How can products be promoted effectively?

Many people write brilliant copy and make beautiful advertisements, and they look very good, but why can’t their sales increase? One of the great possibilities is that the form of promotional advertising is very good, but there is a problem in one important point - the wrong competitor is chosen.

Who are the competitors?

Some people may be confused: "How can competitors find mistakes? Aren't competitors obvious?"

In fact, it is very easy to make mistakes in this regard. Let's look at an example.

This is a student who attended my offline growth class. He created a fitness beef brand - Mr. Kangaroo.

When I asked him to briefly introduce his product, he said:

We make a type of beef for fitness enthusiasts, and our brand is called Mr. Kangaroo.

If you are a fitness enthusiast, after listening to the above introduction, would you like to buy it and try it?

I think most people probably won’t, because many people will still have doubts in their minds: Why do I need to buy this? Why should I buy this from you and not something else?

So I asked him on the spot, and his answer was:

I sell XX brand beef cheaper than the XX store on Taobao and the XX brand beef on WeChat business.

In real business, "cheaper" can indeed be a reason for users to choose to buy in many cases.

But there is an important prerequisite for this situation, that is, customers already have demand for this product.

If there is no demand, it is worthless to say "cheaper", "discount", or "buy one get one free".

For example, suppose I have a special medicine for treating epilepsy, which costs 500 yuan in a pharmacy. I tell you that it only costs 250 yuan here, would you buy it?

Definitely not! Because you don't have this need, you wouldn't even want it even at a 10% discount.

Back to the product of fitness beef, this student made a mistake. As a practitioner in this industry, based on his experience and understanding of the industry, he assumed one thing - "fitness people all want to eat fitness beef", but in fact this is not the case at all.

Fitness beef is still a very niche product category among fitness people. Most people supplement protein by cooking their own laying hens, mixing protein powder, etc.

These three methods are the competitors that this product should target the most , rather than other peers who are also engaged in fitness products, because it is easier to get the users you want this way.

for example:

• As many people cook their own meat to supplement protein, the product should be ready to eat right out of the bag, which is convenient and time-saving;
• As many people are looking for protein powder, the characteristics of Australian natural beef, more natural nutritional content and better taste should be highlighted;
• Only by providing targeted copywriting and channels based on the characteristics of competitors can we better acquire users.

To summarize, one way to judge competitors is:

This solution may not necessarily be from the same industry, but may be a completely different product .

For example, in a barbecue restaurant, Coca-Cola ’s competitors include not only Pepsi but also Wanglaoji .

Only by finding the right competitors can you have accurate promotion targets and focus points, which will make it easier to achieve explosive growth in users.

Different stages, different competitors

As we all know , ofo has developed rapidly in the past three years and has launched 10 million shared bicycles . It has recently raised another US$866 million, setting a record for the highest single financing in the shared bicycle industry.

Here are some slogans that ofo has used. Which one do you think is better?

Afraid of crowds? Ride the ofo little yellow bike when you go out!

Want to travel easily? Ride the ofo little yellow bike when you go out!

Ride anytime, anywhere, ofo shared bikes

It’s easier to ride (endorsed by Lu Han )

I have asked this question offline to different classmates, and they all gave different answers. One classmate even said that he only liked the last one because it had Lu Han in it...

In fact, it is not easy to directly compare the quality of these four copywritings. These copywritings played different roles in different historical periods and faced different characteristics of competitors. Let's look at them one by one:

Afraid of crowds? Ride the ofo little yellow bike when you go out!

This advertisement was made at a very early stage, when people had not yet formed a demand for the "shared bicycle" category. It educated users to start using this type of transportation tool to replace people's original inadequate mode of transportation - "very crowded buses."

Crowded buses are ofo's main competitor at this stage, rather than other shared bicycle brands such as Mobike , Bluegogo, and Xiaoming Bicycle.

Want to travel easily? Ride the ofo little yellow bike when you go out!

This ad is similar to the one above, but it targets competitors such as the traditional short-distance travel method - "walking".

For distances of more than 1 kilometer, riding a shared bicycle to reach your destination is indeed much easier and more labor-saving than walking.

Ride anytime, anywhere, ofo shared bikes

This advertisement was made when ofo and Mobike just started to compete head-on. At that time, Mobike bikes were very expensive (6,000 yuan each), while ofo bikes cost less than 100 yuan. During that period, ofo's bikes were put into production in far greater quantities than Mobike.

Compared to Mobike, where bikes are often hard to find, ofo can be found basically everywhere. Its advertising slogan "A bike to ride anytime, anywhere" also plays to its strengths and avoids its weaknesses, thus exploiting the opponent's weaknesses.

It is easier to ride

Mobike’s first model had a great design, but was very difficult to ride. Ofo identified this point and promoted the slogan “It makes riding easier”, which used double entendre to briefly and powerfully explain its advantages.

The above four slogans of ofo have played different roles in different periods, expressing the right things at the right time.

So you see, at different stages of the product, the competitors we are targeting are likely not our peers, but other alternative solutions.

Is it still useful if you can’t remember the brand’s slogan?

There is a very classic advertising slogan that you must have heard of:

Diamonds are forever. （A diamond is forever）

This slogan cleverly combines people's expectations for everlasting love with the durability and purity of diamonds, and has become a basic requirement for modern women before getting married.

This wonderful slogan is used as a case study in many marketing and advertising classes.

However, another group of marketing lecturers believes that this slogan is not a successful one because people do not remember the brand behind the slogan and the spread of this wonderful slogan is basically to help its peers.

You can also survey your friends. Probably less than 5% of them can accurately say the brand "De Beers" behind this slogan.

So this slogan is a very failed slogan for De Beers?

NO! No fail!

On the contrary, I think this is a very successful and valuable slogan.

We need to look at the slogan, the historical period it went through, and the "competitors" it faced.

Diamond is a kind of carbon that does not contain any precious metals and has a relatively high hardness.

When diamonds were first discovered, people did not think they had any special value and they were used in industry to scratch glass and the like.

In the 1950s, GE acquired the technology to create artificial diamonds through high temperature and high pressure, making natural diamonds even less valuable.

(The picture above shows a rough diamond, which becomes a beautiful diamond only after being cut by a machine)

At this time, the company De Beers jumped out and used the slogan "Diamonds are forever" to tell women that diamonds are "forever, rare, and shining", a symbol of strong and permanent love, and those who are willing to buy diamonds for you are the ones who truly love you.

As a result, the diamond category was expanded through marketing !

The expansion of the category is naturally beneficial to the companies in it, but it seems to have helped its peers more.

However, the fact behind this is that at its peak, De Beers operated 19 diamond mines around the world, producing more than 80% of the world's diamonds. The diamonds mined from these mines, as well as diamonds obtained from other channels, were all sold by De Beers' central unified retail organization based in London.

In other words, the company controlled the supply of diamonds through monopoly , keeping diamonds scarce and stabilizing prices at high levels (when in fact diamonds were not scarce), thereby making huge profits .

So, from this perspective, the advertisement of "Diamonds are forever" is still very successful.

Helping your peers is also helping yourself

Elon Musk , the founder of SpaceX, who has been flooding the WeChat Moments with posts, is also the founder of Tesla , a leading electric car company. In 2014, he published an article titled "All Our Patents Are Belong To You" on his official blog.

The blog post stated, "We are opening up our patents in the spirit of the open source movement with the goal of promoting the advancement of electric vehicle technology" and "Tesla will not initiate patent infringement lawsuits against anyone who wants to use Tesla's technology in good faith."

Tesla's technical patents accumulated over more than ten years were made public for free in such an article.

This move has won praise from the industry, media, and users, with comments such as "disruptive", "unprecedented", "courageous initiative", and "worthy of respect".

Musk's plan is indeed very big, but it is also a clever development strategy in business.

At that point in time, Tesla's biggest competitor was not other electric cars, but the gasoline cars that most people were still choosing.

In 2013, plug-in vehicles , including hybrid electric vehicles and pure electric vehicles, were sold in the United States at 96,000 units, accounting for less than 1% of total U.S. car sales, and pure electric vehicles accounted for only half of that (less than 0.5%).

By opening up his technology patents, he can enable automobile manufacturers that have not yet mastered the key technologies to quickly enter the R&D and trial production stages. At the same time, it may also attract more large manufacturers, accelerate product development and expand production capacity, and ultimately make the "cake" bigger together.

After the electric vehicle industry becomes bigger:

• Supply chain prices can be greatly reduced, such as the cost of batteries and engines
• More outstanding talents and technologies are pouring in to improve the level of the entire industry
• As more electric vehicles are added, charging stations and other facilities will become more abundant.
• As the industry grows, it will have more say in politics and society

As a leading company in brand, technology and data, Tesla opens up its patents to help its peers, which is also conducive to the promotion of new standards and even opening up the entire industrial chain of the charging network.

Conclusion

Only by correctly identifying your competitors can you carry out the most effective promotion.

Endorsing and expanding a category at the right time will also be beneficial to the rapid development of one's own business.

You can have a broader vision and a broader perspective so that your career ceiling will not be too low.

Author: Captain Flying Fish , authorized to be published by Qinggua Media .

Source: Operation Control