"Live streaming with goods" is undoubtedly the hottest word in 2020. Internet celebrities, government leaders, stars, and hosts have all joined the action, and eye-popping data are refreshing people's cognition. Many people are also exclaiming: "Live streaming with goods" has now become a new way of shopping.

In fact, I personally agree with Mr. Xu’s (Xu Lei, CEO of JD Retail Group) point of view: e-commerce live streaming is marketing, but not business.

There have been many large-scale rollovers recently:

• Xiao Shenyang, who once became famous through the Spring Festival Gala, placed more than 20 orders for a type of liquor that night, and 16 of them were returned the next day!
• Li Xiang, whose 5-minute spot fee was as high as 800,000 yuan, didn’t sell a single mink after the live broadcast!
• The most eye-catching thing was that Li Jiaqi, who once "beat" Jack Ma with live streaming sales, sold Cadillacs, but not a single one was sold. The manufacturer said: 3 million yuan was wasted!

Is it Li Jiaqi’s fault? Or is it Cadillac's fault?

Personally, I feel that both are correct, but the problem is that “live streaming with goods” is not a panacea! Is Cadillac's target demographic really among the fans watching the livestream? Cars are not a necessity, and does Cadillac’s target audience really have time to watch live broadcasts?

This reminded me of a conversation I had with my boss in 2011 when I was making wine. He divided the company's customers according to the 2:8 principle, that is, 20% of users who have a deep understanding of the company's products and brands and 80% of users who have no knowledge of the company's products and brands.

At that time, I thought this division was too rough. Years of marketing experience taught me that target customers should be divided more finely, according to the principles of 2, 3, and 5.

• 20% of customers have a good understanding of the product and brand;
• 30% of customers are semi-aware, who have a certain brand and product influence but are not as aware of the product and brand as the first 20%;
• 50% are users who have no knowledge of the product and brand at all;

Different marketing strategies and methods should be used for target users with different characteristics.

Then why do we say “2 to save lives, 3 to win, 5 to leap”?

This mainly focuses on what attitude should be adopted towards these three types of target users with different levels of awareness during the marketing and operation of brands and products. The flexible use and combination of current marketing channels and marketing methods can completely treat these three types of target customers differently.

1.2 Save your life

The 20% high-awareness target customers need to be snatched and dug out with real swords and guns, because this part of customers determines whether this brand and product can achieve a certain revenue in a short period of time to support the continued survival of the product and brand.

Therefore, in order to face this part of target users, we need to make simpler and more direct investments, and do the following work:

• Channel layout: Analyze the demographics of this group of target customers, find out their catalyst habits, and make corresponding layouts of media and marketing channels.
• Find patterns: Label target customers, profile them based on the labels, and identify the changing patterns of population attributes and demand-based customers’ behaviors at different stages.
• Chasing competitors: Position competitors and analyze their marketing methods and strategies, mainly analyzing their marketing channels and activity characteristics. Here, we will go head-to-head with competitors to tap into brand-swinging customers and potential demand customers.

What these customers need is precise sniping, precise sniping marketing channels and corresponding methods:

2.3 Winning

30% of the target customers have only a limited understanding of the target customers. Because these target customers do not have a clear concept of products and brands, they are not aware of the company's brand and products enough, and they do not have enough trust. Therefore, when tapping into this part of the users, the company needs to take into account the way of education;

Therefore, this part of customers is relatively the easiest to discover and cultivate, and if these 30% of target customers can be captured, it will be the key to standing out and winning among many competing products.

To capture these target customers, we need to make the following efforts:

• Analyze customer behavior and population characteristics: arrange channels according to their needs, design advertising ideas in a targeted manner, and plan exclusive activities that are highly preferred by users.
• Brand and product reputation layout: A good product and brand reputation is the key to forming brand awareness and establishing brand preference. Here we need to improve the brand reputation among users and the media, and word of mouth is also a decisive factor in market share.
• User aggregation: Gather users under the brand through official self-media, let users build brand and product awareness, and then become loyal customers of the brand.
• User discovery and cultivation: For this part of customers, we need to use the discovery and cultivation methods, because these customers have no brand and product awareness and preference, so we need to put more energy into discovery and cultivation. Of course, this cultivation process does not take a long time, but they need to be the first brand and product they think of when they have needs.

What is needed for these customers is cultivation and mining, and the marketing channels and corresponding methods for cultivation and mining are:

3.5 Leap

If the marketing channels 2 and 3 above are well laid out and effectively explored, the brand and product can achieve a good development status;

However, as competitors become more aware, competition will become more intense. When competitors increase their resource investment to form a strong momentum to dig into 2 and 3, in order to retain hard-earned customers, you can only passively increase resource investment to the same level or higher than that of your competitors. This is a very dangerous signal.

In order to gain an overwhelming advantage over your competitors, you must constantly discover and cultivate new customers, and the remaining 50% is precisely the key to gaining an overwhelming advantage and achieving a leap forward.

For these customers, we need to do the following:

1) Analyze the current customer sources: Use the perspective of development to form user portraits, find the laws of development and change of potential customers, and start brand layout from the source of customer evolution;

For example, as mentioned earlier about Cadillac’s “live streaming with goods”, are Cadillac’s target car owners and the fans who watch the “live streaming with goods” the same type of people? I think I should put a "?"; but if some of these people will become Cadillac owners in the future, this is possible, so this "live streaming with goods" is more acceptable than a failure as it is a brand cultivation for a group of people.

Secondly, foreign company executives are also a considerable audience among Cadillac owners. Since there are foreign company executives, we can carry out source brand cultivation targeting undergraduate and graduate students majoring in English.

2) Differentiated cultivation methods and approaches: The cultivation channels for the 50% of newbies and the 30% of the partially knowledgeable people have a high degree of overlap, but they must be treated differently in terms of cultivation methods and strategies. Periodic shifts can be made but full coverage must be achieved so that more potential target customers can be gathered.

3) Emotional cohesion method: With the development of social media and self-media, fan economy has become a trend. Whoever attracts more fans can achieve leapfrog development. Therefore, emotions are used to highlight the value and popularity of brands and products, and brand awareness is "branded" for source customers. Although they cannot become target customers in the short term, they will be potential target customers that can be cultivated in the future.

In the face of this part of future potential target customers, the main application channel is social media communication as the core, so I will not go into too much detail on this channel. Here are a few event communication plans that have been planned with emotions as the main line:

Plan 1: "Happiness Never Leaves You Alone" was designed for a 7-seater SUV model of a well-known automobile brand in 2011. It mainly uses situational sketches (short videos) to highlight the harmonious family sentiment of a family of 7.

Solution 2: "There is an Impossibility", which was designed for a decoration Internet platform in 2017. It uses questioning to highlight the differences in innovative models, dig deep into the exploration desire of potential target customers and guide them to establish brand awareness;

Decoration is a low-frequency product, but if we use curiosity and exploration to make future potential target customers form brand awareness, it will be possible to educate potential customers and cultivate them into future customers.

Plan 3: "Part-time Emperor", this was designed for a part-time platform in 2015. It was mainly planned and designed with illustrations, celebrities and emotional copywriting, touching the softest parts of potential target customers to resonate with them, thereby cultivating future potential target customers and exploring existing target customers.

Note: The pictures are from the Internet and are used as examples of the plan. The text is original.

IV. Conclusion

Three types of customers require three different strategies for promotion and communication. When exploring target customers, many companies often have no idea what to do.

For example, self-media and social media have undergone many changes, from the BBS era to the SNS era, from the SNS era to the Weibo and WeChat era, and from the Weibo and WeChat era to the current live broadcast and short video era;

In every era, there will emerge several successful marketing companies that shape their brands and products and create huge exposure. Especially at this time, a large number of companies will flock to the market and increase their investment to achieve the effect of successfully spreading the company's message; but many often go against one's wishes, because the success of the former has its own rules to follow.

By the time you enter the market, the situation has changed. If you fail to view development with a changing perspective and simply copy, you will get half the result with twice the effort. In particular, many companies tend to avoid the important issues and focus more on the results while ignoring the process, resulting in a huge waste of resources and distrust of internal personnel.

Therefore, the success of marketing is not a simple copy but a process of finding rules and adapting to changes. Target customers should be divided according to the 235 principle and targeted channel layout and resource allocation should be made. Only in this way can a healthy development state be presented. Only by digging 2, attracting 3 and cultivating 5 can the company be invincible in future development.

Author: Bei Mo

Source: Beimo Chat Internet Operations

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