Considering the 10 tips before you do brand marketing in Chinese market
1. Consumption decisions are always based on price/performance ratio
Think about it first: Is the iPhone really a low-cost product?
No, the user satisfaction of the iPhone is very high, at least the friends around me have never regretted buying it. If you only look at hardware, gross profit and the like, you will feel that the price is very low, but in terms of the overall product experience, it is a very cost-effective product.
A delicious dish, and a horrible dish, may be just the difference between putting more salt and less, but the user experience is completely different. Do you understand what I mean? If you only use the cost difference of salt to measure the price/performance ratio, then you still don’t understand what is the price/performance ratio.
My opinion is that the price/performance ratio is measured based on a comprehensive product experience.
The user’s decision-making motivation is actually the price/performance ratio. However, most people understand the price/performance ratio very much. They think that the so-called price-performance ratio measures the material benefits, not the spiritual benefits (psychological benefits, service experience).
For example, perfume, spray can bring you the joy of interpersonal social enjoyment, is it not cost-effective to spend money to buy this kind of spiritual enjoyment?
If you only look at the material benefits, then all products with spiritual attributes (such as watching movies and games) are not cost-effective, and all entertainment products should not exist.
Isn’t the person who buys luxury goods not worthy of its price/performance ratio? People who buy LV are not worthy of its price/performance ratio? A LV bag can make you often stand at the top of the social scorn chain and get great psychological satisfaction. Isn’t that worthwhile? See how you can price this satisfaction.
It’s not cheap, it’s called cost-effective, and you can also have a price/performance ratio.
2, the pursuit of brand is a social behavior
If you can’t let others know that you bought a LV bag, would you still buy it?
Probably not, but the category of luxury goods is special, it is necessary to reflect the luxury characteristics by comparing with others. Let’s change the question. If two cans of the same cola, one can not be branded for two dollars, and the other can be labeled with Coca-Cola, which one can you buy?
You will buy Coca-Cola because you feel that the product is guaranteed, and you can find a brand complaint claim if you have a bad stomach. OK, I will tell you now, the after-sales and other aspects of the service are exactly the same, how do you choose this time?
I guess the big probability is that if you drink alone (the vending machine in the middle of the night), you will choose the unbranded can. If you buy it with a friend (even just seen by the supermarket owner), you will buy Coca-Cola.
People pursue the brand because he wants to be seen by others to pursue the brand.
For yourself, you only need to consider quality and service when you buy a product, but when you are pursuing a brand, you will care about what others are saying about you.
This is the reason why mental income (psychological gain) should be added when considering the price/performance ratio. Whether it is branded goods or unbranded goods, it will give both material and spiritual benefits. The two cannot be separated and isolated.
If you buy branded goods, but you can’t be known by others, why don’t you buy a “cheap cottage” with the same quality and service?
3, brand value and brand premium ability are two different things
Which brand is more valuable for Volkswagen and Bugatti?
Which brand is more valuable for Hasselblad and Canon cameras?
The answer is no need to say more. The value of the Volkswagen brand is obviously higher than that of Bugatti (Bugatti was actually acquired by Volkswagen very early), and the Canon brand value is obviously higher than Hasselblad.
This extreme example is easier to understand: who is bigger than the brand power of the 8848 mobile phone?
Brand power and brand premium ability are two different things. It is not that the stronger your premium ability, the more valuable the brand is. The measurement of brand power needs to be judged comprehensively by various factors in the market.
The background of the current consumption upgrade is that the user is satisfied with the material, and there are some idle money to be squandered, so he began to pursue spiritual benefits such as aesthetic and social status.
This means that the consumption upgrade has opened up a “social scorn chain” in every product category. The brand value that many people are talking about now means that those brands can stand at the top of the social scorn chain and have a powerful premium.
But this is a very wrong idea.
In the measurement of brand value, brand premium ability is only one of the measurement dimensions, and it is not even a particularly important dimension.
4, the brand value has nothing to do with the price of the product
Then on the topic above, the brand value has little to do with the price of the product, but is related to the perception of the user’s mind.
I often hear a ridiculous statement that “Millet’s brand has done very low and failed.” The reason for this statement is that the high-end of the Xiaomi brand has been blocked.
Whether the brand is high-end, whether it is to sell high-margin products, is based on corporate strategy, market competition decisions, brand performance is only the result.
In my opinion, the success of the brand is not how high it looks, how much money its products can sell, but whether it can be IP, symbolized, can become synonymous with certain types of products, certain types of behavior.
For example, Baidu is equivalent to Chinese search. Uniqlo is equivalent to cheap and comfortable. You can’t say that the brand is doing badly because Uniqlo sells bargains.
We may wish to analyze the problem of Xiaomi from the reverse thinking. The problem of Xiaomi’s high-end resistance is not that the brand is doing too badly, but that the brand is doing too well, and the user’s inherent impression is difficult to change.
5, the brand is the door metaphysics
In the above question about the price/performance ratio, there is actually a bug, because the so-called “spiritual benefit (psychological value)” cannot be scientifically measured and varies from person to person. For example, everyone’s judgment on the value of LV bag is different. From this level, Luxury goods are actually non-standard products.
Many times, brand marketing needs to rely heavily on the experience and insight of the trader, and these are metaphysics that cannot be standardized. If everyone can reach a consensus on how to measure brand value and sum up the omnipotent methodological approach, there will be no debate, but it is impossible.
Why is the brand a metaphysical (artistic) rather than a science?
Because science can be iteratively forwarded, any university student today knows more physics than Newton, but this situation is rare in humanities and social sciences. Brand marketing is the kind of “mysterious and mysterious” learning, which may extend in different directions.
Since today’s consumer preferences are diversified, it is not uncommon for even two mutually exclusive brand concepts to achieve commercial success. Business is a piece of soil, and every different seed has the potential to take root.
For us personally, we only need to be open-minded and believe in the direction we believe in.
6, the brand is the product of time
Why do you have a long history of big brands that you trust? For example, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, Unilever.
As mentioned earlier, the brand is related to the occupation of the user’s mind. It is actually a kind of trust endorsement and cultural symbols, but the construction of trust and symbols is not easy, so it takes time to shape the brand.
Existence and time are the hardest part of the branding process.
Don’t think that Coca-Cola now looks like a big brand. It was a very low brand a few decades ago. At that time, its advertisements were also selling, almost the same as melatonin. But the accumulation of time has given Coca-Cola a greater cultural value and a stronger brand influence.
Taking a brand of a start-up brand and an old brand to compete for brand power is a very boring thing, such as Ruixun Coffee and Starbucks, Mingchuang Premium and Muji… This brand power comparison does not make much sense. It is better to look at some financial data.
So is there a possibility of becoming a big brand in a short time?
There are also, but the premise is that you have to find a bonus outlet (such as many Internet brands), find a field that is large in the market, but the user is still blank, or directly create a brand new consumer category. All in all, you need to have a far-sighted insight, or be able to catch up with the times.
7, the brand is not so important
When I was doing Party B, I often spoke out that Party A didn’t have a taste. I didn’t understand the brand cloud. Later, after I went to Party A, after some business decisions, I suddenly felt relieved. Therefore, I have always regarded the days when Party B worked in the early years as the most middle-class period.
Business matters, business, feelings, feelings.
The ultimate goal of business is to survive and pursue profits, rather than creating a great brand. Building a brand is only a means of maximizing commercial interests, not a purpose, so the brand is not so important, we should not put the cart before the horse.
Enterprises want to build a brand, they are nothing more than they feel that building a brand is more beneficial to their own interests. It is unnecessary to have a moral trial of others to scorn the chain, but this “deprivation” pressure is also one of the costs they need to bear.
Even if the company does public welfare, it also has a strong public relations/government relationship purpose, and ultimately it is for commercial interests, otherwise they do not need to let you know.
8, the product can not brand
In the past, brands could ignore products, and now products can be branded. Of course, this is an extreme situation.
The monopoly of early communication channels, brand awareness is equivalent to having an endorsement of trust, and advertising on CCTV represents the authoritative media and is recognized by the people, so almost everything can be sold. At that time, brand diversification is relatively easy.
But now, the product experience is strongly related to the brand reputation. In extreme cases, the product may not even be a brand because the product is ubiquitous. The importance of word-of-mouth is highlighted. Behind the changes in the media environment, ordinary users have more rights to express and influence.
Today, most of the products are out of the brand in the Internet products. Each iteration and operation of the product can be considered as an exclusive brand promotion. The brand can be completed by the product itself. This is also why in the Internet products, product, operation, and marketing responsibilities have been integrated.
According to my chat with some friends, I found that high-quality Internet products do not need to be declared in the daily life. Growth is the key (of course, the product may help to grow), and many Internet products are declared, and the purpose is Not to C, but to VC and other needs.
9, the brand is not the core competitiveness
Don’t ignore the brand, but don’t be superstitious about the brand.
From a more macro perspective, brands are not useful in the face of some industry changes and dividend opportunities. Brand value is only a part of the overall value of the company, or even a small part. Many times, holding cash flow is more important than brand value.
Don’t deify the brand. If the brand is so useful, Nokia won’t die so fast. Don’t say that only knowing how to pay dividends can’t form core competitiveness, because you can be quickly overturned if you don’t catch the bonus, and the brand is often able to “buy the ticket first” and the wilderness does not kill the regular army. Rare.
The core competitiveness of an enterprise is not so much related to a brand. The moat of a company is a kind of competitive barrier, not just the brand.
Of course, brands can form a competitive advantage. Others trust your brand and recognize your brand. You will reduce communication costs and persuasive costs on many levels. But the brand is still the result, a by-product of business operations.
10, the brand will gradually fail
Finally, I said a far-reaching but cruel thing.
Many people think that the general trend of consumption upgrade makes the brand value stand out, and users will be more willing to pay for the high premium, but this may not be the case.
Many research reports have pointed out that users’ consumption mentality has begun to change, and they are no longer pursuing brands as before. At the same price, users’ pursuit of quality is much higher than that of brands, and the brand premium effect is actually decreasing. This is most evident in the first and second line of white-collar and clothing categories.
Japan has long said that in the fourth era of consumption, there are many domestic consumption levels, but with the gradual popularization of new life concepts, brands may gradually fail.
Whether the brand is malfunctioning or not is related to the consumerism culture in the society. This is a complicated and ambitious discussion, but at least we can perceive that some “de-branding” concepts are gradually becoming popular today.