7 Common Marketing Methods Marketers Must Know (I)

Every year there are many good marketing cases . Behind these cases there are marketing methods (routines) (ways) that can be learned from. I have summarized seven commonly used marketing methods, hoping that they can provide some inspiration and help for your future promotion .

1. Social Q&A and Knowledge Q&A

Question-and-answer marketing refers to: interacting with potential users through questions and problem-based discussions, while implanting promotional content to achieve marketing goals. Using question-and-answer marketing can narrow the distance between companies and users.

There are two ways to do question-and-answer marketing: one is to find relevant questions to answer, which can show your professionalism in this field. Another way is to raise a question and attract users to discuss.

However, compared to answering questions, asking questions can motivate users more.

Case 1

Mafengwo Free Travel is a travel platform. One of its features is that it provides many travel diaries and guides. Last March, Mafengwo Free Travel posted a question on Zhihu: Where is the "end of the world" that we can reach? It has attracted a lot of attention. We can see that this question has been followed by 6,746 people, read by more than 800,000 people, and has received 275 answers from netizens. They posted their own ideas about the "end of the world" on it.

In fact, this is an activity with problematic packaging. The supplementary content below this question has its activity rules: users can give their own answers to the "end of the world" in their minds through text, pictures, videos, etc. The destination with the most likes will be defined as the "end of the world" for Chinese travelers, and the answer contributor will also receive round-trip tickets and travel funds to the "end of the world" in his or her mind.

The characteristic of Mafengwo is that users post travel notes and guides on it, providing other travelers with solutions to their travel problems. This time, by promoting this activity in the form of questions on Zhihu, Mafengwo has made a good combination of its own platform characteristics with the attributes of Zhihu's Q&A community.

Previously, Mafengwo Free Travel mainly provided high-quality content answers on Zhihu, and it has contributed 245 answers so far.

The "End of the World" topic initiated on Zhihu was the first time that Mafengwo changed from an answerer to a questioner. This activity gained considerable attention through: topics that people identify with and an attractive reward mechanism, while also prompting users on the platform to contribute high-quality answers. This shows that asking a good question will gain considerable attention.

Case 2

Let’s look at another example. Lego also raised a question on Zhihu: What mysterious behaviors of your baby have you encountered that are puzzling?

I think parents should identify with this issue. This question aroused the desire of many parents to express themselves. Many parents used pictures and texts to describe the various interesting behaviors of their babies, which attracted many likes from netizens.

This question attracted 145 answers on Zhihu, received 2,035 followers, and was viewed 442,286 times. It can be seen from the Zhihu Index that the popularity of topics related to Lego has increased significantly during this period.

This is also a Lego activity. Under the problem introduction, LEGO attached an H5 jump link. When you open this link, if you have not followed its official account , you will see a QR code when you click on it. After scanning and following the official account, you will automatically receive an activity link, and clicking on it will show you two small classroom videos.

There are two videos on this H5, one is about some daily behaviors of babies that we think are strange, and the other is the explanation of the mysterious behaviors.

The questions about Lego on Zhihu echo this H5 very well. While attracting friends to post their answers, it also gives its own answer.

Through this H5, LEGO tells parents about their children's growth in motor skills, language skills, cognitive skills, and emotional and social skills. While guiding netizens to share their children’s mysterious behaviors, it can also allow them to further understand the reasons behind these behaviors, thus achieving the purpose of educating users.

In fact, the question raised by LEGO on Zhihu is to promote the children's toy product "LEGO Duplo".

From the cases of Mafengwo and Lego, we can see that in question-and-answer marketing, more and more brands act as questioners and use a good question to mobilize user enthusiasm and promote their activities.

Case 3

There are some other ways to use Q&A marketing. Trip Advisor launched an information flow advertisement on WeChat Moments targeting the target group with potential demand for outbound travel.

They wrote in the copy : "This is an ad where you can ask me questions! @TripAdvisor TripAdvisor interaction, if it's interesting, I'll answer it!" Looking closely at the replies in the friends' group, they actually replied. A core team of about 10 people, consisting of colleagues from TripAdvisor's marketing operations team, products and agencies, answer questions from users behind the scenes. Thousands of questions were received within just one day of going online, including questions that teased the owner of the homepage, such as: Who are you, are you a male or a female? If Booking and Ctrip fell into the water, who would you save first? Wait, the 10-member team will also answer a lot of travel-related questions.

How to ask a good question

As a questioner, the key is to formulate a question that invites an answer. Because the desire to answer can inspire users to contribute and share content.

The most important thing about asking a question that is worth answering is to target the target group and choose the focus based on the characteristics of the group. This is the only way to motivate them to answer questions actively.

Taking the question about Lego as an example, from the perspective of question setting, this is a question with a clear answer object. Its target group is young parents who like to show off their children. They are those born in the 1980s and 1990s who grew up with the development of the Internet and are very familiar with social media . The problem with Lego is that it has successfully attracted such a group of "baby-showing maniacs."

Let’s look at some of the questions asked by other brands, these are not hard ads, but questions that people will be interested in answering.

This article was compiled and published by the author @梁道丰 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games