What is Mental Marketing

 

Positioning theory puts forward that “conscious mind” is the main battlefield of marketing, which lays a foundation for modern marketing. The mind, in a nutshell, is a person’s inner thoughts and wisdom. From the perspective of consumption trend, the mind is the degree of rational and sensible views or value recognition of various products that consumers have in their hearts. Mental marketing is the study of understanding and highly grasping the laws of the mind of consumers, using their mature minds and promoting them to purchase motives to achieve the purpose of marketing products. It can be said that the higher the consumers’ cognitive identification degree of a certain product or service, the higher the level of mental marketing and the higher rate of return. Mental marketing is not single psychological marketing, nor is it a competition with the public’s intelligence and calculation.

 

It is the compound marketing activity with the integration of the two, which is the most forward-looking marketing mode in the world, and a major reform of the anti-traditional marketing mode.

 

People’s minds are very lazy and it’s easy to make assumptions. Everyone knows that the world’s first astronaut was Gagarin from the Soviet Union, but what about the second? Very few people know. Everyone says Volvo cars are safer to drive, but is Volvo really safe? Volvo hasn’t even made the top three in the U.S. highway fatality study, the U.S. crash test, and the U.S. insurance test in the past few years. The real top brands are BMW, Mercedes, and others. Volvo is less safe than them, but that no longer matters. What matters is that Volvo equals safety in the consumer’s mind. So the facts are important, but even more important is the consumer’s mind.

How to occupy the consumer’s mind?

 

Get an accurate position+ differential playing methods

To find accurate positioning is to find their own market position in the industry, there are only three types: Industry leaders, industry followers, and industry survivors. The main purpose of the positioning is to obtain differential playing methods. Aiming at these three kinds of enterprises with different industry status, we summarize three different ways of playing to seize consumers’ minds, which is: blocking categories, occupying characteristics, and creating new categories.

1. Blocking categories (Industry leaders)

 

1.1 How to define an industry leader or the first in the industry?

Whether it is the first in the industry, is not about the turnover or profit level, but the first brand get into the consumers’ minds! For example: go to KFC for hamburgers, pay online with Paytm, go to Flipkart for shopping online, fly with IndiGo, etc.

 

1.2 How to judge whether the enterprise blocked category?

 

Two indicators: market share and mindshare.

Market share: We must make statistics according to authoritative data. We must not deceive ourselves by using non-authoritative statistics for propaganda.

Mind share：use a technical term: No implied first mention rate.

For example: ask you about cell phones? Apple, Samsung, MI, OPPO, Vivo will blurt out; Ask you about cars? Mercedes, BMW, Toyota will blurt it out. Ask you about the supermarket? Wal-Mart will blurt it out; and when we talk about e-commerce? We will think about Amazon and Flipkart.

 

The leading brands in these industries have occupied the mental share and achieved the effect of blocking categories. And in those industries with unclear mental shares, companies with dreams can completely block categories through clever promotion methods.

2. Occupying characteristics (Industry followers)
   
   The prerequisite of blocking category is that there is no leading brand in the industry, so, when the leading brand in the industry has appeared, you are not the first to enter the industry, also did not become the first to rise in the industry chaos period, this time you must find a feature, and firmly occupy it.
   So, how can we find the brand characteristics accurately?

 

2.1 Use strength to fight strength, use your own strength, attack the enemy’s weakness.

 

Where the competitor is strongest, it is also his weakest.

For example, the greatest strength of Coca-Cola is “heritage”. So what is its weakest?

Pepsi cola sought out this opportunity and made this century-old heritage a weakness of Coca Cola. With the slogan “Pepsi cola, the choice of a new generation”, it successfully occupied the market and rival Coca Cola.

 

If the brand that has successfully blocked the category is the leader or leader of the industry, Then, the brand occupying the feature can sit on the second position. Generally speaking, the second one should not only guard against the catching up of the rising stars but also to constantly make trouble for the first place to improve their position. Pepsi is using this idea, The “new generation” is a feature that it can use to preserve its position and challenge Coke’s authority.

 

2.2 Pay attention to the dynamics of consumers and competitors and seize the next flower in consumers’ minds.

 

Today’s enterprises should not expect to build their products to cover all aspects, which is unrealistic. What you need to do is keep an eye on your competitors and find the point where you have the best advantage in the consumer’s mind.

 

In fact, Occupying Characteristics is not a deep phrase, but many people do not really understand it. People tend to focus on the word “occupying”, in fact, behind the word, is not occupying, but abandon. Give up and get, you have to give it up first and then get it. A brand must give up part of the audience if it tries to find a new way. Only by daring to make such a choice can it open up its own stage and build strong barriers.

 

3. Creating new categories （Industry survivors）
   

David Akko, an American famous brand management master, once said: There are two ways to compete. The first is to do better and more popular than other brands. The second one is based on a category or subcategory innovation. By eliminating competitors through consumers’ preference for brands, in other words, new categories need to be created.

Since the original way has already had the forerunner, then we should focus on the business aspect, we can create a road by our own, Open the way when meeting the mountain, build a bridge when coming across the water, to be the first person in a new category. By shrinking the functional ring, make yourself more professional and focused. For anyone and any enterprise, energy and resources are limited, For an enterprise to succeed, the biggest problem is to think about how to maximize the value of limited resources, which requires adhering to the principle of “concentrated forces”. The power of the five fingers is far less powerful than that of the clenched fist. If the whole body can be combined at one point, the power you created is often hard to imagine.

As long as it is an excellent enterprise, often through a distinctive symbol to let consumers remember. Narrow goals, categorize and simplify as much as possible are the keys to success in a society where communication is excessive. The narrower the positioning, the stronger the brand, so that consumers can generate a certain demand, and make your brand as the first choice. For example, PayPal created an online payment category, Lipton tea bag created a tea bag category, Focus Media created an elevator advertising category and Tiktok created a short video sharing category.

Case study: when Wahaha and Tingyi have occupied the leading position in the beverage market, Wong Lo Kat has made a new definition itself — drinking Wong Lo Kat for fear of suffering from excessive internal heat. The characteristics of Wong Lo Kat have changed from merely quenching thirst to preventing excessive heat. While creating a new feature and new category, it also triggers a brand-new market space. At present, Wong Lo Kat and JDB have become the largest beverage companies in China.

Of course, when creating new categories, we should pay attention to the following four aspects:

 

3.1 Appropriate category names

It is necessary to mobilize users’ association cognition and actively associate with old categories.

 

3.2 New categories should have new channels

New products often need to find new channels. Generally speaking, new channels are thirsty for products, while mature products or categories are indifferent to new channels.

 

Case study: Sony’s new channel for pocket radios

When Sony first developed pocket radios, traditional radio stores were reluctant to sell them. Competing with pocket radios were vacuum tube radios, which by then had dominated most of the mainstream market, and Sony’s pocket radios were hard to get into. This is because pocket radios look cheap, have a little profit margin and are thinner after-sales. However, vacuum tube radios need to replace one or two of the expensive vacuum tubes every year. By contrast, selling pocket radios is unprofitable and channels have little incentive to stock. This problem was not solved until SONY found Wal-Mart, which was in its infancy as an affordable channel for Sony, and it upended the vacuum tube radio market.

 

3.3 Show up with a certificate of trust

A famous entrepreneur comes out with a halo, no matter their channels, consumers, capital or talents, it is easy to get attention, and often can overcome the difficulties easily encountered by many new categories. Of course, most entrepreneurs aren’t so lucky.

 

3.4 Appropriate high price

 

For the new category, the user has not established its basic cognition, will not be too sensitive to the price. If it’s a new product at a low price, many users will automatically mark it down to a low price. In addition, if the beginning of the low-price route, enterprise profit is difficult to guarantee, the company may be in the red for a long time, unless they are born with a golden key.

 

Time window and saturation attacks

 

After positioning and differential playing, time-window and saturation attack are needed.

 

Time window: In the fully competitive market environment, most technical advantages, business model advantages, traffic advantages, etc., can be provided for you for 3 or 6 months, but not more than a year’s time window. This will not become the real moat of the brand, once the market followers swarmed in, all time window advantages will be an infinitely exponential decline, or even disappear. So this is a valuable time to grab the consumer’s mind.

 

Saturation attack: When you have a time window, if you don’t make a saturation attack, you will be overwhelmed by your competitors and lose your first-mover advantage. Therefore, we must carry on the saturation attack in the time window, positioning industry leaders, block categories! Positioning industry followers, block new features! Positioning industry survivors, block the new category!

 

The essence of the audience is forgetting; the essence of advertising is repetition. Keep repeating in the simplest and most efficient way, with high density and high frequency, directly get into consumers’ minds， take positions that others might take as well. Only in the time window we use the technology advantage, business model advantage, traffic advantage and so on, with the hammer of saturation attack firmly get into consumers’ minds, let the brand become a new category or new characteristics of the representative, can we have the opportunity to build a deeper moat. And the river can only exist in consumers’ minds because consumers’ minds are hard to change and their capacity is limited.

 

The time window and the intensity of the saturation attack are two key points that break into the consumers’ minds and leave competitors with no way out.

 

China Auto Rental, which is the No. 3 in the industry has a counteroffensive.

Background: In China’s car rental market in 2010, No.1 eHi Car Service had 1200 cars, No2 Top one car rental had 1000 cars, and No3 China Auto Rental only had 600 cars.

Dialogue: China Auto Rental and Focus Media.

Focus: Will consumers know the number of cars, 1,200, 1,000 and 600?

China Auto: Definitely not.

Focus: Consumers do not even know what is a car rental, so they will not pay attention to the ranking of your industry, now the only thing you need to tell consumers is that car rental company is now in China market! Rent a car, find China Auto!

 

China car rental deeply agreed, said to put 80 million of the financing of hundreds of millions to do the saturation attack, 60 million to invest in CCTV television, and spend 10 million in Focus and 10 million in subway advertising.

 

Focus: This solution will not create a penetrating saturation attack in consumers’ minds. Invest 60 million in CCTV TV, just like a scoop of water in the sea, no one can remember you. I suggest you put your local rental ads in the office building and put the car rental advertisement in other places at the airport. With 80 million costs, catch the whole mainstream user groups in an action.

 

Currently, the annual revenue of China Auto rental is more than 8 billion RMB, making it the No1 car rental company in the China market.