Making Money With Your Phone: The Mobile Internet Marketing Revolution

Chapter 13 Follower Strategy: A Small Number of Followers Generates Maximum Value (1)
5.1 Fans are changing, celebrity effect has become a double-edged sword
5.1.1 Celebrity Effect Gives Birth to "Marketing on Momentum"

Because celebrities have strong idol influence and certain credibility, consumers tend to have admiration, trust or following psychology of celebrities in terms of consumption concepts. This kind of psychology is the "celebrity effect".Enterprises can use this kind of psychology of consumers to promote the sales of products, which is an effective "momentum" promotion method.The advantage of using celebrities for marketing is that it can eliminate the defensive psychology of ordinary consumers.Marketing guru Kotler also emphasized the marketing role of celebrities: "A carefully selected celebrity can at least arouse attention to a product or brand."

As a well-known international sports brand, Adidas sporting goods series has long been known to every household.Whenever you turn on the TV and watch exciting sports programs, you will definitely notice that most of the famous athletes who are famous in the sports world and the world are wearing sportswear with novel styles and three-lobed patterns-this is Adidas sports series clothing.

In order to maintain the world popularity of the company's products, Adidas often spends huge sums of money to invite world-renowned athletes to advertise its products.Adidas donates 3% to 6% of its total products to famous athletes and sports groups in various countries of the world free of charge every year.

Although Adidas has paid a huge amount of money through the promotion of sports stars, the returns brought by these efforts to the company are immeasurable.It not only helps Adidas sell countless sportswear, sports shoes, sports caps and other sports clothing, but more importantly, Adidas promotes its own brand to consumers all over the world, making Adidas products a world-renowned brand , It is this well-known brand that has brought greater revenue, greater fame, and more prosperous business to Adidas.

Sports celebrities have a special effect on sports products, so Adidas spared no expense to hire world-renowned athletes to advertise, which ultimately made the company gain more.It can be seen that corporate marketing should make full use of the celebrity effect, give full play to the status and influence of celebrities in the minds of ordinary consumers, guide consumers to recognize and accept the company's products, and finally achieve the purpose of product promotion.

5.1.2 Celebrities + Public Welfare = Spreading Miracles
In the era of mobile Internet, celebrity marketing methods should also be adjusted appropriately.How to attract the attention of fans through the celebrity effect on the mobile terminal, so as to increase the company's popularity and product sales?Let's first look at an example of a celebrity doing charity.

Gigi Leung, a well-known Hong Kong actress, was the first to invent the "Weibo donation method". On her birthday, March 2010, 3, Gigi Leung posted on Weibo that every time a netizen reprinted her Weibo to raise funds for the disaster area, she would donate one yuan to the Hong Kong UNICEF.The event lasts for 25 days and will end at 3:3 on March 27th.This method has won Gigi Leung's Weibo a very high repost rate, and her Weibo has been reposted by more than 12 netizens.

The picture above is a microblog published by Gigi Leung on March 2011, 3 after a lapse of one year. 25 times more than last year.

Doing public welfare is different from corporate marketing in terms of content, but there are commonalities in methods.Gigi Leung’s popularity of fans after doing public welfare on Weibo reflects the fans’ recognition of Gigi Leung’s kindness. This has at least two results: one is to promote the concern of these fans for public welfare undertakings, and the other is to increase fans’ favor towards Gigi Leung and trust.And these two points are not exactly the goals that many companies hope to achieve when doing marketing?Through one Weibo marketing, fans can not only pay attention to the product but also trust the brand. This is the result that enterprises hope to see most in the process of combining celebrity effect and mobile Internet marketing strategy.

5.1.3 Reasonable Avoidance of Negative Effects of Celebrities
However, it should be noted that celebrities are also a double-edged sword for enterprises, and they should be acted with caution. If they are used improperly, their negative effects cannot be underestimated, and they should have a clear understanding and grasp of this.Choosing the right spokesperson is the key to the success of advertising, and at the same time, grasping the opportunity and method of publicity cannot be ignored.After all, fans in the mobile Internet era are both passionate and ruthless.

From this, we found that in the era of the mobile Internet, it is no longer a matter for companies to use celebrity effects for fan marketing to sit back and relax just by investing huge endorsement fees.Enterprises should not only consider the personal characteristics of celebrities, but also pay attention to the psychological demands of mobile Internet fans.

Generally speaking, a good image spokesperson should have the following characteristics:
1.It has high social popularity and reputation.To a certain extent, the level of celebrity popularity is directly proportional to the size of the advertising effect, and the celebrity's reputation will give people a sense of trust, the product is famous by the celebrity, and the celebrity and the product complement each other.

2. There should be some correlation between the celebrity and the advertised product, which can establish a harmonious relationship between the image of the celebrity and the image of the product.

3. Carefully consider whether the celebrity's own image, expertise, personality charm, etc. are in harmony with the target consumer group to be communicated by the advertisement.

After meeting these conditions, celebrity marketing should also fit the characteristics of mobile Internet fans, and do the following three points:
1. Keep updating, interact well with fans, and shorten the psychological distance with fans.

2. On the basis of the first step, moderately soft-package product advertisements, and it is not appropriate to make too straightforward recommendations and simple forwarding.Product implantation should be done naturally without leaving traces.Of course, you can also do the opposite, allowing celebrities to conduct interesting publicity through "self-hacking".For example, Guo Degang's promotion of facial masks on Weibo is to make full use of the huge contrast between celebrity images and products, as well as the humorous characteristics of celebrities themselves, to drive fans' attention and heated discussions.

3. Participate in more public welfare activities to shape the image of integrity and responsibility of the brand, so as to establish a good brand image.Just imagine, if Gigi Leung’s Weibo charity started with “Gigi Leung cooperates with a certain brand to launch a Weibo donation campaign…” I believe many fans will also look at this brand differently.

5.2 Rice Noodle Culture: Fight the Marketing War as You Want

In the first 10 years of Internet development, the entire industry was still in a primitive state of being pioneered.If a company grasps the appropriate product direction, it can quickly accumulate a certain user base, just like Tencent.However, today, in the new Internet era, fierce market competition and users' familiarity with various marketing models have greatly improved users' ability to appreciate products.Therefore, marketing through old routines such as "expert recommendation" and "dense bombing" as in the past is no longer feasible.Especially when the mobile Internet was born, the way users browse information is faster and fragmented, and advertisements that are not innovative and cannot catch the eye in an instant have long been easily abandoned by them.

Under such a background of the times and demands of users, some companies choose to constantly come up with new ideas and use hype to attract attention. Very few people spend money on your product.Under the paradox of "no one will watch it if you don't blame it, it will count if you read it if you blame it", Xiaomi and Lei Jun have embarked on a new path that is closer to users.

5.2.1 Shocking fan economy

Lei Jun has long realized that an excellent product can achieve long-term and stable development only if it is extremely close to users, communicates with them attentively, and establishes a certain emotional bond.In his view, marketing is not about making one or two novel advertisements, but long-term interaction, and the marketing strategy that is born on this basis is fan marketing.Before Xiaomi, only industries such as film and television, literature, entertainment, etc. were driven by fans. When Xiaomi used the fan economy to the extreme, and even relied on the Internet to create a fan industry chain with a huge output value, people couldn’t help but be amazed. Call: It turns out that mobile phone marketing can also be done like this!

Regarding how Xiaomi uses the power of the Internet, Lei Jun once said that it is from rice noodles to rice noodles.This is the logic of the super-generalized crowdsourcing model, that is, a practice of free and voluntary outsourcing to the mass network, and fans do their best to achieve the objects they agree with.Facts have proved that Lei Jun's idea can stand the verification of facts.

We might as well take a look at several key points in time for Xiaomi mobile phone sales:
2011年9月5日，小米手机正式开放网络预订，34个小时预订了30万部。

2012年10月30日，小米M2手机网络发售，首轮5万台在2分51秒内被抢购一空。

2013年4月9日，小米连续发布4款新品，当晚8点，20万台小米2S开放购买，在2分钟内售罄。

From the sales speed data that has been refreshed again and again above, we can see that Xiaomi is successful, and Xiaomi's sales are also very successful.As a young company, there is no doubt that Xiaomi has a strong appeal to users in China, and its continuous record breaking has also surprised people who want to see that Xiaomi is only a 3-minute hit.

5.2.2 You can "buy" fans without spending money

Lei Jun once said: "The difference between Xiaomi and most companies is that when building a company, it takes rice noodles as the core and carefully thinks about many things from the perspective of users." The most successful point of Xiaomi is that it has created its own unique Fan culture allows fans to become Xiaomi's spokespersons to actively promote the advantages of Xiaomi and maintain Xiaomi's brand honor.

In the early days of Xiaomi's entrepreneurship, the first product was the MIUI operating system, and Li Wanqiang was the person in charge of this business at that time.Lei Jun gave Li Wanqiang the task of "making MIUI 100 million without spending money". "The only way is to make word-of-mouth in the forum." Under the heavy pressure of Lei Jun, Li Wanqiang led the team to visit the forum, pour water, post advertisements, and find senior users.

From the initial 1000 people, 100 were selected as super users to participate in the design, development, and feedback of MIUI. These 100 people became the "sparks" of the MIUI operating system and the original source of Mi Fan.Later, under the premise of zero budget, Li Wanqiang established the Xiaomi mobile phone forum, which also became a gathering place for rice fans.It can be said that the Xiaomi forum community is the base camp for millions of Xiaomi fans.

It may be difficult for many people to understand why so many people log in to the Xiaomi forum first thing when they turn on their computers every day, unconditionally assist the administrators to maintain the order of the forum, and even sacrifice their sleep time to spend several hours a day on the forum?In fact, this phenomenon can be explained in one word - a sense of belonging.In the Xiaomi forum community, many people can not only find like-minded friends, but also show the side of themselves that they cannot or dare not show in life. A brush master who admires and adores.

Moreover, Xiaomi Forum will also use badges and other things to indicate the identity of Mi Fan.It doesn't matter how they are in reality, ID is the symbol of their identity and role.It can be said that it is this kind of psychological satisfaction and sense of belonging that makes many people willingly become rice fans and firmly become a member of this camp.

After the success of the online forum, Xiaomi has made efforts in new social media such as Weibo and WeChat.Through exploration, Weibo has gradually become the home of event marketing, winning more new users for Xiaomi, while forums have accumulated resource users, and WeChat has slowly begun to play the role of customer service.It can be said that Xiaomi has almost completely abandoned the traditional form of advertising. "BBS + Weibo + WeChat + Qzone" has become the combined weapon of Xiaomi's new marketing strategy, which has gained good popularity and reputation for Xiaomi.

In addition, Xiaomi also set up a rice noodle festival, which is a carnival party with users.This is a rice noodle festival. During the annual rice noodle festival, Lei Jun will share new products, communicate with rice noodles, and inspire enthusiasm for rice noodles.Moreover, every Xiaomi press conference is also a crazy gathering of Mi Fans, and some Mi Fans even rode bicycles all the way to attend the conference.On the Xiaomi Mi Fan Festival on April 2013, 4, Xiaomi released a special micro-film dedicated to thanking 9 die-hard fans, called "100 Sponsors of Dreams", in which their names were cast on the big screen. On screen, express thanks.

5.2.3 Special millet, special rice noodles

Xiaomi's marketing model is different from other traditional mobile phone manufacturers, even from Apple.Of course, Lei Jun attaches the most importance to marketing. He believes that what Xiaomi sells is marketing, not Xiaomi mobile phones.What is the most important thing in marketing?It may not be a fan group like a star's fan club. After all, a star fan group is an appendage of an artist manager.The artist's artistic quality is not the key, sometimes even the acting skills are secondary, it is pure celebrity aura.

For Xiaomi, what fans do is obviously much more important than the status of such fan groups.Xiaomi's fan movement actually indicates that the marketing work in the technology field is facing changes, and more and more attention is paid to operations in the field of public relations.After Xiaomi's new marketing strategy achieved great success, the topic of market discussion has also evolved from "whether the Xiaomi model can succeed" to "whether Xiaomi's success can be replicated".Today, manufacturers such as Huawei and OPPO have also begun to pay attention to the important role of their core user groups—users who have a certain understanding of products, technologies, and markets, and who have a certain influence on the choices of people around them—in product marketing and promotion.

5.3 Emotional marketing: only fans with human touch

In the era of mobile Internet, in order to cultivate a large number of high-quality fans and lay the foundation for brand and product marketing, in addition to focusing on the quality of the product itself, it is also necessary to pay attention to the emotional maintenance of fans.This is the true meaning of emotional marketing, which takes consumers' personal emotional differences and needs as the core of corporate marketing strategies.

5.3.1 Feedback with sincerity, creating an emotional loop

The era of mobile Internet is also an era of emotional consumption. In this context, what consumers value in purchasing products is no longer just quality and price, but also for emotional satisfaction and psychological recognition.Enterprises must learn to start from the emotional needs of consumers, and use methods such as emotional packaging, emotional promotion, emotional advertising, and emotional word-of-mouth to arouse and stimulate consumers' emotional needs, so that consumers can resonate with your corporate brand in their hearts, and finally form a brand. The emotional circuit turns users into fans and fans into hardcore fans.

Joe Gillard, known as "the greatest salesman in the world", sends greeting cards to customers on important festivals such as birthdays and wedding anniversaries. On average, he sends out 1.2 postcards every year to let customers receive him. These customers even include people who have only met Joe Girard once and have not bought a car from him.This is a model of emotional marketing that not only looks at the money in the customer's pocket, but also pays attention to the heart of the customer.

Coincidentally, this kind of emotional marketing has also been successfully transplanted into mobile Internet marketing.

In order to thank the attention and support of millions of fans on Facebook, the American communication operator AT&T specially made an activity called "Thank You Notes" by using social media. Show your gratitude to your fans.This kind of short film is not mere formality, for example: in order to thank a lucky female fan named Mary, AT&T specially recorded a music short film incorporating Mary's name.The fans in these 500 short films were all selected from an APP interactive activity promoted on Facebook. For those fans who carefully filled in their names, places of residence, favorite music genres and other information, this return is really amazing. People feel moved.AT&T, in particular, will also be uploading the 500 music video clips to its dedicated YouTube page, which is yet another thing to be proud of for those lucky fans.

It is conceivable that not only these 500 lucky fans, but also all AT&T users who pay attention to this thank-you activity will naturally increase their trust and favor towards AT&T.We found that mobile Internet emotional marketing is essentially the same as traditional emotional marketing, but it is faster, more accurate, and novel in form, and the effect of communication has also increased rapidly.

5.3.2 Lubricating shopping experience with human touch
Of course, the form of emotional marketing in the mobile Internet era is not limited to thanking users. In the usual marketing process, companies should pay more attention to cultivating their "human touch" on the mobile Internet, and subtly increase users' emotions in frequent interactions. accumulation.

In advertising and communication, according to Frech's human touch formula, the human touch score = 3.365 x the number of personal words in every hundred words + 0.314 x the number of personal words in every hundred sentences, and the higher the human touch score (in simple terms, The more you, me, him are used), the wider and faster the advertisement or news will spread.Therefore, when conducting mobile Internet marketing, enterprises must act like a "person" and conduct "friend-like communication" with users.

(End of this chapter)