the founder only focuses on one thing, it will lead to omissions in other links. Starting a business is like building an ever-expanding wooden barrel. If one of the boards is too long, the water in the barrel will not increase. The water capacity is also determined by the height of the short board.

2. Operations

Now that we have emphasized the importance of products, let’s look at a position that has been increasingly valued over the years - operations.

This job title has been widely used for no more than 10 years. But over the years, the word "operations" has appeared after various job titles. I have worked in many operations positions. When I first entered the industry, I was engaged in new media operations, which we called social marketing at that time. Later, I switched to e-commerce operations and also worked in event operations for Internet companies.

According to some common classifications in recent years, we often divide the so-called operational work content into these types. In terms of daily operations, it is divided into content operations and user operations. Relatively speaking, we are divided into event operations positions.

Compared with these methods of classification based on job content, companies also recruit for two other comprehensive operations positions on a daily basis, such as e-commerce operations and new media operations. As the new media concept includes more and more work content and business channels, we began to subdivide new media operations into Weibo operations, WeChat operations, short video operations, etc.

As operations themselves develop, they have increasingly clear definitions, boundaries, and KPI assessments. The essence of operation is that we want to increase the relationship between products and users. By continuously outputting content and interacting with them, we hope to strengthen the stickiness between the brand and users. In order to achieve this kind of stickiness, the operator itself needs to constantly pursue hot spots and maintain close connections with users, such as a common discourse system and common preferences.

I often feel that if the operation itself were anthropomorphized, it would probably be a lively dog ​​or a close friend of the same sex. Because of the relationship, operations are always trying to say this to users: I am always with you, and I will always be here waiting for you as long as you need XX.

Whether it is new media channels, the content we create, the private traffic channels we establish, the e-commerce channels, or various forms of activities...they are all tools and methods we use for user relationships and data.

For an enterprise, operators, due to job requirements, are like bundles of nerves connecting various departments of the enterprise. The constantly intertwined nerves form a network, allowing the enterprise's resources to be transported to the required links more efficiently. It has to be said that today, content creation may be one of the ways to acquire customers with the highest ROI for companies. Although there are costs, compared with the effects they bring, the cost ratio is very low. Even for photographic equipment that many companies are reluctant to purchase, most of the time the marginal cost decreases as the effect improves.

Personally, I especially recommend that marketers who are just entering the workplace have some operations experience. On the one hand, it allows you to quickly master some basic skills, while at the same time having a more systematic way of thinking and working. On the one hand, it also allows me to think about whether I like and can persist in doing routine work most of the time. Yes, although I have been working in operations for many years, to be honest, I don’t like doing operations now. This is also one of the underlying reasons why I switched to brand planning. Operations require detailed planning and data feedback. But it also requires more hard work. Good operations require a craftsman spirit to constantly hone one's skills.

Speaking of this, I would also like to share a few articles I wrote before about the practical operations of operations positions.

• A mind map teaches you how to do [daily operations of e-commerce channels], don't let yourself be idle in operations
• With this list mind map, the user data obtained in user operations is clear at a glance
• How to write a summary for e-commerce operations? What data should be considered when reviewing an activity? A mind map tells you
• [Guide to earning over 10,000 yuan a month for small operations] A picture teaches you how to plan events

3. Management

If the key to operations lies in high-frequency interaction with consumers and data-based prediction and review. When it comes to management, companies often overlook individual feelings and the shaping of group atmosphere.

The original intention of management must be because the company has a lot of work that cannot be completed, so the boss needs to recruit corresponding talents to share the work. Of course, the original intention above is not actually management at all, at most it is the first level of management. However, as the number of people increases, we want to minimize the laziness of employees and reduce the increase in entropy during the operation of the enterprise. It is necessary to pay attention to management.

When it comes to individual cooperation, it is not only necessary to consider whether the individual's abilities meet the needs of the company, but more importantly, whether each individual's personality and emotions are taken care of, and in the long run, whether the company can provide the resources and conditions needed for individual growth.

We always talk about "people-oriented", but we have to say that the emphasis on management in our workplace is still completely "matter-oriented". Because from the boss's perspective, he actually doesn't see people. The boss only cares about whether the task is completed. And whether this matter has been completed and met the standards. Even many older bosses, due to their own experiences, often still have an understanding of management that is based on the military-style management they had when they were young. However, as those born after 1995 and 2000 entered the workplace, people across generations began to collaborate together, making many bosses clearly realize that "this generation of young people is difficult to lead and manage."

The new generation of professionals need a management approach that is "people-oriented" and should be a cooperative agreement reached between enterprises and individuals in pursuit of "win-win" results. Therefore, on the one hand, companies should pay attention to the establishment and assessment of standards when managing "things", but at the same time they should also pay attention to the emotional and development needs of "people".

To put it simply, only when everyone is happy at work can the team atmosphere be good and work efficiency be high. If going to work is like going to a grave, it will inevitably affect the entire team. When facing the new generation of young people, managers should also constantly introduce rules and regulations that are suitable for their own companies and teams. If they continue to use the old rules, they will not be able to train a new team.

I would like to share some team management articles that I have shared before:

• As new-age employees, how do we actually need to be managed? !
• Do you communicate well at work? Chief "Translator" teaches you how to communicate efficiently
• "Critical Conversation" teaches you how to face "critical moments" calmly

4. “Management”

When I was working in operations, I actually only had a vague understanding of business operations. Even now, it cannot be said to be completely clear. However, on my journey of learning about business, there is a book that played an "enlightening" role, it's called "CEO Says".

This book mentions a series of key words, or even simply put, these key words are a series of indicators that every boss thinks about every day. These indicators themselves are the key points of business operations.

Cash flow, rate of return = profit margin × turnover rate, growth, ROI.

After 2020, I believe many people have a new understanding of these words. These six sets of key information are key indicators for every enterprise. Cash flow undoubtedly comes first. In 2020, many once large companies collapsed before our eyes, most of them died due to cash flow problems, such as Yousheng Education. Even many catering companies have called for help, such as Xibei...

Today I won’t show off my knowledge and explain every term, but just talk about the different understandings of ROI that I have discovered recently. In fact, the term ROI is calculated in two completely different ways today.

One is the input-output ratio often mentioned by Internet companies. In fact, the calculation method is ROI=sales/input cost. This calculation method is often used to evaluate the comparison between input and output of a certain channel or promotion method, so it is actually a multiple ratio.

Another ROI calculation formula is the original calculation method of this formula: Return on Assets = Net Profit/Average Total Assets*100%. You will find that this calculation method is actually a percentage.

This is a little tip that you can use to calculate the performance of various channels. For example, the input-output ratio in the figure below is our judgment on the sales and input that the corresponding channel can contribute when we make monthly plans. The main purpose is to calculate the approximate amount of investment required to achieve this sales volume based on the existing data.

5. Brand

There are a series of key points to mention about branding.

Brand is the goal: Having a brand means that the product has room for premium, so we make a lot of efforts, such as developing products and interacting and connecting with users through operations, such as our continuous advertising and public relations investments for brand awareness. These are all efforts made to build a brand.

At the same time, brand is also a result: because all efforts can only be seen after the brand development enters a certain stage and the sales scale reaches a certain threshold. Before reaching the boiling point of water, all efforts are just accumulation before qualitative change. As I often tell my friends, I was responsible for the operation of the SK-II Tmall flagship store on Double Eleven in 2014. As a result of my efforts, we increased the single-day sales from 6.5 million in 2013 to 14 million in 2014. However, given our operational authority and capabilities, it is foreseeable that we will not be able to reach 30 million in 2015 even if we try our best.

After I left, SK-II also changed to a new operating service provider. However, the brand itself launched a new advertising campaign in 2016. The main video "She Finally Went to the Blind Date Corner" became an instant hit on WeChat and was widely circulated. This made many young people aware of the SK-II brand and understand its brand proposition. As a result, the brand was the first to enter the billion-yuan club on Double Eleven 2016.

What does this story illustrate? Relying solely on promotions in a certain channel and free paid traffic provided by the platform without any brand communication can only attract the brand's existing user base. If you want to achieve greater results, you can't rely on operations alone. Only when the brand has thought through its overall goals, made greater investments, and attracted new customers can it generate new explosive growth. We often say that the value of a brand is difficult to measure. In this case, if we compare it only with the annual sales of Double Eleven, the value of the brand in this case exceeds 70 million. A brand is a spiritual proposition and also an expected promise.

Fox has also written some articles on brand strategy in the past, which I recommend to you:

• How to formulate and implement “brand strategy”? You can make a "brand manual" (6000 words of dry goods long article)
• Do you think you just can’t write a brand slogan? In fact, there is a big problem behind it.

In the second part, I will briefly talk about some practical tips for starting a business at this time.

1. For products, your SPU should be greater than 10

For the fast-moving consumer goods industry, more SPU is needed for many categories. For example, clothes and snacks. This is different from the approach of technology brands that launch one flagship product a year. You have few products, so whether you are doing live streaming or organizing events, you will face a situation where a good cook has no rice to cook.

In order to follow platform activities, you have to sign up for related activities, but many activities have minimum price requirements. This requires you to continuously launch SKU combinations. However, if you have few products, then relying solely on limited SKU combinations will ultimately be insufficient.

Even when doing live broadcasts, if there are few products, we can’t even do a special show and can only do a mixed broadcast. When there are many products, you can find many anchors to promote them at the same time. There are few products, and if any anchor demands the lowest price on the entire network, it will be difficult for you to explain this to the other anchors at the same time.

2. If you are doing e-commerce, it is recommended to open a Tmall store directly if possible.

Many companies choose to open a Taobao corporate store when doing online business. It seems to be a low-cost option in the early stage, but to be honest, when you really open it, you will find that although the cost of a Tmall store is high, for a new brand, its strategic significance and endorsement value to the brand are difficult to achieve by a Taobao corporate store.

For example, if a corporate store wants to enter the micro-task platform and enable Taobao live streaming permissions, it needs to meet the one-diamond requirement. However, when you actually sell 251 orders and reach the one-diamond level, you will find that most of the top anchors’ requirements clearly state that they will only cooperate with Tmall stores, not Taobao stores.

Even if you think that there are so many platform channels now that you don’t have to do business on Taobao, you will find that many Douyin anchors are also aware of the problem of varying quality of brands on the Douyin platform, so they will mention a standard from time to time: Do you have a Tmall store?

I have also been talking with some Taobao affiliate group leaders recently, and they also gave some opinions, saying that for Taobao corporate stores, since many anchors do not accept them, in addition to paid traffic and official activities, if they want to achieve something in the Taobao affiliate field, then the store level needs to reach at least 4 diamonds in the short term. Only when the store level reaches 4 diamonds or above, the Taobao affiliate group leader will be willing to allocate more resources to this store. Only then will there be an opportunity to continue to expand sales. Although many Taobao agents can also operate the business of making up orders, the treatment is still far inferior to that of Tmall stores which have no restrictions.

3. Let’s talk about private domain traffic and Xiaohongshu promotion

Many people have read too many marketing practice notes and case sharing, so they feel that if they are doing marketing now, they are completely out of date if they don’t use Xiaohongshu to promote products, private domain traffic, and live streaming to sell products. But before doing these things, we know very little about the cost and effect estimates behind these actions. There is no good solution to this problem, after all, the situation in each industry and each company is different.

But according to the data of my friend who promoted his products on Xiaohongshu, he spent 200,000 yuan on promotion on Xiaohongshu in half a year, not counting the official reported expenses. He gave the reacher between 100 and 200 yuan for each post. Half a year later, about 10% of Taobao corporate store sales came from Xiaohongshu. Because he didn't do any other promotional activities during the same period. So how should I put it? When you have the budget and time, then promoting products on Xiaohongshu is something you must do. However, if you want to increase sales quickly but don’t have a big budget, Xiaohongshu cannot help you become the number one in the industry quickly.

There are several points that need to be considered regarding private domain traffic. The underlying question is whether your product is very attractive to users, such as a large number of SPU choices or extremely high product loyalty and repurchase rates. And whether you have strong content production capabilities and can continuously produce content that consumers are interested in. Finally, private domain traffic requires a series of tool and personnel configurations. For example, WeChat Mini Mall, Weiban Assistant and other enterprise WeChat secondary development tools.

The cost is actually relative. For companies that already have the ability to create relatively complete private domain traffic, the cost will indeed be reduced as free tools become more popular. For example, Luckin Coffee and Perfect Diary. However, for startups, whether it is customer service and operations in terms of personnel, or the setting up and operation of a series of tools in terms of tools, these are the actual basic costs for the company to start a project. So it all comes down to the root issue of the entire marketing: Is your product highly attractive to consumers? If not, then you may need to start thinking in advance about how to adjust the product to increase its attractiveness.

Part three: What value can brand planning contribute to the entire brand building?

After we talked about the overall framework thinking that should be possessed in marketing, as well as some small details that need to be paid attention to when doing marketing at the current time. I believe that as an entrepreneur, you should have a basic understanding of marketing.

So let’s start talking about which aspects of a brand’s marketing process require brand planning work?

We know that brand building is actually divided into stages.

In the first stage of branding, for startups, the most important thing to pay attention to is often whether the product is accepted by the market. and the company's day-to-day operating issues.

The most important thing is to survive. At this stage, the brand planner’s contribution includes brand naming and initial company introduction, such as product manuals, company introductions, and other documentary materials. Some companies also use the planning of content such as product packaging and product details pages.

This stage is mainly about setting the tone. This kind of tone setting, on the one hand, helps the boss to think clearly about the general direction of the company's development, and on the other hand, it sets the tone for the style of the content of the company's communication. The styles of different industries and companies are different. For example, some companies are relaxed and interesting, some are rigorous and professional, some are gentle and graceful, and some are bold and straightforward...Brands have their own personalities just like people. Defining personality is also a strategic means of communicating with target users. Birds of a feather flock together. Only those with similar personalities can get along well with each other.

In the second stage, the company enters a stage of relatively stable business. At this stage, most companies begin to enter the stage that requires daily operations.

During this stage, brand planning can not only conduct daily sorting and upgrading of the communication layer of the corporate brand, but also plan and define daily communication content. There are three forms of daily communication for companies: text, which may be mainly various introductions and media soft articles; picture posters, which are mainly holiday marketing and event wins; video communication, which is mostly based on the release of operational content through its own short video channels, but sometimes it also cooperates with campaigns to release video ads.

What planners need to do is to collect a large number of samples of similar content on the market in a targeted manner according to the sales and communication needs of the brand, see how everyone else does it, and then combine the common features to see how they can stand out if they do it themselves. The prerequisite for standing out is to stand on the shoulders of giants. When planners "personalize" the content based on the company's own situation, the content delivered by the company will have soul. This soul is what we often call the main line of brand communication.

If the content and style of a brand’s communications are different each time, then each communication is an isolated event.

But when planning helps a brand find a thread that can be spread, sometimes it is a function, sometimes it is a spirit, sometimes it is a way of expression or a texture of expression.

Then, every communication of the enterprise will become an accumulation of continuous cultivation in the minds of users. For example, the Nike brand, which I like very much, always uses different stories, men and women, young and old, different skin colors and genders, different festivals... to express the same thing - take action, chase your dreams, just do it, through hard work you can realize all your dreams.

This main line, at the basic level, is the company's strategy and proposition; at the performance level, it is a brand slogan, the brand's posters and advertisements. These are the forces that brand planning can contribute to help brands.

By accumulating a large number of cases and abstractly disassembling and summarizing various cases, we can eventually find content that is in line with our own brand and worthy of continuous dissemination, and package and present the content in a creative way. This is what a brand planner has to do.

Of course, in reality, many start-ups are not very willing to accept the prices required for brand planning. If you ask a company that can't even afford food and clothing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to sort out its brand content instead of getting immediate sales feedback, the founder will definitely not agree. Therefore, most companies that need brand planning have already passed the life-or-death period and already have positive cash flow and sustainable development capabilities. They hope to renew the brands that they did not manage carefully in the past. At this time, they will need the brand planning role to contribute their strength. During this packaging and sorting process, brand planning actually contributes two parts of high-value content. The first part is strategic content, and the second part is the planning content that everyone can see.

However, strategic content is difficult to describe clearly using product-oriented language, while simply displaying planning content seems a bit thin. Perhaps this is a disadvantage in the field of brand planning.

For example, the following table shows some of the “planning-type” work I do for brands on a daily basis:

You will find that when we separate the brand planning business required in the process of brand building, the results are largely presented in the form of copywriting content. And for many bosses, this undoubtedly seems not worth it, because for those who are not familiar with marketing or bosses who have just passed the life-and-death period, they largely do not have the awareness to recognize that copywriting and planning are of high value.

In fact, the other half of the value that is not reflected in this "service list" is the strategic content. These provide more directional guidance for enterprises. These can only be discovered in the specific planning cases of brand planning.

To sum up, brand planning actually has high value in the process of brand building, but the recognition of these values ​​still requires the joint efforts of bosses and planners to convey them.

Author: Summer Fox

Source: "Fox Disassembly (ID: Sylar54)"