With a continuous monthly growth of 50%+, how can brand marketing promotion go from 0 to 1?

The process of brand creation can be mainly divided into these six stages: discovery, recognition, memory, liking, unforgettable and sharing.

Through this article, you will not only understand the basic routine of "Brand from 0 to 1" , but also the "3 directions of new brand innovation" , "How to refine product selling points" and "Copywriting structure for selling goods" .

During this period, I communicated with some brand managers and found a problem. The strategy of relying on channels to increase sales has become increasingly difficult in the past year. Those who had previously done well in WeChat business have gradually found that they can no longer sell.

Merchants are increasingly aware that without a brand and lacking competitive barriers, they can only engage in endless price wars, and in the end, profit margins become lower and lower. Sales of tens of millions or even higher may seem good, but when it comes to actual profits, tears well up in their eyes.

In fact, many bosses are good at doing business, but they are not good at building brands.

What is the brand?

Building a brand means building user minds. When users want to buy, your product will be their first choice, thus improving their purchasing decisions and efficiency.

When it comes to this issue, we must first figure out why we need to build a brand. I think there are two core functions:

1. Increase trust

For products that have not been used before, especially new brands, there will be a trust barrier, "Is this product of good quality?" "Is this product safe?" Distrust affects users' purchasing decisions. This is also why people like to read the "comments section" when shopping online. If the brand is influential, this step will be skipped and the question will be directly asked whether the customer needs the product. This is especially true for industries such as cosmetics, maternal and child products, home improvement, and electrical appliances. The trust barrier is higher, and solving the trust problem is half the battle.

2. Increase product premium

Brand premium refers to the added value of a brand. When a brand’s same product can be sold at a higher price than that of competing brands, it is called the brand’s premium ability. For the same facial mask, when you put the SKII logo and the AKII logo on it, the price will be completely different. If you sell AKII mask for 5 yuan per piece, people will probably bargain with you.

Brand is very important, so how do emerging brands go from 0 to 1?

The process of brand creation is mainly divided into six stages: discovery, recognition, memory, liking, unforgettable and sharing . Looking at the brand from the user's perspective, from discovery, recognition to remembering, this is the starting stage of a brand, that is, the 0-1 stage ; from liking, unforgettable to sharing is the mature stage of a brand.

This time we will take a new domestic hair care brand "PWU " as an example to reveal the brand's 0-1 journey.

1. Brand Story

PWU was founded in July 2018 and is committed to creating a new lifestyle brand for young people. In September of the same year, the Tmall flagship store was opened. The founder, Vincent, once worked as a director at Procter & Gamble and received tens of millions of dollars in investment from Jiacheng Capital.

Half a year after the product was launched, the month-on-month growth reached over 50%.

2. Product Analysis

The products include two product lines: skin care (launched in January 2019) and personal care. Skin care products include essences, facial masks, cleansers, creams, etc., while personal care products include shampoos, conditioners, and shower gels.

Core products: Freesia Long-Lasting Fragrance Hyaluronic Acid Shampoo and Niacinamide Body Wash. Currently, the monthly sales of mass-produced products on Tmall are 20,000+ and 15,000+ respectively.

Product packaging: American ins style, which matches the name "Pu Wu" very well.

Innovation direction of emerging brands

1. Product Positioning

In the shampoo category, there are many brands and products. Take Procter & Gamble as an example: Head & Shoulders focuses on dandruff removal, Rejoice emphasizes smoothness, Vidal Sassoon focuses on professional hair care, Pantene pays attention to hair nutrition, and Clairol highlights herbal essences. In such a red ocean category, if there is no innovation, there is basically no need to even make products.

With the changes in the mainstream consumer groups, the changes in the consumer psychology of the consumer groups, and the changes in the sources of consumer decisions, brands in those market segments have the opportunity to rise. For emerging brands, the current mainstream strategy is to deeply cultivate the niche market, concentrate superior funds and resources to create hit products, and then attract the attention of the mass market through the hit products.

1. Three innovative breakthroughs for new brands

To break through in a category dominated by big brands, a niche emerging brand must innovate. Generally, there are three directions:

1. Technological innovation:

Innovate products technologically and create new products in major categories. When Bawang entered the shampoo industry, its main product was plant-based herbal anti-hair loss products, and its products were granted national patents. When Yunnan Baiyao toothpaste entered the market, its main product was "Chinese herbal gum protection", and it contained the unique active ingredient of Yunnan Baiyao and was developed by a pharmaceutical company with multiple product and technology patents.

2. Channel innovation:

When the domestic skincare brand Winona entered the market, foreign brands such as La Roche-Posay and Vichy had already been operating in hospitals and pharmacies in first- and second-tier cities for many years. While maintaining channels for competing products, Winona also established channels in third- and fourth-tier cities and even in township health centers, thus innovating in channels.

3. Marketing innovation:

When it comes to marketing innovation, we have to mention HFP and Perfect Diary, which I have written about before. They have been deeply involved in WeChat and Xiaohongshu, and with the help of social media, they have delved into content, iterated through delivery, precipitated their own methodology, and through marketing innovation, made their products become the top domestic beauty brands.

Strictly speaking, PWU's flagship shampoo and shower gel have no major technological innovations (I understand that major innovation requires patents). Other brands have already had the same fragrance shampoo, and as a brand that grew up on the Internet, there is no channel innovation, so the only innovation that can break through is marketing innovation.

So today we will analyze the marketing strategy of PWU.

3. Marketing strategy analysis

Selling point extraction:

As an emerging product, it is necessary to refine enough product selling points, convey them to consumers, focus on consumers' purchasing needs, and give consumers reasons to buy 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.

There are 3 tips for refining selling points:

1. The advantages of a product are not equal to its selling points;

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 functional points of their products during product marketing, but oftentimes, these functional points are obscure and difficult to understand, and have not been refined into a language that consumers can understand. Consumers only care about: What can I do if I buy this product?

For example: The screen of the iPhone X is shatterproof. Advantages of the phone: It uses Corning's sixth-generation Gorilla Glass, which is Corning's most durable cover glass to date and has stronger surface compressive stress than the fifth generation.

Selling point in plain words: It can withstand an average of 15 drops from a height of 1 meter onto a rough surface. Under the same test conditions, other competing glass will be damaged at the first drop.

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?

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.

PWU is simple and beautiful. How do they refine the selling points of their products?

Take the single product "Freesia Scented Shower Gel" as an example: Puwu Damei is not the first to offer freesia scented shower gel/shampoo, but it is one of the businesses that has continuously promoted this fragrance as its main product.

For shampoo and shower gel, as user consumption psychology changes, consumers have long passed the stage of judging whether the shampoo cleans the hair well. In their subconscious, basic functions are necessary, so additional functions have an opportunity.

Looking at the details page of PWU’s Tmall flagship store, we can see that in terms of communication, PWU has strongly linked the product’s smell and perfume, further highlighting the product’s selling point - long-lasting fragrance.

The product feature is directly expressed through the number "48 hours". For consumers, this fragrance-lasting time is a quantifiable measure of "lastingness".

On its external self-media channels, Puwu Damei constantly emphasizes its own "fragrance" and even compares it with "Jo Malone" in order to deepen consumers' impression, allowing consumers to instantly compare and perceive the fragrance. Even if they cannot imagine what it smells like, they can still form a feeling that the fragrance is very high-end.

In terms of fragrance, Puwu Damei uses the classic top notes, middle notes and base notes of perfume to describe it, consolidating consumers' impression that the product has functional points comparable to perfume.

However, another brand that focuses on freesia shower gel, Lux Freesia and Tea Tree Oil Fragrance Shower Gel, is not very satisfactory in terms of product selling points.

To be honest, I didn’t understand the word “Salon Fragrance” the first time I read it. As a consumer, I had to think in my mind: What kind of fragrance is Salon Fragrance? Consumers are actually very lazy. If they cannot make a judgment at the first time, they will lose their understanding of the product. In order to understand this term, I searched on Baidu:

Salon fragrance refers to perfume produced by some perfume houses (perfume salons) that specialize in producing perfumes. Its characteristics are: it is aimed at a niche group, and generally uses natural fragrance materials. The disadvantage is that the fragrance lasts much shorter than commercial fragrances (but not absolutely). Since the preparation of salon fragrances allows perfumers to express themselves freely, they do not consider the market too much, which makes it easy to have individuality, but it is also easy to cause a situation of low acceptance.

Lux's description of the fragrance is just one sentence:

This text is quite beautifully written, but after reading it, I found that it is purely for playing with words and making the author feel good about himself. This is the most terrible thing about a brand, as it does not tell consumers the selling points of the product in their own language.

Lux's other copywriting focuses on:

1. Precious tea tree essential oil, wash out the skin of first love;
2. Natural and no additives;
3. Cleansing-grade skin care and bathing;
4. When art meets nature;
5. Use 100% recycled bottles, 25% recycled plastic

In fact, from the copywriting, we can feel that Lux is also trying hard to emphasize its "fragrance", but fragrance is a very abstract thing. If it cannot be visualized in the selling point, it will be a meaningless description for consumers.

Just like many food brands use selling points such as "delicious" and "nutritious and healthy" when describing their products, such selling points are nothing but nonsense that will never go wrong.

As emerging domestic brands, they have limited budgets, and the high-profile approach of traditional media is not suitable for them. Promoting products and brands through content marketing on social platforms is the only way for brands. Plant seeds in users’ minds through content from different channels and harvest products on e-commerce platforms (Tmall, mini programs, Youzan stores).

In terms of channels, PWU is mainly divided into three categories:

• Xiaohongshu: There are currently more than 22,000 notes on Xiaohongshu when brands search for "朴物大美". The content is designed from a unique perspective, which will be discussed in detail below.
• WeChat: There were 122 posts with the word "pwu" in the past 30 days on WeChat, excluding posts with very low reading volume, and about 50 posts by brands themselves.
• Douyin: Douyin currently has less than 100 fans, has posted xx videos, and the video with the highest number of likes is xxx

WeChat official account delivery:

In terms of the delivery rhythm, PWU only delivered one article on WeChat in September 2018, and then until February 2019, the number of articles delivered on WeChat was about 5-10 per month. After March, the delivery volume on WeChat started to increase, reaching about 30 articles (probably because the marketing department had money). It seems that the effect of the official account delivery is still good. After the initial precipitation, it ushered in large-scale delivery of the channel.

In terms of channel placement, Puwu chose the fields of emotion, fashion, and abstracts that are more in line with its products. When it first started to place ads, there were several main points in the refinement of product content elements:

1. Product scenario: the appeal of fragrance to boyfriend;
2. Affordable Alternative: The scent is an affordable alternative to Jo Malone;
3. Long-lasting fragrance: The fragrance lasts for 2-3 days;
4. Ingredients: 0 silicone oil, 90% natural ingredients

A good title is half the battle. Especially now that the opening rate of WeChat public accounts has generally declined, if you cannot attract users to open your accounts through the title, no matter how good your content is, it will easily be drowned out, unless your content is powerful enough.

The titles of Puwu Damei’s public accounts mainly fall into the following categories:

1. Female emotional type:

• This kind of smell of women is the highest level of sexiness
• Liu Yifei's new hairstyle is so beautiful, this step is essential!
• The mother is finally single after being SOLO!! It’s all because of the hair fragrance?!

2. Product selling point type:

• I have my own body odor without the need for perfume, and I have been approached 3 times when I went out!
• Who still sprays perfume? Use this to wash your hair every day and you will become a fragrant fairy in seconds!
• Really fragrant warning: Don't use this shampoo, I'm afraid straight men will fall in love with you!
• Wash your hair with Jo Malone? The scented shampoo that's popular on Xiaohongshu is surprisingly affordable!
• I threw away the 600 yuan Jo Malone! This super affordable fragrance shampoo and conditioner smells so good
• Jo Malone's replacement is only 30 yuan!!! It's so useful!!!
• Even if you don't wash your hair for two days, it still smells good? Stock up on 1,000 bottles of this Jo Malone-scented shampoo
• You can buy a Zuma Dragon replacement for only 30 yuan?! Are you dreaming of the sky if it's so cheap?

Fragrance is actually very difficult to describe, but PWU compared it with the big brand "Jo Malone" in the title. For consumers, they instantly have a sense of the fragrance and even a visual image in their minds. At the same time, the use of the word "20 yuan", which has a huge difference, aroused everyone's curiosity. A good title triggers curiosity.

3. Grass planting type:

• What shampoo can I use to avoid washing my hair for three days?
• Good stuff | Wash your hair like this, your hair will be smooth and beautiful, even your boyfriend will be attracted to you!
• This bottle of Chinese shampoo can actually allow you to go 3 days without washing your hair?
• [Today’s Recommendation] The celebrity shampoo and conditioner set that has been all over Xiaohongshu! You’re the only one who doesn’t know about it!
• A super useful shampoo recommendation! Removes dandruff, controls oil and nourishes the scalp in one step!
• I am so excited! This shampoo saved my messy hair!
• It smells so good that I can’t help it! ! I have repurchased this product three times! !

4. Knowledge point popularization type:

• Poor hair quality? Oily hair? Flat hair? This hair care will instantly make your hair smooth and beautiful!
• The harm of dyeing and perming scared me. I originally thought that it was just the deterioration of hair quality!
• What to do if your hair is rough and tangled? Do this, and it will still be fragrant and smooth even if you don't wash it for 3 days

Since March, Puwu’s external investment channels have added two more products to the promotion, one is a cleansing cream and the other is a niacinamide shower gel. It can be seen that Puwu has achieved initial results in the creation of single products and has begun to try to promote more products.

Cleansing Cream:

After using 3 bottles, I want to repurchase this cleanser! My skin is milky and even my blackheads are gone!

Niacinamide Body Wash:

384,000 people on Xiaohongshu recommend this affordable shower gel. Just wash it and your whole body will be white!

It's hot! I just want to say go get white, get white, get white, get white!

Little Red Book:

PWU has over 23,000 notes on Xiaohongshu, but many search results are inaccurate, so there are actually not that many.

I looked through PWU's latest job openings and found that Xiaohongshu is definitely the platform where it wants to focus its efforts.

After looking through the advertising structure of PWU, I found that it follows the classic pyramid advertising model, namely the composition of top bloggers + mid-level bloggers + amateurs. Among them, there are very few bloggers with more than 100,000 fans, and most of them are concentrated between a few thousand and 30,000.

The content posted on Xiaohongshu can be roughly divided into two categories:

1. A must-have for dating/lovers to improve their relationship;
2. I'm interested in shampoos with nice and affordable fragrances;

In fact, strictly speaking, the content of Xiaohongshu also strictly implements the overall content strategy of PWU. The essential artifact for dating/lovers to warm up their relationship is nothing more than creating a scene for consumers. Especially now, most of the Internet natives, Generation Z users, are still unmarried. It is normal for those who are in love to date or for singles to flirt with men. Therefore, brands have insight into this and designed scenarios that are very suitable for the target users. This is an insight that is worth learning.

Tik Tok:

PWU has posted a total of 26 videos on TikTok, accumulating 83,000 likes, an average of 3,200 likes per video, but has only 1,700+ fans in total.

In the brand window, the main recommended shampoo and conditioner set was viewed by 38,000 people, and Freesia shampoo was viewed by 15,000 people.

If we only look at the number of fans, PWU’s Douyin performance can only be described as average.

All of Pu Wu Da Mei’s TikTok short videos are story-telling, highlighting the fragrance of hair through scenes such as encounters/dates/office infighting, etc.

However, a few videos have received a very high number of likes. However, I have reservations about whether this is due to the content, and I do not rule out the possibility that it was promoted by Douyin.

Tik Tok advertising suggestions:

I looked through no less than 30 videos promoting single-brand shampoo/multi-brand joint recommendations, mainly focusing on shampoo brands such as Zhiguan, Sangu, Adolf, and Yujida, but I didn't see any PWU products.

In fact, to promote on Douyin, you don’t have to create your own account. Cooperating with vertical accounts is also a good way.

4. Structural Analysis of Externally Submitted Articles

Puwu Damei has cooperated with many bloggers, but the content used by each blogger to promote PWU is similar. It is obvious that the brand has refined the content structure with better conversion rate after repeated tests and given it to the bloggers.

Let’s go back to analyze the specific copy of Pu Wu Da Mei. There is a basic five-step structure for a typical sales tweet. Let’s take a look at it together!

1. title

No matter how good the content is, without a good title, it will be like good wine that needs to be promoted if it is not well known. The title can be used to attract clicks. The title part has just been analyzed, so I will not repeat it here.

1. Topic introduction

The blogger introduces the story by starting with an introduction that suits his style, introducing PWU's products. In the introduction, he attracts users' attention with words such as "black technology", "48 hours", and "self-contained body fragrance".

For this reason, today I would like to recommend to you a "black technology for fragrance retention". It can keep the fragrance for 48 hours after washing your hair. After using it, it is as if you have your own body fragrance, which is super nice.

A certain article

Another article

1. Pain point analysis

Through scenario-based settings, we can arouse everyone's resonance and propose solutions.

Working scenario:

One time, I was squeezing into an elevator during the morning rush hour. The elevator was filled with a mixture of cigarette smells, sweat smells, and breakfast smells. An inexplicable nauseating gas wafted towards me, making it impossible for me to eat breakfast.

Life scenes:

After all, I have bought other brands of scented shampoo and conditioners before, but many of the scents are very cheap and not long-lasting. Not to mention the next day, the scent is gone when you lie down in bed. Long-term perming and dyeing can cause severe damage to hair, which will become dry and frizzy, with dark yellow and split ends. It will even be impossible to comb the hair completely, especially in winter, when hair is prone to static electricity and is often in a frizzy state.

Any consumption behavior of users is to solve problems, that is, to solve pain points. If you want your fans to buy, you must tell them clearly and simply that you have this problem. Through scene setting, we can bring out the user's pain points and stimulate user needs from a professional perspective.

1. KOL/Professional Endorsement

As a new brand, professional endorsement is very important. Not only should the blogger who posted the article say it is good, but professional organizations should also be introduced and more KOLs should say it is good. Only then can screenshots show good sales.

Four common practices for professional endorsement:

• Ingredients explanation (reliable, awesome)
• User experience (sense of immersion, user reputation)
• Professionals/channels (KOL-professional bloggers, vertical channels-Xiaohongshu, etc.)
• Comparison with big brands (same price as big brands, same factory, same ingredients)

In response to the above points, PWU’s approach is:

(1) Ingredient interpretation highlights product quality

Endorsed by the strength of the world's largest supplier of perfume raw materials, the fragrance characteristics are highlighted through the introduction of top notes, middle notes and base notes, consolidating the mindset that PWU is a perfume-type fragrance shampoo.

(2) Consumer experience highlights user word of mouth.

1. The texture of the shampoo and the foaming effect highlight the washing effect.

1. 3 different hair qualities, highlighting user reputation

Describe the daily hair care problems of three users with different hair types, elicit their feelings about using PWU, and make consumers feel trustful, highlighting that the product nourishes hair, makes hair smooth, and makes hair fluffy.

(3) Testimonials from professional KOLs, vertical channels, and professional craftsmanship;

1. Recommended by blogger “Lin Xiaozhai” who has 9.6 million Weibo followers and 450,000 Xiaohongshu followers;

2. There are various good reviews about PWU on Xiaohongshu;

3. Sales volume ranks first on Xiaohongshu.

1. Technology and craftsmanship comparable to those of foreign big brands:

In terms of products, through the team members' experience in cleaning and care R&D, German technology, dust-free workshops and other R&D processes highlight the quality of the products, and even make consumers feel that the products are in line with international standards.

1. The finishing touch

Promotional activities are a key step in increasing final conversions. At the end of the article, special offers, extra gifts and other activities are used to stimulate fans to place the final order, and the sense of urgency is increased by setting a deadline.

Summarize

For a new brand from 0 to 1, the underlying logic is similar, but for marketers, they cannot copy others blindly. Instead, they must specify strategies and tactics based on categories, groups, channels, etc.

Many times, when we discuss brands, we feel that it is the responsibility of the marketing department or the brand department. In fact, marketing is something that everyone in the company has to do. Product is 1 and marketing is 0. Especially in the e-commerce industry, design, customer service, and after-sales service will all affect consumers' perception of the brand. All communication actions with consumers are part of the brand building process.

Brand marketing from 0 to 1 in terms of communication is by no means limited to the channels and content of social media. It is essential to build the foundation of popular communication channels. Moreover, for brands, in the process of 0-1, they can accumulate methodology, which will lead to a bigger explosion when they cross over into the mass market.

Author: Marketing Lao Wang

Source: Marketing Lao Wang (wltx-2015)