When it comes to user management, in marketing we care most about two groups: The first is angel customers, or what we call source-point people. They are a brand's first batch of customers, the group most likely to buy from you among all consumers, and the ones who feel your product's pain points most deeply and have the strongest purchase intention. Before any new brand launches, it must first find its angel customers; if it can't find them, the brand is doomed. The second is valued customers, or what we call core people. According to the 80/20 rule, 20% of customers contribute 80% of sales, so companies should focus their operations on those customers with the highest spending and purchase frequency. If you manage this group well, performance will follow. Moreover, this group not only contributes sales but may also be loyal fans who generate buzz and traffic for the brand, helping to spread the word, build reputation, create topics, and attract new customers. In times of brand crisis, they will also step up to express support and defend the brand's reputation. Angel customers determine a brand's survival; valued customers determine its growth. For any company, focusing on these two groups and investing core resources, time, and energy in them is the logical approach. As for those who clearly won't buy your brand, or who have no need or interest in your brand or similar products on the market, they naturally don't deserve your time and effort. This is the logic of marketing, but when all brands are eyeing existing customers and busy claiming territory, you'll find that the market quickly runs out of space, leaving everyone to fight fiercely in a red ocean. However, if companies are willing to shift their gaze to "non-customers," they may discover new market opportunities and create new business prospects. The logic here is that if you carefully observe the non-customers in your industry and market, and think about why they have no demand, what key factors are hindering their purchase, then you can find opportunities to improve products, or even redesign them—that is innovation. Generally speaking, innovation is divided into two types: incremental innovation and disruptive innovation. Incremental innovation is about optimizing and upgrading product technology based on meeting existing customer needs. Disruptive innovation, on the other hand, requires entering from the fringes of the market, innovating in a marginal market that everyone ignores or doesn't care about, gradually changing the market until eventually disrupting it. Today's fringe can become tomorrow's mainstream overnight, creating a brand-new market. For example, Pinduoduo entered from the fringe that mainstream e-commerce platforms like Taobao, Tmall, and JD.com ignored, starting with cheap goods, attracting users through the "group buying" model innovation, and eventually growing into the mainstream. If we translate this market fringe into a brand's customer structure, I can represent it with a diagram like this. Customer Management Structure For a brand, the most central and mainstream are valued customers, while the most fringe are undoubtedly non-customers. Potential customers might still buy from you; they just haven't yet, or they've bought from competitors, so they need to be won over. Non-customers, on the other hand, have no need or interest in you, so conventionally you can only give up on them. But as we just said, today's fringe is tomorrow's mainstream. If we figure out the reasons and obstacles behind non-customers' lack of demand, then companies have the opportunity to turn non-customers into customers, and even into tomorrow's valued customers. Take Jiangxiaobai, for example. This brand, founded in 2012, has reached a sales scale of 3 billion yuan (2019 data) after ten years. So how did Jiangxiaobai become popular, and where does its marketing success lie? There have been countless articles analyzing this online in recent years, and here I'd like to share my perspective. Of course, when it comes to Jiangxiaobai's success, an obvious answer is its product sleeve copy. By printing various heartfelt, communicative copy on product sleeves and going viral across social networks, Jiangxiaobai gained widespread fame. This sleeve copy had several impacts. First, many similar small liquors, including various FMCG products, began printing copy on their bottles and packaging. Second, "heartfelt copy" became an industry buzzword, especially from 2015 to 2017, directly inflating the "nominal salaries" of copywriters. People were constantly saying online that this copy was worth 30,000 yuan a month, that copy was worth 50,000 yuan a month, though no one cared what copywriters actually earned. With Jiangxiaobai's rise, a critical voice also emerged: "Although Jiangxiaobai's copy is good, the product isn't." I've heard many people around me and online, especially those who regularly drink baijiu, confidently claim that Jiangxiaobai's liquor tastes bad. In my view, arguments about good copy or bad taste are too superficial. What is Jiangxiaobai's true corporate strategy? It's actually focusing on the "non-customers" of the baijiu market, using this to innovate, including product innovation, brand innovation, and marketing innovation... First, who are the valued customers of the baijiu market? The answer is the political and business crowd aged 30-40. After 40, as physical functions decline and health awareness increases, baijiu consumption gradually moderates and declines. Below 30, there are fewer opportunities to sit at the drinking table, fewer interpersonal interactions and social engagements, and they are still in the process of accepting and adapting to baijiu. In fact, this demographic characteristic is a person's socialization process: graduating from university, entering the workforce, gradually rising to middle management within a few years, becoming a small leader, and thus having more social engagements, eventually becoming a high-frequency baijiu consumer. This starting age is generally after 26 or 27. A few years ago, there was data showing that the average age of heavy baijiu consumers was over 40, which reflects this. With these demographic characteristics, we see that traditional baijiu marketing approaches are basically the same, with a single style. Most baijiu brands emphasize history, traditional craftsmanship, and category status in their appeals. Their brand images pursue grandeur, stability, and intellectual depth, portraying successful people in advertisements. These are clearly aimed at middle-aged people, not young people. Young people are the "non-customers" of the baijiu market. Most young people don't drink baijiu before they are socialized. But young people do drink; they just drink everything except baijiu. However, they don't drink for social obligations, not because they have to at the table, not in the "I'll finish mine, you do as you please" style, but for fun and to get a buzz. Jiangxiaobai's founder, Tao Shiquan, said that Jiangxiaobai's development is based on exploring new consumption scenarios: small gatherings, small drinks, small moments, and small moods—these are Jiangxiaobai's "four small scenarios." These scenarios are precisely the fringe scenarios of baijiu consumption, because the mainstream drinking scenarios for traditional baijiu are business banquets and family dinners. Under this strategy of targeting baijiu "non-customers," Jiangxiaobai's sleeve copy becomes easy to understand, and then you can more easily understand its liquor body and taste. Its products are designed for young people who haven't drunk baijiu before, so Jiangxiaobai chose a light-aroma sorghum liquor with a pure and refreshing body, lower alcohol content (40 degrees), making it easy for young people to drink and swallow. If you ask those seasoned baijiu drinkers who are used to 50-plus-degree strong-aroma or sauce-aroma liquors to drink this, they will naturally find it unpleasant. That's because Jiangxiaobai's products aren't designed for old liquor enthusiasts but to meet young people's taste acceptance. Even if we go a step further, for young people who aren't used to drinking baijiu, what baijiu isn't hard to drink? A 2,000-yuan bottle of Moutai is just as hard to drink, right? Since young people can't swallow high-proof baijiu, Jiangxiaobai also focused on creating low-alcohol fruit-flavored sorghum liquors, including 15-degree white grape flavor, 23-degree peach flavor, and four other flavors. Compared to Jiangxiaobai's current main product, the Expression Bottle (40-degree baijiu), I actually see more promise in this product's future (as an advertising professional who has served various baijiu brands for 14 years, I consider this a true baijiu product innovation). The 40-degree small bottle is still a normal, traditional baijiu product. Beyond baijiu, Jiangxiaobai has also created another strategic big product—Meijian, a 12-degree green plum wine. This is positioned to tap into a new growth curve amid the current boom in fruit wines. From the 40-degree Expression Bottle, to the fruit-flavored baijiu at around 15 degrees, to green plum wine, including both the Jiangxiaobai and Meijian brands, it's clear that Jiangxiaobai's strategic layout is all aimed at baijiu non-customers. Even Meijian is designed for non-customers of green plum wine. Because the valued customers of green plum wine are women. Women account for more than half of consumption, and the growth rate of their average order value for such products is much higher than men's. So if you search on Taobao or JD.com, you'll see that most plum wine brands have very feminine names and packaging designs. But overly feminine brands are generally not consumed by men. However, Meijian's product design is masculine: the bottle and packaging style lean toward whiskey, and even its smoky flavor is more in line with masculine drinking characteristics. In fact, this is the only way to truly expand the green plum wine market, not just ride a trend. Because although women currently drink green plum wine, their drinking volume and frequency are insufficient. Since Jiangxiaobai's Expression Bottle came out, many liquor companies have imitated its product copy and marketing tactics, but most have only learned the surface. Jiangxiaobai's true strategy—targeting baijiu non-customers, this fringe market—has always been neglected, even arrogantly treated, by traditional liquor companies. Otherwise, they wouldn't have made absurd remarks like "Young people don't drink baijiu because they haven't grown up and don't understand." Let me give another case: PIY. This is a furniture brand founded by Shen Wenjiao, the creative director who brought me into the industry when I was at Publicis, and also my close friend and mentor. For the home furnishing market, who are the valued customers? The answer is naturally homeowners, especially those who have just bought a house and are preparing to renovate. If you visit home furnishing and building materials markets, you'll see that many brands even target luxury home customers, with stores full of European luxury palace-style, huge leather sofas and beds that won't fit in small apartments. Renters are clearly non-customers of the home furnishing market. First, they don't really need to buy large furniture, as landlords provide it; second, even if they need it for their current rental, they might not need it after moving to the next place. Throwing it away is a pity, but keeping it is a burden, and moving furniture is quite troublesome. This means that renters' demand for furniture is highly uncertain. Even if they occasionally need to buy simple wardrobes, tables, chairs, or coffee tables, they tend to choose lightweight, cheap options so they don't feel bad when moving or discarding them. So this group all goes to IKEA. With this group explained, let's look back at PIY. PIY's first hit product was the nude coat rack. It became a bestseller not only because of its elegant, simple style and brilliant product design, winning 6 Red Dot Design Awards. Another very important point, I think, is that its product application scenarios are broad—it can be placed in homes, offices, guesthouses, and coffee shops. Thus, its market is large enough; both homeowners and renters need it and can buy it. Even if you move, it can be easily disassembled into six wooden sticks and reassembled, which is very convenient. So a few years ago, when I discussed PIY's brand development with A Jiao, I mentioned this point. I told him that PIY needed to create a second hit product that renters could also buy. Other furniture brands only target homeowners, especially those with luxury homes (valued customers of furniture), but PIY could target renters (non-customers of furniture). But in the end, PIY didn't come up with a second hit product; instead, it came up with a product system. (This video is a must-watch, so interesting—see what the LEGO of the furniture world looks like) Based on this system, consumers can freely splice and assemble the furniture they need according to their living environment and needs, following their own ideas and creativity, creating a unique piece of furniture and a unique home. If you move or change houses, you just disassemble and reassemble according to the new house's requirements. PIY's furniture has no screws and requires no tools; assembly and disassembly are very simple. Its emergence solves the pain points of traditional furniture being heavy, hard to move, difficult to relocate, and unable to adapt to different houses and layouts. Thus, it can attract those who previously wouldn't buy furniture, opening up a blue ocean market. So it greatly adapts to all kinds of people, whether renting or buying, and can freely transform and infinitely reassemble according to your layout, style, and living habits. This big idea of making furniture like toys truly embodies PIY's "play it yourself" brand philosophy. The real strategy behind it is understanding and satisfying the "non-customers" of the furniture market. Jiangxiaobai insightfully identified the needs of people who don't drink baijiu, and PIY insightfully identified the needs of people who don't buy furniture, thus making remarkable innovations in their respective fields and discovering new market spaces. I interpret this with a diagram as follows: this is the path of innovation diffusion. First, find the non-customers in your industry, understand why they don't buy and what obstacles exist, and then innovatively design new products and business models. Then, treat these non-customers, ignored by other brands in the industry, as your angel customers, and make your first sale. As this group grows larger, their tastes and consumption standards begin to influence consumers across the market, and the brand gradually gains market influence and becomes mainstream. At this point, the brand should also capture the valued customers within its consumer base, continuously driving brand and business growth, achieving sustained growth and profitability. Non-customers determine innovation, angel customers determine survival, and valued customers determine growth. Source: Kongshou (ID: firesteal13) Tips: If your tip is adopted, you will be paid 400-2000 yuan.