Don'T Be Superstitious About Brand Awareness.

No matter what the contemporary enterprise will do.

The cognitive gap between customers and enterprises

How important is the brand? Recently, we conducted a small in-depth interview.

In the survey, we simulated the purchase environment of a computer with the background of a laptop brand.

When we ask consumers about the importance of this brand and its impact on buying behavior, respondents often send such an echo: we only care about their own needs and choose according to this standard. What is the relationship between a brand and me?

However, when we asked the employees of the brand with the same question, they got a completely different answer.

Most employees believe that their brands are very influential in the industry and can have an important impact on their buying behavior.

It can be seen that there is an obvious gap between customers and enterprises in brand recognition.

This answers from one side of the puzzle that has long been haunted by people. It seems that enterprises and scholars pay much more attention to the importance of brand than consumers.

This phenomenon shows that under the condition of extremely rich goods and good product quality, for the vast majority of practical goods, there is a great asymmetry between the cognition of the brand and the importance of the enterprises and consumers. Therefore, we must have a full understanding of this.

This difference in brand understanding often results in a phenomenon: enterprises are very concerned about and deliberately emphasize the popularity of their brands, consumers are more concerned about their needs, and do not blindly pursue a brand (except for a few high-end luxury goods).

This gap lies between the enterprise and the market, and becomes the main obstacle to the realization of market communication and enterprise marketing.

If the enterprise does not realize this, facing too much emphasis on the importance of its own brand will make the marketing plan unable to grasp the main points, the planning is not targeted, the sales promotion effect is not good, and the market communication is not smooth.

At the same time, this is also the root cause of some advertisements, which are vague and creative.

Some marketers overemphasize creativity, image and the spread of brand awareness, or even completely immerse themselves in extreme and paranoid self-consciousness, ignoring the analysis of demand origin and consumption motivation and buying behavior, ignoring the relevance between advertising and the market, the acceptability of the audience and the role of product promotion.

The result is that companies burn a lot of money with little success.

It seems to be famous, but it has no real effect.

The asymmetric phenomenon of brand cognition means that the role of brands in purchasing decisions is limited, and modern consumers are becoming more and more self-centered. Enterprises should emphasize customer value in marketing communication, that is, emphasize what kind of interests consumers will get, and must not be too narcissistic in their own brand.

Only in this way can we impress consumers and stimulate sales growth.

Products and services are the foundation of life.

It can be seen that nowadays, enterprises blindly "burn money" and are immersed in the simple dissemination of brand awareness.

Similar to "sheep, sheep, sheep, Heng Yuan Xiang" and so on, it is difficult to produce brand effect, but not much promotion effect.

For consumers, products and services are the most important, which is always the foundation for enterprises to settle down.

However, we have to face the fact that similar phenomena still exist in large numbers and become the bottleneck restricting the marketing development of many enterprises at this stage.

At the beginning of this year, the brand manager of a Econo Hotel group talked about how to develop brand communication plan and establish customer brand loyalty under the current global financial tsunami environment.

However, her plan did not take into account the location and characteristics of the economic chain hotel.

For Econo Hotel, the premise of "financial tsunami" is not true.

{page_break}

First of all, the international financial crisis has not had a great impact on domestic travel. Secondly, some enterprises have reduced their travel costs from five star hotels to Econo Hotel, which has provided great opportunities for domestic Econo Hotel.

Most importantly, her scheme does not take into account the asymmetry of brand cognition, and there are many problems in the implementation methods, tools and means.

For Econo Hotel, people choose your products (or services) rather than brand loyalty, rather than consideration of their own needs, product cost performance and service.

No matter how much money you spend in advertising, no matter how high your brand is, your customers may not be loyal to your brand, not your hotel.

The real idea of customers may be: do they go out to sleep? Choose "home", "7 days", "JinJiang Inn", "Hanting" and "GreenTree Inn". Which is not? Similar hotels are everywhere, and the quality is almost the same. Why must we be loyal to a hotel? Therefore, instead of spending huge sums of money in advertising and building brand awareness, we should do the following two aspects in a solid way: providing better products and more humane network marketing mode.

In terms of products, the company has a very moving slogan: "five star beds and toilet guards, entertaining the lobby."

The enterprise should take more time in this area, and carry out this idea to the grass-roots level and do a good job.

In addition, the hotel originally had a custom which was well received by the customers: providing a bag of milk free for the old customers every night.

Unfortunately, the service was interrupted due to the "San Lu" incident and should be resumed as soon as possible.

Relative to the price of nearly 300 yuan per night, the milk of about 1 yuan is too much to talk about: high protein, calcium supplement, sleep help, good health, energy supplement and better work.

It can deduce many humane care and marketing stories.

In short, it is more important than advertising to try to provide more human services and improve the performance price ratio of products.

In terms of network marketing and information services, considering that the majority of hotel customers stay on the Internet or by telephone, the way to identify customers is mostly through the characteristics of mobile phone numbers, which can put money originally planned to put online advertising into online marketing and online information services.

For example:

Do a good job in search engine marketing, let the customers who need you come to you and find you easily.

Do a good job in database marketing, accurately identify every old customer, and launch personalized marketing and services.

Do a good job in Email/SNS marketing, take the initiative to contact customers, and narrow the distance between customers.

Do well customer participation and online interaction to provide differentiated DIY value-added services.

For example, in the network reservation, let customers choose their own floors, orientation, rooms and personal necessities.

In terms of information service, 24 days ahead of time, sending the weather forecast for the next 3 days by mobile phone message, which is convenient for customers to pack up, and automatically send the navigation map of the surrounding area to the customer's mobile phone in advance for 8 hours to facilitate customers to find and check in; to turn the broadband Internet cable into wireless internet access equipment, to satisfy the customers' online demand; to send the brief news to the customer's mobile phone regularly every day, to solve the problem that the outgoing personnel run around Laughton all day, and have no time to take care of the news of the surrounding area; to actively identify the old customers (such as welcome tips, bedside chocolates, etc.), so that he feels respected and respected.

If an enterprise can do this job in a down-to-earth manner, customers will be accustomed to thinking of your hotel once they have more travel needs.

This choice is not due to the brand awareness of the enterprise, but because of the emotional recognition of the cost-effective performance of the product and the excellent service.

Such a marketing model based on habitual dependence will build a link between enterprises and markets and bring about continuous flow of tourists.

Making customers "habitual dependence"

On the one hand, nowadays consumers are becoming more and more self, more and more "lazy", more and more pay attention to convenience, cost-effective and services.

{page_break}

On the other hand, the homogenization trend of product and marketing is becoming more and more intense.

Under such circumstances, if the enterprise emphasizes its brand blindly, it will cause the public to be ungrateful or even to have a rebellious mentality.

But if the enterprise can fully consider the interests of customers and do a good job in a solid manner, it will make customers customary.

This customary dependency bond can help businesses stick to customers and enhance their customer life value.

Some people will say, "habitual dependence" is also reflected in the customer's mind through brand, in fact, brand loyalty.

But I still prefer to advocate the former because it urges enterprises not to emphasize or even indulge in the popularity of their brands in the face of consumers or the formulation of marketing communication programs, but rather pay more attention to products, services and customer interests, so that customers can get more benefits.

In 1960s, David ogway pointed out that "brand is not inherent in products but in common with consumers' perception of products."

Brand is the comprehensive impression formed by the enterprise through long-term efforts in the minds of consumers, and the brand name is just a typical symbol of this comprehensive impression.

In this sense, customers will not blindly "loyal" to a brand, they always pursue their own interests and values.

For most practical goods, the purchase behavior of consumers is not so much a "brand loyalty" as a habit and pursuit of convenience, service and cost performance.

This is customary thinking established by consumers based on enterprise products or services, not blindly worship.

Therefore, the future marketing practice should pay more attention to the real needs of customers, product quality, service and customer value, so that customers' demand for enterprises or products can be built on the basis of convenience, reliability and customary dependence.

Such customary dependence based on their own interests is the best brand image.

Only by establishing such a brand image can enterprises grasp customers continuously.

At the same time, consumers can get more benefits.

Mutual benefit and win-win, through the customer value to achieve marketing value.