China's consumer market is undergoing an unprecedented iterative innovation. We see the power of the new generations, the brands, businesses and the marketers in this transition period, causing more confusion. As a Chinese marketing agency, we recommend these 9 forward-looking marketing tactics which are focusing on the China market, hoping to inspire confused brands and marketers.
Tactic 1: Small and beautiful
In September 2020, Tmall said at the new brand press conference that "In the next ten years, Internet to create more new brands".
Tmall predicts that there will be 1000 new brands with annual sales of more than 100 million in the next three years.
This means that the Internet is still in the stage of development and is still full of unlimited opportunities for new brands.
The popularity of live e-commerce, short video and social marketing has made the concept of digital marketing clearer, and many new brands have emerged. In short, new people, new marketing, new needs and new brands are reconstructing the consumer market.
With the help of the Internet, niche new brands such as Xiaohongshu, Zhong Xuegao and Yuanqi forest, which focus on segmentation, speciality and characteristic fields, are rapidly coming out of the circle with the marketing positioning of "small doesn't matter, beauty is good". This is what we call "Small and beautiful".
Tactic 2: Personality
Building brand personality is an effective strategy to enrich the brand image and increase brand vitality. The more prominent the personalized image is, the more impressed the audience is.
How to enhance brand personality?
We need to find a spokesperson (commonly known as brand IP) who fits the brand value proposition. This brand IP can be a mascot, a popular online star, or an entrepreneur himself. Often, entrepreneurs as brand IP spokesmen can better create brand topics and concerns. In the era of personalized consumption, Enterprise IP with distinct images can attract and impress users, thus affecting their purchase decisions.
Tactic 3: Win Gen Z
The rise of Gen Z has promoted the formation of a new social field different from the traditional social platform. Compared with traditional social networking, Gen Z young people prefer to choose a social platform to express their true feelings.
According to the data of the "11.11 investment guide" released by Alimama, the "Gen Z" accounts for nearly 30% of the consumption share, and the consumption growth rate exceeds 400%. It has promoted the development of the KOL economy, Fan economy and Two-dimension economy.
Gen Z pointed out that the post-95 young people born between 1995 and 2009 grew up with the Internet. According to incomplete statistics, there are about 260 million people. Personalized consumption has become their mainstream preference. In order to comply with the marketing trend of Gen Z, many brands try to establish communication with them through exciting and fun social ways.
Tactic 4: KOC
With the rise of social media, great changes have taken place in the communication mode between brands and users, and brands pay more and more attention to "returning to people themselves" whether big or small brands, the way and channel to reduce costs and collect sales leads is undoubtedly the best choice.
Celebrity endorsement is no longer the most suitable marketing method. KOC marketing follows the trend of the times and rises rapidly with the movement of lightning, reaping a large wave of traffic. More and more KOC people are becoming a bridge between brands and users, helping brands build user trust and reputation and affect users' purchase decisions.
Tactic 5: Platform IP (Intelligent Property)
The playing method of "Platform IP" has been widely used in recent years.
For example, Jingdong, Tmall, Bate Dance, NetEase, Douyin and other media business platforms have launched a unique IP to increase brand identification. It is worth mentioning that Tmall IP iterates every year. It always attracts people's attention with trendy visual symbols.
Tactic 6: New culture and innovation
With the cross-border joint names of the Forbidden City, Dunhuang Museum and brands, with a new image of youth and commercialization, it has entered the general public's vision, which not only refreshes people's understanding of the cultural industry but also indicates the rise of cultural IP.
Tactic 7: Creativity matters
Creativity sparks brand experience and marketing. Digital creativity has emerged with the new era. With the improvement of cognition, people pay more and more attention to the richness of the spiritual world.
Follow the principle of "Art down and brand up", combine the two, integrate the unique artistic visual language into the brand in the way of building museums and exhibitions, and create an amazing visual feast for the audience. This marketing method is more suitable for medium and high-end brands with artistic temperaments.
Successful cases of Art Flash include LV, Chanel and Fotile. They closely follow the law of cross-border art, based on aesthetics, successfully break through the barriers between art and brand, and add an emotional bond between brand and users.
Tactic 8: Shorten marketing journey
Establishing the marketing journey is to guide the brand experience and purchase behaviour actively. Shorten the marketing journey and focus on increasing brand followers, direct purchase, store arrival, registration, etc., which brings the brand closer to the consumers during their purchasing behaviour.
Tiktok wants to shorten the "marketing journey". Companies need to seize the electricity business track and enter the platform such as Bate Dance, WeChat, Kuaishou, and so on. Take the scene as the medium, integrate the marketing system, and build a marketing link of "what you want is what you see, what you see is what you buy, what you buy is what you get, and what you get is what you like".
Tactic 9: 5G powered video
Short videos are as small as tens of seconds, and documentaries are as long as tens of minutes. To intuitively convey more brand content to the audience, many enterprises have shifted the focus of brand publicity to videos.
Especially with the help and blessing of 5g, the smooth appearance of video has accelerated the promotion of brand documentaries.
No matter the length of time, as long as it is video, it can always attract more attention. In the documentary, the actual image full of realistic particles weakens the hardness of advertising, allows the audience to immerse themselves unprepared, has strong emotional impact and appeal, and is easy to trigger and mobilize users' emotions.
Moreover, this marketing method has a strong ability of brand diffusion and penetration, promoting users to understand and understand the brand more profoundly and connect users more quickly.
Summary
In the era of consumption, the way of advertising has gradually failed. When users buy products, they are no longer satisfied with the simple product experience. They pay more attention to emotional and spiritual resonance.
In the future, in addition to improving the sense of product experience, the brand needs to create a unique value proposition and cultural connotation to guide and provide users with a new lifestyle.