Platform-based brand marketing strategy!

There are huge differences in brand marketing between product-based brands and platform-based brands, and their strategies and methods are completely different.

The product brand has been finalized before it goes on the market, and its selling points and advantages are very clear. The core is to maximize exposure and convey the selling points. To put it simply, shouting slogans is effective.

But the problem with platform-based brands is that the platform is a neutral carrier, and the content is created by users. The tone of the brand depends entirely on the content created by users, and there is a lot of uncertainty. Users’ ideas may not be the same as the platform’s original intention.

The core of the marketing strategy of platform brands is content intervention and guidance. The content cannot be allowed to grow wildly, just like the plants in a garden. The marketer’s responsibility is to prune and shape them.

It is necessary to work closely with the content and user operations departments to shape the long-term perception of the brand through changes in the content ecology.

Next, let’s talk about the marketing strategies and methods of platform brands, as follows:

Platform brands have no “selling points”

I have worked with two Internet companies, both of which were platform brands. If they used solutions under the 4A system, their advertising could be very good and could win praise from the entire industry. However, user feedback was that they felt their ads were so cool that they re-downloaded the APP that they had not used for several years, but when they opened it, they found it was still the same, so they uninstalled it again.

Platform brands cannot rely on branded TVCs, that thing is not very useful. Brand strategy can refine selling points very accurately, but as long as the content ecology does not change, this selling point does not exist and is false.

What platform brands need to do is to create selling points.

The platform grows, and the appearance of the brand depends on how users use it and what kind of content they produce. The brand is made up of content created by users. So what we do in marketing is to create selling points together with users and build brands together.

For example, Taobao has 8 million sellers. It has everything and sells everything, but it has always been criticized for its low-end image of selling counterfeit goods and free shipping for 9.9 yuan. But there are also young creators, designers, trendy stores and so on.

So can 9.9 yuan for free shipping represent Taobao, or can the designer store represent Taobao? In other words, how to weaken Taobao's selling point of free shipping for 9.9 yuan and strengthen the selling point of young trends?

It is useless to shout slogans. Taobao's strategy is to select 100 merchants from 8 million merchants, hold a "Creation Festival", and then spread the Creation Festival to the public. The message conveyed is: this is what Taobao should be like. Create selling points and reshape the brand through content reorganization.

Taobao has carried out many similar marketing campaigns. The core methodology is to create the ideal Taobao through content topics and convey it to the public and users.

In the process of building a platform brand, the core is content ICON, and brand building must be operationalized.

Brand proposition——content ICON——communication exposure.

I have summarized it into these three logical chains: first, brand proposition sets the direction, then content is reorganized to create special topics, and then dissemination and exposure are used to guide users to reshape the ecosystem.

Kuaishou’s strategy: content reorganization

Next, I will try to talk about Kuaishou’s brand strategy. It may not be correct, so just take it as a reference.

I like Kuaishou because of its richness. It is the most authentic and rich content platform that showcases diversified life since the Internet.

Artist Xu Bing has a work called "Dragonfly Eyes". From the perspective of richness and storytelling, today's Kuaishou is China's Dragonfly Eyes.

Faced with this infinitely rich content community, how should we define, guide and shape this brand?

Recently, Kuaishou has held many themed live broadcast events, including "Life in a Day" and "Fireworks in the World". Each live broadcast is a record itself. I seem to have seen some clues in these topics. Through this article, I would also like to discuss brand strategy with friends at Kuaishou.

"Life in a Day" takes time as the dimension, and is pieced together into a day's life through live broadcasts by dozens of anchors in different time periods.

"The World of Fireworks" was recently created. Four live broadcasts were made based on the regions, namely "Safe Living" in the Northeast, "Inheritance" in the Northwest, "Diversity" in the Southwest, and "Influx" in the Southeast. These four live broadcasts show China's world of fireworks.

As the trend of live streaming sales sweeps the entire industry, Kuaishou's live broadcasts still maintain their recording nature, recording the daily lives of ordinary Chinese people through group live broadcasts. In fact, it reminds me of Chen Xiaoqing’s food documentary, which takes the most ordinary daily life and creates the highest quality texture.

You can look up the content of these events online. We mainly interpret and sort out the content at the strategic level. Based on this clue, I would like to share my understanding of Kuaishou’s brand strategy from the perspective of proposition, content, and communication logic:

Brand DNA: Recording the World

Brand values ​​are very important and directly affect the direction of content and the accuracy of marketing. Without a clearly identifiable brand DNA, user communication will be powerless.

Kuaishou’s brand gene is to become a recorder.

Kuaishou records the world with people as the dimension and is a content community with people as the dimension. It is also a short video and live broadcast platform, but it focuses on people.

When we watch Kuaishou, we see a person’s daily life.

For example, if you follow a traveler or a truck driver, you won’t see carefully edited videos, but rather their real daily life captured by shaky cameras.

Today, Kuaishou carries life documentaries of hundreds of millions of people. This is the brand value and social significance of Kuaishou.

So what marketing needs to do next is to explain the "record" itself in the most accurate and maximized way. Accuracy is the attribute of the content and cannot be empty; maximization is the crowd. Everyone's life is worth recording, removing user attributes.

Define the brand from the perspective of content attributes rather than crowd attributes.

Content Restructuring: Sustainable IPization

Taking platform content as the core material, the first step is content reorganization, and then the content is circulated externally, that is, breaking the circle. Create bullets and shoot them.

Faced with content created by hundreds of millions of people, with so much content and so many voices, it is crucial for marketers to choose what to advocate and what not to advocate.

The purpose of content reorganization is to create a small range of ideal content from the messy content through content activities. For example, the recent works "Fireworks World" and "Life in a Day" make the most documentary content that best represents Kuaishou and universal life in China into special topics for separate dissemination.

Reorganize the content around "records", create sustainable operational activity IP, and do it continuously. Different topics correspond to different groups of people, turning one person into a type of person.

My personal opinion is that Kuaishou should first break through the crowd and should not have any preference or prejudice towards any group of people. White-collar workers working in the cubicles of Guomao want to see the wildness of mountain honey collectors, and rural children in Daliangshan also want to know about the big city life they long for.

In the process of content reorganization, Kuaishou needs to continue to expand its audience and truly reach the average Chinese population, with all people recording their lives on Kuaishou.

Guiding users: ecological reconstruction

It is a huge and long project to spread and break the circle of content ICON, change the brand tone, change user perception, and reshape the content ecology.

In my understanding, breaking the circle means the external circulation of content. For example, the content of Kuaishou becomes a hot search on Weibo, becomes news report or even a social topic, so as to achieve the purpose of breaking the circle and refreshing cognition. For example, the clip of Yu Xiuhua reading poetry on Kuaishou, which has been trending recently, was reposted by Zuo Xiaoyuzhou, Erdi, and Zhu Jingxi, which is breaking the circle, and breaking the circle means an update of cognition.

For Kuaishou, the brand image and content ecology that needs to be reshaped is to expand the definition of ordinary people a little bit. For example, if there is Yu Xiuhua's perspective, should we add Xichuan's perspective? The collision between folk poets and intellectual poets. For example, there are recorders of hiking in Sichuan and Tibet, but are there also recorders of crossing the Eurasian continent?

Ultimately, through content topics, we will guide Kuaishou users and the public to have a new understanding of "Kuaishou content" and make "recording" itself more universal. Whether you are a migrant worker on a construction site or a programmer in a cubicle, it is worthwhile to record your life on Kuaishou.

What will the Kuaishou ecosystem eventually look like? From the perspective of users and brand strategy, I think it should be a universal recorder. Life should not be divided into high and low, and it should not be biased towards the countryside or the city. There should be no opposition and it should not carry the label of a certain group. It should be a recorder for everyone.

In summary, platform content reshapes the brand

Today I will briefly talk about the platform’s brand strategy and also share some personal insights on Kuaishou’s brand strategy. I love Kuaishou. It has contributed to the growth of the Chinese Internet, connected people who have never been on the Internet before to the Internet, and provided them with a voice. I sincerely hope that Kuaishou will be awesome.

What Kuaishou needs to expand is the universal population under the content dimension of "recording".

This strategy is applicable to all platform brands to a certain extent, not only Kuaishou, but also all platform brands, which can reshape the content ecosystem through content reorganization.

To summarize the key points, it can be roughly divided into three steps: brand proposition - content ICON - ecological reconstruction.

Brand proposition: It is not necessarily a sentence. To be precise, it is a brand strategy that unifies values ​​internally and serves as a work measurement standard. As the direction of external user communication, we move forward in one direction and do not deviate from the track. We are confident in doing things and the content has direction.

Content ICON: Platform brand building does not rely on slogans. If the content ecology does not change, the slogans will be false. So content must be used to shape the brand. Select ideal brand content on the platform, output it as a whole ICON, spread it outside the site and in public opinion across the entire network, and change the public's original consensus on the brand.

Ecological Reshaping: It doesn’t matter whether it is called brand transformation or reshaping, and it doesn’t matter how the brand defines itself. What is important is the users, how they define themselves, and how they use them. We cannot force users, let alone influence their thoughts. Only through strategic marketing can users be guided to move towards an ideal ecosystem.

Through continuous content ICON, it breaks through the circle and spreads across the entire network, gradually changing the public consensus and user creation concepts. Ultimately promote the transformation of the content ecology.

The marketing strategy of a content platform is more than just slogans. We must go beyond the scope of advertising and change the attributes of ecological content from the perspective of users and content operations.

above.

Author: Yang Buhuai

Source: Yang Buhuai ( yangbuhuai01 )