The media is actually a gatekeeper to the commercial market.

The media has long been a gatekeeper to the commercial market.

At the same time, because of the scarcity of media resources, enterprise products want to enter the market, they have to pay high tolls. But there are only big companies that can afford to pay high fares.

Therefore, the traditional commercial market, large enterprises through the "big budget" can indeed monopolize the media resources, through the control of media resources to maintain product market performance. Small business even with quality products, it is not easy to quickly open up channels. As a result, old products in traditional commercial markets tend to have long life periods and slow product upgrades because of the difficulty of being challenged by new products.

Therefore, the traditional market share ratio, often showing the "budget capacity" to distribute the characteristics of the budget in the total marketing expenditure of the proportion of the larger, sales share will be larger.

But the situation is turning around and the media upheaval has brought new changes. The market's law of "media gatekeepers" has been the past, and while the big companies are still trying to get their attention as much as possible through bigger budgets, consumers have an active choice of information.

Purchase decision is no longer limited to advertising information, social, interactive communication environment, users more and more easy access to other people's experience experience, these experience is becoming a decision to purchase an important factor. Thus to the product fast and wide range of "Word-of-mouth spread" to provide a good soil. In this regard, the use of the product experience is becoming more and more important.

Procter and Gamble "heavy marketing, light products" mode of operation is undoubtedly a very good example, in recent years, Procter and Gamble annual tens of millions of dollars in marketing spending, did not give him a real market growth, the performance all the way down, the profit has been reduced every year.

Therefore, large enterprises also want to use large budget monopoly media resources to control the market, is not so effective, marketing is no longer the decisive factor in product success or failure.

Incidentally, the Internet's desert areas, traditional operations are still influential, especially in China's three or four-line region has not been fully commercial development of the situation. Therefore, enterprises through the launch of a full coverage of the CCTV system, to carry out the carpet bombing, indeed can reap good results. Otherwise, Beijing east, Alibaba and other enterprises will not go to the countryside outside the "brush the wall."

But the situation needs to be recognized, and the direction of the mainstream market has changed significantly. Media gradually reduced to basic services, the liberation of information to consumers become more and more "smart", originally by the media gatekeeper of the traditional commercial market, is gradually moving to the user (consumers) the door of the new market. Enterprises, but also gradually by "the media to deal with" to deal with the market practices, and gradually turn to "fix the user" to obtain the market.

Google, the world's leading publisher of media resources, is no doubt extremely sensitive, and in the first half of the year he tried to add a new feature of "Product evaluation information" to his product listing ads in the U.S. market (Products Listing ads). Google's approach suggests that they are aware of the change.

Google's product list ads added to the evaluation information, the products will be found in the form of comparison table, each product will appear below the rating information, as well as the product is the number of comments. Through this information, users can be intuitive to the horizontal contrast between products, to help users make purchase decisions. Of course, I would prefer to refer to these "evaluation information" as "Third-party user Experience".

The question is whether this method works. The answer is somewhat ambiguous. It can be confirmed that the "other people's products or services experience" to refer to the purchase decision (Word-of-mouth dissemination), is essentially "advertising", advertisers can not use the existing advertising business logic, in this chain directly to earn the benefits of advertising.

There are several reasons for this. 1, "Word-of-mouth effect" This is spontaneous behavior, advertisers can not as traditional advertising as product modification and brand modification. Because, if the advertiser participates in the product adornment and the packing, then to the user, these experience loses the pure third party significance.

If advertisers do nothing in this process, then what is the basis for making money for the business? On the other hand, the media can not punish users to obtain a profit threshold. Media into a free service at the moment, users to help quality products for word-of-mouth dissemination, the media can not prevent or distort this dissemination behavior.

So does the media really do nothing? In fact, the media can go to promote the occurrence of Word-of-mouth, but from this point of view, this value is still difficult to quantify. Weibo as the core of Word-of-mouth marketing battlefield, the reason is still not profitable, because Word-of-mouth transmission because of the characteristics of spontaneity and neutrality, leading to micro-bloggers difficult to get involved, even try to promote the formation of Word-of-mouth, but the quantification of business value is also very difficult.

2, assuming that Google is trying to influence the "evaluation of Information (Word-of-mouth)" to improve the conversion rate of a product, is bound to offend the enterprise, is equal to the foot in the foot, does he not earn other competing goods enterprise's money?

3, even if the "word of mouth effect" in the expansion process there is no competition in the participation (this possibility is very small, the emergence of Word-of-mouth is often the starting point through the comparison of competing goods), the willingness of enterprises to pay will also be reduced. Because Word-of-mouth communication itself, often not the media subject itself can be fully controlled, its spontaneity and uncertainty, it is difficult to let the brand think that this is the media itself, a great deal of a sense of powerlessness for others to marry clothes.

Therefore, the whole communication environment tends to social, interactive, now, when "online Word-of-mouth" becomes more and more important, when the enterprise gradually began to focus on the product itself, then the traditional marketing of the commercial value of the low-lying land was slowly filled, the core of the advertising business was destroyed.

For traditional marketing, in the current communication environment, and this social, interactive communication environment will be more and more strong, marketing "to commercialize" the signs are more obvious, if not to innovate, marketing industry plate shrinkage seems to be predictable. And Google to increase the evaluation of information practices, although adapt to the times, disguised in order to further pave the way for Word-of-mouth online, in fact, the life of their own advertising business.

That's not a bad thing. Perhaps in the future, Google is not to rely on advertising to make money, with users, there is the possibility of everything. And the business model is moving forward.

For now, the new business model of marketing does not yet appear. Advertising business used to "handicraft" of the "packaging" as the core, I help you pack the better to spread the wider, advertising fees will be collected more. Now, advertising business seems to be the only thing to do is, how to help enterprises to form a more rapid "word-of-mouth." The role of advertising seems to fade, and the experience of the product itself becomes more and more decisive.

But the reality is not so pessimistic. Although many big companies are still increasing their budgets, traditional marketing plates seem to be growing, but they will slowly find that mass exposure is not the deciding factor in the product to open the market, and marketing does not need to rely on a huge budget to support. In this case, the marketing plate atrophy of the turning point, is indeed predictable. But new marketing values are emerging.

A very interesting trend: enterprises focus on the experience of the product to control the market, more and more tend to the "truth", but the enterprise's growth process, a very important part of the same time out to the market, that is, how to "online communication environment" to form a huge amount of positive product experience.

These scattered in micro-bo, Friends Circle, watercress, know, shell and other community sites "comment on Information", How to "easier" to reach the user here, will be a driving factor in the decision to buy.

The market will not appear a product, to help enterprises, or to help users, scattered throughout the network in the "experience" to the need for the place, rather than the rough advertising marketing information, directly to the consumer hand. Making more objective UGC seem more persuasive than a professional PGC content.

So for marketing, the focus has become, how to organize and control these objective user experience experience, how to grasp the user on the product and service of the Spit. In fact, as long as you can control the whole network level of "user experience", then you can grasp the initiative in the future marketing. Because they are more persuasive than any marketing message.

And in the new business market, based on a fully social online environment, as the product itself becomes more and more important, as users can more easily identify which products are more in line with demand, small business products and services in the market has greater possibilities, products and services to upgrade faster and faster. This is why the marketing of Procter and Gamble is becoming more and more ineffective, and Samsung's advertising bombing can not bring him a sustained market effect.

The rise of Millet is also the reason. Of course, the user experience of millet is not good, but the "user experience" the concept of the word, should contain another layer of meaning, low price, but also an indispensable component, this is the Internet age social market important connotation.