A phenomenon: The faster you learn marketing, the more miserable your business will die.

The formula for new consumer brands in the past has failed, so what will the marketing methodology of new consumer brands be like in 2023? What did those new consumer brands that are still doing well do right? This article analyzes in detail from the aspects of marketing strategy, marketing formula and marketing execution. Read this article to find out.

Recently, Communication Gymnastics has conducted some interviews and communications with many CEOs of new consumer brands. As we all know, the new consumer industry has experienced great ups and downs in the past two years. Many new consumer brands that were in their heyday in the past two years have disappeared from the public's sight today. The number of new consumer brands that can survive 2022 has been greatly reduced.

We try to explore the "success factors" of new consumer brands that are still doing well today, and try to summarize them, hoping that the successful experience of these new consumer brands can be reused in more companies.

Among them, we are most concerned about the marketing methodology of new consumer brands. Because new consumer brands belong to the creation stage of "from 0 to 1", the efficiency of market development and the quality of marketing will directly affect the survival and development of enterprises. In contrast, the marketing model of mature large enterprises and brands is relatively systematic, and the importance of marketing innovation is not high.

Around 2020, there was a widely circulated marketing strategy for new consumer brands in the industry, namely, "a new brand = 5,000 Xiaohongshu posts + 2,000 Zhihu Q&A posts + Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi's product promotion." Countless new consumer brands quickly gained scale and capital favor through this strategy. But obviously, this strategy has been falsified today.

On the one hand, it is because the brand communication environment is changing too fast. The original traffic depression has now become a red ocean . The appeal of the two major anchors, Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, has gradually declined. Self-broadcasting has gradually become a must for brands. The routines of two years ago are no longer cost-effective.

On the other hand, this marketing combination has been proven to be incapable of bringing in repeat purchases and profits . It is a product of "Internet thinking" that was accelerated by the capital market. It deviates from the essential laws of the consumer industry, ignores the value of the product itself, and also ignores the real consumer needs, resulting in "Internet celebrities being unable to remain popular for long."

Since the formula for new consumer brands has failed in the past, what will the marketing methodology of new consumer brands be like in 2023? What did those new consumer brands that are still doing well do right?

1. Successful marketing strategies are not important

For new consumer brands that are "from 0 to 1", entrepreneurs are often eager to find a brand marketing strategy to quickly amplify brand potential and gain brand sales. This mentality is understandable, because products are in a state of pure cost investment before they gain market sales. Cashing out is an affirmation of the value of the product and the value of the enterprise.

Of course, in the past few years, the new consumer market as a whole has been relatively impetuous. Many entrepreneurs often see good news from friendly competitors in their own entrepreneurial circles. This has invisibly increased the mental pressure and anxiety of the entrepreneurs themselves, leading to distorted actions.

In fact, after interviewing several new consumer entrepreneurs, Communication Gymnastics found that brand marketing strategies are not as important as imagined, because the prerequisite for marketing expansion is small-scale data verification of business models and product models , which is the most critical and important for newly established new consumer brands.

In the mixed new consumer industry, a large number of speculators are inevitable. Their overall characteristic is that they do not optimize or innovate products, but directly use "ready-made products + traffic gameplay" to obtain platform traffic dividends and monetize them with the help of China's mature supply chain resources. Such companies can be regarded as pure brand operation companies, but they often have no obvious competitive barriers and withdraw from the new consumer stage as the marketing dividend fades.

The brand marketing strategy needs to match the brand characteristics of the new consumer brand itself, especially in the early cold start stage from "0 to 1", when different brands require very different strategies.

1. The “copying homework” mentality is not advisable

First, the products of new consumer brands are often optimized and innovated for a specific group of people to make them more in line with the needs of consumers in that group. However, the user behavior patterns, user catalyst scenarios, and consumption decision paths of different groups are very different. At this time, brands need to adopt more customized and targeted marketing models to match them. The mentality of "copying homework" by directly applying ready-made market experience is actually not advisable and may cause brands to take more detours.

Some new health consumer brands targeting professional groups that Communication Gymnastics has recently contacted have suffered losses in this regard. Their CEOs told us that in the early days, they also followed the trend and did some top anchors to promote products, but later found that the audience of top anchors was too "broad-spectrum". Even if the products were sold, it brought about a direct mismatch between the products and the crowd, which eventually led to brand controversy. Later, they found that they needed to conduct targeted communication for more vertical target groups. Although they lost the brand's explosiveness, they could achieve very stable sales growth.

In fact, the new consumer brand mentioned above is not a popular brand. Instead, it can effectively seize this niche market and achieve certain growth by selling through vertical channels.

In short, the reason why new consumption is "new" is that it needs to innovate and grow in the cracks of traditional consumer brands. Therefore, the population, scenarios, and demands are usually more vertical. This also leads to the marketing models of new consumer brands being different for each person, and specific tactics and methods are difficult to learn from each other.

2. “Business validation” is more important than brand marketing

Brand marketing is certainly important for the cold start of a startup, but there is an important prerequisite, that is, the brand has found its own business model and reliable product form.

Of course, different marketing activities and different advertising slogans may have very different effects on brand sales. Advertising copy that hits the user's pain points can help companies save huge advertising costs, but in essence, brand marketing still acts as an amplifier. Defective products and problematic business models cannot be saved by brand marketing, and may even accelerate their exposure of their own defects.

According to the communication and interviews with new consumer brands conducted by Communication Gymnastics, we found that a large number of new consumer brands do not have a very clear product direction in the process of "from 0 to 1", let alone a mature business model. They are usually in a state of walking and watching, or even trying randomly. Of course, random attempts are not bad. This is the norm for entrepreneurs, and it is even the only way to find the right product direction.

The problem with many new consumer brands is that they assume they can expand their market and study various platform and traffic strategies without conducting any product testing or verification. This is actually putting the cart before the horse.

Among the new consumer brands that Communication Gymnastics has recently come into contact with, we found that a large number of brands' current hit products are no longer the product forms of the early days of entrepreneurship. The early versions of the products were eventually found to be false demands. Even the main target user groups of many brands have undergone a great change. A certain brand initially thought that the main target group was working women, but eventually found that it was mostly students, which was more suitable for campus marketing, but campus marketing is actually outside the field of vision of mass media.

Therefore, in the early stages of new consumer brand entrepreneurship, the role of marketing is not to amplify market advantages and establish market position, but should serve to verify business models and verify product demand. So we can say that specific brand marketing strategies are not important for early new consumer brands that are 0-1 years old.

When we talk about verifying product demand and business model, brands should not take it for granted. For example, if you choose to start a freeze-dried coffee product business, you cannot take it for granted that young people like to drink coffee and the demand for freeze-dried coffee has been verified, because this kind of thinking is too granular and is an industry-wide thinking. All product verification should be viewed in the framework of market competition, that is, there are so many freeze-dried coffee products on the market, what unique needs does your product meet, and is this uniqueness a real need? If it is a real need, then it should be reflected in the relevant test data. If it is not a real need, then other product directions should be chosen.

For example, we recently talked about an example where a new consumer brand created a fruit pulp product with youthful packaging, targeting the young user group of Generation Z, but the ROI of the campaign targeting young people was always low, and it was always difficult to convert users. Finally, after testing people of all ages, it was found that the real demand was for the elderly to buy it for their children at home. In fact, the target group was grandparents. The youthful packaging did not hit Generation Z, but instead hit the elderly who took care of the children at home.

In short, before focusing on marketing strategies, you need to confirm that the product can meet the real needs of users, and this is what the core team of new consumer brands should pay most attention to . In the past, media channels mostly belonged to mass communication and mass sales channels. Now that channels are constantly vertically segmented, it is actually easier to do product verification, but a large number of new consumer brand teams have ignored this point.

2. New consumer brands have no marketing formula

In the era of traditional media, marketing needs to be high-profile. Whether it is CCTV advertising or offline elevator framework, a set of marketing strategy methodology and brand advertising content methodology can be derived, such as Ogilvy's 360° integrated marketing, Dentsu's cellular model, localized positioning strategy theory, etc. However, with the rise of platforms such as Weibo, WeChat, and Xiaohongshu, it has become an industry consensus that traditional marketing methods are ineffective in new media channels.

However, while traditional marketing methodology has become ineffective, no new marketing methodology has emerged. Therefore, when we chat with friends in the marketing industry, we often sigh that marketing theory has lagged far behind the development of the media era.

1. The "one thousand faces for one thousand people" content flow mechanism gives rise to the "one thousand faces for one thousand products" marketing conversion model

There is no effective new marketing theory. The key reason is not the fragmentation of the media communication environment, but the fact that various traffic platforms have taken back the initiative in traffic distribution, resulting in the marketing model actually having to change constantly with the traffic platform's traffic mechanism.

This is different from CCTV and other media platforms many years ago. Although CCTV advertising is a competitive bidding, the schedule of CCTV programs is fixed in essence, and CCTV does not have the right to flexibly allocate content traffic. Today, with the rapid development of algorithm models, almost every traffic platform will realize customized display for thousands of people in the future.

Of course, for new consumer brands, even if they have completed the early product verification and crowd positioning issues, they still cannot avoid large traffic platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu in specific marketing and delivery, and they cannot avoid Taobao, the classic shelf e-commerce field. The cold start and strong online attributes of new consumer brands in the early stage mean that they must follow the rules and methods of the platform for marketing adaptation.

The platform’s traffic algorithm and traffic distribution mechanism are always a black box for new consumer brands. Of course, the complex algorithm system is still a black box even for platform operators.

Of course, marketers of new consumer brands cannot decipher the black box of algorithms. They can only form their own marketing models through continuous launch and testing. In addition, the platform’s own traffic distribution model is different for each individual, resulting in each brand ultimately figuring out very different specific marketing strategies and marketing methodologies, and the organizational forms that support this set of marketing strategies are also different.

This marketing model, which is constantly explored through data testing, can be said to be the know-how of new consumer brand marketing, but it only matches a certain brand itself and is difficult to be borrowed and reused. In other words, the different traffic distribution models of various traffic content platforms will eventually lead to different brand marketing and delivery conversion models.

It is precisely because of the black box of the platform traffic mechanism that the new consumer brand circle often discusses rumors about changes in various platform traffic mechanisms. The reason behind this is actually because brands have traffic anxiety and it is difficult for them to control the life and death of online traffic in their own hands.

2. The iteration of platform traffic black box makes brand marketing model vulnerable

Compared with traditional media, traffic platforms have more traffic allocation rights, so the marketing strategies of new consumer brands must constantly match the traffic algorithm model. But at the same time, the traffic platforms themselves are also growing and iterating rapidly, and have different business ecological goals and platform strategic development goals, which will also cause the platform's traffic allocation algorithm to be constantly changing.

For example, in the first few years of supporting influencers to sell goods through live streaming, Douyin needed to establish a live streaming e-commerce field, and the platform's traffic algorithm would be more biased towards the influencers. But now that the growth of influencers' live streaming has gradually slowed down, Douyin needs to strengthen the shelf e-commerce scenarios within the platform, so the traffic algorithm will allocate part of the traffic to brand stores.

In summary, the platform has different phased goals and focuses, and will continuously and dynamically adjust the traffic distribution algorithm, which means that the marketing model of new consumer brands needs to be constantly adapted and adjusted accordingly.

The battle between brand marketing and platform traffic is more like an offensive and defensive battle. The marketing effect data accumulated by new consumer brands in the early stage may be useless when the platform traffic algorithm is adjusted in the later stage. The marketing strategies accumulated by new consumer brands may become invalid due to the changes in the traffic algorithm. And every time the platform traffic algorithm changes, new consumer brands need to optimize and adapt through the corresponding delivery time and data.

Therefore, for many new consumer brands, online traffic is essentially uncontrollable, and the so-called "brands can bring their own traffic" is even more illusory and nonsense. The brand power of new consumer brands is obviously impossible to challenge the platform. This is also the reason why new consumer brands must move to offline scenarios in the future. Offline traffic is actually more certain, and the offline market is also larger.

3. It’s not marketing awareness that widens the marketing gap

According to Taleb's terminology, changes in platform traffic algorithms are "black swans" for brands. To avoid the impact of "black swan" events, brands need to establish the "anti-fragility" of their own marketing systems so that they can benefit from uncertainty. For CEOs and CMOs of new consumer brands, marketing management actually requires the establishment of process systems and organizational capabilities to cope with marketing changes.

Since traffic platforms have various data tools, it is necessary for new consumer brand marketing teams to conduct redundant small-amount testing and then observe data feedback, and continuously revise their own marketing models through testing and delivery data. This is the overall status of new consumer brand marketing.

This set of online tactics does not test whether the marketing theory and marketing strategy are superior, but whether the brand's marketing execution and data analysis are solid and in place. In other words, marketing theory and strategy are no longer important. Marketing has become a data-based execution work. The key lies not in the difference in the marketing team's cognitive level, but in whether it has the execution ability to cope with changes. This is also what Communication Gymnastics mentioned several years ago - the operationalization of marketing.

Therefore, we can find that the experience gap of marketing team members of new consumer brands has been smoothed out, and the importance of traditional marketing experience has been greatly reduced. A large number of marketing personnel of new consumer brands are very young, and a large number of young marketers have achieved very good brand marketing results. Because user insight has been largely transformed into data analysis capabilities, advertising content creation capabilities have been largely replaced by the A/B Test model.

This trend has become very obvious in traditional shelf e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com. In essence, the e-commerce operations and e-commerce agent operations teams are not competing in marketing cognition, but in data analysis, process optimization and team execution, constantly matching platform activities and gameplay.

It is precisely this characteristic of online platform marketing that has led to the lack of a fixed pattern for new consumer brand marketing, and has achieved "de-creativity" and "de-mystification". Many traditional marketers are not used to this change in online marketing, but it actually makes marketing itself more certain, rather than relying on various "metaphysics" for results.

Many business inspirational stories will tell entrepreneurs that marketing is a competition of professional cognition and mysterious marketing models, but in fact it is not the case. The so-called "marketing cognition" is actually a cycle of "marketing testing-data analysis-iterative model". On the contrary, what new consumer brands compete on the level of online platform marketing today is the marketing team's refined operational capabilities, execution capabilities and other organizational capabilities.

Therefore, there is no methodology in the marketing of new consumer brands. The so-called "successful cases in the industry" may not be of much reference value in marketing. New consumer marketing only involves day-to-day marketing testing, data analysis and model iteration.

Author: Zhuoran

Source: WeChat public account "Spread Gymnastics (ID: chuanboticao)"