Why is Xiaomi’s marketing method so popular? Can hundreds of thousands of mobile phones be sold out in a few minutes?

The brand image is well packaged and well publicized. In addition, the machine itself is also good. Every time Xiaomi is mentioned, people will talk about the Apple machine that people love and yearn for. This adds a lot of psychological implications to users, indicating that Xiaomi and Apple are of the same grade, which makes people feel more responsible.

Detailed information promotion methods;

Xiaomi model

Xiaomi’s success has created the “Xiaomi model” of mobile phone marketing in the post-mobile phone era, which uses Internet marketing as the Compared with the marketing methods of traditional mobile phone companies in the pre-mobile phone era, Xiaomi's marketing model has the following characteristics or innovations:

1. Promotion by celebrity CEO

As we all know, Lei Jun, the boss of "Xiaomi", is a well-known figure in the IT industry. Lei Jun introduced himself on Weibo as: the founder of Xiaomi. He previously participated in the founding of Kingsoft Software and Joyo.com, and his hobby is angel investment. Lei Jun joined Kingsoft in 1992 and became CEO of Kingsoft in 1998. Under his leadership, Kingsoft has further expanded its application software into fields such as utility software, Internet security software, and online games, and has made important contributions in Kingsoft's comprehensive Internet transformation. In 2007, after Kingsoft went public, Lei Jun stepped down as president and CEO of Kingsoft and became vice chairman. In July 2011, Lei Jun became chairman of Kingsoft Software. In addition to his experience in Kingsoft Software, Lei Jun has also invested in many innovative companies such as Vancl Eslite, Duowan, UCWEB (Ushi Technology), and Xiaomi Technology as an angel investor. Every investment has been quite successful! It can be seen that no matter what you do, Whether he is a business manager or an investor, Lei Jun is very successful in the Internet industry!

With his fame and appeal in the IT industry, Lei Jun's every move is the target of media pursuit. Every time he speaks publicly All the words are reported by the media, and all of this is free! On August 16, 2011, Lei Jun held a press conference in Beijing to officially release Xiaomi mobile phone and announce the details of Xiaomi mobile phone for the first time. The media gathered at the press conference to see the style of Lei Jun and Xiaomi mobile phone. After that, major media were full of news. After hearing the news about Xiaomi mobile phone, Xiaomi mobile phone became famous throughout the IT industry. Since then, Xiaomi mobile phone has also been favored by the media and mobile phone enthusiasts. Every move of Lei Jun and Xiaomi has attracted the attention of the media and mobile phone enthusiasts. under!

In addition to official public media conferences, Lei Jun also continues to publish information about Xiaomi through his Weibo to attract continued attention from the media and enthusiasts to Xiaomi mobile phones. For example, Lei Jun posted on Weibo on October 1 For the first time, the sales time of Xiaomi mobile phones has been officially revealed: the first batch of Xiaomi mobile phones will be shipped around October 15th!

In addition, Lei Jun also uses Weibo and other Internet tools to create hot spots of media interest and attract media attention and hype. For example, Lei Jun himself actively participated in the verbal conflict between "Xiaomi" and 360, and on Weibo Zhou Hongyi, who constantly posted comments on the blog to counterattack or criticize 360, was nicknamed the "Little Three War" by netizens. For example, Lei Jun posted on Weibo on May 19: "Since someone wants to make a mobile phone, he should do it well: 1. Don't rely on swearing and quarreling to make a market. For promotion, secondly, do not rely on plagiarism and plagiarism models to follow up and make products. Thirdly, do not rely on controlling safe entrances to forcefully push software to steal user information. Fourthly, put down the AK47 and don’t be intoxicated by the illusion of being undefeated in the East. Be a normal businessman and use your products. Talk. If the product is really good, you won’t have to rely on your mouth to curse people every day!” The frequency is very high, which on the one hand has hit 360, and on the other hand, it has increased Xiaomi’s exposure;

Second, precise positioning

The success of Xiaomi mobile phones is first of all due to Lei Jun’s precise positioning of Xiaomi mobile phones. Xiaomi mobile phones are not aimed at all market segments, nor are they meant for blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, students, and bosses. A specific group of consumers, in Lei Jun's words: "They are the group of people who like to play with mobile phones. They understand performance and like to mess around. They are mobile phone users."

In detail, the characteristics of these people include: 1. Aged between 20-28 years old, usually 20-25 years old; 2. Have a college degree or above, majoring in science and engineering, and are obsessed with technology, especially IT technology; 3. Graduation is less than 5 years ago, usually 2-3 years, and the income is between 2,000-6,000 yuan; 4. Likes to play with mobile phones and surf the Internet, and often browses IT websites such as Pacific Computer Network and Zhongguancun Online; 5. Has a personal Consumer opinion, don’t like to follow the crowd; 6. Like online shopping, don’t like shopping; 7. Low social status, most of them are engaged in low-level technical support work, eager to be recognized;

After positioning the target group From now on, Xiaomi has tailored a complete set of product strategies, pricing strategies and marketing strategies for this group of people. Product strategy: to make a high-quality smartphone, the configuration must be good, otherwise it will be despised by these people. The technology (including the platform system and the product itself) must have a certain degree of complexity, otherwise there will be nothing to play with; marketing strategy: pricing strategy: 2000 Within Yuan, it is too expensive, which means you cannot afford it, and if it is too low, it seems tasteless; Marketing strategy: Internet marketing, which means the most things you do every day is surfing the Internet. All Xiaomi's marketing is carried out through the Internet. WeChat Blogs, mobile phone reviews, forums, etc.;

3. Internet Marketing

In the process of brand marketing, Xiaomi mobile phones do not use traditional TV or web advertising, but target themselves Target consumer groups, adopt Internet marketing, use forums, Weibo and professional website reviews to accurately disseminate to target consumer groups.

1. Weibo

Xiaomi has two Weibo positions. One is Lei Jun himself. He uses his influence in the IT industry to continue to speak out and currently has more than 200 fans. Ten thousand, that is, more than 2 million people are listening every time Lei Jun speaks! The other is the official Weibo website of Xiaomi mobile phones. It currently has tens of thousands of fans, which is also a huge number. Not only that, every Weibo post will also lead to forwarding by the fan, thus the number of people affected will explode. For example, Xiaomi Company’s May 20 event Weibo “@小米公司: Survey how many rice fans are looking forward to it” , the tail of #小米手机QQ在线#? Friends who want it, please raise your hands and leave~~", it was forwarded 11,647 times by fans and commented 6,768 times! Lei Jun and Xiaomi use these two Weibos to mainly publish the following information: (1) New product launches. For example, on May 20, Xiaomi released "At 10 o'clock this morning, Xiaomi.com will sell a limited number of 150,000 Youth Edition units on a first-come, first-served basis." . Please choose a good network and log in in advance.” (2) Event notice: //@小米公司: May 23rd # CoolLe61AccessoriesSpecial# event, double the discount. Users who purchase accessories are eligible to participate in the Xiaomi mobile phone purchase privilege draw, and 50,000 privilege qualifications are waiting for you! Optional standard version or telecom version. Welcome to forward it to inform your friends; (3) To create hot spots, such as attacking opponents, Xiaomi released on May 22: "Looking at 360, every online battle ended in defeat, one can't help but imagine: So unafraid of legal penalties, exhausting all means to fight Opponent, 360 is really incorrigible. Please forward this message!”

2. Forum

Forum marketing is also called community marketing. This is not a new invention of Xiaomi, but was first adopted by Meizu, another Chinese smartphone expert. In Meizu’s There is a Meizu forum on the official website, where tens of thousands of smartphone enthusiasts are active every day. Through the forum, a direct communication channel has been established between Meizu Company and mobile phone enthusiasts (kerosene). Meizu Company uses the forum to hand over customer needs and solve customer problems. We collect problems that people encountered while playing with their mobile phones and publish information related to Meizu mobile phones. Huang Zhang, the boss of Meizu, also directly participated in the discussion of the forum as J.Wgong. He was sought after by Meizu friends and became an unwavering opinion leader in the forum.

Lei Jun, the leader of Xiaomi, originally came from the Internet. I am more familiar with the Internet, so I have absorbed the essence of Meizu Internet marketing and continued to innovate, thus reaching another level.

Xiaomi now has at least three forums gathering popularity, Xiaomi official website community, Mi Chat forum and MIUI official forum. "Go to miui.com and have a look. Hundreds of thousands of people have gathered." Among them, Xiaomi's official website has 3.5 million registered users and more than 5 million posts as of early June. The number of posts every day is more than 10,000. The popularity of the forum can be seen from these figures.

What Xiaomi does in the forum is actually similar to Weibo. The main things are as follows: (1) One-to-one communication with customers, in-depth, detailed and first-hand understanding of customer needs, and for The market positioning and function development of Xiaomi mobile phones have accumulated valuable original data; (2) Create hot spots, attack opponents, and unite people. For example, on May 21, an announcement was made on the forum: "Strongly condemn 360 for concocting rogue methods regardless of the interests of netizens" Baidu hot words "attack Xiaomi"; (3) Promoting company culture and achievements, such as a leader visiting the company in a certain month of a certain year and sending messages for the company's continued development; (4) Sharing of players' experiences, posted by Xiaomi technical staff , mainly teaches Xiaomi enthusiasts how to play with mobile phones. Some Xiaomi enthusiasts spontaneously publish it to satisfy their little vanity and sense of achievement; (5), event information release: For example, on May 29th: "Kunming Station 2012 Xiaomi Mobile Popcorn "Kunming Station Registration"; (6), problem feedback, online Q&A and problem solving. Mobile phone users can directly report their own problems in the forum, and the forum administrator will answer them on the spot. Some common questions can even be collected through unified collection. measures to avoid further escalation of the situation and focus on calming the situation. For example, on May 20, Xiaomi released: [Announcement] Announcement and problem collection about third-party software causing system failure and restart. The announcement contains the reasons for the problem, the ways for rice fans to report the problem, and Xiaomi's preliminary solutions, which are very detailed. "Restart failures of smartphones are divided into occasional restarts and frequent restarts: Occasional restarts are generally caused by software conflicts and system instability, which can be solved by upgrading the software or updating the version; the reasons for frequent restarts generally include software systems and hardware. If it is Restarting due to system problems can be solved by updating the version or uninstalling the software that caused the problem. If the problem is caused by hardware reasons, Xiaomi mobile phones strictly abide by the national three guarantees law, guaranteeing a refund within 7 days and a replacement within 15 days. "Warranty within the year"

3. Professional website evaluation

Use the evaluation articles of "professional editors" or "ordinary netizens" on professional IT websites to attract the attention of mobile players and create expert guidance or word-of-mouth communication effects , influencing consumer decision-making. Xiaomi's promotion mainly relies on traditional IT product review websites such as "Little Bear Online", "Zhongguancun Online", and "Pacific Computer Network". These websites have a mobile phone review column and often have an impact on some new models or relatively new models. The review covers the appearance, functions, system software and even comparison of competing products, etc. It is very detailed and the content seems to be very impressive. Most "players" will refer to the evaluation opinions of these websites before purchasing a product. Influencing consumers' purchasing decisions through "mobile phone reviews" is a cost-effective and very effective Internet marketing method.

4. E-commerce sales

Xiaomi has completely abandoned the traditional mobile phone sales model. There are no dealers such as national bags or provincial bags, and no specialty stores or image stores. Some mobile phone hypermarkets do not have special counters, nor do they hire shopping guides. The sales of Xiaomi mobile phones mainly rely on e-commerce websites and operators, especially the former. Xiaomi's website design is very simple, with no redundant information. The homepage is product information, and you can enter the purchase process by clicking on it. The purchase process is also very simple, just register. It is completely a "transaction-type" e-commerce website, which is better than ordinary Taobao stores should be generous and beautiful, and should be simpler and more efficient than ordinary corporate websites. Before cooperating with operators, ordinary consumers used this website to make reservations, purchases and even rush purchases!

4. Hunger marketing.

Xiaomi learned this trick from Apple. The first batch of Xiaomi mobile phones was shipped on October 15, with a quantity of 100,000 units. As of May 2012, it has been open for sale 7 times since then. Every time it is sold in limited quantities, every time it is sold out, with a cumulative sales of more than 1.8 million units! The significance of hunger marketing is that first of all, it creates the illusion that rare things are more valuable. Secondly, batch sales help manufacturers control the quality of products. Even if problems occur, they can be controlled within a certain range. The latter batch of products will be sold before sales. It can prevent the occurrence of similar problems, and finally, artificially create the illusion of hot sales that exceeds supply;

5. Offline activities: combine online and offline activities, and combine multi-channel marketing. In order to develop users through forums, in addition, Xiaomi will often hold some offline activities, such as the "2012 Xiaomi Mobile Popcorn National Tour", which is Xiaomi's so-called "Mi Fan City Meeting" across the country. This kind of offline activities to interact with consumers, rely on activities to attract people, and rely on atmosphere to retain people" can be said to be a true portrayal.

6. Self-created operating system. All Xiaomi mobile phones All are pre-installed with MIUI, the operating system independently developed by Xiaomi. MIUI is a third-party mobile operating system of Xiaomi that is deeply optimized, customized and developed based on the Android system. The MIUI system of Xiaomi mobile phones is definitely the biggest highlight of the whole machine. It can be said that The MIUI system has made Xiaomi mobile phones! According to Lei Jun, MIUI is the first time that Xiaomi has introduced the Internet model, and the development team and 500,000 mobile phone enthusiast fans around the world have participated in a deeply customized Android system.

Since there is The universal version of Andriod is free to use. Why does Xiaomi still waste time and energy on developing an operating system? On the one hand, it is to provide consumers with a better user experience, just as Xiaomi promotes, it is closer to you based on Chinese user habits. Its usage habits and psychological habits make your operation simpler and more considerate; on the other hand, it is to layout and occupy the entrance in the mobile Internet era. This is why after Xiaomi, many Internet companies such as Baidu and 360 have cooperated with mobile phone manufacturers. Launching its own smartphones, for example, Baidu cooperates with many mobile phone hardware manufacturers, aiming to stick to the mobile Internet search entrance and lay out its future cloud strategy.

Inspiration from Xiaomi’s model

1. By trying to please. Audiophiles go to win the market

Audiophiles here generally refer to leading consumers who understand the market, products, and trends. They are usually keen on chasing the latest product trends, and they will spend several times the price to try in the traditional TV era. For flat-screen TVs, they will spend an entire night studying the differences between the two mobile phone operating systems, and then share them with users in the circle through logs or posts. Outsiders may think they are crazy, but these leading consumers are objectively promoting it. The power of innovation and progress.

Everett M. Rogers, a world-renowned communication guru, pointed out in his book "Diffusion of Innovations" that excellent innovation can always be done first. Accounting for 2.5% of the total number of leading consumers in society, they will help the product reach 13.5% of early adopters and 68% of mainstream consumers through higher communication capabilities.

Xiaomi is providing The extremely cost-effective and decent products have successfully won the favor of enthusiasts, and these enthusiasts are often an important reference for their friends and family to choose mobile phones, which has also promoted the influence of Xiaomi mobile phones among mainstream consumers.

The influence that Xiaomi has gained through the enthusiast crowd now, if it adopts traditional advertising and marketing strategies, the investment cost may exceed 100 million yuan, and the effect may be far less than that.

2. The best way to break into new markets is to break the existing rules

If Xiaomi’s mobile phone is just a phone with a slightly advantageous price but nothing new in appearance, design and functions. product, then even if Lei Jun advocates everything, he will never be able to achieve such an enthusiastic response from the market.

The key to the success of Xiaomi mobile phones is to sell smartphones sold by other manufacturers for 3,000 yuan or 4,000 yuan at an unprecedented 1,999 yuan. Emerging terminal manufacturers, including Huawei and ZTE, have also acquiesced to the profit, cost, and income rules of the smartphone market. Xiaomi's "breaking price" has successfully satisfied consumers' need to obtain top-notch products at the price of mid- to low-end smartphones from other brands. Smartphone experience, including screen, processor, battery, memory and other important configurations.

It seems that the media reviews and user trial experience of Xiaomi mobile phones are not bad either. In this way, consumers’ last line of psychological defense has been broken, and all that is left is crazy buying. The experience left to us by Xiaomi mobile phones is: if you want to achieve a quick breakthrough in an unfamiliar emerging market, the best way is to completely break the existing rules without mercy.

Depending on different industries and products, this rule may be price, function, positioning and other factors.

3. Appropriate hunger marketing is conducive to the advancement of the overall plan

Whether intentional or not, hunger marketing has become an important keyword for Xiaomi mobile phones, or because of real insufficient production capacity, Or because of the promotion of marketing power, under normal circumstances most people cannot buy Xiaomi mobile phones through normal channels.

The principle of hunger marketing is very similar to that of kite flying. Through planned control of the rhythm of goods release, it creates the status quo or illusion of large-scale shortages in the market, making things more valuable when they are scarce, which in turn triggers large-scale consumer demand. sought after. If synchronized with appropriate media promotion strategies, it can effectively drive product sales.

Invitation registration for Internet products is also a type of hunger marketing. Including and well controlling the rhythm of hunger marketing in product sales, publicity, and marketing will be conducive to the advancement of the overall product plan.

4. Be adequately prepared

In the first half year of the emergence of Xiaomi mobile phones, lack of preparation has been a problem faced by Xiaomi mobile phones. Insufficient production capacity estimates have led to large-scale product shortages. From the initial 5,000 units to the last two batches of 200,000 units, Xiaomi mobile phones seem to be forever unavailable. Of course, it may also be the choice of hunger marketing.

Online business support has also become Xiaomi’s weakness. From the first batch of Xiaomi accounts to the online sales of the first and second batch of official products, it is always accompanied by downtime, slow access, There are endless problems with page errors. Initial underestimation is understandable, but problems cropping up in the same place one after another are incomprehensible. If Xiaomi needs it, it will not be difficult to obtain server support with large traffic and heavy load.

The negative teaching material Xiaomi mobile phones give us is that you must always prepare enough margin for your products to prepare for resource consumption caused by user growth. If possible, try to choose a highly scalable software and hardware support system. Of course, domestic cloud computing services are still in their initial stages.