In an increasingly fragmented media environment, how can consumer brands born in the era of mass media win consumer mindshare? Coca-Cola abolished the CMO role; what new moves does the newly created Chief Growth Officer have? What secrets lie behind the rapid growth of new domestic brands like HFP, Perfect Diary, and Usmile to over 100 million in sales? This article is based on a speech by Wu Yipeng, partner at Yijian Media, at the 4th Mobile Internet Marketing Summit hosted by Bird's Notes, titled "Seeding Marketing: The Growth Path for Consumer Brands." Today, if you develop a good product, can you definitely beat big companies like P&G and Unilever? Not necessarily. But there are brands like HFP (HomeFacialPro) that quickly broke into the 1 billion yuan annual sales club, a feat that used to take other brands 20 to 30 years. Another example is the domestic cosmetics brand "Perfect Diary," which, in less than three years, became the top domestic cosmetics brand on Double 11. Usmile also quickly rose to the top spot in domestic electric toothbrushes. If we have a good product, how can we efficiently let consumers know about it and buy it? That's today's topic: seeding marketing. I'll discuss it from three angles:
1. WHY: Why do we need seeding marketing?
2. WHAT: What are the basic paradigms of seeding marketing?
3. HOW: Share some pitfalls we've encountered based on our experience over the past two years. First, WHY: Why do we need seeding marketing? Last year, Wang Xing proposed the concept of the second half of the internet, which is closely related to offline (traditional industries) and faces many marketing challenges. Challenge 1: User attention is scarce and fragmented Why have P&G and Unilever's previous marketing strategies failed? Because their methodology is based on the era of mass media. Traditional brand marketing methodology comes from the AIDAS model of the 1960s, which is basic theory we learned in college. Note: The AIDAS principle was proposed by Lewis to explain the different effects of advertising on consumers: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, Satisfaction. Does this traditional methodology still work today? Not really. Based on AIDAS, brand advertising needs to reach consumers 6 times (or more) within a month to change their minds, but even with a budget of hundreds of millions, it's hard for P&G to reach users 6 times in a month. Today, many brands still base their marketing on AIDAS. For example, in feed ads, many big brands still create very refined ad creatives, because refined creatives are what the mass media era required. Challenge 2: The media influencing consumer decisions has changed The media environment has changed; consumers no longer trust the media as much. But what they don't trust is traditional media. What do consumers actually trust? In Kotler's new book "Marketing 4.0," it says consumers trust the f-factor: friends, families, and social platform fans. In traditional media forms, advertisers find it hard to reach them, and they can't make your friends or family influence your purchase. Therefore, whether big or small, brands have the same efficiency in influencing consumers. Challenge 3: Beijing Folding, practitioners can't cover everything Last month, the article "The Real China Outside Beijing's 5th Ring Road" went viral. In fact, there's a huge gap in values between inside and outside the 5th Ring Road, a gap we can't imagine. A typical "outside the 5th Ring Road" product is the Kuaishou app. How much vitality does Kuaishou have? The top account, Sanda Ge, once sold 160 million yuan of his own clothing brand in one day. But even with such an influential platform, marketing heads generally find it hard to accept Kuaishou. That's the huge difference in values between inside and outside the 5th Ring Road. At the same time, subcultural communities have strong social influence. For example, the beauty ingredient-focused community, typically represented by the WeChat public account "Basic Yanjiu," whose owner is a chemistry PhD who worked in R&D at J&J and P&G. This account specializes in beauty ingredients and has strong influence and appeal, creating repeated sell-out records. HFP is also a representative of the ingredient-focused group, somewhat imitating the American brand The Ordinary. The ingredient-focused trend is prevalent today, essentially meaning consumers increasingly trust the product itself, not the brand. There are other typical subcultural communities, like comic circles and meme circles, which popularized products like Onmyoji and Vitasoy lemon tea. Challenge 4: The boundaries between product, content, media, and channels are increasingly blurred Let's go back to before the Industrial Revolution. Back then, people basically got oil by pressing it; there was no brand concept. You only knew it was Wang Er's or Li Si's oil; you trusted the person. After the Industrial Revolution, mass production became possible, and production, channels, brands, and media were separated. Each process required specialization, and brands were born. Today, with the development of social media and e-commerce, the process from supply chain to consumer has become infinitely compact, and product, media, brand, and channels have become infinitely unified. For example, Coca-Cola's nickname bottles: are they a product, content, or media? Take NetEase Cloud Music's subway station case. When they invested in subway ads, they only thought of it as media, but didn't expect it to become content for secondary dissemination. NetEase Yanxuan turned media like NetEase Mail into a sales channel; media is the channel. With the high integration of product, content, media, and channels, companies themselves also need to integrate. In the past, sales and marketing departments were always at odds, but the trend is that marketing and sales are gradually being integrated. Internet companies have gradually implemented CGO, and consumer goods companies will definitely upgrade their organizational structures. With these challenges come new players, who appear as "traitors"—they betray the experience of the previous generation and achieve a new generation's leap. Let's see when the first betrayal happened. P&G has 20-30 brands in China, but many don't know that after Pampers and SK-II launched in 1998, 20 years passed without P&G successfully launching a new brand in China. This suggests that brand theory may not be as efficient. What betrayed brands are channel products. For example, Liby, Blue Moon, and M&G Stationery. Liby relies on a dealer system, building a clear profit-sharing dealer network where each level has sufficient profit. Blue Moon built a store-centered promoter system, successfully converting consumers in supermarkets. M&G Stationery occupied stores, with franchise stores at almost every school gate. This generation is manufacturers that emerged from channels (I don't call them brand owners), and in today's highly fragmented social media era, new forces have emerged, betraying channel products (channel manufacturers). For example, HFP, Perfect Diary, and Usmile: their strategy is no longer channel-first, but content-based "seeding" marketing. Second, WHAT: The basic model of seeding marketing I'll give a basic definition of "seeding": it's about occupying mindshare and converting to purchase. Therefore, seeding marketing is using content to create demand and using e-commerce to meet supply. As a brand person, the dream of a lifetime is to create a new demand or define a new demand. For example, Shi Yuzhu said, "This year, don't accept gifts; if you accept gifts, only accept Nao Baijin," or Zhong Shanshan said, "What kind of water nurtures what kind of life." If I can create a new demand, I can define a new product and use it to meet that demand. It can also be about reawakening existing demand, like affordable makeup. Makeup already exists; what you need is to meet user needs more efficiently. Seeding is about using content to create demand, whether new or reawakened, and using e-commerce products to satisfy users. You must satisfy them more efficiently to win a place in the market. I refer to Blessie Wu's definition: seeding marketing includes three aspects—niche circles, WeChat business copywriting, and effective traffic. 1. Niche circles: Don't try to please everyone; don't think you can have it all Niche circles mean not trying to please everyone and not wanting everything. This goes against traditional brand communication. Every time we receive a brief, all clients say their target audience is white-collar women in first- and second-tier cities, so now there aren't enough of them; a bunch of brands want to target them, with at least 10,000 brands watching them every day. Take skincare as an example. We find that the needs of the mainstream and niche circles are very different. What are the skincare needs of white-collar women in first- and second-tier cities? In order of importance: hydration, repair and soothing, whitening, acne treatment, and firming. These are common needs that all brands try to meet, but the internet-famous brand Martiderm is different; its needs are brightening, acne treatment, firming, and anti-oxidation. If we focus on mainstream needs, we'll compete with major brands and likely fail. But if we dig into a niche circle and start with that small group, the chance of success is much higher because mainstream brands haven't focused there, so competition is lighter. 2. WeChat business copywriting: Speak human + testimonials to build trust + effect/price to drive purchase What are the characteristics of good seeding copy? After research, we found: celebrity effect, like Obama recommended; herd mentality, like all influencers are using it, all friends are using it; product roundups, listing our product and multiple competitors' horizontal reviews... I especially recommend Guan Jianming's book "Viral Copywriting," which says articles need to be developed from four angles: eye-catching headlines, stimulating purchase desire, winning reader trust, and guiding immediate orders. I particularly suggest paying attention to the third point: how to win reader trust. When a new brand has no endorsement, how do you make consumers trust you? Here are a few clever ways: First, get a celebrity to post on Weibo or Xiaohongshu, like Lin Yun's same style. Second, get various awards for the product. For example, Usmile toothbrushes initially emphasized they were the only domestic electric toothbrush brand to win a Taiwan design award. Third, talk about the supply chain, telling consumers: my product uses the same factory as Estée Lauder; my R&D team, raw material team, and factory team are amazing. The goal is to make users believe your product is good. Fourth, talk about raw materials. For example, Olay's small white bottle hypes the niacinamide ingredient. 3. Effective traffic: Real traffic + 1-9-90-900 KOL matrix Since the biggest budget in seeding marketing is on KOL purchases, real traffic is crucial. Constantly fighting fake traffic is the most important part of our work. Besides fighting fake traffic, effective traffic also needs to capture long-tail traffic. Two or three years ago, seeding was easy; just getting top bloggers was enough. But today, you need 900 long-tail bloggers to speak up. We need to carefully figure out how to efficiently manage long-tail traffic, such as shifting labor costs. Third, HOW: How to effectively implement seeding marketing After more than two years of seeding marketing, here are some thoughts we've summarized. 1. PMF is the foundation, categories have preferences, and price is the core PMF is the foundation, meaning product-market fit is the foundation. Categories have preferences; not all categories are suitable for seeding marketing. For example, mineral water—I can't think of how to do seeding marketing for ordinary mineral water. If I had enough money, I'd choose to saturate all channels, so don't be overly superstitious about seeding. "Marketing 4.0" has detailed explanations; I recommend reading it. Price: you need to understand users' willingness to pay. For example, HFP's 15ml essence sells for 139 yuan, which is more expensive than SK-II when converted. So seeding doesn't mean selling cheaper products; you still need to find a price consumers are willing to pay. Product pricing is very important; it becomes an absolute influencing factor in your seeding marketing. So you must test your price and find the price threshold for content conversion. 2. Don't talk, run an A/B test I really like Shi Yuzhu's "Shi Yuzhu's Autobiography," which talks about how they did A/B testing for Nao Baijin and Huangjin Dang'an. Their A/B test was like this: each province made its own plan, so there were over 30; then they internally selected 5 good ideas, tested them in 5 prefecture-level cities, and the best one was rolled out nationwide. This might be the earliest A/B test in the 1990s. In daily work, when faced with which copy is better, just run an A/B test; it's much more efficient than internal discussion and agonizing. 3. Stay sensitive to channels and continuously discover value troughs in traffic I suggest looking at app store rankings to find traffic value troughs. Also, compared to online, offline is still a fertile grassland. This is the opportunity Dr. Dingxiang found offline: every doctor's stamp has a QR code, bringing in a large number of new users. 4. Cold start, hot retention, follow big promotions For seeding, follow these nine characters: cold start, hot retention, follow big promotions. First, cold start: when you launch a new product or brand, don't promote it loudly at first. Quietly post 300 articles on Xiaohongshu so that when consumers search for you, they feel many people are already using it. That's cold start. Second, hot retention: even without big promotions, keep seeding so consumers feel someone is always talking. Third, follow big promotions: since you've done seeding, tell consumers during seeding that there's a big promotion with discounts, which will increase conversion. 5. Product is the best seeding material; consumers are the best seeding channel First, do the basics of product. Besides basic quality, it's also important to make the product shareable and viral. For example, these are basic industry practices: store decoration, SMS and customer communication, outer packaging design, inner fillers, product packaging ingredients, etc., all need to be done well. Second, do consumer operations. Today, many brands are adding consumers' personal WeChat, essentially for consumer operations. Third, I want to remind internet colleagues: if you enter the consumer goods field, you must respect the supply chain. For the internet, the supply chain isn't complicated; just set up a few servers. But for consumer goods, the supply chain may be your core link. For the internet, entrepreneurship can break through at a single point, but for consumer goods, you need a golden partner, with strong channel, product, and supply chain capabilities. Article reposted from "Bird's Notes" (ID: niaoge8), eight years focused on sharing dry goods. -END-