2a. The Evolution of Marketing: From the 4Ps to the 8Ps

Traditional marketing talks about 4Ps, 4Ps emerged in the 70s of the last century, relying on computers to do analysis, the elements are:

1.Product

2.Price

3.Place

4.Promotion

In the 80s, the service industry became 8Ps, the elements of which are:

1.Product

2.Price

3.Place

4.Promotion

5.People

6.Process

7. Physical evidence

8.Productivity (Technology makes service smoother)

In fact, online and offline marketing are similar, but they are also changing. From the most traditional 4Ps, to the current 8Ps, from offline to online, from the previous small data to the current big data, the times continue to progress, marketing continues to evolve (Evolution), 8Ps is to continue to improve on the basis of 4Ps, and all marketing spirit is unchanged.

#個案分享: Embracing Digitalization – How Traditional Industries Can Make a Big Pie

· The author often thinks about a question, under the impact of digital marketing, how should brick-and-mortar stores in traditional industries seek a way out and breakthroughs? The following is one of the author’s personal experiences:

· The health food market is getting bigger and bigger, and more and more stores are opening. In the past, when I bought nutritional supplements, I would go to physical stores to buy them, until two years ago, I searched for eczema-related information and suitable nutritional supplements for my son, and found that there is a foreign website iHerb that mainly sells nutritional supplements, which will search for different brands of nutritional supplements and household products from all over the world, and the international shipping is also very cheap, only a few hundred yuan of goods can be delivered to the house for free, and now most of the nutritional supplements in my family are purchased from iHerb. Another similar site that I frequented is Book Depository, an online shop that sells English books, which has a lot of books that can’t be bought in Hong Kong, and free shipping on purchases made in Hong Kong.

· Like Airbnb, which focuses on the sharing economy, and Goxip, an online fashion shopping platform that allows buyers to find the same product by uploading a photo, they allow buyers to compare the prices and ingredients of similar products from different brands at the same time, and choose the right product according to users’ preferences, age and physical needs, etc., making it easier to find their favorites. Many similar websites do not have a physical product produced by themselves, but instead operate as an intermediary. The diversity of brands and products they provide is difficult for ordinary brick-and-mortar stores to satisfy customers, and they divide up many brick-and-mortar stores.

· With the advent of the Internet, the sale of products is no longer limited to regions and times, and products can be launched on similar websites mentioned in the appeal, which can go global. However, this does not mean that brick-and-mortar stores in traditional industries do not have the value of existence, but they need to know how to add value to themselves and use Digitali-zation. The brick-and-mortar store can be kept as a logo for customers to experience the product in-store and purchase it directly through the online store the next time they buy it.

· Therefore, traditional industries need to embrace digitalization in addition to brick-and-mortar stores in order to remain competitive and launch their products to the international market.

#個人分享: Embracing Digitalization How to improve traditional industries

· Every time a new year arrives, there are always many people who announce the new trends in various industries of the year, and digitalization has been talked about for a long time. In fact, how to make use of the new trend of digitalization in traditional industries is also a topic worth studying.

· In the past few years, there has been news of the collapse of traditional publishing institutions: the sudden closure of the major bookstore chain Page One, the closure of several magazines, or the conversion to an online-only edition. The traditional publishing industry is at risk, some have already experimented with digitalization, and some have just woken up to catch up, but why is it that some publishers use Facebook pages to promote or publish new information [like], but their business is still not much better? Because to find a new way out of digitalization, it is no longer as simple as moving text content online, but to be a curator (Cura-tor).

· The curator will integrate a large amount of information for the user, find out the key points and select articles for the user to read. For example, the concept of Taiwan [MZ+ Current Magazine] is to collect more than 270 instant magazines from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and other places into one platform, and readers only need to pay a lower price to subscribe to all the magazines, saving time and money. The MZ+ app will also reformat the magazine to display only the text content, making it more comfortable and convenient for readers to read. Of course, there are also some people who are so busy with their lives that they can’t even spare time to read a book or magazine, the mainland online platform Youku program [Logical Thinking] will introduce a book to readers in each episode, including new books and out-of-print old books, readers will only order after watching the show if they like it, and the program will also launch a mystery book box, and readers will only know what book [Luo Ji Thinking] has chosen for him at the moment of opening the box after purchase, so as to establish mutual trust between users of the program. The estimated value of the programme in October 2015 was RMB1.32 billion, which proves that the programme format has a certain development potential in the market and readers are also disappointed by the programme format.

· These online companies are the curators of users. A good online company can also use big data to become a personalized curator: popular movie and music apps will analyze and calculate readers’ daily viewing behavior to recommend movies or songs, and usually users will have a high level of satisfaction and selection.

· It’s not that customers don’t like traditional publishing anymore, but they are used to curators curating content for them, and they’re [spoiled] by digital interactive platforms. In order for the traditional publishing industry to survive, it is not necessary to abandon the physical, but to achieve the coexistence of digital and traditional.

· Therefore, we are not completely abandoning traditional industries, on the contrary, there are many areas where they can cooperate with digitalisation, and there is no conflict between the two, and digitalisation must be supported by entities, and traditional industries can rely on digitalisation to re-activate enterprises and brands, and complement each other.

2b. Digital Marketing Roadmap: From SEO to LinkedIn and Mobile Marketing

The evolution from traditional marketing to digital marketing is like a person who has never eaten cake watching wheat turn into flour and then into cake, which is unexpected.

From SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to SEM (Search Engine Marketing), to SMO (Social Media Optimization) and Mobile Marketing, the world has been changing, so marketers should be busy.

Many people know that Linkedln is the world’s largest social networking site for professionals, and it is also an important tool for cross-border job search. But if you think that Linkedln is only useful for finding jobs, you are very wrong. No one has ever talked about Linkedln marketing or Linkedln strategy before, but now more and more clients are asking me: What company doesn’t have a Linkedln culture? Think about how you can get your colleagues to have a Linkedln culture, Linkedln to have a company website, and the CEO to have his own Linkedln account. Why are they starting to pay more and more attention to Linkedln marketing? That’s because Linkedln has an online community of more than 350 million members in more than 200 countries around the world, making it easy for users to find cross-border development partners/customers, as well as establish high-quality exposure channels for brands and products. It can be said that the opportunities provided by Linkedln are more accurate and effective than those provided by online social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Finally, there is mobile marketing. The word “Mobile” is amazing! In the past two or three years, mobile phones have become more and more important, and losing your phone is more stressful than losing your wallet. Asia is leading the world in the smartphone revolution. According to Google’s official [2016 Consumer Insights Report], as of June 2016, Asia accounted for 5 of the 10 countries with the highest mobile phone penetration in the world. In the ranking of penetration rates, Singapore and South Korea are the second runner-up (88%) and third place (83%), respectively. The Asian countries with the highest usage rate also include Hong Kong (79%), which ranks fourth. In 2016, data from the Pew Research Center in the United States showed that the penetration rate of mobile phones in China was 58%, and when most people in the Chinese market are using mobile phones, it will only become easier and easier to do mobile phone marketing.

Nowadays, people can’t do anything without their phones. More than 70% of Asian consumers say they use their mobile phones to search for information online as often as their computers. Among them, Thai users most often use their mobile phones as entertainment tools, they will use them to play games, browse social networks and watch videos. Consumers in other Southeast Asian countries use their mobile phones for social media.

The outlook for mobile marketing

Mobile phone and mobile marketing, these two things are actually one. If you don’t have a mobile phone, you can’t do a lot of content stuff, such as content creation and content distribution. Even real-time marketing and location-based marketing can’t do anything, so mobile phones are definitely a hot keyword in the marketing market.

But when everyone knows that LinkedIn marketing is important and mobile marketing is important, how can you do it better?

The constant innovation and change of marketing channels is a major feature of Online Digital, but that doesn’t mean the old model is no longer useful, just as it’s impossible to just do social media today and ignore the earlier SEM and SEO, which is not feasible! At this time, SEO is even more fundamental to all marketing and cannot be ignored. Online promotion of festivals is an opportunity that businesses cannot afford to miss.

If you do a lot of social media, you do a lot of SEM, and a lot of people want to buy your stuff, but they type your URL into a search tool on the internet and your company is in 10th place, that’s bad! The customer’s purchase intention is bound to be greatly affected, so SEO is the foundation of everything.

On the other hand, Hong Kong’s digital marketing lags behind other countries. That’s why the U.S. was already talking about measurement a few years ago, and Hong Kong was just starting to talk about impression. Therefore, there is still a lot of room and potential for digital marketing in Hong Kong.

2c. A major change in customer consumption

Today’s typical shopping models are Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) and First Moment of Truth (FMOT).

ZMOT is a marketing concept mentioned by Google in 2011, and this concept is derived from FMOT. In the absence of the concept of ZMOT, most of the general people’s consumption behavior is when they are stimulated by consumption, they will go to the store to buy goods, if the product is not used by the consumer, and the temporary decision to buy, that is, FMOT, is the first contact with the product after the decision to buy.

If the product is something that the consumer has never touched and used before, and has already made a purchase decision, it is ZMOT, which is a completely inexperienced user or contact. The emergence of ZMOT is due to the prevalence of online shopping and the rapid development of modern technology, which has profoundly affected the shopping patterns of today’s consumers.

With the development of digital technology, customers’ spending patterns have shifted from offline to online. This is especially true for Hong Kongers, who work the longest hours in the world. (The survey found that Hong Kong has the longest working hours in the world, with the average Hong Kong people working more than 50 hours per week, 38% more than the global average of 36.23 hours.) Hong Kong people already spend a lot of time at work every day, and they choose to rest at home outside of working hours, and try to do activities that should require going out as much as possible without leaving home.

In light of this, the model of marketing is constantly changing, and advertising is also moving from traditional media to the online battlefield. From Display Ads that appear when browsing a website, to YouTube Ads that pop up before watching a YouTube video, from Facebook Ads that pop up from time to time, to Mobile Ads built into Apps, there are ads everywhere online. It’s fair to say that online advertising is ever-changing, competing to attract consumers in different ways.

2d. The impact of digital media on the consumer journey

What media influences today’s consumers on their shopping journey? The above diagram shows the psychology of customers through classification comparison.

It is not difficult to find that the results displayed by search engines and social media are crucial to customers’ purchase considerations, and they are the most influential of the five media. On the other hand, traditional marketing media such as email and telephone advertising have a limited impact on consumers.

Hence the emergence of Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing. According to some data, most of today’s customers get product information for the first time from advertisements on social media or search engines, and they will search for information about the product online before purchasing a product, and this phenomenon is increasing every year.

2e. Introduction to Zero-Contact Marketing (ZMOT).

The internet has completely changed the way we make consumption decisions. Whether you’re going to the supermarket to buy groceries for a month, go to a concert with friends, or go on a honeymoon with your partner, you’ll start by searching online. We refer to marketing at the moment when an online shopping decision is made as Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT).

The traditional way of shopping has only three steps: Stimulus, First Moment of Truth (FMOT), and Second Moment of Truth (SMOT).

In the first step, consumers are stimulated by different advertisements and their purchase intentions are stimulated.

In the second step, consumers go to the store to buy physical goods, which is the first contact with marketing.

The third step is to face the second contact marketing, that is, the user’s own experience of the product.

The way of shopping is now preceded by first-touch marketing with zero-contact marketing.

Today’s consumption pattern has shifted to the point that after being stimulated in the first step, consumers will have access to information about the product before entering the store, do their research on the product, and do not have to rely on the recommendation of the salesperson, and there will be no more “difficulty in choosing” the same type of product. The concept of ZMOT is to hope that consumers can recognize the image of the brand from a reliable channel and improve the chances of consumers finding the right products for themselves.

Therefore, in today’s consumption model, the secondary contact marketing that emphasizes the user experience can be transformed into the next consumer’s zero-contact marketing, and the user experience becomes a guide for consumers to shop. Due to the diversity of opinions online, Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) have also emerged.

So what are the aspects of zero-contact marketing? It’s actually called “pre-shopping” and was coined by Jim Lecinski, a marketer at the search engine Google. This includes search engines, video sites (such as YouTube), social networking sites, reviews, discussions, user experience sharing, and URLs.

#個案分享: Subvert the traditional market strategy ZMOT allows you to win at the starting line

· When Ivan came home from work, he turned on the TV and saw an ad for the latest iPhone X, and he thought about the phones he had in his hands that were already six years old, and he began to think about buying a new one. Lying on the sofa, he picked up the tablet at hand, searched for “iPhone X is good to use” and “iPhone X unboxing” on Google, saw user reviews and reports on the computer discussion forum, and saw many positive reviews, so he decided to buy it on Saturday.

· The above example is the shopping habits of Generation Y, who prefer to search for product/service information and reviews on the Internet before shopping compared to traditional consumption patterns, and this search moment is ZMOT (Zero Moment Of Truth). The existence of ZMOT is to allow consumers to market through various forms on the Internet before they have come into contact with the product, and to send positive messages to stimulate their consumption intention. Or you may ask, “Isn’t ZMOT the traditional way of advertising?” In fact, the biggest difference between the two is that most of the ZMOT consumers take the initiative to contact the information, and when they leave to consume, they have fully grasped the product information, and even have decided to buy.

· Nowadays, everyone has a smartphone in their hands, and all kinds of information is flooded on the Internet, and we have to go through search engines to learn certain information, and Google alone processes more than 1 billion searches every day. There are so many search results in the sky, and there are good and bad reviews of products, and these results are exactly what affects consumers’ ZMOT. If you want to continue their desire to consume products, the first thing to do is SEO (Search Engine Optimization), first let your products appear in front of people on the search engine, and then let your products have more positive search results, stand out from competitors, and let you win at the starting line.

summary

Due to the shift in consumption patterns, digital marketing is becoming more and more important. The emergence of a large number of e-commerce platforms, such as Taobao, Amazon, JD.com, etc., has made digital marketing a very important medium to promote their products in today’s era, especially since people have become accustomed to ZMOT and can shop without touching it in person.

How can traditional industries continue to survive and break through in the digital environment, I believe that many people have thought about this question like the author. As I mentioned above, there are many places in traditional industries where digital marketing is applied, from promotion on social networking sites to the development of mobile apps. The inseparable purpose is to constantly innovate and change, if the traditional marketing continues to stand still or rest on its laurels, it will soon be eliminated by the society. For example, everyone can shop online without leaving home, but your products cannot be found or discussed online, and it is difficult to reach consumers no matter how good the product is. Therefore, no matter how good the product is, it will be in vain if there is no digital marketing; Of course, the reverse is also true, no matter how good digital marketing is, it will not help without excellent products, and the cooperation between the two is the real trend of the future.