How to make online brand promotion strategy “heartfelt”?

The company's corresponding promotion strategies are completely different for brand target audiences and non-brand audiences. In the former case, companies mainly use "profit" to induce customers; in the latter case, companies use a "heartfelt" promotion strategy, which means to drive those who are close by profit and to make friends from afar by heart.

The low cost efficiency of online brand promotion is the current situation faced by all companies. How can we effectively identify the target of promotion costs? How to determine where each promotional expense of an enterprise is spent? Can these so-called wasted promotion costs be avoided?

Wanamaker once said:

I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted, but unfortunately, I don’t know which half.

This problem still troubles many companies today, and no one can come up with an accurate answer on how to improve the efficiency of corporate promotion costs.

I cannot give a precise answer to this question here. But we can analyze it from another perspective. Do these wasted brand promotion costs really have no effect on the development of the company?

What is the waste of promotion costs?

Simply put, companies spend money on promotional operations, but ultimately these promotional information is presented to a group of people who are not the brand’s audience at all, and cannot stimulate the audience to convert. These promotion costs spent on people who cannot be converted can be regarded as a waste of promotion costs.

What we want to discuss now is whether these people who are not part of the brand’s audience can have any effect on corporate promotion when they receive our promotional information?

1. The connection between non-brand audiences and brands

It is common sense that crises are inevitable for all businesses.

However, when a crisis breaks out in an enterprise, based on the impact of the incident, we can find a phenomenon that people who are not originally the brand's audience will also participate in the discussion of the enterprise's crisis public opinion. Moreover, from the perspective of the population base, the proportion of this group of people far exceeds the so-called group that outputs precise "positive" and "negative" public opinions.

To get back to the point, the high focus caused by a corporate crisis has caused many groups who were originally passers-by about a certain brand to participate in the crisis public opinion discussion, and their position will also influence the subsequent development of the crisis.

In this context, the author once again raises the above-mentioned "waste of promotion costs" theory. Is it really correct?

The answer is no.

These so-called promotion costs wasted by enterprises cannot actually be called a waste from a long-term perspective.

Here is a simple example:

When Apple mobile phones first became popular, the iPhone 4S was considered a high-end phone in the eyes of young people. However, only a very small number of these young people could actually afford this phone.

But Apple’s brand promotion is directly aimed at all these groups of people. Over time, under the market environment at the time, a recognized context was formed that Apple phones were very "high-end".

It is also the creation of this "context" that has given Apple phones a new function: "face".

As far as Apple's use of promotional expenses is concerned, those who can afford Apple phones belong to their target audience; but for more people who cannot afford it, they are the so-called wasted part.

As people's consumption capacity gradually increases, those who once "did not have the ability to buy" have also taken off this label. Today, the sales volume of Apple mobile phones continues to rise year by year, which indirectly proves that the brand image building activities it has carried out in the past are effective.

“I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted, but unfortunately, I don’t know which half.”

I don’t know how to avoid this half of the waste, because from the perspective of the long-term development of the brand, this part cannot be called “waste”.

But in that era, there were many other brands of mobile phones that were more expensive than Apple phones, so why was it that only Apple phones became synonymous with "prestige"?

The key is that the brand gains recognition among non-target groups and then creates a "special mass language environment" that is beneficial to the development of the enterprise through targeted content output.

2. “Profit-oriented” brand audience promotion strategy and “heart-oriented” non-brand audience promotion strategy

From the above we can see that regardless of whether a group of people belongs to the audience or not, their importance to brand development cannot be ignored.

If companies want to use products or marketing methods to conquer target audiences, there may be laws to follow; but how should companies conquer non-target groups, groups that have no sense of the benefits of products or brands?

In fact, there are significant differences in the promotion strategies corresponding to these two different groups of people.

For the target audience, companies mainly use "benefits" to induce them; however, for non-target groups, companies should use "heartfelt" promotion strategies.

The discussion on the target group for "profiteering" will take up a long space, so I will not go into details here. This article mainly explains how companies can use heartfelt brand promotion strategies to capture the consumption context of non-target groups.

The basis of every brand is the product, but the same type of product can create brands with a variety of images. A certain structural relationship will be formed between each company's brand and society, and the composition of society happens to be the broad masses of people.

Therefore, how companies use the "heartfelt" strategy to establish a special structural relationship with society is the key to winning over this large group of people.

Companies want to have a strong influence on this group, mainly in the following three categories:

1. Become an industry leader: take responsibility for the rise and fall of the industry

For companies that are “first in the industry”, the role they play in the minds of the public is often not as simple as a single product or brand.

Behind the title of "No. 1 in the industry", the influence it has on the masses and the social responsibility that the company bears under the title of "No. 1 in the industry" cannot be simply explained by the word "interest".

First, they can always get more attention and praise. With this attention and praise, the influence of such companies will also have the ability to spread across the industry.

For example, Jack Ma, the former CEO of Alibaba, the areas involved in Alibaba are e-commerce, finance, and trade sectors. But Jack Ma's influence is not limited to these areas. For example, some of his views on the real estate industry may completely change people's perception of the industry.

This is the so-called phenomenon of influence diffusion, which is not limited to any industry, field or group of people.

Many leaders of Chinese companies will create a "positive" and "active" character image in order to further spread the influence of the company through their personal charm, thereby continuously optimizing the public's views and impressions of their own company.

2. Industry quality enterprise: conveying the moral concept of "If you want to establish a business, you must first be a human being"

Companies capture the language environment of non-target groups by transmitting fresh emotional elements to the masses - in simple terms, they accumulate their own reputation.

Some images are what certain companies have been adhering to from the beginning of their establishment to the present. As a company's influence continues to grow, these corresponding qualities will gradually be amplified, such as Alibaba's integrity value system.

When companies promote their brands, they are actually in the process of spreading their own brand value. Product-based values ​​need to be “selective”, but those values ​​derived from “emotions” can be applied to any group of people.

Therefore, the purpose of content dissemination centered on the shaping of corporate "character" is to continuously win the favor of non-brand audiences.

When the melamine incident occurred, Yili promoted its brand with the core of "ensuring milk source safety" and continued to gain support from the general public through its actual actions.

Shape the core values ​​of your own company and stick to them, and gain acceptance and recognition from the masses through continuous promotion.

From then on, no matter what difficulties the company encounters in its subsequent development, as long as the core value system does not collapse, the company will be able to survive the crisis and return to its peak.

3. Positive social image: lifelong commitment to public welfare

The "heartfelt" promotion strategy, in addition to focusing on the "core" of the enterprise to achieve heartfelt behavior, takes social value as the core to achieve positive image transmission, which will achieve twice the result with half the effort for the enterprise in terms of brand promotion.

Of course, this concept may not be considered a very trendy idea at the moment, but there are not many companies that can truly realize their own value through these "public welfare undertakings".

What is the key to this situation?

First, persist in and continuously output public welfare activities.

Public welfare is a cause that an enterprise must adhere to for a long time. Many enterprises want to gain recognition from the general public by participating in public welfare projects once or twice, which is unrealistic.

Secondly, outbreaks, explosive events, use explosive behaviors to directly attract the attention of the masses.

Sudden events can often quickly attract the attention of the general public. At this time, if certain companies perform public welfare activities, it may have a decisive effect in shaping a positive corporate image.

The prerequisite is that the cost paid must be shocking enough. For example, when the Wenchuan earthquake hit in 2008, the whole country was in grief, but Wanglaoji's heroic act of spending 100 million yuan moved the people. The positive image it created is still shining today.

Focusing on the present, a fire this year brought unprecedented disaster to Notre Dame de Paris. After the unfortunate incident, Gucci's move of spending 100 million to rebuild Notre Dame de Paris was praised by the general public and its brand image was further improved.

Finally, the scope of public welfare is very broad. We should not only focus on the relief level. Humanistic construction, educational construction, etc. all fall within the scope of public welfare.

When enterprises carry out public welfare undertakings, they should choose content that is consistent with their own image and perform corresponding public welfare activities. For example, if a platform centered on reading carries out more education-related public welfare activities, its corporate value can be shaped more accurately. Furthermore, for automobile brands, humanistic construction such as sports and health can better convey a positive, sunny and healthy brand image to the public.

The three operational methods of creating a "mass language environment" that is beneficial to the enterprise all focus on achieving the goal of "getting close" to the masses by strengthening "positive energy" and weakening interest points.

In short, it is to accumulate one's own reputation through a "heartfelt" approach. On the one hand, it can accelerate the effect of brand promotion, and on the other hand, it can continuously weaken the negative impact of subsequent crises on it.

Author: Xiao 5

Source: PR Home