10 Misconceptions About Marketing Promotion!

In 2020, risks and opportunities coexist.

From the current perspective, the global epidemic is severe, consumer security has not yet arrived, most non-rigid consumption continues to lag behind, demand is shrinking and external demand is weak, competition in the domestic consumer market will inevitably become more intense.

For marketers, challenges continue to intensify:

How to accurately stimulate consumer psychology?

How to communicate with target users more effectively?

Is every penny spent wisely?

…

Under the mood of anxiety, various viewpoints, theories and methods emerge one after another.

After nearly three months of observation, practice, and communication with peers based on practical results, we found that many things can be seen more clearly among the variables:

Including misunderstandings and rumors, but also opportunities and dividends

What are the things worth doing, what are the things worth observing and being cautious about, and what are the thinking paradigms we should be wary of and the practices we should reflect on.

It is worth doing a systematic review. These 10 marketing myths are:

1. Integration of brand and effect

2. Live streaming is a universal way to sell goods

3. koc

4. When I speak, you listen carefully

5. Rational decision maker

6. Spend little money and achieve great things

7. Read the slogan

8. Paving the way marketing

9. Bilibili

10. Modular division of labor

1. Integration of brand and effect

This should be the hottest topic in the marketing circle from 2017 to now.

Last year, someone said that fission could achieve a win-win situation for both brand and effect. However, up to now, there are only a few successful businesses.

This year, some people said that live streaming can combine brand and effect! For example, Lao Luo’s live broadcast has both brand and effect.

I think the person who said this didn't watch the live broadcast seriously at all.

At the beginning of the live broadcast, Lao Luo said that this is our first appearance and we have chosen well-known brands.

Sorry, without brand awareness, you can’t even get into this show.

Can the brands that can make such progress achieve brand and effect integration?

Judging from the sales volume, the top three are said to be doing pretty well.

What about the brand? We looked at the Baidu and WeChat indexes of these brands and found that most of them fell rapidly after their peak that day. It cannot be regarded as an improvement in brand power.

Take Roborock robot vacuum cleaner as an example

When it comes down to it, live streaming sales are all about reaping the rewards. Besides, this time, Luo Yonghao’s event marketing is more like an event marketing, not a typical live broadcast selling.

The specific logic will be discussed in detail in the second part.

Let’s talk about the product effect first:

In the short and medium term, the path to achieve brand-effect integration is: quantitative change leads to qualitative change quickly

That’s right, it’s that simple and crude. Only by spending huge amounts of money on promotion in the right way can you achieve both brand success and results.

There are two specific situations:

First, from the brand side, huge investment, whether it is overwhelming brand promotion or concentrated bombardment with large platforms, large traffic, and large resources, this is the only driving force that can drive the brand-driven effect;

Second, from the effect side, they spend a lot of money on subsidies, whether it is Juhuasuan or Pinduoduo, and rely on price cuts to attract huge traffic and keep it for a period of time, creating labels of "cost-effectiveness" and "affordable" for themselves. This is the only driving force that can drive the effect and push back the brand.

The above two methods are because one end exerts enough force to cause a reaction at the other end.

——For large-scale advertising, although it takes time for most people to go from being aware of the idea to being converted, there are also people who are more impulsive and easily influenced, or the advertisement just happens to hit the needs of this group of people. Although the proportion is not high, because the base is really large, it can still be shown to have a strong pull on the effect.

——For large subsidies, because of the large margin of profit, the subsidy duration is longer than that of large promotions, which establishes an image of #discount# and #high cost-effectiveness# in the minds of consumers.

These are the only two ways we have seen so far to achieve real brand effect.

In addition, it is basically impossible to achieve both brand and effect goals in one communication or one advertisement. The reason is simple. Any channel has an inherent channel capacity, and the speed of information transmission cannot exceed the capacity of the channel itself. When we communicate, we want to convey multiple messages (brand information + effect guidance information) in the shortest possible time, which will easily lead to mistakes, and we will not be able to say the last thing.

However, in the longer term, brand-effect integration is definitely feasible: continue to build a brand moat, expand sales channels and touchpoints, and add product strength to form a virtuous cycle of brand-effect synergy.

It is not a good idea to always seek shortcuts.

In the business world, there are not so many shortcuts.

2. Live streaming is a universal way to sell goods

Live streaming to sell goods is not a panacea, but not doing live streaming to sell goods is absolutely unacceptable. (Note that what is being talked about here is live streaming sales, not the form of live streaming.)

For example, live streaming sales make up for the lack of shopping guides in online shopping - similar to the salesgirls in department stores and the promotional loudspeakers in shopping malls.

——The role of the salesgirl is to give the finishing touch, by promoting products face to face and in a conversational manner, telling customers about their personal experiences, and offering personal discounts or gifts. Whether it is Li Jiaqi, Viya, or the store’s own anchor, they all have this function.

Sometimes, you may see it unintentionally while shopping and chat with the salesgirl (watching TikTok or Kuaishou), and sometimes you have a clear purchase intention and go directly to the counter (enter the store or the product details page)

——The promotional activities are intended to send a signal of low-price rush buying, similar to a large supermarket shouting on the loudspeaker that eggs are the lowest price today, and some people with plenty of time will start queuing up to buy. This is the signal that the top anchors are releasing. I have the lowest price on the entire network. Come quickly.

The first type of live broadcast (the role of salesgirls) should be a standard feature of e-commerce. It plays a strong role in increasing conversions, enhancing fan stickiness, and recommending new products, especially for products with strong sensory impact.

The second type of live broadcast (promotional activities) is mainly used to attract customers to hot products (just like supermarkets attract customers by selling eggs at super low prices, so that people will buy a lot of them without realizing it) and clear inventory (similar to post-season clearance sales)

These functions are very useful, if you haven't taken action yet, it is recommended to do so quickly.

However, live streaming sales are not a panacea. Regardless of the above goals, its role is to harvest at the sales end, and it cannot replace brand awareness, marketing and mental influence. Here, I would also like to say something off topic. The sales data of live streaming is good, but in fact it is not as good as Party A imagines. Black production is almost a tacit secret among the anchors from the top to the middle:

Part of the investment fee is used by the anchor to brush orders. Brushing orders can obtain weighted promotion of platform traffic. After the additional promotion, it can attract real traffic and promote sales.

Therefore, to sum up, live streaming sales must be done and it is helpful for sales, but its role cannot be exaggerated, and it cannot replace solid brand building, marketing promotion and user communication.

To put it another way, if brand awareness is established, the harvesting effect of live streaming will be more obvious, because if the two parties in communication have a higher consistency in understanding of what is being discussed (they have awareness and trust in the brand), the mutual information will be greater and the communication efficiency will be higher. Therefore, live streaming can be more efficient for familiar and trusted brands.

As for new products and brands that fans are not familiar with, we have observed that the anchors will intentionally downplay the brand during the live broadcast and emphasize efficacy and price. This means that the price must be more subsidized and the brand will be difficult for fans to remember.

3.koc

Koc itself is not a marketing black hole, but when it comes to how Koc is used, there are still many wrong judgments and decisions.

Before I go into detail, let me first talk about a theory.

How can personal expression have a positive and effective impact?

First, it depends on the person’s own attributes.

Judging from the impact of information on people, the overwhelming amount of public opinion on the Internet does not have as much impact on us as we imagine. In fact, one authority figure can do more to change our minds than thousands of grassroots ones.

This principle is actually widely used in the field of marketing. People with experience in advertising know that although it seems expensive to find top media and top opinion leaders, it is actually more cost-effective than finding a bunch of mid- and lower-level ones.

Then why do we need KOC?

Because the second important factor that affects influence is the way of expression.

In the workplace, everyone has a consensus: for important matters, face-to-face communication is far more efficient than phone calls, and phone calls are more efficient than pure email or online communication.

Robert J. Shiller, Nobel Prize winner in economics, discovered that 94% of people make stock purchase decisions based not on news but on recommendations from friends and family.

Therefore, being able to express things in a more intimate, personal, and even face-to-face way is very powerful.

In fact, the most powerful koc are those salesmen of health products for the elderly. These people go from house to house to chat, hold training courses to communicate, and ask about people's well-being on a daily basis, maximizing their verbal power.

But here, it is worth noting that these kocs can only work if they can establish a frequent, intimate, and familiar communication paradigm.

This means that, for example, finding 500 kocs on Weibo or Douyin for one-time cooperation is usually an ineffective approach. These people are far less effective than those in authority, and they only communicate once in the public domain, using simple and crude notification methods that basically have no effect. Only by cultivating a group of private domain kocs who are familiar with the business (preferably their own employees) and can communicate repeatedly and frequently with the same audience can it play a role.

Koc is a development game, not a delivery strategy.

For the same company, it takes time to develop, and the number of these kocs is limited. The cost of maintaining koc is not small. Therefore, it is natural for companies that value frequent repurchases or customer lifetime value management to cultivate koc, but not all companies need to focus their energy and resources on koc, let alone directly use koc as a marketing strategy.

A reminder: find a bunch of koc placements. This is a placement method strongly recommended by content platforms and communities, because there are too many top players and too little content, and the monetization space is limited. I hope you will invest in a bunch of mid-tier companies, which will not only increase cash income, but also drive more kocs to settle in and publish content, and activate the ecology.

Don't be fooled by them easily. (Highlight the key points, this may be tested, haha)

The following two misunderstandings and prejudices may exist for a long time, but in the current situation where public opinion is complex and opinions and emotions are turbulent, they are more likely to cause losses to marketing. The purpose of writing them down is to remind colleagues and myself.

4. When I speak, you listen carefully

Not many people will have much interest and loyalty to your product and brand. Not to mention advertising.

In fact, many people have this consensus, but they always ignore it when actually operating.

It’s as if users are craning their necks, waiting for your ad like they’re sitting in rows in a movie theater.

Don't laugh, really, many people think this way subconsciously. Especially in large companies, sometimes they unconsciously think that if I make any move, everyone should be interested.

In fact, public opinion is very cruel, especially in the first half of this year. There are hot topics almost every week, and emotions and opinions are surging. If you are not careful, users' attention will be completely diverted.

Therefore, I think when designing marketing content (whether it is video, picture, news or other), you can make a prediction in advance: who will notice it, what content can attract people to watch it for the fifth second, how to make people not disgusted after the advertisement appears...

Of course, there are also many brand advertisements that can make users listen and watch carefully:

Either the brand is very powerful, such as Apple and Huawei

Either the advertisement is particularly valuable, such as being funny, interesting, resonating, informative, aesthetic, etc.

In fact, I also want to talk about live streaming (not selling goods) and interactive videos here, because you can interact while watching, and it is a strong interaction, so your attention will not be easily lost during the whole process, forcing you to watch it carefully. We believe that this will be a very important form of content marketing.

5. Rational Decision Maker

During the epidemic, most people should also be more aware of:

The vast majority of purchasing behaviors are not driven by rationality, nor are they rational decisions.

Otherwise, why would there be irrational rush and hoarding, and even the search volume for double-yolk mooncakes has increased?

Unfortunately, when doing marketing, many people involuntarily construct a "rational person hypothesis", hoping that consumers will make a shrewd, clear and calm analysis and then purchase your products with certainty.

The usual practice is to use advertising selling points and product functional advantages as the only weapon, or even to use the competitive advantages over competing products (which may be difficult for non-professionals to perceive) as the strongest artillery.

This kind of thinking is essentially unscientific.

Studies have long found that two areas of the human brain play a key role in a person's decision to buy or not. The first area is the nucleus accumbens, which mainly provides a sense of pleasure and becomes very active when seeing a product you like. The study found that the more active this area is, the more likely a person is to buy. Another area is the insula. When a person becomes painful or unhappy, the insula becomes active and the person is less likely to buy.

If a person is faced with the dilemma of whether to buy or not, both areas are very active, and the final decision depends on which area is more active.

This experiment shows that people’s purchasing decisions are a contest between two emotions. If positive emotions outweigh negative ones, they will buy; otherwise, they will not buy. The role of rationality is to provide information and assistance to emotions.

Therefore, if businesses want to convince customers, they should not simply list data, evidence, and selling points, but should provide sufficient motivation, positive incentives, and reduce the impact of negative emotional factors.

From a practical perspective, there is a practice that is worth learning from, which is not to talk about the advantages of the product itself, but to deliberately tell users an incomplete story (lacking solutions). The answer to this story needs to be found by users themselves, and the brand only provides clues and paths.

You can pay attention to a brand called [Beast Life], which mainly produces ketogenic products. This brand is very good at telling this kind of story, talking about how ketosis brings about changes in lifestyle, making people healthier and feeling better, but it does not mention its own products in the early stages. If anyone who has seen this wants to know more, you are welcome to find it yourself.

This brand is now among the top 5 in the light meal industry.

6. Spend little money to achieve great things

Bosses all hope to achieve great things with little money.

But in fact, there is such a chance, but it is highly uncertain and can only be encountered by chance.

Whether it is a resource that you can pick up at a discount or a creative idea that will go viral. They are all small chances.

The real power of spending money is:

Spending a lot of money can accomplish great things, one dollar can be used as several dollars, and a huge premium can be obtained. It requires vision, judgment, and execution.

You can get things done with little money, and the money is not much, but the voice is louder than that of peers, and it causes more repercussions in the circle. What is tested is user insight, creative strategy and execution.

Continuously spending small amounts of money can accumulate into big things. For example, in the continuous construction of brand IP, the investment is not much each time, but small amounts add up to a lot, and dripping water wears away a stone, gradually building a distinctive brand image and becoming an important brand asset.

These three things seem easy, but they are actually difficult. It requires strong judgment, excellent marketing strategies and insights, and consistent high-level output.

7. Read the slogan

Many people who do not have a marketing background would say, why not just be direct and condense the product proposition into a slogan and then tell the slogan to everyone.

After all, the less information the better.

This is first of all a cognitive misunderstanding.

The less information, the clearer it is.

In fact, because information is inevitably affected by noise during the transmission process, if a piece of information is encoded too simply, it is easy to be affected by noise and misjudged. On the contrary, if a piece of information is encoded by a longer field, even if 1 or 2 characters are misread, you can roughly understand what it means.

Therefore, the correct way to overcome noise is to increase the redundancy of information.

This is very similar to our daily conversations. There is a lot of redundancy in our daily communication, and sometimes we repeat something several times. Even if a few words are not heard clearly, we can roughly understand the meaning.

Therefore, if you want others to fully understand you, you should provide some redundant content and say it several times.

Especially now, with the deconstruction of brand authority and media fragmentation, brands increasingly need to make users understand what they want to say. Unless huge advertising fees are spent, no one can remember and understand the slogan. Every brand should think about how to make users truly understand and remember the information it wants to convey.

An efficient way is:

Talk to users the same way you talk to your friends in your daily life.

A normal conversation is not to say a slogan to your friend, but to use a language that both parties can understand, repeat it several times to ensure that everyone understands the meaning.

DingTalk’s series of videos on Bilibili, Xiaohongshu’s promotion, topic marketing, interesting short videos…all follow the same principle. It seems that there is a lot of content, and the communication is not very direct or concise, but it has been proven to be more effective.

As authoritative media gradually disappears, the way of solving everything with just one slogan no longer exists.

8. Paving the way marketing

Sorry, there is no professional term for this type of marketing.

So I invented a term for it - paving marketing.

Because I recently discovered that many people have the mindset of paving the way when formulating marketing strategies or promotion tasks:

It’s just about seeing which channels can reach you, then planning these channels clearly, and then distributing the content.

Marketing work becomes a paving job.

Then settle the channel fee and check whether the content has been published. Over.

What's the problem?

The point is: you pave the road, and at the other end of the road is the audience. Ideally, you want to transmit information to the users. However, an audience goes through countless roads every day, and it seems that the information is reached, but in fact, in most cases, it becomes invalid information and is ignored.

This part of [reach] is just to make up the numbers, used for project closure and reporting, and has little actual effect.

In contrast to the idea of ​​paving the way, it is actually about valuing people rather than channels.

When designing a marketing plan, you should simulate the human path:

What topics will the target users pay attention to, what touchpoints will they pass through, and what will easily attract them - keep designing touchpoints along the paths of this group of people.

Some people say, isn’t this just big data precision marketing?

That’s right, but the problem is that the data between the various APPs under the names of the giants are not connected. You can implement path management in the Alibaba ecosystem and the Tencent ecosystem, but if the user uses other APPs, won’t there be no way to track him?

In addition, users have too many touchpoints, including online and offline, mobile phones, computers, personal social networking, word of mouth, etc.

Therefore, another idea is to create an attractive "ice cream truck" in the square where these people may gather - with popular content, hot events, and interesting topics. People can't help but gather around, spend money, and recommend it to their friends after experiencing it.

This is what hits and content marketing are all about.

Next, I will talk about Bilibili, which has also been a particularly hot marketing platform recently. My conclusions come from practical experience and results, as well as communication with friends in the industry. This may be quite controversial, and everyone is welcome to leave a message for discussion.

9. Station B

Recently, there have been many articles like "If you don't go to Bilibili, you will miss the opportunity for young people." To be honest, I have always been very disgusted by this kind of threatening statement. Including previous growth hacking, fission, and brand-effect theory.

As an aside, I strongly urge the industry to have more skepticism and critical thinking, and not to blindly follow what others say.

Does marketing to young people mean going to Bilibili to do marketing?

Before that, let us first understand Bilibili.

First, it is true that Bilibili’s users are mostly young people, but not all young people are on Bilibili. One fact is that the users of Bilibili and Zhihu (not Xiaohongshu!) highly overlap, to the point that both companies feel that [there will inevitably be a battle between Zhihu and Bilibili]. However, people in the marketing circle generally believe that it is difficult to do marketing on Zhihu, especially content marketing. Will B Station be easy?

It is an eternal truth that it is much more difficult to convince the elites than to convince the general public, whether they are college students or elementary school students.

I suggest that everyone go to Bilibili to watch a video by an up-host. The title is something like "What are the primary school students of Tik Tok, Kuaishou and Bilibili like?" In the video, the primary school students of Bilibili are talking about children's programming, which even adults may not understand. In general, due to the user attributes and circle culture, the video quality of Bilibili is fine and excellent. The overall users' knowledge, vision and aesthetic ability are also high. This group of people are actually the hardest to impress.

For brand owners, it is quite difficult to produce very high-quality products on Bilibili that takes a long time (it cannot be mass-produced). To be honest, if you cooperate with up-masters, the price is really not cheap.

Therefore, choosing Bilibili to reach young people is difficult and not cost-effective (think about Zhihu). In comparison, Douyin, Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu are obviously much easier and can produce content in batches.

Of course, players with particularly targeted audiences (such as entertainment and audio-visual, knowledge services, some beauty and fashion, etc.) or who are particularly wealthy (such as the Alibaba group) can take their time and use Bilibili as a platform to cultivate relationships with young people. But for most products and services, even if the users are young or you want to reach new users, why not choose a more efficient, cheaper, and better executed platform?

It is true that some people are having a lot of fun, but when we study a platform, we should never look at the top players, but rather whether the platform's business model can serve more merchants and is in a virtuous circle.

Marketing is not innovation for the sake of innovation.

Rather, it is about taking the most efficient approach to achieve business goals (whether long-term or short-term gains).

10. Modular division of labor

Traditional marketing departments, or most marketing departments now, are still divided into functional modules:

Be a media, a brand, a new media, an event, an effect channel...

The disadvantages of this division of labor are becoming increasingly apparent:

Because, in an ever-changing environment, new models and new opportunities emerge in an endless stream. Under this division of labor system, it is difficult for an inherent functional department to immediately adapt to new demands or find new breakthroughs.

Nowadays, marketing response speed is getting faster and faster, and the requirements for marketers are becoming more comprehensive. If you are limited to a very narrow field, it is also very dangerous for the individual, because it is very likely that what you are competent in is no longer important.

We live in an age of acceleration.

In this era, guerrillas often defeated regular armies. A hierarchical system with strict barriers is often vulnerable; a flexible and flat organization, with quick response and comprehensive capabilities, is more capable of handling tasks with ease. In some flat organizations, new forces can often be born, bringing vitality and vigor to the entire organization.

Therefore, the best team combination model is to organize more flexibly by project, rather than the traditional division of territories and drawing of boundaries. Maintaining fluidity in this way can maximize enthusiasm and space. Give outstanding talents more opportunities for growth.

Finally, let’s talk about individuals.

I believe that the best talent traits for individual marketers are:

——Outstanding core capabilities and the ability to fight tough battles

——Comprehensive ability does not lag behind

——Possess soft power

In the field of marketing, core competencies are required, which are the key to an individual's irreplaceability. These competencies are not academic abilities, but abilities that can be put into practice at any time to fight tough battles, such as user insights, data analysis, precision marketing, creative strategies, business resources, etc.

Comprehensive capabilities are not lagging behind, which means having solid marketing basics and basic qualities. I may not be the most competent in other fields, but I can still handle it.

Soft power refers to logic, communication, learning, and the ability to withstand pressure.

Of course, in a good organizational ecology, the accumulation and growth of these capabilities can be promoted in a positive way.

What is a good team?

When an urgent task comes, the member in charge finds that it is a new field that he has never touched before.

The first thing he would think about is: Why am I not familiar with this?

Second time: He will immediately think about how to get started as quickly as possible and how this is related to the areas he is good at.

Instead of: Why should I do this?

11. Summary

1. Integration of brand and effect: The only achievable path in the short and medium term is for quantitative changes to quickly lead to qualitative changes. Huge and intensive advertising investments lead to effective responses, or intensive low-price subsidies form brand associations with high cost-effectiveness.

(Don’t get me wrong: Does that mean we don’t need to do anything else except spend a lot of money on advertising? No, only long-term brand building and accumulation can achieve a healthy improvement in brand effectiveness over a longer period of time, and a brand moat cannot be built by advertising alone.)

2. The omnipotence of live streaming sales: Live streaming sales has a harvesting effect, similar to the sales clerks in shopping malls and promoters in supermarkets. The former is used to promote sales conversion, while the latter is used to release low-price signals as a means of attracting traffic and clearing inventory.

3. koc: koc is not a delivery strategy, but a cultivation strategy. Do not invest koc in public traffic platforms.

4. Listen carefully when I say this: No one cares much about your products and advertising unless the brand is really awesome or the content is really valuable.

5. Decision-making by rational people: People’s purchasing decisions are a contest between two emotions. If merchants want to persuade customers, they should provide sufficient motivation and positive incentives to reduce the impact of negative emotional factors.

6. Spend little money to achieve big things: This is really a rare opportunity; the really amazing thing is: spend a lot of money to achieve a big thing; spend a little money to achieve a medium thing; continue to spend a little money, it can accumulate into a big thing

7. Recite slogans: Communication nowadays is not about saying slogans to users, but using a language that both parties can understand.

8. Paving marketing: The method of spreading information on various roads is likely to result in ineffective reach. Either study the user's path to reach them effectively, or use content to attract attention where the target audience is focused.

9. Bilibili: It is always more difficult to influence the elites than to influence the masses, whether it is college students or elementary school students. Marketing is not about finding a new position, but about finding the most efficient position.

10. Modular division of labor: In an accelerated era, guerrillas can perform far more effectively than organizations with strict hierarchies and clear divisions. The best combination of abilities for a marketer: outstanding core abilities + comprehensive abilities that do not lag behind + soft power.

Author: Marketing Department Network

Source: Marketing Department Website (scbw2006)