If you don’t know how to flirt with girls, you don’t know how to promote a brand

If there is anything in common between business and love, I guess it must be the ability to pick up girls.

A brand’s fight with its rivals in commercial competition is the art of war, while its interactions with consumers is entirely the art of love.

If a brand wants to build a close relationship with consumers, it must know how to flirt with them. For this, you can refer to popular stars:

Why can Michael Jackson make his fans crazy about him? In 1992, the concert in Bucharest, Romania attracted 500,000 spectators. Because the fans were too excited, 5,000 people fainted and 23 people died.

Li Xian's TV series "Dear, Loved" also caused the term "current boyfriend" to be flooded with messages by countless female fans, directly topping the topic list.

The reason is that celebrities know how to flirt with the people they want to flirt with, which is exactly what most consumer brands don’t understand.

Although brands generally lack the skills to seduce girls, there are also successful cases, such as Haidilao.

Haidilao has amazed consumers with its meticulous service since its inception - people lining up to do your manicure; security guards holding umbrellas to escort you to the car when it rains, etc.

Although sometimes the service is so extreme that consumers feel overwhelmed (awkward), for example, on your birthday, the waiters will hold up a sign and sing happy birthday to you in front of everyone. However, this flirtatious attitude and behavior has attracted countless consumers to spontaneously promote the brand. They have left messages on social platforms to share their wonderful experiences at Haidilao, triggering more consumers to be curious and go and experience it.

It is worth mentioning that Haidilao not only flirts with consumers, but also with its own employees. For example, Haidilao employees have much higher salaries than their peers, are promoted quickly and have better accommodation, and are fully respected at work. Even the most basic waiters have the right to waive the bill for an entire table of guests. How can people not love such a brand?

But if other brands want to emulate Haidilao, it would be difficult to simply copy it.

Just as it is written in the book “You Can’t Learn Haidilao”: The success of Haidilao is the success of the system, not the success of a certain service or product. If you just want to imitate Haidilao's services or products, you will most likely end up with a poor imitation.

So does that mean we can’t learn anything from Haidilao?

In fact, this is not entirely true. This article summarizes some rules and methods on how consumer brands can make good use of seductive skills during the promotion process for reference by those who are interested.

1. Know who you want to flirt with

Regardless of the marketing strategy adopted, brands must first figure out who the real consumers of their products are, what characteristics they have, where they generally obtain brand information, where they consume, and what their expectations are for consumer products.

Therefore, the brand’s portrait of them should also be vivid and specific, rather than a broad description like “young people aged 25-35”.

If the brand's consumer data is internet-connected and monitorable, then classification and insight through big data analysis tools is a feasible solution: such as e-commerce brands such as Three Squirrels and Xiaoxiandun, or Internet brands such as Zhihu and Didi. However, due to the low level of digitization in traditional industries such as automobiles, real estate, and furniture, consumer portraits can only be created based on the basic data held by the company's CRM system and the experience and judgment of marketers. When conditions permit, third-party companies are invited to conduct market research. Although this can temporarily put out the fire, it still cannot solve the long-term pain point of low data sample size.

So how do we describe consumer portraits without relying on big data analysis?

For example: Who are the consumers of Lhasa Dongcuo Youth Hostel?

Before the emergence of OTA, through a whole year's identity registration information, we found that the guests' ages were mainly between 18 and 45 years old, of which more than 95% were non-local residents. Combined with the usual communication and observation with guests, the marketing staff made the following portrait of the hostel’s consumers:

1. 18-25 years old college students or newly graduated backpackers, male to female ratio: 6:4

They come to Lhasa for travel purposes or to transit through Nepal. Most of them are enthusiastic and adventurous, but due to their tight budget, they would rather spend their money on necessary things: such as tickets, visas and accommodation. I don’t want to spend more money on a fancier room. My ideal accommodation environment is to be able to communicate with other travelers, get more local travel information, and look forward to making friends with like-minded people to travel together.

2. 23-33 years old business vendors, male to female ratio 8:2

Most of them are experienced travelers who frequently travel between Nepal and Lhasa, and earn travel funds by purchasing handicrafts in Kathmandu and selling them on the streets of Lhasa. They stay in youth hostels not only because of the cheap beds, but also because they hope to make a profit by selling goods to fellow travelers, or to make new friends who can help them purchase goods from Nepal.

3. Business travelers aged 25-45, with a male to female ratio of 9:1

Most of them are sent by their companies to Lhasa on business trips for a few days or months. They stay in hostels mainly because they are cheap and hope to save on accommodation costs and get more reimbursement. At the same time, they are traveling alone on business trips and hope to make new friends to relieve their loneliness.

For example: Who are the consumers of Gujia Home Furnishing?

1. First-time homebuyers aged 25-30, newlyweds

Most of them have their down payment paid by their parents, have a low budget for interior decoration and have their own aesthetic preferences, but they will also listen to their parents' opinions and hope to buy home products with high cost performance. To this end, they will actively collect information on the Internet, listen to the opinions of experts, analyze the differences between brands, and finally make relatively rational purchasing decisions.

2. First/second home buyers aged 30-45, married couples, most with children

They usually pay the down payment for the house themselves, have a high budget for interior decoration, hope that the decoration style can take into account the common preferences of adults and children, and have high requirements for the quality and environmental protection of home products. Most of them will choose to listen to the suggestions of friends around them on brand selection, and have high requirements for brand awareness and reputation.

3. People aged 45 and above who want to improve their living environment, middle-aged couples or elderly people (mostly decided by their children), those with children

They already have a house or are preparing to move into a new one and need to purchase some furniture items, such as mattresses, bed frames, sofas, massage chairs, etc. Have high economic strength, have high requirements for product functionality, quality and environmental protection, and believe in brand strength and recommendations from friends.

2. What do she expect from you? Satisfy her!

Essentially, consumers only understand category thinking, not brand thinking .

For example, when you are thinking about what to eat, the first thing that comes to your mind is Chinese food? Western food? Or a buffet?

When you decide to eat Chinese food, would you choose Sichuan cuisine? Hunan cuisine? Or hot pot?

When you decide to eat hotpot, you will think about whether to eat cheap or expensive one, and then you can decide whether to go to the hotpot restaurant at the entrance of the community or the hotpot restaurant on the pedestrian street.

Finally you come to the conclusion that you want to eat at the expensive Haidilao hotpot restaurant on the pedestrian street.

This category cognitive thinking determines that consumers’ demand for brands is actually a demand for categories, and brands are merely specific solutions to this demand.

Taking Gujia Home Furnishing as an example, we found through analysis that:

The first type of consumer

The first category of consumers (25-30) have the following demands for home furnishing products:

1. The style and design of the product should be good-looking, and it is best to be versatile.
2. The material and price of the product should reflect the cost performance
3. The overall price cannot be too high, and we hope to get more product combinations within a limited budget.

In order to meet the needs of such consumers, what product/price/channel/communication strategies should Gu Jiajia Furniture adopt?

1. Products: Exquisite appearance, fashionable design, versatile colors, preferably a series that can be matched and combined at will.
2. Price: Lower channel profits and make the retail price lower than that of competing products (TA is price sensitive and will compare the prices of competing products on its own)
3. Channel: E-commerce is the main channel, and store sales are the supplementary channel (displaying too many low-value products will reduce the store's floor space efficiency)
4. Dissemination: Knowledge platform seeding, designers, KOL endorsement (creating the image of product influencers, promoting the concept of appearance and cost-effectiveness)

The second type of consumers

The second category of consumers (30-45) have the following demands for home furnishing products:

1. The style and design of the product should be grand and textured
2. The product price is higher, but the material must be environmentally friendly
3. If you don’t want to waste too much time on choosing, it would be best to solve the problem of soft home furnishing matching at one time if there is an overall design plan.

solve:

1. Products: Imported leather/springs/wood, attention to detail, steady design, environmental protection index up to standard
2. Price: Release channel profits, provide good brand endorsement, and retail price higher than competing products is OK (TA is not price sensitive, brand assurance is more important)
3. Channel: No e-commerce, only stores and home furnishing joint (customers value experience and face-to-face sales; traffic mostly comes from home furnishing entrance)
4. Communication: circle sponsorship, celebrity endorsement, and high-profile branding (creating a high-quality image of the product)

The third type of consumers

The third category of consumers (over 45 years old) have the following demands for home furnishing products:

1. The product must have a clear functional orientation and be able to solve a certain problem (such as insomnia, cervical spondylosis, etc.)
2. The product price is acceptable, as long as it is useful, I am willing to pay for my health
3. I don’t care about appearance, good quality and practicality are the most important.

solve:

1. Products: with functional attributes, such as massage/magnetic therapy/health care, etc., with good material selection and design, and no maladjustment.
2. Price: Release channel profits, emphasize functionality, and the retail price should be higher than that of competitors (high price and high quality preference)
3. Channel: Only stores (customers need to experience it themselves)
4. Communication: big IP sponsorship, public welfare and charity, technological advantages, scientific research cooperation (shaping product professionalism and brand authority)

3. Chance encounter or a chat? It's all about design

Through the above, we have reached a consensus: consumers think in terms of categories, and the existence of brands is to meet consumers' demand for categories. But it is worth noting that there is a category between brands and consumers. If the two want to communicate, they need a medium, which is the consumption scenario .

The consumption scenario can be online (e-commerce/Xiaohongshu/Yi Tiao/WeChat group/Circle of Friends) or offline (community store/department store/supermarket). When a brand chooses different consumption scenarios, it essentially chooses different meeting places with consumers . Therefore, the place you choose for a date may directly determine the girl’s attitude towards you.

If you have judged through analysis that the girl you like likes tall, handsome guys with good looks, then you cannot meet her at a spicy hot pot restaurant on the street, just like you cannot sell a Rolls-Royce in a used car market.

If the girl you like likes practical, capable and thoughtful guys, you can't be extravagant and go on a date with her in a rented luxury car. Just like beef noodles cost 100 yuan a bowl at the airport.

Similarly, meeting a girl you like can be a chance encounter or a chat, which depends entirely on the effect the brand wants to achieve.

Advertising and pickup

The characteristic of advertising is hard push. Whether consumers like it or not, they have to see it: for example, APP splash screen ads, headline feeds, column-wrapped light box ads in airport halls, and road sign ads on highways. To put it in the analogy of flirting with girls, if you like a girl and want to get her attention, you walk up to her and take off your clothes. Sometimes girls will run away in disgust, but sometimes they will secretly admire your figure.

PR is a chance encounter

The characteristic of public relations is a soft landing. Consumers always hear people around them talking about a brand inadvertently, and then accidentally see a big account reposting the brand's co-branded products while browsing Weibo. So out of curiosity, they click on the link above, jump to Tmall Mall, and just happen to see the half-price discount on Double Eleven, so they place an order for no apparent reason.

It's like you want to pursue the girl you like. You first bribe her bestie to say nice things about you in front of other girls. Then you dress up nicely and bump into her in the elevator every now and then. You don't say much each time, but you leave a good impression on her. Finally, on Valentine's Day, she posts a picture on her Moments: "Dinner on holidays, everyone else is in pairs..." Then you leave a message saying "Dinner alone, only the moon is my company... How about sharing a table?"

Author: Jerry Huang

Source: Nuclear Energy Operations (ID: huangxiaopeipeijiang)