8 Marketing Trends and Solutions in 2024

In less than half a month, we will enter 2024. In the new year, are there any new and feasible ways to market? This article will introduce you to 8 trends and solutions to marketing. If you are interested, you can take a look.

In just over half a month, we will enter 2024.

Looking back at the end of this year: consumption downgrade and cost-effectiveness have always been the main themes. Looking back at marketing, as Yu mentioned at the Knife Skills Summit, there are several key words: traffic increase , forced price cuts and market involution . Behind each word, there is a marketing problem:

• The price of platform traffic continues to rise, and for most categories, the efficiency of seeding and traffic delivery is also declining.
• Almost every platform is forcing brands to lower prices: JD.com, Taobao, Pinduoduo, Douyin, Hema... They can only give up pricing power in exchange for traffic.
• There is no need to say much about the market's involution. New consumption is collectively retreating, and there is almost not enough space for the so-called high-net-worth groups - mothers, sophisticated women, and young white-collar workers.

The familiar solution to the problem, namely, the integration of brand and effect , is not an effective solution. More and more brand owners have found that live streaming has drained their profits, and it is difficult to grow a brand even if they promote products online. To be honest, the integration of brand and effect is just a fig leaf for sacrificing product for effect.

Now, all the so-called integrated methods are leading to an established fact: ROI is becoming more and more difficult. With the internal circulation of traffic, the disappearance of the demographic dividend and the downgrade of consumption power, it is difficult to find a breakthrough. The result of long-term neglect of the brand is that it has not accumulated brand awareness and values, cannot last long, and is prone to failure.

So, what is the feasible solution?

Our answer is:

On the premise of long-term management of brand value, extend the marketing line to products and users, find breakthrough points from human nature, and find new incremental space from the trends and variables of the times.

Under this strategy, we make judgments on the marketing trends for next year and provide corresponding marketing strategies and method suggestions from the four major sectors of product, traffic, brand, and humanity for your reference:

product:

• "Split-level cost-effectiveness" and "new species substitution"
• Focus on both search-based products and experience-based products

flow:

• Taobao live broadcast, Douyin search, Xiaohongshu closed loop
• Short video seeding: quality short dramas become a new carrier

brand:

• Brand theme: Release goodwill
• Brand focus: growing together

user:

• Opportunity groups in the consumer market: the "three no" groups
• Anti-consumerism "Intellectual Beauty" and "Poor but Happy"

1. “Split-level cost-effectiveness” and “multi-functional replacement”

In recent years, the main theme of the entire marketing has been: price reduction.

• Companies that actively cut prices or stick to low prices are making great strides - Heytea, Hema, Pinduoduo, Saizeriya, various snack discount stores, etc.
• Those who were late to cut prices hurried to catch up for fear of losing market share - Taobao, JD.com, Sam's Club, etc.
• In the subdivided industries, coffees priced at 8.8 and 9.9 yuan killed many boutique coffee shops, and dictionary pens priced at 299 yuan swept away the old players...

However, there are also different notes in the main melody: some products seem to be not cheap, but they are also sought after because of their "cost-effectiveness". The reason is the " subjective perception of cheapness ", and this perception comes from the user's mental account shifting:

The first example is Hema's Premier Black Label store, which focuses on high-end products - Coles 8-hour stone-baked bread from Australia, Sugarfina candies that are the same as those of Hollywood stars, fresh Dalian sea urchins that are ready to eat, and the newly launched Musang King durian lasagna. It's very interesting that their slogan is "noble but not expensive" . What does it mean to be not expensive? Compared with ordinary supermarkets, it is of course expensive. But Hema has re-created the reference system of cost-effectiveness: baked bread, compared with the high-priced desserts of niche bakeries in Shanghai; imported seafood, compared with fresh dishes in Japanese food stores... In this way, those who originally had the ability to consume the latter will also be attracted by the obvious low price and good quality. This is the first type of split-level cost-effectiveness: originally not belonging to the same type, the cost-effectiveness can also be compared at a certain value point.

The second one comes from the jelly cat craze. Jellycat was originally a plush doll to comfort children: it looks cute and has soft fur. Now, it is popular among young people to raise jelly cats and play "cultivation games" with them as pets. Behind this is the need to heal and comfort themselves. But don't forget that in the category of plush dolls, jellycat is not cheap, basically more than 100 yuan. But compared with raising pets, both the cost and the effort are obviously "more cost-effective". This is another type of "split-level cost performance", which is given higher value because of the changes in the service objects and usage forms.

The third example is lululemon, which we are all familiar with. With the popularity of light outdoor activities and citywalk, it has gradually become a new choice for the middle class to replace light luxury and trendy brands. It is more friendly than the prices of thousands or tens of thousands of yuan, and it also has a more relaxed feeling and casual sports.

To sum up, there are three modes of cost-effectiveness of split-level:

1. Return to the underlying value comparison.
2. Change the original target population and the corresponding value supply.
3. As social trends change, certain products become new preferences.

For the first point, we are required to find a higher anchor point of the same essence; the second point is to find new user groups and value points by gaining insights into "how users use products to solve tasks"; the third point is to closely follow or actively guide cultural trends, such as the pursuit of relaxation, retreat, and freedom by contemporary young people.

Another way to "look cheaper" is to be a " multi-functional substitute ", that is, the more versatile a product is, the more opportunities it will have in the period of market involution. For example, Saizeriya "plays" different roles at different times: it is a substitute for western restaurants for dinner, a substitute for coffee shops in the afternoon (drinks are only 8 yuan a cup, and refills are available); it also sells wine at night, and is a substitute for pubs. The logic of the girlfriend phone is the same, which can be a substitute for expensive home appliances such as tablets, TVs, fitness mirrors, and high-quality speakers.

Note that the term "substitution" here refers to a simple horizontal value comparison of a single benchmark product, both of which have good cost-effectiveness (girlfriend machine VS fitness mirror), rather than a pile of functions, saying that the total price has an advantage - don't think that consumers are easy to fool. Therefore, at the product stage, you have to " have both ", not only find the functional extension space of the product, but also find the benchmark reference coordinates in each dimension.

From our perspective, as consumers become more capable of obtaining product information and have a more open and mature consumer mentality, whether a product has a "differentiated cost-effectiveness" or a " multi-functional substitute" , it will be more attractive in 2024 and even have the ability to command a premium.

2. Give equal weight to search-based products and experience-based products

The focus is on two types of products: search-based products and experience-based products:

The former provides solutions to users’ obvious problems; the latter relieves users’ depressed mood during the experience (which they may not even realize).

From the perspective of traffic acquisition, the former mainly takes on category needs, search and targeted traffic acquisition methods; the latter mainly acquires customers through content scene experience, giving users a sense of immersion to convey the perception of "relieving inner distress."

For enterprises, faced with the situation of rising supply and traffic prices, simultaneously deploying search and experience-based products is a typical path to achieve the dual goals of market share and profit , and many brands are making these plans.

The most typical example is the chain coffee brands, which sell Americano and latte at low prices of less than 10 yuan to meet rigid demand (search-oriented, to meet the need for refreshment), and are madly innovating in joint ventures to meet social needs (experience-oriented, to keep up with the social needs of topics), and by the way, they raise the prices. Convenience stores have also begun to transform in this direction. Lawson, 711, and FamilyMart not only need to do a good job in their basic plate of meeting the needs of convenient purchases, but also increasingly launch new self-operated products at a high frequency and various joint ventures to meet the young people's exploration needs for novelty.

When companies are planning search-based and experience-based products, in order to ensure the optimal cost of the entire chain, either the supply side should be the same raw materials or the same core technology, such as the girlfriend machine and the learning machine, both of which have Xiaodu's AI multi-modal dialogue capabilities, or the target audience should be the same type of people with different needs, such as young people have the dual needs of solving problems and gaining experience for coffee and convenience stores.

On the other hand, search-based products and experience-based products should be completely different from each other in terms of brand positioning, product selling point packaging, user communication, and marketing strategies .

3. Taobao live broadcast, Douyin search, and Xiaohongshu closed loop

Taobao Live, Douyin’s post-view search and Xiaohongshu’s closed-loop e-commerce are the three platforms that Yurui believes deserve the most attention and development on the traffic side in 2024.

1. Taobao Live

This year is the first year of the explosion of Taobao store broadcasts. It has successfully transformed from a "pre-sales consultant" role to a "business tool". It is also one of the few data highlights of this year's Double Eleven: before 0:00 on 11.11, of the 58 live broadcast rooms that Taobao had generated with a viewership of over 100 million, 38 were store broadcasts, accounting for nearly 60%.

For Taobao, store live streaming is a battlefield on which it is determined and heavily betted.

• This is highly related to the low-price strategy that Taobao has vigorously promoted: if merchants want to do a good job in store broadcasting and get high-quality traffic from the platform, they must provide corresponding benefits and preferential policies for store broadcasting and give a price policy that is comparable to that of Douyin. Therefore, for consumers, it is easier to form the impression and mindset that "Taobao live broadcasting is also very cheap."
• Compared with Dabo, Dianbo is more likely to leverage Taobao's advantages in the private domain of e-commerce. It can not only help merchants acquire customers accurately, but also naturally convert them into store members, thus forming retention and repeat purchases.

Speaking of live streaming, let’s talk about Douyin’s self-streaming. We believe that “self-streaming and multi-streaming” is a way for stores to break through the bottleneck of traffic involution: it is difficult to maintain by simply offering discounts (Taobao and JD.com also require discounts), and the platform has increased the assessment of the quality of live streaming content. Zara’s catwalk-style live streaming has been a prototype (there is still a lot of room for exploration in cost control and sustainability), but there will definitely be more live streaming rooms with strong watchability and unique styles in the future.

2. Tik Tok search

Many marketing influencers started to promote Douyin shelf e-commerce at the end of last year, but to be honest, from our actual experience this year, the performance was mediocre. The mindset of [search + purchase] is not so easy to migrate.

As early as the middle of this year, some businesses gave feedback to the media:

"Without live broadcast and short video scenes, it is difficult for users to make transactions directly through shopping malls and stores, which makes it impossible to leverage natural traffic, and ultimately the overall growth effect is not obvious."

In addition, users who come to the mall through search have a strong price comparison mentality and will search and buy cheaper versions of the same product, which also prompts merchants to further compete on price and squeeze each other's living space.

However, in the forecast for next year, Yuwei still puts Douyin search in the traffic bonus pool. The reason is that the [Search after watching] function promoted to brands by the Douyin platform this year (after watching a short video, click on the blue word set by the brand to search for products or brand homepages or other related content) has been polished and has certain potential for explosion.

After watching the short video, BlueWord guides users to actively search. This link is not only more natural and friendly than links or live broadcast rooms (many users have become immune to trailer videos, and traffic is getting worse and worse), but from a brand perspective, the quantitative indicators of interest are also clearer, and the weight of product cards can be increased, and accurate quantitative data on users' high willingness can be accumulated.

Next year, Douyin will focus on various types of entertainment content. The "search after watching" function combined with embedded scenarios can be more enriched and extensible, such as "**same style", "**substitute" or more interesting expressions.

3. Xiaohongshu’s closed-loop e-commerce

After a year of exploration, Xiaohongshu has performed well in both the live broadcast of buyers' stores and the closed-loop e-commerce of stores (notes + live broadcasting), and the exploration has begun to show results. Xiaohongshu users are somewhat special. Compared with price-sensitive people, they pay more attention to the quality of products and are more loyal and sticky to the personalities. Therefore, especially for non-standard products, relatively high-priced products, virtual goods, local life services and other categories, the closed-loop marketing efficiency on the Xiaohongshu platform may be higher.

According to our experience, Xiaohongshu's closed-loop e-commerce focuses on two aspects:

The first is content capability. Good content can bring sales for a long time (even for several months). Whether you build your own account or use a talent, content is the most important thing. Of the two, building your own account is more important because it can establish long-term trust with users and continuously increase the conversion rate.

The second is the platform policy. The interface for communication between Xiaohongshu platform and merchants is relatively friendly. You can grasp the inclination of platform policy, such as store live broadcast, node activity IP, etc., to obtain good traffic support. In addition, according to our preliminary exploration (still to be verified), compared with advertising information flow, the traffic delivery efficiency of e-commerce background is higher. ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

4. Short video seeding: quality short dramas become a new carrier

As early as 2022, Yu had reminded brands and partners to pay attention to and plan short dramas in advance:

At the beginning of this year, we also cooperated with the short drama queen Jiang Shiqi. The cost-effectiveness was very high and the effect was really good.

This year, there has been a huge explosion of short dramas, including short dramas on iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video, Douyin quality short dramas and mini-program short dramas. Among them, Douyin quality short dramas are what we think are the most suitable for brand cooperation - they have better appearance, certain account IP weight accumulation, crowd asset accumulation, and can be linked to subsequent commercial links.

Hei Niu Film Journal believes that the role of grass-growing dramas is roughly equivalent to that of "Star Map Experts", both of which are aimed at converting the opportunity group into the "A3 group (grass-growing group), so that this wave of people can be circled and efficiently reached through delivery, and directed into the live broadcast room to complete the harvest and form a closed loop of conversion. Therefore, from the perspective of demand, grass-growing dramas are not an increase in the new marketing budget of the brand, but a shift in the original grass-growing budget.

We believe that as a short video content marketing method, short dramas have a greater mental compounding advantage than cooperating with Star Map experts : Star Map experts usually cooperate once, and the same IP cannot be accumulated multiple times to achieve a repeated impact. However, short dramas can achieve the same effect as variety shows or TV series with more customizability.

Here, we also want to remind brands that the quality, production capacity, and commercialization capacity of short dramas are all uneven, and the price of top IPs is indeed not low. Therefore, you can consider choosing dramas in the same way as choosing teams (rather than the number-selecting logic of Star Chart experts) - because the short drama industry is highly mobile (for example, the backbone of the former Mi Meng team has left Silver Land to start their own businesses), and the chance of a hit depends more on content than fans. Therefore, brands can adopt the approach of "chasing teams rather than IPs ", and even designate excellent screenwriters to cooperate, thereby increasing the chance of a hit while controlling risks and reducing costs.

5. Brand theme: releasing goodwill

When looking back at the brands that have gained recognition and favor this year, there is an important keyword: goodwill .

Baiyang continues to care for people with disabilities and puts it into action; Pangdonglai has written "cultivating employees' sound personalities" into its corporate values ​​and implements it in salary distribution, daily management, etc. A rigorous investigation report can better reflect the care behind it.

After several years of the epidemic and the current situation where we are still in great uncertainty, people's hearts are very sensitive, and "goodwill" is the broad hand that supports this sensitivity.

Regarding the release of brand goodwill, the first principle must be from the inside out, from the construction of brand values ​​to the implementation within the organization and then to external actions. In the shaping of brand value, three aspects can be considered:

1. It is a goodwill to employees. As workers, more and more people are practicing that being good to their own employees is a prerequisite for becoming a "good company". The popularity of Lao Xiang Ji started when the chairman tore up the resignation letter of an employee.
2. It is to show goodwill to consumers and users. For example, Fenghua not only provides affordable and low-priced products, but also treats consumers as its own people and is frank and sincere. Reminder: For service-oriented enterprises, special attention should be paid to the delicate balance between employees and users. For example, Haidilao, which has recently caused controversy, "forced" all employees to skip the third subject to meet customer needs. Although it is pampering users, it also implies the moral risk of oppressing employees.
3. It is goodwill towards society, that is, going beyond the company's own stakeholders, paying attention to the common propositions of today's human society, and proactively providing solutions.

The best path currently should be:

Companies should act as initiators, on the basis of their own practices, or as platform and resource providers, or by building communities and organizations, to mobilize the broadest possible participation of employees, users and partners. This will not only make brand values ​​more penetrating and cohesive, but also maximize word-of-mouth and communication. Patagonia (Earth Protection) and PROYA (Anti-School Violence) are all good examples.

VI. Brand Focus: Growing Together

Yu’s article mentioned: This year, spiritual shareholders have become popular: whether it is a start-up brand or a personal IP, they are all seeking to communicate and grow with target users in order to gain support and even practical help.

Spiritual shareholders are willing to grow with the brand, and behind this is a sense of belonging and rebuilding confidence. The former is easy to understand, while the latter is to go beyond the individual's established value assessment system (company, school, etc.) to provide a verifiable "experimental field" for their own abilities and ideas. If their ideas are adopted or even successfully verified in the process of helping the brand grow, it will be a huge motivation for them and even help them regain confidence.

So, how should brands design and communicate growth paths with users?

We divide the entire path into three stages:

1. Support group mode

In the growth process from 0 to 1, the relationship between the brand and its fans and early users is somewhat similar to the early stages of idol cultivation: there are unimpeded channels of communication between the two parties, and they can communicate, seek help, solicit opinions and provide feedback on various issues.

Of course, this is also the best and most comfortable state for both parties:

• The brand's needs are the most clear, such as requiring **suggestions or **help;
• Both parties communicated on an equal footing;
• Fans and users are more likely to get direct feedback from brands.

2. IP-based operation activities

At this stage, the scenario of co-growth begins to become complicated: both one-to-one and one-to-many communication modes face challenges, and brands are unable to communicate with users in a personalized manner. Therefore, in order to precipitate the attributes of co-growth in private domains and own positions, it is necessary to create a "participatory" fixed channel. We recommend operating it in the form of IP activities.

A good example is Tiaohai Tavern. In the early days, it relied on loyal fans and communities to develop, including jointly operating the tavern. However, as it grew bigger and bigger, it had to turn its fixed operating methods into IPs:

• New store live broadcast: When a new store is launched, the entire process will be live broadcasted; and user solicitation will be conducted, including how to decorate, what furnishings to choose, etc.
• Open recruitment: It means giving every user the opportunity to be a bartender, allowing them to experience being a bar owner in a part-time manner.
• Personal planning: Regularly invite users to use the pub venue to plan their own activities, such as personal exhibitions, competition games, social parties, etc.

3. Partition management

At this stage, there are already many users and fans, and it is difficult for both the fan club and the IP operation to effectively undertake them. At this time, it is necessary to carry out zone management according to the attributes and integration of different users, so that everyone from shallow to deep participation can feel the joy of growing together and continue to become the brand crowd.

For example, McDonald's uses different strategies on different platforms to invite users to "grow together":

• On Weibo, he invited Maimen fans to play various memes;
• On Xiaohongshu, McDonald’s invited loyal fans to actively create and post various short and quick “friend circles” for McDonald’s.
• On Bilibili, up-loaders, as “kols who like McDonald’s”, conduct in-depth experiences and share;
• …

Zoning management can be designed for different social platforms or arranged according to the membership system. The key is to establish a close and smooth communication model and provide users with different degrees of emotional value and sense of participation so that the "growth" attribute can continue.

7. New consumer opportunity groups: the "three no" groups

This year, one definite trend is that the premium consumption capacity of the new middle class is weakening and starting to merge with the basic mass population. Against this backdrop, many brands are more meticulously segmenting their target populations and looking for potential incremental opportunities - people who are likely to contribute high profits.

According to the classification of Liu Ruizhi, co-founder of Jane Eyre, from the perspective of population structure, the current new opportunity groups are mainly the "three no groups": unemployed graduates, workers who are not in love, married or have children, and the elderly who have no grandchildren to take care of .

The common point of these three groups of people is that they have a certain surplus in terms of energy and consumption power: their time is not fully occupied, they are willing to explore new consumption scenarios, and their expenditure on essential consumption is small, so there is room for non-rigid expenditure.

Compared with the first two groups (who are still relatively sensitive to spending money and expenditure), Yuyi believes that the silver-haired generation or the newly energetic elderly (50-60+, with good physical vitality) who have no grandchildren to take care of them are the most potential consumer groups. They have relatively solid wealth accumulation, a more open mentality than the previous generation, and are motivated for their own compensatory consumption. To describe it more vividly, they are " a group of people who enthusiastically embrace new things and satisfy themselves ." From group buying to live streaming, plus the "online shopping training" during the epidemic, they are becoming more and more familiar and proactive with various online gameplays.

Here, brands can focus on two aspects:

1. Enrich the types of products or services . The needs of the new vitality elderly are richer and more diversified. In addition to health and medical care, there are also knowledge, entertainment, travel, social interaction, etc. At present, there is still an imbalance between supply and demand, and users are eagerly looking forward to more products and services.
2. Innovation in communication mode , new vitality Elderly people do not want to be easily equated with "old". In fact, their energy, vitality and even learning ability are not inferior to those of young people. The previous rough classification, which defines 50+ and 60+ as elderly products, is a huge gap from their self-positioning, which also means that there is a potential blank opportunity: if brands can understand this sensitive mind and make changes and adjustments in selling point delivery and communication methods, they can greatly enhance the attractiveness of existing products and services.

8. Anti-consumerism "Intellectual Beauty" and "Poor Happiness"

People are becoming more and more sensitive to consumerism and brand routines, especially young people who are more "sophisticated" in consumption, and the voices and actions against consumerism are also rising. It is worth noting that, unlike the saving routine of "split a dollar into several pieces", this generation is facing the proposition of shrinking consumption, reducing expenses and being thrifty, and they show "intellectual elegance" and "interesting exploration methods" everywhere.

• Choose to cook by yourself to reduce the cost of takeout and eating out, but the ritual and refinement of cooking cannot be lost; for example, a friend with a monthly salary of 5,000 yuan launched the challenge of #10 yuan to cook a meal#. Although the money is small, the meal looks very good and attracted more than 100,000 fans to watch;
• For example, specifically targeting "old money" and "new money", people have created a "poor money style" outfit, which has become a fashion trend;
• Using the "sophisticated and frugal" approach, calculating expenses, looking for discounts, and DIY are the fun of daily business life. This allows you to easily find the best consumption options and demonstrate your wisdom.
• The "pretend saving method" is to pretend that you have some special savings expenses, such as raising a cat, being pregnant, opening a cake shop, etc. Saving money one by one according to the corresponding expenses is not only interesting and easy to stick to, but also opens up your mind and inspires real inspiration, and creates interesting communication materials.

These practices, which are full of wisdom, imagination and inspiration, can also give brands a lot of inspiration:

Should we offer discounts roughly, or should we seize the trend of "wisdom" and "fun" mentality and make discounts and low prices more interesting? For example, we can offer discounts or provide old users with points benefits by "helping users to fictitiously save money"; launch a series of "money-free" packaging items that are fun and cost-effective; and cooperate with interesting money-saving experts to create interesting content or launch activities.

Here, is there a familiar feeling of the changing fortunes? It reminds me of the economic aesthetics of PX Mart many years ago: saving money is okay, but it must not be vulgar or calculative. Only beauty, intelligence, inspiration and imagination can make this thing reasonable and attractive.

Author: Lan Lan

WeChat public account: Taro and Cat Talk (ID: taro_cat)