Virtual Marketing: Making Consumers The Carrier Of Brand Communication

Have you ever had such an experience? You played some kind of online game on the Internet, such as driving a new Honda car in the best speed car game and competing with your opponent. In many interactive experiences, you have a deep impression on Honda automobile brand and have a high degree of goodwill. When you decide to buy a real car one day, your first choice tends to be Honda brand, because the brand has penetrated deeply into your heart.

Unlike the movie brand marketing, the virtual marketing network provides consumers with a more direct way of experiencing: you are no longer just spectators, but users. In this highly interactive process, consumers have a deeper and intuitive understanding of brand value.

This is the impact of virtual marketing on our real marketing.

The network world is rising rapidly. For real life, the Internet is not only a media existence, it is not just a form of entertainment and entertainment. The development of network technology has made the Internet invade life. The relationship between the network world and real life is like the day and night. It is seamless integration.

How to use the network technology to virtualization marketing, in a highly competitive market environment, quickly attract the attention of consumers, so that the brand information can be effectively pmitted to them, so that they become brand loyalty advocates, and spontaneously become the carrier of brand communication. This is the direction that many enterprises are trying to develop in marketing.

Wang Lin is a junior female student. He usually likes to go online except for classes and shopping. He will chat with his classmates and friends when he is on the Internet. QQ

At the same time, she often went to the QQ virtual mall. After spending money on the virtual Q coins, Wang Lin used these virtual Q coins to buy all kinds of virtual fashion costumes, and then changed her QQ image into all kinds of costumes. When the Korean drama was hit in China, her QQ image was dressed in the latest Korean style clothes. When the street began to be popular with European style, her QQ image also wore a romantic Paris fashion.

Many times, Wang Lin often moves to her QQ image when she is touched by a set of virtual clothes. She will not hesitate to spend a week at the cost of meals to buy a real dress that is the same as the online virtual costume.

Virtual satisfaction on the Internet has extended to life, and the feeling of brand is so deep inside that it is hard to resist.

Compared with the actual market rules, the Internet world provides more Apriori brand experience, brand interaction and consumer communication to the marketing world. Because of its more concealment, virtual marketing often lets consumers unconsciously receive brand information, and constantly enhances brand impression in interactive experience, so its communication effect is remarkable.

Heidegger, a philosopher, said: "it is not enough to have only one real world. We must also have a poetic world."

This sentence is also applicable in marketing: in a new market environment, it is not enough to use only the means of marketing. We must also use virtual marketing to expand the influence of the brand.

Many famous enterprises have taken steps in this regard.

Secondlife, a world-renowned 3D experience website, has attracted numerous famous brands because of its highly authentic experience. Second.

In the virtual world of "second life", Adidas not only has a store, but also displays products in its virtual stores, and even customize sports shoes for those virtual avatars.

The virtual version of Adidas's "A3Microride" series of running shoes is designed to fit the virtual avatars and give them the "bouncing and flexibility" of their walking. The price of the shoe in the virtual world is 50 Linden (about 0.19 US dollars).

The company's "A3Microride" running shoes series has sold 1 million 150 thousand Linden coins in the game.

In reality, many game users experience Adidas's "A3Microride" running shoes because of their "second life" and have a high sense of identity for their brands and products. So many people turn to buy real "A3Microride" running shoes from Adidas's online store for 100 dollars.

American Playboy, the world's leading men's clothing brand, is also reluctant to step down and put money into the "second life" to carry out a series of product exhibitions, sales and brand promotion, and has bought an island to display products from the Playboy's online shopping mall.

The Playboy expects the way of virtual marketing can work together with the actual marketing, and perfect the combination of brand publicity, product display and brand experience.

In a large scale production era, products are often the same, but the brand feels different.

First, the feeling of selling and then selling products. The innovation of this marketing mode is to occupy the consumer brand and recognize the mind, then inculcate the specific product information, so that consumers can become the spontaneous carrier of brand re pmission in many times of experience.

How are we going to "take" consumers? We are in a world where radio waves from 2006 radio stations cover the sky, more than 2000 TV programs surround our view, 2137 newspapers and 9029 magazines grab our eyeballs, and countless outdoor blockades blockade our view.

The media is becoming more and more dispersed, the environment of information dissemination is becoming more and more noisy, and the communication effect of enterprises is getting worse and worse: related consumer research shows that whether consumers are interested in any kind of commercial information dissemination in 5 seconds, whether TV advertising, newspaper news or network information, in order to make the brand information accurately communicated, consumers must be interested in the information content they are exposed to within 5 seconds.

The brand should take "consumers" in the shortest time and make consumers the carriers of brand re propagation. The key points lie in three aspects: creative expression, emotional link and control experience. Successful virtual marketing is effective in meeting these three requirements.

With the development of new technology, the media environment and the mode of information pmission are constantly being promoted. The Internet, communication networks and TV networks will be more closely integrated. This provides a broader application and experience for virtual marketing.

The creative expression of the brand is the ingenious design of the virtual marketing in the brand, which can give consumers a brand-new impression in a more novel and unusual way, so that curiosity can drive consumers to spontaneously generate interest and experience the brand.

If a company that produces beef jerky put its own brand into a famous online game, players must find the beef jerky and eat it in the game if they want to improve their skills to enter a higher level. The more they eat, the more powerful they will be. This ingenious design makes the player interested in the beef jerky brand.

The emotional link means that the situation and atmosphere set up by virtual marketing can resonate quickly, making consumers seem to be involved in the most familiar life realities and spontaneously participate in them.

The virtual marketing conducted by Playboy in SECONDLIFE is designed with different scenes such as senior party PARTY, romantic lovers, formal business meetings and so on. Netizens can pform themselves into the characters in a scene according to their own interests, and experience the wonderful feelings brought by different flowers and children's costumes.

It is in this real virtual reality that the emotional connection between consumers and brands is suddenly aroused.

In the new communication environment, consumers have the power to control information flow. They hope to gain more control power. For brands, to successfully conquer consumers' hearts, they must consciously release their desire to control consumers and give them more control power.

When Ford popularized its Mondial brand on the Internet, it completely gave the control of the car to the consumers. Besides the basic frame of the car body, the color, interior decoration and function of the car could be designed by the consumers according to their own favorite.

The satisfaction of consumers on the Internet driving this completely unique car is imaginable.

The reality survey shows that many consumers are buying the same "self - designed" montdi after the virtual driving satisfaction. Many of them are the most successful Ford brands, and Ford's car virtual marketing has been a great success.

The three rule of conquering consumers through virtual marketing is to find out the emotional buttons between brands and consumers. The essence of marketing is to let brands / products relate to consumers, so that consumers are willing to pay for the value of brands / products.

From this level, any marketing strategy is to find emotional buttons between consumers' psychological acceptance and brand value, so that consumers can accept the brand with emotion.

No matter how the times change, consumers always make the choice of buying between the rational selling points of products and the emotional appeals of brands. In the homogenization of products, the emotional experience of virtual marketing can add emotional value to brands, start emotional buttons with consumers, and thus break down the psychological fortress of consumers faster, and enable them to accept the information conveyed by brands / products imperceptibly.

Lin Jingxin, a senior pr marketing consultant, a crisis management expert and an enterprise trainer, has a book entitled "crisis management of Chinese enterprises" (Guangdong Economic Publishing House, September 2007). Welcome to discuss your views with the author.

Mobile phone: 13711578184Msn/Email:jingxin_lin@hotmail.com