Want to do a "screen-sweeping" marketing? Understand user psychology first!

There is perhaps no industry in the world that is more fickle than marketing . Repeating the same idea and gameplay 10 times can be considered lazy, but if you repeat it 20 times, you will be called vulgar and sneered at by your peers.

But the butterfly of inspiration and novelty will not fall into our net easily, even if we have cleared our senses and erected the butterfly net to catch it. In the turbulence of following trends and imitating , marketers need to pay more attention to the user's psychology, where some new desires and preferences are quietly growing and can develop into a powerful driving force to help us achieve successful marketing.

Philip Kotler mentioned in his book Marketing Revolution 3.0:

Consumers connected by the Internet are increasingly like three-dimensional "people" with common spiritual pursuits and universal values. We need to go beyond the trivial and narrow "marketing techniques and craftsmanship" and elevate "exchange" and "transaction" to "interaction" and "resonance."

This article wants to share with you 5 emerging interactive gameplays and the changes in user psychology hidden behind them.

1. Identity Transformation: From Prey to Teammate

For a long time, people have viewed marketing as a “zero-sum game”: one party’s gain means the other party’s loss, and brand owners and consumers are always at opposite ends, consciously or unconsciously. Brand owners try every possible means to grab the attention, favorability and money of consumers. With this kind of mindset, users are often viewed as static "prey" who are "hunted" and "captured" by all kinds of advertising messages.

The rise of social media has broken this unequal divide.

The sinking and fragmentation of channels have put a "microphone" in the hands of users. Their opinions on brands can be easily expressed and listened to, and can easily influence other potential customers. These ordinary users, as well as the opinion leaders among them, have replaced advertising slogans and celebrity spokespersons and determine the reputation and fate of brands and products.

In the new communication environment, if brand owners want their information to be widely disseminated, they can no longer view users as "prey", but as close "teammates": give them sufficient incentives, mobilize their participation in the entire marketing process, and encourage them to output positive comments.

Some brand owners with a keen sense of smell have made bold attempts.

In 2016, the 75-year-old American chocolate bean brand M&M's handed over the decision-making power of the regular flavors of chocolate beans to users. They held a vote to let consumers choose between Honey Nut, Coffee Nut and Spicy Nut flavors of peanut chocolate chips, and in the end, coffee flavor won and became the regular flavor of M&M's.

It is worth noting that during the testing phase of these three products, coffee-flavored chocolate beans were already the most popular. To some extent, M&M's is just using this marketing campaign to "play" with users, allowing them to feel involved and establish two-way communication.

Recently, more and more brand owners have begun to adopt the marketing method of "turning users into teammates". Burger King Spain recently launched a survey on Instagram. Through 9 short videos, they let users choose their favorite flavors, such as how many slices of meat and lettuce to add to the burger, and what flavor of sauce to choose.

After completing the survey, users can get coupons and redeem them for the customized burgers they voted for at the store within a specified time. Within a few hours, more than 45,000 users participated in the event and generated 270,000 interactions.

It can be seen that under the new marketing thinking, the user's identity has shifted from "prey" to "teammate", and participation has become an indispensable factor. An interactive campaign with a battle flavor and a set of novel and interesting incentive mechanisms may transform users into "teammates" who fight alongside you, narrow the distance between the brand and users, and inject strong topicality and self-propagation into marketing.

2. “Check-in” psychology: Experiences are more “sharing”

Let users actively and enthusiastically spread the brand and products? This is the key that every marketer dreams of.

In the new media era, using stimulating "emotions" to incite users and allow content to spread virally has become a tried-and-tested tactic, but its flaw is also obvious: emotions take over the show, often making it difficult for brands and product information to leave a deep impression in users' minds.

Compared with online "emotions", offline "experiences" can better make up for this shortcoming.

Nowadays, a word is popular among young people, especially girls, called "punch in"; different from punching in for fitness or memorizing words, this "punch in" refers to the act of taking photos and posting them after going to a certain place, such as "checking in at XX Internet celebrity restaurant" and "checking in at XX photo-taking spot".

This is an act of sharing offline experiences online. It has a certain programmed meaning. The psychological mechanism behind the "check-in" behavior is "showing off", and at the same time leaving a reference and imitation for later check-ins.

For example, the Chicago Flamingo Internet celebrity wall in the picture below has attracted countless INS Internet celebrities to check in.

According to data from Eventbrite, a US event platform:

More than three-quarters of consumers born in the 1980s and 1990s, when faced with limited budgets, would prioritize purchasing “experiences” rather than products.

This is an interesting data. The "experience" is obviously richer and more "showable" than the product, and can help users better improve their "personality".

It can be seen from the endless stream of brand "pop-up stores" since last year that offline experience and emotional interaction are becoming popular. They allow users to remember the brand through immersive experience and provide more diverse exposure of brand information in the space.

At the end of last year, Mafengwo held an experience event called "Conquer the World's Internet Celebrity Walls" in Sanlitun, Beijing . It "replicated" 12 well-known Internet celebrity walls around the world (such as Salvation Mountain in the United States, Thousand Torii Gates in Japan, etc.) in a smaller version and moved them to an exhibition hall, allowing users to complete the check-in of Internet celebrity walls around the world within 1 hour.

The ice cream brand Magnum recently released a set of large-scale illustrations with "check-in" value on the streets of major markets such as Paris, London and Rome. The shape of the Magnum ice cream is hidden in the visually impactful pictures.

The illustrator believes: "If it can attract people to stay for two seconds during their busy commute, it will be a success."

In fact, behind the "check-in" mentality, there is another action hidden, that is, "posting photos on social networks ", and this user behavior is the key to achieving self-propagation of marketing activities, without even the incentive of prizes.

In an era where users have long been immune to advertising and marketing information, providing an experience scenario and building a soft space for communication and interaction with users may be more elegant and effective than emotional marketing that takes away the limelight.

3. Say goodbye to programming and create Wow Moment

Wow Moment is the moment when users are surprised and exclaim. Philip Kotler believes that in an era of information overload and scarce attention, marketing must create surprises and surprises for users.

There are three factors that make up a Wow Moment:

• WOW is meant to surprise people. When someone has certain expectations and the result exceeds this value, he will express surprise.
• WOW is personal and can only be triggered through personal experience. A person’s deep-seated needs can also trigger WOW moments once they are met;
• WOW is contagious. People who experience the WOW moment will voluntarily spread this information to others.

Sabina Doomm Doomm, a Thai bra brand, once shot an imaginative commercial, describing heaven as an "office" that handles all human activities: the "Wishing Baby" team is responsible for making wishes for humans, the "Reward" team is responsible for punishing villains, such as punishing men who "have affairs, have complicated friendships, love to be ambiguous and tell lies" with "a bolt of lightning"... and the protagonist of the film, Prometheus, who is responsible for "creating humans", is the head of the Human Resources Department.

Prometheus believes that "art cannot be rushed", but when faced with a population surge of 200,000 due to Valentine's Day , it became flustered, which resulted in some works becoming less than perfect.

At the end of the short film, a beautiful girl who was dissatisfied with Prometheus's "craftsmanship" bought a Sabina Doomm Doomm and told the audience that "you can be plump without relying on God." When Prometheus asked, "Who asked you to make this kind of film?", the girl said, "It was God," "Which God?", "Customer."

Such a wonderful ending can create a Wow Moment and make users unable to resist forwarding and sharing it with their friends. This short film has been played 12.35 million times on Weibo alone, and because of the strong connection between the plot and the product, users can have a deep memory of the product after watching the short film.

4. Reject labels and welcome “micro-labels”

The era when marketers crudely labeled users is over, but this does not mean that "labels" have become completely ineffective.

It is a natural need for users to seek recognition and positive feedback by showing themselves to others and the outside world. The psychological reason why they dislike "labels" is that "I don't want to be the same as others" and they don't want their personality to be the same as others. This is a fear of convergence and the extinction of their own individuality.

If we use "micro labels" that are more detailed and have less overlap with others, it can not only make up for the crudeness of ordinary labels, but also allow users to show their personality to the outside world more easily and clearly.

Providing users with “micro-tags” has been the key to many successful marketing campaigns in recent times.

If you observe carefully, you will find that many of the test H5s that have been flooding the screen recently do not simply take advantage of the user's love of showing off, but all use the "micro-tag" technique. Through a sufficient number of texts that can form a diversified combination, they outline a portrait for the user that is less likely to be the same as others.

NetEase Cloud Music 's test H5 "Personal User Manual" generates a description of the user's personality by having the user listen to six kinds of voices, such as "The less XX eats, the fatter he will get", "XX needs to be fed regularly, he is quite simple", etc. Judging from the text alone, it is either teasing or routine, and there is nothing particularly eye-catching.

But its cleverness lies in this: a total of 66 sets of different copywriting were prepared. A simple calculation using the permutation and combination formula shows that they can form more than 40,000 "personal instructions" that will not be repeated, telling users that "you are special and different from others." Under such psychological influence, users are easily tempted to share and forward, and actively label themselves with "micro-labels."

NetEase News 's popular H5 "Sleeping Position Competition" visualizes "micro-labels" and allows users to generate their own "sleeping positions" and "life scenes" through sufficiently diverse components. In order to meet users' diverse needs for displaying their personalities, there are as many as 27 choices of small objects placed on the bed in H5, providing huge room for users to create their own "micro-labels".

5. The “Law of Imitation”: Unleashing the “Planting” Instinct

If you pay attention, you will find that nowadays, terms such as "Internet celebrity restaurant", "Internet celebrity hotel", "Internet celebrity mask", and "Internet celebrity check-in spot" are becoming more and more common. Any product, service or experience, as long as it is prefixed with the word "Internet celebrity", can easily make users "plant grass" (meaning that the user has the desire or plan to buy a certain product).

The obsession with internet celebrity products and the enjoyment of "planting grass" and "pulling grass" are major characteristics of consumers in the new era. French sociologist Tarde once put forward a point of view in his book "The Law of Imitation":

Imitation is the most basic social relationship. Society is a group of individuals who imitate each other, and the actions of each person are repeating something.

Tarde’s “Law of Imitation” can explain why the public is more likely to be attracted to “Internet celebrity” products. They are excellent objects of imitation because they have various endorsements, are verified, and have a good reputation.

Just as the Dyson Supersonic hair dryer is portrayed as a standard of elegant middle-class life in various recommendation posts, purchasing it can be seen as a pursuit and imitation of this lifestyle, and the user's psychological mechanism is "by buying a Dyson Supersonic hair dryer, I will live an elegant and refined life."

It is worth noting that the development of electronic payment and e-commerce has greatly shortened the process from "planting grass" to "pulling grass". For those products with lower average order value, it may only take a few minutes. At this time, if we can expand the role of the "law of imitation" in the product copy and provide psychological hints to users, we may achieve twice the result with half the effort.

For example, in many grass-planting posts, you can see words such as "It's so popular on INS" and "Recommended by fashion bloggers", which are quietly using the "law of imitation" to unleash the user's "grass-planting" power.

Conclusion

This is a bad time for marketing, as attention has never been so scarce and users have never been so picky. It is also a good time for marketing, as users in this era are more cooperative, humanistic and humorous than ever before. They hold the key to helping brand owners achieve self-propagation. Only by keeping up with their psychological trends can we transform ourselves from tired followers into creators of novel ways of playing.

The author of this article @乌玛小曼 is compiled and published by (青瓜传媒). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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