Learn these 4 tricks and do marketing as well as Durex!

2. Find the leverage point

The reason why hot spots can explode is that they must have tremendous energy, but the energy does not come from just one point. Each brand/product can find a suitable point of leverage according to its needs. Therefore, after finding the opportunity to leverage the momentum, you must find the leverage point. The following are common leverage points:

1. Leverage the hot product itself

There is a mindset in companies that they develop and sell their own products. But there is nothing certain, necessary or necessary in the world. From R&D to R&D, the company's products can also be developed using the principle of "taking what is useful" to take advantage of the situation.

Xibei Oat Noodles takes advantage of “A Bite of China”: After “A Bite of China 1” became popular, many companies took advantage of the momentum, and the one that played it the best was the Xibei Oat Noodles chain restaurant brand.

Xibei signed a contract with Huang Laohan, the host of “A Bite of China”, for its yellow steamed buns. After signing the contract, Huang Laohan was not only the spokesperson for Xibei oat noodles, but also served as the technical guide for the company’s branches across the country, making the Xibei brand popular overnight and achieving sales of 30 million. After the broadcast of "A Bite of China 2", Xibei once again launched marketing by leveraging the momentum, spending 6 million to buy out "A Bite of China 2" Zhang Yeye's handmade hollow noodles, and announced a sales plan of at least 100 million yuan a year.

2. Leverage hot channels

Each industry has its own specific sales channels, such as the supermarket system and e-commerce network for daily necessities, and the pharmacy and hospital system for medicines. However, if you can cleverly borrow the channels of other companies or industries, you can achieve the miraculous effect of surpassing the industry leader.

• Kingsoft Antivirus Software relies on installed software: In the era when antivirus software was still "packaged in boxes and sold through software agents", Kingsoft Antivirus Software could only be left far behind by industry leaders such as Rising. It was basically an impossible task to surpass Rising through distribution channels. Kingsoft then integrated its product with popular software such as Thunder , which was a must-have for computers. This strategy of leveraging the momentum enabled Kingsoft's sales to grow rapidly by 2 to 3 times, with sales soaring from 30 million to 200 million.
• WeChat Pay takes advantage of the rapidly rising momentum of Didi Taxi : Before the launch of WeChat Pay, Alipay was definitely the No.1 mobile payment. While WeChat is using its own channels such as games and red envelopes to promote WeChat Pay, it has also begun to plan cooperation with mobile APP platforms. Among them, the introduction of WeChat payment platform by Didi Chuxing, which is invested by Tencent, has become an important step in its channel layout. As the subsidy war between Didi and Kuaidi intensifies, WeChat payment has also entered people's mobile payment candidate list with the rapid rise of Didi.

3. Leverage consumer purchasing behavior

Consumers' purchasing behavior and purchasing habits themselves also contain huge potential energy. Seemingly unrelated products can be combined into huge marketing potential through the clever combination of marketers.

• Diapers leverage beer's momentum: Walmart once discovered a very strange phenomenon when analyzing store sales data: the sales growth rates of diapers and beer were extremely similar. They did a lot of analysis and investigation, and finally found that many young fathers who were sent out by their wives to buy diapers for their children all had the habit of drinking beer. Every time I would buy some beer to take home. So the store simply displayed the two products together. Completely convenient for consumers to purchase.
• Durex and chocolate (or flowers) are a perfect match: On Valentine's Day, flowers and chocolate are the most common gifts given by people, but Valentine's Day is also a high-consumption node for condoms, so if the three can be placed together at the sales terminal, the possibility of consumers buying all three together will increase greatly, thus forming a sales opportunity leveraging on special nodes.
• Relocation of the British Library: The British Library was faced with the task of moving to a new location, but the library's funds were tight and not enough to pay for the high cost of moving books. Therefore, the administrator came up with a solution. From now on, the British Library will lend books to citizens for free and in unlimited quantities, on the condition that the books are borrowed from the old library and returned to the new library. In this way, the librarian successfully moved the books from the old library to the new library without spending a penny.

4. Leverage key landmarks/key words

This is the most commonly used method of leveraging marketing, using the key symbols/key words of hot people and events to promote your own products. This is an even more important method when it comes to portrait/logo/copyright issues.

(1) Durex took advantage of Liu Xiang’s retirement

(2) Durex and “Body Hollowed Out by Shanghai Rainbow Choir”

5. Brands leveraging hot industries/events

There are two common possibilities for leveraging other industry brands. The first possibility is: a certain industry has a very obvious upward momentum and is highly concerned by the public, and the company's own products can also be found to have some relevance to the industry. The second possibility is: the portrait rights of stars, celebrities, and athletes, the right to use the emblems of important events such as the Olympics, the copyright of publications, etc. are not so easy to obtain, but companies want to seize these celebrities and hot events. In addition to the clever use of landmarks/key words mentioned in item 4), another way is to carry another brand that has the right to use them.

Baidu cleverly used Coca-Cola to carry the Olympic topic:

6. Leverage competitor promotional materials

The story of "Borrowing Arrows from a Thatched Boat" is widely circulated in China. This is a very classic example of leveraging the power of a competitor. Competitors can also use each other's market behavior to carry out their own marketing activities.

Mercedes-Benz and BMW leverage each other's strengths: Mercedes-Benz - the general riding on the horse (a metaphor for BMW), the copywriting is "pass 5 levels, kill 6 generals", "both civil and military" (a metaphor for their excellent driving and riding performance). BMW - the same picture, but the text was changed to "Big E loses Jingzhou, losing E means losing Maicheng" (a metaphor for the Mercedes-Benz E series) and "No BMW, no hero". By teasing and hyping each other in this way, the key points of consumers are concentrated on them, and then other car companies also join the ranks of squeezing each other out.

In new product launch promotion activities, the method of "benchmarking competitors with high market sales" is often used for comparative promotion.

3. Form an association with your own products

We often see some companies making these mistakes in their leverage activities:

Mistake 1: Taking advantage of the momentum for the sake of taking advantage of the momentum, simply changing the copy and logo of someone else's poster. In fact, even if the copy is modified, the connection between the event and the company may still be too far-fetched, which will make consumers feel "unreliable", and therefore will not have a positive marketing effect.

For example: When Kobe Bryant retired, a Chinese medicine product called Hercules Pills took advantage of the situation with a poster - Kobe Bryant got up at 5 a.m. every day to train in high spirits, all because he took XX Hercules Pills (this example is purely the author's YY). Do you think consumers will believe this kind of poster? Although the above statement is a joke, it is common in marketing by leveraging momentum.

Mistake 2: The company did not consider its own actual situation. Well-known brands only need to leverage the brand imprint to play a role in market promotion, but unknown brands still need to demonstrate their product attributes and product advantages in order to root the brand anchor in the minds of consumers, otherwise it will only become a passing cloud.

Only by combining the actual situation of your own brand/product (such as market position, consumer impression, etc.) and forming a strong correlation between the leverage points of hot events (people, etc.) and your own brand/product can you truly achieve the effect of leveraging the power of others and achieving the desired effect with little effort. Common examples of chain hanging methods are as follows:

1. Introduction: The "leveraging products, leveraging channels, leveraging purchasing behavior" mentioned above are actually all concepts of introduction, introducing other products, channels, and consumers into one's own product system, thereby generating new attention and increasing new sources of consumers/users.
2. Contrast: The "competitors" mentioned above used the technique of contrast to cleverly direct the hot events of competition toward themselves.
3. Metaphor: This technique is often used to "leverage other brands, key symbols/key words". Use metaphors to link the leverage point with your own products.

Others - There are many other ways to leverage momentum, such as association, commonality, metaphor (other metaphors besides contrast and metaphor)..., choose more targeted methods of leveraging momentum according to different points of leverage.

For example, Durex uses the metaphor of the festival (February 2) to

4. Master the rhythm of leveraging momentum

Each product has its own fixed industry attributes, and each industry category also has different marketing strategies due to its inherent characteristics. Marketing by leveraging trends does not mean that you have to chase after hot topics. Marketers must formulate and grasp the rhythm of leveraging trends based on the attributes of their own industry. Otherwise, doing too many marketing by leveraging trends will only waste manpower, material resources and financial resources.

1. Fast Moving Consumer Goods: Maintaining Continuous Brand Attention

Fast-moving consumer goods are high-frequency, low-priced, and highly homogeneous. Consumers have obvious emotional and instant consumption characteristics when purchasing, which leads to low brand loyalty of fast-moving consumer goods. Therefore, brands need to maintain high activity so that consumers can associate the brand with the brand when purchasing, so as to make instant purchasing decisions. If a consumer laughs out loud because of a message from Okamoto a few minutes before buying condoms on the night of Chinese Valentine's Day, the possibility of him buying Okamoto will increase significantly.

2. Durable goods: Find out the product’s problems during the consumer’s purchase decision process, and then choose the way and rhythm to leverage the situation

Durable goods are low-frequency, high-priced, and highly homogeneous. Consumers’ purchasing decisions are rational and the decision-making cycle is long, which means that every link in the entire purchasing decision-making process of consumers is very important. Any slight mistake will lead to consumers being eliminated. In the durable goods market, companies need to carefully plan their marketing activities at every stage of consumer purchasing decisions. Therefore, their marketing activities will not be very frequent, but they will be very effective.

3. Catering: Focusing on "implanting the characteristics of food into consumers' impressions" as the core element of leveraging

Excellent catering brands are all low in homogeneity, and whether the food has absolute characteristics is the key to the success or failure of the brand; and the food must change from time to time to attract people to continue to come to the restaurant, otherwise consumers will turn to other catering stores driven by human instinct to get tired of the old and love the new. Therefore, in the process of brand building, only social hot spots related to one’s own characteristics and business policies are worth pursuing, otherwise just give up.

4. Internet: Find the problem points in " attracting new customers ...monetization...recommendation", and then choose the way and rhythm to take advantage of the situation

The Internet is a fast-growing and fast-changing industry. How to seize the opportunity and quickly become No. 1 in the industry has become the key to the survival of the product. The operation of the Internet industry emphasizes "attracting new users, promoting activation, retention , monetization, recommendation..." Only if the routine is played well will users be deeply trapped. Otherwise, consumers will quickly and ruthlessly abandon the product. Therefore, how to leverage social hot spots to achieve "attracting new customers, promoting activation, retaining customers, monetizing, recommending..." for products has become the key to leveraging the momentum for the Internet industry.

Summarize

There are two points to emphasize when doing a good job of leveraging marketing activities:

1. Leverage marketing can not only promote brand/product awareness, but also have an all-round effect on "products, channels", etc. Therefore, the correct answer is to select hot events in a targeted manner and design marketing activities that leverage the characteristics of your own products and industry attributes!
2. Leveraging marketing is not just about following the trend and making a poster, it can also be done through integrated marketing methods. However, this requires rapid response and integration capabilities during the "start-up period" (first 12 hours) and "golden period" (last 2 hours) before the incident occurs.

By cleverly leveraging the momentum, a tornado-like marketing wave will sweep across China, allowing companies and products to soar to success. Otherwise, it will be drowned in the hot events and the dust of following trends.

However, we cannot expect that a single leveraging of momentum will have a thunderous effect. Marketers also need to gradually find the most suitable leveraging marketing method for their products in the process of continuous honing and refinement.

Come on, marketers, let’s create “thunderous” marketing campaigns that will sweep across the country like a tornado!