On October 14, the 11th China Real Estate and Pan-Home Furnishing Industry Cross-border Conference was held with the theme of "New Trends, Big Brands", hosted by the China Building Decoration Association, hosted by the Material Application Branch of the China Building Decoration Association and China Ceramics Network. The Industry Summit and the 2021 "Top Ten Brands of Architectural and Sanitary Ceramics" Awards Ceremony were grandly held at the Sofitel Foshan Louvre Hotel.
On the same day, Shan Ren, an online marketing strategy instructor, CCTV financial commentator, chairman of Shanren Information Group, and chairman of NiuShang.com, attended the event and delivered a speech titled "Brand Layout in the Digital Era of the Whole Network".
The following content is a transcript of Dr. Shan Ren’s speech (not verified by me):
Dr. Shan Ren
Over the past few decades, China's economic development has flourished, with companies large and small in many industries competing in the market. China's last five-year plan was a supply-side reform. Recently, there has been a lot of news about power and production restrictions. Slowly, we found that the country gradually needs to mechanize and give more resources, more markets, and more opportunities to the country. The leading brand in the industry. In other words, in the future development of China, the market of leading brands in many fields will further expand. This is a major trend.
China's GDP will double in 2035 compared to 2020, and China has huge market space for future development. The opportunities are there, but who has the best chance? Today I will share with you a theme "Brand Layout in the Digital Era of the Whole Network". This is how we can build a good brand in the future.
一
Brand Characteristics in the Digital Age
We are very familiar with the word brand, but what is a brand? What exactly does the brand stand for?
Take Huawei as an example. When we think of Huawei, what do we think of? Usually the part related to it. For example, Huawei's big technology is very developed. Huawei will invest 14% of its operating income in research and development. Huawei is the world's leading high-tech company. Huawei's representative Ren Zhengfei, Huawei's mobile phones, Huawei's 5G technology, and Huawei's starting business switches , Huawei’s wolf culture...…Huawei is like an airplane, it has been scarred by many attacks; Huawei performed a particularly wonderful dance on the surface, but behind it is a pair of bad feet; Huawei's former spokesperson was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences...the image presented to us by Huawei It is not simple, not single, but three-dimensional and all-round.
So we will find that a successful company has a very three-dimensional brand image. So how do we build such a brand?
Brand is not a symbol, it represents six levels.
The first is the brand attribute. What are the attributes of a brand? What you present when customers come into contact with you, your showroom, your projects, etc. are all attributes of the brand. Brand attributes are the sensory responses to specific products that customers can perceive based on the brand, including touch, hearing, vision, and smell.
The second is brand benefit. When I buy a brand of product, it must have its own brand value that I will remember deeply. The value a brand brings to consumers and the reason why users buy it are brand benefits.
The third one is core values. The brand must convey the long-term vision, mission, and emotions of the brand to the target group, and resonate with the target audience on a spiritual level.
The fourth is brand culture. Brand culture is the beliefs, values and behaviors that a brand should contain. For example, Huawei's wolf culture gives people a special national complex.
The fifth one is brand personality, which is its human part. The humanized character traits of a brand are very important. When you think of a brand, you must think of a special character. For example, even if Huawei encounters many difficulties and dangers, even if the plane is beaten and bruised, it still insists on flying. This is the brand of Huawei. Persona.
The sixth one is user mind. That is to say, it becomes a category representative that matches the needs of users, allowing users to return to the brand if they want it. Customers will not be enthusiastic about worthless information, but will only develop a demand relationship with the brand. For customers, it is very important to determine what kind of needs the brand will play in the future, which requires a large amount of communication to build the brand's personality and build the user's mind.
In the Internet age, it is not easy to build a good brand. Whenever a new communication method appears, it will bring huge challenges to the brand. When every different information carrier changes, there will be changes in the quality of the entire industry.Iteration of cards. What exactly is a brand? A brand must first be a symbolic concept, and it must also give customers an impression, just like engraving. The deeper the traces you engrave, the better you can withstand the test of time. Brands need communication, and communication needs symbols but not just symbols. A good brand must give users a picture. When they think of the brand, they think of graphics. At the same time, implanting the brand in the minds of users requires graphics and even more impressions. Is this impression high-end or low-end, technological or fashionable, with Chinese characteristics or foreign style? In addition, the brand needs to convey the deepest value and the core concept of the brand, and express it through brand deployment. The most important thing in brand communication is how to create a link between the brand and customers, so that customers feel that they are of the same kind.
There are three primary colors in nature, and there are also three primary colors for brand external output and communication. First, tell the other person who I am, what kind of person I am, what kind of character, what kind of tone; second, what do I do and what business do I do; third, why should you choose me? What is the value and commitment given to you? Who am I, what do I do, and why choose me? These are the three most basic tones of the output brand.
In the entire brand development process, we must first study demand. Demand is the soil for brand generation. In fact, there is no relationship between brands and customers. Your name is Oceano, and your name is Huawei. They have nothing to do with customers. Customers have an impression of you because you can meet some of his needs. In other words, if the brand can meet my needs, I will spend time and energy to understand the brand, so the brand must capture the needs of users. And what are the needs of users? User needs are not illusory. User needs are a category. Category is the real needs of users. Brands help customers make choices. A good brand must be deeply engaged in a certain category, such as Jianyi marble tiles.
With the advent of the Internet era, the scope of brand market competition has expanded. In the past, there were few categories to choose from because the market was too small. Now with the Internet, and with the help of a large amount of communication and extensive channel layout, even a small category has a big market, and a small category can also have a big business. If a brand wants to survive in the market in the future, it must establish connections with users through categories, because only categories are what users need. Good brands have the opportunity to penetrate the market, gain greater market share, and have higher value and premium capabilities.
In the Internet era, there is no such thing as big brands or small brands. Many home furnishing brands and customized brands cannot appear repeatedly and on a large scale in the market, nor can they be widely and repeatedly disseminated. But you can ensure that users can find you when they need it. This requires the help of the brand layout in today's entire Internet digital era.
The key to the survival of small and medium-sized brands in the digital age is these three things: I don’t know you exist, but I can find you. Today's users, especially young people, use the Internet to find what they need. When users have needs, brands have the opportunity to enter the user marketThe user’s choice is up to them. How to put the brand at all possible points of contact with customers is an issue that every company needs to rethink today. I have remembered you since I knew you. Use all your options to build greater stickiness with your users. When I am in need, I think of you. Since I came into contact with you, you have left a deep impression on me. You have made me remember something, and at the same time, I can recall you when I need it one day.
How to build a good brand? Many people will say tell consumers and the market. Does a good brand really just tell the market? In fact, a brand must not only be communicated externally, but also internally. For example, if you want to create the most comfortable baby clothing brand, comfort is both a demand and a selling point. For a product, if you want users to feel comfortable, you must start from within the brand. R&D, design, procurement, production, marketing, display, etc. are all done from the perspective of making babies comfortable, so that the concept of comfort is internal. Mass spread. Today's brand communication is not the work of the marketing department or the brand, but the responsibility of the entire company. If you want to form a good external image and real user value, internal communication is a very important part.
The Internet is like water that can carry a boat or capsize it. There are many brands that once had a great reputation in the market, but collapsed due to one or two negative events. What you feel is different from what I feel. What you say is different from what is exposed, and the impact on the brand is fatal, especially internally.
二
The relationship between brands and users
In the pan-home furnishing market, many companies will need the help of third parties in the future. Therefore, in today's era, we need to rethink the saying that customers are God. Remember, the real God is not your customers but your users. Only users have scenarios, can users perceive the diversity of the brand, and only users know how to extend their needs around your brand.
There are two lines of brand development. The first line is to increase users, expand different regions, and increase the number of different users. This growth method requires the entry of a large number of new users, which is the biggest advantage of the Internet. Internet brands can generate more demand links and supply chain links. The second line is to increase the unit price. Only by entering the user's scenario can you know what kind of peripheral needs the user has, which will generate a large amount of business long tail and increase the average revenue contribution per customer.
For example, villa decoration. For villa families, the frequency of decoration is very low. How to improve your users for the second time? You have to know that in addition to hard decoration, villa decoration also has soft decoration.In addition to soft furnishings, we also purchase decorative items. From design to construction, the decoration process and business are moved to the APP, and the frequency of owners opening the APP is very high. After the renovation was completed, the owner required housekeeping services, which cost RMB 70,000 to RMB 80,000 a year to manage the entire home inside and out. How to increase customer orders? Only by entering the user's scenario and user interface can you understand what the user's needs are. A brand is just a label affixed to a product. Building a brand in the future will involve going deep into users.
So what is the relationship between brands and users? In fact, customers don’t need brands, but they need specific category needs. The benefits of brands give me the possibility and more choices. In the contact between users and brands, first of all, users must trust the brand, and at the same time, the brand must make a commitment to the users. All home building materials are low-frequency businesses, and customers in low-frequency businesses are not very loyal to the brand. At this time, what kind of brand promise you give them is actually very important. This is a matter of whether the values are consistent between your commitment and my trust. At this time, if you use brand values, it will actually be easy to resonate. In the past, brand marketing and channel marketing were separated. There was a gap between brand communication and channels, and the point of sale and the brand were not connected together. Nowadays, the Internet connects two points together, and there is an opportunity to open up brand communication and channels.
To sum up, there are three points in the relationship between brands and users: the first is called the short path, from the arrival of your dissemination information to the immediate switch back to the transaction with the user. The short path is called the era of DTC. , is called the era of direct-facing users; the second is multi-touch points. This digital era is not like the single media era in the past. There are many search platforms, communities, self-media, short video platforms, and different touch points. The future is The jigsaw era of brands; the last one is brand reputation management. Now is an era of fragmented communication. It is very important for enterprises to plan the entire brand and combine all elements in advance. It is a very important content in shaping brand tone and brand value. At the same time, we must consider how to release the impression of brand consistency to different platforms and spread it through different information carriers and different representatives. This is a very important challenge in today's brand communication.
When a brand is spread and a channel is established, it is not just about establishing a relationship with the channel. It is also necessary to open up the relationship between your channel and users. When a good brand builds a channel, it must build a relationship between the channel and users. How to open up this relationship and directly face your consumers.
In the future, there are several key points in building a brand: First, integrated marketing across the entire network, maintaining the three-dimensionality and consistency of the brand, and communicating in multiple touch points, multiple scenarios, and multiple forms. Second, network-wide tonality management,It is necessary to maintain a specific tone that can give customers a very pleasant feeling. This is the issue of brand consistency, consistency from commitment to experience. Third, the whole process of experience management, from the product to the user's purchase experience to the experience of the use process, from the communication of the brand to the entity of the product, to contact with the user, and finally to all the experiences given to the user, is it maintained with a high degree of consistency?
三
Brand layout in the digital era
The so-called hard advertising on the current Internet is actually very difficult to do. In the future, it will be purely for brand communication, and the benefits it brings may disappoint the brand. Of course, one of the biggest advantages of Internet communication is that brand information communication and products are connected and linked. You need to consider that the content we are currently doing on the Internet is not enough to make your users have a good impression of you, make your customers have the desire to buy, and let users think of it when they need it one day. The content you create should not only let customers know your functional requirements, but also have the promised value and understand the company behind it, from your technology to your team and your culture.
How to do this? These three things are crucial. The first is to understand how users and brands are linked in the digital era; the second is to consider how to present it from multiple angles and on multiple platforms; the third is how to grasp the brand's tone. This is a question that needs to be considered in brand layout in the digital era.
Today’s IP is not only a single brand promotion, but also represents more angles and methods. When a user is searching for a brand, he will go to Baidu to search and check the founder's encyclopedia; what content will appear when searching for a brand on Douyin, positive or negative, what kind of main content is laid out in the multimedia matrix, Zhihu, Q&A Is there any communication? Today’s customers have much richer tentacles for brand recognition than in the past. When all customers have different loves, different communities, and different behaviors, how can you spread your communication across the entire network based on user behavior? , this is something to consider.
What method is used for brand layout? Search well-known brands in the industry on Baidu and study their layout methods and paths. For example, Hua Xizi. It only took Hua Xizi a few years to build a brand with a turnover of billions, and it is currently the most popular brand in the world. Huaxizi's representative category is lipstick. It incorporates Chinese elements into its lipsticks and carves them into the lipsticks. With the help of public search, we can see the brand layout of Huaxizi. Their layout ranges from text to pictures to videos, with a large number of layouts on various carriers.
In all category layouts, there are several key points: The first is the brand's official website (the core official brand base). Even though many transactions are not conducted on the official website, the official website is an important basis for the output of all brand elements. The second is the search brand layout, such as marketing official website, Weibo, WeChat official account, etc., as well as Baidu Encyclopedia, Baijiahao, Baidu Zhizhi, Baidu Map, Baidu Library, etc. The third is the knowledge Q&A layout, such as Baidu Q&A, 360 Q&A, Sina iAsk, Zhihu, etc. The fourth is the industry platform layout. A professional platform layout like China Ceramics Network will be of great help to the brand's future market. The fifth one is the Weibo forum type, which filters suitable users from the public domain traffic and places them in the private domain for cultivation, which will naturally generate transaction opportunities. The sixth category is short video platforms, such as Douyin, Xigua, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, bilibili, etc. Short video platforms are a new traffic outlet.
The above are the areas that need to be reached in future brand layout. Through the construction of brand media and the efficient communication of the Internet, it is actually very efficient to distribute the same content with the same structure.
