​Live streaming, advertising, KOL, creating hot products... How can new brands avoid pitfalls from 0 to 1?

While the reconstruction of media and traffic brings new content opportunities, there are also many pitfalls in these emerging "growth paths" such as live streaming , advertising, KOLs, and hot products.

What are the criteria for good content for brands? Behind the content, how to establish the core barriers that drive brand growth? What kind of mentality should founders have when facing the various changes brought about by new media?

The many practices and reflections from the front line may not be the most complete and direct answers, but after summarizing and sorting them out, they are still eye-opening and can provide inspiration for all aspects of consumer product entrepreneurs.

Excerpts of the exciting content from the second part are shared with everyone! (Grow together with thousands of new brand founders, click to join the New Wave Brand Club)

01. Why is live streaming a high-risk thing?

A: I am in charge of a health care product brand. Today I would like to share with you my thoughts on media and advertising.

First of all, for many brands, live streaming is a very risky thing. Why?

First, it is difficult to make money from live streaming. Health care product brands, in particular, are basically not allowed to do live broadcasts, because the anchors are particularly afraid that the products will not work for consumers and will receive bad reviews.

Today, unless you find Li Jiaqi or Wei Ya and customize a product that is suitable for long-term sales binding with them, for most brands, the role of live streaming is just to quickly pile up Tmall’s transaction volume at the beginning, to take the lead, and that’s it.

If you do it quickly in live streaming, you will definitely lose money at this time because the price you sell at will be very low.

This is different from the logic of doing business on Tmall. Whether you can make a profit by doing business on Tmall depends on whether you can create popular products and obtain free traffic from the Tmall system.

Second, live streaming customers may not be your real customers.

There is a huge difference between the traffic population portrait brought by live streaming and your real user portrait, so these users in live streaming cannot be expanded.

If you want to get more people to join in the process of creating a hit product, live streaming is fine, but don't expect to build a brand through live streaming.

Your products are very useful, but consumers remember Li Jiaqi or Wei Ya, not your brand, so live streaming has very little impact on the brand.

In addition, creating content is not as easy as everyone imagines.

First, what can and cannot be copied on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Douyin?

I think the most easy to copy is the logic of selecting KOLs and placing ads. Everyone knows this logic anyway, which is to measure the KOL's ability to bring products based on some relatively vague data indicators.

But you cannot copy the KOL you choose, because the customization requirements are very high, and you cannot just take the people and content directly.

Second, in terms of content creation, we are still quite far away from users.

It is best to leave the creation of content to professionals, who may only need to provide a framework of ideas and goals.

Our team has watched all the popular videos on TikTok before, and we all find it incredible. We can't understand why such a bad thing can be so popular, so we finally came to a conclusion:

When everyone in the team votes unanimously to reject a certain content, you should give yourself a chance to see if it is really the case.

Today, the way we reach consumers is different than in the past, and we understand consumers less than we thought. Therefore, we should return the right to content creation to the market and to those who specialize in content creation.

In addition, many people are curious about whether the underlying logic of top 500 FMCG brands like Procter & Gamble and Unilever has undergone major adjustments after being in business for so long? Actually no:

For consumers, a successful product and brand has core value and can solve problems in a certain scenario very accurately.

For example, for a product I was previously responsible for, I drew a user portrait for it, thinking that the user was a young woman who was dealing with jet lag on international flights.

As a result, we went to the airport and found that there was no such group of people, because 75% of the people traveling for business were men.

When we first start making a product, we all have an assumption about "TA", but after experiencing the launch and other things, we will find that many things are different from what we imagined before. So, we have to make adjustments based on the data.

For an overseas brand like us, when we launch a new product in China, the first thing we do is to refer to the overseas population portrait.

For example, for health care products, we originally thought that they were mainly targeted at women born in the 1990s and 1995s, but we discovered that in China, those who buy them are mothers, who are the main force. No matter how much the spending power of those born after 1995 grows, it cannot escape the characteristics of this category.

In this era, every platform has very good data for you to give back. Therefore, everyone must make adjustments based on changes in the traffic structure of their products.

02. How do brands view advertising and KOLs?

B: I am the founder of a brand of instant tea. It was officially launched on Tmall in August last year. We are a typical example of planting seeds outside the site and reaping the rewards on Taobao.

In the entire process of promoting products, there are two points that we pay more attention to: one is the content of the product, and the other is the quality of the KOL.

1. The best content is not high-end, but life-like material

We have been thinking about how to deliver content to users. After trying it, I found that the best content is not necessarily the most official or beautifully edited photos, but rather some very lifelike things.

You need to present the lifestyle you want to express to consumers in a down-to-earth manner, so that users will feel that your products are close to them. Therefore, the effect produced by using everyday materials may be better than those using those particularly high-end and awesome shapes.

In addition, you also need to think about how to reuse the content multiple times, or how to maximize the value of the content.

The first point is to reach multiple cooperation with traffic owners.

Many times, brands find a big V on Weibo, and the cooperation ends after the launch. This is actually a very wasteful behavior. In the early stages of our cooperation with bloggers, we have to consider how to make multiple transactions with them.

For example, after the Up主 posts a separate short video to promote a product, can he also indirectly embed the same product in his daily VLOG? Before events similar to Double 11 occur, could the product appear more times?

When the same product appears in front of a fan multiple times, the chances of him buying it will be much greater.

The second point is the secondary use of materials.

For example, can the content we create on Taobao and Tmall be synchronized to our buyer shows? Or in the information flow?

Secondary utilization is very important to us. Once a content is connected, you need to take the time to settle it and amplify it again.

2. How to find the KOL that suits you?

When it comes to KOL placement, we pay more attention to the authenticity of the data.

Anyone who has done advertising knows that a lot of data is true and false and difficult to distinguish. Even if a KOL has a lot of fans, reposts, questions, etc., it doesn’t mean anything, because these data are likely to be false.

Many brands pay close attention to the number of content views because this data makes them feel at ease, but it is not necessarily the real situation.

Therefore, when we screen bloggers, we do not require them to present beautiful data, but instead require them to provide the most authentic data.

In addition to this, we also need to think about how to find the blogger who suits us best.

This is an era where traffic is very expensive. In addition, a lot of capital has recently set its sights on the consumer sector. After many brands obtain financing, they will spend a lot of money on investment, so traffic will only become more and more expensive.

In this environment, it becomes very important to find a blogger that suits you.

For example, if I am working on food, the most direct way is to cooperate with some bloggers who do food broadcasts or food-related content. But the number of such bloggers is limited. When you have discussed cooperation with most of the bloggers, what should you do next?

Find sections where user portraits overlap.

For example, we did a lot of advertising on TikTok at the beginning of this year. After we had advertised on all the food-related accounts, we found a new direction: bloggers of cute pets. Why?

First, their fans are all very young people.

Second, fans love their pets very much, so they have a certain purchasing power.

Third, fans generally research the ingredients of pet food, so they have requirements and knowledge about the quality of the food.

It can be inferred from this that there is a certain overlap between the fans of cute pet bloggers and our users. Therefore, we conducted tests on TikTok and collaborated with some cute pet bloggers, which ultimately brought us quite good results.

3. Why not give up on advertising?

Sometimes, we can sit down and reflect on the effectiveness of the delivery, because in the process of delivery, you may fall into a misunderstanding:

When you first start channel marketing, you may have been doing it for a month, but the results are not very obvious, so you think about giving up.

But at this point in time, I don’t think you have to give up. Instead, you should study it in depth and think about why your advertising effect is not good?

First, when the channel does have a bonus but you don’t get any results, there must be something wrong with you.

Second, the data effect will only become obvious when you invest in the second or third month.

You can think about your own consumption habits. When you see a new brand for the first time, you may not buy it directly. But when you see it recommended by a blogger for the fifth time and feel that everyone is promoting it, proving that the product is good, then you start to become interested in it.

Therefore, investment is a long process. Don’t give up completely just because you have invested for only one month and feel that the effect is not good. You should work harder to study how to maximize the channel traffic.

New brands can also try multi-channel promotion. It doesn’t mean they have to focus on one channel, because the policies and algorithms of the platform are different in each time period. Perhaps some of their internal adjustments will cause your advertising results this month to be different.

Therefore, we need to deploy our products through multiple channels to diversify risks.

4. Treat live streaming with a normal attitude

Nowadays, as long as you are doing online business, it is difficult to avoid the pitfall of live streaming.

I think we should look at live streaming with a normal attitude, because it is selling at the lowest price. If users buy from you through live streaming for the first time, it will be difficult for them to repurchase at a normal price.

Therefore, we should look at live broadcasting with a very normal mentality. There are two reasons why I do live broadcasting:

First, the materials from this live broadcast can be reused.

If the material of this live broadcast can be used in information flow delivery, or authorized in other aspects, and bring me secondary conversions, then this live broadcast will be meaningful.

Second, this anchor can bring certain endorsement to my brand.

For example, Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya can give you strong endorsements. Even if the results of working with them are not perfect, I don’t think there is a problem, because I can still use their materials for secondary promotion.

For new brands, it is not a healthy state for most sales to come from live streaming. A relatively healthy number should be one where part of the sales comes from natural traffic and part comes from recommendation, which is more valuable for the brand.

03. From resource-driven to demand-driven, is this the long-term trend for brands?

C: Let me share my understanding of the needs and content.

Every content platform hopes that more high-quality and diverse content can be produced. So, opportunities for content producers always exist.

For brands, having more differentiated new content means having more advantageous negotiating space to obtain relatively low-priced, high-quality user traffic.

At the same time, content is fragmented, and each consumer has his or her own content preferences. The content you like may not be liked by others.

Therefore, it is difficult for brands to target a large group of consumers through subjective content creation. Instead, they need to target different consumers through a wider range of UGC, because different KOLs will have different user portraits.

The core of doing business is to better understand each consumer, understand their different needs, and match appropriate resources based on these needs.

For example, when we provide customized tours, we customize travel plans for users according to their needs. This is a demand-driven, people-centered business model.

If we look back, traditional travel agencies are resource-driven. They will first turn travel services into a product based on their resources and understanding of the destination, and then sell it on the OTA (online travel) platform.

Consumers understand whether the travel product meets their needs based on the content displayed on the OTA platform.

However, more and more consumption concepts tend to be driven by human needs, and products on OTAs may not necessarily meet the personalized needs of consumers.

Therefore, the tourism industry’s understanding and approach to traffic are a little different from what everyone thinks.

We are a service category with a relatively low frequency. Consumers’ decision-making path is relatively long, and we may lose users at every stage from product promotion to decision-making. At the same time, content platforms are increasingly hoping to shorten the decision-making path and complete the e-commerce closed loop directly on their own platforms.

So private domain traffic is very important to us. We need to use a suitable reason to let users enter our private domain, and in the future we need to carry out some long-term activities related to user stickiness, and let them communicate with others in our system before making a decision.

This is a long-term job.

We are not competing for traffic with other content platforms or trading platforms. Instead, we are using appropriate tools to better utilize content traffic, allowing the traffic to settle in our own system and provide more valuable services to consumers.

Now, the traffic on each platform is extremely large and dispersed. We can use various data methods to judge the company's every move, whether it has achieved the goals we set, and iterate.

In this process, many things need to be explored and optimized at the same time, and there are still many opportunities left for us entrepreneurs, because every change in traffic means the emergence of new opportunities.

04. Don’t be superstitious about the supply chain. Startups need more “smartness”

D: I have a background in industrial design and was previously a partner in a Xiaomi ecological chain company. Today I will mainly share with you my understanding of the small appliance industry.

In fact, small appliances are a bit like the fashion industry.

Why? Let me give you an example. There is a company that makes small fans. This year, it went to South Korea and sold about 2 million units. It has N models, and the response speed for launching each model is very fast because they have digitized the entire product design and supply chain management.

We have been doing the same thing since last year. We found a SaaS software to monitor e-commerce data, discover the latest trends, and after identifying new demands, we import the design plans into the factory as quickly as possible, as if we were racing against time.

In addition to using traffic for sales, we also incorporate it into product design and production to guide all aspects of our work.

In the past, products were mainly created based on the boss’s ideas or the designer’s talent. But now, products are captured through data, and we need to analyze the hot-selling products in each category, including their user portraits, time fluctuations, popular colors, etc.

Every two or three weeks, we will have a dedicated colleague responsible for preparing some data reports on popular products for designers to refer to. The designers will make micro-innovations based on this data and then put them into production within a month.

We started using this strategy last year, and now we have a product that has generated nearly 30 million in revenue in less than 11 months.

It doesn’t mean that you can produce a hit product every day by using this method, but it can indeed greatly increase the probability of product success.

From the perspective of Xiaomi's ecological chain, most small appliance companies rely on Xiaomi's traffic. Once the dividends from Xiaomi are gone, what will be our core barrier? I think this approach is a secondary development of traffic and is also one of the models that can establish long-term barriers.

Many people think that innovation in the back-end supply chain is the real barrier, but I disagree.

In areas like small household appliances, technology and supply chains are very common, and one factory may be engaged in OEM for seven or eight companies at the same time. Unless you have a technologically transformative patent like Dyson, most companies, including those in Xiaomi's ecosystem, mainly sell design, appearance and marketing.

Supply chain innovation is difficult, I know this very well because my partner previously worked for an Apple OEM factory. Innovation on Apple's scale cannot be achieved without a lot of money.

Therefore, for startups like us, we are more likely to use ingenuity and first make "many styles, new styles, and hot styles" and do things similar to fast fashion. The technology behind it is not very important. Once we have capital, we can then work on supply chain innovation.

05. Return to the user itself and look at the online and offline content layout

E: In terms of online and offline and content layout, I think we should return to the users themselves and think about how to establish connections between products, brands and users.

For example, our main consumer group for low-alcohol liquor is young urban white-collar women, many of whom are single women.

Their characteristics are: they will buy flowers for themselves, prepare gifts for themselves on their birthdays, and may also keep a cat.

We want to target this group of users, and the content must cater to their lifestyles so as to create an emotional connection and resonance with them.

In addition, low-alcohol beverages have a category characteristic, which is that users don’t want to wait when they want to drink. How is it possible to ask them to place an order on Tmall and then wait for two days?

Therefore, we pay great attention to offline channels, such as HEMA Home Delivery, major convenience stores, etc., and improve the convenience of our products through these scenarios.

Of course, we will also work hard on online channels, but I think it is a channel for reaching users and gaining good brand exposure. For example, when promoting products on Xiaohongshu, I have told the entire e-commerce department before that I don’t need them to make money because offline business can already support us.

Since I don't want them to make money, what's the point of their existence?

We just need to combine content operations, deeply circle out different user groups, and use data to understand their consumption habits and emotions, so that the feedback can become more clear and we can do more.

06. The core barrier of new brands lies in organization

1. The channel is still the one that makes the most money

F: In the entire venture capital circle, there has always been a discussion: Is it better to build a channel or a brand?

From the perspective of industrial structure, there are currently far more investors who make money by investing in channels than those who make money by investing in brands. So if you ask me to give an advice to my investor friends, I would say that the current channels still bring the most dividends and gains.

Because so much money is being poured in, more of it will end up on platforms like Douyin, WeChat, and Taobao, and the brands that will ultimately survive and grow big will be extremely rare.

2. What is the core barrier of a new brand?

I believe that the core barrier for new brands lies in the fact that the entrepreneurial team must have a strong learning ability and foresight for the future.

For example, many people who work in the cosmetics industry will refer to Perfect Diary’s approach back then and master it thoroughly. But while you are still learning from them, they are already doing the next thing.

So first of all, can the team learn it? Second, does the team have a more acute perspective that is at the forefront of the times? I think these two points are the biggest barriers for startups.

3. Maybe you can choose to become a merger and acquisition target

I think for many people who don’t have the courage to go public or don’t want to continue to innovate, it may be a better option to find a small and beautiful business that is not particularly large but has sufficient profits and deep barriers.

Because when a giant finally comes to acquire you, they may not look at the price, but at your sustainability and whether you are a scarce resource in the industry.

For example, Alibaba spent 9.5 billion to acquire Ele.me. Was this deal worthwhile? No one knows the timing of the merger and acquisition, but time will tell you the answer.

Author: Inspur New Consumption

Source: Inspur New Consumption