How can consumer brands bridge the growth gap?

Consumer brands need to go through three stages: short-term, intermediate, and long-term. In order to successfully enter the next stage, from scratch, from hot products to hot models, and product series...consumer brands need to cross the chasm. In this regard, this article analyzes how different brands cross the chasm with examples, and is recommended for those who are interested in brands.

Three processes a new consumer brand must go through:

1. In the short term, products win
2. In the middle, across the gap
3. Long-term, brand closing

First, the short-term success of explosive product growth

Most of the new brands you can see, at the beginning of entering the market, used a single product, a single channel, and a single content promotion method as a starting point to seize the bonus of the category, and then completed the process from nothing to something. The active methods in this process are visible products, channels, and content, and the invisible passive methods are the perception of demand and the delivery of media bonuses. It is too early to say that it is a victory for the brand at this stage. It is more accurate to say that it is a victory for the product.

Open questions at the beginning of market entry: physical sensation is greater than judgment, and new brands need to pay attention to two positive and negative points:

1. Arranging my own prejudices over and over again, treating it as thinking itself
2. Judge with feeling, not with judgment

Secondly, the long-term potential of the brand will win

The promotion method of single product, single channel and single content cannot bridge the gap. The branding method can be used to move from hot products to hot models, product series, series branding, and then achieve brand sedimentation, thus crossing the gap from early adopters to early majority.

The value of a new brand does not lie in the brand itself, but in the new users brought about by the new demands and consumption behind it.

1. Yuanqi Forest

Brands do not need to work hard to guide consumers' objective needs, because needs exist objectively.

• Emotions are the ignition point of needs
• Interest is the search for needs
• Purchasing is a choice of demand
• Fear is the shortest path to action

In the field of marketing psychology, there is a concept that users can only remember seven brands in a category. In the current era of media information explosion, products are not competing products, but the competition for attention itself is. Attention first comes from the demand for the category, followed by the presentation of media + traffic + content, and then the choice of brand. That is, demand-search-interest-comparison-selection-purchase-evaluation-sharing-repurchase.

In an industry where others are doing well, you have the opportunity to do better. In an industry where others are not doing well, you have no reason to do well. The situation is bigger than the person. The core of business decision-making is all in after the choice, not the choice after all in. Don't forget the basic probability of anything:

The probability of an event happening is equal to = basic probability × the probability of the event itself

Category is the foundation and ceiling of business. In a declining industry, you cannot escape from it. The basic foundation of the category largely determines the probability of success or failure.

• Category development trend: Big water means big fish, shallow pond means more turtles
• Breakthrough in industry competition: Dare to be the last in the world
• Consumer demand insights: latecomers come first, all in on single products
• Product differentiation: 0 sugar, 0 calories, low fat
• Leverage traffic to reap the benefits: Xiaohongshu + Internet celebrities, online + convenience stores

Discover first, then invent. Objectively speaking, anything you can think of has already been thought of or even done by someone in this world. This world has never been and will never be able to achieve the so-called "flat state". The successful businessmen compete on who can first take advantage of the information gap to seek benefits.

In Yuanqi Forest’s products, you can almost find the shadow of its products in another business society. Whether it is burning tea, sugar-free sparkling water, milk tea, or electrolyte water, the success that has been verified in a market after daring to be the best in the world is often more likely to succeed, or has a greater probability of success.

Sugar-free tea has a high penetration rate among Japanese consumers. Yuanqi Forest Beihai Ranch Yogurt corresponds to the American Greek yogurt brand CHOBANI. CHOBANI's sales exceeded 1 billion US dollars in 5 years. Alien Energy Drinks is benchmarked against Monster, which challenged Red Bull's absolute leader status and became the most dazzling company in the American food and beverage industry since the 21st century.

1. Latecomers but early adopters: insights into local consumer demand

1. In 2017, the light functional tea drink "Rancha" was launched to compete with the tea drinks of Japan's Ito En and Suntory.
2. In 2018, the sugar-free sparkling water "Yuanqi Forest" was launched, Perrier + San Pellegrino + O-Cola
3. In 2019, the "milk tea" with "0 sucrose", "0 preservatives" and "low fat" is positioned to compete with Japanese "milk tea"
4. 2020 pushes energy drink "Alien Electrolyte Water" to compete with Monster

In an industry with many strong competitors, for new entrants, it is important to focus on a relatively small niche, meet the needs of the niche, actively differentiate the large category, establish an expert or leader identity, and become the first choice in the sub-category. At this stage, the new demands brought by the new category are often more attractive than the brand, that is, the category value is the biggest differentiation of the new brand, and it is also the most efficient expression of the new brand's communication with consumers.

• Organizational inertia: The hardest thing for an elephant is to turn around; big brands often have no time to take care of small markets.
• Consumers have existing brand awareness: The original brand awareness cannot make traditional brands both traditional and innovative
• It is important to note that you should choose a category segment that represents a trend, not a popular one.

2. Eliminate the sharpness of products and focus on zero sugar

My favorite is the Kamagra flavored sparkling water, which has 0 sugar and is guilt-free to drink - this is how netizens commented on Yuanqi Forest.

In 2017, Yuanqi Forest achieved success with its sugar-free and sparkling water, using burning tea as a breakthrough. The demand for good taste, non-fat and healthy food is driving the growth of new categories. Products are the foundation of marketing. If the product is not good (whether the product really meets the demand), the marketing will be short-lived no matter how good it is.

Yuanqi Forest has led Chinese beverages into the 6-yuan era. Compared with brands such as Coca-Cola, Red Bull, and Uni-President, it is more sophisticated in terms of raw materials. For example, milk tea uses milk powder instead of cheaper non-dairy creamer (commonly known as creamer). Tang Binsen said: This is the only beverage in the Chinese market where the "sugar water" in the bottle is more expensive than the bottle.

• 5-6 yuan a bottle of soda and tea (Yuanqi Forest, Burning Tea)
• Energy drinks for 7-8 yuan (alien)
• 10 yuan a bottle of milk tea (milk tea)

What kind of packaging is more likely to attract attention? The most eye-catching packaging factor in consumers' minds is: the packaging product name is novel (63%). Among them, 89% of people pay attention to the production date/shelf life, 76% pay attention to health/nutrition related claims, and 73% pay attention to the nutritional ingredient list. Let's take a look at Yuanqi Forest: "0 sugar, 0 calories, low fat, 0 trans fatty acids" The reason is self-evident.

3. Xiaohongshu + influencers

Three tricks of traditional brands:

1. Media Advertising
2. Celebrity endorsements
3. Line channel depth

Yansheng Forest, on the contrary, avoided the fierce battlefield of communication advertising in the media, and chose online media + internet celebrities such as Xiaohongshu. Through the investment in new media, Xiaohongshu delivered a satisfactory market answer in the early stage of going out of the circle: in 2019, online transaction volume accounted for 40% of total sales. On Double Eleven 2019, Yuanqi Forest ranked second in sales on the entire network, beating Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

There are 50,000 articles promoting Yuanqi Forest on Xiaohongshu, and the number of fans of its flagship store has reached over 3.3 million; the number of fans of Yuanqi Forest’s flagship store on Taobao’s official website has reached 3.35 million, surpassing Nongfu Spring’s 1.05 million, Master Kong Beverage Flagship Store’s 471,000 and Coca-Cola’s 722,000.

• During the 6.18 period in 2019, Tmall sold 2.26 million bottles of beverages.
• In 2019, the total sales volume of the entire network reached 3.23 million bottles, and the total sales revenue exceeded 15 million yuan.
• In May 2020, Yuanqi Forest's monthly sales reached 260 million yuan, exceeding the full-year sales in 2018.
• In the first five months of 2020, a total of 190 million bottles were sold, with total sales reaching 660 million yuan.
• In 2020, the company achieved sales of nearly 3 billion yuan

4. Sinking into convenience stores to reap the potential

Yuanqi Forest has seized the "opportunity" of channel transformation and effectively connected with consumers through the two "emerging channels" of chain convenience stores and e-commerce platforms. "

• In 2019, e-commerce platforms accounted for only 3.4% of the sales channels in China's beverage industry, while offline channels accounted for 96.6%.
• 7-Eleven data shows that consumers aged 20 to 40 account for 88% of the convenience store consumer population.
• There are currently about 6.8 million mom-and-pop stores in China, with 800-1,500 SKUs and 2-3 brands for each product category. In the vast Chinese market, mom-and-pop stores, grocery stores, retail stores, restaurants, and tobacco and liquor stores still occupy a large share.
• Build brands in first- and second-tier cities, and collect profits in third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities. Build brands in KA stores, and make money in mom-and-pop stores, grocery stores, and tobacco and liquor stores - this is the eternal logic of the beverage industry.

2. Perfect Diary

Market introduction stage: large categories, small market, high appearance

• Major category: cosmetics. In 2019, the growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods in China ranked second, and the industry ceiling is high.
• Small track: Skin care VS makeup. The technical threshold of skin care is high, the user conversion cost is high, and the brand competition is fierce (Estee Lauder, Lancome, etc.). Foreign big brands are not focused enough and domestic brands do not have an expert image.
• High appearance: If you want customers to exclaim "Wow!" and be willing to stop and stay, you must rely on eye-catching packaging. Lipstick and eye shadow are particularly suitable for presenting product characteristics through beautiful pictures and short texts.
• New volume: From 2017 to the present, the scale of China's beauty market has increased from 358.1 billion yuan to nearly 453 billion yuan, with an annual growth rate of about 7%. From 2018 to 2019, the transaction amount of skin care products on Taobao and Tmall increased by only 33%, while the growth of cosmetics reached 40%.

1. Product promotion + brand: all in hot products

From the beginning of 2017, Perfect Diary did not adopt an omni-channel and multi-media approach to lay out content, but instead put all its resources into Xiaohongshu. Pyramid-style layout: including top and mid-level influencers, as well as passers-by and amateurs for large-scale placement (top influencers for product endorsement, mid-level influencers for large-scale promotion, and passers-by and amateurs for customer testimony). The lower the frequency of placement, the more budget there is. Taking Double 11 and 618 as an opportunity, all artillery firepower is concentrated on attacking one city gate.

At most, I received 10 advertisements in a month, 4 of which were from Perfect Diary. "Working with Perfect Diary is quick and hassle-free. They pay me directly without saying anything, which is very worry-free." - said a blogger on Xiaohongshu

• Mainly divided into celebrities (certified, such as Zhu Zhengting)
• Well-known KOL (with V certification, such as Li Jiaqi)
• Top influencers (number of fans > 500,000)
• Waist Expert (50,000 < Number of Fans < 500,000)
• Primary Talent (5,000 < Number of Fans < 50,000)
• Amateur (300<Number of fans<5,000)
• Passersby (less than 300 followers)

• In July 2017, Perfect Diary was listed on Xiaohongshu
• Starting from February 2018, Perfect Diary has arranged a large number of related grass-planting notes on Xiaohongshu to cooperate with the new cycle and important e-commerce nodes such as the Double 11 promotion and Double 12 promotion.
• Perfect Diary's sales in June 2018 approached 50 million
• During the 2018 Double 11 Shopping Festival, Perfect Diary became the top domestic beauty brand on Tmall. During this period, the search exposure related to the brand on Xiaohongshu increased 12 times.
• During Tmall’s Double Eleven in 2020, Perfect Diary achieved sales of 600 million, becoming the number one in the beauty category;
• In 2021, the official account of "Perfect Diary" on Xiaohongshu had about 1.92 million followers, over 3.68 million likes and collections, nearly 310,000 related notes, and had cooperated with nearly 15,000 KOCs.

In 2018 and 2019, Perfect Diary's marketing and promotion expenses accounted for 48.7% and 41.3% of its net income respectively. Among them, more than 15,000 beauty KOLs on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Bilibili have become one of the largest expenditures among Perfect Diary's billions of marketing expenses.

Since 2018, brands such as MAC, Lancome, and YSL have successively launched Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and YSL has even started live streaming. According to data from CICC Research Institute, after launching new traffic sources such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and live streaming and starting to try to cooperate with grassroots KOLs, the sales growth of Shiseido, L'Oreal, and Estee Lauder in 2020 exceeded 60%, while Perfect Diary's sales growth in the same period was only 22%.

——The wild period of a new brand mostly benefits from traffic dividends. Today, more than 70% of Xiaohongshu users are born after 1990, and more than 50% of users are born after 1995. Throughout 2020, they posted nearly 300 million notes on Xiaohongshu and generated 100 million searches per day. In 2021, the cost of seeding and recommending through KOLs and KOCs on Xiaohongshu has also risen sharply, and beauty category recommendations have increased by 13-18% compared to 2020.

2. Brand-effect operation stage: public domain + private domain, brand-effect integration

First do the public domain and then the private domain. If you don’t invest in the public domain, there will be no private domain, and the public domain will have zero product effect. Through large-scale investment and wide-range planting of KOL/C on Xiaohongshu, traffic-type purchasing users are brought in. After the transaction, traffic is accumulated through traffic positions (public accounts: Perfect Diary, Perfect Diary Full Alliance, Perfect Diary Experience Store, mini programs: Official Flagship Store, Perfect Diary Heart Selection, Perfect Diary Home), thus forming a 48 million traffic pool belonging to Perfect Diary. Through discounts, buy-one-get-one-free, experience packs, etc., traffic fans are converted, repurchased, and shared.

At the same time, Perfect Diary has also established hundreds of personal accounts (Xiao Wanzi). These WeChat customer accounts use the Perfect Diary brand image as IP and are operated by real people. While completing the service, users are stratified, penetrated, repurchased, and converted.

3. Brand promotion stage: advertising + public relations, cross-border promotion

For consumer goods, brand is a particularly important thing. Whether your brand is formed depends on whether your brand is high-end or low-end in the perception of consumers. Consumers' needs and price acceptance are completely different. The significance of a hot product is to be "seen". The value of the brand lies in the mental traffic pool, otherwise "buying traffic and selling volume" will eventually become a zero-sum game.

According to the changes in the word cloud of Perfect Diary's official WeChat public account over the years, when Perfect Diary was first established in 2018, it was in the stage of creating explosive products, highlighting cost-effectiveness, and gradually transitioning to product words. In 2021, Perfect Diary's "exquisite", "fashionable", "high-end", "stunning", "innovative" and other emotional product adjectives appeared in the word cloud, while the word "cost-effectiveness" was still there, but the proportion began to shrink.

The proportion of Perfect Diary’s head, shoulders, waist, and tail KOLs:

• First half of 2020 2:4:22:75
• Second half of 2020 2:2:20:78
• First half of 2021 3:3:28:68

Brand start-up stage: mass coverage of mid- and low-end KOLs to promote brand penetration and popularity

Brand growth stage: Top KOLs help to improve brand favorability and elevate brand status

They have collaborated with the Discovery Channel to launch the Explorer 12-color eyeshadow palette, and with Li Jiaqi's dog Never to launch a cute pet palette, or they have chosen popular IPs with high audience recognition, such as Oreo, to achieve cross-border collaborations. In the first half of 2020, Perfect Diary's brand voice was 15.61% among men, and 84.39% among women.

In the first half of 2021, 20% of Perfect Diary’s brand voice was from men, while 80% was from women. Perfect Diary is working hard to break through the circle.

It is important to remind you that brand building is a protracted war - advance layout, accumulation of strength, otherwise there will be a backlash effect of imbalance between brand and effect. The cost of traffic is always the lowest price at the moment. Especially for new consumer brands, brand is the bottleneck of sales growth. Sales of 300 million for new brands is a hurdle, breaking through 500 million is the key, and it is too late to go back and plan and build the brand when it reaches 1 billion.

3. Inside and outside of NEIWAI

Everyone who makes products knows or should know that brand is the foundation of business. Otherwise, it will become a "white label" and a slave to traffic. The way of buying traffic and selling goods will eventually make profits trapped in the cost of acquiring customers - this is ultimately a zero-sum game business. When the category bonus gradually disappears and the brand cannot be established, the glory will become a story of the past.

The method of spending money to buy traffic in exchange for sales is acceptable in the early stages of a brand. However, if the brand still relies on low-level operations of simply exchanging traffic for sales in the middle and late stages, the brand will have to work for KOLs and Internet celebrities. In essence, KOLs and Internet celebrities are channels, not the brands themselves. Selling goods and building brands are two different things. If users trust KOLs, not brands. This means that the company's brand has not really established mind and brand awareness among the target population. Once the consumer's mind is saturated, it will be too difficult for you to break in again - the key to not missing an opportunity lies in the window period of the category. Once consumers are overloaded with a certain type of information, it is difficult for them to remember similar information.

The underlying logic of new categories is not only the blank in the market, but also the blank in consumer cognition. Generally speaking: there are no more than three all-round players in an industry, and the vacant market gives new entrants new opportunities. Therefore, after the mind is saturated, the only way is to differentiate and open up new cognition.

In 2015, the wireless ring market exploded in China. How to seize the natural dividends brought by this category?

On the one hand, online hot products are used to grab traffic, enhance exposure, and create the first. The essence of hot products is to solve the problem of consumers' first purchase and voice. In fact, the new domestic underwear F4 brands, Ubras, Bananain, Naitangpai, and Neiwai, have all created hot products belonging to their own brands at different stages. For example, Ubras' Tmall flagship store sold a total of 12.6 million items, of which the most popular single product sold about 4.39 million pieces, accounting for 34.9% of the total sales. Neiwai launched the cloud size-free underwear with a single product price of 169 yuan as a super single product to focus on online.

Secondly, establish offline channels. Offline stores are not only a channel, but also a scene touchpoint for brand strength and category extension. The earlier this touchpoint is established and the greater the potential of the business district selected by the touchpoint, the more conducive it is to establish the brand in the minds of consumers. For example: the beauty brand Glossier resolutely chooses to open an offline store because it is the most suitable store for new brands to establish "direct dialogue" with customers, and even a brand dojo. Through the touchpoint layout of offline stores, on the one hand, it can establish a deeper and broader connection with customers at a lower cost, and on the other hand, it paves the way for category extension.

In fact, 90% of sales of major global and domestic intimate apparel brands come from offline channels. In 2017, Neiwai began to invest heavily in expanding offline channels. It is said that the first shopping mall Liu Xiaolu chose was the Shanghai Jing'an Kerry Center, "Neiwai's first store must be opened in the core area of ​​Shanghai", and Neiwai waited for a year for this location.

In the three years from 2017 to 2020, Neiwai has 110 retail experience stores in 29 first- and second-tier cities across the country, and has strategic cooperation with first-tier owners such as Kerry, Sun Hung Kai, Swire, Hang Lung, and China Resources. On the one hand, the location of offline stores in high-potential business districts can reflect the brand image and effectively form brand endorsement. On the other hand, as traffic becomes more and more expensive, offline channels can bring brands greater category expansion space and more development opportunities. With the help of the layout of offline channels, Neiwai has gradually expanded from underwear to home casual wear, dance sports and home products.

• The initial single-store model of Neiwai achieved profitability for offline stores, with an average sales per square meter of more than RMB 4,500 per square meter nationwide.
• With the help of offline stores, Neiwai has expanded its product categories from underwear to home wear, dance and sports, and home products.
• Flagship stores in first-tier cities + standard stores in second-tier cities and even beyond second-tier cities
• It effectively avoided the online customer acquisition competition from Bananain and Ubras and established a primary moat for the brand.

1. Find a brand-new product category and set a price that matches the brand’s identity: Neiwai was not the first to propose the idea of ​​underwire-free products, but it followed Uniqlo in vigorously promoting the concept, chose its own price range, and occupied the market while maintaining its brand identity.
2. Clear brand positioning: Find a point of entry for differentiated competition in the market, separate from other brands (Ubras), and establish a new category leader image through clear positioning and relatively effective operation (online and offline). It is very similar to Lululemon inside and out. The key to Lululemon's success is that it seized the category bonus when the industry was rapidly rising and became a category leader; although there are many latecomers, it is difficult for them to have similar category opportunities and sufficiently differentiated brand footholds, so it is difficult to replicate Lululemon's success.
3. Grasp the traffic dividend, Internet celebrities + stars: Rely on KOL, Internet celebrities, and stars to conduct brand marketing and create hot products on social media, seize the category dividend period, and seize both market and mind vacancies.
4. A sales channel that combines online and offline sales: Using e-commerce channels as the entry point, exchanging traffic for hits; laying out offline channels early to expand product lines.

4. Xiaoxian Stew

In the past, traditional brands promoted brands through CCTV + celebrities. Now, new consumer brands promote brands through pictures/short videos + KOL.

The basic logic of a business: exposure X clicks X purchases X average order value. The more you plant and the more concentrated the planting, the greater the base of exposure. Under the condition that other conditions remain unchanged, it will bring the possibility of growth to the business. Corresponding relationship:

• Exposed population—O/A1
• Click Group—A2/A3
• Buying group—A4/A5

The focus of brand promotion is different at different stages, from the brand's original audience to competitors, from categories to cross-categories, and then to scenarios. Through promotion at different stages, on the one hand, the promotion area is increased and the base of the exposed population is increased; on the other hand, the promotion density is deepened to occupy the user's mind.

There are two types of grass planting: area and density

• The leap from quantity to quality lies in the fermentation of grass planting area and density
• Area: Large area, increase exposure base
• Density: Deepen cognition and occupy the mind

1. From 0 to 10 million, product promotion should focus on product features and selling points

At this stage, you can understand that products should be placed before brands. When a brand is unknown, consumers evaluate it based on its products. When a brand is well-known, consumers evaluate products based on its brand, because the product's functions and the specific feelings it brings are the basis of word-of-mouth.

Especially for new consumer brands, the first step to opening the door to consumer awareness is to rely on the golden key of product strength; even if old brands launch new products, the product must be the main focus.

Swisse launched blood orange essence. In the first phase of Xiaohongshu, the focus was on the benefits of blood orange and why blood orange can supplement collagen, helping consumers understand the benefits of blood orange. The product was even named after its function: Blood Orange Collagen Liquid (rather than Blood Orange Essence).

The product’s nickname “Collagen Liquid” lowers the consumer’s cognitive threshold, and what you see is what you get; by promoting its efficacy and principles, it helps consumers understand the efficacy of blood oranges.

Similarly, when Xiaoxiandun was from 0 to 1, it focused on polishing its products and highlighting the functions of ready-to-eat fresh bird's nest. In the 18 years when the content was first released, it mainly focused on weight loss, skin care, and emphasized product functions, with the focus on weight loss and skin care accounting for 28% and 37% respectively.

In this stage, consumers recognize the brand through products, and complete their initial understanding of the brand through product functions, services, and usage experience.

Therefore, in this stage (new consumer brand 0 to 1), the seeding should focus on the function, use and experience of the product. Let consumers know clearly what your product is, why they choose you, and why they trust you; clarify the category, clarify the differentiation, and establish credibility.

• The selection of KOLs: on the one hand, it helps to build trust and make them credible, and on the other hand, it helps to reach potential consumers. The logic of selecting KOLs is the logic of brands sending signals to potential consumers. The signal source must be strong, the signal coverage must be large, and the signal must not be interrupted.
• The signal source must be strong: The influence of the KOL itself must be strong. A KOL with 1 million fans is different from a KOL with 100,000 fans; a vertical KOL is different from a non-vertical KOL. When choosing, you should first choose vertical and then pan-vertical. The more vertical the information source, the stronger it is. For example: choosing Zhang Yuqi, Zhang Ziyi, Jing Tian and other celebrities with the labels of "noble lady" and "exquisite" to promote Xiaoxiandun, while bringing high exposure to the brand, it also subtly establishes the credibility of potential consumers for Xiaoxiandun.
• Signal coverage should be large: Coverage is a measure of magnitude, and large coverage means trying to increase the magnitude as much as possible. This magnitude is best to be a phased magnitude under the same keyword.
• The signal cannot be interrupted: the essence of long-termism is not to cross the big cycle, but to continuously penetrate the small cycle; it is an ability and action to cross the small cycle and see through the big cycle. Each small "peak" represents the new consumer brand that continuously transmits signals to consumers, traversing from products, brands, competing products, categories, cross-categories, and scenarios, and finally establishes a unique brand mindset.

For example, the mature brand Feihe milk powder has long been conveying a core concept that it is more suitable for the physique of Chinese babies. Of course, this statement does not stand up to thought. Does it mean that foreign milk powder is not suitable for the physique of Chinese babies? Obviously, this is not the case. However, cognition is greater than facts, and signals cannot be interrupted. Repetition can establish cognition and then influence cognition.

2. From 10 million to 100 million, amplify keywords and penetrate scenarios

After completing the product function-based promotion from 0 to 1, how to achieve the amplification from 1 to 10. The key lies in completing the crowd portrait through the data population in the first stage. Through the crowd portrait, circle the keywords, and promote the crowd around the keywords. Based on the A4-A5 crowd as the basic data, expand the A2-A3 crowd through the crowd portrait, and the method is to reset the core keywords.

Taking Xiaoxiandun as an example, in 2018, it mainly focused on weight loss and skin care; in 2019, it strengthened the extension of the concept of pregnancy care and anti-aging, and at the same time increased the percentage of skin care recommendations from 28% to 45%. This means that the combination of skin care and function is effective.

Focusing on the A2-A3 population, complete the user population portrait, and based on the A2-A3 user population portrait, iterate keywords and penetrate the population.

For example: After April 2019, the scenarios for Xiaoxiandun's advertising began to change. The proportion of "weight loss" scenarios decreased to 11%, and the proportion of "skin care" scenarios was the highest, accounting for more than 45% of the total ratio. The proportion of "pregnancy care" and "freezing age" scenarios increased significantly, and the proportion of "health preservation" scenarios was still at the bottom.

We used super-head KOLs to increase awareness, and used "weight loss", "skin care", "anti-aging", "health preservation", and "pregnancy care" as keywords for penetration. We gradually developed the core keywords: skin care as the main focus, health preservation as the foundation, pregnancy care, and anti-aging as the grass-planting strategy to penetrate the population.

Focusing on the product function, Xiaoxiandun has put a total of 422 notes on Xiaohongshu since 2018, focusing on weight loss and skin care in 2018, and infiltrating keywords into pregnancy care and anti-aging in 2019. In the past year alone, Qiangua Data found 2,202 notes on Xiaoxiandun, including 231 business notes.

• 2 notes from top KOLs (1 million followers+)
• 31 notes from mid-level KOLs (200,000 to 1,000,000 followers)
• 375 notes from mid-level KOLs (1-20w followers)
• 13 notes from amateurs (1k-1w followers)

3. From 100 million to 1 billion, cross-border combination, large-scale encirclement

10 million to 100 million is 10 times, 100 million to 1 billion is also 10 times. The same 10 times, the brand's actions are different in magnitude. If you still stay in the grass planting method of the previous stage at this stage, no matter how much grass you plant, you will not be able to grow into a big tree.

In the face of the increase in scale, it is time to establish the determination to fight a big battle. In the process of enterprise development, there will always be a difficult decision to make. Once this decision is made, the enterprise will bid farewell to mediocrity. Most companies do not lack this opportunity, but lack the courage, so they miss the key window period in the minds of consumers . Once this window period is missed, it will be useless to use ten or a hundred times the force to capture it.

Talking about methods at this stage is equivalent to not understanding business. The core of this stage is not the technique, but the mind and the heart. Many companies that have passed the first two stages died at this stage and have since become mediocre companies and mediocre brands.

Of course, we still have to say that from the perspective of the user pool, the core of increasing from 100 million to 1 billion is to use brand pull to increase the user population from A2-3 to O-A1, and to increase the brand's basic traffic. From brand population, to competitor population, to category population, to cross-category population, and scenario population.

At this stage, the core logic of the brand lies in the logic of the market. The brand is a tool for the enterprise and a way to occupy the minds of consumers. The core of branding is to make the brand = category and let the brand represent characteristics.

The form of grass planting should be consistent with the purpose of the brand. We plant grass, but it must grow into a big tree. Only brands that leave a mark in the minds of consumers can transcend the backlash of traffic. Otherwise, they will continue to be blocked by traffic, the cost of media placement will be pushed up year by year, and the price of KOL will naturally rise.

1. From product selling points to keywords
2. From keywords to crowd portraits
3. From crowd portraits to labels
4. From labeling to penetration
5. From penetration to occupying the mind, only by taking this thrilling leap can the brand complete its journey of self-growth.

Saturation attack by targeted marketing. Whether online or offline, the ultimate competition is to occupy the minds of consumers. To occupy the word, let the brand replace the category and become the synonym of the new category. At this time, enter the coordinated operation of all media and channels. Online hits, offline harvesting, Internet celebrities bring goods, KOL follow-up, and targeted regional detonation.

When consumers are repeatedly exposed to "grass-planting content, live streaming, targeted advertising, and KOL short videos" during distribution and penetration, and identify with the "warmth" conveyed by the brand, the brand will gain a place in the minds of consumers, achieving a word occupation and eventually becoming synonymous with a new category/new track.

This is done through cross-border marketing, brand co-branding, seizing new traffic dividends, creating momentum, public relations, and advertising. Multi-dimensional and multi-scenario, to achieve multi-touch to the crowd and the general crowd.

• Cross-border marketing (cooperating with Didi Taxi to fight smog and deliver bird's nest)
• Launched a joint product (Zhong Xuegao and bird's nest ice cream)
• Guochao Cultural IP Crossover Model (Customized Edition of "Dream of Red Mansions")
• International Awards/First Place in Various Categories (Landing on the Nasdaq Big Screen, Becoming One of China's New Craftsmen 100)
• 3.8 Queen's Day Targeted Advertising
• Public welfare marketing (empty bottle recycling)

Author: Houshan Keju; Source public account: New Consumer Brand Research Society (ID: PPD6977)