How did Yingke conduct marketing in its early days?

Yesterday I was browsing Zhihu and saw a question called "How did Inke promote itself in the early days?" I wanted to answer it seriously, but later I found out that it seemed to be a group-based approach to boost likes or something. I spent a long time writing the answer, but I still think I should find a place to post it. It has nothing to do with interests, no exaggeration or slander, and no money is collected.

Below is the original answer.

The poster asked four questions: 1. Acquisition of cold start anchors 2. Promotion of brand image and product features 3. Acquisition of viewing users and wealthy users 4. Self-propagation planning on social platforms. The second question falls within the scope of my work. I have also studied it before, so I will try to answer it.

In my opinion, there are three main points worth mentioning about Inke’s ability to be the first to stand out from the mobile live streaming platforms in early 2016 from a market perspective.

1. They are rich.
2. People dare to spend money.
3. They spend their money wisely.
Does it look like three nonsense sentences? Okay, let me explain them one by one.

1. They are rich <br />Two weeks ago, I attended Zhuang Dada’s live broadcast on live streaming , where many people mentioned Inke, which is currently very popular. Zhuang Dada said that having money is really a core capital of people's strength. I don’t know why the venture capital circle chose Yingke among many mobile live broadcasts and gave it so much money. You can see the specific amount of money received in the public relations release. Judging from the scale of Inke’s advertising at the beginning of the year, the cost of advertising production and placement alone should be in the tens of millions, not to mention the appearance fees for the Korean group Uniq to shoot the commercial and the costs of collaborating with Bigbang.

2. They dare to spend money <br />Yingke’s management team must be one of those that make more radical decisions. In my memory, the market environment at the beginning of the year was really not very good. Everyone was talking about the capital winter, and no company dared to take too big a step. In the field of mobile live streaming, although 17 was very popular for a while, it soon declined due to various reasons. At that time, Yingke dared to spend tens of millions on marketing, which must be said to be quite courageous. Of course, there is another aspect. They should have a better idea of ​​the market and user needs at the time, and knew that spending this money would not make too much of a difference. This will be mentioned later.

Regarding market investment, the principle I agree with is that you should never have a drizzle in the whole city. If you have to rain, have local heavy rain. Of course, it would be better if it could rain heavily in the whole city. For the kind of investment where the ground is not even wet after a rain, basically all the money is wasted. Judging from its subsequent marketing strategy, Yingke should think the same.

At that time, there was another top-ranked mobile live streaming software, which I won’t name. I was hesitant and hadn’t decided whether it was the right time to invest the money to attract users. In the end, it seemed to have just invested in a few offline advertisements in the waiting room at the entrance of its own company, and then nothing happened. Recently, seeing that Inke was so popular, I was also stepping up my investment. But as Li Jiaoshou always teaches us, in a brand new field, once a company occupies the minds of users first, the customer acquisition cost for the followers that follow will be estimated to be many times higher. Well, wait and see...

3. They spend their money wisely

Many people must have seen Inke’s video ads, all kinds of different ads. Just like the videos below!

GMIC Yingke App second sister Alice promotional video:

The video above is an advertisement shot from the anchor’s perspective.

In addition to this, there are many other advertisements, with boring pictures as the main theme.

One was shot by Uniq, it was lively and the VO only had one sentence: live broadcast, on the Yingke App. No more words.

The URL of the Inke video ad is as follows (copy the URL to your browser ):

http://www.iqiyi.com/v_19rrkwr860.html

The one I watch more often is another one, from the 60s.

Inke video ad address (copy the address to view in the browser):

http://www.iqiyi.com/w_19rtblzfld.html

The last three scenes are put together, VO, "Reflecting this moment, I am Yingke. Watch live broadcasts and play live broadcasts on the Yingke App."

The entire story structure, including the text , except for the interpretation part in the middle, conveys the whole message very clearly.

"If you're bored, watch live streaming." This sentence gives users a typical scenario for using the product. "In this moment, I am Yingke." This sentence reinforces the brand message. "Watch and play live streaming on the Yingke App." This sentence is the final reinforcement of the product function - whether you are watching other people's live streaming or doing your own live streaming, you can come to Yingke. There is basically no nonsense.

During the same period, a short video community also launched pre-movie advertisements in cinemas. Let’s take a look at them. I personally feel that it is more interesting, but the message it conveys is not clear enough and the film looks a bit messy.

Jia Nailiang Miaopai and Xiaokaxiu -TVC advertisement:

Let’s look at another one from the 60s:

Which one do you prefer?

As for the distribution channels, I remember seeing large-scale pre-movie advertisements in cinemas and pre-video features.

The benefits of pre-screening at the cinema are :

1. A relatively precise group of people can be identified through fixed-investment movies .

In fact, it is the same logic as posting a package of dramas before the video.

2. The effect of "forcing users to watch" in movie theaters is far better than other video platforms .

After all, the lights go out in the few minutes before the movie starts, and if you sit there playing with your phone, it will disturb others. Normally, you will watch the commercials together with the people watching the movie with you.

3. I wrote in a previous answer that in the scene in the cinema, the cars , luxury goods, and entertainment products, the presentation on the big screen, and the audio and video effects are really incomparable to other video platforms .

In recent years, Internet companies have shifted their advertising battlefield back to offline and started to pay more attention to the power of offline media, which does make sense.

Oh, I have strayed off topic. What is worth mentioning about the pre-roll advertisement of Inke video is that it has a lot of interactive packaging frames. While watching the advertisement, you can click on the page to get Bigbang concert tickets, etc. It is said that the interactive effect is very good. I won’t go into details about how to vote, but you can imagine how it will be voted based on the crowd.

The next big market move by Yingke was to sign a contract for the live broadcast of the finals of I Am a Singer (I forgot whether it was exclusive or not). Of course, at that time, Yingke was already well-known in the field of mobile live broadcasting, so the synergy between the cooperation with I Am a Singer would be greater. I prefer the order of first placing advertisements to increase brand awareness, and then cooperating with large-scale brands to leverage each other's strengths. I think if the order were reversed, it might be able to gain some popularity, but it would definitely not be better than the current effect.

That’s about it.

For mobile live streaming platforms, in the future, no, in fact it has already happened, they will definitely move towards a stage of homogenization. Differentiated platform positioning and content are the foundation for the platform to survive. However, in terms of the first battle of early promotion, Yingke fought resolutely and beautifully.

Welcome to discuss, thank you for watching.