During the epidemic, how can brands effectively implement grass-roots marketing?

During the epidemic, all walks of life were inevitably impacted and suffered more or less losses. However, the author discovered a clear stream of "1 single product sold for 10 million in 1 day", so how did it avoid the impact of the epidemic and achieve such good sales? The answer lies in - grass-roots marketing !

With the arrival of the return to work tide, my once very fresh circle of friends has suddenly turned into a large online shopping mall. There are people selling snacks, clothes, cat food, cosmetics and skin care, and courses... From vivid pictures and texts to short video live broadcasts, the Moments has become a carnival ground for traffic to flow in.

With the extremely penetrating and magical quotes such as "Personally tested and effective!" "Buy, buy, buy!" "Lowest price of the year", people like me who are calm inside have a grassland in their hearts. Coupled with the convenience of mobile payment, the consumption path is greatly shortened. Even if consumers stay at home, it only takes a few minutes for consumers to go from "planting grass" to "pulling grass" with a mobile phone.

On one hand, there is the dire situation of the epidemic, and on the other hand, social media is bustling with both promoting products and selling goods.

For example, ColorKey achieved sales of 10 million per day with a single lip glaze during the epidemic, giving the impression of a Double 11 promotion.

It has to be said that during the epidemic period, thanks to the acceleration of online transformation by many offline retail brands, the links between e-commerce platforms and social media have been opened up, allowing media and channels to be highly integrated, and the potential of grass-roots marketing has been highlighted.

So I would like to take this opportunity to talk to you about grass-roots marketing today.

I will analyze it from the following three dimensions:

1. How does the fire of grass-planting spread across the prairie?
2. Why are consumers easily tempted?
3. How can a brand create a high-quality grass planting machine?

1. How did the fire of grass-planting spread across the prairie?

The essence of consumption is supply and demand. Supply is the product and demand is consumption. There are three carriers that connect supply and demand: media, content, and channels. These three variables are constantly changing. Whoever has the final say on these variables will take the lead in this market.

Let's take a look at the entire evolution history of these three variables.

In the pre-Internet era, the "big investment" marketing strategy was often a shortcut to making a brand a household name. Whoever could become the winner of the bid on CCTV would be remembered by the audience. At that time, the media was concentrated, so well-known brands such as Head & Shoulders, Pantene, and Liby emerged.

Times have changed, channels and media have become more diverse, and today with social media and e-commerce, the process from supply chain to consumers has become interconnected. At this time, products, media, content and channels tend to be infinitely unified.

• For example, NetEase Cloud Music is both a product, content, and media;
• For example, in the case of the lost book in Xin Shi Xiang, the idea at the time was to use the subway as a media, but they did not expect that this media would become the content of secondary dissemination.
• For example, NetEase Yanxuan turned media such as NetEase Mail into a sales channel, and the media is the channel.

With the high integration of products, content, media and channels, the transformation of the "big investment" strategy has become unrealistic. Consumers at this stage have become less trusting of the near-perfect brands transmitted by traditional media. Instead, they trust content that is not so perfect but can bring everyone a sense of reality, just like family and friends. Grass-roots marketing can help consumers perceive the value of the brand through emotional communication between people.

As a result, brands that rose to prominence through content-based marketing were born, such as HomefacialPro, Huaxizi, Zhong Xuegao and Perfect Diary. This is also the reason why content-based marketing has become so popular today.

2. Why are consumers easily tempted by the idea?

1. Consumers’ needs and concerns are fully met

In the consumption process, intuition and feeling are becoming powerful decision-making forces for users. For example, the IP, appearance, style and experience that make them feel good are all-round perceptions.

Therefore, planting grass is to create demand through products, whether it is new demand or awakening old demand, and push it to users with scenario-based content to touch the user's inner emotional ignition point, thereby promoting the next step of "behavior".

2. Brand trust links sink to the user end

In Kotler’s new book “Marketing 4.0”, it is mentioned that what consumers believe in is the f-factor, including friends, families, and fans on social platforms.

Recommending products among acquaintances is a form of word-of-mouth communication based on strong relationships, and strong relationships mean a higher level of emotional connection and trust.

Therefore, we will find that the era when brands lead public opinion through traditional media is gone forever, and the brand's trust chain is shifting from "user-brand-user" to "user-user (KOLKOC)-user".

This is why today’s grass-roots promotion probably cannot escape the following three channels: word of mouth from acquaintances, KOL/KOC, and communities, etc.

For brands, KOL/KOC are "living advertisements" that attract attention and engage users' minds; for consumers, KOL/KOC, communities and other circles are projections of self-identity and emotional needs.

So, why is it that everyone in the circle of friends has become a micro-businessman recently, and everyone is selling goods, and what they are doing is business in the social circle of acquaintances.

3. Visualized consumption scenarios + benefit-driven

For example, Taobao Live has pushed sellers to the forefront during the product sales process. When consumers browse Taobao, the conversation has changed from "a dialogue between products and people" to a "dialogue between people." When a product is spoken by the anchor, it is very easy to give users a strong sense of immersion and trust.

During the epidemic, many restaurants converted their kitchens into live broadcast rooms, and chefs became anchors. By providing real-time interactive video content, they built an attractive consumption scenario, allowing people in the traffic pool to pay attention to, trust, and ultimately purchase products in another pool as much as possible.

On top of that, a super discount combination of low discount, limited quantity, limited time + gift pack is thrown at you at the same time, and it will be gone once you leave the live broadcast room. Who can bear this? Under such a consensus, no matter you are Li Jiaqi's "all girls" or "Viya's woman", as long as you click in, it seems difficult to get out with the RMB in your wallet.

3. How does a brand create a high-quality grass planting machine?

Only when we plant the "grass" well can we attract horses. Actively attracting horses is the highest level of marketing. However, the key to marketing lies in whether you have the ability to "plant grass"!

1. Product is the basic skill

In a deeply digital communication environment, products are media, products are word of mouth, and products are levers to leverage brands. The brand’s value anchor comes from the relevance of the product to consumers’ lives and culture.

For example, the young people born in the 1990s who have the strongest purchasing power are the majority. The process of them being "planted with grass" goes through several attributes: the three principles of "fresh/cool" - "want" - "effective".

Therefore, to create a hit product, you must first have a good product, and this product must find a point that consumers are willing to buy. I have summarized the following 4 points:

1. New products/products with selling points and high cost performance;
2. Comes with burst traffic attribute;
3. Products with personality, good looks and/or unique niche products;
4. Products with high unit prices but backed by technology or endorsed by big-name supply chains.

For example, take the PROYA Bubble Mask that was very popular last year. It is a cleansing mask that automatically produces bubbles when applied to the face. Its biggest selling point is that “the dirtier your face, the more bubbles it produces.” Let’s break down its strategy for creating explosive products:

① The brand is in line with the current trend of the public seeking novelty

The bubble mask breaks the public's impression of ordinary facial masks and provides everyone with a novel and interesting feeling.

② The product is real and effective to stimulate consumption impulse

The saying "the dirtier your face, the more bubbles you'll get" has given consumers a good idea of ​​its effectiveness, and has also created an opportunity for friends and family to apply the mask together, making it a kind of social currency.

③The product has an attractive price

The price of less than 100 yuan is within the comfortable range that people can accept. Whether it is white-collar workers or students, there will be no pressure to buy it. This is also an important reason why it can become a hit in the short term.

2. Content is the core

As the famous marketing expert Eugene Schwartz said:

Marketing cannot create the desire to buy goods, it can only arouse the hopes, dreams, fears or desires that already exist in millions of people, and then direct these "already existing desires" to specific products.

What brands need to do is not to create popular desires, but to find out the existing urgent desires and guide consumers to where they want to go:

How to do it?

Ⅰ Explore the relationship between consumer interests and product interests, and find pain points and itch points.

Taking my former sponsor HFP as an example, I disassembled several articles it had published on the Miniso WeChat official account:

"Do you still think your face is yellow?" I recommend this domestic essence which is so effective that it even removed my ancestral yellow qi! 》

Are your pores too big to be embarrassing? This bottle of cheap online celebrity essence can dissolve all the dirt in the pores...》

《Life-saving lip balm in autumn and winter, one application is equivalent to applying lip masks 10 times, even dead skin disappears!》 》

From this we can see that the main user pain points their products solve are as follows:

1. Become younger, become whiter (think about it, why not become more beautiful?)
2. Solve specific problems: oily, dry, acne, large pores
3. Highlight key facial parts: eyes, lips

So when we output content, we need to consider this:

Are the products you present in line with the user's real pain points? Are they specific to a certain coverage area or match a certain demand point and specific product?

Ⅱ Translate product selling points into human language and integrate them into various scenarios

When consumers are bombarded with all kinds of hard advertisements, their hearts will gradually become numb along with their wallets. Compared with pure grass-planting machines, consumers would rather see more interesting and informative content beyond advertisements.

For example, I think the quotes and copywriting in Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room can be used as a reference for many brands. His words really touch the sweet spots in the hearts of countless women, and they are continuous and intensive, one link after another.

For example, cosmetics are about creating dreams, and Li Jiaqi is good at covering the dreams in the bottle with a layer of beauty for you to see:

"It feels like first love. The texture is very moist, delicate and smooth, with a light peach scent. A must-buy for ladies!"

"And it's a limited edition color, VELVET VIOLET, with a plum jam purple tone. It looks super elegant. You'll be a lady when you put it on!"

"This is the rotten tomato color that every girl must have. It is not picky at all and makes the skin look brighter."

Ⅲ Create a memorable nickname for the product to give users something to talk about

If the product name is well chosen, it can not only make the product more well-known beyond the brand, but also convey a psychological hint to girls in an invisible way, making them want to "plant grass".

For example, Vichy’s “Volcano Energy Bottle”, Kiehl’s “White Mud Mask”, and Decorte’s “Basil Water”. These aliases emphasize the ingredients in the simplest and most straightforward way, and your money is well spent!

Another type of nickname starts with the product's efficacy. Maybelline's "eraser" concealer is all about concealing effects. The name of Helena's "Black and White Bandage" comes from the fact that the product can be used by people who have undergone medical beauty treatments to play a repairing role, just like a bandage.

Meaningful and memorable. It can form the "social currency" of fans, and provide a memory focus for circle communication.

3. Channels are the engine

When it comes to Internet marketing, I think we should pay attention to the value of three-dimensional traffic when choosing channels. The original traffic was single, but now the traffic is three-dimensional. We must find a focal point to match other traffic with the point, rather than moving forward at the same pace, which will result in nothing being done in the end.

Take the Collage lip glaze mentioned at the beginning of the article as an example. Xiaohongshu has been a very good platform for promoting products in recent years. Collage focuses on deep penetration, finding a large number of Xiaohongshu amateurs and KOLs to try out the colors, letting them "promote products", and then making an overall promotion strategy around Xiaohongshu, using KOLs to drive the brand.

Through a large number of promotions on Xiaohongshu, the product attracted attention and set the tone for discussion - and then mid-level influencers and small internet celebrities intensively promoted the product to set the pace, so that the product was planted in the minds of consumers - and finally, word-of-mouth was verified through UGC of private domain traffic. It is precisely because of these early foundations of promotion that Collage was able to stand out from the crowd during this epidemic and achieve sales of 10 million per day with a single product.

Of course, many friends often ask me, when a new brand has no endorsement, how can consumers quickly understand you and trust you?

There are 4 tips to share with you:

1. If the budget is sufficient, you can find a top KOL or celebrity to create a Douyin or Xiaohongshu video for your product, similar to the ones released by Li Jiaqi and Xiao Zhan. If the budget is limited, you can win by quantity, tap into the tail vertical KOL or KOC, and disseminate long-tail content.
2. The most common way to increase the added value of products is through authoritative certification and industry awards. For example, the MINISO "Water Cube" series of water cups, which were once reported by CCTV's Financial and Economic Channel, emphasized at the beginning that they had won the iF award.
3. Talk about the supply chain and tell consumers that your products are made in the same factory as a big brand, such as Estee Lauder. By bundling the endorsement of a big brand, you can elevate the quality of the product and increase consumer trust in the product.
4. Make trouble, collaborate or cross-border. A typical example is the "Counterattack of Domestic Products" topic event initiated by Li Ning and New York Fashion Week, which first captured the two major circles of trendy brand lovers and celebrities, and then continued to ferment and achieve consumption.

4. Do a good job in user operations

During the epidemic, many brands have been adding consumers' personal WeChat accounts through offline stores, planting seeds in consumers' circles of friends, and making private domain traffic a hot topic again. In fact, they are doing consumer operations work.

My suggestion is:

1. WeChat public accounts, short video live broadcasts and other platforms are used to create content;
2. The Moments are used to retain users, strengthen relationships, and deeply convert users.
3. The community is used to manage user revenue and promote interaction;
4. Mini programs can be grafted with products and carry out user fission.

I won’t go into details here, you can refer to my previous article "I lurked for 100 days and broke down for you the logic of Perfect Diary’s high-conversion “private domain traffic”!" 》I reviewed the cases of Perfect Diary and Qiandama and did a very detailed analysis.

V. Conclusion

The Internet traffic caused by the epidemic has reached an unprecedented peak, and has also allowed grass-roots marketing to run rampant on major new media platforms.

But what I want to say is that grass-roots marketing is a protracted battle. Short-term traffic capture must be aggressive, and long-term traffic acceptance must be stable. If brands want to seize this wave of dividends, they must not only make good products, but also have good content and good services.

Finally, I would like to recommend to you a book I have been reading recently, "Differentiated Marketing", written by Lee B. Salez (USA).

It is no exaggeration to say that I read this book in its entirety in the past few days without missing a word, and I found it extremely valuable. I believe it will give everyone a lot of inspiration on how to break through the current brand marketing dilemma and carve out one's own track through differentiation, and it must be strongly promoted! ! !

Author: Sister Mulan

Source: Mulanjie (ID: mulanjie-)