How to do Internet brand marketing? 6 rules!

The Internet is a place where innovation is highly concentrated, with innovative ideas emerging in an endless stream. In recent years, Pinduoduo, 88VIP, and one-yuan new customer acquisition... all seem to be very innovative; but compared with traditional retail strategies, these innovations are not breakthroughs from zero to one. In other words, they have long been commonplace in the marketing field and are merely extensions of traditional marketing methods. If we must emphasize the importance of the Internet, the fluidity and aggregation capabilities of information are far more important than its innovative capabilities.

This article summarizes certain traditional and Internet rules, sorts out the most common problems in a company's marketing process, and avoids them.

1. The difference between sales promotion and marketing

Sales is when you knock on people's doors and try your best to sell something;

Marketing is about doing something so that customers come knocking on your door.

—Bill Bishop

The most common method used by salespeople is the suggestion sales method, which focuses on the product itself and infects users by repeatedly explaining the advantages of the product and getting them to pay. Marketers, on the other hand, think about the relationship between products and users from a longer-term perspective. They first understand the real needs of consumers and then specifically display the features of the product to meet user needs and get users to pay on their own initiative. Sometimes demands may also be concerns. Without deviating from the essence, we can dispel concerns in a targeted manner and encourage users to pay proactively.

Insurance salesmen, friends who have come into contact with them all know that the traditional routine is: exaggerate the benefits of a certain insurance, then talk about sales, then play the emotional card, etc. Many times after purchasing the insurance, the buyer may not be able to clearly explain what the insurance is for, they just think it is useful.

One characteristic of Internet insurance companies is that they give you the right to choose, help you understand your income, the strength of your needs, and the cost-effectiveness of insurance, and then let you take the initiative to place an order. You can tell which one is better at a glance.

So here comes the question, you! Are they salespeople or marketers?

2. Rule 1: Most people are followers

After designing a plan, Internet marketers generally have this feeling in their minds: everything is ready except for the east wind. But what exactly is this "Dongfeng"? We need to analyze it:

Suppose Koizumi opened a new restaurant. The decoration and food are impeccable, but business is rather slow. What would you do at this time?

Koizumi implemented three strategies:

• First, free drinks and dinner;
• Second, find a way to get people to line up at the door;
• Third, invite good friend and celebrity Bingbing to come and show support.

The queuing effect and the word-of-mouth effect - the two effects applied here, by hiring people to queue, give people a feeling that people would rather wait in line than go in and try it, which implicitly means that this restaurant must be great. Once customers join the queue, it is natural for more customers to join. The gift of small gifts gives people a sense of gratitude, and on the other hand, it reduces the cost of the user's first attempt and leaves a good impression; the celebrity support is needless to say~

This kind of routine is very common in Internet marketing design, celebrity team, free trial, hunger marketing, PPT mobile phone...

When Taobao was at its peak about 10 years ago, all the successful Taobao stores had one thing in common: brushing orders (ps: the supervision was not in place at that time, but it is still practiced now). This kind of brushing order behavior with a bottom line broke through the psychological barriers of users. The first person to try it out had already appeared. The fact that there were no bad reviews showed that the quality was good, and even if I suffered a loss, I was not the only one.

3. Rule 2: Give your users the power to choose

Shift your users' attention from the question of "do you want it or not" to the question of "what's the best deal?"

Giving your users the right to choose is just a means. It may seem that the bargaining chips in your hand are reduced, but in fact, by diverting the user's attention, you can make more unexpected bargaining moves. On the contrary, if this is not the case, your customers will focus all their attention on the price and will easily give up because of the price issue. This rule seems to be explained by psychological anchoring, which moves the user's anchor position from A to B, and the normal distribution becomes a skewed distribution.

Your bargaining power has changed from one-half (left side of A) to three-quarters (hypothetically, left side of B). At this time, the user's bargaining power becomes lower and he will tend to achieve the optimal solution he can get - getting the product with the best price-performance ratio. At this time, you have already started to make money.

For example, there is a box which is a potential consumer product. You ask him whether he wants to buy it or not? Normally he would reject you without hesitation or even looking at you; but now, if you get three boxes and tell him that they are your necessities, he will start to think: Why are there three? →You seem to have some sense? →Which one is more cost-effective for me? Through strategic additions, you give him the right to choose, but you are able to capture his time and energy, which is why your bargaining power increases.

There are many examples of changing the psychological anchor position in this way: Generally speaking, price discrimination in fast food restaurants, skin levels in games such as Honor of Kings, and pricing of department store products are all widely used... Many times, the smaller and larger boxes are just your foils, and the box in the middle is the main source of profit, which is also in line with the 80/20 rule.

Like Apple phones, I have always doubted whether high-priced and high-storage phones (16g+512G phones) would really be owned by so many consumers? Will anyone really buy low-priced and low-spec mobile phones (2g+16G)? Is this the big box and the small box?

Increasing bargaining power is not only about grabbing users' time and energy, but more importantly, you are squeezing users' profit margins invisibly. How to achieve this: You can increase your original price by anchoring a larger box. For example, the original purchase price of 5 yuan is now divided into 2 yuan, 10 yuan and 100 yuan. In such a comparison, a 100% price fluctuation also seems reasonable.

4. Rule 3: Change your self-perception and figure out who you really are?

Reflect on the excellent products with good sales on the Internet, such as: video memberships, Taobao memberships, mobile phones that are replaced every year, endless pairs of shoes, etc., are you really willing to pay for them because they are necessities? Not necessarily. I can accept advertisements, a two-dollar discount is nothing to worry about, a cell phone can last another two years and it’s totally fine as long as the shoes are wearable - it seems that all these things are not necessities, so why are consumers willing to keep paying for them? (If your answer is yes, you can close this article~)

This is actually a thinking trap. As a marketer, you focus all your attention on how to make consumers spend money? How does it feel as a consumer to know this? So it is crucial to figure out what the right mindset is - you are not the one who squeezes the customer's profits but the one who increases their profit margins. In other words, you change from a "robber" to a "partner."

Once you fall into the thinking trap at the starting point, another series of problems will arise in your actions - when your customers don't know what they want, they don't need all your products or services.

What you need to do is to help your customers figure out what they need to accomplish and what resources they need, and these resources happen to be what you can provide. This idea may be your Ahament.

Generally speaking, it is better to provide a solution than to provide a product. The completeness of the solution makes it impossible for users to refuse. Ninety-five percent of Internet platforms are built on this foundation, whether they are cats, dogs, or penguins at first glance.

Most salespeople don’t really care about their users, they only care about themselves. They try every means to sell products to customers without caring whether the customers really need these products.

So, the question is, are you a "robber" or a "partner"?

5. Rule 4: Use a little effort to eliminate the sales cover

Marketing shelter, people tend to hide in their shelter and reject any form of marketing, including flyers/TV ads/subway ads/audio ads.

As the information flood continues to grow, marketing bunkers are becoming more and more solid. If marketers rely solely on suggestions or sales pitches, it will be difficult to break through this cover and they will become exhausted. How to break through this bunker? A frontal attack is often not as effective as an indirect attack. It seems not difficult to use a valuable object to pry open the bunker. This valuable object can be a chocolate, a pen, a headset...

So what is this chocolate?

Isn’t the free trial ad-free membership privilege used by video apps like iQiyi exactly this kind of chocolate? When you watch three episodes of a TV series and there are occasional commercials, wouldn’t you feel a headache? But when the fourth episode comes, you are suddenly given a day of membership privileges. Wouldn’t you feel great? Although you may not necessarily purchase the membership immediately. But one day, iQiyi’s annual membership is 50% off, would you be tempted? What about 30% off, 20% off and 10% off?

Winter is here, can spring be far behind? In a service like this where the marginal cost is almost zero, the cost of this box of chocolates is not high.

This chocolate is such a valuable thing. The so-called value is not the value that moves you, but the value that users believe it has. Different products should be adapted to local conditions and the times.

Note: Discounts and coupons will not work at this time. This should be an afterthought, and free chocolate should be an beforehand action.

6. Rule 5: Whose little can be used to defeat whose huge force?

This is an extension of the saying "a little effort can achieve a great result". I have seen many companies that have complete plans, detailed steps and strong execution capabilities, but they have achieved little results and have suffered great internal friction. For example: a complete plan to attract users to register, but it becomes a profit-making tool for front-line promoters.

To move a thousand pounds with just a little effort does not mean that all little efforts can move a thousand pounds. Choosing the right little effort is a matter of wisdom.

As a company, being wary of freeloaders is a key step in reducing costs. In fact, the example above makes it very clear that as a company with higher marginal costs, it is extremely rational and smart to cooperate with a company with zero marginal costs. If you observe the countless cross-border integration cases in 2018, the so-called ecological construction is nothing more than one light and one heavy, with similar user positioning: JD.com + iQiyi, Alibaba ecosystem and even Honor of Kings have put on lipstick.

At the same time, we should also seize the initiative to give the chocolate. Not everyone can get the chocolate for free. Those who can’t get it will always be in turmoil. 88VIP has shown it very clearly, so I won’t elaborate on it.

7. Rule 6: Customer-centricity

Customer-centricity has become a topic that has been talked about a lot since 2008, but only a few companies have actually done it. Some have technical limitations, some have funding limitations, and some have time limitations... The market is the only criterion for testing products. The reality is that the vast majority of companies are built around certain products or services, rather than being customer-centric.

I remember that WeChat and TIM were questioned - why did they do so many messy things when they already had QQ?

The question itself is a confirmation of this view. Yes, as a social tool, QQ has the capabilities of a tool for almost all age groups, but such a large and comprehensive tool is not suitable for every scenario for every person, so many segmented products have emerged. People who think why they need B when they already have A, their thinking is limited to this product, instead of considering the problem from the perspective of users who are completely different from them.

At this point, some friends may still be confused. Let me summarize the most common mental traps: Usually when doing something, our most common starting point is to do it well and give 100% of our energy, but there is no defined standard. The longer you walk on a road going in the wrong direction, the further you are actually from the right path, and the harder it is to abandon the accumulated results in the process, even if major mistakes occur.

The correct path should be: establish core goals → create valuable components → iterate and optimize. No matter how many valuable components there are or how many iterations there are, they are all a part of serving the core goal. Putting the cart before the horse is not only a trap but also a watershed.

There is a question on Zhihu: Why is Jack Ma worthy of respect? Alibaba's consistent value of serving customers has contributed greatly to this.

This concludes the first part of this article. A decision will be made based on actual value and feedback as to whether the second part is necessary.

Source: Zimujun