"In 2017, we started content marketing; in 2018, we started social e-commerce; in 2019, we started live streaming. We have taken every step to catch the trend."

You may not like ramen, but you must have heard of the " ramen theory ".

In February 2018, Ramen Says Tmall flagship store opened. In the same year, the Double Eleven sales reached tens of millions. In 2019, RamenShuo’s GMV exceeded 250 million!

How can a product of instant ramen sell for 250 million yuan? How did the Ramen Say brand achieve its growth?

On the second day of the Women’s Knife Skills Growth Summit, we were honored to invite Jiuyi, co-founder of Ramen Says, who gave us a sharing full of practical information, "Shortcuts and stupid methods for brand growth in the new communication environment."

The entire sharing session focused on "How did Ramen Say achieve rapid iteration and growth?" and answered three major questions.

1. What kind of brand is Ramen after all?

2. What pitfalls should we avoid in e-commerce operations ?

3. Why has Ramen Say achieved such remarkable success? What unique strategies did it use in traffic operations?

1. What kind of brand is Ramen after all?

Ramen Says was officially launched in 2017, and 2020 is the fourth year of its development.

Ramen Says is developing solutions for a new generation of fast food. The brand's purpose is to meet consumers' demand for this specific category by producing instant noodle products that are comparable to those in ramen restaurants.

In 2017, Ramen Says was in its start-up phase, and its main task at this stage was to carry out product research and development.

In 2018, Ramen Says entered the brand-building period, with annual sales exceeding 80 million yuan.

In 2019, Ramen Says began to build a product matrix and launched 8 ramen-related products.

In just three years, RamenShuo has become a leading brand of instant ramen, with monthly transaction volume exceeding 10 million.

Ramen says that it is very meticulous in its attitude towards creating the overall product. Its overall product matrix can be divided into three major parts:

First up, the most classic series of ready-to-cook noodles. This is the core series of the Ramen Says brand. While retaining the four most classic flavors, it continues to explore new popular flavors.

The second one is the seasonal marketing model. Ramen says it will launch different types of noodles according to seasonal festivals. It's a quick capture of the seasonal heat.

In addition, Ramen Says has also launched surrounding snacks, as well as light noodles, udon noodles and other SKUs.

The third piece is branded ramen. Ramen said it would collaborate with other brands.

For example, the "999 Joint Gift Box" in collaboration with 999 Cold Relief, the "Tom Yum Ramen" in collaboration with Miwei Grocery Store, the "Pork Stomach and Chicken Ramen" in collaboration with NetEase Weiyang, the "Eat Well, Drink Well and Live Long" ramen gift box jointly launched with WeChat Emoji Package, and the birthday noodles made in collaboration with B Station's game "FGO" to give back to users.

Ramen Says mainly promotes such products through the linkage of product customization and channel marketing. In this way, even if the preparation time for a single product is nearly 6 months, it can still generate sales of over 10 million in one day after it is launched on the market.

2. What pitfalls should we avoid in e-commerce operations?

People who are engaged in e-commerce operations must be a "calm and unconfused young man".

Why do you say that?

Because, in essence, operations only account for 10% of whether a brand or product can become a hit.

Operations are just the icing on the cake, while the remaining 60% depends on the market and 30% depends on the product.

Therefore, operations must be able to endure loneliness, because when it comes to fast-moving consumer goods, the ultimate competition must be the repurchase rate.

In the current environment of fierce market competition, many brands and categories are adopting price war strategies. Often use promotions such as "25% off" and "buy one get one free" to attract attention.

But among all marketing methods, promotion is actually the last thing to consider.

So for new brands, what is more important when grasping the overall development direction of the new brand?

Of course it’s the brand content. Content is a very important part of brand building and needs to be continuously created.

If you want to build a brand, you should not increase sales through simple promotions, but instead spread content to let consumers understand the product value and brand premium.

If you keep using promotional tactics, in the final analysis, the brand can only become a product that sells goods and generates traffic, and there will never be a brand premium or brand value.

Second, how to choose the channels for e-commerce operations.

Many startup brands will encounter soul-searching questions in the early stages: "Should I choose online or offline first?", "Should I choose Tmall or JD?", "Which distribution channels should I choose?"

In fact, new brands will encounter different problems at each stage. But in general, the process generally follows:

Verify product → Verify the match between the population and product → Determine performance goals → Match promotion strategy.

First, the product verification period. At this stage, the brand needs to obtain a series of feedback from consumer behavior, modify the product based on the feedback, and then increase traffic. On this basis, we will create some model stores and replicate them in batches.

At this stage, brands need to “go wherever the data is.”

When doing distribution, brands need to remember that they can only do distribution when the brand's pull is greater than its push.

For example, if a brand wants to engage in distribution, the distributors must make money. However, if the brand's interests cannot be maintained, rash distribution may result in dealers receiving goods but being unable to sell them, which may lead to some returns or price disruption for promotions.

Who would want this to happen?

The significance of self-operated channels lies in shaping brand power and acquiring data.

The significance of distribution lies in whether the brand can balance the relationship between channels and dealers through some profit distribution, and reap both profits and people after building brand power.

During the product verification phase, Ramen said that its channel strategies include the following:

1. After a single point is destroyed, batch replication is performed.

Single point is a single channel, while Ramen Says adopts the approach of "the first battle is the decisive battle" and immediately becomes a hit once it is launched on the platform.

In this way, when a new brand goes online on the same channel, other channels will naturally come to it, and the channel premium will also increase.

2. Adhere to the principle of mutual benefit with dealers and have "insight" and "empathy".

Why do I say so?

It is better to think about the problem from the perspective of the platform and channel. When new brands enter a channel, they often receive strong support from the platform when creating hit products.

But in fact, the platform hopes to create a hit case to force some merchants to enter its own channels and achieve profit growth.

From the dealer's point of view, dealers care more about how much money they can make, that is, the profit amount and profit margin that the brand can give.

What do brands care about? Brands care more about how high the product’s premium can be in other channels after it becomes a hit at a single point.

Therefore, assuming that there are currently 60 distributors, Ramen says that its operational strategy when negotiating with distributors is:

First, through some incentives, we can develop marketing and operational strategies based on the matching of people, goods and venues to help the top 6 dealers get rich first. When the remaining 54 dealers start to get anxious, we can use other means to have more room for negotiation and let the 54 dealers get rich slowly.

As a result, the peripheral dealers also became anxious. Na Ramen said that what he needed to do now was to wait for the dealer's call in the office.

After the first product verification period of "verifying products and obtaining product feedback", the second stage came.

The core of the second stage is to verify the degree of match between the population and the product.

At this stage, Ramen said that it obtained a series of data both online and offline. Jiuyi believes that after selecting channels and products, if you want to determine monthly performance goals, you must have insight into the ceiling of market capacity.

So how do we gain insight? From two aspects: one is to observe the market capacity of the channel and the ceiling of the categories within the channel; the other is to benchmark competitors and determine one's own performance through the data of past competitors.

In 2018, Ramen Says officially began to be launched. In terms of market placement, Ramen Says adopts the following approach: targeting the social media platforms where traffic is located; the strategy is to carry out omni-channel online promotion and overall KOL marketing.

3. Traffic Operation Methods

Jiuyi mentioned that there are many ways to operate traffic, but the most important thing is to find the right way for yourself.

For example, we need to look at ROI dialectically. Is the higher the ROI, the better? This requires consideration in conjunction with the gross profit margin of the category.

At the same time, brands should choose social media and other channels that best match. If a brand’s main user group is Generation Z, it will certainly not attract new customers through middle-aged and elderly communities.

When it comes to "finding channels that match the brand", Ramen also summarizes different phased strategies:

The strategy for the 1.0 phase is to select some vertical KOLs for reach, and after reaching the vertical categories, find some cross-category KOLs to attract new customers;

The strategy for stage 2.0 is to purposefully select some KOLs, form a matrix, and select SKUs to take over.

The 3.0 version is to combine marketing products to create topics.

Then why did Ramen say that it would be broadcast on Bilibili?

First of all, the main user group of Bilibili is Generation Z. Generation Z is a group that dares to earn and spend and has strong purchasing power. However, their brand loyalty is often relatively low. Therefore, when Ramen says it is trying to attract new users, it will focus on establishing the connection between the brand and Generation Z in order to increase user stickiness.

At the same time, the social and consumption behaviors of Generation Z are closely tied together.

Bilibili is a platform with ecology and content as its biggest driving force. The entire Bilibili has 2 million cultural tags and more than 7,000 cultural circles. UP hosts are all loyal users and can produce corresponding content.

On Bilibili, advertising is content and content is advertising.

The reason for choosing to advertise on Bilibili is that through data collection, Ramen said that the user retention rate and CLV on Bilibili are generally good. Moreover, the "Salted Duck Egg Incident" and the "DingTalk Ghost Video" cases on Bilibili both show that the content dissemination of Bilibili has a great out-of-circle attribute, which is a relatively ideal "out-of-circle" platform.

However, it should be noted that whether the marketing on Bilibili can "go beyond the circle" depends on the method of internal communication.

Therefore, when Ramen said that it was doing B station advertising, it was mainly divided into three steps:

The first step is to clarify the purpose;

The second step is to develop a communication strategy.

The third step is to use fireworks.

Before a brand creates exposure, operates traffic, and arranges the rhythm of communication on the platform, it must be clear about its purpose.

Is it for brand promotion? Or do we still need to do product-effect conversion? Different purposes correspond to different means and focuses. This is a strategic issue that brands need to think through in advance.

In the second step, when formulating the brand's communication strategy, there are four points to pay attention to:

Select content, choose the right people, build a matrix, and do maintenance.

1. Select content

First, look at content dissemination. The content direction must be very vertical and in-depth, and at the same time, it must respect the UP host's personal style. The more natural, real, and close to life it is, the better.

2. Choose the right people

Ramen said that it had also looked for video bloggers to do advertising in the past, but at that time they paid the bloggers and let them shoot the videos themselves. However, in the end, Ramen Says received a delivery that was completely inconsistent with the brand tone and content.

The overall content of the original video does not reflect the product characteristics, so when the brand goes to the blogger to make modifications, it is equivalent to asking the blogger to reshoot it. This situation can easily lead to conflicts - it is tantamount to paying for one piece of content but asking the KOL to produce two pieces of content.

Therefore, we must respect the style of individual UPs, so the selection process is crucial.

So how do you choose the right person?

First look at the fans - not just the number of fans, but also the quality of fans. Some people may ask, are UP hosts with few fans less effective? However, UP hosts with a small number of fans actually pay more attention to content, quality and brand relationships.

Secondly, look at the number of views - the data from Bilibili is absolutely true. If the fan-to-broadcast ratio is greater than 0.5, the UP host is relatively stable.

After that, look at the overall data effect - likes must be greater than comments and reposts.

In many cases where the number of reposts is greater than the number of comments and likes, there is suspicion of data manipulation.

Brands can take a look at the comment section. For UP hosts with high interaction rates, there will usually be some users with high stickiness in the comment section under their videos. The UP hosts and users interact with each other frequently, and this kind of interaction is not simply exchanging emoticons.

If the comment section is filled with spam comments, it means that the interaction data of this UP is not very rational and there may be data manipulation behavior.

While looking at the overall data effect, we must also look at the degree of match between the UP host and the crowd portrait - Jiuyi pointed out that the placement on Bilibili is quite special because the traffic distribution mechanisms of Bilibili and Douyin are different.

If brands only look at CPM, there is no comparison between Bilibili and TikTok. But in fact, Bilibili's user retention rate and stickiness are still very strong.

3. Matrix

When putting up a product matrix, you first need to allocate budgets for different products. Generally speaking, the allocation is determined based on the proportion of sales.

As for the configuration of the volume, including the quotations of the head, waist and tail, after some investment, Ramen said that the conclusions reached are roughly as follows:

Regarding the tool Fireworks, Jiuyi said that its deployment should still be based on data operations itself. At present, Bilibili is vigorously supporting Huohuo, and in the background of Huohuo, you can see the situation of KOLs receiving business orders and the portraits of fans.

4. Do maintenance

Finally, in terms of post-launch maintenance work, Ramen Says’ approach is to put product links under all videos released on Bilibili.

The ultimate goal of video delivery and post-delivery maintenance is to increase overall exposure. To this end, after the video is released, the brand should pay attention to public opinion tracking and do a good job of tracking the overall effects.

For example, is the number of views the same as the UP host’s previous views? At the same time, brands need to pay special attention to data fluctuations after 3-15 days, as more sales can be harvested during this period.

In the brand introduction section, Ramen Says has very clear ideas on its product positioning, brand development path planning and product matrix creation.

In terms of channel strategy for e-commerce operations, Ramen Says has found a way that suits itself through verification and insight while insisting on honing its brand content and value. Some of Ramen Says' unique traffic operation methods are wise moves based on accurately defining user groups, choosing appropriate social media platforms, and matching them with systematic communication strategies.

As new consumer brands in China are developing in full swing, we are fortunate to see many excellent new brands like Ramen Says. We also believe that some of these new brands will be able to grow into representatives of the category.

I hope that every brand that continues to uphold its values ​​and optimize its content can find its most suitable path of growth!

Author: Women's Knife Research Institute

Source: Women's Knife Research Institute