Friendly reminder: Click the ↑ above on "FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting" to learn more about marketing and distributor internal management. Are consumers really fools? This really needs to be viewed from two sides. Sometimes they are foolish beyond reason, sometimes they are shrewd beyond measure. Fools are the happiest people in the world, but there aren't that many fools; it's just that their intelligence goes dormant at certain times. When it goes dormant depends entirely on the consumer's psychology. So we have invented various marketing strategies, and the essence of marketing is a psychological game with consumers. What psychological traits do consumers typically have that we can use? 1. A low price covers a multitude of sins Nowadays, after the price cut of the Smartisan T1, its ads are everywhere in subways, elevators, and other media, shifting from sentiment to sales appeal, with the 3000 yuan pricing strategy waning. In this era, not only for phones, but for any class of consumer, the last line of defense against consumption resistance is price. In fact, the mass consumer chooses products based on price limits. So "a low price covers a multitude of sins" is the most basic rule. Because of this, no matter how ugly the clothes, someone will wear them; no matter how bad the restaurant, someone will eat there; no matter how wilted the vegetables, someone will buy them. The world needs perfectionists, but not that many. Every category has a "suitable price point" that applies to high, middle, and low-end consumers. Try to control costs so that the product pricing is at a suitable price point, which will increase the probability of experiential consumption when a new product launches. Of course, while maintaining costs within a reasonable range, you also need to align the product's core value with the core pain point. Have one outstanding differentiated advantage, while other aspects are mediocre. If there is no outstanding differentiated advantage, then you need to support the overall performance with multiple values. It is because of this contradiction that concepts like "small packaging," "fast fashion," "small batches," "supply chain," and "pre-sale" have blossomed everywhere. Before the internet thinking era, few Chinese health liquor brands were profitable. JING Brand, which sold small bottles by reducing quantity and price, is one example. Because the cost of experiential consumption decreased, product sales increased, consumption habits formed, and the bargaining power of manufacturers and terminals increased, creating a virtuous cycle. Behind Xiaomi's sense of participation, it also benefits from low pricing. So, when there is no market foundation for a product, pricing factors are more important than positioning strategy. 2. Good looks add ten points In this face-value era, as technology barriers weaken and product functions become homogenized, it's hard to make major breakthroughs on core category pain points, and the importance of product appearance (or interface) design is increasingly prominent. A product goes from nothing to something, from bones to skin, but when the product faces the market, the first thing consumers see is the skin. If it doesn't look good, it's likely to be eliminated in the first round of comparison. Especially for categories without functional differentiation. If the price is not expensive and it looks good, consumer tolerance expands. If the category function is also not bad, then it's basically done. However, in the wave of internet thinking, it's not easy to make the basic technology end compromise to the ultimate experience end, and truly thinking and executing "from the outside in" is even rarer. Disruption comes from this kind of reverse thinking and action. When we observe consumer behavior in supermarkets, it's easy to find: when consumers choose daily necessities like shampoo, with similar price, function, and capacity, most choose based on whether it looks good. 3. The immediate matters most There is a saying: "Help the urgent, not the poor." This applies to products as well. Focus on urgent pain points. The more urgent the pain point your product can satisfy, the more eager consumers are to buy. In this situation, consumers become simple, less picky, and lower demands naturally make sales easier. "The present" is the most important time concept in Buddhism. The most important thing for people is the present (the present refers to the interval from now to the next moment, such as the interval from starting product development to product launch). Grasping the present is the most real. If you develop a product obsessed with solving future problems, you need long-term market cultivation to make consumers pay attention to the problem before they value your product. This is time-consuming and laborious. The author once did strategy for a women's brand, reordering more than ten product function appeals by urgency of need, putting urgent problems like freckle removal and wrinkle reduction first, and whitening and nourishment second. Although whitening is also a strong need, freckle removal and wrinkle reduction are more urgent. Whitening can wait, but freckle removal and wrinkle reduction cannot. The more urgent, the weaker the consumption resistance, and the easier it is to close a sale. 4. Don't stray from practicality The word "bige" (style/pretentiousness) has been put on a pedestal in the internet commerce era, but the author believes: no matter how high the "bige," if it's not down-to-earth, it won't work. Except for a few categories, the vast majority of products without practical value, no matter how high the "bige," cannot become mainstream. The core value of a product must be built on a practical basis (if spiritual needs are the first priority, satisfying strong spiritual needs is also practical). Solving 100 peripheral problems is not as good as solving one core problem. There is one obvious category on this issue: women's clothing. Some women's clothing brands have very large sales volumes, but we rarely see people wearing them on the street. Because the design deviates from practicality, consumers buy them and put them in the wardrobe, with no suitable occasion to wear them, and no suitable shoes or bags to match, so they can only look at them. Such brands can also have annual sales of hundreds of millions or billions. But in the end, they are hard-pressed to compete with practical brands and can easily hit a ceiling. 5. Respect the crowd's opinion Mass consumers are blindly obedient, following the crowd while pursuing their own pitiful little individuality. In fact, they have no real opinion; all tendencies are based on social public opinion. The vast majority of people conform to social public opinion, a minority rebel against it, and a very small minority influence it. To disrupt an industry, you must lead the conversation. People will give up aesthetics to conform to common social discourse. To guide public opinion, advertising and PR are equally important, especially in an era where online media dominates social discourse. We see that brands on the pedestal all have strong PR strategies and execution. The biggest difference between advertising and PR is: negative advertising can also produce positive value, while negative PR can produce negative value. In other words: bad advertising won't kill a brand, even if the ad's reputation is worse than Brain Platinum or Hengyuanxiang; but bad PR can kill a brand, no matter how much money is spent or how strong the PR is. The saying "the best reputation comes from good products" is not wrong, but it is definitely not achieved by good products alone. 6. People like to watch the excitement In social marketing that aims to do more with less, the majority are onlookers, and the minority are those who join in. Communication relies mainly on onlookers, while sales rely mainly on those who join in. We pursue those who join in to pay, so we must first let them come and watch. It seems complicated, but in summary: first, create excitement. Excitement creates more possibilities and increases participation. Excitement has many dimensions, such as being in an already exciting industry, engaging with exciting media, making marketing exciting, and so on. Without special channels, the possibility of making a fortune quietly is extremely small. Market loudly, use excitement to trigger curiosity, and cause onlookers to form word-of-mouth communication. Consumers' resistance to familiar products will also weaken. Consumer psychology drives behavior. Finding the right price point, valuing appearance design, solving immediate problems, not abandoning practicality, running advertising and PR in parallel, and making marketing exciting are all basic strategies to weaken consumer psychological defenses. If you implement these 6 points, consumers will be "fools." Source: Market Department Network --------------------------------------------