How to develop a hit brand: to piggyback on traffic or to create traffic?

Introduction: Good content, when spread spontaneously, will generate traffic, and the greater the traffic, the greater the monetization value. If a brand does not have its own content to spread, it can only piggyback on other people’s traffic to attract traffic. But as time goes by, you will find that one is expensive and the other is inefficient. No matter how closely you follow the hot topics, if the traffic is not your own, your ability to bring goods will always be low and your conversion rate will never be improved.

In today's era, traffic has shifted from offline to online, from downstream to upstream, from concentration to fragmentation, and from public domain to private domain. Traffic is always erratic, and you don't know where the next traffic entrance is.

Chasing traffic is the eternal nature of commercial activities. When traffic suddenly appears at this point, brands will immediately take action, efficiently and quickly. The only martial arts in the world that cannot be defeated is speed. When it comes to dividing up the traffic, there is no room for lagging behind; this is the logic of freeloading on traffic.

Therefore, most brands, when encountering a festival, immediately mobilize artists to Photoshop a holiday greeting poster and force all employees to post it on their Moments. When encountering a hot current event, they instruct new media editors to write an article about the hot topic and also stiffly link the article to the company's business or brand products. Finally, the article is synced to major self-media platforms, but unfortunately no one is interested.

It is inefficient and useless, and will only produce information garbage and waste of resources.

Of course, there are people who are good at and skilled at taking advantage of traffic, such as Durex. He is very adept at riding on hot topics, and dances with joy. Whether it is major festivals, movie releases, entertainment hotspots, Apple's new product launches, etc., it has firmly established itself as the king of hot marketing, surprising people yet making them accept it with pleasure. At the same time, Durex's ability to drive with ease has created an image of him as an "old driver" and he has used various methods to corrupt the onlookers.

But no matter how well you get the traffic, the disadvantage of getting traffic by piggybacking will always be there - after all, it is not your own traffic. No matter how hard you try, it will ultimately be a drop in the bucket for bringing in goods. After the prosperity, it is nothing more than losing money to gain publicity. This is also the reason why Durex chose to break up with Huanshi Interactive, with which it had cooperated for seven years, and switched to Youmen Interactive.

In the era of "traffic worship", we must learn how to plan traffic. In this process, it is better to create traffic instead of just taking advantage of it.

This is true for brands and also for the variety show industry.

"Fantasy City" invited Faye Wong to be its "variety show debut", but the waves she made only lasted for a few days on social media; for another example, "Chinese Restaurant 2" brought together Wang Junkai, Zhao Wei and Shu Qi, and the other guests were all well-known, but throughout the entire season, the interaction between the guests hardly made any big splashes.

On the contrary, "Super Vocal", "I Am an Actor" and "Sound into the Heart" which are "singing the opposite tune" of riding on traffic have stood out, as if they have pointed out a clear path for this industry. In the final analysis, "de-trafficization" can lead to "trafficization". Instead of riding on various traffic-riding stars, it is better to focus on the program itself and generate traffic by creating more new highlights and content, so as to achieve a win-win effect for both the program and the stars themselves.

Good content, when spread spontaneously, will generate traffic, and the greater the traffic, the greater the monetization value. If a brand does not have its own content to spread, it can only piggyback on other people’s traffic to attract traffic. But as time goes by, you will find that one is expensive and the other is inefficient. No matter how closely you follow the hot topics, if the traffic is not your own, your ability to bring goods will always be low and your conversion rate will never be improved.

Three ways to generate traffic: high-reputation products + resonant content + high-quality operations.

The cheapest traffic is word of mouth from users. The secret to making users become tap water is to exceed their expectations.

Good product experience will always be a brand’s core competitiveness. Any product has core functions that can help users and solve certain needs of users, such as saving time, solving problems, improving efficiency, etc.

Creating an ultimate product is the most core strategic point to gain user reputation. If this is not done thoroughly, marketing can only attract users but not retain them. Users come and are disappointed, and then you have to spend more energy to make up for it, which is not worth the effort. A good product experience and products that can gain user reputation are the premise and foundation for generating traffic.

How to create high-quality content? Able to reach all users. Moreover, it is not only necessary to reach but also to perceive what consumers are thinking and need, and to please them. High-quality content marketing is rooted in human nature. To create a fission-like dissemination, don’t think about whether your content can go viral, but think about why users will spread your content spontaneously?

By discovering the core or potential needs of users, we can reach their needs through content, and then use H5 pages, copywriting, posters, soft articles, videos and other content forms to attract new users, making content production a closed loop. The content itself originates from user needs and ultimately returns to user needs and solves them.

High-quality content is the core of generating traffic. The content must be targeted at the recipients. The pain points must be addressed to the core of the customer's pain points. The quality of the content must be innovative and resonate with the emotions, so that users will have the desire to understand and buy after just one glance. Only high-quality content can ultimately win the favor of users.

Finally, a good marketer should know how to implement the plan step by step, linking each step together to create a complete marketing communication. After all, a successful marketing campaign depends 20% on the plan and 80% on execution. High-quality operations are necessary to generate traffic.

So you see, events like Pechoin's screen-sweeping campaign, Jiang Xiaobai's heartfelt copywriting, and NetEase Cloud Music's subway train, were spread in this way and formed their own traffic. Not only did the brands have a lot of exposure, but they also brought in a lot of goods. This is what it means to successfully "create traffic."

Another example is the recent KAWS x UT hot-selling event at Uniqlo, which was also a successful way of “generating traffic”, but it was a bit too much.

KAW is a fashion icon whose single work can sell for HK$100 million. It is not unwise for Uniqlo to cooperate with it. In the joint cooperation that started in 2015, both parties have achieved mutual success.

KAWS's fashion influence has been growing with the help of Uniqlo. He was originally just an artist in a niche circle, but with the release of Uniqlo's limited edition UT every year and the marketing by KOLs on social media, this UT has caused a sensation before it was even launched on the market.

At the same time, the "most ruthless" thing about Uniqlo is that, unlike the unaffordable prices of previous KAWS co-branded works, the UT series is priced at only 99 yuan per piece, making the public realize that "for 99 yuan, you can wear a piece of art worth tens of millions home." In addition, this collaboration is promoted as the "last" co-branded work, so the collection value is self-evident. Therefore, it is not surprising that it can generate traffic, and the panic buying incident is just a "black swan" event caused by excessive traffic.

In general, "generating traffic" is a more advanced form of "using traffic", which can bring many benefits such as breaking circles, realizing brand premium, and brand communication. But at the same time, it needs to be emphasized that it does not mean that leveraging marketing and piggybacking on traffic are all great. After all, in this era when traffic dividends are exhausted, piggybacking on traffic is a fast, efficient and extremely cost-effective marketing method, and it is also one of the underlying survival rules of the Internet.

However, the free traffic comes and goes quickly, and only by creating traffic can you create a continuous content output. In the book "Growth Hacker" written by Sean Ellis, the concept of "Aha Moment" is proposed, which refers to the moment when the product makes the user's eyes light up, and the user truly discovers the core value of the product - why the product exists, why they need it and what they can get from it. If traffic generation can achieve this level, making users aware of the brand's core values ​​and concepts through fission-like dissemination and making users willing to understand, that would be another form of success.

Finally, I would like to remind everyone not to blindly create traffic, and not to underestimate fragmented traffic. Fragmented traffic can be aggregated into a lot, so don’t give up on any content related to traffic. Therefore, to generate traffic, you don’t necessarily have to make a big splash or flood the entire network with messages. As long as you can generate the “right” traffic, it will be more effective. After all, fragmented traffic is largely circle traffic. If you do a good job in the circle traffic of a certain circle and build traffic based on this circle, the effect will be quite significant.

Author: Tenant 404

Source: PR Home