Hugo Chan (WeChat ID: hugo-weengauge), Managing Partner of WE Digital, author of 'Social Marketing' and 'Marketing for Everyone', and Adjunct Associate Professor at HKU SPACE China Business Institute.

  1. Managers should not always focus on providing and improving products and services. From a marketing perspective, brands need to consider how to get closer to consumers and deepen relationships with them. Many brands fail not because their products or services are bad, but because they don't think about why consumers should choose you and why they should spread the word about you. Managing relationships with consumers is the core of social marketing.
  2. WeChat may become the number one social platform, but for some products, Weibo is still better at generating quality traffic.
  3. To communicate effectively, you need to say things that the audience understands. Brands often speak in profound terms without considering whether consumers understand, and then assume they've made themselves clear, which is no different from talking nonsense. In social marketing, it's important to speak human language, make consumers understand, and enable them to communicate with the brand; otherwise, everything is in vain.
  4. Running a social marketing campaign without aiming to generate strong word-of-mouth is equivalent to doing nothing.
  5. Any brand that uses disasters to market itself is shameless. Brands with integrity should not suddenly become charitable, and truly charitable brands don't need to publicize it. People need character, and brands also need character to be respected.
  6. Before brands plan to build communities and gain fan dividends, they should first think about why fans would follow the brand! This is a simple question, but brands don't think about it carefully. Then they think that running a marketing campaign and quickly gaining hundreds of thousands of fans completes the social marketing task. How to truly gain long-term attention from fans and build mature communities? How many brands have thought for years without finding the answer!
  7. Continuously chasing hot topics and posting interesting (or supposedly interesting) content is not marketing. The key is to use hot topics to add value to the brand and make consumers like it. Chasing hot topics gives temporary pleasure but doesn't generate revenue for the brand. So, it's better to think clearly about how to carefully manage brand reputation on social media; that's the best strategy.
  8. A typhoon blew over mailboxes in front of a post office in Taiwan, and photos became symbols in international news. Taiwanese people took photos with the tilted mailboxes, striking various poses, full of joy. The latest news: Chunghwa Post decided to keep these two tilted mailboxes, and may even issue stamps and souvenirs, and even run a social marketing campaign calling on netizens to upload the most bizarre photos. Isn't this worth learning from?
  9. One day at dinner, the waitress said that if we gave a full score on the review site and mentioned her name with praise, she could waive the cheese bill, and we did it. The problem is that this is a fake positive review, and consumers experience a bad user experience. This made me extremely disgusted. I will definitely not go again, and I later left a negative review. Isn't this counterproductive?
  10. Marketers! Just because you use WeChat and Weibo doesn't mean all consumers do! Do you use Qzone? Do you use Baidu Tieba? Do you know many people are using Momo and Nice?
  11. Brand owners, wherever your consumers are, your brand should be there. Similarly, wherever they are not, you should not be there. This has nothing to do with the preferences and location of the brand marketing manager.
  12. Using the internet and information technology for enterprise management and brand marketing is a long-term strategic plan, not a simple tactical application. This is something every senior manager or entrepreneur needs to understand, because it concerns the competitiveness and comparative advantage of the enterprise, not the work of junior employees.
  13. Many brands think that as long as information about them floods the screen, it's success, but most consumers (especially post-90s) find being flooded annoying and will choose to avoid it. This is marketers' lack of understanding of consumers; try reverse thinking!
  14. Compared to 'Do Not Disturb' and 'Please Clean Up', isn't this door hanger more friendly?
  15. Anyone or any brand sells value, not cost. So quoting based on labor hours, or material costs and processing, is an insult and does no good to the enterprise.
  16. If brands still think social marketing is just opening accounts, posting content, interacting with fans, and running campaigns, that's too shallow; many brands don't need us to operate, but need us to provide listening reports, proactively find consumers, discover KOLs, etc., and the cost is higher, but the effect is better. Do you understand this?
  17. Sometimes what you think you know clearly is actually an illusion. What you see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears may not be true. So subjective judgment is always a fatal flaw. This applies to marketing and life.
  18. In marketing, if you can't change the product, change the packaging; if you can't change the packaging, change consumer expectations.
  19. Sometimes, when brands communicate with warm 'human language', it can better touch consumers' pain points, make it easier for everyone to understand, and feel more approachable.
  20. No one likes to follow or like an account that is like a robot or a plastic flower. So whether you are a person or a brand, you need to be flesh and blood, content should be real and interesting, close to life, know how to interact and chat, have feelings, have flavor, and know how to make people like you!
  21. So-called creativity means fundamentally thinking about the problems the brand currently faces and finding answers to those problems. Pitches usually have preset questions, so every participant is just catering, not creating, and such creativity is limited.

You can enter 'list' to view the directory, or directly enter a number to read related articles. a0122 Post-90s consumers are indifferent to ads a0123 Social marketing: Let me complain! a0210 Crowdfunding changes the world a0211 Some marketing wisdom shared by Hugo a0218 WE's IDEA model a0221 Small capital, big profit: Brand building in the social era a0305 Brand building is the sustainable competitiveness a0312 A picture tells you the difference between strategy and tactics a0317 Marketing thinking that opens your mind a0318 My original intention for writing 'Marketing for Everyone' a0325 Preface to 'Marketing for Everyone' a0331 Seven forces of brand building a0421 Social marketing insights sharing a0505 2015 Marketing Class successfully concluded a0525 Social marketing: 'Spreading' is more important than 'broadcasting'! a0601 Strategic planning from marketing trends a0613 Mobile marketing: Let consumers find things themselves a0620 30 random thoughts on marketing management a0714 More random thoughts on marketing a0827 Marketing failure is because you ignore consumers a0830 Hugo Chan shares marketing insights If you like my articles, remember to share them to your 'Moments' or 'WeChat groups'. Below is the QR code for my official account hugo-weengauge. You can scan to follow me and communicate with me.