Analysis of the three major growth models and core formulas in 2020

Last Spring Festival, I wrote "2019, the beginning of new marketing". What is new marketing? That is, personality drives social, social drives content, and content drives traffic. This is the marketing landscape as I see it in 2018.

As the traffic dividend is disappearing, I think many people will feel anxious and confused, unable to find new directions or good methods. That is why so many new terms and new concepts are born in the marketing industry.

In 2018, everyone flocked to short videos and mini-programs, and kept talking about KOL and MCN, thinking that these were the saviors of the marketing industry.

By 2019, I found that everyone was more anxious. Why did "South" become the word of the year? Because I can't find the north, I don't know what to do.

Look at the new popular terms this year: live streaming sales, KOC, private domain traffic... I think behind these terms, there are at least two mentalities reflected.

First of all, companies pay more attention to the actual results brought by marketing, so everyone talks about growth, selling goods, and the integration of product and effect. Secondly, companies are poorer. I see that many corporate clients are cutting their marketing budgets. They can’t afford to hire KOLs, so they train their own KOCs; they can’t afford to buy traffic, so they generate their own private traffic.

So, is there any way to achieve growth without money? What new terms will be popular in 2020? Can they help companies grow?

To answer these questions, let’s start with the basics and talk about where the source of growth lies.

Ultimately, companies must face two fundamental issues. One question is how to get from 0 to 1? Another question is how to get from 1 to 100?

From 0 to 1 refers to how an enterprise creates a marketable product from scratch. Please note the three words "have a market" that I said. The products produced by the company must have a market, consumers who need it and are willing to pay for it, rather than just the company's self-imagination, such as the former Beer Tea Shuang.

From 1 to 100 refers to how, after a company has such a good product, it can let as many people as possible know about it and buy it, thereby rapidly expanding the user base and market space.

Expressed in two concepts, from 0 to 1 refers to the market adaptability of the enterprise's products, and from 1 to 100 refers to the user scalability of the enterprise's products.

All the company’s marketing is aimed at solving these two problems, and all the company’s growth comes from these two variables.

How to adapt corporate products to the market?

There are four core elements involved here: target users, needs, differentiation, and scenarios.

First of all, who are your target users? Who is most likely to buy your product? If we further subdivide the target users, they include angel users (source users), high-value users, fan users, and non-users. Enterprises should focus on different user groups at different stages of development.

Secondly, what exactly do your users need? Does your product meet this need? Are you meeting a real need or a false need? You should know that the fundamental reason why many products fail is that the demands they meet do not exist but are false demands imagined by entrepreneurs themselves.

Again, your user needs are not met by your company alone. There are other products and alternatives that can meet them. These are your direct and indirect competitors. So, compared with your competitors, what is the difference between you? What is your differentiated value? Do you have a competitive advantage?

Finally, in what scenarios will users choose and use you? Scenario is actually a secondary concept under demand, but many failed products do not fail because they do not meet user needs, but because they cannot find user usage scenarios, such as Apple’s Newton.

This is a very important issue, especially for innovative products, so we need to discuss this scenario separately.

The second question is, once you have a good product, how do you expand your user base?

In fact, this is what I understand as growth. The growth of a company ultimately comes from the expansion of users and the increase in sales. Where users come from is the lifeline of the enterprise.

To achieve this growth, five important variables are involved: products, channels, advertising, content, and customer management.

Let’s take an example. Xiaomi is one of the earliest smartphone manufacturers in China. Its main growth model in the early years was based on user operations, which is often referred to as Xiaomi fan marketing.

In the past few years, everyone has been flocking to learn about Xiaomi's Internet thinking, and many books have been published on the market about Xiaomi's successful experience and marketing methodology. I think the titles of two books summarize Xiaomi most accurately.

One is called "Beyond Expectations". Your product and the experience it brings to users must exceed user expectations, so as to create word of mouth and make users willing to discuss you; only with word of mouth can it spread and bring in more users.

This is the seven-word product formula that Lei Jun talked about: focus, extreme, word of mouth, and speed. By focusing on creating extremely good products, we can exceed user expectations, quickly build word of mouth, and quickly achieve brand diffusion and user acquisition, thus enabling the company to enter product iteration, continue to exceed user expectations, and ensure the continued competitiveness of the product.

Another one is called "Sense of Participation". Let users participate in product design and brand marketing, so as to turn users into fans, let users become the brand's tap water, spontaneously spread word of mouth, thereby influencing more people and bringing in more users.

Exceeding expectations and ensuring a sense of participation are Xiaomi’s user operation methods and growth secrets. Xiaomi has used this method to conquer the world and it has been successful time and time again.

But in 2016, Xiaomi's sales suddenly dropped by 40% year-on-year. So, does this growth strategy no longer work?

In fact, a careful analysis will reveal that the competition in China's smartphone market is becoming increasingly fierce in 2016, with OPPO, VIVO and Huawei all competing for Xiaomi's market share.

Now let's look at OV. Its growth method is completely different from Xiaomi's. OV still uses traditional marketing, hiring spokespersons, spending money on advertising, and then opening a large number of stores to sell goods. Although this method is traditional, it is still effective, especially in the third and fourth tier markets.

Let’s use a set of Redmi data to illustrate this. At that time, Redmi studied the urban density distribution data of its mobile phone users and found that:

In first-tier cities, every 100 people own 11.4 Redmi smartphones; in second-tier cities, every 100 people own 9; and in third-tier cities, every 100 people own only 4.7 Redmi smartphones.

What does this indicate? Xiaomi's Internet strategy is not well accepted in third- and fourth-tier cities. Why? Because the Internet penetration rate in third- and fourth-tier cities was not high at that time.

If this is the case with Redmi, there is no need to mention Xiaomi. So Lei Jun quickly opened 100 new Xiaomi stores within a year. In 2017, Xiaomi's sales rebounded by 59%.

From then on, Xiaomi also began to learn OV's marketing methods, hiring spokespersons, placing advertisements, and building offline channels.

From this case, we can see that Xiaomi and OV have completely different marketing strategies and growth methods. Xiaomi focuses on user operations, OV focuses on advertising channels, and Huawei relies on products and a series of major public relations events such as 5G, the Sino-US trade war, and the detention of Meng Wanzhou to establish its brand height and the image and status of a national brand. It is product + public relations.

The detailed stories of the three major brands, Xiaomi, OV, and Huawei, will be discussed in detail in the future article on marketing inventory of China's mobile phone industry. To summarize briefly here, products and channels are the foundation for enterprise growth. No matter how you use Internet thinking and marketing innovation, you still cannot do without the most basic marketing tools such as products, advertising, and channels.

In addition to relying on product reputation and channel traffic, companies have three other growth options when designing their own business growth: advertising exposure, content seeding, and user operation.

Let’s talk about them one by one.

1. Advertising exposure

The growth formula for advertising exposure is called "high memorability appeal + spokesperson + strong media".

Among these three elements, strong media is easy to understand. It is the media that consumers often see and come into contact with, such as traditional CCTV and outdoor TV, and Baidu, Toutiao + Douyin, Tencent, Alibaba, etc. in the digital age.

A spokesperson is not a must for advertising exposure, but it is indeed an effective element in increasing awareness and memorability, otherwise it would not be so widely used.

The appeal of high memorability means that the advertising information is simple and single enough to be easily remembered by consumers. Because TV ads are generally only 15 seconds long, and consumers' attention span for outdoor ads is only 1 second, and whether it is traditional media or digital media, the media environment is very noisy and has many interference factors, so advertisements must strive to be of interest to consumers and be remembered by consumers.

For example, brainwash advertising places great emphasis on repeating the advertisement over and over again through powerful media so that consumers can remember it.

Since 2019 is not a competition year, there are fewer brainwash advertisements than in 2018. But there are also companies like Yiche, which contracted the elevator TV screens in 54 cities across the country on October 14, 2019. An advertisement was broadcast all day long and rotated repeatedly. The slogan was just "Know all the prices, you won't lose out when buying a car."

Spokesperson Chen Teng, Yiche’s first celebrity spokesperson.

But as I have repeatedly emphasized, this brainwashing effect is based on heavy financial bombardment, and the requirements for media budget are astonishing. In order to make users remember Yiche and remember the phrase "know all the prices, buy a car without losing out", Yiche is estimated to have spent 700 to 800 million yuan throughout the year, and half of the budget is estimated to be spent on the screen coverage in October.

Moreover, this effect is basically a one-time thing. If you still remember in October 2015, Uxin spent 30 million to buy a 60S advertisement on the final night of China's Voice, and then played a ghost video of many stars rapping "Best, best, best, best, Uxin". The gameplay is exactly the same, and there is no technical content at all.

On the second day after the advertisement was released, Uxin did become popular. People on Weibo and Weibo were talking about Uxin used cars. However, this popularity did not last for two days. Everyone forgot about Uxin and turned their attention to other things.

This is how the Internet age is, with information exploding and everything coming into being and dying, it is impossible to rely on spending money to brainwash consumers and be remembered for a long time. Two weeks after Yiche’s screen-wrapping on October 14, 2019, I went to check Yiche’s WeChat Index, and it was as expected.

Besides, this kind of advertising that relies on media bombardment and consumers’ passive memory cannot be sustained, and brainwashing advertising lacks emotional and long-term connection with consumers. Just because they remember you does not mean they will buy from you.

Compared to Yiche, the Cadillac CT6 advertisement of the same period is much better in my opinion. It also looks quite brainwashing, repeating the phrase "Without rear-wheel drive, it is not luxury."

But first, Cadillac raised a topic for consumers about the relationship between luxury and rear-wheel drive, "Is a car with rear-wheel drive considered a luxury car?" "Does a luxury car have to have rear-wheel drive?" This triggered a lot of discussion, debate, and controversy, which made people remember that Cadillac = rear-wheel drive.

Secondly, the creative form of Cadillac's advertisement is completely different from common car advertisements. It creates differentiation, highlights the personality and style of the Cadillac brand, and deepens everyone's impression of Cadillac as a new luxury car brand.

Therefore, brand recognition is crucial for advertising exposure growth. The purpose of advertising exposure is to leave an impression and seed of the brand in the minds of consumers, thereby allowing the brand to drive sales.

Let’s take another example of mobile phones. As mentioned earlier, since Xiaomi learned the tricks of OV, the advertisements of major mobile phone brands are becoming more and more similar. I can’t even tell who is endorsing whom.

Xiaomi’s latest spokespersons include Guli Nazha, Zhang Zifeng, Wang Yibo, Wang Yuan, Wu Yifan, Liu Haoran, Liu Shishi, etc. OPPO has Xiao Zhan, Yang Zi, Di Lieba, Chen Weiting, Yang Mi, Yang Yang, Li Yifeng, Zhang Yishan, Wang Junkai, and Huawei has Zhang Yixing, Guan Xiaotong, Yi Yang Qianxi, Li Xian, Hu Ge, and Zhao Liying.

Popular stars gathered in the mobile phone circle. The three members of TFBOYS each have a mobile phone brand. Well, ordinary people really can’t tell them apart.

Not only are the spokespersons indistinguishable, but even the advertising appeals are exactly the same. Please try it out -

Vivo talks about "20 million soft light dual cameras, illuminating your beauty"

Oppo says "20 million front and rear pixels for clearer photos"

Huawei says "Master of portrait photography, every shot is a blockbuster"

Xiaomi said "Dual-camera zoom, 4-axis anti-shake, more beautiful photos" (this was the advertisement for Xiaomi 6. When it came to Xiaomi 6X, the appeal became "20 million front and rear cameras, more beautiful photos")

The spokespersons are indistinguishable and the advertising appeals are homogenized, but from these pictures, you can still tell which brand is which. Different brands have different tones, styles and images, so you can tell who the advertisement is at a glance.

That’s what branding is all about.

Therefore, to achieve good advertising exposure, the most important thing is to increase brand recognition. The higher the brand recognition, the better the effect of advertising exposure, and the deeper the consumer impression and memory.

If a brand lacks recognition, then no matter how much money is spent on advertising, it will be a waste and it will be difficult to leave an impression on consumers. Consumers may even mistakenly think that the advertisement is from a competitor.

At the end of 2019, Audi mistakenly placed an Infiniti advertisement on its WeChat Moments, which sparked heated discussion.

What do I think is the scariest thing about this incident?

When I first saw this misdirected video in the group, I didn’t realize at first that it was not an Audi advertisement, although shots of the Infiniti QX50 model flashed by from time to time. It was not until the Infiniti logo appeared at the end that I realized something was wrong.

Why does this happen? Because no matter whether it is Audi or Infiniti, the advertising styles of the two are very similar, with various high-end scenes, product road running shots, cool and sporty pictures, and the product selling points are also very similar (Audi Q8 and Infiniti QX50 are both SUVs, and even the names are so similar). If you don’t look closely at the logo, it’s hard to notice whose advertisement it is.

This is just like the mobile phone advertising mentioned earlier. For today's companies, the most terrifying thing is that today is an era of homogeneity, with homogeneous products and advertisements.

If a brand lacks recognizability, consumers will not be able to tell who is who; if they cannot even tell who is who, then there is no point in doing more advertising.

Therefore, for advertising exposure, the most critical growth factor lies in brand recognition.

2. Content seeding

Content seeding is a new term that has emerged in recent years. Especially after HFP achieved great success through its mid-level public accounts and Perfect Diary achieved great success through its KOLs on Xiaohongshu, the science of seeding has become a popular subject.

How to plant grass? Let’s take a look at the cases of these two brands.

Perfect Diary does not use hard advertising on Xiaohongshu to tell everyone how good its lipsticks and eye shadows are or what the selling points of its products are. Instead, it shares various makeup knowledge with girls, such as how to apply eye shadow, tutorials, reviews and comparisons of lipsticks from various brands, a collection of eyebrow pencils, etc.

Let’s look at HFP. For example, the anti-sugar product HFP carnosine concentrate that was very popular last year did not start by explaining what carnosine is or what benefits this product has for the skin. Instead, it tells you an anti-sugar story.

For example, one of HFP’s tweets was “A 36-year-old popular goddess in the music industry has been fighting sugar for 10 years, and the changes are jaw-dropping…” It tells the story of Angela Chang, because when this tweet was released, the show “Singer” was being aired.

This article tells us four layers of key information:

1. People with high sugar content in their bodies have yellower and looser skin, and their faces will be sugared.

2. The secret of the ageless goddess is not to eat sugar + to do anti-sugar

3. Carnosine is a widely recognized effective anti-sugar ingredient

4. One drop of HFP a day can effectively fight sugar and make your skin brighter in 14 days

It shares this knowledge and stories, making you enjoy watching the advertisements, and then uses celebrities, scientific experiments, before-and-after comparisons, numbers, and authoritative organizations to endorse them, making you unconsciously trust them.

This is the routine of planting grass.

Here we are not discussing whether anti-sugar is scientific or not. We are only saying that this method of promoting products can indeed easily arouse users’ interest and trust.

What does planting grass rely on? It's the content.

What is good content? That is "interesting stories + useful knowledge". The stories contain codes of emotions, and the knowledge hides methods for users to change themselves and live better.

When good content is distributed to major content platforms by influential and persuasive KOLs, the promotion is completed and the brand achieves growth.

Therefore, the growth formula for content seeding is called "knowledge & story-telling content + KOL + content platform".

Compared with the simplicity and crudeness of brainwashing advertisements, content seeding requires technical content. It requires companies to have three capabilities: content productivity, KOL discrimination, and insight into trends.

The first thing is whether you can produce good content. If your content is just self-boasting and boring, it will not only fail to attract consumers, but will cause disgust.

The second thing is whether you can identify high-quality KOLs, because we all know that data falsification is an open secret today.

In October 2019, a Taobao shop owner approached the top MCN agency on Weibo, Fengqun Media. They picked a blogger named "Zhang Yuhan" with 3.8 million fans to post a VLOG to promote their product. It is said that they formulated a promotion plan with a budget of one million yuan, and waited for the final execution...

The Weibo post was published 49 minutes later, with 121,000 views, several thousand likes, hundreds of comments, and over a hundred reposts. In the comments, people said they were "grasped", "want to buy", "have received the coupon", and "have placed the order".

(Note: The data comes from interesting stories during the entrepreneurial journey)

But what is the result? Party A found that their store traffic was basically 0 and the transaction volume was basically 0. These beautiful data mentioned above were completely artificial and were fake traffic. And this data can be purchased for only a few thousand dollars.

As a result, this incident swept the marketing circle and became a hot topic in 2019. When the incident happened, I also commented on Zhihu that "data falsification nowadays is a large-scale emperor's new clothes". If companies don't understand the business and lack the ability to identify KOLs, then they can only wait to be the next victim.

The last point is whether you can discover the trend of content platforms in time. When the content platform is in its prime, its ROI will be relatively high.

Let’s look at the HFP data. It is said that from March 2016 to August 2018, HFP has cooperated with a total of 1,428 public accounts, launched 6,247 campaigns, and spent about 100 million yuan on advertising. But in just one year, the ROI of HFP investment quickly dropped from 1:100 to 1:50, and now many are only 1:1.

(Note: Data from C2CC ​​Media)

As the platform grew bigger, traffic costs rose, KOL and internet celebrities’ quotes increased, the number of brands increased, leading to intensified competition, and consumers became less and less credulous. The value gap disappeared and the wind stopped.

So what is the trend of content platforms? It was Weibo 6 or 7 years ago, it was WeChat official accounts 3 or 4 years ago, it was Tik Tok, Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu in the past two years, and it was Bilibili this year.

When the trend is gone, HFP, which was touted as a star case in the past two years, is said to have declined seriously, and Perfect Diary's profit margin is also extremely bleak.

So starting from 2018, HFP also invited Wang Yibo to be its spokesperson, shoot commercials, and strengthen brand building, trying to create a second growth curve of advertising exposure in addition to content seeding.

However, HFP seems to have not made up its mind to change its course. No HFP brand advertisements have been seen in major media, and the concept of "Be Pro" is too obscure and incomprehensible.

In the past few years, due to the existence of content platforms, we have seen the rise of domestic beauty brands, but since 2019, the major new beauty brands have begun to have a hard time.

When times are good, companies can just do some promotion and pigs can fly to the sky. When times are tough, the importance of brand power is highlighted.

Therefore, for content seeding-style growth, the most critical factor is brand value/brand image. How can you get conversion rate by planting grass? It’s because of the brand that you can get fresh water.

Of course, if we take a broader perspective, the content is not limited to public account tweets, short videos, and Xiaohongshu notes.

The White Rabbit fragrance series products, White Rabbit milk tea shop, White Rabbit flavored milk... that White Rabbit Milk Candy launched in 2019 are also content seeding products.

Qingfeng Mahjong Tissues, Mayinglong Lipstick, Uniqlo*KAWS UT Series, Zhong Xuegao poured Luzhou Laojiao into Blackout Ice Cream, ROI developed Hero Ink premixed cocktails, and Atour created the Shanghai Animation Film Studio theme hotel room

…

These products are also content seeding.

For these brands, the focus is not on how much sales these cross-border products can achieve, but on allowing consumers to feel the brand’s value and charm through these cross-border products, and making users like and fall in love with the brand.

This is the key to marketing. It is about promoting the brand, not just these limited-edition hit products.

In March 2019, Kindle joked that "cover the Kindle, the noodles are more fragrant", turning itself into a cover for instant noodles in a marketing spree;

In April 2019, Oreo used 2,750 cookies to recreate the iconic opening sequence of Game of Thrones.

In May 2019, BMW filmed a spoof video to pay tribute to Mercedes-Benz CEO Dieter Zetsche’s retirement;

In July 2019, the UnionPay Poetry POS machine spit out poems written by left-behind children;

In August 2019, UnionPay filmed the micro-film "The Last Transfer in Mobei, Tang Dynasty"

…

These contents are also content seeds.

Different from hard-selling advertising, it hides advertising and brand information under various interesting content through topics, poems, micro-movies, viral videos, etc., so as to attract consumers and make users feel good and have good associations with the brand through these contents.

Let’s go back to the beginning of 2019. “What’s Peppa Pig?” and the Cat’s Paw Cup successfully created a screen-sweeping trend at the beginning of the year and set off a marketing circle.

But compared to the long queues for the cat claw cups, "What's Peppa?" did not boost the box office success of the movie "Peppa Pig Celebrates Chinese New Year," which has caused a certain degree of doubt. Is "What's Peppa?" a good content marketing?

To be fair, this is unfair to the content of the micro-film "What's Peppa Pig?"

First, no matter how good the advertising is, sales (box office) ultimately depends on the quality of the product (film);

Secondly, communication indicators rather than sales indicators should be used to evaluate advertising effectiveness.

The communication indicator refers to how much people's attention, interest, and purchasing desire the advertisement attracts. Whether sales can be achieved is a complex decision-making process that is affected by many variables such as products, pricing, channels, terminal promotions, and brand power.

Comparing "What's Peppa Pig" and the cat claw cup, both of them are content seeding but the results are completely different. I think the biggest difference is that Starbucks' brand value and brand image are strong enough to support the conversion brought by the cat claw cup seeding and enhance users' recognition and favorability of the Starbucks brand.

As for "What's Peppa?", the brand power of the film "Peppa Pig Celebrates the New Year" is too weak, and the brand power of Peppa the IP and the cartoon "Peppa Pig" is too weak.

"What's Peppa?" obviously planted the seeds of the "Peppa Pig" cartoon in the minds of users, but failed to successfully plant the seeds of the "Peppa Pig Celebrates Chinese New Year" film.

If you want content promotion to be successful, the best driving force is brand value, not internet celebrities or KOLs.

The company's own brand power is not strong enough, but it puts all its hopes on content promotion, imagining that it will become popular by finding the second Li (Li Jiaqi and Li Ziqi) to do a live broadcast. This kind of marketing idea will not work.

In 2019, Simon Peel, global media director of Adidas, admitted that "Adidas has over-invested in digital and performance media at the expense of brand building."

What is the proportion of over-investment? The figure given by Adidas is 77%, which means 77% of the marketing budget is spent on digital and performance media. In fact, I know that many big brands allocate their marketing budgets in a similar proportion.

However, even Adidas, a company with such strong brand power, still reflects on its excessive effect investment and insufficient brand building. So how many companies have the confidence to claim that their brand power is strong enough?

If your brand value/brand image is insufficient, but you spend all your energy and budget on performance advertising, relying on discounts and offers to create clicks and conversions, and relying on special offers to sell products through live broadcasts, then it is hard to say that this is a sustainable way of growth.

The growth of effectiveness must be based on the brand. Without content planting and performance advertising with brand power, its conversion rate cannot be high and cannot be sustained.

Therefore, for content seeding, the most critical growth factor lies in brand value/brand image.

3. User-operated

The third way of growth besides advertising exposure and content seeding is user operation.

The user operation growth formula is called "profit fission + gamification design + social platform".

Interest fission is easy to understand. It is to acquire customers by providing benefits to consumers. For example, Didi in the early years and Luckin Coffee two years ago.

In order to maximize the customer acquisition effect of this type of interest subsidy, merchants usually introduce social mechanisms and add gamification elements. This is gamification design.

For example, Didi sends red envelopes to friends, Luckin Coffee “sends red envelopes to friends for free and each gets a cup”, and Pinduoduo “asks friends to cut down the price”.

The most common gamification elements are PBL, points, badges, and leaderboards. Last year’s Tmall Building Challenge on Double Eleven combined the use of points and leaderboards. By setting building levels, you can compete with others and thus attract more people to help you build the building.

In order to form social fission, of course you have to use a social platform, which is basically WeChat. This is the user-operated growth strategy, "profit fission + gamification design + social platform".

But in this gameplay, first of all, you will find that the representative cases are all RMB players. Whether it is Didi, Luckin Coffee, Pinduoduo, or Tmall, they are all extremely crazy when it comes to subsidies, with subsidies of hundreds of billions at every turn.

If you don’t want to spend money, you have to spend time. In addition to these kryptonian gold players who spend money lavishly, user operations in the eyes of ordinary merchants, "fission growth", "private domain traffic" and "traffic pool" eventually turned into self-media articles, using personal WeChat accounts to add a large number of user friends, and then forming groups to carry out fission, transactions and other user operations activities.

Secondly, the fission gameplay is extremely dependent on social platforms, which depends on the mood of WeChat. Apps like Pinduoduo and Didi, which are having a lot of fun playing with fission on WeChat, are both invested by Tencent. WeChat Reading, which requires you to share with friends and friends circles every day to get unlimited cards, is even more of a favorite of WeChat.

In addition, even Alipay’s recent lucky draw event will be blocked by WeChat without hesitation.

WeChat released policies continuously in 2019. On July 2, 2019, WeChat banned group control plug-ins such as opening multiple WeChat accounts, adding friends in batches, posting to Moments with one click, scheduled group messages, and automatic chats. It is said that 30 million WeChat accounts were banned overnight.

Another time was on October 18, 2019, when WeChat issued the "WeChat External Link Content Management Specifications" to crack down on external links that induce sharing, downloading, and forwarding.

Under the official WeChat's continued crackdown on gray and black industries, although "official account + personal account + WeChat group + mini program" is a complete ecological system, the official account posts to attract fans, the personal account adds user friends for one-on-one communication, the WeChat group realizes transactions and conducts fission activities, and the mini program becomes an e-commerce platform, but the efficiency and effect are obviously difficult to satisfy people.

The cost of acquiring customers is getting higher and higher, and fission is becoming more and more difficult, so the AARRR growth model was born in the industry. After Acquisition, there are four major user behavior data that need to be paid attention to and optimized: Activation, Retention, Revenue, and Referral.

Because if you only attract customers through free services or subsidies, you will attract a group of price-sensitive users. Once the subsidies disappear or simply decline, the price-sensitive users will immediately leave. This is obviously not cost-effective today when traffic is becoming more and more expensive and customer acquisition costs are getting higher and higher.

If you want to turn price-sensitive users into loyal users of the company, how to go from customer acquisition to retention becomes the center and key of user operations.

The solution to this problem is obviously to create brand resonance and value recognition. Only after users identify with your brand will they be willing to stay and become your loyal users.

Therefore, for user operations, the most critical growth factor lies in brand recognition.

To sum up, whether it is advertising exposure, content seeding, or user operation, the key to growth lies in the brand, brand recognition, brand value/brand image, and brand identity. Brand is the accelerator of enterprise growth.

When the wind is blowing, even pigs can fly. But when the wind stops, we can see that only those companies with truly strong brands can survive the cold and continue to evolve. When the economic situation is bad and corporate budgets are insufficient, the brand operation capabilities of companies are put to an even greater test.

Live streaming sales, private domain traffic, KOLKOC are just temporary marketing techniques for companies, while brand building is the long-term way to growth.

If the situation is not right and the way is unclear, and you just blindly rely on and focus on techniques, then you are undoubtedly missing the forest for the trees and picking up sesame seeds while losing watermelons.

Author: Empty-handed

Source: Empty-handed