As the demographic dividend gradually fades, the domestic market of some well-developed industries has become saturated, and the growth rate has encountered bottlenecks. Under such circumstances, the layout of overseas markets has become a new trend for Chinese enterprises to seek new growth points. In recent years, it has been very popular for brands to go overseas, and the main force of going overseas has gradually expanded from clothing, shoes and hats in the past to industries with more diverse and higher added value in the fields of the Internet, home appliances, consumer electronics, and automobiles. But what kind of brand is suitable for going overseas? What difficulties do Chinese brands face when going overseas? What is the difference between domestic and foreign consumers? And how to gain insights and enable growth through data-driven?
DS Business School's "Super Flywheel" Growth Series Live [Phase 8] Li Lizhong, Senior Director of the Automotive Industry of Shushuo Story, had a conversation with Dr. Li Zhan, COO & Strategy Director of Boding International, and Yu Jing, Director of Market and Ecological Cooperation of Shushuo Story, served as the host. We will share the theme of the round table "Riding the Wind and Waves to Grow Overseas, Data-Driven Brands to Win", take stock of those Chinese brands that have become popular overseas, and explore the opportunities and challenges of brands going overseas from the two perspectives of data-driven and practical strategies, and make suggestions for brands going overseas .
#Wonderful content review#
01 Is brand going overseas a "short-term effect" or a "long-term approach"?
Boding International COO & Strategy Director: Dr. Li Zhan
"Short-term effect" and "long-termism" are phased and complementary states, and are also a common law of development: Generally, there is an effect first, and a certain scale is formed under the impetus of the effect before considering long-term construction. Since 2016, although the growth rate of cross-border e-commerce in my country has been fluctuating and slow every year, the overall development trend has been positive, and the transaction scale has increased year by year. At the same time, in the list released by Amazon in October, the consumer technology list contains a large number of Chinese brands, and the top ten Chinese brands account for more than 60%. It means that in the short term, Chinese brands will gradually occupy the hearts and minds of international users, and the realization of long-term construction on the basis of the conditions for short-term effects still requires the brand to ride the wind and waves and continue to make efforts.
Senior Director of Automobile Industry: Li Lizhong
Taking automobiles as an example, regardless of the development trend of the manufacturing industry, the capacity of the international automobile market, and the development of digital technology, it is the consideration and significance of the long-term development of brands going overseas. I believe that in the near future, we have a great opportunity to see domestic automobile group brands achieve global The sales volume is more than 10 million.
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Development Trend of Manufacturing Industry-Manufacturing Powerhouse, International Window Period
The development situation of the manufacturing industry has changed. In the past 10 years, the manufacturing industries in China, India, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia have developed rapidly. Due to factors such as land, labor costs, and high welfare, the manufacturing scale of traditional powerhouses in Europe, such as Germany, Britain, France, Italy, and Spain, has remained relatively stagnant. It is related to the stage of development, the cost of land and labor in Europe is too high, coupled with high welfare, etc., China currently ranks first in the added value of manufacturing in China, reaching 3.9 trillion U.S. dollars, followed by the United States with 2 trillion and Japan with 1 trillion. Manufacturing-related The rapid growth of factors has given impetus to domestic brand cars.
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International Automobile Market Capacity - Global Market Automobile Consumption Capacity and Demand
From the perspective of the top ten global car sales, Toyota, which ranks first, has sold 10 million+ vehicles worldwide and 1.95 million vehicles in China. Suzuki, which ranks eighth, also has 2.76 million vehicles. The top two domestic brands, Geely with 1.65 million vehicles and BYD with 1.5 million vehicles, still have room to double from the top ten international sales threshold of 2.5 to 3 million vehicles.
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Digital Technology Development - Domestic Digital Marketing Model and Technical Advantages Empower Overseas Markets
domestic
There are 1.459 billion domestic mobile Internet users, and 492 million 5G mobile phone users;
Diversified development of public domain social applications, rapid development of short video and notes social applications;
"Brand super APP, public domain to private domain operation system has a strong user driving force" Automobile self-built APP provides digital service monthly activity.
foreign
From 2019 to 2020, the penetration rate of mobile Internet users will increase by 2.9% year-on-year, but the user base effect is obvious, and the number has increased by 100 million, reaching a total of 4.46 billion. The traffic advantage is obvious; the consumption pattern of overseas users;
TikTok and other domestic mature social media and algorithmic content technologies are going overseas. The latest monthly activity in 2022 has reached 1.6 billion, which is a rapid increase compared to 1 billion in 2021. It has become a new position in global social media marketing. The multi-channel and cross-position operating environment is becoming more and more mature. The conditions are sufficient.
02 What challenges do Chinese brands face when going overseas?
Boding International COO & Strategy Director: Dr. Li Zhan
To meet the challenge of brand association, create exclusive brand concept and brand management awareness. First of all, we must consider the overall positioning of the brand and the construction of communication strategies. We must always be clear about the cornerstone, ideal, service population and future business planning of the brand. Establishing this point is also a pavement for long-term construction.
The challenge of brand differentiation is to find the points of connection and differences other than price in the categories of mature markets. Foreign users are originally more avant-garde and open. They are very inclusive of new things and always pursue new trends. They pay more attention to the innovation of products.
The challenge of brand activity is to maintain the market activity of the brand in a way that conforms to overseas local understanding and aesthetics. Overseas local media, public relations resources, and connections with consumers are contrary to domestic ones. In order to maintain the vitality and health of the brand in a way that is in line with overseas local understanding and aesthetics, it is especially necessary to work hard on the quality of promotional content and operate it for a long time.
Senior Director of Automobile Industry: Li Lizhong
The challenges of discovering growth opportunities, who are my users, what is the local culture, religion, and popularity? Brands have an intuitive feeling in China, but in the face of foreign situations, the risk of decision-making will greatly increase, requiring brands to obtain more data and user insights to discover.
The challenge of studying and judging the competitive situation. As mentioned earlier, the cake is huge. We are latecomers. We have to share the cake with our competitors in the international market. How can brands maintain sufficient competitive advantages in the long run?
The challenge of multi-regional management and control, the differences in transnational business models, the coexistence of direct sales and partner models, for different models, how to play the role of the headquarters and coordinate the operation of local companies with resource advantages; on the other hand, how to ensure the management objectives from the headquarters It is clear and consistent from country to region to dealers, whether there are traces to follow in the management path of the headquarters, and the path is clear.
The challenge of cross-cultural consistency, different countries, different cultures, different languages and different thinking. On the one hand, in the process of brand localization, the cultural integration between the headquarters and the local area is a big challenge. Some brands will hire local Chinese overseas. Management is a method, and on the other hand, it is necessary to find a definite cross-cultural language in diversity, and data is undoubtedly the solution.
03 Can data-driven really help the brand's overseas campaign?
Boding International COO & Strategy Director: Dr. Li Zhan
Data-driven brand marketing is the only way for brands, big or small. We usually use the traditional method in the figure to do global monitoring of brand health, and the multi-level indicators jointly display the overall health of the brand and make a diagnosis. However, this method will be less accurate in judging behavioral indicators. In addition, this method of data collection is costly, difficult to control, and low in real-time. It can be seen that compared with some current big data methods, the traditional method can not only effectively supplement more accuracy, but also greatly improve efficiency, and quickly break through the relevance, differentiation and activeness of brands. degrees of challenging puzzles.
Senior Director of Automobile Industry: Li Lizhong
The limitations of the classic way of going to sea: mode and efficiency. And the unique [data-driven methodology] of Shushuo Stories can help brands break through the limitations. Based on this, we have a basic judgment: the operating effect is the only test standard for data-driven, how to improve the operating effect?
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Data-insight-strategy-action closed loop
Form a powerful opportunity insight based on the data, what kind of people are overseas consumers, what is their cultural religion, behavior preference, content preference, location distribution, how do they evaluate car brands and products, etc.; From strategy formation to output competitive strategies in terms of brand, product planning, channel layout, user operations, etc. by understanding the situation of users and competitors; from strategy to action implementation, specific position selection, content production , user rights design, etc. all have a unified goal; from action to data, when the business is implemented, more data will be generated, and the business will be optimized continuously, thus forming a business growth cycle.
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The principle of resisting risks and maintaining growth
Being data-driven can ensure the success of going overseas. From a strategic point of view, growth and risks coexist. The higher the growth, the greater the risk. Due to the complexity of the international situation, everything from ideological performance to financial and trade policies will affect the progress of brands going overseas. , How to walk more steadily at each step, through information collection in specific fields or feedback from public opinion, research, judgment and control of risks are what every brand must always pay attention to in the process of going overseas. On the other hand, driven by data, from an operational perspective Considering that due to the insight of business opportunities and the formation of precise strategies, it has got rid of the ineffectiveness of purely relying on empirical decision-making in the past. International events such as the epidemic, economic downturn, Russia and Ukraine have affected consumer behavior, and data-driven can achieve unified goals and fine-grained operations. to improve operating performance.
04 In the sea battle, how to gain insight into the needs of overseas consumers through small and broad?
Boding International COO & Strategy Director: Dr. Li Zhan
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Deep binding with consumers
It is necessary to maintain a healthy and in-depth connection and communication with consumers through long-term insights. The first is to gain insights and understand overseas consumers through a period of patience. Second, explicitly split the business problem. For example, it is necessary to find out a new market and gain insight into all these general information, such as the usage, demands and preferences of its category? Looking at the categories again, how do consumers use various brands and competing products? Finally, look at consumers' perception of the brand's image and brand reach for detailed insights.
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Look for category differences
Overseas developed markets basically have a very high degree of saturation in every category, and the competitive environment of the category is also very fierce. Therefore, if we want to find an advantage on the basis of a low price, we must find some differences in categories.
Senior Director of Automobile Industry: Li Lizhong
Where does the data come from? First, we need to understand where consumers leave their data. Overseas, there are few vertical forum platforms like Autohome in China. Consumers generally use social media to understand and communicate with brands. Facebook has 2 billion daily active users, Twitter has 250 million, and YouTube has nearly 400 million. For example, Changan UNI-V is on YouTube . A blogger’s ordinary product experience video leaves more than 200 consumer comments on the product. These are all information that cannot be ignored by the brand. These are public data that can be collected. In addition, there are user label data, For example, in North America, Europe and other regions, there are relatively mature user tag library companies that specialize in the business of credential stuffing. They only need to provide the user's physical address information to obtain rich feature aggregation data.
When we know where the data is, it will be relatively simple later. We can use various tools to collect the data on one platform. The data can be text in various languages, video and audio, analysis result data, etc., and then make data After cleaning, invalid data such as noise and trolls are eliminated, and the remaining data with analytical value are labeled with various labels through algorithm models and stopwatches, and the label analysis results are output for different topics of the brand.