Let’s talk about 5 aspects: How to do brand cross-border marketing?

Cross-border marketing is the process of combining multiple brands to ultimately achieve a marketing effect of "1+1>2", which has become commonplace today. However, many brand cross-border marketing efforts have not been very effective, as they are still only at the stage of joint promotion . This article will mainly discuss how to conduct brand cross-border marketing.

Some time ago, Liushen Floral Water and RIO jointly launched a floral water-flavored cocktail, which was sold out in 17 seconds after it was released. It was also constantly discussed on social media , which really attracted a lot of attention. It can be regarded as a representative case of cross-border marketing in recent times.

Cross-border marketing is the process of combining multiple brands to ultimately achieve a marketing effect of "1+1>2", which has become commonplace today. However, most of the so-called cross-border activities on the market are essentially still at the stage of "joint promotion" and have not fully utilized the combined efforts of multiple brands, resulting in poor overall results.

Let’s talk about cross-border marketing today.

1. The purpose of cross-border marketing

The ultimate result of cross-border marketing is naturally a win-win situation for both brands in marketing. However, if we break down the goals, there are mainly the following points:

1. Mutual leverage of brand elements

The essence of cross-border marketing lies in borrowing each other's accumulated brand assets and bringing new elements to one's own brand tone, so cross-border marketing is often an effective means of brand rejuvenation.

If your brand is aging and you want to become more popular with young people, you can look for young brands for cross-border cooperation; if you want your brand to be more technological, you can naturally look for technological brands for cross-border promotion.

Cross-border marketing can deepen your brand impression and bring new elements to your brand, so as to find new breakthroughs in marketing, bring new vitality and new growth.

2. Expand channel coverage

Due to different channels, each brand can cover different groups. Cross-border marketing allows your brand to borrow the channel resources of both parties to cover more target groups.

This principle is actually similar to the mutual promotion of public accounts . Although they target the same group of people, the other brand’s channels may be able to reach your channel blind spot. For example, in the cross-border cooperation between NetEase Cloud Music and Nongfu Spring, NetEase Cloud Music belongs to the online channel, and Nongfu Spring belongs to the traditional offline channel. Cross-border marketing can enable the two brands to reach users that were previously difficult to reach.

3. Create market topics

Cross-border marketing is more of an event marketing operation with a strong flash nature, which also means that both brands will concentrate resources in a short period of time to ignite market voice and attract user attention.

Cross-border marketing focuses more on the novelty and fun of content, and the complementary contrast between brands. Just like the floral water-flavored cocktail mentioned at the beginning, it can trigger self-propagation through topics and has enough gimmicks for public discussion.

4. Breakthrough scene traffic

Seizing user scenarios is particularly important in the context of mobile Internet , and cross-border marketing can seize user usage scenarios and further compete for user attention.

Let’s take the cross-border example of NetEase Cloud Music and Nongfu Spring. When users drink water, they will naturally think of NetEase Cloud Music through the bottle, and when users use NetEase Cloud Music, they will also think of Nongfu Spring because of the joint promotion.

In other words, NetEase Cloud Music has seized the scene of users drinking water, while Nongfu Spring has seized the scene of users listening to music, breaking through the scene traffic of the original brands.

2. The core of cross-border is “harmony but difference”

As a marketing method, cross-border marketing naturally requires that the target consumers of both brands are consistent. If the target groups of the brands are not consistent, there is no need for cross-border marketing.

However, cross-border brands need to have both complementarity and contrast. This contrast can be in terms of channels, product form, product tone or usage scenarios. Otherwise, it will be difficult to spread topics and create freshness in the brand.

Simply put, cross-border marketing requires "harmony in diversity", similar brand scale, similar target audience, but at the same time having certain contrast effects.

Common forms of brand crossover include: crossover between traditional products and modern products, crossover between domestic brands and foreign brands, crossover between online brands and offline brands, crossover between fashion brands and mass consumer brands, etc.

3. How to choose the right cross-border brand

Choosing the right brand is the first and most critical step in cross-border marketing. We can choose the right brand through user scenario analysis.

First of all, you need to have a clear user portrait of your brand's target users , analyze the typical user's daily behavior trajectory and various life scenarios; then list the brands that the user may come into contact with in each life scenario and screen them one by one.

4. Common cross-border techniques

1. Customized products

The most common form of cross-border cooperation is for both brands to produce customized products, and these customized and limited edition products are sometimes achieved through IP licensing.

Whether it is the cross-border customization between Atour Hotel and Internet products such as NetEase Cloud Music and Zhihu, the cross-border cooperation between Minions and OFO , or the cross-border cooperation between Liushen Eau de Toilette and RIO, it is essentially a kind of IP authorized customization.

2. Pop-up stores and pop-up events

Cross-border marketing is more of an event marketing with a certain timeliness. Offline flash events are the most suitable choice for offline promotion .

The most well-known case in China in recent years is the launch of the Sangcha pop-up store by Ele.me and NetEase News , which was open for only four days. Of course, not only real pop-up stores, but also various offline event display installations and pop-up events are commonly used means of brand cross-border marketing.

3. Resource and technical cooperation

Cross-border cooperation can also mean that a brand provides technology or resources to promote events or customize products. For example, HM once carried out cross-border cooperation with CHANEL, inviting CHANEL designers to design clothes for HM. This is a kind of cooperation of designer resources. For example, the Nike+ watch jointly launched by Apple Watch and Nike , the technical cooperation between them is already very in-depth.

5. Points worth noting

• First of all, cross-border marketing is basically a game for large companies , which need to have a certain market influence, otherwise it will be difficult to attract users' attention in the market;
• Secondly, cross-border marketing involves brands rather than logos . It does not mean putting the other party’s logo on a joint poster and promoting each other on Weibo or WeChat . Real cross-border marketing is mostly product-level cooperation, and even customization at the supply chain and technical framework level, to truly form a synergy of brand value rather than simply promoting each other’s resources and exposing logos.

Conclusion

Cross-border marketing is more about content. In fact, its form has not changed much since its emergence. Only by finding the points of integration and difference between the two brands and creating refreshing content ideas can we gain recognition from users and the market.

The author of this article @传播体操 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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