Making Money With Your Phone: The Mobile Internet Marketing Revolution

Chapter 12 Popularity Strategy: Popularity is the foundation of performance (3)
There was a one-year gap between the launch of Xiaomi 1 and the launch of Xiaomi 2. If this trend of research and development follows, it will take at least one year for Xiaomi 3 to be launched, and this year should be "planned and used".Lei Jun can fully estimate the sales volume of Mi 2 through the product positioning, crowd analysis, and understanding of data such as the number of rice noodles.For example, if the number is 700 million units, he can place an order for the manufacturer to produce, and then sell it openly, while stocks last.But the problem is that if this is the case, there will be a peak of panic buying in the first month, and the sales will be relatively hot in the next 2 to 3 months, and the subsequent sales will tend to be stable.And new smartphones are born every day in the market, which may have better performance than Xiaomi and lower prices, so in the remaining months of the year, Xiaomi 2 will lose the attention of the market, and sales will gradually decline.Then when the new Mi 3 is produced, Xiaomi will need to restart the promotion for the next year, so that Xiaomi will gradually become mediocre like the "China Cool Alliance".

And through the method of hunger marketing, the pre-sales are concentrated once in a while. Although the output is still 700 million units, it always makes people feel that the supply is in short supply.The psychology of customers is that things that cannot be bought and things that everyone grabs are good things, so Mi 2 is more precious to customers because it is not available.

What needs to be grasped is this interval. If the interval is short, it will not be effective, and it will not whet the appetite of customers; if the interval is long, customers will not be willing to wait.During the interval, the publicity should keep up, so that customers can keep abreast of the latest developments, so that customers will wait forever.Xiaomi products have been on sale, and the supply has been in short supply, so Xiaomi's publicity and promotion can continue around the product, and the shortage in supply itself is a topic worthy of hype, so Xiaomi's brand attention will always remain high.

The last point is that hunger marketing must have an end point. It is right to prolong the life cycle of products, but it cannot be infinitely long. When a product is sold to a certain stage through hunger marketing, there must be follow-up products that can be connected. In order to smoothly transfer demand.

When people talk about Xiaomi's hunger marketing, there are supporters and opponents, but for Lei Jun, hunger marketing is the most suitable marketing strategy for Xiaomi at this stage.Xiaomi has never advertised in the media, but its attention is not lower than that of Samsung and Apple. It has become the most famous brand among domestic mobile phones, and it is also the brand with the highest sales of single products. Hunger marketing has played a key role.

4.5 Focus on products: Only by driving yourself crazy can you drive your opponent to death
In the era of mobile Internet, companies without marketing awareness will eventually be eliminated by the market.But on the other hand, companies that pay too much attention to marketing and ignore product quality cannot gain a long-term foothold.No matter in what era, a good brand is not shouted out, but accumulated and precipitated through one high-quality product after another.As Haier Group emphasizes: "Quality is the life of a product, and reputation is the soul of an enterprise. Product qualification is not the standard, but customer satisfaction is the goal." Although this kind of rhetoric is slightly official, it honestly expresses the foundation and marketing of the enterprise. foundation.

Obviously, all the production and management activities of the enterprise are carried out around the products, that is, to achieve the development goals of the enterprise by providing the products needed by consumers in a timely and effective manner.In this sense, the key to the success and development of an enterprise lies in the degree to which products meet the needs of consumers and whether the product strategy is correct or not.In essence, it can also be said that product decision-making is a strategic tool for implementing marketing strategies.Therefore, the relationship between product and marketing is the relationship between 1 and 0.Whether it's packaging or advertising, your marketing and promotion are all "1"s that follow the "0" of the product.Without a good product, all marketing is out of the question.

Take Xiaomi, which is best at mobile Internet marketing, as an example. Although the industry is hyping its fan marketing model, everyone ignores one point. Xiaomi’s marketing is based on the high cost performance of Xiaomi products and good user experience.Inside Xiaomi, all those who do marketing planning are product managers, and most of them are excellent product managers.Many people in the planning department still insist on doing product and design on the front line, in order to always carry out relevant marketing planning with product orientation.

Let's take a look at how Xiaomi makes products to the extreme and uses this as the starting point for marketing.

4.5.1 Cost-effectiveness that makes users scream

The rapid development of the mobile Internet and the replacement of smart phones are also very fast. While satisfying consumers' needs for trying new things, it also brings about a problem, that is, insufficient purchasing power.Smartphones cost upwards of 3000 yuan, and Apple’s new products have always maintained a high price of 4000 to 5000 yuan.The majority of consumers need smart phones with high configuration and low price. Whoever can achieve this, even without marketing, will be successful.

Before the birth of Xiaomi, there were two ecology in the domestic mobile phone market, one was high price and high performance, such as Apple mobile phones and later Samsung.One is low price and low performance, such as domestic smartphones represented by "China Cool Union".If Xiaomi wants to take the "high performance, low price" route, it must make a breakthrough.Lei Jun's choice is to subvert the business model, that is, not rely on hardware to make money, and retail mobile phones at cost prices.This means that Xiaomi has reduced the price of mobile phones originally priced at 5000 yuan to less than 2000 yuan.

When Lei Jun first priced the Xiaomi mobile phone, he wanted to set the price at 1499 yuan, or even 999 yuan.However, after accounting for various costs, the price was "helplessly" set at 1999 yuan.However, even at this price, people still exclaim that the price-performance ratio of Xiaomi mobile phones is high.Lei Jun emphasized: "Xiaomi doesn't want to profit from hardware, but just for the seamless integration of hardware and software, to provide users with more smooth and extreme content and services, and to improve users' mobile Internet experience on mobile phones."

In fact, the mobile phone industry has developed over the years and has become very mature.Hardware procurement, from chips to screens, and even cameras, the price of each product is transparent.As an outsider, Xiaomi has adopted two methods in order to achieve the combination of high performance and low price: the first is that the mobile phone does not make money, and will make profits through accessories and peripheral products in the future; the second is to sell it in the form of e-commerce through the Internet. Reduce store and channel costs.

In addition to being affected by production costs, the price of traditional mobile phones also includes channel and store costs, which are ultimately passed on to users, resulting in high smartphone prices.Now Xiaomi has not only realized the complete sale of mobile phones on the Internet, reduced the cost of intermediate channels on the largest scale, greatly lowered the price threshold, but also occupied the entrance of the mobile Internet through mobile phones. The next thing Xiaomi needs to do is to further improve the layout, through Serve for profit.

1.6.2 Drive yourself crazy for user experience
Like Jobs, Lei Jun, a programmer, is also a perfectionist.In terms of doing things, Lei Jun has very high requirements. He feels that he must do one thing to the extreme, to the limit of his ability, and to refine it to the end, which becomes the "Tong Ren Tang Spirit" in Lei Jun's mouth: always insist on real materials Be real, do everything right.

To give two examples, one is the selection process of Xiaomi MIUI system wallpaper.

Many people may think that finding the best wallpaper is an easy task.However, just doing such a small thing, the Xiaomi team looked at nearly 100 million photos, and even developed a software to select the most satisfactory wallpaper.In the end, they found that it was not easy to find a good wallpaper, because Xiaomi’s requirements for the wallpaper were: it should look good on the lock screen, and it should be meaningful and detailed, at least 90%. % people like it, no one will object or dislike it.Therefore, in July 2012, the Xiaomi team mobilized the masses to collect wallpapers for Xiaomi with 7 yuan. Finally, Xiaomi collected 10 pictures, which can be said to be very exquisite.The team worked overtime to pick 45000 of them, but Lei Jun was not satisfied after reading them.Later, Lei Jun forced all the designers of Xiaomi to draw wallpapers. In 310 months, the designers drew 8 perfect wallpapers, but they did not meet Lei Jun's perfect requirements.Therefore, Lei Jun had no choice but to continue to solicit, and declared: If anyone can make a better picture than these 5 wallpapers, Xiaomi promises 5 million yuan to buy a wallpaper.

There is also the product category of Xiaomi.Many people have the idea that the more products a company produces, the more it can meet people's needs and spread faster.Lei Jun believes that too many models will distract users' attention, and it is difficult for such a company to make truly high-end products.Lei Jun said: "Until now, Apple has only made two products, one is the iPhone and the other is the iPad. The iPhone and the iPad account for 75% of Apple's operating income. The iPhone has only launched 5 mobile phones over the years, and even The color is also very single, but Apple has become the most expensive company in the world, with a market value of 6000 billion U.S. dollars." Lei Jun never wavered in his determination to focus on one mobile phone, and he and the Xiaomi team focused all their energy on this mobile phone on the perfection.Some people suggested that Lei Jun learn from Apple and make a Mi Pad.And Lei Jun believes that making Mi Pad requires a lot of investment, and it may not be able to compete with iPad, which is a thankless task.He still insists on his philosophy: concentrate all resources, focus on making Xiaomi mobile phones, and improve user experience.

The example of Xiaomi believes that it can bring a lot of inspiration to many companies.Indeed, clarifying what kind of products and services a company can provide to meet the needs of consumers, and how to maximize product quality and user experience, these product strategy issues are the primary issues that companies need to solve.The realization of product value is the foundation of the enterprise's profit and also the foundation of the enterprise's strategic goal.Therefore, the quality of product decisions will directly affect the implementation of marketing strategies.Details determine success or failure, and only by paying attention to every aspect of product decision-making can the implementation of marketing strategies be like ducks in water.

(End of this chapter)