Holiday brand marketing promotion skills and strategies!

Just as everyone has a difference between their true self and their true self in their self-perception, we also have cognitive biases in our perception of things and phenomena.

For example, when talking about the most watched festivals, we must think of the Spring Festival, the most important festival in Chinese culture. One objective dimension is that in the era when traditional television media dominated, CCTV was the top traffic source, and the competition for the bid for the Spring Festival Gala was a huge investment, bringing a regional brand to the whole country overnight. Brands such as Qin Chi Wine, Aido VCD and Subor are rushing to join this "big gamble" that is sure to win.

To this day, festival marketing remains the main battlefield for brand promotion. When something becomes mainstream, it also constantly differentiates internally, and at the same time, it also constantly corrects our understanding of the "weight of festivals".

1. Moments: Personality of Information Flow

Halfway through 2019, by comparing several important time nodes, I found that the WeChat Index for "2.14 Valentine's Day" was the highest, even exceeding the WeChat Index for "Spring Festival". It can be seen that festivals related to the theme of "love" are so popular among Chinese people that they even tend to surpass traditional festivals.

Another dimension beyond the data is the development of "Valentine's Day" itself. Just as an important sign of the prosperity of financial markets is the prosperity of financial derivatives. "Valentine's Day" itself is also constantly evolving, with Western Valentine's Day (2.14), White/Black/Silver/Green Valentine's Day, Chinese Valentine's Day, 520 and other "love" themed festivals emerging in endlessly.

Why and how Valentine's Day attracts such a huge amount of traffic is highly related to the establishment of personal image in the contemporary social context and the sense of ritual of the festival itself.

The circle of friends is a personality that flows through information. Just as every brand will repeat a key message, an important point of interest, and continuously output the brand concept through different content forms. As each independent individual, we will also use different forms of content to output the side of ourselves that we want to present in our circle of friends - a social network composed of close relationships, and maintain our own image through different content.

The sense of ritual of Valentine's Day itself also serves a larger theme, which is that in an era of lack of romance and security, our perception of ritual in life is weakened. The romantic temperament of Valentine's Day can satisfy people's emotional needs to break away from their daily lives, as well as their emotional dependence on "being loved". After this need is met, people will develop behaviors such as showing off by posting pictures, gaining social recognition in the form of likes and comments, while also gaining a sense of happiness from comparison.

For example, YSL, which has been all over the screen with various limited-edition sets of products that are popular among men, has been constantly conveying its brand appeal of "limited for love" on various love-themed festivals. From the Valentine's Day One Arrow Hunting Heart Fragrance Travel Gift Box, the 520 Dare to Love Impulsive Love Gift Box to the Qixi Festival Limited Gift Box of 2 Square Tubes with Love as Makeup, YSL presents content through videos and multiple pictures, realizes sales conversion through mini-programs, and continuously accumulates private domain traffic. At the same time, it can accumulate social currency and topics for YSL through continuous exposure in the circle of friends. Of course, the audience who receive the gifts are also willing to spread topical content.

01. Valentine's Day One Arrow Hunt Heart Fragrance Travel Gift Box

02. 520 Dare to Love Impulsive Love Gift Box

03. Makeup with Love 2 square tubes limited edition gift box for Chinese Valentine's Day,

2. Brand: Outperforming the “Cognitive Window”

Brand marketing is born in the attention economy. The powerful traffic effect brought by Valentine's Day will inevitably cause brands to compete for market share.

Attention can be briefly divided into three dimensions: people, time and cognition.

In terms of population dimension, the age structure of China's population is small at both ends and large in the middle. The 245 million new urban middle class, represented by those born after 1985 and mainly born after 1990, are gradually becoming the main force of social consumption. They are the decision-makers in society, and their choices influence the way the business world works.

In terms of time, audience time has long been fragmented by various news, videos, games, social and other applications. The audience will not receive brand information according to the communication path you set. How to capture consumers' attention is an issue that brand marketing needs to consider.

On the cognitive dimension, different brands in the same category are competing for limited cognition. This is particularly evident among fashion brands. Just like human attention, identity labels are also limited. For example, there are similar cognitive positioning such as "pampering", "inheritance", and "independence" in the market. For example, the idea of ​​"giving to only one person in a lifetime" has attracted many brands such as Darry Jewelry, roseonly, and Eiffel Mark to compete for it.

Just like the classic paradox of positioning theory, when the content of a brand’s positioning is too large, it cannot effectively occupy cognition, and if the positioning content is too small, the “track” will become narrow and leave no room for imagination.

Therefore, in a limited time, occupying a "cognitive track" with future potential is a competition between brands and "cognitive windows". Brands need to show their new style, which is not only a brave affirmation of the brand itself, but also an identity recognition that is actively or passively accepted by the outside world.

This also means that the turning point of Valentine's Day marketing has already appeared. The challenge of the new communication context is not limited to widespread publicity, but represents widespread awareness of effective reach. Because the audience is "forgetful", and good cognition will trigger competitors to follow suit. Just as Dior has a strong reputation, it still continues to advertise on WeChat Moments, repeatedly conveying a core interest point - limited edition high-quality products.

3. Marketing: From notification to cognition

Younger populations, fragmented time, and cognitive scarcity constitute the new communication context for Valentine's Day marketing today, with "advertising" shifting to "widespread awareness."

Brand marketing with “wide publicity” means that communication has only a beginning but no end, especially for long-term brand communication. Because we don’t know where the effective audience is and which advertisements are effective, large-scale production and large-scale investment are the mainstream approach.

“Broad and Cognitive” fits in with consumers’ desire to solve all the things that are important to them in a one-stop manner within a complete period of time. At the same time, the brand hopes to calculate advertising investment and advertising efficiency through a one-stop approach, and hopes to reach the core consumer group in one stop.

For brands, they only need to find the core entrance and do one-stop subtraction marketing, that is, grasp the most controllable products and ideas, and coordinate with the core entrance to complete the links that were easily out of control in the past. And Moments ads play the role of the core entrance, from core consumer group positioning, multi-format content presentation to brand marketing conversion.

1. Positioning of core consumer groups

How to understand the consumer group positioning of WeChat advertising? I think there are two points: one is the behavioral path, and the other is the content preference.

As a national application with 1.112 billion daily active users, users have retained a complete behavioral path in the WeChat ecosystem, such as searching for keywords such as Chinese Valentine's Day, gifts, Valentine's Day, and related gifts, as well as psychological mining of "sensitivity, rationality, individualism, extroversion, and introversion", which can be differentiated and classified into various labels, refine the granularity of delivery, and accurately locate the core consumer group.

In addition to identifying the target consumer group, we also need to understand their cognitive status and their content preferences. WeChat advertising uses social networking and content to tap into the Chinese Valentine’s Day scenarios in the minds of users: followers of popular Chinese Valentine’s Day brands, followers of Chinese Valentine’s Day-related content, and advertiser-defined scenarios to capture users’ situational preferences. Understanding these preferences can better guide brand owners’ advertising strategies.

Finding the right person and delivering the right content is the first step in building cognition.

2. Efficient communication method

Moments advertising is a medium where brand owners and audiences can make a two-way choice. After the brand selects the audience, whether the audience will actively watch the advertisement is the second test for brand placement, which includes content format and interactive experience. In terms of content format, Moments ads provide a rich variety of light-interactive styles - videos, celebrity styles, and multiple pictures, helping luxury, beauty and other fashion brands attract users to actively click.

For example, Swarovski launched a light video interaction. The outer dynamic video can attract attention, and it only takes three steps from clicking on the video to jumping to the landing page H5. Reducing each funnel link means an increase in traffic conversion.

Cartier adopted the celebrity style and posted a status with Jackson Wang as a friend in the circle of friends. Imagine that your idol posts a status in your circle of friends and prompts you that N of your friends have seen it. This will undoubtedly be a hot topic in your circle of friends.

GUCCI uses a multi-picture style, which is closer to our daily sharing status. If we add participation links such as likes, comments, reposts, and follows, this form will be closer to native advertising.

Tiffany uses external materials to directly jump to the limited-time boutique store on the mini program, allowing users to experience a seamless jump. For brands whose products themselves are topical, the mini program can accelerate sales conversion.

In addition to the form of brand content, interactive experience is also a key link. In Moments ads, audiences can also see comments, likes and interactions from other friends, and can instantly initiate topic discussions. This is a new form of value co-creation, but it also increases the difficulty of creativity. Consumers are no longer passive purchasers/users, but have transformed into active participants, and the audience will also enhance brand awareness during participation.

3. Brand marketing conversion

There are two indicators for sales conversion: one is retaining money, and the other is retaining people, which correspond to sales conversion and private domain traffic respectively.

As mentioned in the Tiffany case above, the conversion link for WeChat Moments ads is very short. It takes only three steps to complete the conversion from outer creativity, inner details and purchase. Combined with template message reminders, the entire sales conversion process experience is more complete.

When it comes to private domain traffic, this is a hot topic that never fades. The so-called public domain traffic and private domain traffic, I think they are relative concepts. For example, brand stores are private domain traffic relative to JD.com, and JD.com’s traffic is also private domain traffic relative to the WeChat payment entrance. In fact, it is a concept that has existed for a long time.

Why is private domain traffic so important nowadays? I think the private domain of private domain traffic is fissioning layer by layer. After the fission, the "private domain" can be specific to the personal dimension. It is very close, small and specific, but it contains huge efficiency. With the help of social e-commerce, knowledge payment and WeChat business, we suddenly feel its existence.

For example, the Chinese Valentine's Day gift box advertisement that TOM FORD placed in the WeChat Moments directed the audience to follow the official account, and then within the official account, guided the users to purchase in the corresponding store. During the purchasing process, the audience also accumulates private traffic for the brand on various public traffic platforms and subsequently makes long-term conversions.

Therefore, I believe that public domain traffic is suitable for incremental growth, private domain traffic is suitable for long-term conversion, and the WeChat ecosystem can build a relationship between the two. Only by maintaining this traffic balance can we cultivate brand loyalty and establish more sticky brand awareness.

Therefore, when the mobile Internet era arrives, traditional advertising becomes more and more expensive, and linear brand communication in the past becomes increasingly difficult to effectively reach users.

In today's era of brand oversupply, audience awareness is the most scarce resource. Moments advertising brings new thinking to brand marketing methodology. It is not only about competing for "private domain traffic" in the public domain, but also about occupying the minds of the audience. The earlier the layout is, the more differentiated advantages can be formed. Otherwise, other brands will grab the attention and occupy the minds of users, thus falling out of favor.

The competition among brands and the trend of give-and-take have created a holiday marketing boom in the fashion industry on the WeChat platform.

Related reading:

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2. Marketing promotion: How does fission marketing achieve market “fission”?

3. Brand marketing promotion, 6 common psychological effects!

4. Crisis and challenges of marketing promotion in the first half of 2019!

5. Marketing and promotion skills: turn the masses into a “mob”!

6. Marketing and promotion skills | The marketing of Uniqlo’s co-branded T-shirts that were snapped up!

Author: The Beauty of Marketing

Source: The Beauty of Marketing