Brand marketing: “Traffic is king” is the key?

There is something wrong with the value of marketing. Giving traffic medicine is useless.

1. Listen to criticism with an open mind - Zou Ji persuades the King of Qi to accept advice

The handsome man Zou Ji asked his wife: "Who is more handsome, me or Old Xu from the north of the city?" His wife said: "Nonsense, of course you are handsome, Old Xu is nothing compared to you."

This is called beauty in the eyes of the beholder, and high emotional intelligence is used to handle family problems.

Zou Ji then asked about his concubine and the visiting guests.

The concubine said: "Old Xu is just an ordinary good-looking man, but you are a killer of thousands of women, making people fall in love with you at first sight and unable to extricate themselves."

The customer said: "Mr. Zou, you are not only good-looking, but also dignified and charming. You have a very good temperament."

This is called saying nice things to everyone you meet. Flattery never wears out a single thread.

Mr. Zou was very proud, and went to compete with Lao Xu; there is no harm without comparison, and Zou Ji was defeated instantly, and he suffered a critical blow in his heart.

After Zou, who suffered a heavy blow, figured it out, he went to his boss, King Qi Wei, and told him the story, and then said, "Boss, no one can trust the words of the people around you. You must do your best to get everyone to express their opposing opinions."

When the boss heard this, he thought it made perfect sense and immediately gave the order: Come on, scold me, spit at me, the harsher the better.

Those who curse behind someone’s back will get a medium reward; those who curse someone in a letter will get a big reward; those who curse someone by pointing at him or her will get a super big reward.

Just by doing such a simple thing, the State of Qi suddenly became a superpower and became extremely cool for a while.

When I first heard this story, I found it unbelievable. Isn’t it just criticism? Haven’t we been criticized enough since we were young? Can it be so powerful?

I can tell you responsibly that it is true.

It seems easy to listen to criticism with an open mind, but it is actually very difficult and it goes against human nature.

Li Lao Er, a great ruler of the Tang Dynasty who was famous for accepting advice, wanted to chop off the head of the stubborn old Wei several times.

It is difficult for ordinary people like us, as long as we are adults, to hear the truth, let alone business owners. The bigger the company, the less likely the boss will hear real criticism, and even fewer people will dare to criticize.

Once a boss emerges who is willing to listen to criticism, his business will definitely have unlimited potential and will be so successful that you can't even imagine it.

We often say that the boss's vision determines the upper limit of the company - to put it bluntly, the vision is how many different ideas, different perspectives and different cognitions you can accommodate.

I have been working in marketing for more than 20 years and have seen all kinds of companies. Only a very few bosses can make relatively objective evaluations of their own products and companies.

2. "Traffic Thinking" - Bakery Owner

There is an elder in my hometown who is good at making pancakes. How delicious is the cake? I have lived for 46 years and this is the most delicious delicacy I have ever had, absolutely no doubt about it.

When you take a bite, you can taste four layers of fragrance.

• The outermost layer is the burnt aroma: the surface of the pancake is brushed with oil and baked to create a burnt aroma. The heat is crucial. It must be a bright golden color, not red, as that would mean it is old. It cannot be yellow or white, as that would mean it is not heated enough. Moreover, the work must be done very carefully and the surface must be extremely smooth so that the whole pancake can be golden brown throughout.
• The second layer is the onion fragrance: remove the onion leaves and use only the onion whites, cut them into chopped green onions, and spread a layer under the surface of the pancake. The outside is soaked with oil and the inside is permeated with meat flavor. It has the aroma of onions lightly fried in oil, and the inherent spicy flavor of chopped onions.
• The third layer is the meaty flavor: the meat in meat patties is usually chopped into minced meat. His is cut into dices. A large amount of diced meat is embedded in chopped green onions and pancakes, and when fried in a closed griddle, the fat in the meat is absorbed by the green onions and noodles. The meat is fragrant but not greasy, and a little chewy, coupled with the rich aroma of green onions, it is far better than Dongpo pork.
• The fourth layer is wheat aroma: this is the most rare. In the middle of the cake, there is still a thin layer of crust. It tastes like the outer layer of steamed buns just out of the pot. The more you chew, the more fragrant it becomes.

This is just the feeling of taking a bite, the most enjoyable thing is chewing it with a full mouthful.

The surface is slightly hard and crispy, followed by the tenderness of the onions and meat, and the innermost layer is tough and chewy; there are seven layers in total, and when you take a full bite, it feels like something divine.

For most of my life, the only delicacy that appears repeatedly in my dreams is this big pancake. The elders who made the pancake are my great uncle and great aunt.

How booming is their business?

The old couple started preparing at midnight and began to bake the cakes at around three o'clock. People started coming to buy them at five in the morning. By six or seven o'clock, there were dozens of people lining up, which was more than the number of people at Heytea.

My uncle's bakery was near the bus station, so we had a saying at that time: "If you don't eat pancakes, you won't enter XX County."

When I was in school, I once ate more than a pound of cake and drank a bowl of tofu pudding, but I still felt unsatisfied. Seeing that I had finished eating, my aunt cut another big piece of cake, wrapped it in paper, and asked me to take it back to school for dinner.

I couldn't resist the craving and ate up the more than one pound of cake on the way.

Wipe the saliva off the keyboard and tell me what happened later.

Because the bus station was being replanned, my uncle's bakery needed to be relocated; the old couple were old and the business was too tiring, so they decided to quit.

After that, there were many shops making this kind of pancakes in our county, some in the commercial street, some in the residential area, and some near the train station.

Whenever I come across such a bakery, I will go and try it; to be honest, the cakes are completely different from those made by my uncle-in-law, so the business is naturally very average; most of them cannot last long, and gradually this kind of cake has become extinct in our place.

The amazing thing is that later on, none of these cake makers thought that their cakes were bad; they all took my uncle's old shop as a benchmark, and claimed that their cakes were better than those of the old shop. They said that their business was not good because of their bad geographical location, as the station had a huge passenger flow.

To use today’s terms, these bakery owners all have “traffic thinking.”

3. Cognitive Bias

Why can't you see the obvious facts? Have eye problems? Having taste problems? Or is there something wrong with your brain?

Neither, that’s human nature.

It is really not easy to be like Zou Ji or King Wei of Qi.

Human nature and the environment around us make it difficult for us to make accurate judgments about ourselves. The boss looks at his own products like his own children; the more he looks at them, the more he likes them.

If you ask the people around you, if they are friends with you, they will definitely say good things about you. People like Lao Miao who speak without restraint will not survive more than two episodes.

Ask the employees. They have feelings for the company and vested interests in it just like you do, and will like to agree with what you say.

If you ask your partners, they have their own interests. You will be happy if they say nice things, but it has nothing to do with them if things go wrong.

If you ask a consulting company, they will praise you to the skies so that you will give them business.

If you let people try your products, consumers will take your gifts and say good things about them; if you don’t give out gifts, the situation will be even worse, because they are a specific group of people and will exaggerate their purchasing power; there may be a few loyal customers, but they may be a special group of people, and they are more likely to lead you into survivor bias.

When doing market research, many companies will ask a silly question: "If there is such a product, and the price is x, how likely are you to buy it?"

Brother, this kind of result will definitely lead you into trouble.

Not to mention that consumers may not necessarily tell the truth, even if they do tell the truth, it may not be accurate.

The biggest determinant of purchasing intention is the scenario. How can an ordinary consumer accurately express his or her willingness in the consumption scenario in a questionnaire scenario?

Consumption is the result of one or more impulsive actions.

Therefore, many of our companies are mysteriously confident about their products, just like those pancake makers in our county.

If the basic judgment deviates from the right track, the following will go further and further wrong:

• The pancakes didn’t sell well because they didn’t get the prime location at the bus station;
• Foreign trade enterprises fail to do well in the domestic market because they do not have distributors to help them sell goods;
• Traditional enterprises are not good at e-commerce because they do not have traffic;
• The reason why the company is not growing now is that it has not seized the traffic dividend;
• …

The huge foundation of cognitive bias is fertile soil for cultivating the freak of "traffic thinking"; simply attributing poor business to lack of traffic is strategic laziness.

IV. Conclusion

Repeating a piece of business common sense, Lao Miao will say it over and over again.

• Business is composed of basic parts such as goods, delivery, and information. The operation of business is the operation of information flow, goods flow, and capital flow.
• Commodity providers, regardless of whether you are producing or selling physical products or service products, are collectively referred to as cargo owners, which are what we often call physical enterprises. This includes not only processing and manufacturing industries, catering, etc., but also distributors, e-commerce and other intermediate links.
• Traffic providers, whether you are an online platform, traditional media, or someone collecting rent or selling advertisements offline, are all traffic owners.
• All commercial value is based on user value. Traffic has no value to users and can only be realized by parasitizing on goods.

Traffic owners advocate "traffic thinking", preach "traffic is king", and promote the attention economy, just like cargo owners promote "the melon is as sweet as sugar" and "thin skin, large filling and eighteen folds". It is their duty.

However, physical enterprises followed suit and called for "traffic thinking". On the one hand, they were misled by those who controlled the discourse power. On the other hand, they made serious misjudgments. They really thought that as long as more people saw it and noticed it, it would sell well.

There is something wrong with the value of marketing, and giving traffic medicine is useless.

A case mentioned before: a company launches a new product, but the effect is not good. Then it discovers that the performance of individual terminals is quite good. The reason is that the shopping guides at the terminals are very good. So the company spends a lot of effort to train a large number of shopping guides. As a result, the shopping guides you trained are eventually poached. This is because excellent shopping guides can sell more goods to others, can play a greater role, and can earn more money.

If you can't find the real reason, you will definitely be blamed.

Of course, traffic owners understand this principle better.

So on the one hand, they shout "traffic is king" and make you keep spending money in different ways, and on the other hand, they invest traffic in companies with attractive brands and products - because traffic can only be monetized if it is parasitic on goods, and goods with product and brand power will undoubtedly be better monetized.

Since last year, the platforms have not even taken care of their own "own children" (such as Taobao brands supported by e-commerce traffic), but have flocked to Huawei, Apple, L'Oreal, Nike, Uniqlo...

Physical enterprises must first stand firm on their own position and not get too carried away and follow the crowd to say “traffic is king”.

On the other hand, you must always remind yourself: Does my product really meet the needs of users, can consumers identify with it, does it truly touch the hearts of consumers, and does it fit the consumers' purchasing and usage scenarios?

You can listen to what people around you say, but don’t believe any of their good words.

What is truly reliable is your profound insight, careful research, meticulous design, and considerate service...

Just like the pancakes at my aunt’s house, the taste of the pancakes with seven layers is different from the regular three layers, the aroma is different when the meat is diced and when it is minced, there is a big difference between using only the scallion whites and using the whole scallion, and there is a difference between making the surface flat and smooth and simply rolling it... This is why the old couple starts preparing at twelve o'clock in the evening, while the breakfast shops usually start at four or five o'clock.

Only when we put our efforts into users can our true value be reflected.

You take the time to listen to advice, but often you just hear a lot of nice things.

They may mean good for you, but they are actually pushing you into trouble.

I sincerely recommend that all business owners keep Zou Ji's story in mind and repeatedly emphasize to your employees and partners that you are someone who can listen to harsh criticism.

Correctly understanding yourself and your business is the prerequisite for not being led astray.

If all physical businesses can return to the concept of value marketing, the bubble of "traffic is king" will burst by itself, and we won't have to spend so much money to buy the so-called "traffic".

Author: Miao Qingxian

Source: Lao Miao Si Marketing