Editor's lead: At present, the wind of involution is sweeping all walks of life, and the whole society is deeply troubled by involution. As a service to enterprises, marketing is inseparable from competition, and naturally it can't escape involution. And how can brands correctly understand the concept of "marketing involution", conform to the development of the times, break the strange circle of "involution", better serve customers and build brands? Let's look at the author's sharing. Nowadays, when it comes to topics such as workplace, market, competition and Internet, it is inseparable from the hot word "involution", and enterprises, employees and even the whole society are deeply troubled by involution. Marketing, as a kind of behavior that serves business and is inseparable from competition, can't escape from involution. Especially in recent years, the dividend of mobile Internet has gradually disappeared, leading to a decline in the overall market environment, a decrease in traffic acquisition efficiency and an increase in user conversion costs. Marketing involution has become a challenge that every enterprise must face. Marketing involution refers to the phenomenon that brands pay more costs and resources in order to compete for limited consumers, which leads to the decreasing proportion of brand marketing and production, and belongs to low-level and homogeneous tactical competition. A correct understanding of the concept of "marketing involution" can help us to be more calm and make a more rational and objective judgment in trade marketing project. Taking the live broadcast with goods favored by enterprises as an example, we can deeply understand the phenomenon and consequences brought by marketing involution: as an emerging consumer brand, beauty brand W can only be rubbed on the ground by traditional beauty giants if it goes beyond the container channel, and the expensive traffic of traditional e-commerce platforms also makes the brand miserable; In order to fight our way out in the fierce channel competition, W brand decided to try a new sales model of live broadcast with goods. So I found a popular traffic KOL Xiao Li for live broadcast. The way of cooperation is that the brand takes out 20% of the sales GMV as a commission reward. Sales far exceeded brand expectations. With rich experience in cosmetics sales and huge fans and influence, KOL Xiao Li sold nearly 2 million products in just one week, even exceeding the sum of all other channels of brand W. Another beauty brand H heard that the live broadcast was so powerful that she came to KOL Xiao Li with a dubious attitude and was willing to give 40% commission as a reward. Good brands that also have amazing sales effects are particularly satisfied. As a result, a battle for the anchor slot began. In order to cooperate with more KOL anchors with high-quality traffic, brand W decided not only to give 40% commission, but also to pay an additional 200,000/slot fee. After several times of price competition for commission and slot fee, the two brands suddenly found that the live broadcast was no longer as fragrant as before, and the brand became the lamb slaughtered by the anchor, but there was nothing they could do: First, the anchor endorsed the traffic and trust, and the brand could do nothing. Secondly, after paying a very high commission and pit fee, the live broadcast of goods has become a pure loss-making business. At the same time, live broadcast with goods has greatly increased the human input and workload of the brand side, resulting in more and more overtime work in the marketing department, and the phenomenon of employee turnover has become very serious. The most fatal thing is that the entire beauty market share has not increased due to the addition of live KOL. The involution of marketing makes the brand gradually lose its right to speak, the profit space is squeezed, and the workload becomes more. To make matters worse, the cake in the market has not become bigger. Thus, marketing involution is extremely harmful to enterprises, employees and the market. First, the root of marketing involution Any negative social phenomenon is caused by the combined efforts of various internal and external factors, breaking through a critical point; The emergence of marketing involution is also attributed to the complex and changeable domestic market environment: in recent years, the disappearance of mobile Internet dividends, the bursting of capital myths and bubbles, and the lack of revolutionary new technologies have led to an extremely severe living environment for enterprises. Faced with such an unfriendly market environment, global consumers tend to be cautious in their consumption decisions, and enterprises have to survive in the cracks. Through unrestrained price reduction and unscrupulous marketing, they hope to spend this cold winter and embrace new opportunities. Therefore, the formation of marketing involution can be roughly attributed to the following reasons: 1 Marketing and product homogenization In recent years, the increasingly powerful consumption power of domestic consumers has made the phenomenon of product homogenization more and more serious; For example, in the automobile industry, from the competition for functions 20 years ago to the competition for appearance, to the feeling that foreign brands have more face, and then to the competition for space and comfort. Finally, we found that the selling points of cars of the same level and price in the market are the same, and it is difficult for consumers to perceive obvious differences. It was not until the rise of new energy vehicles and new technologies such as intelligence and batteries in recent years that the automobile field found new growth points and this embarrassing homogenization situation was changed. However, for most industries such as clothing, food, daily necessities, real estate, etc., technological change is an extremely slow process, which makes it difficult to improve the phenomenon of commodity involution. If you look at the brand marketing department of a company casually, you will find that what you do in marketing tactics will be similar: the brand team will focus on title variety, offline flash, TVC shooting, celebrity endorsement, social promotion, content marketing and so on; The marketing team launched fierce market competition with competing products through competing products visits, ground promotion, B-side channel expansion and business negotiations. The innovation of online operation team is particularly weak, and consumers are immune by means of live broadcast with goods, advertising, big promotion, red envelopes, coupons, limited time specials, fission growth and so on. Of course, it doesn't mean that the above can't be done, but when everyone is doing the same thing, it will lead to an infinite increase in marketing costs and a significant decline in marketing effects. This is not desirable for enterprises themselves, marketing practitioners and streaming media. 2. Brand mainstream anxiety The Internet is a world where traffic is king. Whoever controls the flow will take the initiative to make money; In the first half of the mobile Internet, as long as any industry plugs in the wings of the mobile Internet, it will usher in a huge dividend and start a crazy and barbaric growth stage. Traffic is sometimes as addictive as drugs. Those enterprises that are used to spending money on traffic to maintain their business development become flustered after the traffic price rises beyond their tolerance. First of all, the expensive traffic price makes enterprises discouraged or become extremely cautious; Secondly, the accuracy of the purchased traffic can not be guaranteed, which leads to the gradual failure of the usual growth and operation means, and the transformation of the effect is even more difficult. I heard a particularly interesting truth from my elders a long time ago: "People who are used to making money easily can hardly make money down to earth". Now it is very suitable for enterprises that have eaten traffic dividends. It was too easy to get traffic a few years ago, and it was difficult to settle down and do refined traffic management, and finally fell into the whirlpool of traffic anxiety. 3. The improvement of consumers' identification ability. At present, the marketing effect of enterprises is not ideal. From the root, the responsibility still belongs to the enterprise itself. All kinds of false propaganda and operation routines have made consumers miserable, and even popular sketches with Internet marketing routines have appeared on the Internet. Such a funny phenomenon, on the one hand, shows that consumers are more disgusted with the routine marketing of merchants, on the other hand, shows that consumers have stronger ability to distinguish between true and false marketing. In the game between merchants' routines and consumers' purchases, consumers gradually gain the upper hand and initiative. Take the Double Eleven as an example. Although this year's Double Eleven GMV continues to grow, consumers have long been indifferent to the sales of 540 billion yuan, and the promotion of Double Eleven is no longer a hot topic of public discussion. As the previous Double Eleven drama, the real-time GMV live broadcast was also quietly cancelled by Ali. 4. The Big Bubble of Capital Valuation In recent years, we have witnessed too many stories of new brands going public quickly and getting rich overnight, making the public mistakenly think that the standard of a successful brand depends on its financing ability, whether it is recognized by capital, whether it can be listed, etc. However, product technology innovation, brand equity shaping and user word-of-mouth management, which really create long-term value, have been weakened in the wars of enterprise development. The domestic consumption potential is huge, and the infrastructure such as supply chain and logistics is relatively perfect, which leads many brands to compete for this limited property, and involution becomes inevitable. However, from the delisting incident of Luckin Coffee, we can see that involution will make the brand fall into an extremely irrational carnival, constantly create and amplify expectations, violate the initial heart and values, and eventually lead to irreversible painful lessons. Second, the performance of marketing involution If an industry is caught in the whirlpool of marketing involution, there will usually be some or more vicious competition at the tactical level, mainly including product innovation, marketing tactics, consumer attention struggle, traffic acquisition, sales channels and other involution. 1. The essence of product innovation involution is that enterprises lack innovation ability or technical ability; For example, a company has made a market explosion, and other competitive brands have followed suit. Not long after, the whole market is similar products, and traditional manufacturing and service industries are the hardest hit areas in this regard; There is also the fact that enterprises have been living on their laurels, the product iteration is slow or they have been making some minor changes. The most typical example is the mobile phone brand in recent years. Many brands of new mobile phones just enlarge the screen, increase the pixels, or add a camera hole. Even the great Apple has not escaped the powerlessness of product iteration. 2. involution of marketing strategy involution of marketing strategy is one of the most important reasons for the decrease of marketing efficiency and the increase of cost. As mentioned above, advertising marketing is to shoot TVC, make posters, engage in cross-border, sparkling, and develop H5. When it comes to transformation operation, it means preferential price reduction and collective bargaining. MGM always brings new products and punches in every day. First of all, the unchanging marketing routine will make users immune and insensitive, and the interest and motivation of participation will naturally decrease; Secondly, there is a great difference between the benefits promoted by many merchants and those obtained by actual users, which leads to the decrease of users' trust and tolerance for merchants. 3. Traffic involution Traffic involution has become a recognized fact. Without traffic, there is no business; However, the pattern of major Internet fields tends to be stable, and traffic is controlled by a few super platforms and media. If you want to get traffic, you have to exchange it with something valuable or spend money on it. Even the market valuation of most Internet companies depends on the number of users, DAU, MAU and other traffic data, so traffic competition is doomed to be an endless war. 4. Attention involution This can be said to be the chief culprit of the prevalence of vulgar advertisements. When normal content and information are difficult to attract consumers' attention and discussion, many enterprises have to choose the way of scratching the edge to get attention. Although bosses are well aware of the damage of vulgar advertisements to brand image and some potential risks, they can only choose to compromise in the face of survival crisis. Attention involution is essentially the involution of flow. Compared with the traffic that can be counted by data, mental flow belongs to an invisible long flow, but the value it brings to enterprises is really beyond the reach of data flow. 5. involution of sales channels involution of sales channels has always existed. Before the emergence of e-commerce, who can get offline channels and distributors means controlling the market and sales; In the era of traditional e-commerce, whoever can better understand the rules of e-commerce platform will get more sales. Nowadays, the most popular new retail is the combination of online and offline (such as Box Horse Fresh, Everyday Fresh, Luckin Coffee and so on). ) and social e-commerce (applet, live broadcast, KOL planting grass, private domain traffic operation, etc. Although the channel competition has been fierce, fortunately, the channel has been changing with the development of technology and market environment. As long as enterprises dare to step out of the comfort zone and embrace new channels and technologies, they can make themselves invincible. If the above-mentioned involution phenomenon has occurred in your industry, then you should actively seek new opportunities and growth points in marketing and pull yourself out of the whirlpool of marketing involution, and maybe you will see a broader sky. Third, get rid of marketing involution. In recent years, driven by capital, we have seen the myth that too many companies go public quickly and the founding teams get rich overnight, but those companies that have the patience to research and develop products, serve users and create brand value are often ignored by the public. So we didn't know that marketing involution developed so seriously. On the one hand, it is caused by the change of market environment and the bottleneck of scientific and technological innovation, and the ambition and expectation of enterprises' continuous methods are also the culprit. 1. Manage rationally and avoid short-sightedness in marketing. Everyone in the industry knows that the essence of marketing is to meet the needs of users. However, there are very few marketers who can really understand users' needs, operate users well and create value for users. Meeting the needs of users has become an empty slogan, and it will always be tempted to be short-sighted in the process of real landing. In the hot period of capital, the phenomenon of burning money to seize the market winner-take-all emerges endlessly. However, after the capital market has calmed down in recent years, if the mode of burning money by violence is still adopted, it will only become a stepping stone for others, because the price war is not the lowest but lower, and it is more difficult to become the final winner than to ascend to heaven. Whether it is financing or market expansion, you need to calm down and think twice before you act. 2. Do a good job in products, products with their own communication effects are the best media brand communication, and consumer word-of-mouth is the best form of communication; There are several important factors to create a self-contained explosion model: the product solves a certain demand of consumers, conforms to the public aesthetics and culture, and shows that the identity of consumers forms a social currency. Of course, topic planning of social media is also an indispensable part. After all, in the era of information surplus, incense is also afraid of deep alleys. For example, Dyson hair dryer, lululemon yoga suit and POP MART blind box are typical products with their own communication characteristics, which save huge communication costs for enterprises and can be sought after by consumers for a long time. 3. Keep pace with the times and embrace emerging channels. Traditional supermarket shelves are expensive, and the traffic competition of e-commerce platforms such as Tmall JD.COM is fierce. If an enterprise still sticks to these sales channels, it will be overwhelmed by high customer acquisition costs. Smart enterprises should actively embrace the change of channels and try new channels to bring more growth fulcrums, because the emergence of each new channel will usher in an early wave of traffic dividends, and grasping the dividend period in time will bring twice the result with half the effort. Innovative channels such as self-built private domain channels, early live broadcast with goods, YEATION crowdfunding/necessary shopping malls are all worth trying by enterprises. 4. Marketing innovation, breaking the routine. As mentioned above, the homogenization of marketing tactics is also an important reason for involution, so repeating the old marketing methods will only annoy consumers or attract a wave of fixed wool parties. Although the marketing methods of most enterprises are very similar, there are still some excellent explosion cases every year to help brands or industries explore more new marketing possibilities, such as live broadcast of beauty disco, online marketing/screen test of Netease Cloud Music H5, local flavor strategy conference, online begging songs, etc., which are very worthy of recognition. In a word, marketing involution is the inevitable product of market environment change and market competition. What a marketer can do is to dare to break through thinking, actively innovate and understand that user value creation and brand value management are the foundation of marketing. A marketer who caters to the development of the times should not only know the budget, flow, commodities, resources, explosions and screens, but also talk about products, operations, profits, experiences, services and businesses!