Making Money With Your Phone: The Mobile Internet Marketing Revolution

Chapter 9 Interaction Strategy: Making a Profit by Flying Wild Gooses (2)
[-]. Weibo

Maybe you have never noticed that the first choice for people to obtain news and other real-time information is no longer the morning news reports of TV stations, nor the various newspapers and periodicals in newsstands that cost a few dollars, but a classified index, real-time, A concise, sophisticated, tailor-made, and completely free new media platform, an intimate partner that you can rely on wholeheartedly: Weibo.The fast sharing and rapid dissemination of Weibo are obvious, and its interactive experience is much more upgraded than that of blogs.As one of the representatives of new media, Weibo is the first choice for modern enterprises to carry out interactive marketing.

3.3.2 New ideas of integrated marketing communication
The popularity of new media does not mean the death of traditional media, and the prevalence of new marketing methods does not mean the complete contraction of traditional marketing strategies.Enterprises are always exploring new marketing tools to obtain higher marketing efficiency.But the highest marketing efficiency actually comes from the integrated utilization of different marketing tools.

One report states that more than 70 percent of top management and marketing executives at large companies producing consumer products prefer to use integrated marketing communications as a tool to improve their communications impact.In recent years, with the development and popularity of new media, integrated marketing communication has also undergone new developments.

Maybelline's leading position among the world's popular makeup brands is due to the diversity and high quality of its makeup products.However, in its brand image communication, Maybelline's new media integrated marketing communication is more worth mentioning.

In 2008, in subways and buses in major cities, a video advertisement of Maybelline attracted people’s attention—Mabel dating video.The video content is divided into 4 different chapters according to the characteristics of the heroine Mabel's date and the color of Maybelline's mascara, and a "dating emergency situation" is designed to convey the waterproof characteristics of the product.After the audience watched the dating video with great interest, a text reminder appeared on the screen: "Who do you think Mabel is most suitable for dating?" and a voting URL was attached at the bottom of the screen.

Unlike the Maybelline TV commercials that you have seen in the past, Maybelline uses an interactive advertisement.Consumers can vote to decide the choice of the protagonist of the advertisement, that is to say, the plot of Maybelline's next advertisement is determined by consumers.This interesting interaction has attracted the attention of many consumers.A short message after the video advertisement will transition from "acceptance" to "interaction", and skillfully transfer "terminal" to "network" and "mobile phone". From the traditional "video one-way broadcast" to an interactive way of communication.

In the process of further promoting interactive marketing, Maybelline has also adopted a variety of communication methods, especially focusing on the use of new media: blogs are new media; video is new media; mobile phones are new media; focus is also new media, new media The big family of the mobile phone is getting richer and richer, with more and more terminals, and more and more interactivity.How does Maybelline serve brand communication through the use of new media?There is only one choice: integrated marketing.

On the interactive voting platform of Maybelline POCO.com, in addition to voting for the boyfriend of the video protagonist Mabel, you can also enjoy the "makeup video", experience the "love test" and learn more about Maybelline products.Maybelline chose POCO.com, a Web2.0 website, not only to focus on POCO.com’s large user base, high traffic, and young and fashionable user base, but also to avoid portal, entertainment, and video websites with scattered users, a wide range of people, and a relatively high degree of interaction. Low enough.And this kind of experience-based community interaction is combined with Maybelline's overall market strategy and public relations plan, combined with POCO.com's audience interests and points of interest, and a variety of new media integrated communication methods to continuously interact with users and guide them. Users generate purchase actions and at the same time have effective awareness of brands, products and services.

Maybelline spends the least amount of money to integrate as many resources as possible, and influences the audience through various communication methods, especially the selection of interactive new media, and makes full use of the advantages of integrated marketing communication to maximize the effect of brand communication. optimization.Of course, we cannot deny that Maybelline has any brand characteristics that can be used for interactive marketing: high-quality products, competitive functions, quality, price, comprehensive channels, services, etc.Therefore, when enterprises use new media for interactive marketing, they must also plan according to their own characteristics.

3.4 Provide a sense of participation and gain loyalty

3.4.1 Why does Xiaomi attach importance to the sense of participation

In the era of mobile Internet, every smartphone and tablet user is a "player". They not only hope to get high-quality information for free and quickly, but also hope to actively participate in the creation and sharing of information.It is no wonder that Li Wanqiang, vice president of Xiaomi, emphasized: "The sense of participation is the soul of new marketing." Xiaomi is also a firm implementer of the interactive strategy in the new mobile Internet marketing.

Let’s first look at a set of data provided by Li Wanqiang: “Xiaomi has two sales channels, one is Xiaomi.com and the other is the operator’s channel. Among these two channels, our Xiaomi.com accounted for 70% of the sales channels. The operator's channel is 30%, which is just the opposite of many traditional manufacturers."

Some colleagues are curious about how Xiaomi can achieve this level with its own marketing and channels.As we all know, Xiaomi is taking the route of fan marketing, and its main battlefield is social media such as social networking sites. What magic weapon do they have for winning in these places?Li Wanqiang's answer to them was: "Three. First, the sense of participation. Second, the sense of participation. Third, the sense of participation."

Li Wanqiang said: “The foundation of social media is to have a community—whether it is a forum, Weibo, WeChat, or Qzone—what you have to do is to choose among these channels. , choose one or all of the features that match your product."

3.4.2 Upgrade the sense of participation to a sense of belonging
The community brand operation that Xiaomi first chose was not Weibo, but a forum.This is because the forum is most compatible with Xiaomi's product features.Xiaomi's first product is a super system for mobile phones. To use it, you need to flash the phone and crack the ROM permissions first, which is relatively professional.It is difficult for such professional things to provide efficient guidance through Weibo, let alone respond to each user's question in a timely and effective manner.The forum is different. In the forum, users can post their own questions, and managers and other users will participate in the answer.The forum has greatly improved the participation of Xiaomi users. Many technical noobs have been in the forum for a long time and began to actively help new users.This transition from "advice" to "guidance" is accompanied by countless Xiaomi users gradually becoming rice fans.It can be said that today's Xiaomi forum has long been the base camp of Xiaomi's millions of rice noodles.

Today, there are several core technical sections on the Xiaomi Forum: Resource Downloads, Getting Started, and Xiaomi Academy. Later, lifestyle sections were added: Coolplay, Suishipai, Popcorn, etc.In this forum, rice noodles participate in research, product development, testing, dissemination, marketing, public relations and other links.

On the Xiaomi forum, Mi fans can decide the direction of product innovation and the increase or decrease of product functions. Release a new version.On Tuesday of the following week, based on the experience report data submitted by users, Xiaomi will select the most popular function and the worst function of the previous week respectively, in order to determine Xiaomi’s internal “Popcorn Award”.In addition to online interactions, Xiaomi also has many offline activities.Xiaomi not only launched the internal magazine "Popcorn" for Xiaomi members, but also used Xiaomi's "City Club" as a link to let many rice fans have dinners, outings, fruit picking, and even donate blood together in real life...

In this regard, Li Wanqiang is very proud: "Our forum has nearly 1000 million registered users, 10 posts per day, and 100 million users participate in discussions every day. 100 million users is very important for a website with many vertical categories such as IT. It’s already an astonishing number, and we’re not in the media, but just a manufacturer’s product forum.”

3.4.3 Liberate employees and interact with users
It can be said that no one has fully understood the "Xiaomi model" until today. In fact, Xiaomi's basic strategy is to subvert and redefine and update every aspect of traditional mobile phone marketing by using the Internet to do mobile phone marketing.For example, the traditional way to manufacture mobile phones is to hire top technicians to do research and development behind closed doors, while Xiaomi invites Mi Fan to participate in product design and development; the traditional way to sell mobile phones is only for users to use, while Xiaomi sells mobile phones to play with Mi Fan Mobile phones; others are just selling products, while Xiaomi sells them with a sense of participation; others spend huge sums of money to invite celebrities to advertise, while Xiaomi uses rice noodles to create a new Internet marketing method; many companies do not allow employees to go to forums during working hours, Playing Weibo, while Xiaomi encourages "full employee liberation", encourages all employees to spend time online, have direct contact with rice fans, and transfer internal evaluations to external evaluations...

Although Xiaomi has made the fan economy flourish, it does not mean that the fan economy is Xiaomi's only economic model.The key link leading the success of the Xiaomi model, as well as the management of core users and the shaping of the Xiaomi brand, is the core of which is the effective solution to user participation and belonging needs in the early stages of industry formation.

In fact, creating a sense of user participation is not an original creation of Xiaomi, and it does not necessarily require the investment of a large number of people. Its core thing is the importance the company itself attaches to users.Because the sense of participation is not a purely formal interaction, companies must try to bring users in in the product link, product improvement link, and marketing link, and use their ideas to improve quickly—or at least let users feel that you have made an effort, that is, Make them feel that their participation has generated beneficial value.

3.5 Settle accounts for customers first, and only then can enterprises make money

3.5.1 Satisfying the needs of users for "value maximization"

There is a concept in marketing called "customer transfer value", which is defined as: the actual value transferred by the enterprise and felt by the customer.It is generally expressed as the difference between the total value of customer purchases and the total cost of customer purchases. This is a potential interaction between enterprises and customers. The psychological experience of customers shopping.It was Kotler, a marketing guru who proposed this concept, and he further explained: "The total value of customers is the total benefits that customers get from purchasing a specific product or service, including product value, service value, personnel value and image value, etc. The total cost of the customer is the estimated cost incurred by the customer when evaluating, obtaining and using the product or service, which includes four aspects: monetary cost, time cost, energy cost and physical cost.

Under certain search cost and limited knowledge, flexibility, income and other factors, customers are the pursuers of value maximization.So customers will form a value expectation and act according to it.Customers always buy services or goods from those companies or organizations that they think can provide the highest customer delivered value.

In other words, when customers purchase products, they always hope to minimize the relevant costs, including currency, time, mental and physical strength, etc., and at the same time hope to get more practical benefits from them, so that their needs can be maximized. satisfy.Therefore, when customers purchase products, they often conduct comparative analysis from the two aspects of value and cost, and choose the product with the highest value and the lowest cost, that is, the product with the largest value transferred by the customer as the preferred object of purchase.In the traditional industry, the success of Shenzhen Suibao stems from this way.

Shenzhen Shirble Department Store Co., Ltd., as an earlier local large-scale comprehensive chain commercial enterprise in Shenzhen, has continued to develop steadily in a short period of 1996 years since the establishment of the first department store in 12, and has created many famous brands. The business model that the industry is vying to imitate has achieved impressive results.Since its establishment, Shirble Department Store has quickly become a well-known brand enterprise in Shenzhen's retail industry.

Shirble first started from the service aspect, deepened the service tenet of "serving customers wholeheartedly" from the standpoint of retail business within the company, and implemented it in every detail.They made a promise to the society of 28 convenience measures that other commercial retail companies will follow in the future, such as "provide instant purchase and installation, and make an appointment to purchase goods outside the city" and "all branches implement exchange and refund".Secondly, Shirble Department Store vigorously advocates "knowledge service" among employees, that is, when employees serve customers, they should provide "expert-type" and "consultant-type" services with rich professional knowledge.Improve the knowledge level and comprehensive quality of employees from various aspects, realize knowledge services, and avoid phenomena such as not being able to provide services in a timely manner, not having rich product knowledge, not being familiar with the layout of shopping malls and product classifications, and being unable to provide professional advice when needed.On the one hand, the above-mentioned measures have increased the service value of customers, and on the other hand, the thoughtful and considerate service has reduced the time, energy and physical costs of customers for shopping.

Shirble has made long-term and unremitting efforts in improving customer transfer value, built a marketing mechanism to increase customer transfer value, and improved customer satisfaction. After more than ten years of expansion, it has not only formed a group of stable and highly loyal customers It also makes this group continue to expand, and the commercial value of the enterprise has also been continuously accumulated and improved accordingly.

3.5.2 Integrate the various elements of "customer transfer value"
The customer transfer value theory is not only applicable to traditional marketing, but also applicable to mobile Internet marketing.Customers who consume on the mobile Internet will also generate total consumption value and total cost. This total value includes product value, service value, personnel value and image value.The total cost includes time, energy, energy and currency paid.While the mobile Internet provides convenience for customers to compare and evaluate the level of customer transfer value of different companies, it further increases the difficulty of marketing for companies.If an enterprise wants to beat its competitors in the competition and attract more potential customers, it must provide customers with products that have more customer transfer value than competitors on the mobile Internet side.

Compared with offline traditional consumption, the process of mobile Internet customers from generating needs to finding relevant information to screening and then deciding to purchase and pay is extremely fast. From this point of view, the total cost is lower than offline purchases However, how can a company that also conducts marketing on the mobile Internet provide greater customer transfer value than its online counterparts?

All the components of customer transfer value are related, and if they affect the whole body, any short board in a small link may cause customers to ignore your brand in an instant when they are screening and evaluating.Therefore, product value, service value, personnel value and image value cannot be ignored by enterprises.Product value, as the name suggests, refers to the value of the product purchased by the customer in terms of function and quality. This is the primary factor for customers to choose to buy products, which requires key packaging; service value is the value provided by the enterprise to customers after the online virtual transaction is concluded. The value of distribution, installation, repair, etc.With the improvement of consumption concept, more and more customers begin to pick on the service value provided by enterprises.If the after-sales service level of the enterprise can be improved in an all-round and high-quality way, it will greatly increase the overall total value; the value of personnel is the value generated by the employees of the enterprise, and this value is not only determined by the attitude of customer service, but also related to the work efficiency of enterprise administrative personnel, It is related to factors such as the display of corporate culture by the staff. Customers always trust a professional, responsible, and efficient team; the image value is the value generated by the image created by the company on the mobile Internet. Apple has shaped its own image It is synonymous with quality and creativity, which provides a lot of image value for its customers.

Learn to comprehensively consider the relationship between these factors, highlight the key points, improve the shortcomings, and optimize the allocation of resources, so that enterprises can win the marketing war.It should be noted that different customers have different expectations for product value and service value, and some passionate consumers do not care about the total value, but only care about the total cost, that is, time, energy, physical strength and monetary cost.Different marketing strategies should be formulated for different customer groups, and different customer transfer values ​​should be provided.For example, for those senior white-collar workers who are busy with work but have ample funds, they care more about the service value, image value in the total value, and the time cost and energy cost in the total cost, but do not pay so much attention to the monetary cost. They should highlight the "professional, efficient, caring" high-quality service and the "fashionable, individual" brand image when designing advertisements or pushing information.For customers with ample time and tight funds, they may be more inclined to product advertisements that introduce specific parameters and highlight cost-effectiveness.

Humans are rational and self-interested.In order to achieve "customer first", we must fully understand and satisfy the customer's transfer value.

(End of this chapter)