Reviewing and summarizing 2020, and planning and looking forward to 2021, is a topic that all enterprises have been focusing on and discussing recently. In the food and beverage sector, 2020 can be called the first year of growth for new consumer brands. Everything was new: new product launches, new rounds of financing, and new customer growth. With the outbreak of the pandemic, consumers stayed at home and got to know more and more innovative consumer brands through various social apps. While brands achieved rapid growth, they also completed the startup phase from 0 to 1 and from 1 to 10. Behind this business rise, the essence is direct connection with consumers, no middlemen, and efficient growth driven by direct traffic conversion. On various seeding platforms, with unique selling points and livestream selling, innovative products stimulated a large number of users. But is this "stimulation" sustainable? Not necessarily! When we summarize 2020 and plan for 2021, every new consumer brand's online growth will face a practical issue: In 2020, through traffic logic, users were stimulated to make the first purchase attempt. After the "novelty" consumption ends, where is the handle for sustained online growth in the food and beverage industry in 2021? How to achieve sustained growth in 2021? Let's give the answer directly: 1. Continuously impress users and build brand awareness; 2. Continuously drive user repurchase, focusing on retention rather than new acquisition. To understand this in detail, this article will focus on these two dimensions to explore strategies for innovative food and beverage brands to cope with the new round of growth pressure in 2021, hoping to provide some inspiration and reference for entrepreneurs and innovators. -01- Continuously Impress Users In the past, we rarely said "impress users." Why? Because it wasn't necessary! In the past, the era of the post-70s and post-80s generations was characterized by resource scarcity. Internally, there was material scarcity; externally, information was scarce. But for those born after the 90s, material abundance is relatively high, and information is overflowing. Therefore, the consumption needs of the previous generation were more about satisfying quantitative needs of "having or not" and "how much." Now, the mainstream young consumers' needs are about satisfying qualitative needs of "relationships" and "self-pleasure." What does that mean? Business owner: My product is really good!? Consumer: What does that have to do with me?! When consumers are in an era of material abundance, the satisfaction and happiness that a single material item can bring to young consumers is decreasing. Material is the foundation, but emotional connection, peer recognition, and personal pleasure are the key. Therefore, for consumers, who you are and what you say are not important. What matters is: what does it have to do with me? This is the first question that innovative business owners need to think about when they want to acquire users, gain brand awareness, build their brand, and do sustainable business. In comparison, the past brand growth path of current FMCG giants was basically achieved through centralized single media. An advertisement could run for ten years, repeated over and over, to make users remember. Consumers' input and awareness of the brand relied on TV advertising, which often represented status and authority. Brand awareness was achieved through repeated memory and authoritative carriers. But now, the single centralized media is gone, and consumers with strong material needs are gone. To achieve brand awareness, we can only rely on continuously "impressing users." How to impress users? Let's look at a specific case. On May 20, 2020, Zhong Xue Gao used 5,200 sunflowers to create its first pop-up store at K11 in Shanghai's Xintiandi. This event attracted the attention of passersby and captured everyone's attention. Whether inside the K11 mall or outside, many people in the Shanghai area saw Zhong Xue Gao's ads while scrolling through their Moments. Seeing the ads, many users came out of admiration, got a taste experience, and shared it again, continuously gaining exposure on WeChat Moments. Even those who didn't come to the scene could feel the natural and healthy brand concept advocated by Zhong Xue Gao through other users' shares. With the help of Tencent's social scene, Zhong Xue Gao achieved a closed loop of check-in – sharing – traffic diversion, combining online Moments with offline pop-up stores. In addition to the social scene, the Tencent ecosystem also provides a powerful content matrix, relying on pan-circle content sections such as music, news, sports, entertainment, and games, to help brands explore greater traffic value in major events and big IPs. By designing activities that are relevant and enjoyable to users, and then through Tencent's social and content scenes, achieving viral communication, the complete chain of seeing the brand online ➡️ remembering the brand ➡️ understanding the brand ➡️ following the brand is ultimately realized. In the past, we said, "Closely connecting products with users is the basic rule to leverage users." How to connect closely? Integrating products into users' social life and life scenarios is the logic of continuously impressing users. An innovative good product is just a starting point; interacting with users and co-creating scenarios with users is the key process. Only through this cycle can we finally achieve the end point of brand awareness. Meeting consumers' social needs, helping them flaunt their identity, and bringing them pleasure is the new definition of a good product today. -02- Continuously Drive User Repurchase Continuous repurchase is a topic we often discussed in the past. But with changes in the environment, the logic of repurchase is also quietly changing. In the past, solving the repurchase problem could only be done through memory-based advertising, constantly stimulating users. Media and stores were separated, and ads couldn't immediately trigger purchases. Remember my product, and when consumers walk into a supermarket, they choose the brand based on the impression in their minds. So repeatedly reinforcing brand memory was an important handle for user repurchase. Today, consumers can see information and place orders at any time without delay. Faced with massive amounts of information, people's memory becomes very short. If consumers can't place an order immediately, they will soon forget. Of course, business is progressing, and consumers' demand for immediate feedback is getting stronger. Compared to the early days of online e-commerce, the so-called "immediate" meant content platforms attracted users, users went to e-commerce platforms, and then searched and purchased. But now the "immediate" requirement is higher: see it and buy it. Therefore, to achieve continuous user repurchase in the current consumption environment, the most important way is to surround users, reach them through the shortest path, and attract them with content, social interaction, and products in a multi-line approach. A very interesting set of data: In the past, most of us thought Tencent was a social platform and content platform. But in reality, today's Tencent is not only a social scene and content scene, but also a trading scene. In 2019, WeChat Mini Program transaction volume exceeded 800 billion yuan. More than 50 million merchants connect with 1.2 billion users every day, and more than 1 billion orders are paid through WeChat Pay. As of August 2020, Mini Program GMV grew 115% year-on-year. It can be seen that Tencent is a rapidly expanding trading scene. Whether in terms of volume or growth rate, I think the key reason behind this is the immediate satisfaction of users. In the WeChat ecosystem, self-operated e-commerce with Mini Programs as the base, by connecting the entire Tencent private domain ecosystem (communities, WeCom, official accounts, Channels, etc.), has become a new scenario for innovative brands' direct sales. To summarize the current logic of continuous user repurchase: embed the business into consumers' social and content scenarios, continuously stimulate users with short paths and zero loss, and achieve rapid conversion. For example, in official accounts, push personalized content based on different user lifecycles; in WeCom, provide different communication methods based on users; in communities, build a 1-to-N social communication base and optimize the community in a timely manner. Daily Black Chocolate is a good example. As a dark horse in the chocolate field, the brand directly linked to the Mini Program mall through Moments ads, and after payment, diverted users to the private domain. The conversion rate for scanning codes to join the group and purchase was as high as 30%, and Mini Program business grew 4 times monthly. Mint Health also connected the official account – Mini Program – WeCom chain, accumulating over 120 active communities. By using heartfelt operations such as sharing nutritionist recipes and inviting users to participate in new product reviews, they effectively maintained the activity of core loyal users, resulting in an average purchase amount of over 700 yuan per user. -03- Summary Jiang Xiaobai has a PPBS methodology: P: Users, 40% of time; P: Product, 30% of time; B: Brand, 20% of time; S: Sales, 10% of time Obviously, the time and energy spent on users far exceeds others. In the past, traditional enterprises might have spent 40% of their time on sales, 30% on brand, 20% on product development, and only 10% on user research. Now that's not enough. When we have a good product, we must think about how to quickly find user needs. It's not just about a product, but through product + content, product + social, product + scenario to impress users, establish brand recognition, build brand affinity, and then achieve continuous repurchase. Tang Binsen, founder of Genki Forest, once said: "The product with the strongest new acquisition capability in China is Tiananmen. Everyone wants to go once, but no one wants to go a second time. From a mathematical perspective, what truly solves long-term user growth is retention, not new acquisition." When food and beverage brands complete the startup phase from 0 to 1 through good products and traffic exposure, the next step is how to live better and longer. This will be a key topic in daily operations! 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