You've just taken over the marketing for an O2O driving school platform. Your boss asks if you have any good ideas to overcome the difficulty of promoting the product. You quickly dive into product research and gain a deep understanding of the product.
The product you need to promote is an O2O driving school platform, competing against traditional driving schools, with several standout advantages:
- One-time fee, competitive pricing, and installment payment support.
- Local license in 4-6 months, non-local in 45 days.
- Strict coach evaluation, with a student pass rate above 90%.
- Excellent service: flexible scheduling, multiple training grounds, one-on-one instruction, and the ability to complain, rate, or change coaches if unsatisfied.
After understanding the product background, you propose your ideas to the boss: we should focus on price, service, time, and pass rate, and use activities, new media, third-party channels, and advertising to tell consumers we're better than traditional driving schools, encouraging them to choose us.
But the boss says, "We've tried these methods before, and they didn't work well. Do you have other ideas?"
You're puzzled—why don't these methods work?
Have you noticed? Your proposal is the same as what the product has done before: it starts from the product, not the user. Any marketing that ignores the user is fake marketing; such self-congratulatory promotion is naturally difficult.
Suppose a typical office worker wants to get a driver's license. They plan to buy a car in the next 1-2 years, have already learned about this O2O driving school platform, and have asked colleagues and friends for advice. How should we promote the platform to them?
Here's what you need to do: Find the need for the product, determine the need—set marketing goals—connect with users.
Step 1: Find the need for the product, determine the need
Before finding needs for this O2O driving school platform, you need to understand a tool—Li Jiaoshou's Ten Demand Templates.
According to Li Jiaoshou's demand template tool, market demands can be roughly divided into 10 types. Of course, these 10 templates don't cover all market demands, but 90% of demands can be categorized into these 10.
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Clearly, based on the product attributes of this driving school platform, the main demands you can focus on are low price, convenience, performance, and process experience. Although you've found some potential demands, you can't determine the final main demand yet. To finalize, you need to consider the consumer's purchase decision stage and purchase scenario. Because at different decision stages and scenarios, consumer needs differ.
For example, a college student wants a driver's license. They compare various driving schools and don't know which to choose. At this point, they're in the plan comparison stage, so the main demand might be low price. Suppose this student has now compared and decided to choose this O2O platform; they're in the purchase decision stage, so the main demand might be process experience or performance.
Now, let's analyze with the consumer decision model and purchase scenario: what demand should we focus on when promoting this platform to the office worker?
Determine the consumption decision stage: The consumer has prior information, has asked colleagues and friends, and plans to buy a car in 1-2 years. Given the current situation, getting a license typically takes half a year to a year, so the consumer might be looking for a school that can get them licensed quickly, placing them in the plan comparison stage.
Purchase scenario: White-collar workers in first-tier cities (this O2O platform is in Shenzhen) are generally tired, anxious, and under high work pressure; they don't have much energy to spend on getting a license. Also, shared cars are popular, providing practice opportunities after getting the license, so as long as they get the license, other things matter less. Thus, their core need is "speed."
Therefore, when promoting to this office worker, you should focus on the convenience need.
Step 2: Set marketing goals
Marketing goals are the core of marketing work. Without goals, we can't focus actions or allocate resources. So, setting a marketing goal is the foundation. Because it's the foundation, the goal must be reliable. A reliable marketing goal should have these characteristics:
- Points to the key challenge of the current marketing task.
- Answers why users don't buy the product (we assume users don't pay attention, don't buy, and ads are ineffective).
- Focuses on the user and can guide marketing work.
To set a reliable marketing goal, you only need to do these 4 steps:
- Find the target user.
- Determine the target user's consumption decision stage.
- Confirm the target user's default choice.
- Identify the action barrier between the user's default choice and your product.
So how do we set a marketing goal for this O2O driving school platform?
We've already identified the target user and their decision stage. Following the 4 steps, we still need to determine the default choice and action barrier.
Target user's default choice
- We know people have an instinct to avoid risk. When facing risk, most consumers would rather give up a preference than take a risk. O2O driving, as a non-traditional model, is perceived similarly to P2P models, making it seem risky. Also, because getting a license is heavily influenced by third parties, and O2O driving isn't widespread, few users can vouch for this platform; instead, most users vouch for traditional schools. So users don't really believe they can get a license quickly with this platform, making them more likely to choose traditional schools.
What is the action barrier that prevents users from abandoning their default choice and choosing this platform?
Finding the action barrier is essentially answering the question: "Why don't consumers do this?"
Before finding the barrier, let's understand a tool that influences consumer decisions—PMO Theory.
PMO represents three forces that influence consumer decisions, used to analyze which forces affect consumer choices. For example, when buying a phone, does the consumer listen to themselves, third parties, or the brand?
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According to PMO theory, getting a driver's license has characteristics of unclear user preferences, high decision importance, and easily accessible information. It's mainly influenced by third-party forces (word-of-mouth, friend recommendations) and marketing forces (brand image). But since this platform hasn't formed a brand yet, consumers are mainly influenced by third-party forces.
So why don't consumers choose this O2O platform?
Combining PMO theory, target consumers face multiple participants in a single decision, too many choices, high third-party reference value, and unproven platform capability, leading to high decision costs and high trial-and-error costs.
Thus, we know the action barrier is the high decision cost and trial-and-error cost of choosing this platform. In this situation, marketing measures can include signaling capability and lowering action thresholds. Options include brand endorsement, brand loyalty building, word-of-mouth recommendations, and trial experiences.
Since brand endorsement, loyalty building, and word-of-mouth can't immediately convert, the most likely conversion method is trial experience. So, the current marketing goal is: get target users to try the platform's product.
Step 3: Connect with users
From the analysis above, we now know that for this target user, the platform needs to focus on the convenience need, with the goal of getting users to experience it, thereby reducing risk perception and convincing them they can get a license quickly.
So how can we make users want to experience the platform? This requires building a connection between the platform and the user. To achieve this connection, you need to use the Ladder Theory.
Ladder Theory is a tool to connect products and users. When consumers don't understand the product well, you go up the ladder; this suits new products not well-known in the market. When consumers lack purchase motivation, you go down the ladder; this suits products already familiar to consumers. The relationship between product and consumer can be understood and remembered with the diagram below.
Understanding Ladder Theory, we build a ladder for this platform.
- Attribute: Get a license in 4-6 months.
- Benefit: Reduce time cost.
- Psychological benefit: More time to work and earn money.
- Value: Time is money; saving time is saving cost.
Since driving school products are familiar to consumers, we should choose the psychological benefit and value levels to connect with users. Here, we choose to output copy at the value level, as follows:
- Why spend a year when you can get a license in just 4-6 months?
- ×× Driving School Platform: Try before you learn, overturning the traditional driving school model.
- Coaches at ×× Driving School Platform are strictly selected, one-on-one teaching, changeable if unsatisfied, flexible scheduling, and multiple training grounds.
Now, we've connected with users and produced copy. The remaining task is to reach users through various channels.
〖 Summary 〗
To promote a product, you can follow these steps: find the need for the product, determine the need—set marketing goals—connect with users.
In the need-finding and determination stage, consider the consumer's default choice, purchase decision stage, and purchase scenario. Tools you can use include the Ten Demand Templates and the Consumer Purchase Decision Model.
In the marketing goal-setting stage, focus on what market forces affect consumers and their action barriers. Tools include PMO Theory and the 4-step marketing goal process.
In the user connection stage, focus on the relationship between product and market. Tools include Ladder Theory and the Market-Brand Quadrant Diagram.
Source: Marketing Flight (ID: YXHB18)
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