[09] How does brand public relations determine the people to be influenced?

In the first part of the course, "What does brand public relations need to do", we mentioned that identifying influential people is one of the key areas of quality communication. In this class, we will expand this topic a little and talk about why this matter is important and how to determine influential people.

Corporate brand public relations should make a work plan, and Party B should make a proposal to Party A. On the first page, the target and the people to be influenced must be written. Sometimes this first page remains unchanged for several years, and everyone is used to focusing on the next few pages, dozens or even hundreds of pages, all about what to do and how to do it.

In fact, the first page is particularly important. A good plan needs to have clear and specific goals. You can't say that the goal is to improve the brand in an all-round way, but to concretize the goal. Like this, the goal is to "spread the company's comprehensive research report on the supply and demand of natural gas and the development of power generation industry in 25 countries around the world among the groups that affect the pricing policy of natural gas, convey the company's opinions and opinions on the energy policies of various countries, and gain the trust of industry decision makers and opportunities for further dialogue." 」

Look, the first page of the work plan should be written like this. The first page is written, and the rest will be easy to handle.

In this example, the groups we want to influence are the decision makers of natural gas pricing policy and the people who can influence the decision makers. When we determine the influence groups of brand public relations, we should pay attention to these issues:

1, who will be affected?

2. Who is obviously influenced by whom?

3. Who will be influenced by whom?

The first question is not difficult. To sell natural gas power generation equipment, you have to influence the government's decision makers on natural gas prices. If the gas price is too high and the power plant uses coal to generate electricity, your natural gas power generation equipment will not be sold. If you sell baby milk powder, you have to influence the mother of the child; If you sell your mobile phone with a hammer, it will affect fans and hammer lovers in Luo Yonghao.

The second question, through who obviously affects who, sometimes obvious, sometimes not obvious. For example, you think that selling baby milk powder will affect the mother of the child, but if you sell baby milk powder in the third and fourth lines and rural areas, many parents are working outside the home, and the children are brought by grandparents, you need to influence grandparents.

The third question, who will potentially influence who, is the biggest problem of brand public relations, and we often encounter challenges and obstacles. You send a press release, the boss said, who can read this press release? I want to influence the governor. Can the governor see it? Doing product activities and trying to influence people who buy cars. What are you doing with so many fashion media?

In fact, this is a question of who will be affected by the potential. The decision-making process of consumers is now difficult to describe simply by seeing the news of advertisements and products. Brand public relations generally does not directly promote sales, but builds word of mouth, cultivates consumers' goodwill towards you, and gradually forms sales transformation. Especially in B2B enterprises, customers' decisions are made in a complex ecological circle for products with high unit price, such as airplanes, large machine tools, medical equipment and millions of consulting projects. As shown in the figure, what affects the customer's decision is his work circle and circle of friends, political reasons, past experience, brand and price. So when deciding who to affect, it may be that different projects affect different groups.

Generally speaking, the basic groups affected by brand public relations include:

1, government

2. Media

3. Industry opinion leaders

4. People

5. Non-governmental organizations

6. Others

Let's look at the following to determine how brand public relations will affect people in different stages, different industries, different regions and different consumer groups.

Enterprises have different people at different stages of development. In the early stage of enterprise development, it is generally approved by the government and distributed to initial users. By the time of maturity, colorful groups have changed.

For example, SAIC-GM, in 1997, SAIC and GM's main job is to influence the government. Ford also wanted to cooperate with SAIC-GM at that time. So, GM played a beautiful public relations card and made five commitments to China, including bringing the best technology to China and establishing a joint venture in automobile design.

These promises are nothing now, but when Santana was the main international brand in China at that time, General Motors brought the official Buick sedan to China, which was highly recognized by the government and played a key role in winning the government's approval to cooperate with SAIC. Now, the layout of the automobile joint venture is basically completed. SAIC and GM, including the joint venture SAIC-GM, most importantly sell cars. The government is still important, but it is no longer a forging group that needs to be influenced.

Looking at consumer goods, the initial users of Xiaomi mobile phone are fans and enthusiasts, and now Xiaomi mobile phone has a wider range of users. Xiaomi and Xiaomi Eco-enterprise's products cover charging treasures, power sockets, routers, air purifiers, rice cookers and even towels. Their brand public relations are not only aimed at his enthusiasts, but at people who have taste, expect the best products and have the best cost performance.

1. When the business and products of an enterprise change, the enterprise will affect different industry groups. In the Internet era, enterprises will reorganize their business and seek new demands in the process of transformation. For example, what IBM is doing in the transformation is "cognitive business", that is, commercial artificial intelligence, which will affect the wider industry distribution. It needs to formulate the brand public relations strategy of medical and health industry and the strategy of financial industry, because these industries need different "cognitive business" solutions.

2. Enterprises do business in different regions, which affects different people. Last class, we talked about brand internationalization, and brand public relations have different groups to influence in different regions. Fuyao Glass has built the largest automobile glass factory in the United States. Generally speaking, Mr. Cao's brand public relations team can mainly influence automobile manufacturers, but the role of trade unions is particularly important in setting up factories in the United States. There is an exaggerated saying that in 2008, the three major automobile companies in the United States were brought down by trade unions. I can't say that, but in the United States, in the automobile and aviation industries, good trade union communication is an important goal of brand public relations.

The main way for brand public relations to influence different groups of people is the media, as we have already said. One of the main tasks of brand public relations is communication, which must be mass communication, aiming at a group rather than an individual. You chase your girlfriend, please your mother-in-law, and invite customers to dinner, not brand public relations.

The most effective way of mass communication is to use the media. It used to be limited traditional media, but now it is all media aimed at mass communication, including traditional media and new media. It is the most basic to spread it well and determine the people to be affected. Even in the process of "brand public relations". Work guide "then we should consider which group will be affected, and the professionals who are engaged in quality public relations now." Are you a student at school? Is the boss of the enterprise? I don't want to know this clearly either. We are always entangled in which channel to promote this course.

To sum up the contents of this hall:

First of all, to do brand public relations planning, the most important thing is to determine the target and audience, which is the first page of your PPT;

Second, in planning, we should determine who you want to influence, through whom you obviously influence, and through whom you potentially influence;

Third, consider the dynamic changes of people affected by the needs of enterprises in different development stages, different industries and different regions.

Finally, the main influence channel of brand public relations is the media. After determining the influence groups, it is much easier to choose media and formulate specific strategies.

Content from: Practical Guide to Brand Public Relations | Li Guowei