Xiaomi basically didn't spend much money on mobile phone marketing but achieved extraordinary achievements. On the other hand, Fanke spent a lot of money on media investment, but ended up shrinking its business and returning to the old path of shirts. In addition to the difference in business model, Xiaomi found another way because it had no money in the early days of starting a business. Instead, it was a huge success. Below, Shanghai Shanglue Marketing Planning Company compiled several highlights of Xiaomi marketing that everyone agrees on based on Xiaomi marketing insiders and various articles.
Highlights and reflections on the successful word-of-mouth marketing of Xiaomi mobile phones
Internet thinking is that word-of-mouth is king
Google understands this truth and everything else is user-centered. When Google launched email in 2006, it relied entirely on word of mouth. At that time, Google only provided a few thousand trial accounts. People who wanted to try it had to be invited by someone. These limited-number invitation codes quickly became popular around the world and were exchanged for everything from a two-night vacation to Dubai to a postcard from San Francisco. Even the asking price of the account in the UK was as high as pounds. I worked hard to get the invitation code. This was the first time I was shocked by Google’s powerful word-of-mouth effect.
The rise of many Taobao brands also relies on word-of-mouth communication. For example, Handu Yishe has become a key brand recommended and shared by female users in various shopping communities with its fast-tracking and fashionable design and product selection. In the skin care mask category, Yunifang has attracted many girls with its special natural raw material mineral mud from the place of origin. Popular among sex users, it has become a leading brand in the facial mask category on Taobao. For example, the Taobao brand Three Squirrels in the nut category has become more and more popular due to word-of-mouth spread. Many of my friends and I have personally experienced this.
The traditional commercial marketing logic is that due to information asymmetry, communication means advertising and public relations. In short, everything is louder than your voice. However, the new social media has flattened all communication speeds and exploded. The diffusion radius of information has increased hundreds or thousands of times, and there are frequent cases of overnight fame.
Information symmetry greatly enhances users’ ability to vote with their feet. Whether a product or service is good or not is not up to the company to brag, but everyone has the final say. Good news or bad news can be shared quickly through social networks. The fair and reciprocal nature of information also gives the Internet public space a strong ability to self-purify public opinion. What is fake cannot be true or false.
The essence of word-of-mouth is user thinking, which is to give users a sense of participation
For traditional businesses, the sense of participation based on Internet thinking is similar to the dimensionality reduction attack in the science fiction novel "The Three-Body Problem", which is a duel in different dimensional worlds. To put it more informally, the sky has changed.
Consumers’ decision-making psychology when choosing products has undergone tremendous changes in the past few decades. Users purchase a product from the earliest functional consumption to the later brand consumption to the experiential consumption that has become popular in recent years. What Xiaomi has discovered and is participating in is a brand-new participatory consumption.
In order to allow users to have a deeper experience, Xiaomi has opened up the business operation process of making products and services to allow users to participate.
, word-of-mouth is the transmission of trust relationships and making users friends
What is the ideal relationship between users and enterprises? Thousands of users have thousands of ideas about them Why should I endorse your product? Why should I take the initiative to help you spread it after I endorse your product?
The establishment of social networks is based on the trust relationship between people. The flow of information is the transmission of trust. The higher the trust level in user relationships established by an enterprise, the wider the spread of word-of-mouth.
Doing a business is like being a human being. Only friends will sincerely spread and maintain your reputation for you. Friends are the most trusting user relationships. Xiaomi's guiding ideology of user relations is to make friends with users!
Good products are the source and engine of word-of-mouth
If a company wants to have good reputation and good products, the engine of word-of-mouth is the foundation of all foundations. Product quality and brand marketing are all behind it, which is completely meaningless without the former. And if the product is great, even if the marketing is poor, it won’t be too ugly.
Xiaomi marketing is word-of-mouth communication, and the origin of word-of-mouth is the product. Therefore, the basic materials based on the selling points of the product and how to express the selling points are the lifeline of communication.
Every time a new product is released, if the press conference presentation and product website are well prepared, then more than half of the work is completed.
This is completely contrary to the logic of many large companies. Some advertising companies we have contacted tend to spend most of their energy on big concepts and formal senses when defining new product launches. Some companies even think not to build a product website, thinking that users will not be able to read or understand it, and that too much information will affect the realization of big ideas. Therefore, many creative people speak clearly about product concepts but do not even understand the important parameters of the products they market.
At Xiaomi, we believe that our users have never been as smart as today, and the days of buying products because of a beautiful advertising slogan are gone forever. In our Xiaomi community, we can see that users carefully read product feature searches, comparisons, reviews, and even product teardowns before purchasing. Every user is an expert and even knows the features of competing products better than we do.
Therefore, after refining the core selling points, we will work hard on the product website. My requirement for our marketing colleagues is that their understanding of products and technologies should be as good as that of engineers. Only after you understand it yourself can you translate the technical language into human words and speak it to users. You can also dig out the information that is truly valuable to users from this process. Features. Designers can best translate selling points into design language only when they understand the most detailed product features.
It turns out that building word-of-mouth can be done at zero cost
When Xiaomi started its first project, Mr. Lei asked the team if it could reach 10,000 users without spending a penny. The method was to capture word-of-mouth. Because you don’t have money to spend to get people to take the initiative to praise your products and recommend them to people around you, you have to concentrate on making your products and services good.
In 2012, Xiaomi started looking for the marketing director of Xiaomi mobile phones. Mr. Lei and I met with several people. They always told us that you go to advertise or open a physical store. We were very disappointed that what Xiaomi was looking for was not just He is a salesperson but a person who truly understands the concept of Internet mobile phones.
Two months have passed and I still haven’t found the right person. Mr. Lei said, Ali, come on.
At the beginning, we made a marketing plan worth RMB 10,000. We planned to use Vanke’s existing media resources to promote core street signs across the country for a month. However, we were slapped to death by Mr. Lei in person. He said, Ali, can you do the same thing when you made a mobile phone without spending a penny? Can we continue to open the market without spending a penny?
My first reaction at the time was whether it was right to be a system user. You have to spend money to use it as a mobile phone user. At that time, I would also have a question mark in my mind. Mobile phones are just a piece of cake. If you don’t spend a little advertising money and let users pay for it, is it really feasible?
Xiaomi is a brand new brand with no money, no media, and no advertising. We have no choice but to stick to new media.
Comments
Xiaomi’s success is both inevitable and accidental because Xiaomi happened to catch up with an era when new media such as Weibo and self-media exploded, and netizens participated in the most discussions and had the strongest sense of discourse. Therefore, good marketing plans often combine current consumer trends, social trends, and media trends. Xiaomi accidentally discovered and seized this opportunity because it had no money. Latecomers can learn from Xiaomi's successful experience and techniques but cannot surpass Xiaomi's success. Because the first one to do is always the most successful.
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