How to make users fall in love with your brand in one second? Here are 4 tips!

As the number of consumers increases, the number of products also increases. It is easy to develop a product, but how to develop it into a well-known brand that "keeps customers coming"? The author gives some of his answers.

Just like the interactions between people, from seeing what the other person looks like and knowing his name (acquaintance), to understanding what the other person does and what hobbies the other person has (cognition), to resonating with the other person's outlook on life and values ​​(identification), then falling in love (trust), and finally achieving a happy ending and moving towards marriage (companionship).

Brand communication is like a process of falling in love with users. We hope to communicate with users in a more friendly way and convey the value proposition and connotation of the corporate brand during the communication process, so that users can understand the brand, accept the brand, identify with the brand, and use your products.

How does a user know, understand and like a brand? Four steps to stimulate his interest, let him understand the brand, use the brand and fall in love with the brand.

1. Products: Promoting enterprise value transactions

Starting from the product is the first reaction of the public to brand marketing. Generally speaking, brand action is based on the product itself, through a series of operations to achieve the maximum promotion of the product, so as to generate the greatest economic benefits.

The Chinese dim sum industry has seen two notable changes in recent years: brand aging and categories without quality.

You may know brands such as Daoxiangcun, Xinghualou, and Guangzhou Restaurant, but most of them are bought as souvenirs. You may like egg yolk cakes, pineapple cakes, ham mooncakes, and red bean paste cakes, but there are few nationally renowned brands behind them.

However, Yu Xiaoguo has taken a path of reviving traditional culture and Chinese dim sum culture, organizing, innovating and designing traditional Chinese dim sum. It promotes the industrialization upgrade of pastries from the perspective of cultural creation, and becomes a national new Chinese dim sum brand that meets market demand.

Specifically, Yu Xiaoguo's product strategy can be summarized into the following four aspects:

In terms of product modeling, Yu Xiaoguo collected and sorted out what ancient Chinese dim sum looked like. The brand finally collected more than 7,000 artifacts related to dim sum and more than 4,000 molds. Some of them are made of ceramics, some are made of wood, and some are made based on character stories and gods and monsters, all of which are very exquisite. Each mold contains rich cultural connotations. One thing Yu Xiaoguo did was to try to restore the ancient dim sum making process through these molds and then show them to consumers.

In terms of taste, Yu Xiaoguo incorporated the traditional process flow into the factory's production line, and then improved the taste based on the different preferences of consumers. Therefore, in Yu Xiaoguo's product "Xiaoguo Su", we added durian, spicy, brown sugar and other flavor elements to the peach pastry to meet different taste requirements.

In terms of packaging, we often see snacks sold in bulk in the market. Such packaging not only looks cheap, but also accumulates oil stains in the box over time. Yu Xiaoguo designed the "Xiaoxian Box" to address this problem. It uses a deoxidizer to create a low-oxygen environment in the box to preserve freshness. This not only makes the packaging box itself fashionable, but also ensures that the product's appearance remains unchanged for a long time.

In terms of design, Yu Xiaoguo also guides consumers to understand the eating scenarios of each type of pastry, which includes popularizing knowledge about specific seasons and traditional rituals on the page, telling consumers what kind of pastries they should eat and when and in what occasions, making pastries a ritual for consumers to express their emotions.

What can we conclude from Yu Xiaoguo's case? You don't have to create a brand first, the market is yours, and you have to have products that surprise users.

Calm down and be a craftsman, carve and polish more valuable things (products, services, content), and everything is possible.

2. Senses: Communication and Mind Occupation

In the Internet age, the values ​​conveyed by people become more important.

Michael Solomon, a pioneer in the field of consumer behavior, once said: "Treat consumers as people, not just as consumers."

From the perspective of discovery marketing theory, the pursuit of improved communicability first requires understanding and respect for “people”—no one likes to read instructions, no one wants to learn in order to shop, no one likes to wait in boredom, and no one does not feel lost when confused.

In these situations, users’ first reaction is always to communicate, and brands should adapt to users’ nature of being highly dependent on communication.

Therefore, we will find that in the operation of the market economy, Internet companies are increasingly paying attention to collecting consumers' opinions and feedback, and "reflecting" the valuable "suggestions" in the optimization and iteration of products and services.

For example, Laoshan Snake Grass Water did not open up the domestic market when it was first launched on the market, and no one was interested in the product. Later, it quickly opened up the market with a video titled "Challenging the Most Unpalatable Beverage in History."

Faced with the label of "Top 5 Most Unpalatable Beverages in the World" given by consumers, the smart decision-makers and marketing team of Laoshan Mineral Water Company turned the crisis into a business opportunity. They took advantage of the continued popularity of the topic and quickly expanded the market. In terms of marketing, Laoshan White Snake Grass Water went against the trend and regarded itself as "unpalatable" and started a series of "unorthodox" creative marketing interactions.

For example, its Weibo and WeChat public platforms generally use youthful and humorous online language, such as micro-expressions and cartoons such as "the other party doesn't want to talk to you and gives you a sip of white snake grass water", which have won the favor of many young consumers.

Moreover, taking advantage of the popularity of the topic of "hard to drink", Laoshan Mineral Water Company has also continuously launched online and offline activities such as "hard to drink beverage evaluation" and "challenge Hedyotis diffusa water" to interact with fans. On this basis, the marketing matrix consisting of official Weibo, KOL, mainstream portal media, traditional media, etc. has been exerted simultaneously, coupled with the comprehensive follow-up of online and offline market channels. This series of marketing operations has made the market position of Hedyotis diffusa water more and more stable.

From this example, we can see that by enhancing the user's sense of participation and letting the user have a real sense of presence in the event, they can experience the role they bring. By connecting the brand with individual users, we can enhance the brand's reputation and establish a positive image for the company. At a time when product homogeneity is serious, user participation is of great significance to the company's marketing.

3. Value: Market for brand realization

We all know that according to the 80/20 rule, 80% of a company's sales are contributed by 20% of its important users. So, don't think about catching all users at once, but attract those who are willing to actively approach the brand and recognize your products and brand values.

Take Le Chun as an example.

Le Chun directly contacted consumers during the R&D stage, through its social platforms. In the preparation period, when Le Chun did not even have any products, it first attracted 3,000 fans by telling consumers what the brand wanted to do. Then Le Chun started MVP (minimum viable product), making 3,000 boxes of experimental products for three consecutive months, 100 boxes a day, and immediately invited some fans to eat them. After the fans finished eating, they immediately improved the next day's 100 boxes based on their feedback data.

Today, when Le Chun is developing new products, it has always maintained this idea, and has made them bigger and more interesting, allowing core users to participate in the development of MVP products.

When users come into contact with Le Pure, they can see its entire production process transparently: how yogurt is made step by step. Therefore, in Le Pure's concept store in Sanlitun, the brand is equivalent to compressing the assembly line of a large dairy company with thousands of square meters into a space of 30 square meters, and making it fully transparent for every customer to see.

During the preparation period, i.e. the opening of operations, users were allowed to participate in every link: R&D, production, design, recruitment, and supply chain. These "Lechun Contributors" actually played a role in fueling Lechun's cold start during their participation, play, and the first batch of experience.

When Le Chun sold 200,000 boxes of yogurt, the back of the yogurt packaging was made into a magazine for everyone to contribute. About 2,000 people participated in the submission, and Le Chun selected 25 of them and posted them on the brand's WeChat account for everyone to vote. These contents became the packaging of Le Chun's new issue, driving the continuous update of Le Chun's products.

The underlying driving force of a brand is innovation. This innovation is brought by 1% of people, who are now called "content creators". After you have innovation, you need people to interact with you and help you spread it, which is now called "community". This accounts for at most 9% of your audience; the remaining 90%, the so-called lurkers, are the consumer groups that brands radiate through these core groups.

Therefore, every brand can divide its audience into three groups: 1%, 9%, and 90%.

This is a dynamic process. You can think of it as, first you have 100 fans, you make products for these 100 people, and then they drive the spread, and when you have 1,000 fans, you iterate for these 1,000 people again, and drive the spread again, and when you have 5,000 fans, you repeat it over and over again.

4. Social: Turning “fans” into consumers

Uni-President is a well-known senior brand. It once launched a product called Xiao Ming. Since this product is about the second dimension, it targets the information to the people who are interested in the second dimension, and instantly resonates with this group of people.

In order to capture the "funny" and "cute" style that young people like, Uni-President formed a special team to carefully design cold jokes. They spent a lot of energy, from social networks to deliberately communicating with young people in daily life, collecting many classic jokes, and then designing scenes based on Xiao Ming's personality and role, and repeatedly pondering.

After countless days and nights of design, the product design of "Xiao Ming Tongxue" finally highlights a lot of fun and rich colors. The bottle is specially marked with exaggerated and personalized head elements, and different flavors of packaging are printed with different dry humor. The cartoon characters on the packaging are also embodied around this little story, and with some cute and interesting symbols, the style is more in line with the preferences of young people.

In terms of social marketing strategy, targeting the target fan group, whether it is WeChat games, Weibo interactive topics, TVC, campus activities, or even brand placement in TV programs, Xiao Ming has subtly established an emotional connection between the brand and consumers, established a better brand image, and won all-round recognition from the market.

In the era of social retail, consumers’ voices are infinitely amplified. They are both content audiences and content creators. Therefore, brands should pay more attention to reducing self-motivation in marketing and focus on consumers to stimulate interest, drive decision-making, and continue to like social fission, so that fans can truly be converted into consumers.

As Mr. Ogilvy said: "Consumers buy not only products, but also psychological satisfaction. Advertising should give emotions to the brand." What it brings to users is image and identity recognition.

The brand’s value attributes are reflected in: functional value, quality value, cultural value, and social value.

The process of brand cultivation is a long one. It requires us to be loyal to our own brand positioning, continuously output good products with both internal and external quality, and provide considerate and meticulous services. As time goes by, users will eventually fall in love with our brand and stay with it for life!

Author: Sister Mulan

Source: WeChat public account: Mulanjie (ID: mulanjie-)