Research on Beer Brand Marketing Strategies
Brand marketing means that companies use consumer demand for products and then use product quality, culture and uniqueness to promote a brand in The recognition of value in the minds of users ultimately forms the marketing strategy and process of brand benefits.
Abstract With the development of the mobile Internet era, WeChat has become the most popular mobile instant messaging tool due to its friendly interface and mobile convenience. The WeChat platform has also become a new way for enterprises to conduct brand marketing due to its rich and flexible marketing methods, accurate user positioning, complete functions, and knowable and controllable marketing effects. The article analyzes the current situation and problems of beer brand WeChat marketing based on the retrieval information of the big data platform, and proposes strategies for WeChat brand marketing of beer companies.
Keywords WeChat platform; beer; brand marketing
1. Introduction
In the era of intelligent mobile Internet, WeChat, Weibo, podcasts, Zhihu Social media has been widely used. Among them, WeChat has become the fastest-growing mobile instant messaging tool due to its friendly interface, voice social networking, and mobile convenience. As of the end of 2016, the number of monthly active accounts on WeChat reached 889 million. The WeChat platform has also become an important channel for companies to communicate with consumers and a new way to conduct brand marketing due to its advantages such as accurate user positioning and complete functions. As marketing scientist David Scott pointed out: "Social media is an online platform for people to share insights, information, ideas and reward relationships with each other, and provides new ideas and methods for corporate marketing." In addition, beer As a high-consumption daily alcoholic beverage with high-frequency repurchase product attributes, it is suitable to use the WeChat platform to promote brand marketing and improve consumer brand loyalty.
2. The Current Situation of WeChat Marketing
In recent years, WeChat has maintained a high level of user usage, which has brought changes in corporate marketing concepts and regarded it as a traditional marketing method. An important complementary approach to marketing and customer service.
(1) Advantages of WeChat marketing.
Compared with other brand marketing methods, WeChat marketing has its own advantages.
First, the marketing forms are rich and flexible. On the one hand, users can find and follow corporate WeChat public platforms in a variety of ways, such as direct following, scanning QR codes, sharing in Moments, information push, WIFI connection, etc. On the other hand, corporate organizations can promote products in multiple ways. For example, push text pictures, voices, videos, GIFs, etc.; launch multi-faceted marketing activities through Moments, drift bottles, micro malls, etc. This type of marketing activity not only has lower media costs than traditional marketing activities, but is also convenient and timely.
Second, precise positioning of communication. Followers of corporate accounts are all WeChat users who are interested in their product information and preferential information. The WeChat platform can obtain the personal information of the users it follows, determine the user's needs and current situation, and push customized information to target customers in a timely manner to achieve accurate delivery of marketing information.
Third, understand and control marketing effects. The WeChat public platform has the function of data statistics. The public account can obtain information such as daily user analysis and group text and graphic information analysis. Specifically, companies can learn detailed attributes such as the number of subscribers, user gender, province, etc., and learn the results of message push, such as the number of readers, forwarders, and favorites. By analyzing and comparing these data, enterprises understand the effect of information push, constantly adjust information dissemination behavior, and implement scientific and precise management of target customers.
(2) Current status of beer brand WeChat marketing.
The WeChat public platform has information, consumption, entertainment, social networking and other functions, and is also the main carrier of WeChat marketing for beer brands. By analyzing the WeChat public platform of beer brands, we can understand the current status of WeChat marketing of beer brands. Qingbo Index is a professional new media big data platform in China. Through the big data retrieval of this platform, we can search and understand the corporate WeChat public platforms of beer brands.
The search term is "beer", and there are 164 certified public accounts of beer brands, ranked from largest to smallest according to the WeChat Communication Index (WCI, a weighted calculation based on the spread and coverage of pushed articles and account maturity and influence) The top 20 public accounts are: As can be seen from the table, the top 20 beer WeChat public accounts involve 14 beer companies, the top 10 involve 6 beer companies, and the top 3 all belong to 1 Beer company--Anheuser-Busch InBev. If the ranking is based solely on the name of the beer enterprise group, the ranking order is Anheuser-Busch InBev, Zhujiang Beer, Taishan Beer, Snow Beer, Heineken Beer, Huanghe Beer, Tsingtao Beer, Tuborg Beer, Corona Beer, Chongqing Beer, Golden Beer Longquan Beer, Wusu Beer, Liquan Beer and Tianhu Beer.
(3) Problems with WeChat marketing of beer brands
1. The degree of attention needs to be improved. Judging from the results shown in Table 1, some beer companies have not invested enough energy in building and maintaining WeChat public platforms due to the inertial marketing mindset formed over the years. For example, Tsingtao Beer has only more than 60,000 active fans, which is inconsistent with its 2016 operating income of 26.106 billion yuan and its market position among the top three in the industry. Its main competitors Snow Beer has 180,00 active fans and Harbin Beer has 710,00 active fans. Qingbo Index shows that Yanjing Beer, one of the established large-scale beer companies, has only more than 15,000 equivalent active fans on its official account, with a WCI value of 461.71. Zhujiang Beer's 2016 performance report shows that its sales volume and operating income are stable and slightly growing. This is a good performance in the sluggish market of the beer industry in recent years. As can be seen from Table 1, Zhujiang Beer operates WeChat marketing relatively well. The WCI index ranks behind Anheuser-Busch InBev and is better than Snow Beer and Tsingtao Beer.
2. The platform construction is imperfect. The investigation found that the construction of some beer WeChat public platforms needs further improvement. On the WeChat platform, in addition to the push message function, there should also be WeChat official website, WeChat mall, location services, WeChat activities and other functions to achieve the purpose of brand marketing and customer service. Imperfect functional construction of the enterprise WeChat platform will lead to poor customer interaction, experience and convenience on the WeChat public platform, affecting the communication effect of the WeChat platform. The micro-malls of some beer machine companies have not yet been opened, or they have been opened but the connection is not smooth enough and the operation page is not friendly enough, which is not conducive for customers to purchase products conveniently.
3. The number of users and active users is insufficient, and the platform cohesion is not strong enough.
According to the data in Table 1, the number of equivalent active fans can be divided into four levels. Firstly, Budweiser China and Harbin Beer have 700,000-800,000 fans; secondly, Sejin Beer and Budweiser Beer have more than 300,000 fans; thirdly, Pearl River Beer, Taishan Beer, Snow Beer and Huanghe Beer have more than 100,000 fans. , and fourthly, the official public accounts of Tsingtao Beer, Heineken and other brands have less than 100,000 followers. The number of active fans of AB InBev's beer brands is 4 to 5 times that of other beer brands, or even more. This does not match the offline market share of various domestic beer brands.
3. Development strategy of beer brand WeChat marketing
(1) Plan WeChat marketing strategy and improve platform construction.
First of all, we must have sufficient understanding of WeChat marketing and ensure due attention. As the most popular instant messaging tool, WeChat has a brand marketing effect that cannot be underestimated. As its platform functions continue to improve, more and more companies are enjoying the dividends brought by WeChat marketing. Beer corporate brands should pay enough attention to WeChat marketing and list it as a part of the corporate development strategy. Young people are the main force in the consumption of beer beverage products. Seizing the WeChat platform marketing that is closely related to the lives of young people will effectively promote the marketing and promotion of beer brands.
Secondly, we must match WeChat marketing strategy with the company’s development strategy. WeChat marketing strategies should not be limited to temporary results and pursue short-term effects. It should be coordinated with the internal system of the beer company, constantly adjusted and improved following the overall development direction of the company, and cooperated with each other to exert synergistic effects.
Third, strengthen the training of WeChat marketing talents and improve the construction of the WeChat platform. Arrange special technical personnel to receive professional training and be responsible for the daily operation and maintenance of the company's WeChat public account.
Improve the functions of WeChat accounts, official websites, malls and other platforms, conduct systematic, standard and precise management, and promote all-round WeChat marketing. In addition, we should not just rely on third-party service companies for WeChat marketing. We should cultivate the company's WeChat marketing talents so that we can better integrate the company's own concepts and culture into WeChat marketing.
(2) Build WeChat marketing culture to increase user stickiness.
WeChat marketing culture is an expression of corporate culture. A distinctive WeChat marketing culture can increase the stability of following users. Building a good WeChat marketing culture can strengthen users' awareness and favorability of the brand, and promote the conversion of attention into purchasing behavior. Budweiser Beer and Harbin Beer, which have outstanding WeChat marketing capabilities, use their WeChat platforms to display unique cultural characteristics and firmly lock in target customers. Budweiser Beer's party culture, Harbin Beer's hip-hop culture, Snow Beer's bravery and ancient building appreciation culture have all left a unique and distinctive impression on customers and increased the stickiness of fans.
Beer brand companies should find their own cultural positioning and develop corresponding WeChat marketing culture. Written content expression is an important carrier of cultural communication. Building a good WeChat marketing culture is inseparable from high-quality soft articles that meet the audience's interests and are pushed in a timely manner. Closely track social hot topics, select events and festivals that are suitable for content creation and marketing of the brand, and create and publish readable soft articles. WeChat soft articles that keep up with social hot topics and fashion trends can be good-looking, interesting and in line with the reading interests of young people in the Internet era.
Enterprise WeChat marketing is essentially an "ecosystem" marketing system. The construction of WeChat marketing culture cannot only rely on the push of articles, but also pays attention to interaction with users and strengthens the relationship links with fans. The best way to retain users is to build emotion. Conduct multi-faceted interactions with users to stimulate customers' enthusiasm for participation, thereby increasing customers' understanding and recognition of the corporate brand.
(3) Make good use of data analysis to strengthen assessment and evaluation to enhance WeChat marketing power.
One of the differences between WeChat marketing and traditional marketing is that with the help of the services of the big data platform, detailed information about the effectiveness of WeChat communication can be learned in real time. Managers of beer brand WeChat marketing platforms must regularly evaluate marketing effectiveness. Consider services, marketing and communications. For example, monitor the number of reads, collections, and likes of articles to judge the effectiveness of soft article push; examine the number of users’ lottery draws, activity participation, etc. to evaluate the effectiveness of the activities, etc. All in all, establishing an information feedback mechanism and improving the customer management system will greatly promote the marketing effect of the platform.
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