2021 Brand Marketing Market Trends!

If Wang Feng were to ask a question: Tell me, what is your dream?

Many entrepreneurs will answer: Build a brand!

What is that brand? Many people also don’t explain it clearly. But the ideas are very realistic: they hope that their brand products will sell well, make more money, and have a longer lifespan.

In the past 2020, despite the black swan of the epidemic, more entrepreneurs flocked to the track of new consumer product entrepreneurship. This year, more brands rose online. This year, more online brands tried diversified brand development paths. This year, 360 new brands took the top spot in their sub-categories on Double 11, the highest in history. Last year, there were only 11 new brands on Tmall’s Double 11, and this year there were only 26 on Tmall’s 618.

Among the founders, there are profit-seekers who take advantage of the trend, as well as long-termists who stick to their original aspirations. All kinds of people make choices between quick money and the long term, between sales and tone, and between interests and users. For those who dream of building their own brand, the journey is long.

Without a dream, why bother with a brand?

Today, let’s review 2020 and look forward to 2021.

01 Difficulties

1. Consumers are more demanding

The upgrade of consumer demand and the rise of the post-90s and post-95s have brought more opportunities for consumer product entrepreneurship, but have not made the brands "easier to do." On the contrary, consumers have higher requirements for brands, whether it is product strength, appearance, ingredients, service, effect, price, and even packaging and service. Brands should not only think about how to satisfy consumers in terms of product strength, but also consider how to bring different emotional value to consumers spiritually .

2. Brands have more places to spend money

The intensification of competition has led to more and more founders coming into contact with capital. They hope to take advantage of this wave of opportunities, run out quickly during the window period, and distance themselves from their competitors.

So, finding money and keeping an eye on products became their daily routine. Only if you have money can you dare to continuously invest to attract new users, occupy the minds of users first, and run out faster. Otherwise, if you stop investing, sales will stop.

3. Channels are becoming more and more selective

The anchors are the bosses, the channels are the bosses, and they are becoming more and more picky about products. They also hope that good products will have high sales and bring generous commission returns. Some anchors and influencers who sell goods have the opportunity to appear on the platform either because the brands are rich or because of their products.

Some bloggers cooperate for the sake of money, but they keep the price very low and just ship the products, which is of no help in building brand power.

4. Recruitment

There are too many startups and we find that there is not enough talent.

Many copywriters know how to write, but their weakness is commercial copywriting; many media lack data analysis and content capabilities; and many bosses want to hire good brand managers but cannot.

How strong a startup team is does not depend on how strong the boss is, but on finding the right employees, ensuring that each employee performs their duties and quickly joins the battle.

5. Branding is more difficult

Thinking clearly about the issue of brand value/user experience has become an important watershed in distinguishing between "brand" and "LOGO".

Many bosses have a dream of building a brand. Rather than building a brand, it is better to say that they just need to have a LOGO and start selling goods. For companies with average product strength, the cost of acquiring customers is very high, repurchase is poor, and they desperately squeeze their profit margins. They survive on possible channel advantages. They are neither better than the best nor worse than the worst, let alone establishing brand barriers, and a large number of them die directly.

No matter how bad the environment is or how many difficulties there are, there will always be companies that stand out.

02 Follow the trend

1. Rise from the trend

In 2020, affected by the epidemic, some industries grew rapidly, especially small household appliances, household cleaning, fast food, disinfection and sterilization, and health and wellness industries.

Within the first hour of November 11, the transaction volume of 313 small home appliance brands increased by more than 1,000% year-on-year. Among them, Yunjing became a member of the "100 million yuan club" only one year after entering Tmall, a significant increase of 2,000% year-on-year. At the same time, new brands such as Tineco floor washing machine, turkey sterilizing knife holder and Yuli floor heating pad have become the top 1 in their respective industries.

Consumers pay more attention to the home environment, and studying and working at home have become new demands. During Tmall Double 11, the number of latex mattresses increased by 5,600% year-on-year, and the number of smart door locks and designer furniture transactions increased by 900% year-on-year; the number of children's study tables increased by 900% year-on-year, and the number of computer chairs increased by 750% year-on-year.

The epidemic has led to the rise of stay-at-home consumption and a surge in demand for home-cooked food. Fast food represented by Kongke pasta, Haohuanluo , and Liziqi snail noodles are sought after by foodies.

Kongke created a new product category of "instant pasta" and after entering Tmall in September last year, it took less than 10 months to achieve cumulative sales of over 100 million yuan.

03 Rise

For most brands, rapid growth during special periods is not replicable. At the same time, there are also many brands that have achieved great results within less than a year after listing by entering extremely segmented markets, differentiating their products, or having explosive marketing promotions.

First, population segmentation

China's main consumer group is clearly getting younger. The population of those born after 1995 is about 260 million, and their spending can reach 4 trillion yuan.

It is very difficult for a new brand to gain access to the mass market. In the early stages, it is necessary to identify the most accurate users of the product and find the group with the highest user concentration to reach them.

Many brands have targeted those born after 1995 in terms of target population segmentation, especially beauty and food brands. Compared with those brands that make mass products, they have already achieved population segmentation. However, they can further segment this group of people and find their own target population.

Buying sneakers and figures is a very common phenomenon among the post-95 generation, thus, the " GOTO Figure Storage Box" was born. This extremely niche industry became the No. 1 figure box storage on Tmall in April 2020, less than a month after its launch.

IQOO , the phone used in the KPL competition, is a personalized product developed by vivo for young consumers. Its target group is users who like to play mobile games. It has a curved screen with movie-level color performance, a full-racing processor, etc., hoping to bring users a professional e-sports experience. IQOOz1x is among the top three products in the 1.5k-2k price range on Tmall’s Double 11 this year.

Second, Products

Good products will save marketing costs.

When they were studying, students with poor grades could go to good schools if their families had money to pay for school selection, and those with good academic performance undoubtedly saved a lot of money. The same applies to brands selling goods. If the product is not good, unless you have a lot of money and the speed of attracting new customers exceeds the speed of loss, otherwise, you should start with the product. Good products can save marketing costs. Paying too much attention to traffic and marketing techniques is putting the cart before the horse.

How to judge the strength of your own products?

The team is the customer. Look at the employees of your company and see if they are willing to buy your products for their own use or as gifts.

In addition to the brands just mentioned such as Yunjing, Tineco, and Shark Steam Mop, there is another interesting brand - townew sensory trash can, which is the No.1 sensor trash can on Tmall Double 11. It is unprecedented in the trash can world, with its sensor-activated lid opening and automatic garbage bag tying! Many people bought it to put in the bathroom.

Of course, for many brands, technological research and development is a barrier that cannot be replicated.

Products are the foundation of every brand. Before marketing and promotion, you must first clarify your brand positioning, differentiation, and product content. It would be even better if the visuals and packaging can be enhanced.

1) Product differentiation

For new brands, it is easiest to establish or retain a brand by entering into an innovative field. There is no hope of outperforming by simply copying the products of giants.

Turkey tested the waters with the new category of kitchen knife holders. The disinfection knife holders were launched on the Tmall store in August last year, and sales were lukewarm. However, in the first half of 2020, affected by the epidemic and the effect of category education gradually emerged, sales soared, with a year-on-year growth of more than 1,000%.

Before Ffit8 , the mainstream meal replacement brands in China were nothing more than Super Zero, Beast Life, WonderLab, Dongchi, Smeal and other brands. Although the rise of Ffit8 has a lot to do with Luo Yonghao, its products are indeed differentiated from the above-mentioned brands.

ffit8 has made a snack-like design, breaking through the original protein bar that is just protein powder stuck together. It concentrates high-quality protein, high dietary fiber, high-quality fat, etc. into a protein bar, breaking through the fitness eating scenario and expanding to different scenarios such as breakfast, work, travel, meeting, driving, etc.

However, my concerns about Ffit8 also come from its products. There are many negative reviews on its flagship store, which focus on the fact that the products taste like soap, are sweet, and are not filling. If Ffit8 cannot promptly iterate its products based on consumer feedback, it can only rely on attracting new customers to make up for the low repurchase rate.

2) Differentiated positioning

PMPM : Founded in May 2020. For an analysis article about it, please see my previous analysis "3 dimensions to analyze how the emerging brand PMPM exploded? 》. It has already considered how to carry out subsequent online promotion from the product research and development stage. The sense of ceremony of unboxing, the design of the package, the type of package card, the number of gifts, the differentiated selling points of the product and the brand story are all done in one go.

3) Ingredient differentiation

Ximuyuan , as the first domestic brand to develop and produce a full range of industrial hemp skin care products, officially launched its products in January, completed five rounds of financing in one year, and has two core series, camellia and hemp leaf CBD, with medium to high customer unit prices. Although the rise of its "Camellia" series cannot be compared with that of aeoeo, the CBD series has formed a barrier advantage in terms of licenses and ingredients in the current skin care field.

In China, companies that grow and extract industrial hemp need to obtain a license issued by the state, and as a brand company, you can only cooperate with such companies.

DEX , a new brand of baby care products, has completed three rounds of financing this year. Its core product is the calendula series, which contains ingredients such as calendula extract and covers products such as calendula face cream, body lotion, and moisturizing oil.

Kiehl's has been educated about the calendula ingredient, and female consumers are very receptive to its moisturizing and soothing functions, so it does not require much market education. By focusing on the differentiation of its ingredients, Daikesi quickly cooperated with a large number of KOLs/KOCs in maternal and child care and professional fields on platforms such as Douyin, including Laodabapingce and Dingxiang Doctor. At the same time, build private domain traffic and establish relationships with users.

AOEO , which was launched in April this year, ranked No. 1 in body soap on Tmall’s Double 11. The main ingredient of its facial cleanser is camellia. Although it feels a bit like imitating Chanel’s camellia series, the big brand used this ingredient to educate the market, shape the tone, and promote itself as a substitute for Chanel.

04 Cognition

For any brand to get consumers to buy its products, the basis is to build consumers' attention and awareness of the brand and products.

After the Spring Festival, the first marketing case that went viral was "Lao Xiang Ji" from Anhui. The slightly rustic press conference brought this remote catering brand into everyone's vision.

There must be many people who have never eaten " Lao Xiang Ji " so far, but this does not affect these people from knowing this brand. They even know that their main product is Anhui old hens. With the help of this wave of online marketing, the brand has been recognized and the reputation of many people has been gained.

Brand awareness refers to consumers' knowledge of a brand. The initial stage of recognition is attention: seeing you, but not knowing your purpose. From attention to a clear understanding of the product's characteristics, functions, and value, brand awareness is the process. At this stage, it is necessary to communicate with consumers through content marketing, advertising, public relations, marketing activities, etc.

Nowadays, an important way to build brand awareness is content marketing, including text and short video promotion, live broadcast, and information flow delivery. Almost all brands are aware of the strategy of directing traffic from outside the site to e-commerce platforms, but different executions bring about vastly different results. The transparency of the strategy also places higher demands on marketers' content operation capabilities. When it comes to collaboration with influencers, it’s no longer just about fans.

To sum up 2020, the overall changes in marketing strategies are:

1. Hot-selling product thinking

Startup brands have limited financial and human resources, so they should concentrate their forces, select one product at a certain stage for a saturation attack, establish a trust anchor through a high-potential product category, and then expand the product category based on functions and scenarios.

Shark Fit , TOP1 chicken breast item on Tmall Double 11. We initially chose chicken breast as our flagship product because among the earliest health foods, chicken breast was a product with extremely high general awareness and extremely strong demand. By using chicken breast to build more consumer awareness and trust in the brand, and then launching konjac noodles, buckwheat noodles, brown rice, ready-to-eat beef, etc., the cost of educating the market was greatly reduced.

Akita Manman , No. 1 in milk powder/supplementary food cards on Double 11, initially entered the infant food market through walnut oil, passed the organic certification of three countries, and won brand recognition through the concept of pecans, and then expanded to other categories.

Old packaging

BabyChanle , the TOP1 in infant snacks, initially built its brand recognition with its dried shrimps. Through differentiated products, it filled the gap in the market and quickly gained cooperation from channels such as WeChat official accounts and maternal and child bloggers. It then accumulated private domain traffic and later positioned itself as a complementary food. When it launched complementary food products, old users directly drove sales of new products.

2. The efficiency of brand promotion outside the website determines the speed of launching

Few of the brands that have emerged in the past two years have not attracted traffic through off-site promotion.

First of all, when the brand has a limited budget, it should first go all in on one platform, especially Xiaohongshu, and collaborate with influencers to promote the product. However, there are bloggers with good results on other platforms, and we can also cooperate with them on a scattered basis for the purpose of selling goods.

Secondly, in 2020, more brands began to build their own content matrices. By building their own accounts through short videos, pictures, texts, and live broadcasts, they can control the traffic in their own hands. Even many personal IPs on Douyin can build consumer trust and sell products through short videos + live broadcasts.

On Douyin, Liu Nan, CEO of Miaya Baby, opened his own account "Liu Nan Talia" to attract fans through short videos and live broadcasts to sell goods. Lianyungang's seafood swept the Douyin platform last year, and this year, Lianyungang people are no longer satisfied with seafood and have started to buy beef. The foodies on the Internet really don’t let go of any cow. Previously, major bloggers sold steaks, and now they sell beef.

3. The rapid rise of live streaming

I guess even industry practitioners themselves did not expect the popularity of live streaming this year. On April 1, Luo Yonghao made his first live broadcast on Douyin. The total amount of live payment transactions exceeded 110 million yuan, and the cumulative number of viewers exceeded 48 million. His arrival changed the world where the anchors' fans were mainly female. 80% of Lao Luo's fans are male.

Popularity is definitely accompanied by chaos. Artists who did not receive any notices during the epidemic have flocked to the live broadcast room, mobilizing the hormones of brands and anchors. Live broadcast bases have been built everywhere, and the debut shows of various out-of-date artists have made many people fantasize that as long as they have fans, they can sell goods, and as long as they have a mobile phone, they can become an anchor.

In addition to selling goods, the live broadcast room has two core functions:

1) Product promotion

The live broadcast room is not just a simple selling room, but also a new space for communication between brands and consumers. Brands release new products, promote their brands, and convert sales through the live broadcast room. On December 4, superstar Andy Lau made his live broadcast debut , logging into Taobao anchor Viya’s live broadcast room to promote the movie "Shock Wave 2". The fans who flocked to the room directly turned Viya's live broadcast room into a PPT.

2) Self-broadcast

Self-broadcasting by stores has spread to multiple platforms. No matter how deeply the influencers are bound, they are still dependent on others. More and more stores have started to broadcast themselves. With the rise of Douyin e-commerce, brands are no longer satisfied with self-broadcasting on Taobao, and have also started official live broadcasts on Douyin, especially various clothing brands: Bosideng, Peacebird, GXG Semir, Heilan Home and other clothing brands, food brands: Huangshanghuang, Mengniu, Three Squirrels, Gujing Gongjiu , beauty and personal care brands: Unilever, Huaxizi Biology , have reached a state of non-stop broadcasting.

(Bosideng Douyin live broadcast duration)

(Bosideng Douyin live broadcast duration)

Data source: Douchacha

Especially for Douyin live broadcast, it does not mean that having a fan base will definitely lead to good audience attendance, nor does it mean that having few fans will lead to poor audience attendance. In the field of Douyin live streaming, 90% of the companies are trying to find solutions, so there is still an opportunity to enter the market now.

However, many veteran e-commerce people look down on live streaming, thinking it is low-end. They don’t understand and are too lazy to learn about the products sold outside the site. The prices are getting lower and lower, but they still hope that their own brand can make a name for themselves.

4. Content management is becoming more and more refined

With a limited budget, it is far more important to delve deeply into the content than to spend money on volume.

The competition for influencers across traffic platforms such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili has become the norm for off-site promotion, with influencers often worth thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of fans. For many new brands with limited monthly budgets, refined content management is extremely important. They should be more careful in screening influencers, optimizing content, embedding scenarios, and reviewing data.

The category of fruit wine has always been about categories but no brands. But now, more and more new brands are emerging. The taste and appearance show the brands' efforts in basic product strength. Basically, the current fruit wine brands are very good-looking in terms of the wine body, bottle and packaging. The saying "appearance is justice" has failed to work for new fruit wine brands. However, when it comes to the efficiency of off-site marketing, Meijian is the best.

Meijian , the green plum wine under Jiang Xiaobai, won the double championship in sales volume and sales revenue during the Double 11 period this year.

In terms of overall marketing, "Meijian" starts with the product. From the perspectives of raw materials (Puning green plums) and craftsmanship (sugar-pickled process for slow juice extraction, the process takes 90 days), it is a better plum wine, allowing consumers to trust the quality of Meijian.

At the beginning, Meijian’s main content scene was home cooking. Including how to make summer drinks using Umemi and other beverages.

But when summer really comes, Meijian stops focusing on drink mixing scenes and starts to focus on dinner parties.

The scene where Mei Jian appears, there are lobster, hot pot, and barbecue. Help consumers find reasons to buy through scenario-based services.

My bold guess here is that it may be that in the summer, some competing product scenes are also mixed with other drinks, so the scenes are similar and the only way is to find differentiation.

When it comes to content marketing, the differentiation between different brands is still very obvious. For example , Zhixun, Huatianxiangzi, Shizigege, Jiushilang , etc. all focus on highlighting appearance.

The fruit wine of Shizigege is designed to make women slightly tipsy. This is the point that ROI Tipsy Series hit when it was launched. This kind of content marketing only interprets the selling point in a video format without combining it with the consumer usage scenario. Currently, most fruit wine brands have made this mistake, and the delivery efficiency is low.

5. Bind artist/bloggers/streamers

The in-depth cooperation between Hua Xizi and Li Jiaqi has allowed everyone to see the important role that top anchors play in the growth of brands. Not only can it directly reach the target group and increase brand exposure, but it can also directly increase sales. More and more brands are choosing to cooperate with top bloggers and influencers to endorse their brands while deeply penetrating the influencers’ fan base.

Take live streaming as an example:

Ffit8 meal replacement protein bars were first launched on Xiaomi crowdfunding in March this year and sold nearly 190,000 boxes in 14 days, but the brand did not break out of the circle. The turning point came from the cooperation with Luo Yonghao in May, and then became a frequent visitor to Luo's live broadcast room.

The comprehensive personal care brand for men " Li Ran " was founded one year ago and has completed four rounds of financing. Currently, its Tmall store has more than 20 SKUs, basically covering all usage scenarios for men from skin care to bathing and makeup. When it comes to live streaming sales, Luo Yonghao was chosen because compared to Li Jiaqi, Luo Yonghao has more male fans, accounting for more than 80%, and can better influence the purchasing decisions of male consumers.

After the live broadcast, Li Ran used Lao Luo’s live broadcast slice as endorsement and placed it on the Douyin information flow to reach users.

Other brands, such as Shanghai Jahwa's Yuze , which produces functional skin care products like Winona, are tied to Li Jiaqi; Huaxi Bio's Runbaiyan is tied to Viya; the emerging contact lens brand cofancy often appeared in Zhang Mofan's live broadcast room in the early days, and cooperated with An Qi from "Youth With You 2", and the same products were sold out directly, while its competitor Moody chose to cooperate with Yu Shuxin.

6. Cross-border collaboration, explosive marketing

In 2020, there have been many exciting cross-border collaborations in the e-commerce circle, including 999 Cold Relief x Ramen Says, HEYTEA x Wonderlab, and HEYTEA x Cha Yan Yue Se. The collaborations between Li Ran, OATLY and Okamoto are telling us through practical actions by many consumer brands that collaboration is still an effective means to shape a younger and more personalized brand image and to get closer to the ideal personality of young people.

The cross-border collaborations between the Palace Museum, Dunhuang Museum, etc. have become very popular. Although cross-border collaborations have become commonplace, it does not affect brands from using this as one of the important marketing methods to trigger explosive content marketing and break through the circle.

A joint venture requires both parties to have similar brand values ​​and tones, leveraging each other’s commonalities to further enhance their brand image; secondly, the creativity and products of the joint venture must be based on the real needs of users and focus on consumers’ usage experience.

Shu Uemura x One Piece, Juduo x Disney, Holiland x Oreo, Perfect Diary x Oreo, Cool's x White Cat Dishwashing Liquid, Li Ning x Ballantine's, Bosideng x Gaultier.

05 Trend Judgment

The current changes in platform logic, traffic structure and new sales methods are very suitable for brand launch from 0 to 1, but the challenge is breaking the circle from 1 to 10. In 2021, for those brands with dreams, they must remember:

1. Traffic is not the core, product strength is

In 2021, there will be more and more brands, and the hunger for traffic will become more serious. Many brands put too much energy on marketing and make saturation attacks, but fail to calm down and make good products. As a result, many brands’ strengths are not good enough, but their shortcomings are already very obvious.

More important than traffic is whether the brand solves the customers’ pain points and whether there are enough reasons for consumers to buy. You need to care about what value your products bring to consumers, pay attention to details about consumers, and continuously have extremely high demands on your products. Otherwise, there will be no repeat purchases, and brands without repeat purchases are destined to become bubbles in the new consumer goods wave.

2. User assets

Consumption is changing very quickly nowadays, and consumer loyalty has become increasingly weak. In the future, the industry will enter a stage of refined user operations, focusing on users, meeting consumer needs, and being able to form interactions. The brand's core competitive points will shift to user retention, conversion and per capita consumption. Whoever can understand users better and is closer to customers will have more opportunities.

• Is the product trustworthy enough for consumers?
• Are consumers clear enough about operation and use?
• Is the purchasing experience good enough?
• The effect, whether it is really as promised;

Private domain traffic is no longer a battlefield for monetization and harvesting. Brands should think carefully about how to operate consumers and provide services to consumers based on private domain traffic. It is definitely not just posting a message every day saying good morning and good night. This is called consumer operation.

3. Mobilizing consumer sentiment

Most of today’s consumer goods have shifted from “necessities” to “non-necessities”. In the future, there will only be more homogeneous categories competing for users’ budgets.

Consumers are still willing to spend money on "non-essentials" not only because the products evoke consumers' usage scenarios, but also because they are touched by the products' appearance, story, spokesperson, etc. And sensibility refers to the emotions of consumers.

Many girls’ attention is attracted when they see good-looking products. So if you want a female user to like a product and make an impulse purchase, you have to make her feel obsessed with it at that moment.

4. Tik Tok self-broadcast

Since Douyin established its e-commerce department, we can see its determination in e-commerce. From "competing for users with content" to "monetizing users through e-commerce", Douyin now needs more conversion rate to support the monetization of the platform.

Self-broadcasting on Taobao Live by brands has basically become a standard feature of stores, but not many brands have tried self-broadcasting on Douyin yet.

From May to November last year, the number of Douyin Blue V (corporate certification accounts) with monthly GMV exceeding 10 million increased sharply from 25 to 110. The number of top players and GMV continued to rise, indicating that "Douyin Live Streaming" will become a mainstream trend.

5. Online traffic is saturated, and brands continue to return to offline

In 2020, Red Elephant, colorkey, babycare, BOBORE, and Wang Xiaolu all entered offline convenience stores and emerging channels, gradually accumulating their own users.

In 2021, more brands will open their own stores or enter offline channels:

1. Only by reaching more terminals, reaching more consumers, and infinitely improving the convenience of consumer purchases, online and offline, can a brand grow.
2. In offline scenarios, products will bring consumers more direct experience marketing.

6. Cross-border collaboration

Cross-border collaborations are now everywhere, and you can see Forbidden City collaborations everywhere, which have completely exhausted the Forbidden City’s style.

However, cross-border collaborations as explosive content marketing are still encouraged for brands to try. There is a large degree of overlap in the target audiences between brands, and brands can cooperate on content points, leverage each other’s strengths, and achieve a win-win situation.

In addition, the linkage between brands must take into account brand positioning and inherent core values, otherwise it will only bring fatigue to consumers.

06 Conclusion

Creating a real brand is very hard and requires time. It is a long journey and cannot be accomplished overnight. Just like leveling up and fighting monsters, the founder dare not relax at any moment.

Beautiful dreams are always exciting, but there are many uncertainties as to whether reality can develop as expected. Instead of grasping uncertain resources such as talents, channels, traffic, etc. It is better to seize some certain resources: products, improvement of founders and team capabilities, user experience, etc.

I have met many brand founders, and most of the outstanding ones have one thing in common: never-ending learning and awe of consumers.

I hope brands will stick to their dreams and remain in awe!

Author: Marketing Lao Wang

Source: Marketing Lao Wang (ID: wltx-2015)