Discover vAlue-looking for marketing ideas in the front line (al? Ruiz, Jack? Qute): Go to the front line of customers to find the competitive advantage of your service or product in the hearts of consumers.
"Details determine success or failure. You may have formulated a brilliant global strategy, but you can't implement it at all. A really good strategy must come from being familiar with the details-knowing the ability, market and timing of the actual executors. I like to start with the details and slowly study the general direction. "
? -Andrew, Chairman of Intel? grove
Retz and Kurt, the authors of Looking for Marketing Ideas on the Frontline, believe that observing the success stories of the greatest strategies in the past few decades will reveal that those who can come up with successful strategies can gain strategic advantages only after deeply understanding the market.
The reason for this result is that senior managers are usually the farthest away from the real life of consumers and the last people in the company who can understand consumers' thoughts.
Senior management may propose strategies that cannot be effectively implemented, and no strategy can successfully achieve strategic objectives. In order to save worry, middle managers may adopt several strategies at the same time, hoping that one of them will succeed. As a result, the company's marketing resources are scattered to different places, which weakens the marketing efficiency.
The author points out that only the bottom-up reverse thinking marketing method can make a long-term strategy that can give full play to strategic benefits.
The reverse thinking marketing method follows the following steps: first, find out the effective short-term marketing strategy at present, so as to formulate a long-term strategy, concentrate the resources of the whole company, and make this strategy play its greatest role.
Reverse thinking marketing has the following advantages:
1, the success or failure of marketing war depends on strategy rather than strategy, only strategy can determine success or failure, and reverse thinking marketing strategy must be based on some successful strategy.
2. The planners of traditional marketing practice always want to force the effect, while the planners of reverse thinking marketing are trying to find opportunities that can be used well.
3. Managers of traditional marketing practices pursue the existing market, while managers with negative thinking about marketing will look for new profit opportunities, including new markets.
4. The key to developing reverse thinking marketing strategy is to actually go to the front line and understand the direct contact between your products and potential customers. You must take the time to observe how potential customers leave an impression on your products and how to take corresponding actions.
Examples of reverse thinking marketing:
The new cold medicine introduced by Vexcor has the side effect of drowsiness, but the company did not give up because of it, but changed to "cold medicine before going to bed" as its marketing appeal, so Nyquil became the most successful new product of Vexcor in history. This is an example of the strategy of "introducing an important new cold medicine" with the strategy of "the first cold medicine before going to bed".
Little Caesar's pizza chain adopts the strategy of buy one get one free, trying to attract customers from Pizza Hut, Godfather and Domino's. In order to turn this strategy into a strategy, little Caesar focused on the consumption mode of only providing take-away, saving the recurrent expenses such as waiter's personnel expenses and restaurant rent. Then little Caesar launched an advertising campaign, emphasizing the strategy of "buy pizza and send pizza for free". Little Caesar used this simple strategy to become one of the most successful pizza chains at present.
Disney found that the most profitable movies must be more erotic and violent, but you rarely find these scenes in ordinary Disney movies. However, when they release adult movies under the Disney trademark, consumers are reluctant to watch Disney adult movies because of their existing impressions. In order to reverse the public impression, Disney set up Touchstone Film Company to manage all adult films. This strategy was very successful, and Touchstone Film Company released many films with excellent box office.
Traditional marketing strategy thinks that product line extension can effectively increase market share. Some companies deal in multiple products at the same time, hoping to eat all sizes. Therefore, they often lose to companies that focus on a single product.
On the contrary, reverse thinking marketing is to find ways to further strengthen the effective strategy in the minds of consumers, and then draw up the company's consistently effective marketing direction according to this strategy. No matter how competitors deal with or face any external factors, this method can ensure feasibility and profitability. Because in the eyes of consumers, professional companies can always provide high-quality products more than comprehensive companies.
Creating Value —— Marketing Principles and Practice (philip kotler): Customer-oriented marketing strategy to create value for target customers.
Products, services and brands should be centered on building customer value: philip kotler defined products as anything provided to the market, which attracts attention, obtains, uses or consumes to satisfy desires or demands, including not only tangible products, but also services, events, people, places, organizations, ideas or a combination of the above.
In order to make the products provided to customers unique, enterprises in all walks of life are redesigning their traditional products and services in addition to simply manufacturing products and providing services to create and manage customers' experience of enterprises and brands.
For example, Verizon's redesigned smart stores not only sell mobile phones, they also create lifestyle experiences and encourage customers to patronize, stay and experience the miracle of mobile technology more frequently. Several interactive mobile lifestyle areas are designed in the store, where customers can try all kinds of exquisite mobile devices and applications. The "fitness area" provides a positive combination of exercise and fitness; And "Le Fun Garden" brings together many games; There is also a "Remote Smart Home Area" designed for people interested in remote monitoring and energy management. In the discussion area, Verizon experts teach relevant knowledge in front of a huge digital display and share tips on how to make the best use of mobile devices and Verizon services. Through these new stores, Verizon hopes to establish deeper brand interaction and close customer relationship by providing guidance to its wireless customers.
Increase customer value through three levels: product planners need to consider three levels of products and services, and each level will increase customer value. The most basic layer is the core customer value, which raises the question: What do buyers really buy? When designing products, marketers must first determine the core interests or services that customers pursue to solve problems. A woman buys lipstick, not only the color of lipstick, but also an Apple ipad, not just a tablet computer. They are buying entertainment, self-expression, efficiency and relationships with relatives and friends-this is simply a personal mobile window facing the world.
At the second level of products, product planners must build physical products around the core interests of products. They need to build the characteristics, design, quality level, brand name and packaging of products and services. For example, the ipad is a physical product. Its name, components, style, function, packaging and other attributes have been carefully combined to provide the core customer value of keeping in touch.
Finally, product planners should provide customers with some additional services and benefits, so as to construct extended products around core interests and physical products. The Ipad is more than just a digital device. It provides customers with a complete solution to the mobile contact problem. Therefore, when customers buy Ipad, Apple and its distributors will also provide customers with the warranty of parts and workmanship, provide free telephones to teach customers how to use them, and provide websites for customers to access various applications and accessories. Apple also provides a wide range of applications and accessories, as well as Icoud services, which can integrate pictures, music, documents, applications, calendars, contacts and other content on different digital devices of buyers anytime and anywhere.
Customers usually regard products as a complex combination of various interests to meet their needs. When developing products, marketers should first determine what kind of core customer value customers want from products, then design physical products and try their best to expand them to create customer value and the most satisfactory customer experience.
Customer experience mainly comes from service. As shown in Figure 2, philip kotler proposed that the service has four characteristics. When designing a marketing plan, enterprises must consider the following characteristics: invisibility, inseparability, variability and easy disappearance.
In this book, philip kotler also pointed out that the traditional external marketing using 4P (product, price, channel and promotion) is not enough to meet the requirements of service marketing, and service marketing also needs the cooperation of internal marketing and interactive marketing. Interactive marketing means that the quality of service depends largely on the effect of interaction between buyers and sellers in the process of service contact. In the marketing of physical products, the quality of products is usually rarely affected by the way products are obtained. However, in service marketing, service quality depends on the quality of service provider and service delivery process. Service marketing should choose people with inherent "service passion", and at the same time carry out the skills of interacting with customers to meet the various needs of customers.
Increase the degree of service differentiation: philip kotler believes that with the intensification of competition, the increase of cost and the decline of productivity and quality, service enterprises are faced with three main marketing tasks: increase the degree of service differentiation, service quality and service productivity.
Philip kotler, taking Dix Sporting Goods Store as an example, described how to distinguish himself from his competitors by providing services that make consumers feel good besides physical products. Dix Sporting Goods Store started from a humble store in Binghamton, new york, and distinguished itself from ordinary sporting goods retailers by providing interactive services. Now it has developed into a giant retail enterprise, with 588 stores in 46 States and a turnover of 5.8 billion US dollars. Customers can try on shoes on the trails in Dix store, test golf clubs with on-site golf swing analysis instruments, try to shoot with bows in the archery area, and get personalized fitness product guidance from the resident fitness coach team. It is these differentiated services that make Dix "the favorite store for purchasing sporting goods for most sports and outdoor enthusiasts".
Service enterprises can realize the differentiation of service delivery methods through the following measures: 1, more capable and reliable front-line employees; ? 2. Improve the hardware environment for providing services; 3. Re-plan the service delivery process; 4. Image differentiation can also be achieved through logos and brand.
Passing Value —— Marketing Manual in Digital Age (Harvard Business Review Supplement): Cultural Creation and Brand Building Reconstruction in Social Media Age.
Amos Winter and vijay govindarajan believe that enterprises have not found effective brand building methods since social media appeared 65,438+00 years ago. Large social platforms including Facebook, YouTube and Instagram seem to have the right to speak. Although the company invested billions of dollars, it didn't get the opportunity of cultural voice. Enterprises need to shift their attention from the platform itself and pay attention to the real power brought by the digital trend-creative culture. Can bring unprecedented opportunities to the brand.
The rise of creative culture greatly weakens the effectiveness of content marketing and sponsorship, but it introduces a new brand building method, which the author calls building cultural brands.
Taking the rapid rise of Mexican food chain restaurant Chipotle at 2011kloc-0/3 (before the outbreak of food safety problems) as evidence, the authors prove that it has not successfully used social platforms such as YouTube, but supported the food industrialization movement through products and communication, created cultural brands and won the cultural influence of brands with the help of the public.
Specifically, Chipotle has successfully established its own cultural brand by adopting the following five principles:
1, looking for cultural orthodoxy To build a cultural brand, enterprises should pursue innovative ideas and break the traditional concepts of the industry. To do this, enterprises must look for: which old traditional ideas need to be broken? I call it the search for cultural orthodoxy.
At the beginning of the 20th century, some food marketing companies concocted the idea of American food industrialization. American consumers began to believe that a series of great scientific inventions and standardized production processes, coupled with the supervision of the Food and Drug Administration, large companies can create rich, healthy and delicious food. This concept supported the fast food industry, such as the take-off of McDonald's in the 1960s.
2. Looking for cultural opportunities With the accumulation of time and the progress of social sciences, the attraction of cultural orthodoxy has gradually weakened. Consumers began to look for new and alternative cultural creativity, which brought opportunities to those enterprises with innovative spirit.
For the concept of food industrialization, the turning point appeared at 200 1. This year, Eric Schlosser's best-selling book Fast Food Empire came out, which strongly questioned the industrialization of American food. Subsequently, the film Super Size Me directed by Morgan Spock in 2004 and Michael Poland's best-selling book The Omnivore's Dilemma in 2006 also contributed.
Before the emergence of social media, the influence of these works was limited to a small part of society. Zhongchuang culture magnifies these critical works and introduces people's anxiety about food industrialization into the mainstream of society. Now, as long as it is related to the production of food industry, including excessive sugar and cancer-causing preservatives in food processing, growth hormone in milk, bisphenol oozing from plastic packaging and various genetically modified foods, it will spread rapidly on the Internet. Videos like problem meat are also going viral online. Parents are always worried about their children's food. Creative culture has turned the concerns of a few people into a wide range of public challenges.
The idea of finding a suitable culture to oppose food industrialization has existed for more than 40 years, but it was considered nonsense in the past. The subculture advocating organic agriculture and pasture agriculture is limited to the narrow areas of community farms and farmers' markets. However, with the rise of social media, a series of different subcultures have emerged, which have promoted the development of food innovation, including the concepts of nutritious recipes, sustainable pastures, neo-environmentalism, urban growers and comprehensive restaurants. In short, there has been a huge cultural movement in support of food deindustrialization. Chipotle is successful because it recognizes and makes use of this creative culture.
4. Introduce new ideas. Chipotle used two short films to promote the concept of food deindustrialization. On 20 1 1 year, the company released the first animated short film "Back to the Starting Point". In the short film, an ancient farm is transformed into a surreal industrial farm: livestock are concentrated in a cement silo and then transported to the production line, where they are matured by injecting chemicals, then compressed into cubes and transported to large trucks. The owner of the farm was frightened by the sight before him and decided to change the farm back to its original appearance.
The second short film Scarecrow satirizes a food industry company using pictures of natural farms to disguise its products. This company is actually a big factory, where animals are not only injected with drugs, but also abused. The finished food made by the company is marked "100% beef and so on", but the children who don't know are wolfing it down. A scarecrow working in a factory was very depressed when he saw this scene. He came up with a good idea. He transported the crops from his garden to the city and opened a replica of Chipotle, a small Mexican fast food restaurant. These two films received little media attention when they were released, but they were very popular on social media platforms. These two films have gained great influence, with tens of millions of views, attracting media attention and creating considerable sales and profits for the company. ?
Two films also won the Cannes Advertising Festival Award. Chipotle's movies are wrongly regarded by many people as a successful case of content marketing. In fact, they succeeded because they went beyond the scope of entertainment. Although both films have high artistic standards, thousands of high-level short films have not gained influence. Their story is not unheard of. In the past 10 years, a large number of works with similar plots have appeared. They are very popular on social media because they have grasped the essence of the creative culture of food deindustrialization. Chipotle's films depict the return of the United States to the traditional pastoral agricultural production tradition and solve many problems in today's grain system.
The main criticism object of food deindustrialization is fast food, so a large chain fast food enterprise took the lead in promoting the concept of deindustrialization, and naturally gained a strong influence among the public: Chipotle declared war on processed meat! Besides, exquisite organic food is generally more expensive, while in Chipotle, people can enjoy reassuring burritos for only $7. Because Chipotle has solved the anxiety of Zhongchuang culture about food safety, their short films can attract people's attention without being very entertaining.
5. Make use of cultural hotspots and innovate constantly. In order to maintain the brand's cultural influence, enterprises can challenge those social problems that are related to ideas and cause concern or controversy, so as to gain media attention. In this way, Benjery ice cream successfully promoted the business philosophy of sustainable development. The company used the opportunity of new product release to jokingly challenge various policies of President Reagan's administration, such as nuclear weapons, rainforest destruction and combating drugs. In order to achieve sustainable development, Chipotle needs to use cultural hot events to develop new products and ideas.
Fission value-tipping point: how to trigger an epidemic (Gladwell): the fission value of detonating an epidemic tide
The author believes that both the popularity of fashion and the spread of epidemic diseases stem from the three laws of popularity-the law of personality, the law of attachment factors and the law of environmental forces.
To launch a large-scale epidemic tide, we must first launch many small-scale epidemic tides. Whether it is a best-selling recital or a basic unit of enterprise production, the most effective number of people who launch a small-scale popular team should not exceed 150.
Taking the unexpected best-selling novel "The Holy Secret of Ya Ya Sisterhood" as an example, the author tells how the popularity in a small area is divided under the law of environmental power.
1996, Rebecca Welles published the sacred secret of Ya Ya Sisterhood. She is an actress and playwright. The publication of this book is not a major event in the literary world. Wells also wrote a book before this, called "Everywhere Altar", which once set off a small idol fever in her hometown of Seattle. Shortly after the book was published, she held a reading meeting in Greenwich County, Connecticut. There were seven people in the audience at that time. When reciting, she made random comments from time to time, mostly praise. As a result, her books (hardcover only) sold as many as 15000 copies.
A year later, the sacred secret of Ya Ya Sisterhood was published in paperback, and the first print 18000 copies were sold out in the first month, which greatly exceeded people's expectations. By early summer, its paperback sales had reached 30 thousand copies. Wells and her editor began to realize that something strange and wonderful was about to happen. "I signed the book and a group of women got together." Wells later recalled. Diana Reverand, editor of Wells, went to the company's marketing staff and said it was time to launch an advertising campaign. So, they bought a whole page in the catalog page of the New Yorker magazine to advertise. As a result, in a month's time, the sales volume of this book doubled to 60,000 copies. During a recitation tour in China, Wells noticed that the audience structure was changing. "First of all, I began to find mother and daughter coming. Daughters, all in their early 40 s or nearly 40 s; On the other hand, my mother was a generation who went to middle school during World War II. Then, it runs in the family, a man in his twenties, came. Later, it really made me happy. Teenagers and fifth-grade students also came, although it was a long time later. "
The sacred secret of Ya Ya Sisterhood was not listed as a best seller at that time. It was not until February 1998 that the book was printed 48 times, exceeding 2.5 million copies and making it on the list. If an important women's magazine published an article introducing the book, or as long as the book appeared on TV programs, Wells would become a celebrity. However, at that time, the national media had not begun to pay attention. However, due to word of mouth, her book became very popular. "For me, the turning point may be in Northern California, the winter after the paperback came out." Wells said, "More than 780 people attended the recital."
The success of The Holy Secret of Ya Ya Sisterhood is inseparable from Wells' superb performance skills. She is simply a first-class salesman. But it is more related to the last law of fashion, the Law of Environmental Force. It is proved that a certain factor plays an important role, that is, a certain group plays a key role in the social epidemic.
At the end of the book The tipping point, Gladwell said earnestly that although the world we live in looks solid or stubborn, lightning can't move and fire can't melt, in fact, as long as we find that point and touch it gently, it will tilt. This point is what Gladwell called the "tipping point". In Greek mythology, the giant giant is a member of the demigod Titan. His name is Atlas. The tipping point is like a sensitive part of Atlas's body. When he touches it, Atlas will laugh, Atlas will shrug, and the earth will change.