In the opinion of Feng Weidong, partner of Tiantu Capital

Brand exists in customer recognition

Without customer recognition, there is no brand, at most it is a trademark.

Feng Weidong said that when looking at a brand from the perspective of customers (the most important outsiders), there are three fundamental questions that occur in sequence

"Who are you?"

" What's the difference?"

"Why?"

It only takes 15 seconds to focus on these three questions.

If you cannot answer within 15 seconds, it means your brand needs a physical examination.

This sounds simply alarmist. Let us listen to why Feng Weidong said this.

1

First question

What are you?

To answer this question, the simplest answer is to tell the category to which the brand belongs.

Normally, a category name rarely exceeds 5 characters, and usually only requires two or three characters.

Category is the specific classification of products and services in the minds of customers. It is the last level of classification before customers associate with the brand.

Customers’ standards are the key to understanding categories. Customers will be confused if they hear categories that are not customer-standard. They will either continue to ask “what is that?” or directly block your brand.

Comparing the probability of occurrence of the two, it is obvious that the possibility of customers choosing to block is much greater.

For example, what is Gree? Almost everyone blurts out: "air conditioning."

So, what is Haier? Now everyone will hesitate and hesitate, and the final answer will be divided.

Due to the strong correlation between "Gree" and "air conditioner" in the minds of customers, when customers have demand for "air conditioner", the first brand that pops up in their minds is Gree.

The result is that Gree’s profit margin, total profit, and company market value are much higher than Haier.

Customers need categories

On the other hand

Categories represent the real needs of customers

Strong brands

It is a representative or even synonym for the category

For example, WeChat is so powerful that it has become a synonym for the category. When people explain what "Laiwang" is, they usually don't say it is a "mobile social software", but "Alibaba's version of WeChat."

In addition, "Laihuang" is also a bad brand name. Without quotation marks, communication will be affected (we will explain this in the following four points of brand naming).

Violation of customer standards will lead to false categories and false positioning such as "XX is an expert in white appliances" or "XX is an expert in kitchen appliances".

The customer's thinking is, "I need an air conditioner", or "I need a range hood", but the customer will never say, "I need a white appliance", or "I need a range hood" A kitchen appliance”.

Brands that try to represent fake categories are sick and need to be cured.

There was an entrepreneur who opened a chain of mutton soup shops. At first, he thought "mutton soup" sounded worthless. When he listed the store, he gave it a name that seemed more valuable. It's called "XX haggis cut".

Later, every time he introduced his shop to others, he had to explain it for a long time. In the end, he had to succumb to the trouble of wasting more words and automatically changed his words and said that he was a "mutton soup shop".

二

Second question

What is the difference?

The answer to this question is actually brand positioning, that is, differentiation.

The difference here is not what the company thinks is different, but it must be a meaningful difference recognized by customers, which is the reason why customers choose your brand instead of other brands.

Entrepreneurs can always talk about the differences of their own brands for a long time, but most of them are self-perceived differences, that is, the "internal thinking" opposed by positioning theory.

Ask customers how they feel and you will find that it is not what you think at all.

From the perspective of whether it affects customer choice, the most effective difference is the "first brand in the category".

The iPhone is loved like crazy because it is the “number one smartphone brand in the world”, no matter how similar or cheap the counterfeit products are to it.

When all mobile phones became smart, the word "smart" was abandoned by customers. This led to the evolution of mobile phone categories, and the iPhone became "the number one mobile phone brand in the world."

What should you do if your brand is not number one in its category?

You can focus on a certain characteristic

Become an expert brand

Of course, characteristic propositions are easier to imitate, but when many imitators appear and agree on the same When consumers are educated, this feature has the potential to become a new category.

If your brand can continue to stay ahead, your most effective differentiation will appear: the first brand in a new category.

For example, this is the case with the Lexing balancing car invested by Tiantu Capital.

The founder and No. 1 brand of self-balancing scooters is Segway in the United States. Lexing cannot claim to be the No. 1 brand of self-balancing scooters for the time being, so it focuses on the "portable" features of self-balancing scooters and makes its products more compact and portable. Developed in the direction of Segway, it hits the shortcomings of Segway, which is bulky, expensive, difficult to carry and difficult to park.

Nowadays, there are many followers of portable small balancing scooters, but Lexing maintains its sales lead and becomes the number one brand of portable balancing scooters.

Moreover, portable balancing scooters are very likely to become the mainstream of balancing scooters. Once this happens, the word "portable" can be removed, and Lexing will become the number one brand of balancing scooters, and Segway It was squeezed to become the number one brand of "large balancing vehicles".

Sometimes, the main features of a brand will not differentiate into new categories, but will evolve into the most important features of existing categories.

If your brand dominates the most important characteristics of the category, you can also become the number one brand in the category.

For example, when Colgate toothpaste entered China, it focused on its "anti-moth" properties and achieved rapid growth through intensive advertising.

Although "anti-cavity toothpaste" has not become a new category recognized by customers, consumers have been educated to believe that "anti-cavity" is the primary feature of toothpaste, and Colgate has occupied the mental resources of "anti-cavity" This will make it the number one toothpaste brand in the Chinese market.

When category characteristics differentiate into new categories is a delicate question, and everything depends on changes in customer perceptions.

Still taking toothpaste as an example, if a woman asks her husband to "buy a toothpaste," and the husband asks "what toothpaste to buy," and the woman answers "Colgate," then "toothpaste" comes before she thinks of the brand. At the last level of classification, "anti-moth" is just a feature and does not complete category differentiation.

If the woman answers "anti-cavity toothpaste" and her husband asks "what anti-cavity toothpaste to buy" and the woman answers "Colgate", then "anti-cavity toothpaste" becomes a category.

For another example, when the Boss brand range hood was being promoted, it focused on the "high suction power" feature, educating consumers that "high suction power" was the most important feature of the range hood, but in the minds of customers, Generally, they only stop being classified into “range hoods”, so there is no new category like “high-suction range hoods”.

However, Boss took advantage of the "large suction power" feature to surpass Fotile in sales and became the number one brand of range hoods.

Latecomers may surpass the leader with the help of a certain characteristic, so the leader needs to occupy two words in the minds of customers:

The category name and the primary characteristic of the category

< p> For example, although Gree is the leader in the air conditioner category and has already occupied the word "air conditioner", it still needs to occupy "technologically advanced", which may be the most important feature of air conditioners, otherwise it may be overtaken.

Hisense used frequency conversion technology to have a great impact on Gree. If Hisense had not engaged in brand extension and not used the "Hisense" brand for both TVs and air conditioners, but had given a new brand name to the new category of "inverter air conditioners" it created, perhaps the current landscape of China's air conditioning industry would have been very different. Same.

Jack． Trout pointed out 9 types of effective differentiation in his book "Be Different" (see the original text in the book for details), and Feng Weidong added a 10th type of differentiation:

Don't just focus on categories First

Being second in a category is sometimes an effective differentiation

Because "second" is also unique

When one company dominates a category, "We It’s the second” that can effectively gain customer choice.

Does "Lao Ganma come first, Fan Sao Guang second" increase your chances of choosing Fan Sao Guang?

Three

The third question

How can you see it?

Customers are naturally skeptical of the information companies convey to them.

Be a little more tolerant about the answer to "what are you?" because customers themselves want to understand it, but they are not without doubts.

For example, if Haier claims that it is a refrigerator, some customers will believe it, while others will question it and ask, "Why do I think it is a washing machine?"

Customers will have the strongest doubts about the answer to "What's the difference?" because this is the reason for them to pay. Of course, they will be extremely cautious.

At this time, the company needs to provide a certificate of trust to relieve customers' doubts.

However, customers are also skeptical about certificates of trust provided by companies, so certificates of trust must be obvious facts or evidence provided by a third-party authority, and must conform to the customer's thinking logic.

>>>>

"Zero Risk Commitment"

is a common way to provide a certificate of trust, such as free trial, unconditional return, trial after satisfaction, and payment later , long-term free warranty, etc.

A friend said that she once bought a Galanz air conditioner because the dealer promised a 6-year warranty, which shows that the seller has confidence in the product. This is the thinking logic of customers.

>>>>

“The number one brand in the category”

The certificate of trust needed is nothing more than an authoritative sales ranking.

For example, Jiaduobao will promote "for every 10 cans of herbal tea sold in China, 7 cans are Jiaduobao" (the advertisement was later banned due to Wanglaoji suing it for inaccurate data), and Afu essential oil will promote “For every 3 bottles of essential oil sold online, 2 are Afu”, while Xiangpiaopiao Milk Tea advertises that “700 million cups are sold in a year, and the cups can circle the earth twice”.

>>>>

Obvious facts

can also be used as credentials, such as hot sales or word-of-mouth.

When going to eat in an unfamiliar place, Chinese people all know which restaurant is more popular.

Now with word-of-mouth evaluation tools such as Dianping and remote queuing tools like "Delicious without Waiting", customers can obtain restaurant evaluation information and queuing information without being on site. This is the first Letter of trust provided by a third-party authority.

Typically, companies will have multiple credentials.

But there is a basic principle for using letters of trust:

Use the most powerful one

Do not list all letters of trust

< p> Because their mental capacity is limited, customers cannot remember too much, and they are even less likely to say too much when relaying it to others.

Also, more is less.

Everyone actually has the same feeling: most of the people with various titles printed on their business cards are not really important people, because those who achieve great things need to be focused (if there is a coincidence, then you happen to be one of the few exceptions) people).