Weibo, WeChat and Douyin: New rules for brands

Li Jiaoshou once said in the 2020 New Marketing New Year Class that the biggest single variable affecting the business model of consumer products is "media" .

A simple sentence, but behind it is a very profound insight.

From traditional media to new media, from the era of pictures and texts to the era of live broadcasts, every change in media will create huge waves in the market.

What has created such a huge wave is the dramatically changing information model - from television and newspapers to mobile Internet, and the unchanging life scenes - the mediatization of scene space.

If you were to ask, what is the biggest change brought about by the mobile Internet era and scenario-based media compared to the traditional era and traditional media?

In fact, it is a link, which realizes the information link between people through social platforms, the information link between people and brands through scene platforms, and the integration between the two.

Consumers' perception of brands often progresses from awareness to cognition and then to identification and subscription. Life-scenario media represented by Focus Media creates high-frequency forced touch at elevator entrances of apartment buildings, office buildings and shopping malls that consumers must pass by every day. It solves the problem of quickly igniting a brand and enabling consumers to form a broad and solid understanding and cognition of the brand.

Social media represented by Weibo, WeChat and Douyin on the mobile Internet solve the problem of brand recognition through celebrity and internet influencer recommendations, and solve the problem of brand subscription through precise distribution of traffic. The combination of the two is becoming the standard for brand building throughout the entire chain from awareness and cognition to recognition and subscription.

Low-cost communication and multiple reach

It is an opportunity for brand communication on social media

In the traditional era, the relationship between people and people, and people and things is scattered and fragmented; in the era of mobile Internet, the relationship between people and people, and people and things is networked and connected. We are all in a network called the Internet.

Based on the links between people and between people and things, social media provides brands with opportunities for low-cost communication and multiple reach.

1. Low-cost communication

The connection between people corresponds to low-cost communication . The essence of low-cost communication is that people are connected, which changes information from one-to-many to many-to-many, just like what Professor Hua Shan said, "broadcasting."

In the traditional era, if a brand wanted to spread its influence, it had to spend money to advertise on CCTV, outdoors, and in newspapers. However, because people were relatively isolated from each other, information was difficult to transmit from one person to another, so it could only spread from one point to multiple people.

But today, each of us has the right and channel to speak out, and behind each of us there are people who can spread the message again.

That is why we are able to see many screen-sweeping cases, such as "Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou", "What's Peppa Pig?", "Pinduoduo Bargaining", etc., which are essentially supported by "connections between people".

The key to achieving low-cost communication is to be able to produce content that people are willing to spread . In order to spread, there must be people willing to spread it. Therefore, in the competition on social media, the production of high-quality content will be a big dimension.

So, what you see is that more and more brands are producing and publishing content on social media, and they all hope to use high-quality content to leverage low-cost dissemination.

This can be seen from the product packaging of many brands. The brands that have become popular in recent years, whether it is Xiaoguan Tea, Santonban, Yuanqi Forest, or Jiang Xiaobai, their products are very contagious.

Therefore, if you want to seize the opportunities of mobile Internet, what you should do instead of buying traffic is to produce high-quality content and use the characteristics of social media to leverage low-cost dissemination.

2. Can be reached multiple times

The link between people and things corresponds to multiple touches , including multiple touches of goods and multiple touches of brand information.

As mentioned above, people and products are all on the same network, or more accurately, on different platforms within the network. Users spend their time and attention on platforms such as Douyin, WeChat, and Xiaohongshu.

This provides brands with the opportunity to reach out multiple times. By simply opening an account on a platform and continuously delivering content, they can repeatedly reach a certain target group. Or you can also achieve reach by purchasing traffic.

In the traditional era, not only was it difficult to reach consumers, but it was even more difficult to reach consumers repeatedly. For centralized media like the central media, few brands could afford the high costs of advertising and reaching consumers all year round.

But social media can solve this problem very well. Not only is it easier to reach people, but more importantly, the cost of reaching people is lower than that of traditional media. Companies like Durex that has made great use of Weibo, Perfect Diary that has become popular on Xiaohongshu, and HFP that has launched public accounts are all effective uses of multiple reach.

To put it simply, brand communication is nothing more than reaching the audience with brand information and making the audience react. The reaction includes understanding, trust, interest, purchase, etc. of the brand.

If you want to achieve multiple reaches, all you have to do is purchase traffic and produce content, or a combination of the two. First purchase traffic and then use content to reach, which is actually what we call private domain operation.

To sum up: social media brings opportunities for brands in terms of communication: low-cost communication and multiple reach.

Weibo, Douyin, Bilibili, and Xiaohongshu

Main representatives of social media

From "two Weibo" to "two Weibo and one Douyin" and then to today's "two Weibo and one Douyin + Bilibili and Xiaohongshu", social media is constantly enriching. The rise of each platform can bring opportunities to some brands, such as Perfect Diary, which started with Xiaohongshu.

In addition to their own characteristics, these platforms all provide brands with two common opportunities: one is low-cost communication, and the other is multiple reach.

For example, announcing an event on WeChat may trigger widespread dissemination. By creating an account and posting information every day, multiple reach can be achieved. The same is essentially true on other platforms.

So what role do low-cost communication and multiple reach bring to a brand?

It can reduce some communication costs; it can frequently reach users with brand information; it can achieve some real-time effect conversion.

That's all, it's nothing more than a better conversion effect. Even if the brand is achieved from 0 to 10, from 10 to 100 will become a bottleneck that is difficult to break through.

As mentioned above, the key to achieving low-cost dissemination and multiple reach is content. Moreover, the content must meet the two requirements of consumers being willing to spread and actively receive it . Therefore, although much of the content on social media is interesting and useful, it is fragmented and discontinuous.

This results in consumers being unable to form a holistic understanding of the brand and being unable to firmly remember a single feature of the brand. Once the content exposure stops, consumers’ perception of the brand will decline, thereby reducing the frequency of purchases.

The limitations of social media

As a product of mobile Internet, social media has performed very well in recent years, especially its spreadability and reach. It has indeed made some brands successful, but it still cannot cover up its limitations.

1. Difficulty in spreading

The peak of traffic dividends and the increase in traffic costs are currently a hot issue on the Internet platform, which means that purchasing traffic in the long term is neither advisable nor cost-effective.

What should I do then?

Use content to attract traffic. As a result, more and more brands have opened accounts and produced content on social media, and operators are becoming more and more tired. However, most of the accounts have become useless, so it is better to give up than to reach them.

With more content, consumers will see more things, and the threshold will be raised. Content that once attracted a lot of people to spread will now be ignored. If there is another "100 Things You Must Do in Life", it will probably be difficult to arouse public participation and spread.

Secondly, more and more brands rely on social media to go viral and spread their influence, such as milk tea brand Heytea, ice cream brand Zhong Xuegao, beverage brand Yuanqi Forest, liquor brand Jiang Xiaobai, nut brand Three Squirrels, beauty brand Perfect Diary, coffee brand Santonban... and will gradually cover every possible category.

If you also want your products and activities to attract people's attention and spread among the public, you must be different from them, which will become increasingly difficult.

Furthermore, many brands are not suitable for producing content, such as those selling sockets, tiles, toilets, etc.

What kind of content do you think they produce that consumers will be willing to consume and spread? No matter how much it is produced, it is difficult to arouse discussion and spread among the public.

Therefore, it will become increasingly difficult to leverage low-cost dissemination through content in the future.

2. Weakened reach

The second is the reach of information. In order for information reach to be effective, the audience must be willing to accept it. If a brand posts advertisements every day, no one will be willing to watch them.

What should I do then?

Making advertisements in the form of content and information is a common practice used by brand owners. The result is that the audience is willing to watch it, but what attracts them and makes them remember is the content itself, rather than the highlights of the product itself and the advertising appeal.

How many people still remember the advertisement titled “No matter how big the world is, it’s just a bowl of scrambled eggs with tomatoes” which once swept the circle of friends? In fact, the advertiser was China Merchants Bank.

Secondly, reaching out is a long process. It is almost impossible to attract a large number of fans and make an impact on a platform in just three to five months.

Furthermore, due to the weakening of advertising appeal, even if it is produced, it cannot be monetized continuously without subsequent continuous reach through content.

More importantly, the audience has the initiative and the right to choose on the Internet platform. They can turn off the content they don’t want to see at will. This is a major flaw for brands that spread on social media.

3. Disperse the crowd

Although consumers are all on the Internet, they are scattered on different platforms at different time periods, and each platform they use will take up a certain amount of time and attention.

This creates a great resistance to brand communication. The number of people reached by a communication campaign is very limited, and sometimes it can even create a false impression. For example, something may seem popular on a certain platform, but in fact it is just a few stars.

It is obvious that a piece of information becomes popular in one circle, but people in another circle don’t know about it. Even Li Jiaqi, who now has top-level traffic, still cannot reach many groups of people.

Even if you have 10 million followers on Douyin, it is still a drop in the bucket for many mass brands.

Even if you sponsor a variety show or TV series with very high ratings, there is still a big gap between the number of viewers and the number of target audiences.

It’s not that Lao Gan Ma never advertises. Putting aside the advertising for it by Tencent, it actually released a magical advertisement called "Unscrew the Gan Ma" last year. It just chose social media to spread it, which failed to achieve wide coverage, causing many people not to know about it.

To sum up, the main problems currently faced by brands in communicating on social media are: communication becomes difficult, reach weakens, and the audience disperses.

Advantages of scene media

The low-cost dissemination and multiple-reach features of social media are indeed worth every brand’s attempt and exploration, especially for some small brands and emerging brands, which is a good opportunity.

However, if most brands want to expand their business, quickly gain popularity, and take the lead in the industry, it is almost impossible to achieve this by relying solely on the power of social media.

We can learn this from a few advertising slogans.

“0 calories, 0 fat, 0 sugar”—Genki Forest.

"If you're looking for a job, talk to your boss directly" - BOSS Direct Hiring.

“No middlemen make a profit from the price difference”—Guazi Used Cars.

I believe you will be impressed by the above slogans. They all have some characteristics. Apart from being similar in style, they all choose to be detonated in the core life scenes of consumers - the targeted elevator media that they must pass through every day in apartment buildings and office buildings.

Are they not using social media to spread the word? Not really, it’s the limitations of social media that make it unable to solve the problems faced by brand development.

As the core of scene media, elevator media is on the must-go route for 300 million mainstream urban consumers. It can reach the target audience with high frequency in the closed elevator space, which is often an advantage that other media cannot match.

1. Wide coverage

Being known is always the first step to being chosen.

As a city’s infrastructure, one of the characteristics of elevator media is that it covers a wide range of people. This is also one of the reasons why many brands choose elevator media as their main delivery channel.

Unlike social media, which has a serious circle phenomenon and an extremely scattered audience, elevator media is based on two core scenes: office buildings and apartment communities. Almost every mainstream person working and living in the city must be exposed to elevator media.

Of course, this is only limited to leading companies. As the leading company in elevator media, Focus Media, according to relevant data, currently has 2.6 million terminals in 230 cities, reaching 300 million people and 700 million people every day.

An elevator media that can cover 300 million people can almost cover the target population of most brands.

Brands such as BOSS Direct, Guazi, Yuanfudao, Feihe Milk Powder, Bosideng, Yuanqi Forest, and Meiji Landau all need to attract more mainstream people in order to seek breakthroughs in user volume and sales, and Focus Media is obviously the best choice for them.

2. Seize the mind

The competition in business lies in who can capture the user's mind first.

Being in a leading position is very advantageous, especially in commercial competition. Consumers have limited mental capacity and a tendency to seek security, which brings huge benefits to the brands that first capture the minds of users.

When it comes to 0-calorie, 0-fat, 0-sugar beverage brands, who can you think of? I guess it’s only Yuanqi Forest; when it comes to children’s cheese sticks, who can you think of? I guess the only one is Miaokelan.

The most crucial reason is that these brands have taken the lead in shaping a clear perception in the minds of consumers through targeted screen dominance and have occupied an irreplaceable position.

It was recently discovered that the natural color paper brand Banbu also placed advertisements on Focus Media’s elevator TVs, which shows that Banbu wants to seize the perception of “natural color paper = Banbu” in the minds of consumers.

Whoever occupies an important position in the minds of consumers first can achieve mental pre-sales.

What is mental pre-sale ? It means that the brand has been reserved by consumers in advance, and consumers have chosen you subconsciously, breaking through the competition with other brands on the "shelves".

When consumers want to buy a used car, the first thing they think of is Guazi Used Car; when they want to take online courses, the first thing they think of is Yuanfudao; when they want to buy down jackets, the first thing they think of is Bosideng; when they want to find a medical beauty platform, the first thing they think of is SoYoung Medical Beauty.

Although social media spreads quickly, its audience and the information it disseminates are dispersed, so its effectiveness is far from satisfactory.

Therefore, elevator media has become the only media in the real world for brands to concentrate on occupying the minds of users first. How can users easily forget it if the same information is repeatedly and frequently injected into the minds of users in a short period of time?

3. Active high frequency

Active high frequency is the guarantee for achieving advertising results.

As a brand owner, we must admit that, given a choice, almost no consumers are willing to actively watch advertisements.

Therefore, the most difficult problem on social media is that brand owners post a lot of advertisements and articles, but consumers often turn a blind eye to them.

On the other hand, when consumers are standing in the elevator, the signal is bad and they feel awkward facing strangers. So where should they put their eyes at this moment? Why not take a look at the ads in the elevator?

Secondly, the space in an elevator is small, and the distance between people and advertisements is very close, especially for elevator televisions. The combination of pictures and sounds has an information conveying effect that other media cannot compete with.

Furthermore, it is impossible for consumers to take the elevator only once. If we calculate it as 4 times a day, that means 30 high-intensity touches in a week.

As strategic marketing experts Hua & Hua brothers said: The essence of communication lies in repetition; the essence of the audience lies in forgetting.

For elevator media, as long as there are people in the elevator, the advertising will be effective. Countless advertisements that you will never forget are created under such circumstances.

To sum up, the main opportunities that elevator media brings to brands in terms of communication are: covering a wide range of people, entering consumers' minds first, and actively reaching them at high frequencies.

Final Thoughts

The media has gone from the era of pictures and texts to the era of videos and now to the era of live broadcasting, and the overall trend is currently slow.

It has to be said that the multiple reach, connectivity and interactivity of social media are opportunities given to brands by the times. Coupled with consumers' catalytic habits, social media has become a battlefield that must be deployed for brand communication.

But as more and more brands produce and publish content, it will become increasingly difficult to stand out.

Secondly, due to the dispersed nature of communication among dispersed groups of people, communication on social media is just scratching the surface for many brands. Social fission, private domain operations and live streaming cannot fundamentally solve brand problems.

This is why more and more brands, even after deploying social media, are choosing to use offline elevator media to focus on the audience in order to occupy the minds of consumers first.

Because, on social media, what is more important is to carry out long-term operations, to achieve steady growth and to accumulate brand reputation; and by utilizing the life scenes that 300 million mainstream urban consumers must go through - elevator media segmentation, it can quickly detonate, seize minds, increase brand potential and enhance brand awareness.

It is undeniable that social media (Weibo, Weibo, Douyin, Bilibili, and Xiaohongshu) + elevator media segmentation will become the new rule for detonating brands.

Author: Brand New Insider

Source: Brand New Insider