Listen: How to do big marketing with a small budget?

I especially like these real questions, because only by giving me real questions can I put marketing theory into practice. In the process of solving these problems, I have several interesting observations about marketing, which I would like to tell you.

the first observation is that 99% of marketing books in the past were written for 1% of enterprises, but marketing theory should have been available to all enterprises.

Why? Because the research objects and cases of these marketing books are the world's top 5 brands, the directors are great gods, the spokespersons are world-class, and the budgets are billions. These marketing cases and methods are really good, but the problem is that most enterprises don't have that much budget and the influence of that brand, so we won't do marketing?

of course, it's impossible not to do it, because 99.99% of the enterprises in the world are small enterprises, and the annual marketing budget is only several hundred thousand or even tens of thousands. So how can we do marketing?

my client asked me this question.

I must provide an answer to this question.

the answer is yes, even if your marketing budget is only one dollar, we still have the practice of one dollar.

For example, if you are a restaurant on the street and you don't have much money to promote it, you just need to make a mobile luminous light box with the name of your restaurant printed on it, put it on the roadside at the door, and draw a big arrow pointing to the door of the restaurant. It doesn't cost much, but it has been tested that this kind of light box can increase the number of customers passing by and then eating in the door by about 2%. If you draw that arrow a little bigger and draw a curve, it can also increase the number of customers.

for example, if you are an e-commerce product, your logo can be printed bigger in your packing box, so that your brand will become the most beautiful courier box on the courier cabinet, which doesn't cost you a penny more, but it can make your brand get more exposure.

We have a customer who makes milk tea named Tian La La. The average price of a cup is 6-8 yuan. At present, there are more than 6, stores in China. When we were consulting for it, we found a little trick, that is, after the customer ordered the tea, you took the initiative to ask the customer if he wanted to add coconut, so most customers would choose to add coconut. If you ask customers if they want to add small ingredients, most customers will choose not to add them. Why? Because there are many kinds of small ingredients, such as cold weather, meaty, pearls, coconut, taro, Explosicum red beans, etc., customers don't know there are so many kinds, and they can't tell them, so it is very useful to ask directly whether coconut is added or not. A coconut is 1 yuan, which can increase the unit price of customers by about 15%. This is a pricing skill, and pricing is an important part of marketing. A small pricing skill can increase your turnover, but it doesn't need to cost money.

all the situations I mentioned are the design and marketing plans that our company has done for our customers. You see, we will not only help customers like Yuanqi Forest to create overwhelming advertising films, but also help customers like Banriyao Grilled Fish to make very simple material improvements, but all of them can promote sales.

my second observation is that marketing is not a life-saving straw, nor is it the only factor for the success of an enterprise.

in the actual business operation, marketing is indeed very important, which can effectively help enterprises to obtain business development, build long-term brand assets and help enterprises to build a lasting foundation.

However, we should not overdo everything. We should not exaggerate the role of marketing indefinitely, thinking that good marketing will bring everything. This is not a scientific attitude. In fact, the success of all brands is first of all the success of enterprises, and the success of enterprises is attributed to the success of enterprise management, and marketing itself is only a part of enterprise management. If the enterprise management itself is a sailboat, then marketing is a sail, and the implementation of marketing activities is your operation on the sail. If your boat is well built, just in time for the strong wind, and you are good at sailing, you will sail faster.

but if you only know how to sail, there's nothing you can do if the ship breaks down. If you have the knowledge of shipbuilding, when there is no wind, maybe you can build a rowing boat to travel.

let me give you an example. We have a customer of a milk tea brand with more than 1, stores. They have launched a new flavor of milk tea, and we have helped customers design various materials to promote the new product, including light box posters, promotional videos, event prizes and so on. Finally, I found that the effect is not good. Why is it not good? It's not because there is something wrong with the design of promotional materials, but because their implementation efficiency is too poor. One month has passed, and more than half of the shops haven't even put up posters for new products. Why is the implementation efficiency poor? That is a problem with the management system and training system.

This seems to be a marketing problem, but in fact it is a problem of enterprise operation and management, and finally it is a problem of execution. If the execution is not solved well, it is useless to do marketing design well.

For another example, many people will think that Jiang Xiaobai is doing well because his expression bottle is well written.

it's certainly true to think so. However, there are actually many people who can write this kind of expression bottle copy in China, so why is it that only Jiang Xiaobai can achieve the scale of several billion? I have a friend, whose copywriting is very good. He thinks he can make this kind of small wine, so he went to build a brand of small wine and tossed it around for several years, that is, to make a multi-million-dollar business, which is nothing compared with Jiang Xiaobai.

why? Because Jiang Xiaobai was successful at that time, in addition to expressing the spread of bottles, he also had an important ability to spread wine to millions of restaurants across the country. This is a very, very rare ability, which few companies can do, and my friend can't do it.

Another example is a brand of infant milk powder called Feihe. They have a very famous slogan: It is more suitable for China baby's physique. Many people will naively think that the flying crane has succeeded because of this sentence. In fact, the truth behind this is that only two brands of domestic milk powder did not add melamine when the melamine incident occurred, and one of them was Feihe. Feihe has made enough efforts in dairy farming to form a barrier to upstream milk sources. Feihe has more than 8, promoters offline, and Feihe conducts more than 1 million large and small activities for customers every year, that is, there are 3, activities every day. Most enterprises can't do these things, but some entrepreneurs simply believe that a simple brand positioning enterprise can succeed.

Of course, you can also see Coca-Cola's ability to penetrate into the villages and streets of China like capillaries. This is really not an achievement that can be achieved by simply branding.

If corporate success is really that simple, our marketing consulting companies should charge ten times more, shouldn't they? Unfortunately, this is really not the case. I advise you not to have this illusion about marketing.

the third observation is that advertising is a marketing activity, but marketing is not just advertising, or even without advertising.

I have asked many people: What do you think is marketing? Most of my friends' answers are advertising, event marketing, small red book planting, live broadcast and so on.

Let me give you an example. You should know that there is a hotel brand called Atour. Excuse me, have you seen the advertisement of Atour? No, and almost all hotels have never advertised. You shouldn't have seen hotels like Shangri-La, Peninsula Hotel or Ritz-Carlton advertise, nor have you seen accounting firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers advertise, so why are the so-called Big Four so famous? Don't these enterprises need marketing?

therefore, our understanding of marketing is too one-sided.

In fact, the most classic marketing textbook at present, that is, kotler's Marketing Management, has said that the marketing framework consists of four parts, that is, what we usually call 4Ps, products, pricing, channels and promotion.

If you can understand marketing from these four parts, some problems will suddenly become clear.

For example, when some new brands come up, they go to the big anchor to bring goods, but they sell a lot, but they lose money and have no profit. This has solved the problems of promotion and channels, but not the problems of products and pricing.

if the value of the product is not enough, the customer will not buy it again. Only by advertising can there be sales, and if the advertising stops, the sales will stop. Moreover, in order to go live, you keep the price too low, and you have no profit. The more you sell, the more you lose money. This is not a logic of going concern.

We usually have the illusion that there are many brands that can be circled by so-called "marketing", but if you make a careful inventory, you will find that few brands have really circled after one year. But what you need to know is that there are millions of brands in the country, and the probability of going out of the circle is similar to winning the lottery, so you can't expect to get this effect.

real marketing is to provide customers with value in a down-to-earth manner, gain customers' trust and grow steadily, which is the right way for most brands to succeed.

that's all for my three observations.

although I am engaged in marketing, my biggest feeling and honest advice is that you can't expect marketing to help you succeed quickly. Because it is almost everyone's nature to expect quick success, there will be many so-called experts to sell this quick and successful marketing method. There is no way. If there is demand, there will be products to meet your needs, even if the product is fake. In fact, many popular cases and sayings on the market are packaged and screened, but many people will pay for this quick method. In the end, it is found that success requires honest work.