Recently, I was reading the "defining level" classic masterpiece "Marketing Management" by Dr. Philip Kotler, the father of world marketing. I have gained quite a lot, especially the complete marketing path and methodology. I would like to combine the content of the book with credit card management, and talk about my own insights.
First of all, let’s look at the credit card issuance data. According to the statistics of the central bank, as of the end of the first quarter of 2021, the number of credit cards and debit cards in use nationwide reached 784 million (749 million in the same period last year), and the growth rate dropped to 4.6% . Per capita The number of combined credit and debit cards increased to 0.55 (compared to 0.53 in the same period last year).
Considering that 40% of the resident population in my country is still in rural areas, and there are also a large number of users such as Huabei, Microcredit, and Baitiao, the per capita cardholders of generalized credit cards are far more than that. A CICC research report estimates that there are more than 1.76 credit accounts per capita .
Looking at another set of Internet data, the 47th "Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet" released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC): As of December 2020, the number of Internet users in my country has reached 989 million, and the number of mobile Internet users has reached 986 million. The Internet penetration rate reached 70.4%. The growth rate of Chinese netizens will drop to 3.6% this year . Taking into account children and elderly people, Internet traffic has also almost reached a state of saturation.
Based on the above data, it can be clearly seen that the growth rate of credit card issuance has slowed down. If banks want to add new card-issuing customers, they will either grab customers from other banks or grab customers from Huabei Baitiao. The Internet dividend has already receded, and it cannot bring too many incremental customers.
In the stock era, how to do a good job in user marketing and management has become the hottest topic at the moment.
1. Analyze demand from a marketing perspective
Going back to the book of marketing guru Philip Kotler, there is a simple definition of marketing, "making profit while meeting customer needs". Dismantling the meaning of this sentence, the most important subject-verb relationship in it is "meeting customer needs".
From pre-sale, mid-sale and post-sale in the marketing life cycle, marketing = demand management + user operation management + customer relationship management. As the first step in the top-level design of a product/brand, demand management needs to put a lot of energy into doing sufficient market research and product design at the very beginning. The concepts involved are STP (Segmenting, Targeting, Positioning) and 4P theory (product, price, place, promotion).
Take the credit card product as an example, a bank is going to issue a new credit card product. Four card products were considered, namely: Women's Card, Shangchao Card, a Milk Tea Co-branded Card, and City Feature Card.
According to Kotler's theory, from the perspective of demand, demand can be divided into three dimensions: need, demand, and want . This is similar to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Women's cards and supermarket cards are both to meet simple material needs. A milk tea co-branded card actually carries a certain brand identity demand, while the city feature card is a higher level of self-identity.
From the perspective of market competition , both women's cards and supermarket cards face competition from multiple products in the same telemarketing list industry; while co-branded cards and city feature cards can rely on brands and local resources to avoid excessive competition.
From the perspective of product positioning , the female card positioning customer group is women; the business super card is mainly the household and personnel customer group; the milk tea co-branded card audience is mainly young customers; the city feature card is mainly people with self-worth identification .
As for marketing scenarios and promotion strategies, each product has its own focus. For city commercial banks, it is very important to avoid excessive competition with big banks and choose a suitable track. Changsha Bank's Chayan Yuese co-branded card and Zhongyuan Bank's City Impression Card are both excellent product designs. The common denominator is a focus on " local characteristics ".