【Real Money Experience】The rhythm and strategy of big promotion marketing

Promotion is becoming more and more difficult. In this article, the author shares his own promotion experience, which is full of practical information. The author divides the rhythm and strategy of big promotion into six parts according to time. Let's take a look.

If you have been running big promotional marketing in the past few years, you may have a common feeling: it is getting harder and harder to do .

First, the momentum of the concentrated outbreak of big promotions has weakened - "price cuts" have gradually become a daily routine:

• All major e-commerce platforms are setting up low-price channels and operating them on a regular basis. Pinduoduo is providing billions of subsidies, Taobao has daily special sales, and has launched 99 special sales and N yuan selections, and JD.com is also speeding up to launch billions of subsidies; there are also brand super product days, category days, New Year's Festival, Goddess Day, Valentine's Day, back to school season, and so on.
• Various anchors and experts also bombard the platform with offers on a daily basis, with each broadcast room saying that they have obtained the lowest discount on the platform, guaranteeing that their fans can get the most benefits.

The daily practice of price cuts not only eliminates the potential energy of the concentrated outbreak of big promotions (from opening the floodgates to frequent diversions), but also raises consumers' expectations of discounts - not comparing with daily prices, but comparing with "a previous low price."

Secondly, online platforms are more fragmented, including Tmall, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Douyin, Kuaishou, vertical e-commerce, private domain, distribution and offline. With more platforms, the difficulty of price control increases exponentially . How to balance the relationship between platforms in terms of price and goods (competition between them is fierce) is also a huge challenge for brands.

For example, as early as April 6 this year, Pinduoduo announced that it would officially launch the "Digital Home Appliance Consumption Season" with a subsidy of 10 billion yuan. On the basis of the 10 billion yuan subsidy, it invested "1 billion real money" to provide additional subsidies for all categories of digital home appliances, allowing consumers to experience that "every day is 618" - it is almost a blatant target for JD.com's 618.

Finally, as the supply side becomes more involuted, every big promotion has more participating merchants and traffic is becoming more and more expensive. It is said that this year is the year with the most new products in JD.com's 618. From the perspective of consumers, so many products and various forms of discounts are overwhelming, which further increases the cost of decision-making.

Although it is difficult, merchants must be prepared for the big promotions, especially the 618 and Double Eleven twice a year. The two big promotions are still the key nodes that most consumers look forward to buying. Especially this year when consumer confidence is insufficient and decision-making is more cautious, if merchants miss the big promotion nodes, the pressure throughout the year may be even greater.

Therefore, if brands want to achieve their expected goals at a lower cost during the promotion period, they must "run on a tightrope". On one side, they face various platforms with more expensive advertising traffic and complex stakeholders; on the other side, they face consumers who are more savvy, more price-comparative, and have high expectations for low prices. In overall marketing operations, it is necessary to comprehensively consider the dual factors of platform traffic changes and consumer psychology and habits.

We believe that in order to achieve steady growth in big promotion marketing, the most important thing is rhythm planning , which involves laying out content, traffic and global promotion strategies through a set rhythm.

Next, we will sort out the rhythm of the overall marketing of the big promotion based on our experience:

1. Three months before the big sale: the golden period for new product launches

If we work backwards from 618, for most products, the best time to launch new products is mid-March (about 3 months in advance), for the following reasons:

• Big promotions are increasingly moved forward. After starting in May, the 618 promotion has entered a warm-up period, which means that the information density is high and traffic prices are rising. In order to find a relatively "quiet" and "traffic cost-controllable" promotion period, it is necessary to launch the product at least 2.5-3 months in advance to give new products enough room to grow.
• As will be discussed later, there is a golden period for live broadcasts before a big sale. If you want to be featured in the live broadcast rooms of top influencers, new products must also accumulate enough popularity and reputation.

Of course, if the new product is a light decision, the launch time can be closer to the big promotion, about 2 months; if it is a new product launched by a mature big brand, and the customer unit price is very low, which means the market education cost is extremely low, it can even be put on the market one month in advance, and the platform IP or top influencers can be linked to launch the new product. If the new product itself has a strong topic attribute, it can also serve as a hook to stimulate everyone's enthusiasm for trying the entire line of products.

After launching a new product at this time, in addition to concentrating resources, we must also seize the time to do two things:

1. Through selling point testing and channel sales testing, we can polish out the best selling point combination for this product, as well as the best channels and methods to communicate with consumers.
2. Accumulate sufficient high-quality content with strong appeal.

2. 2 months before the big promotion: New products are released in large quantities + old products break the circle

From April to early May is the first and most important critical period for storing water for 618. Even Yu believes that the budget allocation during this period should exceed 1/3 of the entire quarterly budget.

First, large-scale promotion, such as Douyin self-broadcasting, content promotion services, Xiaohongshu KFS, Ali UD, etc., is to quickly acquire as many people as possible and quickly accumulate potential users with the help of algorithms. The key indicators at this time focus on click and add-to-cart costs , because there is a new product education cycle, which may not be converted immediately.

Second, the whole region is intensifying the promotion of content, whether it is e-commerce, content e-commerce or community platforms, all of them are concentrated on promoting content:

• For new products, we mainly focus on promoting functional scenarios for the target population. Endorsement by top influencers, in-depth communication with vertical influencers, as well as word-of-mouth and KOC tested content must be arranged one by one, with added topics and influence to create momentum, and the influence must be expanded using traffic investment tools.
• Old products focus on developing new groups or new usage scenarios. For example, Xiaodu has been focusing on the [younger generation purchases + older generation use] scenario.

Third, start the bidding model, including bidding advertisements of Alibaba, JD.com, and Douyin, so that the algorithm can find the correct model and prepare for the big promotion.

Fourth, hold the price. At this stage, especially for new products, all channels should keep the price stable and not reduce or change the price easily, so that consumers have a clear perception of the price (which is very critical for the outbreak of big promotions).

3. One month before the big sale: Dabo brings goods

Working backwards from the successful start on June 1, it is recommended to start live streaming by experts to sell goods around May Day.

At this time, there is still some time before the big sale, and most consumers will not deliberately wait for the big sale to place an order. Moreover, after previous market education, their conversion power is relatively strong. Brands can also give influencers more favorable prices compared to e-commerce platforms (once the platform requires the lowest price during the big sale period, it is difficult to give influencers additional price or gift discounts). The influence of these influencers can once again help increase the popularity of products.

Especially for high-frequency and high-repurchase products, consumers feel good after the purchase experience, and will repurchase again during the promotion period, and even actively recommend it to relatives and friends. Of course, there is another golden time for Dabo to promote products - 3-5 days before the promotion, which will be discussed in detail later.

4. Half a month before the big promotion: atmosphere creation

During the warm-up period of a big promotion, you can gradually narrow the target audience and create a "hot-selling product" atmosphere in the entire region. The main actions include:

• Authentic content : including KOC and UGC experience sharing, user order sharing activities, and getting products included in KOL’s must-buy list for big promotions, etc., while maintaining public opinion and comments.
• Carry out PR promotion for products (hot-selling, behind-the-scenes stories, origin traceability, etc.), create topics and events that are beneficial to the products, but do not give users overly complex information - such as launching a public relations war, or confronting competitors, etc., because this will increase the difficulty of consumers' purchasing decisions.
• Proactively produce purchase guidance content : Batch produce content on "how to choose and use products", especially for products with multiple SKUs or certain usage thresholds.
• Cooperation with top influencers (Dabo) : Through recommendations from 1-2 top influencers or special cooperation with top anchors, the product can gain higher attention again before the big promotion.
• Private domain and old user activities : Brands launch welfare and sharing incentive activities for old users in the private domain, including more favorable prices or additional gifts, planning active sharing and recommendation red envelope activities, active sharing of user stories, etc., to further enhance the value of core user recommendations.

Of course, if the advertising budget is very sufficient and it is a mature and large brand, it is also an option to launch a concentrated bombardment of various advertisements in a short period of time.

5. Big promotion period: harvesting all products and lowering ROI

After officially entering the promotion period, we should not provide users with "incremental product-related information" - everyone's focus is on the discounts and offers.

Therefore, the top priority of marketing is to harvest:

• Bidding harvesting : Although traffic is expensive at this time, bidding is still suitable for increasing prices and harvesting high-intent groups based on the previous group model;
• Self-sowing and harvesting , with the same bidding logic, lowers ROI and maximizes sales;
• Proactively provide strategies and information on 618 on official platforms and community platforms to inspire hesitant users to place orders;
• Repeated contact with high-intent users , people who have collected, added to cart, purchased, and private domain users are the key communication targets, and try to carry out one-on-one in-depth communication through platform tools.

Another reminder: at this time, the advertising resources on e-commerce platforms will be very expensive, and the traffic is very general. Unless it is a big-ticket item, there is no need to buy these resources at a high price. If you have an advertising budget, you can lock in off-site traffic-generating advertising resources in advance (it is recommended to promote popular products) to remind everyone that the big sale is coming.

To be honest, 80% of the effects that can be achieved by a big promotion have been determined in the first 2-3 months.

6. The golden period after the big promotion: Strengthen the brand and deepen the moat

In previous articles, we have broken down the different goals and roles of brands and marketing. This set of strategies for big sales falls into the marketing category (stimulating user actions). When implemented as a whole, it can indeed achieve the effect of stimulating interest and converting to big sales.

It is worth noting that in the whole set of strategies, the cost of traffic invested in Douyin self-broadcasting or other direct transactions will account for a high proportion - in the early stage, it is indeed necessary to use efficient methods to increase popularity, but it also hides hidden dangers:

• Overly dependent on the immediate effect of traffic investment. Once competitors join the competition, the traffic cost will be higher. The users previously reached may be directly sold to competing products by the platform, resulting in higher and higher traffic costs and narrower gross profit margins, but people dare not not invest;
• When stimulating user actions, brands often seize the strongest pain points and demand points in the user's inherent cognition, as well as the price advantages, because these are the most effective interest points in stimulating immediate actions. However, the brand's differentiated competitiveness - whether it is the highlights on the supply side (materials, technology, craftsmanship, etc.) or the content at the brand value level (building trust and preference) - is often not fully conveyed to consumers.

Once competitors join, they will fall into traffic involution again due to lack of core competitiveness (consumers are not aware of it). Therefore, the 1-2 months after the big promotion is the best time to correct the marketing-oriented strategy based on the big promotion . Our budget and energy should be more focused on building a real moat. At the marketing level, we should create in-depth content, bind persuasive opinion leaders to explain the core competitiveness of the product, and accumulate higher-quality in-depth content rather than direct conversion orientation .

At the brand level, according to 2023, the brand is old and the product is newly classified. The suggestions are as follows:

• Mass brand (a neighbor familiar to users): Create the first association of the category and build trust. The first association of the category is mainly achieved through the repeated delivery of core information, while trust is mainly the hidden line of brand management, including the expression of brand stories and brand values. For specific methods, please refer to the brand building operation methods about the light and dark lines of the brand in our course.
• Social brands (active members of social circles) : constantly refine the paradigm of communication with users and create surprises for users, such as IP cooperation, integration of product highlight elements, node marketing, etc., to create an interesting and distinctive brand image.
• Lifestyle brands: These brands generally focus on branding rather than marketing, and mainly stimulate users' active interest and purchase rather than rely on traffic, and build brand tone and values ​​in the long term. It is worth mentioning that some of these brands even oppose big sales. For example, outdoor brand Patagonia repeatedly reminds users not to buy during big sales because of its environmental value proposition; NetEase Yanxuan has also done similar creativity.

In fact, at this stage, the most difficult thing to overcome is the inertial thinking brought by marketing - from investing budgets in visible outputs to a promotion method that can lay a solid foundation and strengthen competitiveness . Today I saw a very sharp saying: "For most Chinese people, things that cannot be seen or touched do not exist." However, in fact, these "seemingly non-existent" values ​​determine the tangible results of the next big promotion.

Author: Lan Lan

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