New media era marketing rules

Today, an era of new media based on various emerging communications and communication tools has emerged. From the development of the company, we summed up the marketing rules of the new media era:

Rule 1: Personalization. For decades, marketing is the perfect "brand personality" for the company. But in fact, communicating with customers is like a real conversation. Therefore, instead of working hard to design an exquisite public image for the company, it is better to simply look for a sincere and real person within the company to represent the company. In this way, what the customer hears is truly honest and more convincing.

Rule 2: Openness. Companies often exercise strict control over the information they convey to the market. However, the true communication is not the monologue of the self-talk, but the communication you have come and made. When you openly talk to your customers, you can gain market intelligence and win customer trust. How can we start frank conversation? For customers, you should actively and openly receive feedback and adopt customer suggestions. For employees, you should use open minds to convey information that is even detrimental to you. To competitors, you must face it calmly.

Rule 3: Interesting. In the past, once you designed your brand and the information you were prepared to communicate, you would study how to “deliver” this information to the most influential media. However, it is difficult to know if these placements are really effective. Today, many companies are looking for another way: no longer looking for media suitable for advertising, but to open up their own media space.

Rule 4: With customers. The most important determinant of marketing spending has always been the cost of reaching consumers. In fact, the most important thing may not be the cost of reaching them, but whether the place, time, and method of your arrival are appropriate.

Rule 5: Shortcuts. Traditional marketing often involves large product launch activities. Now, you don't have to bet all your bets on a big launch event. The first step in action is to bring your ideas or products to light and conduct open experiments. Simply showing off your product or concept is not enough. More importantly, it is necessary to quickly make corrections based on market feedback.

China brand in the eyes of developed countries

Statistics show that Chinese brands have successfully entered the markets of various developing countries and emerging economies in various product categories. However, the key to Chinese brands going global is whether they can successfully attract consumers in global affluent markets, including consumers in North America, developed European regions, and Oceanian economies. If these consumers cannot be won, Chinese brands will not be able to obtain high brand value, and will only be on the fringes of low profits.

In February 2010, we conducted a survey of a total of 1,230 consumers in the three representative markets of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The survey results show that they have different willingness to accept different types of Chinese brand products. Product categories with high acceptance (40% and above) include computer-related supplies, household appliances, personal electronics, apparel and sporting goods. Acceptable medium (25%~39%) product categories include food, automotive, luxury goods, and personal care products. Low-acceptance product categories (25% or less) include alcoholic beverages, beer, cosmetics, insurance, and financial products. In these three categories, the highest degree of acceptance of Chinese brands is British consumers, followed by Australia, followed by the United States.

In the Chinese market, local companies are very good at translating potential consumer demand into actual purchase behavior. Strong sales force, discount rebate policy and bundle pricing are all their marketing tools. However, in rich markets, the situation is likely to be very different. First of all, due to the high labor cost, a large part of the total retail sales is realized in self-service retail stores.

Secondly, under the self-service shopping model, there are no promotional staff persuading around the customer, and promotion methods such as discount rebate and bundle pricing may not be as effective as in China. Finally, due to mandatory laws, manufacturers must provide consumers with adequate product information, and because the shopping environment is relatively relaxed, consumers in rich markets have more time to think and evaluate their purchasing behavior. This means that when Chinese companies sell products overseas, they need to redesign a more effective promotion method.

Asian middle-class consumer demand

The rise of the middle class in emerging markets will greatly change the commercial map of Asia and the world. The middle class in Asian emerging markets has become a significant consumer group.

First of all, this is a new "middle class" class that has just broken away from being "survived" but has not yet reached the level of consumption of the "rich". Therefore, they have a certain degree of superiority towards them, and they feel less than expensive when they are upset. This kind of mentality makes them care more about their identities and are more sensitive. Some older people may remember the days of “survival” in the past. Although they have disposable income on hand, they are more frugal. Some older people may, on the contrary, enjoy spending to make up for the joy of life that was not enjoyed before. Young people are more aligned with the atmosphere in Europe, America, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. "Consumption" has more meaning for the middle class than material satisfaction. They tend to use consumption to strengthen their sense of belonging and social status.

Second, the middle class in Asian emerging markets is relatively young compared to European and American countries. According to the Hurun Research Institute, the average age of the billionaires in China is 45 years old. The average age of millions of rich people is only 41 years old. As a result, the middle class is even younger. They have high requirements on product quality, fashion elements, and experience of use. These requirements are reflected in the values ​​contained in the brand. If businesses can't provide them with compelling and recognized brands, they will turn to brands with such features. In addition to brands, young consumers not only focus on product and service quality, but also focus on consumer experience.

Again, online consumption is increasingly favored by the newly emerging middle class. Through many years of hard work such as B2C, C2C, group purchase, ranking, and other e-commerce websites, social media, blogs, and micro-blogs have contributed to social media, coupled with the gradual improvement of the logistics distribution system and payment system, online consumption is gradually entering mainstream consumer channels. .

Finally, middle-class consumers in emerging Asian markets are not entirely concentrated in the metropolitan cities of each country. In China, outside Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other first-tier cities, a middle-class consumer group is forming at a faster rate than the central city. Not only is there a wide geographical distribution, the composition of the middle class is also diversified.

Don't wipe out all the pain for the customer

The queue time is too long, the background music is too loud, and the payment cards that the company can accept are limited... But will eliminating all these dissatisfactions really satisfy the customers? According to research, doing so does not provide an effective customer experience, because if you ignore the value that customers really value and the characteristics of the company, it is easy to create an experience that is homogenized with the competition, and this process continuously requires companies to invest resources, and the result is counterproductive. .

Use the emotion curve to understand the customer experience. A method that breaks through the tradition is to use the “emotion curve” to experience the vertical axis and natural time as the horizontal axis to list the main sub-processes and attributes that affect the customer's emotions, and to quantify the customer's happiness and pain at each experience point of contact. At the same time, combining the importance of each contact point to the customer and the importance of the brand value of the company, to find the key moments of experience, there is a target source.

Create a differentiated brand experience.

To see the customers' dissatisfaction points revealed by the emotion curve, you must distinguish the importance of each sub-process (including the importance of the customer and the brand value), and allocate resources according to the importance of the pain points.

Find the key points that affect the customer experience. Experience as a subjective feeling of the customer, has its regularity. To create a superior customer experience, it is necessary to find the key points of resource deployment according to these laws.

1. Maximize the discomfort between pains; companies should allow pain points (that is, customer dissatisfaction points) to exist. Any satisfaction or dissatisfaction is relative, if an experience is satisfied, then the customer does not feel the focus or prominent brand value point.

2. Optimize the peak-end experience; According to the “peak-end law” in psychology, in every experience, people have the most impressive addition to the “peak” and the “end point”, which is the end point of the experience. As the final melody often lingers, the last point of experience is always impressive.

Customer-centricity does not mean accepting customer feedback without thinking, but rather distinguishing what they truly value, what is consistent with your positioning and ability, and also finding the key to the impact of their experience on their experience. Point, as the focus of resource delivery, ultimately establishes a differentiated brand and achieves target performance.

The social value of corporate strategy

Wikimedia makes it possible for Internet users to develop strategies that may sound very different. After all, the existence of Wikimedia depends on mutual cooperation to create content. In recent years, more companies have begun to try to open up the strategic process, so that the groups that have never been able to formulate strategies are involved. Executives cited two major benefits of this initiative: First, a variety of insights from the front line outside the core of the company can make the plan more depth; Second, to enhance the employees' feelings for the company, the idea is more uniform. However, according to McKinsey research, these benefits are still rare in the corporate world. Here, we propose three observation points on the role of community-oriented strategic tools.

First, enrich the decision maker's toolbox. Social strategic initiatives include some valuable tools, but they cannot replace the complete strategic planning process. Social-strategic tools are less likely to help strategists find out about the need for direction and change, to make trade-offs among similarly attractive options, or to formulate battle plans in a highly competitive environment. The most important thing is that decisions are ultimately made by decision makers rather than tools.

Second, eliminate bad ideas. Brainstorming often says "There are no bad ideas." This does not apply to strategy. New market development, mergers and acquisitions, investment products, etc. are filled with bad ideas. Predictive markets and other similar mechanisms promise to find bad ideas before companies invest too much.

Third, avoid forming herd thinking. When leaders consider the application of social strategy tools, an important issue to be noted is how to create high-quality discussions instead of following collective thinking. Of course, these methods may trigger different opinions. But you can also think that everyone's participation mechanism may also create large-scale collective thinking, encourage participants to adhere to conventions, and become more and more strong when more participants affirm existing concepts.

Considering comprehensively, when future socialized decision makers need to consider each mechanism, it is necessary to carefully consider whether the intent to achieve is to generate different opinions or to establish a unified opinion. Either mobilize employees to move in a direction that everyone agrees with, or let them come up with new ideas and question old ideas. Most companies want to build consensus and break the status quo when they are developing strategies. However, you can only take one of them at any time.