-01- Why Can't We Discuss Marketing Effectively? When we talk about marketing, what comes to mind first? Perhaps advertising agencies like Ogilvy, or local marketers like Ye Maozhong, or marketing gurus like Kotler. What about Jiang Nanchun of Focus Media? He seems to be in marketing too. What about Alibaba and Baidu? They also seem to be doing marketing. It can be seen that the connotation of the word "marketing" is very complex, and different people have completely different understandings of marketing from different angles. Nowadays, a large number of new terms keep emerging in the marketing industry, such as "influencer live streaming" and "planting and weeding" in the past, and "growth hacking" and "private domain traffic" today... These also show that the current marketing industry is still quite chaotic in terms of concepts. There are all kinds of people and opinions, but they may not all be talking about the same thing. When we talk about marketing, what exactly are we talking about? This is very critical. Many concepts in marketing are not clearly defined, which can lead to talking past each other, making dialogue difficult to establish. But more importantly, don't be confused by those new terms and industry noise. Many things change, but what remains unchanged is the essence.

-02- The "Change" and "Constancy" of Marketing Drucker once said "The purpose of a business is to create customers", which essentially means that enterprises should be customer-centric. How to be customer-centric? Drucker also said "A business has only two basic functions: marketing and innovation". Drucker placed marketing before innovation, showing the importance of marketing. Every industry has different marketing methods. The topic of marketing cannot be generalized because marketing models differ significantly across industries, categories, and business models. You cannot apply the marketing methods of FMCG to real estate, and it is difficult to use B2C methods for B2B. This is the "change" in marketing. Let's make a simple and rough division of the big market:

  • The first major category is the FMCG market. Because FMCG products usually have low unit prices, the trial cost for users after selection is very low, and they don't need to be very careful. The consumer decision time is relatively short. For example, whether we drink this brand of mineral water or that brand, we usually don't deliberate for a long time. Whether to drink Starbucks, Costa, or Luckin Coffee, users won't agonize over it all afternoon. In fact, the English for FMCG is "fast-moving", but I think it could also be "fast-thinking".
  • The second category is the conventional consumer goods market. This is a broad concept, referring to products with slightly higher unit prices, possibly products priced above 300 RMB in China. For such products, consumers have lower purchase frequency, are more price-sensitive, and the decision process is not as casual as with FMCG. For example, consumer electronics like mobile phones; you wouldn't buy them as casually as mineral water.
  • The third category is the high-value goods market, such as automobiles, real estate, education, healthcare, and finance. These products typically have high prices, and consumers may not buy them many times in their lifetime. The decision cycle is longer, and sometimes it's not just one person's decision but the whole family's, considering the needs of the elderly and children. This already has some B2B attributes.
  • Then there is the B2B market, which considers not just individual needs but the comprehensive needs of the entire organization. The amounts are large, the decision chain is long, and the trial cost is high. Marketers target not only the purchaser but also decision-makers and users. Marketing becomes increasingly complex, and B2B products are often customized to address specific pain points of enterprises.

The three major needs of enterprise marketing remain unchanged forever. Although different markets have different models, and there will be many changes and opportunities, these are all in the realm of "change". But true marketers should think about what is "unchanged", which is the essence of marketing. Bezos once said, "I think about what consumers' needs are that will never change, not what they will change tomorrow." The three major goals of marketing are things that never change:

  • Enterprise sales growth: More Enterprises need to sell more and sell faster. This is the most basic need for most enterprises, and it has given rise to many tactics for seizing opportunities. Enterprises constantly look for low-cost traffic pools and more effective channels. Through these channels and traffic dividends, enterprises may indeed stand out in a certain stage.
  • Brand value enhancement: More expensive How to increase product gross profit, enhance brand added value, and create more value for the enterprise. This is more about the brand's premium capability. The most terrible thing for a product is to sell cheaper and cheaper. For example, Xiaomi did well in the first stage by using internet methods like "sense of participation" for social marketing, but later still emphasized cost-effectiveness, which was a fatal mistake.
  • Customer loyalty improvement: More stable Improving user loyalty means more stable brand sales. In fact, B2C consumer goods are a highly competitive industry. Compared to B2B, C-end consumer stickiness is lower, while B2B products have closer customer relationships. For example, SaaS products have high switching costs and higher loyalty. These three marketing goals also sequentially give rise to three marketing stages for enterprises: most enterprises just need to sell products; some begin to hope consumers remember them; and later some realize they need to output values. Knowing what is unchanged tells you the direction in which enterprise marketing should strive.

-03- Do Startups Really Not Need to Build a Brand? Many startups adhere to the saying "Product is 1, marketing is 0", which is certainly correct. But in today's environment, products in many categories are no longer scarce. When everyone has that "1", the "0" behind becomes more important. And note that adding a zero means a tenfold increase. But brand building is a long-term endeavor that cannot bring returns in the short term. According to some international beauty brands, they basically lose money for three years when building a brand. The loss in these three years is not because gross profit cannot cover channel costs, but mainly due to brand building expenses. This leads to a very realistic question: Should startups build a brand? Many people think the competitive environment does not allow startups to build brands, but is that true? I think it's more that many enterprises lack brand awareness and do not include brand building in their marketing budget in advance. There may be a "poor man's thinking" phenomenon among marketers. Why are many people poor? Because they don't have time to do things that make them rich. Brand building is the same; it's not determined by competition or environment, but by whether the enterprise itself has brand thinking. For an enterprise, brand value is the long-term sustainable core competitiveness. Many enterprises are good at leveraging channel traffic dividends for growth, but such growth is not sustainable in the long run. Channel tactics are already relatively transparent, and no enterprise can build core competitiveness on acquiring traffic forever. This is why the once-popular Taobao brands have mostly declined now.

-04- What Exactly Is Difficult About Marketing? In the specific work of marketing, the core capability is insight. Whether marketing is done well mainly depends on whether the insight is accurate. Insight can be divided into multiple dimensions: from the perspective of consumer needs, can you see user needs; from the perspective of competitors, can you perceive competitive dynamics; from the media environment, can you discover communication patterns; from macro trends, can you see future market opportunities. With insight, subsequent marketing strategies, content creation, media buying, channel management, and loyalty management can be developed, forming a closed marketing loop. Of course, the "change" in marketing is also the norm in the industry. New concepts and tactics keep emerging because the internal and external environment is constantly changing. We call this environmental change the "butterfly effect". The "butterfly effect" in marketing management brings about two essential changes to marketing: First, the marketing model shifts from a "funnel" to a "ripple". In the past, marketing was driven by forced exposure, and both communication and conversion were a process of continuous filtering. Therefore, we often talked about marketing funnels and conversion rates. But today, users have actively participated in the communication process and can contribute traffic to the brand during marketing, like ripples on water, sparking social discussions and word-of-mouth. This change means brands need to shift their thinking and pay more attention to users' active voice. Today's fission, SCRM, and viral communication are essentially about creating "ripples". Second, from expert experience to human-machine collaboration. The marketing environment has become complex, and marketing variables have increased, meaning the difficulty of processing marketing information has increased. In the past, marketing strategies based on expert experience are gradually failing today because the human brain cannot handle so much information and data. This means it is necessary to use machines and technologies such as ABC (AI, Big Data, Cloud Computing) to assist marketing experts in decision-making.

-05- How to Improve Enterprise Marketing Efficiency? The "butterfly effect" in marketing management has reduced the marketing efficiency of many enterprises. How to market efficiently has become the biggest pain point for enterprises, and the key to efficient marketing lies in efficiently obtaining marketing insights. A medium-sized brand today generates about 10,000 pieces of content and interaction data daily on social networks, e-commerce platforms, and vertical media. After word segmentation, the related content contains more than 100,000 keywords, and there are more than 20,000 related users. In fact, enterprise marketing data has become "big" data first. By analyzing this marketing big data, it can efficiently assist marketers in discovering "marketing insights" and avoid the risks brought by pure manpower and pure experience judgment. To tap the value of this marketing big data, a data marketing system can be built to capture and analyze all data related to the brand and marketing, including public data, build a marketing knowledge graph, form targeted analysis frameworks for each vertical industry and vertical marketing scenario, and enable AI empowerment for strategy, creativity, media, and communication. I believe that with the accumulation and optimization of data, this will surely become an important auxiliary tool for marketers. Just as we rely on search engine computing power to retrieve information on the internet, mining insights also requires an engine system.

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