To transform from advertising planning to e-commerce marketing planning, do these 3 things!

Nowadays, e-commerce platforms led by Tmall are no longer satisfied with the previous promotional methods of attracting people to bargain/group buy; instead, they need more and more innovative off-site social (social marketing) and digital (digital marketing) methods. How can those who work in social and digital industries do a good job in e-commerce marketing planning ? This article shares three suggestions for transitioning from traditional advertising planning to e-commerce marketing planning.

First, let me talk about the starting point of writing this article:

Nowadays, e-commerce platforms led by Tmall are becoming more and more adept at marketing. They are no longer satisfied with the old promotional methods of attracting people to bargain/group buy. Instead, they need more and more innovative off-site social (social marketing) and digital (digital marketing) methods.

This trend has become increasingly evident as e-commerce platforms have upgraded brand flagship stores to become consumer operation bases.

In theory, this is undoubtedly a good thing for some social and digital advertising companies: they can now have a bigger stage to showcase their expertise. But the result is that the e-commerce marketing plans written by these companies that are good at social and digital advertising are often fed back as: not e-commerce enough!

I am often asked by some friends who work as planners in creative hot shops and advertising companies: How should an e-commerce marketing plan be written? How can I make my current plan more e-commerce?

This is actually a contradiction: e-commerce platform marketing clearly requires social and digital methods. These social and digital advertising companies obviously have experience and can come up with many interesting and creative ways of playing. But the supply and demand relationship between the two is difficult to match.

Why?

The reason is simple: information asymmetry between industries.

So, next, I will act as a "middleman" and talk about: How can those who work in social and digital industries do good e-commerce marketing planning?

I hope this can be of some reference value to friends who have related confusion.

1. Think about how to seamlessly connect “what to spread” and “what to sell”

This is actually what I think is the most lacking part in the e-commerce marketing plans written by social and digital advertising companies.

I have seen many plans of this kind, which include eye-catching social topics, fun interactive H5 ideas, and flash event ideas with internet celebrity qualities; but I just can't see how these plans will be taken over by the e-commerce site after they are completed.

In short: it’s very interesting in terms of communication, but there is no mention of the product. This will cause problems because in an e-commerce environment, the ultimate goal is to sell goods.

Let me expand on this topic. Isn’t it said now: “Product and effect integration”, or even “Product and sales integration”?

Of course, there are also many people who say that this is a false proposition and it is impossible to achieve both at the same time. But I think there is an opportunity. This opportunity lies in whether we can take on the core message of brand communication in product creativity and create a seamless connection between the two. If the concept of emptiness is too abstract, we can give some examples.

For example: Oreo is on Super Product Day on Tmall these days.

In recent years, the brand image that Oreo has been trying hard to create is that of a very playful cookie, so we can see that it has a series of brilliant ways of communication while maintaining a consistent main theme. From being the first company in China to make customized Oreo colorful coloring packaging, to making biscuit music gift boxes for several consecutive years, to building a Forbidden City with biscuits, to this year's collaboration with Jay Chou, to the series of time travel exhibitions built with biscuits to pay tribute to youth classics.

More importantly, Oreo really uses product creativity to carry forward its communication strategy. Some even directly use product creativity to reversely drive what the communication side should do.

For consumers, this allows them to get a clear image of the brand through a complete shopping experience, thereby increasing their awareness and favorability of the brand.

A case similar to Oreo is Kindle's marketing actions in the past one or two years. Ever since it opened up the "Ren and Du meridians" of official marketing with the slogan "Kindle covers are more fragrant" last year, the brand seems to have begun to liberate its nature. This year, we launched a three-piece bed set under the Kindle brand. The official took over the title of "sleep aid" and launched the theme of "People who read have dreams to pursue."

In my opinion, these two campaigns are good attempts by Kindle to integrate brand and effect.

Therefore, when doing e-commerce marketing planning, the principle I advocate is: first see if there are any ready-made hot products this time. The so-called "hot products" are products that come with their own topics.

If so, you can reversely output creative methods for communication based on the top products themselves; if not, you can first think about the content for communication, but it must be followed by the products or experience methods on the e-commerce side.

Product creativity can be special gift boxes and gifts that combine external creativity, such as Oreo's music gift box, the fingertip skateboard gift box launched by G-SHOCK on this year's Super Product Day that left a deep impression on me, as well as various celebrity, IP joint, and brand cross-border gift boxes.

If there are really no cutting-edge products, and you can’t think of any special products that can carry on the creativity, or the brand simply does not have the budget or time to produce, then there is another trick, which is to carry on the creativity of the communication end in the e-commerce shopping experience.

For example, Tmall International has run a creative campaign called “Slacking Off at Work”, which really turned the e-commerce page into an interface for various office workers to work on. For example, receiving emails with Outlook, pulling data with Excel, searching for pictures on the material website, and online programming by coders. There are also creative ideas that keep the shopping experience consistent with the communication end, such as: Vatti’s “If France wins the championship, Vatti will refund the full amount”, gxg.jeans’ “Free bill if it rains”, and letting celebrities serve as customer service staff for a day and draw lucky consumers’ replies, etc.

To sum up, the first step to good e-commerce marketing planning is to seamlessly connect "what to spread" and "what to sell". "What to sell" can be approached from two levels: goods or shopping experience.

2. Building a vertical consumer AIPL circulation chain

Traditionally, when we do social and digital, we first have a BIG IDEA, and then based on this BIG IDEA, we extend it to what social communication can do, what H5 can do, what offline activities can do, what PR can do...

What is presented is a horizontal 360-degree integrated marketing experience.

But have you ever thought about it?

The marketing efficiency under this kind of thinking is relatively low. This is because many links may just be repetitive in terms of awareness and engagement, but not the subsequent shopping links; or people who are still in the awareness stage may jump directly to purchase. It is obvious that the loss rate in the middle is too high, and the e-commerce conversion effect is relatively poor.

What should I do?

At this time, we are required to use the vertical consumer AIPL circulation link to replace the horizontal 360-degree integrated marketing experience to plan every marketing link.

For example, this link is to convert potential industry groups into brand A groups, and another link is to convert A groups into I groups, and then through other content, I groups are converted into P groups...

According to the current status of brand population data and corresponding marketing goals, the brand can focus on a certain link. The ultimate effect is to make each execution link targeted, thereby promoting the flow of consumer groups in the future.

Therefore, when doing e-commerce marketing planning, it is recommended to first clarify the crowd operation goals of this campaign based on the current problems in the brand crowd link.

For example: Based on the analysis of the data bank, the problem of too low turnover rate from "I population" to "P population" in the link indicates that the store currently lacks a sales conversion mechanism.

The approach is to first divide the "I population" into different groups based on labels. Some of them may be sensitive to promotional discounts, so you can use Diamond Ads to push store discount information to them; some are attracted by celebrity activities, so perhaps you can use some celebrity-related products to attract them to make the next purchase.

In general, it is recommended that when doing e-commerce marketing planning, you can draw an AIPL link flow diagram similar to the one below; first based on the crowd operation goals, and then correspond each marketing link into the table.

3. Cater to e-commerce platforms without changing the original intention of the brand

I have read many plans written by social and digital advertising companies, and the feedback I got from the waiters was: What does this have to do with my platform?

This is the third point we want to talk about: when doing e-commerce marketing planning, you must consider how to cater to the e-commerce platform and play together.

Why play along with it?

The reason is very simple, it’s resource exchange! Since the brand has invested resources in e-commerce marketing campaigns, it certainly hopes to get some resources from the platform. You can even compete with marketing IP activities such as Super Brand Day, Gathering Day, and Little Black Box.

So, how can we cater to the e-commerce platforms and play together?

I think there are three directions to approach, and you can choose one based on the brand’s own situation.

1. “Drainage type”

That is, various media resources, such as KOL and hard advertisements, all carry links to e-commerce platforms; or various offline flash events, video end pages, and posters all carry the joint logo of the brand and e-commerce platform.

This is the easiest to think of, but also the most necessary.

Many times when we receive feedback that “it has nothing to do with e-commerce platforms”, it is actually because these factors are not reflected in the plan, or are not prominent enough to be seen.

2. “Trend type”

That is, at different stages, there will be a trend of e-commerce platforms being the main pushers. If brands seize the dividends of these trends, they will naturally be able to obtain some resources from the platform.

For example, around this time last year, Tmall was vigorously promoting store-run live broadcasts. Some brands seized this bonus and started store live broadcasts lasting several hours a day, which earned them a lot of free live broadcast recommendation traffic at the time.

Now that every brand is doing live streaming, this bonus has naturally disappeared.

Is there still any bonus for live streaming now?

Yes, I mentioned in a previous article titled "There will be these small trends in live streaming e-commerce" that virtual anchors and various technical live streaming services may be the dividends of the next stage.

3. “Co-creation”

That is, brands and e-commerce platforms can jointly create and disseminate content or some topical products.

The "co-creation" here is not like the first direction, where having a joint logo means co-creation, but it is truly tailor-made.

Let me give you a textbook example of how to cater to e-commerce platforms.

During the Tmall Super Brand Day some time ago, Decathlon made a short video called "Alibaba Sports Academy", which brought together the mascots of all Alibaba members: Tmall, Cainiao, Xianyu, Qianniu, Fliggy, Xiami, Shenma, etc., and used cartoon animation to make them move in the "Sports Academy" created by Decathlon.

This case is probably an example for subsequent merchants: What is content co-creation?

That's it!

Of course, I personally feel that all these tricks to cater to e-commerce platforms have a prerequisite, which is: not changing the original intention of the brand.

This "original intention" includes both adhering to the brand's original proposition and tone, and not increasing the brand's established resource investment.

After all, a forced melon is not sweet!

IV. Conclusion

In the future, marketing in the e-commerce platform environment will definitely require more fun and creative ways of playing that the younger generation of consumers will find interesting.

If social and digital advertising companies want to seize this opportunity, it is very important to increase their understanding of e-commerce marketing on the basis of their original skill advantages.

This article discusses three points, including the transformation from traditional advertising planning to e-commerce marketing planning.

1. The key is to seamlessly connect "what to spread" and "what to sell" and create products or shopping experiences that can support the dissemination end.
2. Build a vertical consumer AIPL circulation chain, rather than a horizontal 360-degree integrated marketing experience, to improve marketing efficiency;
3. Without changing the original intention of the brand, we cater to the e-commerce platforms and play together, including three directions: "traffic-generating", "trend-oriented" and "co-creation".

Hope it helps you!

Author: Pulang

Source: Planner (ID: planner2333)