The following is the speech delivered by Wang Jinghua, CEO of Miduo, at the 5th FMCG + Internet Conference hosted by New Distribution, organized and published for readers. Understanding the essence of business is the prerequisite for understanding 'new marketing' Wang Jinghua believes that to understand new marketing, one must fully understand the 'essence of business'. Therefore, at the beginning of the conference, he raised the question: 'What is the essence of business?' He believes that 'the essence of business is to deeply bind customer relationships', and brand owners must keep customer-centricity in mind. From 1980 when 'commodity supply was short' to 2010 when 'information transmission was overloaded', the brand owners that have survived to this day share a common trait: they have a group of regular customers, which we now call seed users (customers). The most critical factors are customer intimacy and the number of intimate customers, as these two metrics can determine the 'life and death' of a brand owner. The more seed users (customers) you have and the higher their quality, the closer your relationship with customers, which is also a customer-centric behavior. As times change, the role of seed users (customers) for brand owners has evolved from 'wholesalers → distributors → terminal stores → terminal customers (people)'. Today, the core customer base of brand owners has been segmented down to end consumers, not just large units like wholesalers, distributors, or stores, but down to individuals, which we often interpret as fans. Now, terminal customers are both consumers and disseminators. Once a brand owner attracts negative fans, even the strongest PR is futile, because among your terminal customers, there may be KOLs with massive traffic, and their voice can be louder than the company's. Therefore, at this stage, brand owners must pay attention to their relationships with terminal customers, connect with them as much as possible, understand their needs, and gain their trust. Wherever customers' attention is, brand influence should be there! New marketing is a means to deeply bind terminal customer relationships. Therefore, the core competitiveness of future enterprises lies in shifting from product production to deeply understanding consumer needs and creating customer needs, organizing R&D, production, and services based on needs, making rapid and timely business decisions to drive business growth. The keyword of new marketing is 'deep customer connection'. Only 'new marketing' based on big data is truly 'new marketing'! Earlier we mentioned that new marketing is about binding relationships with customers. To achieve new marketing, one must understand what new marketing is. There are many opinions about new marketing, but Wang Jinghua believes that true new marketing is centered on 'user operation', using data to reconstruct 'people, goods, and places', and achieving 'what you see is what you get' for users. Whoever does 'what you see is what you get' well will naturally do 'new marketing' well! Currently, many enterprises attempting to transform to new marketing are not successful enough. At a deeper level, the biggest obstacle is that their mindset has not changed, and they have not understood the core of new marketing. The key to building new marketing lies in having data on 'people'; only data centered on people can be called big data. New marketing is built on big data; otherwise, there is no essential difference between new marketing and traditional marketing. If you fiddle with so-called new marketing without a big data foundation, the result will inevitably be superficial and counterproductive. Therefore, the practice of brand new marketing needs to create richer 'what you see is what you get' marketing scenarios through multiple dimensions, ports, and channels, capturing data from terminal customers (channel distributors, terminal stores, consumers), to build your own big data engine, generate high-frequency connections with customers, and deeply operate customers, so that new marketing can be done better. Everyone talks about new marketing, but where exactly is it 'new'? First new: Integrating the 'trinity' [cognition, transaction, relationship]. In the marketing field, the previous 'cognition, transaction, relationship' were separated; advertising was necessary to reach, expand, and strengthen brand awareness, and products had to go through layers of distribution before reaching consumers. In traditional marketing models, brands basically had no relationship with consumers; most brand owners could only establish relationships with channel distributors, and then through distributors with terminal retail stores. However, with the existence of the internet and the gradual improvement of surrounding infrastructure and ecosystems, many original information dissemination and reach methods have been disrupted and reconstructed, making everyone a self-media, capable of integrating 'disseminator, buyer, and seller', allowing 'cognition, transaction, relationship' to be trinity. Because each person's strong ties with their circle of friends can greatly reduce the costs of cognition, transaction, and relationship maintenance. Second new: Opening up the 'three-dimensional space' [online, offline, community]. Offline is the entrance for traffic; in the early stage of a brand, it can solve the cognition problem for some people. Online mainly plays an interactive role; it can be infinitely expanded, empowering cognition, relationships, and transactions. In the three-dimensional space, community mainly serves as a connection and a tool for deepening relationships. Before the internet, products had to be transferred from the brand owner to consumers through 'deep distribution' to be effectively realized. But with the internet, deep distribution has gradually failed. The biggest reason is that consumers' attention and time are spent on the internet, and products are not omnipresently reaching the internet through all channels. This is the current situation: people are online, places are everywhere, but goods are not online. This requires traditional enterprises to use the internet as a carrier and big data as the foundation, to build a brand-centered big data system of 'data sharing, panoramic resonance, and full-chain win-win', and on this basis, organically integrate the three-dimensional space of 'online, offline, and community' to coexist symbiotically. Third new: Satisfying users' 'three alls and five senses'. The dual support of consumption upgrade and internet reform has greatly liberated the information asymmetry between consumers and brand owners. In the era of consumption upgrade, consumers want products that meet their needs, not products that brand owners think are good; they want products that their circle of friends thinks are right, not products that people outside their circle think are right. Therefore, they need brand owners to provide 'all-weather, all-scenario, all-experience' capabilities of 'goods finding people', need brands that suit themselves, and need brands that can provide 'sense of existence, participation, ritual, achievement, and happiness' to satisfy their 'small but certain happiness'. The temporary success of Heytea, Luckin Coffee, and Hema is largely due to their satisfaction of users' "three alls and five senses" . For brand owners to truly implement the 'trinity', 'three-dimensional space', and 'three alls and five senses' of new marketing, what is needed behind the scenes is a big data engine system that can help brand owners build various account systems (distributors, terminal stores, salespeople, consumers, etc.). It is a top-priority project and a decisive factor. Brand owners only need one Miduo big data engine software system to master new marketing! Wang Jinghua believes that 'mini-program + one product, one code' is an important starting point for traditional brands to launch new marketing. The most authentic and direct communication bridge between brands and consumers is the product itself. The two most important moments for brands to reach and influence consumers revolve around 'products': the first moment: the scenario of seeing and purchasing the product (mini-program); the second moment: the scenario of using the product (one product, one code). Miduo Big Data Engine's 'Smart Retail Mini-Program' makes products online before users purchase, helping various terminals achieve interactive experiences and sales promotion with consumers in a 'goods find people' manner. Brand owners can use the Miduo Smart Retail Mini-Program to regularly push benefits to consumers, such as group-buying activities, bargaining activities, etc., stimulating consumer participation, thereby achieving 'goods find people', and also solving the problem of pre-purchase online presence. It is an important starting point for brand owners to implement new marketing. Moreover, for most brand owners, terminal sales promotion still has significant pain points. The store mini-program has LBS attributes; brand owners can use the store mini-program to radiate traffic within 3 kilometers based on LBS, attracting nearby people to the store and guiding consumption, solving the problem of lack of traffic and conversion for traditional brand stores. Through the 'Smart Retail Mini-Program', brand owners' activities can quickly reach store terminals, and share the brand owner's own capabilities (product library, marketing activities, etc.) with the store side. As a tool that can be used by scanning a code, the store mini-program is not only simple to set up but also extremely convenient for offline promotion for physical stores that have no internet marketing thinking or capabilities. Miduo Smart Retail (Store Mini-Program) Case: The store doesn't need to do anything; all it needs to do is forward and share. Miduo Big Data Engine's 'One Product, One Code' makes products online after users purchase, serving as the entrance for brand-user and channel interaction and marketing, and the core source of precise user data assets. The store mini-program helps brand owners solve the problems of store traffic and sales promotion. Miduo's one product, one code organically combines QR codes for all possible scenarios such as anti-counterfeiting, anti-channel conflict, traceability, promotion, sales guidance, and after-sales on product packaging (not that a product needs multiple QR codes, but one QR code should cater to personalized needs of multiple scenarios), making product coding the best entrance for zero-distance, barrier-free interaction between brand owners and consumers, so as to collect the account system of every consumer who buys your product, and through the scenarios needed by each consumer who buys your product, trigger the automatic sharing mechanism, letting friends in their circle know, and making the brand personified to form community resonance. In this code-scanning era, through the information transmission after each scan, enterprises can save a large amount of terminal communication costs, and each promotional message can be accurately delivered to consumers. Moreover, each scan connects the scanner who is the real consumer group. 'One product, one code' collects real consumption data, including core user information and profiles. Furthermore, through one product, one code, products are transformed into touchpoints that form relationships with consumers, turning products into traffic entrances for 'Internet +'; this can turn terminal routes into a 'honeycomb', allowing enterprises to better understand product flow, endow products with marketing functions, and reduce investment in intermediate links. Remember: The prerequisite for brand owners to achieve new marketing is to build a 'user account system' The uniqueness of the Miduo Big Data Engine lies in its ability to connect the data chain behind users' 'scanning', helping brand owners build three account systems: 'channel distributors, terminal stores, and consumers'. Once users scan the code, a personal account for consumers will be established based on WeChat official accounts/mini-programs, helping brands collect four types of important data:
- Native data: 'Is it male or female, where are they, how old are they?'
- Behavioral data: 'What did they do? What activities did they participate in?'
- Transactional data: 'What did they buy? When did they buy it? How much did they buy?'
- Scenario data: 'What happened in what scenario. Where did the user come from, and where did they go?' Relying on multi-terminal, multi-carrier, and multi-media to enrich and extend scenarios, and after collecting user data with scenario experience as the origin, the user profile system in the big data engine backend analyzes user data in real-time, fully implementing user classification, member grading, and privilege stratification, thereby achieving 'knowing customers better than they know themselves' and truly realizing the 'customer-centric' approach of new marketing. Miduo Big Data Engine helps brands achieve 'sales increase, fan multiplication, and cost reduction' without changing existing sales channels. Final Thoughts In the specific practice of new marketing, the methods and approaches will vary infinitely according to the differences in different enterprises at different development stages and with different demands; there is no immutable magic formula. The success of any enterprise depends on strategy, which relies on the predictive ability of enterprise leaders; operation is important, relying on the organizational ability of management; results are the manifestation, relying on the execution ability of the grassroots. This must be the case in any era, because no matter how times change, an enterprise is a seller of goods; how to sell goods is the kingly way, and consumers are buyers; how to make consumers willing to buy is the key. Overall, new marketing in the internet era is based on ABC (AI, Big Data, Cloud) to operate 'people', which is the prerequisite. Only on this basis can all enterprises have the possibility of success in selling goods. Therefore, the way of selling goods, due to the internet infrastructure and ecological environment, effectively integrates the 'trinity' (cognition, transaction, relationship) based on 'people', opens up the 'three-dimensional space' (online, offline, community) based on 'people', and realizes the 'three alls and five senses' (all-weather, all-scenario, all-experience; sense of existence, participation, ritual, achievement, happiness) based on 'people'. Any method of new marketing must achieve 'unity of brand and effect'.