In the post-epidemic era, are the 4Ps of marketing no longer useful?

From a marketing perspective, the epidemic has caused the value of traditional advertising to drop sharply, which has also made the role of digital marketing more prominent. Some people may say, isn’t it just advertising online? We have been doing it all the time. The truth is not that simple. Complete digital marketing refers to the digitalization of the entire marketing process, not just online advertising.

In his book Being Digital, published in 1996, Negroponte tells a story about data:

One day Negroponte visited the headquarters of one of the largest integrated circuit manufacturers in the United States.

When checking in at the front desk, the receptionist asked him about the model, serial number and value of the computer he brought for registration.

"About $1 million to $2 million!" he said.

The receptionist said that was impossible, looked at Negroponte's notebook, and filled in a number on the register: $2,000.

Why was there such a big difference between the receptionist and Negroponte's estimate of the value of a notebook?

This question is worth thinking about. The receptionist's estimate of $2,000 is the hardware value of the laptop, which is what you would pay for a laptop on the market. The $1-2 million that Negroponte estimated was the data and information in his notebook that were valuable to the author. Compared with this, the $2,000 hardware was nothing.

1. Negroponte’s digital inspiration

In this story, what Negroponte is actually talking about is the value of data. When real-world commodities, channels, content, etc. have been digitized, the value of this data is no less than that of physical objects. This is also the core value of the book "Being Digital", that numbers are rapidly replacing atoms and becoming the basic exchange in human life.

This story is quite inspiring for business during the epidemic.

Think about it, during the epidemic, the industries most affected are physical industries such as tourist attractions, shopping malls, restaurants, and cinemas. If these industries are digitized, then they can be in the form of VR cloud attractions, e-commerce, food delivery, and video platforms. The impact on these businesses will be relatively limited, and they can at least achieve normal business operations to a large extent .

Some brands are doing just that, such as fresh food e-commerce and online education. In the past, fresh food and education were both industries, and most activities had to be completed offline. After the outbreak of the epidemic, these business forms could not be carried out, but after completing digitalization, fresh food e-commerce and online education brands can complete a large part of everything from products, channels to marketing online, thus not only maintaining the operation of the business, but also achieving growth in traffic and users.

In the face of such black swan events, their growth can be described as resilient growth with considerable flexibility and adaptability.

Of course, these companies are not cramming at the last minute, but have already laid the groundwork and preparation for business digitalization and short-chain closed loops. They have been sensitive to and proficient in using various online tools, and have accumulated and operated them over a long period of time. This is the basis for them to achieve resilient growth during the epidemic. Their ability to turn crises into opportunities shows that opportunities only come to those who are prepared.

2. Marketing enlightenment in the post-epidemic era - digitalization of the entire marketing process

From a marketing perspective, the epidemic has caused the value of traditional advertising to drop sharply, which has also made the role of digital marketing more prominent. Some people may say, isn’t it just advertising online? We have been doing it all the time.

The truth is not that simple. Complete digital marketing refers to the digitalization of the entire marketing process , not just online advertising. The 4Ps proposed by Professor McCarthy in the pre-Internet era - product, price, channel, and promotion - are the basic marketing processes. The digitalization based on this process can be called full-process digital marketing, which I call the digitalization of 4Ps.

Products – Digital Survival

Products are the most basic element of marketing. Without products, everything else is nonsense. During the epidemic, physical businesses have been greatly affected. At this time, if your product can only be experienced offline, then its survival space is extremely limited. If your product can be turned into data and displayed, experienced and promoted online, then at least it has business opportunities.

For example, the Dunhuang Museum launched an online "cloud tour" project of the Dunhuang Museum on February 10, allowing everyone to visit the museum at home. It is true that the current experience cannot be compared with offline ones, but with the advancement of VR technology in the future, the experience may not be too different from being in person.

For example, the "Online Sales Office" developed by Tencent uses a personalized online exhibition hall. The mini program comprehensively displays the apartment type, supporting facilities and other details with pictures, texts, and videos. At the same time, through VR house viewing, live broadcast and other forms, it has realized the digitization of real estate to a certain extent.

The digitization of books can be said to be the earliest. When there was no Internet, you had to go to a bookstore to buy books, and you had to hold a physical book to read. Now you can own a large library without leaving your home, and WeChat Reading is digitizing thousands of books all the time. Kai-Fu Lee once claimed that e-books will completely replace physical books in the future, and this view is not an exaggeration.

During the epidemic, a person's behavior of buying groceries, eating, etc. may be affected to some extent, but for a person who likes reading, his reading behavior will not be affected at all, because e-books are in sufficient supply and do not require any contact at all. According to official WeChat statistics, during the epidemic, every 100 WeChat reading users read an average of 110 more books than the previous month.

Today, most cars produced around the world include parts printed by 3D printers. These 3D printed parts are actually data in nature. You receive this data and then print it out to become a product. In the future, when you buy certain physical products, you may just be buying a string of data, and after receiving the data, printing it out will be the product you want. At this time, the transaction does not require any contact or logistics. 3D printing will accelerate the process of product digitization.

Therefore, the first step in the marketing process is to turn your product into numbers. Whether all your products can be turned into a database is the prerequisite for whether you can carry out business activities under special circumstances.

Price - Precision Testing

How to price a product is a science, and in traditional times most of it was done through offline research. Today, this behavior can be completed entirely online, and this method can more accurately predict consumer preferences, including pricing.

Suppose a brand has developed a new product, it can launch a wave of advertisements on the e-commerce platform to attract a certain number of consumers and also get their feedback - what is good about the product? What's wrong? What features would be better? Is the price high or low? Brands can adjust their products based on feedback and increase advertising when their products achieve relatively good sales.

This process not only completes the research before the product is officially launched, but also greatly reduces the risks of product and advertising.

During the epidemic, if your product has been partially mass-produced, this method will not delay your research and obtaining pricing basis at all.

Channels - Smart Retail

During the epidemic, if your channels are only offline stores, then I'm afraid you can only worry. Smart brands have already established online retail channels and achieved online and offline integration. How did they do it?

When shopping offline, brands often recommend membership cards. Some brands target the WeChat ecosystem by binding official accounts and membership cards. In sales recommendations, consumers often become dual users of the official account and electronic membership cards. At this time, every reading, click, consumption, after-sales and other data will be recorded, which accumulates a data foundation for their future targeted promotional advertising.

When a promotional advertisement with a coupon appears in the user's circle of friends, the user will receive the coupon. One way is to save it in the card wallet and complete the purchase offline. Another way is to be directly directed to the brand's mini program mall and complete the purchase in the WeChat ecosystem.

Therefore , some retail brands make use of the ecosystem of WeChat official accounts + card wallets + Moments ads + mini-program malls, and allow the activity of the three to promote each other, build a private traffic pool, and complete the transformation from pure offline business to online and offline integration.

For example, Carrefour has laid out this ecosystem relatively early. If you follow Carrefour’s official account, you will often be guided to bind your membership card. After binding, the membership card will remain in your card wallet, and then the traffic will be directly directed from the membership card to the shopping mall’s mini program. The three promote and guide each other to form stable private domain traffic.

It needs to be said here that the WeChat ecosystem is still the ecosystem with the largest traffic today. Making good use of official accounts + mini-programs + coupons to activate one's own users is an important base for establishing private domain traffic. It is also an effective supplementary channel for offline retail business .

Promotion - Link Marketing

During the epidemic, many people found that for advertisers, performance advertising is more popular than brand advertising. As I wrote in "Should we cut advertising budgets during the epidemic? Shouldn’t! 》 said that this choice may not be correct, but it is understandable because it can quickly convert investment. At this time, the necessity of link marketing is relatively large.

The so-called link marketing is to see, be interested, and then directly complete the purchase. The entire purchase process is within one link . Marketing in the traditional sense is to see, be interested, recall it many times, and then buy it after a long time. This is the model of most traditional advertising.

The self-rescue content of One-Way Street during the epidemic is very representative. As a bookstore, One Way Street has been under tremendous pressure during the epidemic. It posted an article on its official account seeking crowdfunding to keep it alive. The mini program purchase link was directly embedded in the article. Many people forwarded it and purchased it to show their support. The article quickly exceeded 100,000 views, and the crowdfunding amount continued to grow. In this chain marketing, One Way Street did not spend a penny and directly converted its brand influence into real income.

The annual MWC conference was cancelled during the epidemic, so many mobile phone brands also cancelled the release and marketing of new products. Xiaomi 10 chose to release its flagship mobile phone through online live broadcast as planned during this period. Tencent launched live streaming marketing during the epidemic. On Tencent Video and Kandian Live, users can watch and interact at the same time. Since Kandian Live and official accounts are connected, users can directly complete purchases while watching the live broadcast, realizing "live streaming with goods".

The popularity of live streaming and short video sales methods reflects the characteristics of chain marketing.

The above is the digital process of marketing 4P. I believe that in the era of mobile Internet, in addition to the 4P of traditional marketing, the user factor must be added. Users are as important as revenue.

User-normal operation

Users are not a stream of traffic that buys and leaves, but a pool of traffic that accumulates over the long term.

In traditional offline commerce, consumers have little contact with the brand after purchasing a product, and it is basically a one-time transaction. In the era of mobile Internet, as long as a user uses a product for a long time, the income he contributes must be long-term and sustainable, and this income must be greater than his single consumption.

During the epidemic, if you have loyal users who operate for a long time, your business activities can be maintained. Nike has long been preparing for its user strategy.

As early as 2006, Apple and Nike jointly launched a sports kit called Nike + iPod, which can track the user's exercise date, time, distance, calorie consumption and other data.

Now Nike and Apple Watch's collaboration on Apple Watch Nike+ can guide users to complete multiple actions. During training, you can track your heart rate and calories, and after training, you can view statistics and report cards. Its guidance is more like that of a personal trainer. To this end, Nike has developed a number of related apps and mini-programs to establish its own private traffic and user operation platform, so that the connection between itself and users is no longer just simple sales.

During the epidemic, Nike launched the "Bring Sports Home" campaign online, broadcasting fitness live on Tencent Kandian and calling on users to participate. The entire process, from viewing pictures and texts, to jumping to the gym mini-program, to participating in live fitness, is all completed on WeChat, directly converting fans of the official account into users interested in Nike sports.

Of course, this is just the first step. The important follow-up action is to continue to guide consumers into their own private traffic, convert them into users, and operate them for a long time to realize the user's lifetime value to the brand.

3. When the next black swan comes, can your digitalization withstand the test of "resilience"?

The epidemic is an unexpected event that comprehensively tests the product strength, brand strength, marketing strength and resilience of enterprises. Brands that did not sit idly by during the epidemic but turned crisis into opportunity are those that have made comprehensive digital preparations in normal times.

The lesson we have learned from this epidemic is that companies should not only focus on temporary traffic, but should look at the long term and make comprehensive digital preparations. Digitalization is not only digital marketing but also the digital accumulation of assets. If your daily products, channels, marketing, users, etc. are all prepared for digitalization, then the epidemic will not be unexpected, and you can still carry out business activities calmly.

Under the epidemic, digitalization is a prerequisite for enterprises to respond flexibly and is also the driving force for achieving resilient growth. From the perspective of the entire marketing process, the more digital your 4Ps are, the more resilient your growth will be.

I believe that this epidemic is an opportunity for you to make up your mind. When the next black swan event comes, you should be prepared for digital survival.

Author: Xunkong

Source: Xunkong’s Marketing Revelation