If you were a cookie shop owner, how would you use Internet thinking to sell cookies?

The current employment situation is not optimistic, and many people are thinking about starting a business, especially lightweight entrepreneurship, which uses small costs to make profits. If you want to make money from a product or service, you must first explore the highlights and work hard to break the circle of the product and increase sales. Tiantianwen takes the handmade biscuit brand as an example to discuss how to use Internet thinking to sell biscuits better. Let's take a look~

Now, you are the owner of a handmade biscuit shop. With the booming development of the Internet, even a small biscuit shop has the great dream of going public. So, how can you take advantage of the Internet to help your product break through the circle and increase sales?

Please check your cookie shop information:

This is a biscuit brand that has been in operation for 5 years. It ranks among the top 10 regional brands. The goal in the past two years is to rank among the top three.

The craft of making biscuits has a long history and has been passed down for hundreds of years. Some manufacturers of the same category have already applied for intangible cultural heritage.

The biscuits are all hand-baked (not fried), slightly salty, similar to soda crackers, but with a chewier texture and a lingering fragrance.

How to sell such a cookie better? We discussed this question with our friends on Tiantianwen. Let's take a look at their answers~

1. Product perspective

First, focus on supporting flagship products with good market feedback, and avoid blindly innovating.

In the biscuit market, the technology is very mature. Domestic and foreign manufacturers have basically achieved perfection in product form, craftsmanship, taste, etc., and there is little room for innovation, which can be seen from the speed and number of new products launched in recent years. In the past few years, there have been no new products in the biscuit category that are breakthrough, subversive, and widely accepted by the public.

If you are not a leading enterprise and do not have a strong product development team, it is basically impossible to achieve a blockbuster in the product dimension.

As a small-scale biscuit shop, the product strategy should be to focus on supporting flagship products with good market feedback. Other product innovations should mainly adopt a follow-up strategy. Blind innovation is likely to result in expenditures exceeding income, so breaking the circle on the product side must be analyzed and studied in combination with its own current conditions.

The product team should brainstorm and make predictions and verifications based on market feedback. If they cannot come up with a blockbuster product idea, then they may wonder whether blind innovation is appropriate at this time.

If the flagship product is very profitable, then it is necessary to plan product upgrades and iterations under the background of favorable circumstances.

First of all, we must ensure survival and expand profits. We cannot consider breaking the circle right away. In such a competitive track, the cost of breaking the circle must be higher.

Of course, products cannot remain unchanged. If innovation is necessary, where can we start?

1) Healthier

Compared with most fried biscuits on the market, this handmade biscuit uses a non-fried process, which has a more refreshing and healthier taste. It can emphasize its healthy and nutritional properties and attract more consumers who pursue a healthy diet.

Handmade biscuits can use healthier ingredients, such as natural organic materials, or special foods such as sugar-free and grain-free. Now sugar-free and low-carbon have become the diet of many people, and the change of ingredients can attract consumers who pay attention to healthy diet.

Freshness is also one of the highlights of handmade biscuits. Why are there so many industrially made breads and why are there always markets for street bakeries? Freshness is one of the important factors. This freshness can be seen with the naked eye and smelled by the nose, which is incomparable to industrial bread.

2) More flavors

The flavors of handmade biscuits should be flexibly adjusted according to market demand, and different flavors should be added, such as the popular cheese, chocolate, nut flavors, etc., to attract more consumers' attention and purchases.

Handmade biscuits can produce very unique tastes and flavors, not only crispy, crunchy, sweet, etc., but also spicy, sour and smelly. This can attract consumers who are looking for new tastes and food experiences.

It takes a long time for a big brand of biscuits to come up with a new flavor, but the innovation time of a small biscuit shop can be greatly shortened. The flavor needs to be innovated frequently in a small range, which can not only control the cost of trial and error, but also give consumers a sense of freshness and avoid being stagnant.

3) Targeting special groups

Handmade biscuits can target a part of the market at some special groups, such as children, the elderly, vegetarians, etc., so as to better meet their needs.

The demand for this part is small, but the repurchase rate is very high. If these special groups of people find that only this store has products that meet their needs, they will repurchase for a long time and promote it to others, thus creating a stable flow of customers.

2. Operational Perspective

This is no longer the era where “good wine needs no bush”. If you make a good product, you also need to learn how to promote it.

Before promoting, you need to understand the highlights and shortcomings of the product from the user's perspective.

Try searching for your own brand words on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, WeChat, Douyin, Zhihu, etc. This way you can collect a large amount of user content related to the brand.

Try searching for product-related words in the above channels, such as soda cracker brands, so that you can grasp the current product dynamics and latest trends.

If the information available in the media is limited, conduct one-on-one interviews with users who have purchased cookies.

After understanding users’ opinions on your product, you need to find ways to highlight your strengths.

1) Outstanding product features

Hand-baked, craftsmanship inheritance, relatively low sugar content, and high regional recognition are all advantages of the product and can also be used as product highlights for publicity and promotion.

As handmade biscuits, the handicraft history and non-fried production method are their unique features, which can be emphasized through brand stories, product introductions and brand reputation, and relevant information can be indicated on the product packaging to enhance consumer trust and satisfaction.

Tell the story behind the brand, the most common one is the story of the founder, to build the brand's emotional value and attract emotional resonance from consumers.

Brands can also share the cookie-making process on social media to enhance customers' awareness of the brand.

2) Taste selling point promotion

The taste of the product is also a very important selling point, and the taste can be used for brand promotion.

For example, the taste characteristics of the product can be highlighted on the product packaging through advertising slogans, pictures, videos, etc. The exquisite packaging corresponds to the young group, and KOLs such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili are invited to visit the store for promotion to deepen the understanding of the young group.

If you want to promote some unique taste, you can refer to the example of Kraft Heinz.

In order to break the current situation of conservative positioning and single flavor of traditional biscuit brands, Kraft Fun Family has added popular flavors that are sought after by young people nowadays, such as: tempting cheese chocolate sandwich biscuits and hot chili chocolate flavored biscuits, which are deeply loved by those born after 1990.

With the concept of "weird and delicious", Kraft Fun Family encourages today's young people to unlock the "little weirdness" in their hearts, be themselves, and release the most interesting souls in their hearts.

The millennials’ favorability towards Kraft Fun Brand has increased, allowing it to make the leap from a simple snack to a brand with an interesting soul.

Products must be unique and novel enough to attract the attention of young people, but whether they taste good is the key to retaining consumers. When the brand grows further, it is time to add values ​​and link the products with lofty ideas.

3) Clear positioning and precision marketing

For this product, you can clearly define its positioning and conduct precise marketing. Promote it through social media, KOL cooperation, event planning, etc. Develop different marketing strategies for the target consumer groups, such as joint marketing, limited-time discounts, etc., to attract consumers' attention.

Targeting different groups of people requires considering different marketing methods.

For example, if the product is positioned as a high-end snack, it is necessary to sell it through high-end retail channels and carry out precise social media promotion and advertising.

If the target group is children and the elderly, they attach the most importance to food safety. Find a group of agricultural experts who study wheat to endorse, select wheat varieties for packaging, trace the entire industry chain, create a brand image in terms of health, taste, and food safety, package, shoot promotional videos or write popular science articles, and conduct advertising and marketing in media channels.

4) Brand extension

The product has been recognized by the top 10 regional brands, and it can be considered to extend the brand to other related categories, such as desserts, coffee, etc. The market can be expanded by cooperating with related brands and opening online and offline sales channels.

In addition, a friend provided a new idea: when designing new products, you can bring in the supplier's thinking. You can make a biscuit product to be a strong supplement to the most profitable products nowadays.

For example, after the emergence of full-screen mobile phones, explosion-proof glass films instantly became popular. Milk tea is a hot and relatively stable product in the catering market. If the new biscuits can perfectly match milk tea and provide users with an upgraded experience, then co-branding with milk tea is a good choice.

Take Mixue Ice City as an example. Mixue Ice City's current offline layout is very dense, and the audience is highly homogeneous, so cooperation is still possible. The milk tea cup holder is designed with grooves, and biscuits are paired with milk tea. The main theme is "enjoy afternoon tea anytime, anywhere". Several exquisite small biscuits are matched as you like. The packaging design is petty bourgeoisie, celebrity style, light luxury style, young lady style, etc., and a good story is written and a good event is held, which is still attractive for milk tea brands.

However, the core difficulty lies in how to make milk tea brands, especially leading brands, willing to cooperate. An excellent overall marketing case is only the basis, and concessions are also required. If you want to do it, you can register a patent first to avoid other brands copying.

3. Conclusion

If you are not a cookie shop owner, is the above knowledge useless to you?

Of course not!

Any new brand can apply this underlying logic, have an Internet mindset, understand users, make good products and promotions, and establish a well-known brand, which is the first step to selling the product.

Source: Tiantianwen Topics Selection