8000 words to deconstruct the 618 marketing promotion gameplay

At present, most brands’ 618 is still in the process of waiting to be launched or in the early stages of launch. This time, we have invited five senior marketing experts from Shiqu to talk about what brands should do in this year’s 618 from five angles: 618 marketing trends, brand marketing strategies, media placement strategies, and how to use data to safeguard 618, and how to get more traffic from platforms. This article may provide some inspiration for brands.

1. Six insights about 618

Most brands are busy all year round. They can split countless marketing projects in a year and keep taking action. There is no end to marketing, but there are many ineffective actions in the middle, or even just for the sake of doing it.

The main reason for this situation is that the brand has not yet thought clearly about its own situation and marketing objectives, and just because they see other brands doing it, they want to do the same. If a brand is thought through, it must have an influx of new ideas and strategies, rather than turning every project into a daily, routine action.

Going back to the important node of 618, we can see that the overall market performed well last year and there was a significant growth. So will brands continue with last year’s strategy this year? Is it to break the deadlock or get stuck in the deadlock? Before thinking about this question clearly, we can first look at 6 insights about 618.

1. From category upgrade, experience upgrade to operation upgrade

The main battlefield of 618 is on the e-commerce platform. We divide 618 into three stages. The initial stage is the stage of category upgrading. Simply put, it is to set up a stage to attract people and goods from all directions; the second stage is experience upgrading, the core of which is to enhance consumer stickiness and consumer awareness; in recent years, it has been in the stage of operation upgrading, penetrating from platform experience upgrading to brand operation optimization, channel extension and operation deepening.

As for the so-called channel extension, we can see that the category track, scene track and crowd track have been gradually subdivided. The core purpose is to activate the activity and vitality of the traffic within the site, and even increase the average order value and repurchase rate, while increasing operational efforts to find incremental markets.

2. Online e-commerce competition intensifies, and supermarkets upgrade to new scenarios

At present, competition among the three major platforms remains fierce, and the sinking market is still an incremental market. The major trend of JD.com during 618 was to break through downwards, taking advantage of the 618 promotions and concessions to enter the "down-market"; Alibaba's move was a strategic defense, using two killer weapons, Juhuasuan and new products. The former was aimed at the booming Pinduoduo, and the latter was to resist JD.com's offensive; and Pinduoduo has launched surprise attacks in the past two years, without any tricks, and directly reduced the prices of goods, with hundreds of billions of subsidies to win the favor of consumers.

Shiqu SVP Peter said that due to the impact of the epidemic, community group buying and offline supermarket fresh food transformation and upgrading may add new battlefields this year, and consumers are expected to return to offline and pay attention to offline shopping experience. At the same time, with more and more brands and roles joining, brands can also consider strategically filling in the gaps through offline methods.

3. The differentiation between new and old brands is intensifying, and new brands are shaping their brand power

On the one hand, the platform is vigorously supporting new brands. On the other hand, brands born in the Internet environment have a younger online sense and are more likely to be popular. It is estimated that there will still be many dark horse brands emerging this year, and the impact of new consumer brands on traditional brands will continue to intensify.

In fact, if a new consumer brand wants to go from 1 to 10, it still needs to go through a process of continuous brand sedimentation and accumulation. When a new thing or a new brand enters the market, the content that the brand wants to communicate and express is actually different at different stages. Peter believes that May is the time to start brand-oriented marketing, and it is also necessary to think about what should be communicated to consumers.

Only in this way, when the 618 price war really begins, during the fierce competition, consumers can make the brand more premium when comparing discounts, and make the brand more memorable to consumers.

4. Various nodes are inserted in the middle to assist in the attack, and fancy marketing continues

Most brands generally start warming up around May 18th and set a return date of June 19th and 20th. During such a period, brands will also pay attention to three nodes: Dragon Boat Festival, Father's Day and Children's Day. During this period, brands will definitely leverage different holiday scenarios to link up with 618 marketing, and based on holiday scenario needs, prepare corresponding dual-node promotional materials, product gift boxes, sets, etc. in advance, and carry out corresponding in-site activities and official store accounts to store water and divert traffic.

5. Accelerated product launches in subcategories, with a surge in new products on the market during the 618 shopping festival

Compared with previous brands pushing inventory, more and more brands will choose to launch new products at major nodes such as 618, rather than just being more segmented and vertical in product categories.

You know, the marketing investment of brands in launching new products is huge, which is one of the reasons why the competition in 618 has become more intense in recent years. If brands hope to get a piece of the 618 traffic pool, it is worthwhile for them to think carefully about 618 marketing.

Abin, senior creative director of Shiqu, believes that brands cannot view 618 in isolation, but should view 618 in a broader perspective. They should also start from a strategic and long-term operational perspective and look for new growth in the brand's customer base from the three dimensions of people, goods, and venues.

6. Brand strategy leans towards the three treasures, and refined operation is the trend

During the purchasing process, brand content will focus more on information richness and pleasure. In this process, especially with Alibaba as the main player, three sections were officially revised last month: Browsing, Self-broadcasting, and Brand Second Floor. These can actually attract people and assist brands to extend the time consumers stay on the site.

In this scenario, the higher the quality of a brand’s information and the more interesting the content, the more helpful it will be in retaining consumers and may even create a good impression of the brand.

In addition, brands have also begun to pay attention to what is accumulated after each big promotion. On the one hand, the platform promotes brand data-based operations, and brands use the platform tool AIPL model to promote brands to obtain refined traffic; on the other hand, brands also rely on a variety of Taobao data to divert traffic to their own stores and accumulate their own private traffic pools.

2. 618 Brand Marketing, Five Key Driving Points

As mentioned, 618 is a summary of all the brand’s marketing actions in the past six months. It is a mid-year exam that tests the comprehensive scores of crowd operations, hot-selling strategies, communication concepts, celebrity marketing, and product rights in the past six months. We have sorted out five key driving points for brand marketing, which can be used as a reference to make marketing more practical:

Key driving point 1: The platform creates new product launch IP and seizes brand new product resources

During last year’s 618 and Double 11, Tmall Little Black Box and JD Little Magic Cube were already linked and bundled with the big promotions. According to data, Tmall and JD.com sold 330 million and 200 million new products respectively in 2021, and more than half of consumers rushed to buy new products during the 618 shopping festival.

Abin believes that the development of this track is very worthy of brands' focus, as it will help merchants increase customer acquisition paths, improve fan conversion, increase member retention, and obtain transaction results while conducting marketing and launching new products.

For example, last year Hua Xizi customized a Miao gift box during the 618 shopping festival. Around the gift box, the brand used celebrity marketing to convey to consumers the brand appeal and proposition of oriental cosmetics and aesthetics.

In fact, it proves that 618 should not be just a big promotion, but should be based on the brand strategy of the whole year, and even how to accumulate brand assets, how to use new products, how to create new product iterations, and how to do IP joint and customized products.

Key driving point 2: Live broadcast scene x live broadcast, developed into a mature conversion method

After the rapid rise and popularity of live streaming in the past year, there is no doubt that live streaming sales will still be the key scene of this year's 618. Short videos dominate the market and are also the biggest tool for sales.

Live streaming now has two trends. The first is the IPization of live streaming. Last year, Alibaba created a lot of live streaming IPs, such as Liu Tao's Liu Yidao. The key point is that the prices are affordable. The tones of live streaming IP and Juhuasuan IP are very similar, and both are essentially about quickly achieving brand conversion.

The second is the entertainment of live streaming. Last year, both platforms and brands cooperated with many celebrities in live streaming, and the content was very entertaining. JD.com, for example, is also producing content about concerts and music festivals that young people like. It uses interest-based entertainment as a starting point to guide young people to pay attention to it and conduct live broadcasts to promote it.

In terms of live streaming content, Kuaishou and Douyin are more inclined towards story-telling content, while JD.com and Tmall are sales platforms themselves and focus more on content that attracts traffic. Last year, people sold rockets in live broadcast rooms, appeared on variety shows, promoted products using virtual IPs, and connected with famous CCTV hosts... 2021 will still be a year of "making things happen."

Of course, we have to admit that in front of traffic giants such as Viya, Li Jiaqi, and Simba, brands are relatively weak.

Abin suggested that brands choose content that matches the tone of different platforms, so that they can obtain more traffic recommendation support from the platforms. Live streaming should not just be seen as a simple live broadcast. It can also be a very good marketing campaign by providing storytelling marketing content before, during and after the live broadcast, or by doing a differentiated live broadcast.

Based on Shiqu’s experience of tens of thousands of live broadcasts, we have sorted out a simple live broadcast strategy formula. For specific details, please contact us for in-depth discussion.

Key driving point 3: Leverage marketing IP, 618 marketing needs long-term consideration

JD.com and Alibaba have now developed a lot of marketing IPs, which can be used around the 618 period. Taking Alibaba as an example, its marketing IP includes Little Black Box, Super Category Day, and Juhuasuan. From the perspective of live streaming, it can be said that the entire cycle of marketing IP is superimposed, allowing brands to use it to deepen operations across the entire consumer chain.

Brands need to conduct a multi-dimensional scan of the brand based on platform data, and attract new customers and promote operations among people with different dimensions and labels.

Behind consumer operations is full-link support for people throughout their life cycle. Brands should strive for sustainable growth on the platform, plan marketing IP for the entire year, make good use of IP superposition before the big promotion breaks out, combine data label models to conduct a continuous crowd positioning, and finally make an explosion. After the outbreak, 618 should also be regarded as a starting point for a new outbreak opportunity.

Key driving point 4: Content perception, interactive gameplay upgrades surprise marketing

The communication touchpoints or connection points between brands and consumers are very worthy of attention, and brands should even spend more time and energy thinking about them.

In the past, a lot of the marketing content we did was just content and lacked a sense of reality, but e-commerce marketing is different. The latter has a greater sense of value. Because these factors are key to consumers' purchasing decisions, it can help brands promote sales conversions.

Specific physical sensation refers to the carriers and material presentations that give consumers a good sense of touch, taste, vision, etc., such as customized gift boxes, interactive surprise gifts, etc., and then allow fans to continue to participate and ultimately complete sales conversion.

Key driving point 5: Data-driven, dividing consumers into eight strategic groups

Tmall divides consumers into eight strategic groups based on consumer behavior preferences: emerging white-collar workers, senior middle class, sophisticated mothers, small town youth, Gen Z (Generation Z), urban silver-haired people, small town middle-aged and elderly people, and urban blue-collar workers. These data and labels bring more possibilities for brands to attract new customers.

Of course, we think the most important thing is that each category will definitely have its own customer focus, especially the new white-collar workers and sophisticated mothers who have received more attention after the epidemic.

In addition, more and more brands are beginning to pay attention to Generation Z, because whether in terms of economic ability, purchasing habits, interest preferences, and social activity, Generation Z is the group that brands hope to influence. From the perspective of attracting new customers, Generation Z also has a lot of room for imagination for brands.

Different industries have their own unique ways of acquiring new customers. They use data to interpret population growth opportunities from the dimensions of attracting new customers through scenarios, attracting new customers through minds, and attracting new customers through special vertical populations.

Formulating a strategy to attract new customers is a crucial step in brand development. The first step is to identify the precise target groups: set targets for different groups by category to efficiently capture brand traffic. The second step is to customize different communication content and channels for people at different positions in the chain before launching marketing campaigns, ultimately achieving brand growth.

Based on data operations and the Timely Insight Engine, brands can greatly improve the success rate of 618, complete the target of retaining a large number of people in stages, and realize new customer operations to drive business growth.

Creative marketing plans and data-driven operations enable the brand to achieve “product and effect integration” more accurately. Of course, the support of media strategies and media resources is also indispensable in this process. Next, let’s look at what we should pay attention to and focus on in advance on June 18 from a media perspective?

3. Four dimensions of brand traffic growth

Increasing traffic during the 618 shopping festival is a critical link. If there is any method that can achieve the fastest increase in traffic, it must be to seize the most advantageous resources, including top KOLs, high-quality IPs, celebrities, etc. Zhao Fangfang, VP of Shiqu Media Center, said, "At present, it is understood that many high-quality resources have been booked during the 618 period. Brands that have not yet taken action need to pay attention and can also contact us to obtain the latest specific resource information."

1. From the perspective of increasing brand traffic

The first is to increase traffic within the site. Most brands will basically increase traffic through self-broadcasting in brand merchant stores, as well as through on-site promotion methods, including browsing, promotion in the form of PGC and UGC, as well as brand second-floor and brand member exclusive activities.

The second is to attract traffic from outside the site. The first is live streaming, followed by Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu, as well as Weibo Cornucopia, etc. Zhao Fangfang said, "If brands want to combine their own 618 marketing campaign needs, obtain more detailed customized media traffic increase strategies and understand media resources, they can contact us again."

2. From the perspective of media delivery rhythm

The general launch time is divided into two nodes. The first node is the consumer's weak-purpose shopping stage. During this time, the brand's most important action should be to achieve comprehensive brand promotion. The core purpose is to guide consumers to go to the store online, enter the store to receive coupons, follow the store, and pay a deposit.

The second node is the clear guidance shopping stage. All e-commerce platforms will launch different IP marketing projects on their sites, including HeiBox, Juhuasuan, etc. At this node, brands need to make every effort to build IP and celebrity resources, including top KOLs, experts, anchors, etc.

3. From the perspective of media placement strategy

If a brand wants to promote a product in a short period of time, Zhao Fangfang suggests that the media placement can refer to Shiqu’s “1990 Placement Model”, with 1% going to top KOLs, 9% to mid-level KOLs, and the remaining 90% to a large number of amateur bloggers.

The main reason behind this is to first make the brand known through top-tier and credible KOLs, and then use professionally evaluated KOLs to accurately target the circles, and finally use a large amount of early seeding to achieve secondary dissemination. At the same time, if the brand cooperates with the information flow at this stage, a good conversion effect will be achieved.

4. From the perspective of media effect verification

The 618 marketing campaign cycle is relatively long. If the brand finds during the process that the marketing content may not be accepted by consumers, or the conversion rate is relatively low, the brand can use the Shiqu Insight Engine to monitor the brand marketing campaign, identify problems, and adjust the communication content in a timely manner to reduce certain marketing risks.

In terms of media resources, the points of recommending resources are, first, they are combined with offline hot spots and are topical; second, they have the potential to create content and can generate topics; third, they are in line with the brand product tone and audience preferences.

The specific resources recommended by Shiqu are mainly in the following aspects for brand owners’ reference.

The first is the national trend, which is still a hot topic this year.

The second is virtual IP, such as Luo Tianyi, Ling in CCTV's "Colorful Boys", and some IPs in anime.

The third is IP cooperation in the blind box category . The gameplay of blind boxes is very diverse, and it is also worthy of attention and cooperation.

Fourth, film and television resources. This year, movies like "Hello, Li Huanying", which is aiming to be the number one in China's box office, and "Better Days", which was recently nominated for an Oscar, will also continue to be popular.

Fifth, there are stars from talent shows. Yu Jingtian and Liu Xuxiu from Produce Camp are both very popular topics. One is about to quit the group, and the other has the image of a rich and noble son. There are also sisters in "Sisters Who Make Waves 2" such as Rainie Yang and Jike Junyi.

Regardless of the media strategy or gameplay, the most important point is that every content platform has rules. Whether it is crowd positioning, keywords, or the popular context of the platform, the brand needs to master better content. Only in this way can the brand use better IP and at the same time obtain better head resources to differentiate and achieve results in 618.

4. How should brands bid with platforms?

During an important e-commerce event like 618, the platform will also release resources and traffic, but it is very difficult for brands to compete for resources.

Especially for some large resources or nodes with relatively large traffic, there may be dozens of brands competing together. So, in such competition, how should brands think or act to obtain a better allocation of resources?

Fang Lei, SVP of Shiqu, believes that brands need to communicate with platforms at three levels:

1. Have a win-win mentality

When brands are pursuing some popular platform marketing IPs, they need to think beyond the client’s mindset and think about what the platforms want from the perspective of e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.com, what the platforms can gain from the cooperation between the two, and what unique value the brand has in the cooperation, so as to help the brand obtain more resources.

2. Big-name resources & popular IP

When a brand is communicating with a platform, whether the brand has an exclusive IP or resources from a big brand can greatly increase the brand's access to platform resource support.

3. Exclusive and ingenious resources

If there are no top stars and no exclusive traffic influencers or IPs to cooperate with, the brand needs to find some exclusive resources that cannot be replaced by others.

Of course, the entire communication is definitely a long and complex process, involving multiple resources, the brand’s own situation and the grasp of the entire 618 trend. Brands can also look for professional and experienced integrated marketing partners like Shiqu to solve problems and maximize marketing efficiency.

5. From a data perspective, how to run a successful e-commerce festival?

In addition to activities, content, promotions, etc. within the e-commerce site, attracting traffic outside the site is also very important, and the core tool is data. From this perspective, we have also prepared some corresponding data and cases for brand owners to refer to.

1. Consumer Insight Scenarios

Use data to gain insight into consumer needs. For example, OPPO, a mobile phone client of Shiqu.com, was used during the service process to review a large number of creative communication effects of its own and competing products. We found that in many extreme scenarios in the past, consumer feedback and photography effects were not good. Starting from the real demand scenarios of consumers, Shiqu's project team and brand found the product selling point of anti-shake, and made corresponding creative communications, achieving very good results on Weibo, Douyin and even e-commerce conversions.

2. Competitive product strategy analysis

For fast-moving consumer goods and beauty brands, they prefer short, fast campaigns when doing e-commerce marketing. Combined with data insight analysis, these campaigns are actually very simple to implement.

Zhao Wei, CTO of Shiqu, said that based on the Shiqu Insight Engine, brands can quickly analyze similar campaigns of competitors. For example, when a certain product is launched, we can analyze the product's launch strategy, rhythm, media strategy, different content methods, the advantages and disadvantages of each brand and product, etc., to help brands clearly and comprehensively understand the marketing situation of competitors and the market and consumer market feedback in advance, and provide decision-making references for the brand's subsequent strategy formulation.

3. Review of marketing results

Marketing actions are a process of continuous iteration and review. Brands need to accumulate and settle some brand assets from the previous campaign. This asset includes not only consumer traffic, but also the subsequent development of the entire strategy.

Combined with the Shiqu Insight Engine, we can review the results of the entire marketing campaign, including whether consumers recognize the brand's selling points, whether the entire interactive group is consistent with the brand, and analyze all KOLs and channel resources in a media matrix to see which performances are more outstanding. Such analysis can be done from the perspective of interaction or the cost of real CPE and CPM.

Shiqu CTO Zhao Wei believes that by using the power of data, the brand's entire media strategy can be continuously improved. You can also do a larger brand marketing assessment.

6. What is the content marketing “secret” behind the best-selling beauty products?

The rise of emerging brands is often inseparable from a hit product, especially in the popular beauty industry. Through the Shiqu Insight Engine, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the brand marketing campaigns of the three hot-selling products during Double 11: Winona, IPSA, and Colorkey.

The first trick for a successful hit product: Winona, excellent marketing input-output ratio

Winona was the only domestic brand in the top 10 beauty products on Double 11 last year. Looking back at the peak of Double 11 in October, Winona’s multi-platform content marketing did not have as much publicity as international brands such as L’Oreal and Lancome. However, with its precise differentiated positioning + core communication content, it continued to consolidate the user mindset of its products “focusing on sensitive skin”, and its publicity soared 17 times. Among many domestic beauty products, its Double 11 sales performance was “unique”.

In terms of media strategy, a multimedia matrix was adopted to cover a wide range of consumer life scenarios; in terms of content strategy, it used expert endorsement + live broadcast + brand collaboration + leveraging the Cat Night IP & celebrity on-site fan-attracting strategy, with a rich content combination to ultimately ignite brand sales.

The second trick for the success of a hit product: IPSA, high frequency and diverse marketing content

IPSA adopted a cross-platform strategy, integrating multiple platforms and online and offline activities, leveraging the celebrity effect and Tmall topics to harvest traffic; the media strategy also mobilized multiple platforms and integrated marketing methods of celebrities + KOLs to increase the overall popularity, and targeted three major groups: the brand's own group, celebrity fan group, and general interest group. It adopted high-frequency and diverse content strategies to reach different groups and platforms.

In general, brands embrace the new media traffic dividend and integrate the layout of all media, use multiple content forms according to the characteristics of the population on each platform, and cover different user scenarios.

The third trick for a successful hit product: Colorkey Ke Laqi, quickly conquering young people

During last year’s Double 11, a total of 16 new brands on Tmall achieved sales exceeding 100 million yuan. Colorkey, founded in 2018, was the “youngest” beauty brand among them.

In terms of content strategy, the brand focuses on formulating long-term and short-term marketing strategies, continuously planning long-term campaigns, and executing short-term campaigns at a high frequency to continuously capture new media crowds.

At the same time, in terms of media, we focus on preheating with mid- and low-end KOLs, and celebrity spokespersons such as Meng Meiqi and Wang Ziyi focus on influencing young women. In addition, we keep up with consumer demand trends to achieve accurate brand positioning and create a product matrix. From face to lips and eyes, we continuously implant differentiated advantages into consumers' minds, and deploy live broadcast + full platform to promote seeding and spread Double 11 benefits, ultimately realizing traffic harvesting.

In general, the emergence of a hot product has the following marketing characteristics:

1. The brand has transformed from traditional media channels to social marketing channels. It uses Douyin, Xiaohongshu, WeChat, Weibo, and Bilibili as its main marketing platforms. It also sells products across the entire network, including Taobao, Tmall, JD.com, and Weidian, and even e-commerce live broadcasts.
2. The consumer groups are mainly those born in the 1990s, 1995s, and 2000s. Brands will match different types of marketing methods based on the interests and hobbies of the new young consumer groups, such as celebrity products, celebrity spokespersons, and other topics within the "sight range" of young people;
3. With strong scenario-based and personalized features, it can be said that this type of brand has been targeting a certain vertical market segment since its inception and has strong consumer insight capabilities. Both products and brands can easily gain loyal supporters and consumers.

Author: Xu Yanbing

Source: Xu Yanbing