In recent years, innovative consumer brands have emerged like mushrooms after rain. Over the past two years, New Distribution has reported on dozens of such brands. In our exchanges with founders, we also found that the rise of these new consumer brands has invariably ridden on the dividends of the era. The improvement in consumption levels, and the personalization and diversification of demands, are explicit dividends. At the same time, the popularity of mobile internet, especially the emergence of WeChat with 1.2 billion monthly active users, has become the infrastructure for people's social lives, making the connection and communication between new consumer brands and users more real-time and convenient. This is an implicit dividend. The first generation of consumption dividends came from the emergence of offline physical stores, increasing physical touchpoints. KA hypermarkets were the main driver for new consumer brands in earlier years; the second generation came from the emergence of online e-commerce platforms, with unlimited shelves and aggregated traffic; the third generation comes from social relationship retail, such as WeChat, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Bilibili, where brands integrate into consumers' social life touchpoints based on network nodes. This is the opportunity that the era has given to new consumer brands. Of course, this is the macro environment. Returning to each innovative consumer brand itself, while seizing the current opportunity, they also face key challenges for sustained growth. What are these challenges? How to overcome them? This article aims to answer these questions. We also hope the answers herein can provide some thoughts and inspiration to brand practitioners riding the era's dividends. -01- Too Fragmented: What Should We Focus On? What is the key challenge for growth? From two dimensions: one is channels; the other is communication. Frankly speaking, in the past, our channels were relatively simple, only offline. Brand owners would do terminal layout (distribution), terminal construction (merchandising), terminal incentives (profits), and corresponding sales management offline. By building a broad purchase venue through such distribution, they could basically rest easy and make money effortlessly. But now, channels are too fragmented, with both online and offline. Any online touchpoint can be a channel, and the same goes offline. Moreover, this is not static; everything is in flux. Short-video live streaming and community e-commerce were unheard of by many at the beginning of 2019, but within just a year or two, they have become channels known to everyone. In the past, our communication was also very concentrated. Brand owners doing brand awareness and new product promotion only needed to consider the budget: those with money advertised on CCTV and satellite TV, while those without advertised on offline bus bodies and outdoor terminals. Basically, these were the three tricks. But now, due to the internet, consumers' attention is scattered across various screens. With a sea of touchpoints, brand owners simply don't know how to invest in advertising; they can only try. They test one platform, invest a little in another, and resources cannot be concentrated. In summary, the key challenge for brand owners in the past, although unable to precisely reach, was relatively efficient. There was a single communication medium and a single channel venue. But now, although mobile internet can be relatively precise, marketing efficiency has weakened because it is too fragmented, requiring constant search for precisely matched target users. They cannot grasp the channels because they keep changing; they also cannot build brand awareness through external communication carriers because they also keep changing. Facing these challenges, how to solve them? Instead of chasing what changes, it is better to grasp what remains unchanged. What is unchanged is product and user. Focus on product in one hand and users in the other, and finally precipitate the brand. This is the key strategy to crack the sustained growth of new consumer brands. As Mr. Zhou Bing, Vice President of Zhongxuegao, said, "Wherever users go, we go." Once the strategic direction is clear, let's look at the common growth methodology of new consumer brands that are relatively successful and have a place in their categories. -02- Common Growth Methodology of New Brands Summarizing practitioners' methodologies, we believe the core is reflected in three levels: 1. User Insight—From the People, For the People 2. Marketing Innovation—Integrated Online-Offline Linkage 3. Integration of Brand and Sales—Brand Building and Sales Achievement 1. User Insight—From the People, For the People Let's start with a brand case: Wangxiaolu, founded in 2016. In less than 4 years, founder Wang Xiong turned Wangxiaolu into a representative of new braised snack brands. Data shows that in the braised snack segment, Wangxiaolu's star product "Tiger Skin Chicken Feet" has a repurchase rate exceeding 40%. Wang Xiong once said, "Almost every major milestone in Wangxiaolu's development has involved user participation." How exactly? Through WeChat communities, they established a core user tasting group. Core users participate in tasting, scoring, and product selection. When a new product gets high scores from more than 80% of users, it is highly likely to be loved by the majority. By leveraging communities within the WeChat ecosystem, they communicate with users in real time, gain deep insights into their needs, and match product design accordingly. Of course, understanding needs is only the first step. They also need to continuously communicate one-on-one with users, clearly understand their thoughts and preferences, and be friends with users. This is also the key reason why more and more people have proposed the concept of "private domain" in recent years. In Wang Xiong's view, although everyone is discussing private domain traffic, few can clearly understand: "Users are private domain traffic for me, but what am I to users? What value can the enterprise provide to users is the core of building private domain traffic." For Wangxiaolu, the role of taster is the position he found for users. Tencent officially defines private domain as: long-term and loyal user relationships. In one-to-many communication relationships, merchants simulate one-on-one intimate relationships through various touchpoints. With the help of the nationwide WeChat social platform, they find precise core users, let them participate in product design and development, and these core users, out of love for the product, actively spread recommendations, attracting more users. In the process, brand owners continuously communicate, launch more good products, co-create more topics, and then precipitate users' awareness of the brand, that is, everything centered on users. 2. Marketing Innovation—Integrated Online-Offline Linkage In the current period, to do marketing well, relying solely on online or offline is not advisable. Integrated online-offline linkage is the fundamental solution. If you only do online, users won't get a good experience; if you only do offline, enterprise resources are limited, and you can only reach a small group. How to achieve integrated online-offline linkage? Zhongxuegao, a leader among domestic brands, provides a good example. On May 20th, Zhongxuegao created its first pop-up store at K11 in Shanghai's Xintiandi, using 5,200 sunflowers. While the pop-up store attracted attention offline, both inside and outside the K11 mall, many people across Shanghai saw Zhongxuegao's ads while scrolling through their Moments. Seeing the ads, many users came to the store, where they could enjoy free tastings without spending money. The only requirement was to post a Moments update about the Zhongxuegao pop-up store tasting. Thus, online Moments ads + offline pop-up store + online Moments sharing transformed into: find users ➡️ user experience ➡️ user sharing ➡️ find users ... completing a full online-offline marketing loop. At the same time, it achieved a cycle of online customer acquisition, offline experience, and second-round social exposure online. Of course, Zhou Bing believes that the carriers behind this are not just Moments ads, but also the WeChat social ecosystem's official accounts, enterprise WeChat customer service, WeChat communities, and mini-program malls. With these carriers, new consumer brands can effectively achieve synchronized online and offline user acquisition and relationship building, ultimately realizing continuous repurchase within online mini-programs and official accounts. In Zhou Bing's view, Zhongxuegao has always been doing brand and product operations. For example, in the past, Tmall would let brand owners earn traffic through search terms, rankings, Juhuasuan, discounts, and promotions. But the cost of public domain traffic is rising, while conversion rates are declining year by year. If brand owners' traffic layout is limited to public domain, the result may be continuously squeezing their profit margins, even affecting brand experience. If we can try something different, we hope to find a path that suits us. 3. Integration of Brand and Sales—Brand Building and Sales Achievement Many people talk about the integration of brand and effect, but the direct manifestation of effect is sales. For new consumer brands, without sales, there is no value for sustained survival. Whether it is user insight or marketing innovation, they are means and methods to connect and communicate with users. If sales are not ultimately achieved, and users do not vote with their money, everything else is in vain. For a long time in the past, brand building and sales achievement were two separate things. Either brand building was done online and sales offline, or seeding was done on social platforms and harvesting on e-commerce platforms. Regardless, from building to achievement, the cross-space and cross-platform path always had attrition. Regarding the integration of brand and sales, let's first look at a company that completed a C-round financing of 100 million yuan in April this year—Bohe Health, an internet weight and health management company. Bohe Health includes health management tools like the Bohe Health APP and mini-programs, and has developed own brands such as Easy Fun, Easy Ace, and Easy Fan, launching about 100 consumer SKUs covering breakfast, meal replacement, and snacks. Among them, the starch-free low-fat chicken breast sausage in the Easy Fun healthy snack series became a hit, and the 21-day full meal plan in the Easy Ace health solution series exceeded 10 million yuan in monthly sales. Founder Ma Haihua once explained in a media interview the comparative test of brand-sales integration on e-commerce platforms versus social platforms. For example, acquiring a customer on an e-commerce platform costs 150 yuan, but the repurchase rate is poor. But on the WeChat platform, for 150 yuan to acquire a customer, I have him, and he has me. A very direct relationship is established between me and the user. Soon, maybe within 45 to 60 days, we start making money. For a category like healthy food, repurchase occurs within at most 6 months. Ma Haihua believes that what business people fear most is one-time business—selling a product once and the customer never buys again. WeChat allows you to do business continuously, which is very important. Now, much of our daily work focuses on brand building: WeChat communities, official accounts, and WeChat Moments, trying every way to integrate the brand into consumers' lives. The final step is still to achieve sales through the most direct activity guidance. Mini-programs are not only the sales entrance that carries consumers' social life, but also the window to achieve more sales conversion and repurchase. By launching promotional activities, giving users an irresistible temptation, letting them participate, and using mini-program fission activities to complete purchases. In addition, users retained in communities can be reactivated through various community activities to achieve more repurchases. Summary: The above is the common growth methodology for new brands based on the WeChat ecosystem. We have been talking about the WeChat ecosystem, but what is the core? It is emphasizing that when the market is diverse and fragmented, only by placing daily marketing work on connecting and operating users can we fundamentally respond to rapid market changes. For new consumer brands, product is the starting point, users are the end point, and brand is the result. The communication, exchange, feedback, and relationship between product and users, and the final transaction process, ultimately precipitate only the brand. Without a brand, there is no lasting business; without a brand, there is no stable foundation. How to build a brand well? Everything revolves around users as the core! Latest Event Preview 2020.12.23, Shanghai Tencent Ads will host 「Yujian·New Food Opportunities」 Private Domain Growth Plan·Tencent Ads Private Sharing Session Executives from interested food and beverage brands are welcome to attend Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted.