How to master offline marketing?

When we do offline marketing , the actual flash scene is already the last stop of the product journey, which can directly promote the tightening of the connection between people and products and the subsequent conversion, and "scenario thinking" runs through the entire product journey from beginning to end.

The scene is about building connections between people and products. In order to efficiently establish this connection and build an effective offline marketing scenario, we must first have "scenario thinking".

Scenario thinking can be divided into: product thinking, entry thinking, traffic thinking, cross-border thinking, etc. Only by skillfully applying and combining these ideas and connecting different scenarios can we ultimately improve the effectiveness of scene marketing and conversion efficiency.

1. Product thinking: testing product assumptions through the market

When we do offline marketing, the actual flash scene is already the last stop of the product journey, which can directly promote the tightening of the connection between people and products and the subsequent conversion, and "scenario thinking" runs through the entire product journey from beginning to end.

When designing and developing a product, the product manager will inevitably start from the user, investigate and imagine the usage experience scenarios, what problems the user may encounter, what pain points and difficulties can be solved, and use this as the core function of the product.

Just like a chef cooking, he needs to understand the customers’ preferences in advance and imagine the tasting scene. However, whether the dishes suit their taste and which customers’ tastes they prefer still needs to be tested and screened by the market.

Therefore, when the product reaches the market, the imagined scenario is restored through marketing to demonstrate the functional effectiveness of the product.

Just like putting a cooked dish on the table, if it is recognized by the target customers, the product is relatively successful. If potential customers are willing to pay for it, the product will have a wider range of applications and usage scenarios. If everyone is not satisfied with the dish, the product manager will go back to the drawing board and remake it.

This requires the market to be more responsive to products and provide more timely feedback. What is needed is a channel to test the market.

Flash sale is a relatively new offline marketing method. Just like a market research questionnaire, it has become the preferred choice for many brands to conduct offline promotions and test new products. In a pop-up store, people interact directly with products and information flows more flexibly.

For example, when a car brand launches a new model, it will hold a nationwide pop-up tour at auto shows, and usually choose shopping malls and squares with high traffic to attract customers to stop and experience it. Just like throwing a grain of bait into a crowd, relying on the product itself to verify target users and find potential users, it can both accurately acquire customers and gain wide exposure.

The product finally reaches the hands of users, where it takes on different emotions and stories in different occasions and scenarios, reconstructing new scenes. After completing the experience and consumption, the product is no longer just an ordinary commodity, but a solution for the scenario. Based on emotional identification, the product transaction is completed smoothly.

The product is the best scenario. When designing a product, the usage scenarios will be taken into consideration. When selling, these scenarios will be restored. When the user experiences and generates consumption, the product will reconstruct new scenarios. With the help of scenarios, products can move beyond limited ideas and move towards unlimited possibilities.

2. Entrance thinking, gaining user attention and designing customer flow routes

The scene not only presents a situation, but also is a consumer touchpoint and traffic entrance, playing the role of guiding and suggesting consumers.

Gaining consumers' "attention" is the first step to successful scene marketing. Whether in the traditional AIDMA or AISAS model in the network environment, Attention is the first hurdle.

In offline scene marketing, pop-up stores have a stronger appeal to users than traditional stores. The pop-up store itself can be directly recognized by consumers due to its creative and distinctive attributes such as design, style, and color. The multi-dimensional and three-dimensional sensory impact is conducive to mobilizing emotions. The pop-up store forms an entrance attraction in terms of sensory vision.

In addition, during the event warm-up, through the cooperation of online media and venues, consumers can obtain preview information of pop-up stores through different channels, which expands the width of entrances compared to regular stores.

For example, this year Tsingtao Beer held flash events in offline subway stations and major shopping malls, and pre-announced the location and time of each event on media channels such as the APP and Weibo, creating a scene entrance online to control consumers' attention in the scene in advance and preheat and divert traffic for offline activities.

In regular store spaces, shelves are usually neatly arranged in rows and columns, with product information fully displayed. However, consumers’ attention is easily distracted by information, and without a focus of vision, they will not take the next step in consumer action, which also leads to the loss of a lot of potential purchasing power.

The pop-up store has clever ideas in its spatial structure, planning a complete set of movement routes and journey maps for consumers, completing the traction from the scene entrance to the center. At the same time, the pop-up store extends the traffic flow into the interior and designs the user experience process. The length of time a single person spends in a store and the completeness of information are much higher than straightforward self-service shopping in offline stores.

Case: Xiaomi Home’s offline carnival includes immersive experience activities such as interactive photo taking and product trials. Pop-up stores are opened near the stores, becoming a traffic source for the stores.

Case: Mengniu Yogurt Culture Festival flash event divided the scenes into areas such as science popularization, tasting, game interaction, and prize redemption. In fact, it distinguished the consumption process of focusing on understanding, experiencing use, and cultivating emotions. Through the scenes, it guided consumers to accept the product and enhance brand awareness.

Research shows that the design and display of a pop-up booth determines the visual flow of consumers. By adjusting the scene setting, products can grab consumers' attention.

Take the auto show as an example, where cars of the same brand but different models are displayed in the atrium of the shopping mall. These models have performed equally well in historical sales, but the heat map gives different results. At the same booth and with the same customer flow, the customer flow and popularity nearby are not the same.

We analyzed the reasons and found that popular areas usually have shopping guides or interactive display devices. Therefore, even at the same booth, the distribution of consumers' attention will be significantly different. Through clever scene settings, consumers' attention can be maximized.

3. Traffic thinking: make products popular through scenarios

Traffic thinking is to find, create, and manage traffic through scenarios, make products popular through scenarios, and thus enhance the brand's influence and control over users.

In the ever-changing consumer environment, flash sales, as a trendy and innovative marketing model, have gradually evolved from catering to the aesthetic tastes of top players to attracting the needs of different groups, and the division of traffic has become more refined, diversified, and sinking.

Point 1: Flash traffic distribution and characteristics

The main customer groups of flash mobs are young and middle-aged consumers and the "Z generation". As the flash mob concept continues to penetrate into third- and fourth-tier cities, flash mobs have more audience groups in the sinking market.

Flash mob customer groups have different characteristics and preferences, and will appear in specific flash mob scenes. For example, office buildings and subway scenes are mainly populated by young and middle-aged white-collar workers, shopping mall scenes are popular with young people of "Generation Z", and the customer base in scenes such as squares and parks is relatively broad.

Scenario marketing requires clear understanding of traffic sources, distribution areas, and related characteristics. Before setting up a pop-up store, gain insight into the surrounding user portraits and adjust and optimize the pop-up store model in a targeted manner; after the event, conduct a timely data review and analyze the user portraits that the pop-up store interacted with and reached, in order to facilitate the next step of marketing work.

Generally speaking, big brands and large companies that have already taken root in the market have a higher status in the mainstream population and culture. Therefore, when constructing a customer portrait, in addition to framing the general public, it is best to find emerging audiences with corresponding needs. It is relatively easier to open up a new market than to grab market share from the original market. In addition, certain subculture groups have their own unique values ​​​​and subversive spirit, and are likely to become the mainstream customer base.

Point 2: IP shared traffic creates new scenarios

Another application of traffic thinking is to share traffic through scenarios or create traffic with products.

Many brands combine their products with similar celebrity IPs, and attract fans through roadshows, flash check-ins and other activities, which can generate heated discussions in a short period of time and improve communication effectiveness. Fans will also actively spread the news on channels such as Weibo, WeChat and Douyin, bringing effective media exposure. This is to leverage external resources to achieve traffic growth.

Nowadays, more and more brands are becoming IPs and idols. When the brand development reaches a certain scale, it will extend its own cultural system and users will become fan groups. For example, the "Forbidden City" has become a super cultural IP, launching a variety of cultural programs across multiple categories of cosmetics and daily chemicals, and setting off one cultural and creative boom after another.

According to incomplete statistics, the annual sales of the Palace Museum's cultural and creative products exceed 1 billion yuan. It takes a certain amount of time and user accumulation to form such a super individual IP with strong brand power and its own traffic.

Many brands use pop-up stores as a way to gain offline traffic and gradually form a long-term, normalized pop-up marketing model. The purpose is to repeatedly trigger heated discussions and continuously strengthen the brand image in the minds of users.

Case : Zhihu’s offline flash events such as “New Knowledge University” and “Unknown Clinic” make knowledge contextualized, gather traffic and improve user stickiness.

Point 3: Using the flow of traffic

Food festivals, competitions, music festivals and other events themselves have scenes with extremely large traffic, and these large-scale events have a certain activity cycle and tour between different cities, bringing their own mobile traffic. If brands follow these "mobile large-scale events" to conduct tour flash mobs, it can help brands gain concentrated exposure in a short period of time and in multiple regions.

Usually, such activities themselves have formed a cultural atmosphere of creative markets and pop-up store gatherings. Compared with brand sponsorship, the marketing cost of participating in the form of pop-up stores gathering in the audience interaction area is greatly reduced, which can greatly improve the efficiency of brand marketing.

Case: Before opening, Hangzhou Joy City toured the West Lake Music Festival and the Oxygen Music Festival and interacted with the audience. The "Manyin Space Station" with the theme of trendy culture and quality life won many fans. The total number of visitors during the opening season was nearly 800,000.

4. Cross-border thinking, brand cooperation and innovation with similar target audiences

Cross-scene refers to brands from different industries and categories sharing and cooperating on scenes, integrating and interpenetrating originally unrelated elements in the scenes. For users, adding brand entities means adding scene themes. A scene can have multiple angles and experiences, and its attractiveness and freshness are doubled.

Cross-border cooperation means finding similar attributes in other fields and using them to increase the value of our own products, enhance brand influence, and gain more users.

For example, 58.com teamed up with Hema Supermarket to create a workplace-themed pop-up store in the mall on weekends. One is a fresh food supermarket and the other is in the information service industry. The two are not related, but the main consumer force of Hema and the customer base of 58.com are basically the same, both of which are working people born in the 1980s and 1990s. This is a brand joint communication precisely targeting specific consumers.

Summarize

At the beginning of product design, the user's usage scenarios are envisioned through scenario thinking, and the market launch stage is the testing stage of the original product design assumptions.

We can outline the user experience process through product thinking, design the crowd flow of pop-up stores through entrance thinking, improve traffic acquisition efficiency through traffic thinking, and broaden the scenarios through cross-border thinking and strong brand alliances.

Only by skillfully applying and combining these ideas, connecting scenes at different stages, and building connections between people and products can we ultimately improve the effectiveness and conversion efficiency of scene marketing.

Author: Linhuiba Source: Linhuiba