Brand Marketing

Readers often ask me privately: how to control the progress of products and marketing operations? If the product is not perfect and rich, should the marketing operation be carried out to the end? How to carry it through? What's the connection between them? At work, we will often encounter such a situation. Each company's departmental structure is different, the division of functions is different, and there are many synergies and overlaps between * * * events. For example, in manufacturing, the prototype of product polishing is still taking shape, or the product structure is single. Can product marketing and brand operation be covered with high intensity, or should we wait until the product is mature before considering profit? For example, Internet companies will have user portraits, data mining, analysis, early warning, research, return visits to old users, questionnaires, CRM construction, website construction and so on. Who will do it? Even the division of labor of each company is different. All along, the accepted view is to do a good job of products before talking about brands. Products are the foundation of everything. This view must be acknowledged, but if we only follow this principle, 90% of startups will go bankrupt. After all, product imperfection is the norm in most companies. At the scope of work, there is no need to worry about who a job belongs to, because the boss has the final say. I suggest you have a professional manager's mentality: do your own job first, try to help others when working together, and be responsible for the final result of things. In any company, operations, marketing and products (R&D) are responsible for user retention, online number and income. Let's talk about the conclusion at the conceptual level: different industries have different definitions of "product manager"; The concept of "marketing" has different scope in different industries; "Operation" is a concept subdivided later due to refined division of labor; For such companies, how to make a good brand when the products are not perfect? To sum up from the product point of view: 1 products can be imperfect, but there are many ways to have bright spots, which can be the selling points of physical attributes. The same product is better than others' formula; The same price is better than other people's materials, and so on; It can also be a bright spot in the product story. For example, the founder is a senior backpacker and has been to dozens of countries. Although the products are the same as travel agencies, they are all screened out by the founders' personal experience. Does it sound more experienced? For example, the product has been used by star users, such as the same model used by a popular star when traveling. Can this product be sold more expensive? Or the products have been invested by well-known institutions, and even the products that the investment institutions are optimistic about are not used well; Several methods to refine the highlights of products: 1: Historical witness time is the best witness. If a product or a brand has a long history, the persuasiveness can be imagined. Once, Ye Maozhong planted a kind of tea in Guizhou. When he learned about the product, he found that this kind of tea was praised by Grandpa Mao himself. Because in the past few decades, the contents of the original letter have been lost. After a lot of investigation, the contents and notes of the letter were recovered. With a letter from Grandpa Mao, this kind of tea became an instant hit. 2. Celebrity aura celebrity effect is really not low, such as: XXX program, XXX celebrity endorsement, XXX big coffee. Like many people, they try to get along with celebrities. There is an online celebrity who can't remember his name. He took photos with stars at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport every day, which made him popular. What if SMEs don't have that much money? Then, build it with industry-related celebrities. Even a photo can add persuasiveness. 3. comparison of others this is a technique used in many industries, but it is the first place compared with competitors. For example, during World War II, Coca-Cola caught the demand of American soldiers who didn't want to fight and missed their hometown. So advertisements encourage them to think of home and cater to them when they see Coca-Cola on the battlefield. Later, Pepsi followed in an unusual way. Grasping the anti-war needs of young people, the choice of a new generation, and after a slogan came out, it narrowed the distance with Coca-Cola. There is also the advertising copy of Xiao Huangche, "Riding can be easier", which is compared with peers. 4. Functional effect method No matter how many functions your product has, you can synthesize a bright spot. For example: a skin care product, whitening and hydrating are each a function. Safety is the most worrying issue for women, and it is also a function. In the final analysis, what your product can bring to consumers and solve. Taking skin care products as an example, it solves the whitening problem for women, brings self-confidence, is more confident in front of girlfriends, and is more attractive to the opposite sex. 5. Self-comparison Compare your past with your present. Many mobile phones like to compare the present with the past. Because the products are too homogeneous, it is difficult to survive without upgrading. For example, efficacy upgrade, packaging upgrade, service upgrade and configuration upgrade can all be compared. For loyal users in the past, it is also easy to buy many highlights. It doesn't seem to have a strong connection with the product, but you should know that every highlight is the basis for users to pay the bill and a good basis for communication. But being a brand also has a bright spot, that is, not making a good product. After all, no matter what industry you are in, it is impossible to create bright spots when products are useless, and it is unrealistic to expect marketing to solve problems. Products must have the ability to solve problems. If the bright spot is the premise of product attention, then the ability to solve problems is the premise of ensuring product sales. The birth of every product is inevitably accompanied by demand, whether it is real demand or false demand. Solving some needs of current users is the value of products. With the ability to solve a certain problem, products can be well marketed and branded. For example, the birth of customized tour is aimed at solving the travel needs of high-end users and in-depth tour users in view of the characteristics that traditional travel agencies and group tours are not independent enough and not deep enough; For example, Pinduoduo can become bigger, which really meets people's demands for the extremely low price of e-commerce platform after Taobao's transformation; For example, * * * enjoys the birth of a bicycle. Even if it is criticized as a waste of resources, it cannot be denied that it has solved the last mile travel problem of many commuters. So before you become a brand, think about what problems your product solves. This problem can be holistic or just a small problem solved by a small function, which may be recognized by users. For example, compared with many competing products, perhaps just looking good is enough to impress many users. 3 products should have a clear development direction, bright spots and solve problems, which can be of great help to brand communication and marketing. Long-term planning and progress of products is a long-term means to realize enterprise value. Take apples for example. Now when it comes to Apple and Jobs, we can tell many cases and solutions, and we can tell many stories and details about product manufacturing to show how powerful and great this product is. However, if we go back to the beginning and look at Apple's first-generation mobile phone products from the current perspective, whether it is iPad, iPod or iphone, it is estimated that they will feel weak in function and design experience. What does this example show? It shows that even though a killer function helped Apple to rise rapidly in the past, it did make Apple a product that still made everyone feel strong, because from the beginning, Apple had a clear planning and iterative rhythm for product development, and it was realized step by step, so it was the Apple we know today. Therefore, for most products, no matter whether they are not perfect now or look strong, they still need to grow and progress in the future to win. There are two best ways to maintain product strength and innovation, to maintain product strength and enhance competitiveness. One is to define the product direction and keep iterating, and the other is to keep innovating based on the product. As for innovation, many people will think that it is a project that consumes huge human and financial resources, sometimes it may be, but there are also a few examples of great success with a few changes. Internet products are the most obvious example. In the early years, many foreign Internet giants failed to enter China. Whether it is e-commerce or social products, Ali and Tencent can achieve the final victory. Many people attribute it to localization. In fact, in my opinion, it is essentially product innovation. After all, there are so many imitators in the same period, why only they can succeed? Behind this is the localization innovation of "successful products". Another example is the cold medicine that has been successfully listed-white plus black, eating white tablets during the day and black tablets at night. The cost is not high, but it is a great success. Of course, the premise of this kind of innovation is that you need to have in-depth research and understanding of the industry, and have a deep insight into users and your own products, so that you can know where to innovate, instead of blindly innovating for the sake of innovation. 5. Make clear the essential difference between sales and brands. Finally, talk about sales volume and brand. After all, whether a product is perfect or not is all about selling and building a brand. These two points are essentially different. No matter how bad the product is, it can actually be delivered for sale. As long as you can tap the bright spots and figure out how to sell them quickly and well, you don't even need word of mouth. After all, the core goal of sales is to sell products. However, brands need products to sell to a certain extent, which is a positive effect that products are sold to target customers after polishing, and gradually gain word of mouth and grow up. Therefore, we should demand the quality of products and gradually improve the requirements, so as to do better. It is the final result of corporate vision, mission, product strength, sense of responsibility and other comprehensive factors. Therefore, building a brand for products must not be quick success and instant benefit. In a word, products can be imperfect. As long as we find the bright spots and meet the needs of users, we can get sales. To build the long-term vitality of products, it is necessary to have clear planning and continuous iterative innovation in order to become a successful brand. To sum up from the brand point of view: Having said that, what is brand operation? Brand operation refers to the integration of marketing planning, creativity, communication, new media, merchants/commodities and online &; Offline linkage marketing allows users to form awareness of corporate brands and products. Send products to consumers' hearts, so that users can choose our services when they are entangled in which products to spend resources on. Brand operators influence user behavior through the process of "contact-cognition-cognition-identification". This process includes four aspects: event marketing, social marketing, public relations communication and advertising. Event marketing: a small-scale marketing activity, which caused spontaneous hot discussion and imitation by netizens. For example, last year's Ice Bucket challenged social marketing: viral communication was formed on social platforms such as WeChat, Weibo and Zhihu, and netizens also completed brand interaction as scheduled. PR marketing: dig up news points related to products, attract media attention and take the initiative to play, instead of buying media PR! Advertising: traditional channel purchase, such as subway advertising, TV advertising, DSP advertising and other brand operations should be the most expensive of all operating directions. It will cost millions to put advertisements on Shanghai Metro Lines 2 and 9 in January alone. Event marketing, social marketing, public relations communication and advertising are just means of brand communication, and large companies sometimes outsource these things to professional companies. What kind of brand to deliver and how to do a good job in brand creative packaging are the key to operation. My understanding of brand operation workflow should be as follows: 1 defines the brand image of a product, that is, what kind of product users want it to be. To do this operation, we need to pay attention to the three brand principles mentioned by Professor Li: strategic focus, positioning suitable competitors, and fostering strengths and avoiding weaknesses. For example, car number one is mainly about safety. In order to compete with Uber, crowded waiting time is planned. The mobile APP turns the roulette lottery to let the driver tell you jokes on the spot, conveying the "interesting" brand image of the No.1 car to the users, which violates the two principles of fostering strengths and avoiding weaknesses and strategic focus. 2. Clarify the way of brand image elaboration. Operations need to figure out what users can see to make them perceive the brand. This is a difficult and brain-burning job, which is usually done by several operators brainstorming together. If there is no good idea, you can look for points that can arouse users' curiosity but are not niche. Double Eleven e-commerce shopping, Suning.cn courier riding a horse to send sanitary napkins to a campus activity, female college students renting thighs, sending grounded performance art to protect your brand Tuniu. "There is sand in my heart, what can I ask for?" 3 Subtract all the ideas in the second step of brand image packaging from the brand image to achieve business goals, and select the best image scheme, of course, we should also consider the landing ability. Prepare the materials needed for brand communication for the final adopted scheme. At this stage, it is necessary to make careful preparations by combining four major means of communication: event marketing, social marketing, public relations communication and advertising. Basically, you can see that the brand activities of large Internet companies are all planned and prepared for more than 2 months. 2065438+In August 2004, Didi teamed up with Mercedes-Benz GLASUV to order a special express train for Argentine photographer esteban. After seven days of preparation, on June 20th, a 79.37-meter-long photo was taken along the 32.8-kilometer Second Ring Road in Beijing where modernity and culture coexist, which broke the Guinness World Record and was also reported by CCTV news programs. Didi Chuxing-Didi Hua 50 yuan, refreshing Guinness 5. Good execution is to use the materials prepared in advance to show the brand of the product to users in various forms within a certain period of time. H5 appears on WeChat, your video appears on the video website, and your message is on Weibo. This is also an important criterion to measure the success of brand operation, which is the so-called circle of friends. What the operation must do is to plan the implementation of material delivery in advance. If one channel is successfully detonated, it can speed up the launch of other channels. In the process of "The Force Awakens, Come to Yili" 6, we consciously tap the interactive highlights in brand communication and collect communication data from various channels to facilitate the summary and use of the later resumption. A hard copy needs to contain the following information: scary data (UV, PV, interactive volume, online time, sales volume, customer unit price, sales volume, download volume); KOL's unity (Weibo, WeChat, friends circle); Media reports (TV, paper media, online media); Case studies (Meihua. com, Shuying.com, advertising door), and then it would be even more awesome if you could win an award in the field of communication. KOL, "Wake up the Force and Come to Yili", supports making the information in the communication data that can be released to the outside world into a beautiful long picture like a WeChat red envelope, which is being spread twice, perfect! 20 16 wechat red envelope data about brand operation, finally, I want to talk about an interesting topic based on my experience in the post bar: first-line internet companies have marketing public relations departments, whose main job is brand communication. What is the difference between brand operation and marketing public relations department? First, brand operation is the interesting point of spreading products, and marketing public relations department digs out the points of products from the perspective of communication. Sometimes colleagues in the marketing department can create a communication point on the product to meet the needs of communication. Second, the essence of brand operation is operation, and 80% of the time is dealing with products. On the other hand, the marketing public relations department is more about the management of communication channels. For example, PR not only plans its own brand activities, but also needs to maintain the paper TV media. Third, friends are welcome to practice, or to supplement directly. Generally speaking, brand operation and marketing public relations department are a cooperative relationship. When the operation finds the interesting point of the product and makes a good plan, it can seek the support of marketing public relations department in communication channels. Similarly, as an exchange of resources, the marketing public relations department can also let the operation help them build products according to the needs of market communication. Open wechat search wechat official account: elite operates more products, dry goods are free to read.