How to cold start brand operation and promotion?

What is the cold start of a new brand?

New brand, lack of resources, small budget, sell more products, survive.

HFP and Perfect Diary, the textbook-level marketing of these two brands has become the object of imitation and learning for businesses. I have written about this in my previous article (see bottom). But I hope that after studying them, you can calm down and think, instead of just looking through their accounts and then investing, which is meaningless.

Is their success simply due to the launch? China has no shortage of wealthy brands, but why do they stand out?

In the brand life cycle, everything is marketing.

The brand name is marketing, packaging design is marketing, product positioning is marketing, product effect is marketing, marketing communication is marketing, customer service is marketing, after-sales service is marketing, and the content details page is marketing, but most people only see the marketing communication part.

If it is a new brand with sufficient budget, the following strategies are usually adopted:

If you are a new brand with a small budget, you can usually do the following:

Many brands have developed their products, but their budgets are tight and they are thinking about how to cold-start the brand. This article is aimed at them.

Before launching, many brands will ignore the brand name and packaging, so it is necessary to mention it.

1. Product Name

WIS, PWU, Adolf, HOLDLIVE, HELIUS, HFP, HEDONE, ZEESEA, VNK, KDM

You read that right. These brands are all domestic products. Many domestic brands, especially those in the cosmetics industry, use entire English names in the hope of giving consumers an impression of the brand's internationalization, so that when consumers see them, they will think, oh, this should be a foreign product.

For a new product, it is very important to have a brand name that is easy for consumers to remember and has a unique tone. At least consumers will notice you at first sight, thus reducing the cost of communication.

Brand name, suggested:

1. Choose a short, easy-to-remember name. To be honest, the name homefacialpro is a bit long and difficult to pronounce. Today, everyone uses HFP directly instead.
2. If a product has strong characteristics, or wants to convey a desired effect to consumers, then the Chinese name is the best interpretation of the product. For example, "Natural Hall", "Half Acre Flower Field", "Plant View", "Xunhuiji", "Healthy Skin Beauty", "Herborsist", "Shangshui Heji", "Touzhen", "Zhiyouquan", "Natural Melody", and "Huayaohua".
3. The product name reveals the target users/industry, which is more prominent in the maternal and infant industry. "Caring Mother", "Kim Koil's Growth", "Seven-Colored Tadpoles", "Naughty Partners", "allblu Youlan", etc.

2. Product Packaging

Clothes make the man, so for a new brand, packaging is of course very important.

1. Packaging design determines who your consumers are

Before selling, you must first think about who you are selling the product to, what the target customers’ aesthetic preferences and personality labels are, and then decide on your packaging.

2. Packaging design affects purchase intention

If consumers have never purchased a product, they will make predictions about the product’s function, taste, and even value based on the packaging to determine whether it meets their ultimate consumption purpose. Girls, in particular, are more visual animals. When they consume, they are easily captured by beautiful designs.

3. Packaging can create social topics

Good product packaging can create social topics, and consumers will actively show it on their Moments or Xiaohongshu, especially for co-branded products and gift boxes. When consumers receive the package, they will also have an unboxing process. Packaging can easily become the first step in social communication, so if the packaging can make consumers feel "Wow", then your first step of communication will be successful.

I have heard a point of view before, which said that for product packaging, the brand positioning should be highlighted through packaging. But to be honest, I don’t quite agree with this point of view.

Consumers will not establish any brand awareness for new products. To consumers, a new product is just a logo and is far from being a brand. There is no such thing as highlighting the brand positioning through packaging.

I think good packaging design should do at least 4 things:

1. Visual differentiation;
2. Highlight product positioning;
3. Conform to the aesthetic taste of the target audience;
4. Create a foreign brand feel.

(1) Visual differentiation

Nowadays, everyone’s attention is very limited. If the product packaging cannot be recognized, it will be easily ignored by users. Therefore, the purpose of packaging should be to attract users and even create a memorable point. We should not simply pursue beautiful and exquisite patterns. Just like outdoor advertising, the goal should be to grab the user's attention in the shortest possible time, rather than pursuing subjective beauty and comprehensive information.

ZEESEA

(2) Highlight the product name/function/features/ingredients

The product packaging echoes the product name, allowing consumers to have a deeper impression of the product's functions and selling points when they see the product:

Hanhou Hydrodynamic Hydration 4-piece Set (Like a Water Drop)

One Leaf Avocado Set (Like a Pear)

The packaging design of most skin care products is simple, which shows its gentle moisturizing effect, giving people a relaxing feeling and relaxing your skin from the inside out.

PROYA

Some packaging will be combined with the product positioning, highlighting the main ingredients, so that users can't help but associate it with its efficacy.

Planting

The packaging design of products such as cosmetics often has bright colors, which visually attracts consumers and also reflects the bright and colorful characteristics of such products.

SUSISU Lucky Coin 9-color Eyeshadow Palette

Perfect Diary Cupid Eyeshadow Palette

(3) Conform to the aesthetic taste of the target audience

Since HFP pioneered minimalist packaging, this packaging style has become mainstream among major brands, mainly due to the rise of young users and the fact that brands cater to their aesthetics.

Half Acre Flower Field Packaging Upgrade

934 Skin Care Set

(4) Create a foreign brand feel

If the product has a foreign background, a R&D team or a concept originating from abroad, then foreign elements can be added, avoiding the national flag, and can be words, animals, buildings, etc.

Yizitang 73

One leaf peach

4. Summary

The overall packaging design highlights the image of the product, and is also an invisible spokesperson from the perspective of market development. Good packaging not only protects the product itself, but also contains more creativity in the design of visual composition, instructions and usage. Thereby increasing the overall value of the product.

Now that we have a name and packaging, we can finally return to the product itself. Looking at all the industries, beauty and skin care, maternal and child products, and snacks are basically a red ocean. It is very difficult to stand out from such a track, but the greater the difficulty, the more important the product becomes.

3. Brand Positioning

For brand positioning, you only need to make one thing clear to consumers, letting them know what you do, which is equivalent to the brand's business card.

Let’s first look at the brand positioning of these domestic products:

Marie Dalgar

ZEESEA

WIS

Did you notice? The brand positioning of ZEESEA and Mary Kay, these two top domestic brands, are very similar.

Brand positioning is not to highlight differentiation from other brands, or to highlight uniqueness, because there are too many brands nowadays, and consumers are so fickle. At least when consumers see you, they can associate you with something, then the purpose is achieved. So, if you can’t find a differentiated positioning, don’t worry or feel distressed. Of course, if you can find a differentiated positioning and penetrate it, that would be amazing.

For consumers, especially when the brand is not well-known, even if you say you are good, in order to make consumers believe you and place an order, it still depends on the product. No matter how good the marketing, design, and service are, they are not as important as the product.

4. Product Selection

1. Why do we talk about product selection?

Let’s take a look at the miracles created by those popular items:

Perfect Diary: It opened a store on Tmall in 2017, and later became the number one seller on the entire network with its loose powder products; a year later, it ranked first in the eye shadow category with its nine-color eye shadow products.

HFP: The Tmall flagship store opened in 2016, and the brand stood out with its single product, niacinamide essence, which helped the brand enter the 100 million yuan club in 2017, with sales reaching 360 million yuan.

ZEESEA, one of the top 10 domestic cosmetics brands: Its Tmall flagship store opened in 2017, and sold 100,000 units of its patented roller BB cream. In 2018, its Clear Silky Honey Pressed Powder sold 200,000 units, ranking first in the pressed powder category.

Many unknown new brands have risen rapidly in a short period of time. The secret to their success is that they did one thing right - focusing resources, magnifying single products to strive for breakthroughs, doing everything possible to acquire users, and achieving the brand mind shaping of the brand and category.

Therefore, when making products, don’t be afraid of dividing them too finely. What you should be afraid of is that you don’t divide them finely enough. Only with concentrated detonation will new brands have a little chance.

2. How to select products?

How to choose a product to conquer the world?

There are 4 points for your reference:

(1) Whether the product is socially topical: packaging, co-branded items, design, product story, founder story, taste, etc. can all become topics for users to spread on social media.

(2) Whether it conforms to the trend: ingredient party, multi-step care, naturalism, easy to carry, customization and high-end. If you do not follow this trend, it will not be very meaningful to launch a bunch of new products randomly.

According to the latest survey report "2018 FIT Transparency Perception Assessment Survey" released by the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT):

• 42% of consumers believe that they do not receive enough ingredient safety information from brands of the products they purchase.
• 72% of consumers hope that brands can explain to them what functions the product ingredients have.
• More than 60% of consumers hope that brands can certify the source of product ingredients.

And the HFP that everyone has seen just caught the trend before the trend of the component party emerged.

(3) Product strength: Product strength is the foundation of marketing. If it is food, it is your taste; if it is skin care products, it is your main functional effect.

(It must be the main function. For example, if a facial cleanser has hydrating or whitening functions, then cleansing is the core function of the facial cleanser, and hydrating or whitening functions are icing on the cake. Consumers expect to buy facial cleansers to wash their faces, not hydrating or whitening. Therefore, including the research and development stage, facial cleansing should be the product strength, and don’t get hung up on hydrating and whitening. If the core function of facial cleansing is not done well, consumers will lose the reason to buy it.)

(4) Cost-effectiveness: The price should be compared with products of the same type and capacity in the industry. If they are the same in the same category, your product has a price advantage or a higher cost-effectiveness, which reduces the user's trial and error cost and makes it easier for them to buy.

Once a product that meets these four aspects is launched, there is a high probability that it will be successful.

3. Testing and testing

Whether the product selection is correct or not determines whether our subsequent marketing will be easy, whether it can be done, and whether we can make money.

When we are unable to make a subjective judgment, we need to select a few products with good data, and test and validate them with small amounts, low costs, and multiple channels. Through the market reaction, we can understand which product has greater potential.

Low-cost trial and error is a stage that new brands must go through in their life.

5. Content Marketing

For new brands, the best way to cold start is to promote them on various content platforms and conduct content marketing.

Content seeding is definitely the lowest-cost and longest-lasting traffic entrance.

TIPS: When a brand is growing from 0 to 1, the founding team needs to create the content themselves, or have strong control over the content of their partners. Because only your team knows your product best, don't be lazy.

1. How to do content marketing?

After deciding on a product, before promoting it, you must extract enough selling points for the product and convey them to consumers, thereby reducing their decision-making costs and giving them reasons to purchase the product. There is a saying in the marketing world: "A good product selling point can achieve 90% of brand marketing", which shows the importance of selling points.

1.1 Extract selling points

(1) Product advantages support the selling point, but are not equal to the product’s selling point

The advantage of the product is centered on the quality, and the selling point of the product is centered on the consumer. This difference in roles determines whether the selling point of a product is successfully refined.

Many brands will describe the advantages and functional points of their products in their product marketing, but many times, these functional points are obscure and difficult to understand, and are not distilled into a language that consumers can understand. Consumers can understand the advantages, but then what? What they care about is: What can I do after buying this product?

(2) The more refined the selling point, the better

A product may have many selling points, but for consumers, they are exposed to a large amount of information every day and are willing to stay in front of product advertisements for shorter and shorter periods of time. If you cannot dig deep into one or two points and deepen the user's impression within a short period of time, the user will not be able to remember you.

Many skin care products have various selling points such as whitening/moisturizing/hydration locking/repairing, etc., and they are eager to concentrate them in one product. The direct result is that consumers can’t remember your product. What is the core selling point? When he wants to buy a product with a certain function, he won’t remember you.

(3) Refine selling points based on target users

Different content channels have different selling points based on the different attributes of their fans.

Taking skin care products as an example, if the fans are mainly those born after 1995, then the selling point can be mentioned as big brands with affordable prices. If the fans are pregnant women, then the selling point can be said to be safe and non-irritating. If the fans are those who love traveling, then the selling point can be said to be whitening and preventing melanin deposition. What users buy is the value of the product. If the value of the product cannot be specifically delivered to the target user, then her desire to buy cannot be stimulated.

Myth:

Some brands will be obsessed with product differentiation . In the marketing theory USP , product positioning refers to the unique selling proposition, which is mainly aimed at competitive differentiation at the product level. Indeed, if differentiation can be achieved through product innovation, it will greatly help businesses stand out in the red ocean competition.

However, I feel that USP does not apply to many brands today. Because many products nowadays do not have such obvious differentiation, especially the increasing number of maternal and child, food, cosmetics and skin care brands. The industries they are in are extremely competitive. Compared with other products and brands, it is too difficult to be unique. To be honest, all the differentiation you can think of has basically been thought of. Therefore, new brands should not worry about product differentiation. Work hard to make the selling points clear.

After saying so much, what if you still don’t know how to refine the selling points? ? ?

Keep a close eye on industry leaders and competitors of similar size to you. If you can't find your own advantages, refer to them. In fact, the products in an industry are similar, and the advantages of peers are often the advantages that everyone has. Many people just don’t talk about them in such depth.

In addition, if you can do the following, even if the selling point is mediocre, it will be a plus for your product:

1) Cost-effectiveness

This is an absolute nuclear weapon. Some brands are like this. No matter what competitors say, I say that my price is low and the cost performance is high. If a company can control consumption, reduce costs, and lower the price of its products, this will definitely be the biggest selling point. However, if they engage in price gouging or sell inferior products as good ones, then it is not worth promoting!

2) Services

No matter how the consumer market changes, the essential things will not change. Good products and good services will always be popular in the consumer market.

2. How to choose promotion channels?

The so-called channel means going to places where there is purchasing power, finding ways to establish links with potential consumers, building trust in the product, and influencing the purchasing behavior of these consumers.

The current mainstream platforms are WeChat + Weibo + Douyin + Kuaishou + Xiaohongshu + Bilibili + Zhihu.

The logic of planting grass is to divert traffic from all channels outside the site and realize the harvest through the Taobao system. The most important thing is: through planting grass outside the site, the incoming traffic is more accurate and it is easy to achieve high conversion. The machine will think that the product is good, and Tmall will also match the traffic within the site to give your product more exposure opportunities.

(1) If your budget is really limited

1) Word-of-mouth communication and sharing

If your brand budget is tight, there are two platforms that can easily help you expand your business, namely Weibo and Xiaohongshu. Many people think that Xiaohongshu has been removed from the shelves and the effect is not good, but according to my communication, it is just the opposite.

Xiaohongshu is a very important platform for consumer decision-making, and its traffic distribution is decentralized. As long as your content is good, even if you only have one fan, there is a chance that the number of readers will explode and be seen by others. Therefore, when recruiting, many brands set the threshold for the number of fans very low, or even without any threshold.

Such a platform must interact well with its consumers, stimulate them to share, and spread the message through word of mouth. In fact, there are many ways and methods. The most common method is to stimulate with benefits (PR gifts, coupons, cash red envelopes, etc.). Consumers are very willing to become our communicators.

However, the incentive of interests often fails in front of mid- to high-end users. If material stimulation cannot stir up ripples in their hearts, then we have to consider what can easily impress them?

I communicated with a children's clothing brand a few days ago. Their average order value is relatively high, and their consumers are basically middle- to high-end mothers. The incentive of interests will fail, so think about it, for mothers, they like to show off their babies, and topics related to babies are their eternal theme. Can we guide them to share based on their sense of honor?

2) Stable core users

Some brands are worried about whether to establish a user group, but if it is your core users, especially the first batch of core users in your business, you must serve them well. You may not establish a general fan group, but you can consider establishing a core seed user group.

You must believe that the ROI of retaining old customers and getting them to make repeat purchases is higher than that of acquiring new customers. So, start by valuing old customers. This is an effective way to build trust and increase revenue.

(2) If you have a stable budget of several hundred thousand per month

It is important to choose the right platform for advertising. If your product is novel and unique, it is suitable for advertising on Douyin. If your product focuses on visuals, such as eye shadow, lipstick, blush, etc., it is suitable for advertising on Xiaohongshu. If your content is more functional and safe, it is suitable for advertising on WeChat official accounts, Weibo and Bilibili, such as maternal and child products or skin care products.

1) Cooperation with top anchors/bloggers

Top individuals (anchors/bloggers) can play a role in empowering new brands. This is because top individuals have their own brand effect, laying out cognitive channels in the minds of the public. By using their already widely recognized influence to promote the characteristics of the brand, they will achieve the fastest and widest communication effect.

Take Taobao Live as an example: new brands are all eyeing Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi, hoping that their products can be selected by them. Not only can it bring a surge in sales in a very short period of time and a surge in monthly product sales, but it can also gain a large number of targeted consumers. If you know how to use private domain traffic operations and fission, then this large number of consumers can also be word-of-mouth communicators on various content platforms.

As for how to find suitable bloggers on each platform, I will open a book and skip it for now.

TIPS: Look for top anchors and bloggers, not entertainers. Nowadays, there are very few artists who understand products, prices are high, and there is an overabundance of advertisements, which are of no particular help in product promotion, let alone selling products.

2) WeChat self-media distribution

Now many leading WeChat self-media have opened their own shopping malls, such as "Yi Tiao", "Ding Xiang Doctor", "Dad's Review", and "Uncle Kai Tells Stories". These accounts have great influence in the industry and have very strict requirements for products. Being favored by them undoubtedly proves that the product has good "product strength". So for new brands, if you are very confident in your products, find these WeChat self-media channels and cooperate with them in the form of supply or CPS.

The top WeChat self-media have a very good demonstration effect in the industry. If you get the opportunity to cooperate with the top self-media, the mid- and lower-level self-media will actively seek cooperation with you. After all, they also hope to encounter products with "product power". Since the top big ones have helped them screen, the mid- and lower-level self-media can directly cooperate with you.

3) Paid information flow

Currently, the platforms that support information flow include Tik Tok, Weibo, and Toutiao. After chatting with some brands, the quality of information flow on Weibo and Toutiao is average. If you are a beauty brand, it is recommended to invest in Tik Tok.

6. Harvesting within the site

For new brands, the budget is limited, and with so many launches, it is easy to have problems with follow-up. The succession and the planting of grass must echo each other to form a real explosion.

Taobao promotes the product vigorously outside of the company and releases it for pre-sale in advance within the company, telling users about the benefits and gifts on the day of launch. This will make buyers feel nervous and excited, as if they are the first to see the product and get the best deal. That special feeling will also stimulate conversions and deepen brand impression. Then, with the help of the store’s own traffic, Taobao’s direct traffic, and the platform’s overflow traffic, we can guide customers to add to their cart.

Perfect Diary and Zise’s advertisements will be concentrated in a certain time period and then coordinated within Taobao.

If you don't pre-sell and put the product up for sale directly, the new product will have no weight, no sales, and no popularity. Users will be unsure and will judge from the sales volume that no one will buy your product, which is definitely not a good idea.

As the overall popularity increases, the system and official authorities will become more powerful and provide more resources. The intelligent system will look at your growth trend and will recommend you as long as the data is good. Moreover, pre-sales can reduce inventory pressure. For new merchants, they don’t know how many new products to produce, and too much or too little will not be appropriate.

TIPS: It will be more effective if merchants pre-sell new products during major promotions, such as Tmall S-level promotions or industry A+ events.

7. 3 Suggestions

1. Channels should be focused

In today's world of information explosion and media fragmentation, consumers' attention continues to be dispersed, and people are always forgetful. The forgetting curve of German psychologist Ebbinghaus tells us that people forget things not linearly, but they start to forget quickly, and then the speed of forgetting becomes slower.

The best way to solve this problem is to repeat, repeat over and over again, and expose advertisements in all directions through multiple channels and platforms.

However, the biggest characteristic of new brands is that they are “poor”, with small or even no budget and insufficient staff. For them, multi-channel and multi-platform three-dimensional bombardment is just a luxury. Don’t be too scattered. If you only touch upon each platform briefly, it may seem that you have covered many bloggers and platforms, but it is far less effective than deep cultivation on 1-2 platforms, which will not allow consumers on the platform to form a deep brand impression.

Brand marketing is a brand's investment in consumers' brains. Brands that are doing well are very focused in their channel distribution and do not cast a wide net.

At that time, HFP focused on WeChat, Perfect Diary focused on Xiaohongshu, Adolf mainly focused on Douyin, and Mengya electric toothbrush mainly focused on Weibo.

2. Lower the experience threshold

You can often see that whether it is the opening of an offline restaurant or an online Tmall flagship store, merchants will attract consumers through various promotions and discounts. Users are afraid of trial and error, and discount promotions can lower the experience threshold and reduce the guilt caused by consumers' trial and error.

It is very difficult to gain the trust of a stranger in daily life, let alone ask consumers to pay for things. Especially for categories such as maternal and infant products, skin care products, or products with high unit price, the trust threshold will be higher. For brands, it is necessary to lower the product experience threshold and reduce consumers' trial and error costs, which will make it easier to purchase the products.

Lowering the experience threshold includes:

1. Small packages;
2. Limited time special offer;
3. Free gift;
4. Good after-sales service.

3. Single product penetration

After a single product or a certain sub-category becomes popular, don’t be complacent and immediately expand the production line and add a bunch of SKUs. Those stores that are doing well will continue to dig deeper and continue to explode, unless the team is confident that the new SKU can also become popular, which is another matter.

So how do we dig deeper and continue to explode? for example:

1. Gift box;
2. Co-branded items;
3. Holiday money;
4. Single product upgrade.

Final Thoughts

What is most important for new merchants? Sell ​​the goods and survive. At this time, don’t think about creating a brand tone. You are just a LOGO. It is more important to sell the goods, make money and keep the team alive.

Branding is a long process. Good products are the foundation. A stable supply chain, good services, excellent marketing and promotion, and waiting for time will form a brand that makes users recognize and loyal. Don't be anxious, just wait for the flowers to bloom.

Author: Marketing Lao Wang

Source: Marketing Lao Wang (ID: wltx-2015)