"Circle Marketing" Practical Manual

I was chatting with a friend not long ago. He was very successful. The advertising company he opened was acquired by a listed company within a few years of operation, and he personally made a net profit of several hundred million. What are you going to do with so much money?

His answer is "out of the circle". According to him, he achieved financial freedom by luck in the past few years. In recent years, the digital marketing track has become more and more crowded. Next, he wants to break the circle, broaden the track, and transform into strategic consulting, data middle platform, industrial Internet and other businesses with more development space and broader scope.

One has to admire his vision.

This reminds me of the concept of "circle" which has been derived from the marketing world. Today, it has become a universally applicable rule in the marketing world. Corresponding to it are "cross-border" and "out of circle". This year, I have also seen countless excellent marketing cases that all combined their own brand tone and put these concepts into practice.

Today we are going to talk about “circle marketing”.

In 2009, the number of mobile Internet users in China surpassed that of PC users for the first time, and the mobile Internet era officially arrived.

As can be seen from the above figure, global mobile data traffic has increased rapidly in the past few years and will continue to grow rapidly in the next two years.

From 2017 to 2019, the number of mobile Internet users increased by more than 200 million, and the average daily usage time of users also increased by 30-45 minutes.

With the development of mobile Internet technology, companies are paying more attention to mobile marketing. The main feature of mobile Internet is that it is more instant, faster, and more convenient than traditional Internet, and there will be no geographical restrictions.

Circle marketing, as a marketing model that has attracted attention, is based on the changes in mobile network marketing and can be called a "stroke of genius" in the marketing industry.

As mobile traffic is concentrated in the top players, customer acquisition costs have soared.

Therefore, the circle marketing model came into being, mainly to cope with the current situation of difficulty in acquiring mobile network marketing traffic.

In the era of mobile Internet, products are merely entrances to traffic, circles are business models, and KOLs and communities are the rules of survival in the era of mobile Internet. Circles are a marketing model based on scenarios and user communities.

The target group of the circle marketing model is a group of people with common interests, hobbies, professional characteristics and other labels. Therefore, product branding marketing is a precise marketing model that can be adopted.

The circle marketing model was first applied in the real estate industry. It then expanded to the luxury goods industry, because the audiences of these industries generally have a certain economic strength or social status, forming a very recognizable cultural circle or consumption circle, and this circle is relatively niche, so companies can concentrate more resources and costs on this group of people. For example, a luxury car brand regularly organizes events to bring together its VIP customers for overseas tours, with the brand subsidizing all travel expenses in order to consolidate customer loyalty. This is a form of circle marketing. However, more and more industries and brands have begun to realize the value of circle marketing, set up teams, and started to use this concept to implement some marketing projects.

Therefore, circle marketing now no longer distinguishes between high-end or low-end brands. If you want to establish brand influence, you must do circle marketing.

The concept of circle marketing sounds very similar to CRM (customer relationship management). What are the similarities and differences between the two?

Generally speaking, circle marketing is divided into three steps

Step one: identify the right customer.

Many people in the market don’t know what the circle of people who operate brands is?

For example, although they belong to the same high-end consumer group, they have great differences in living habits, hobbies, and concepts. Only after understanding these differences can we target the audience based on their lifestyles and psychological needs.

Taking car buying as an example, everyone aims for A-class high-end luxury cars. Some pursue performance and control, some pursue brand, and some pursue safety. It varies from person to person according to user needs.

In my definition, my circle is marketers or corporate executives with the same functions. They may take digital marketing as their main job, or they may be in the process of transforming from traditional marketers to new marketers. They may also be self-media in the marketing industry, or corporate executives who want to learn about the emerging hot industry of digital marketing. Because I regularly output practical information, and only practical information, without jokes, my fans are generally very sticky, and once they become fans, they are not easy to lose.

Step 2: Develop social content.

After selecting your target customer groups based on user needs and tags, the brand should use certain content to get closer to them, understand their psychological needs and purchasing motivations, so that the circle can always feel the care and greetings from the brand and create a warm brand reputation. In this way, the brand influence can be enhanced through the power of the top circle, the circle can be expanded, and more customers of the same class can be attracted to join the circle. At the same time, it also leverages the brand’s energy to create a social platform where members in the circle can generate their own content, communicate and share with other members, and attract outsiders to join the communication. Typically, UGC content has a greater impact because it is more authentic.

Social Currency

Here we have to introduce a recently popular concept. It is called "social currency". Social currency comes from the concept of social economy in social media. It is used to measure the tendency of users to share brand-related content. Simply put, it is to use people's willingness to share with others to shape their own products or ideas, so as to achieve the purpose of word-of-mouth communication.

The social currency perspective holds that what we discuss on WeChat and Weibo represents and defines ourselves, so we are more inclined to share content that makes us look “tall, rich and handsome” or “white, rich and beautiful” . For brands, what kind of image I have will determine what kind of content I tend to share. In this way, brand content and content that users care about can reach a spiritual resonance point. Finding that point is effective social content.

Therefore, your WeChat public account represents your personality.

Step 3: Define what circle rights are.

After defining the group of people, there must always be some core interests to retain the members in the circle and ensure the vitality of the circle. This is a long-term marketing effort. On the material level, such as exchanging points for gifts; on the spiritual level, such as VIP privileges and exclusive services. In short, we need to make people in the circle feel a sense of belonging. Taking the automobile industry as an example, extended warranty services and even lifetime warranties are more common, which save maintenance costs while giving car owners a sense of belonging. All of these are aimed at increasing the circle’s stickiness to the brand.

The concept of customer relationship management (CRM) came into being much earlier than circle marketing, and this function is basically a standard feature of the marketing department. This is very common in companies with a B2C business model. The team includes pre-sales and after-sales services, lead follow-up, and loyalty maintenance, covering a relatively wide range of functions. In companies with a B2B business model where budgets are more limited, the marketing department is not so detailed, and many do not have the CRM function. However, from a business perspective, CRM is an important functional department that can produce results, convert new customers, maintain old customers, and promote repeat purchases. It is a pity not to have this position.

Customer relationship management refers to the process by which enterprises use corresponding information technology and Internet technology to coordinate the interaction between enterprises and customers in sales, marketing and services in order to improve their core competitiveness, thereby improving their management methods and providing customers with innovative and personalized customer interactions and services. The ultimate goal is to attract new customers, retain old customers, and convert existing customers into loyal customers to increase the market.

In the entire marketing system, circle marketing and customer relationship management have overlapping functions. Both are aimed at winning and maintaining customers in order to enhance brand influence and create competitive advantages.

Circle marketing is very close to the narrow definition of customer relationship management, but the broad definition of CRM also includes comprehensively improving the management of corporate business processes to reduce corporate costs and attracting and retaining more customers by providing faster and more thoughtful quality services.

In addition, the two have different focuses. Circle influence emphasizes the meaning of "circles, niche communities", so it has strong social attributes and awareness of population division. Customer relationship management emphasizes more on how to solve customer problems starting from the service itself in order to strengthen long-term connections with customers.

Why will circle marketing become more and more important in the future?

Because in the era of big data, data science gives user portraits three-dimensionality and the possibility of group segmentation.

Every user has a variety of three-dimensional labels due to different Internet behavior trajectories such as browsing habits, search history, APP usage habits, etc., such as "mom, white-collar worker, first-tier city"... With the accumulation of big data, these labels are becoming more and more detailed. The Internet may know what kind of person you are better than you do.

Ultimately, all this data can be converted into valuable business information. After accurately defining these customers, you can bring these people together through content and rights, and eventually form a circle for your brand. Through the circle, you can influence more people outside the circle to join. This is circle marketing.

From the user's perspective, Generation Z, more and more young people like to speak out and express their opinions and ideas. Circle marketing provides an opportunity for a group of like-minded people who share the same brand to get together and exchange ideas.

How circle marketing can be organically integrated with your customer relationship management strategy needs to be customized based on your market goals, business model, current situation analysis and target audience attributes. Understanding customers, reaching and influencing customers, and achieving win-win results with customers, and being customer-centric are always the starting points for developing an effective circle marketing strategy.

After forming the definition of your circle, cross-IP with some well-known brands that also have strong customer favorability is also a popular and eye-catching way of playing. But at the same time, what kind of brand to choose, how to effectively cross the border, break out of the circle, find the right trigger point, and convert it into consumer power has become another big topic worthy of discussion.

I hope the above knowledge about circle marketing is useful to you. Not only marketers need it, but the three-step circle marketing strategy can also be applied to building personal brand IP.

Author: Zhu Jingyu

Source: Jade Digital Marketing (Jade_Digital)