How to do content marketing well and let users come to you!

When making a product, content should be added to its genes to give the product content characteristics. In this way, when content marketing becomes high-quality, whether it is creativity or advertising, content marketing will make your consumers actively look for you, because what you post is a part of their lives.

1. The foundation of content marketing: How to improve cognitive ability?

Most of you here work in marketing, content or new media . I think cognitive ability is particularly important, so how should we improve our cognitive ability?

Taking English as an example, how do we master English? There is usually a structure: master a thousand words enough for daily expression; then master grammar; next is important practice, assuming that practice is 900 sentences in English.

By borrowing this framework, we will find that the framework is applicable when facing many unfamiliar things, so it is necessary for it to become a thinking habit, which we call the grayscale cognitive methodology. It is the basic framework of cognition, and we can look at content marketing along this framework.

2. Fragmented cognition

We are now very accustomed to fragmented cognition. We open some content and take a look at it at various irregular terminals in trivial time, so there is no need to talk about systematization when talking about content marketing.

Today I will share a content marketing idea that goes beyond the conventional content: for example, taking Coca-Cola's change of CMO position to CGO (Chief Growth Officer), let's explore what the idea was, and what content marketing is from the perspective of big product and big growth.

Case 1:

Currently, the tuition for the most expensive business school in China is between 600,000 and 800,000 yuan, which is equivalent to about 7,000 to 10,000 yuan per day. I spend ten thousand yuan a day to buy a product. Is the product the main factor when making decisions?

If the product is the main focus, I will ask the school to send me a detailed course list PPT first. I want to know how those courses can be applied in my work, who will teach the courses, and what level the teacher is at... I will decide whether to purchase only after obtaining these or more information. But people didn’t ask for this when they bought the course, which shows that the product is not their first priority.

So what is the first thing we put first when we come to business school? brand ? circle?

You may say that what you buy is alumni relationships - this is actually a superficial phenomenon. Behind it are results and resources, and the brand tone corresponding to the two-way screening mechanism.

For example, I am from CEIBS. Both CEIBS and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business are quite authoritative at present. They are equally authoritative in their categories within everyone's field of vision, but their two-way selection mechanisms are different. More than 50% of the decisions you make are not based on the product itself, but on things outside the product.

Are business school courses considered content-based products? Let’s not talk about the connotation of content-based products first, let’s first define fragmentation in our minds.

Case 2:

Michelin is a very famous brand, which also has restaurants. It is B2B , and most of its business is in 2B.

There are many people who want to buy cars and can drive, but if you go to buy a car now, how many people will look at the brand of the qi generator? Brand of gearbox? What’s the brand of the sofa seat? You can't see it, there are too many parts that are more important than tires.

But Michelin is strange, it has a brand, and even content and two colors, red and green - the red part of the Michelin Guide is food, and the green part is travel.

The Michelin Guide has also helped many people. Once a host in London said that we found a main road with a lot of traffic. According to Michelin's advice, we took a slight detour and the total driving time was shortened.

Michelin's business scope is very broad, and the output has nothing to do with its products. So what is this production for? Does this type of content count as self-propagating content? Is it a part of our users’ lives? Can this be considered social content? Okay, let’s assume it’s social content.

(Note: Michelin Group was founded in Clermont-Ferrand, France more than 100 years ago. Since inventing the first removable bicycle tire in 1889 and the first pneumatic tire for cars in 1895, it has continuously made innovations in tire technology and manufacturing. In addition, Michelin Group also produces rims, steel wires, mobility assistance systems (such as the PAX system), travel services, maps and travel guides. The famous Michelin Guide was 100 years old in 2000.)

Case 3:

Pechoin ’s previous advertisements were controversial because of their low conversion rates .

Some people say that if the purpose is just to increase awareness, the conversion rate will not be a big deal. But many business leaders don’t see it that way.

Is Pechoin a phenomenal advertisement? Or is it a phenomenal product? What is more likely to impress customers: products or communication? This is an interesting topic.

Pechoin’s Baidu Index quickly returned to normal after the event, indicating that it made a good advertisement but not a very good product. The advertisement is definitely good, so why is there no commercial conversion?

At this time, we thought of a company that did very well in Weibo marketing: Durex . The situation is the same as that of Pechoin. Will you place an order directly after reading Durex’s Weibo? Neither will I. Then why does Durex still enjoy making this kind of advertisement?

Because traditional sales are through aerial bombing, such as Qin Chi wine, the CCTV winner of the bid. There was no Internet before, so Qin Chi Wine relied on the power of television to carry out aerial bombardment. After the bombardment, it was impossible for us to buy it with just one click on TV, so there was no conversion rate. What should we do? Let salesmen sell and distribute products through channels . The air cannot stop, and the channels cannot stop. Traditional sales methods of aerial bombardment plus ground distribution can improve conversion rates.

The Internet is different from traditional sales methods, and it is even cruel. Usually there are only four steps to conversion: the first step is that the audience sees a picture, title , or poster; the second step is to read soft articles or content; the third step is the product page; and the fourth step is payment completion.

Case 4:

Starting a business is a life-and-death struggle, and it is normal for most companies to fail. A very hot industry may suddenly die, for example, O2O was very popular two years ago and then died; another example is group buying.

We should be tolerant of entrepreneurial failures, so I won’t talk about specific cases here.

Suppose home massage is a very popular product. If we go back in time, two years ago, home massage took advantage of the laziness in human nature, and users were willing to pay for this value-added service.

The ultimate user experience is good, but this is only the spirit of the Internet. Have you ever considered which experience is better, lying in a Liangzi foot massage shop or lying on the sofa at home? You are a consumer at Liangzi's place, and you can have a cup of tea at your request, but at home you need to serve yourself the tea.

This is another form of decline in user experience. What is even more fatal is that the user delivery cost is too high. In the past, a waiter could serve 10 customers in the store, but now he spends all his time on the road and can only serve 3 customers a day.

Therefore, no matter how eye-catching this business is, if a store drives a Mercedes to deliver food, the event is contagious, but is the product itself delicious? Is it in line with the essence of business? Therefore, the essence of business lies in the products you make.

This brings up a new concept: product-based business.

3. Four genes of content marketing

When we make products, we often put function first, but has anyone thought about changing the way of thinking: injecting content genes into products, making content-based products, and then injecting social genes and commercial genes into the content, and finally returning to the product.

In this way, the overall experience of the product is almost perfect, which gets the wheel turning.

Internet thinking itself is misleading. In fact, traditional enterprises have already had content-based products. For example, Red Bull makes fast-moving consumer goods, but few people know that they link their products with extreme sports, right? Their experience in organizing extreme sports is no less than that of professional sports organizations, and some sports organizations even want to purchase copyrights from them.

So which company in China has taken business to the extreme? Xiaomi, Nike , Alibaba ... Alibaba has products and business.

Tencent and Sina are doing relatively well in social networking. In the overall structure, Tencent and JD.com have investments . JD.com has two ecosystem platforms: business and product. Alibaba has invested in Weibo. Weibo has content, and it is social content, which is easy to integrate with traffic .

In fact, Alibaba not only invested in Weibo, but also invested in 36Kr, Huxiu, etc.

What are the differences between the twenty or so media outlets it bought and Weibo? Is social communication also possible? Why buy media? The media can continuously plan financial public relations events, which follows the same rules as Sina Weibo . Financial public relations conducts public relations communications through Weibo and WeChat . It has media attributes but is different from the media.

Is 36Kr’s valuation really 2 billion? Don't know, but Alibaba recognizes it. Therefore, we can see that Alibaba is not an e-commerce company, but a marketing company and financial company based on e-commerce. It has accumulated a lot of transaction credit and is a company with social media, which is where it has the most core competitiveness in our opinion.

Do you think buying flowers is a high frequency or low frequency activity? Low frequency. With the same hundred dollars, many people would use it to treat guests and would not think of buying flowers.

Flowers cannot be popularized on a large scale, so some people inject some content into flowers to make them confusing. For example, they are linked to zodiac signs, and buying flowers of a certain price can improve luck; girls love beauty, so they put flowers in the office so that colleagues can see them; before eating, you have to take a photo and show it to your friends before you can eat. Although it is a joke, flowers decorate our lives and showing photos becomes a social content.

I don't know who coined the phrase "Diamonds are forever", but rings are usually given as gifts when getting married.

In fact, gemstones are difficult to sell. The consumer base is small, the average customer spending is too high, and no one knows what people buy them for. But after diamonds are linked to marriage, diamond sales have increased significantly.

So no matter what industry you are in, as long as you put your heart into it, you can find opportunities to create content-based products.

When our content marketing becomes high-quality, whether it is creativity or advertising, content marketing will make your consumers actively look for you, because what you post is a part of their life.

Creating social content is not difficult. The key is to be attentive and have products with suitable cost-effectiveness.

The entire big product concept is actually applicable, but due to time constraints, I won’t explain it in detail today.

Coca-Cola has a lot of money to advertise to 4A companies, but this year is different. It not only established a CGO Chief Growth Officer, but also established its own content center.

The mature routine is to have advertising agencies design advertisements, so why do we need to set up our own content center? This is because there are two parties A.

Coca-Cola’s public relations department and the 4A company are the first-level Party A and Party B, and Coca-Cola’s business department, product department and public relations department are the second-level Party A and Party B. Great brands are seamlessly connected to social hot spots, which requires a special understanding of the product. However, the product itself has many business secrets, so the second party is not suitable for content marketing with a particularly high timeliness.

4. When doing content marketing, first establish the authority of the category

The so-called Chief Growth Officer (CGO) is a concept derived from growth hacking .

Growth hacking includes three aspects: the first is marketing, the second is data analysis , and the third is product design.

Based on the Internet, it is easy to understand the benefits of connecting these three. What we want to emphasize here is: in the past, we made money directly from money, but now we let money find capable people to make money for us; in the past, we directly seized market share, but now we must first seize scene share and then convert it into market share.

There are two input ports at both ends of this market share: one is called content-based products, and the other is called social content. This is the core of our content marketing.

As for why we refer to category authorities when purchasing products? What problem does category authority solve? Category authority can avoid heavy interpretation. When we do content marketing, we often repeat and give heavy explanations. Brand tone can reduce decision-making costs and help us make decisions quickly.

The product value can provide a suitable price-performance ratio. When the price-performance ratio is right, consumption does not necessarily mean upgrading, sometimes it may even mean downgrading. For example, why has Himalaya become mainstream as an audio product? 65% of our information comes from vision, and the delivery cost is too high because the eyes are occupied. At this time, people downgrade their consumption on the way to and from get off work and are willing to listen to audio to free up their eyes.

Everyone must remember: when doing content marketing, you must establish an awareness of authority in the category, otherwise your efforts will be wasted if you are not careful.

The author of this article @曹升 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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