How to build a multi-channel integrated marketing knowledge system?

With the rapid development of the Internet and mobile Internet , new marketing methods and marketing carriers continue to emerge. How to possess the ability of multi- channel integrated marketing, build and enrich one's own knowledge system , and better bring quantitative or qualitative improvements to the development of enterprises and brands is really a test for every corporate marketer . Based on the author's current knowledge system and work experience, we can work and develop in the following directions:

1. A high level of awareness of the brand, target users and industry;

2. In-depth understanding of a single marketing channel or method, as well as extensive understanding of other channels;

3. Form a set of effective marketing strategies + program plans + execution plans + data feedback supported by brands, users, channels and content;

4. Form your own multi-channel marketing knowledge system theory through multiple project executions, and continuously optimize and upgrade to enrich the knowledge system;

5. Maintain communication with peers or people from different industries to adjust, change and enrich your knowledge at any time.

As an integrated marketing practitioner, I am often asked by clients how to promote new products and new businesses in the market . In this process, we also found that due to differences in industry, product characteristics and target users, the promotion methods and approaches are slightly different. However, among the many differences, there are always some commonalities, which has become the essence and core of the entire online marketing plan. In the following content, we describe this issue from the perspective of communication.

The entire promotion strategy can be summarized in 20 words: brand first, word-of-mouth assisted, traffic driven, carrier marketing, and content deepening (in fact, in actual applications, their correct order should be carrier first, brand establishment, word-of-mouth assisted, traffic driven, and content deepening).

1. Interpretation of marketing promotion strategy

Why should branding be a priority? How should we understand this 20-word marketing strategy?

It is generally believed in the industry that a brand carries more of the recognition of a certain group of people for its products and services, and is a product derived from the mutual adjustment between brand owners and customer purchasing behavior. Compared with unknown brands, consumers prefer well-known brands, so brand awareness must be established at the beginning of the product's launch. At the moment of launching the product into the market, it is even more important to give priority to the establishment of brand image. Only in this way can we quickly capture the minds of users in the fragmented Internet era. Through a series of marketing and promotion methods, product awareness increased rapidly and the brand image was gradually established.

At this time, the product finally meets the user, and the various word-of-mouth evaluations brought about by direct experience will naturally settle on platforms such as WeChat Moments , social media , and search engines . If the content is negative product reviews, their existence is bound to have an impact on the decisions of other potential consumers. Therefore, in the early stages of brand promotion , corresponding word-of-mouth content must be provided, and maintenance and intervention must be carried out through positive word-of-mouth content, and word-of-mouth guidance must be provided to potential user groups (there was a client of an early childhood education machine. In the early stages of the plan, we suggested that relevant word-of-mouth content such as product instructions for use and precautions for use be accumulated, but they believed that such content would not help sales and did not adopt it. When the plan was halfway through being executed, because the user did not understand a certain function of the product and there was no corresponding content to help the user solve this problem, he posted related negative comments on a certain platform. When searching for brand or product keywords , the position was particularly obvious. At this time, the customer realized that his original decision was unwise).

As the brand image is gradually established and user reputation becomes stable, we must focus more on user traffic. Only continuous traffic inflow can make a company invincible and better provide users with valuable service content. How to continuously generate user traffic involves the construction of marketing channels. Here, we put forward the concept of carrier, that is, carrier marketing (this has certain similarities with Professor Ye Maozhong’s statement that communication is marketing).

In the era of PC and mobile Internet , online marketing carriers continue to emerge. Here, I mainly divide them into four categories, namely official websites, Weibo, WeChat and third-party platforms . After the initial construction of the four major marketing carriers, we will enter the most important stage of marketing promotion, which is the operation and maintenance of refined content in multiple channels or single channels.

With the accumulation of content from the first four stages, the marketing difficulty at this stage has been reduced but it still cannot be underestimated, because all the refined content is related to the improvement of brand reputation and word of mouth, as well as the actual conversion of cash flow from products to the company. What needs to be noted here is that whether to choose a single channel or to develop content through multiple channels simultaneously should be considered based on factors such as product characteristics, consumption behavior characteristics of the target user group, and existing resources that can be mobilized.

2. Carrier Marketing

Carrier marketing is a model proposed by Stanford University in the United States. Its basic business philosophy is: advanced ideas + perfect platform (the overall marketing undertaking) + perfect service + good reputation + high-quality products = huge business opportunities.

In layman's terms, when a user has a need, such as needing a computer, he may learn about computer brands and related information through channels such as WeChat Moments and relevant professional websites to make decisions, and then place an order on an e-commerce platform to complete the purchase. For enterprises, in this process, computer information websites or e-commerce platforms are a carrier. They not only help enterprises display computer product information, but also successfully connect with purchasing users through their good reputation.

The most basic carrier of the official website

After the birth of the Internet, websites have been highly praised by many individuals and companies as an effective communication tool . At this time, some people successfully seized this business opportunity and quickly made their first pot of gold in life, such as Cai Wensheng, who started his business by investing in domain names. A large number of individual webmasters represented by him prospered in this wave and supported half of the Internet at that time.

For enterprises, websites are a new carrier based on the Internet. They can help them promote their brands and products, and their hidden commercial value is immeasurable. With the emergence of search engines such as Baidu, the status of the official website in a company's external publicity has rapidly increased. As long as a company has a well-run official website, it can gain huge commercial benefits, such as the once very glorious Putian Group.

Because of Baidu's precise traffic entrance, many Putian-based hospitals have obtained a steady stream of customer resources through SEO , SEM and other means and made considerable profits. Because of the Wei Zexi incident last year, the development of China's private hospital industry (China's private hospitals are mainly represented by Putian private hospitals) has also rapidly entered a downturn. The reason for this is the change in traffic entrances. Although we have entered the era of mobile Internet, the official website is still an important carrier that companies cannot ignore in the process of promoting new products.

Marketing tools in the new media era

If the official website is the product of the PC Internet era, then Weibo and WeChat are typical representatives of the mobile Internet era. In the first quarter 2017 financial report released by Sina Weibo , Weibo's monthly active users reached 340 million, and the data from Tencent's "2017 WeChat User & Ecosystem Research Report" released in April showed that as of December 2016, WeChat had a total of 889 million monthly active users worldwide. Backed by the two giants Sina and Tencent, Weibo and WeChat have huge user traffic.

For enterprises, platforms with huge traffic will naturally contain unlimited commercial value, which is also an important reason why Weibo and WeChat are so popular among many enterprises. The Weibo and WeChat platforms not only undertake the important task of promoting corporate products and building brand image, but also serve as a CRM software to effectively manage fan users.

In the process of helping our clients operate Weibo and WeChat, especially those with e-commerce platforms, we often receive interactive content from their users, which covers many issues such as product quality, price and after-sales service. Compared with the official website of the company, Weibo and WeChat not only provide users with a convenient interactive portal, but also allow corporate operators to quickly answer users' questions and establish a positive image of the company. I have the deepest understanding of this issue.

During the National Day holiday this year, I went to Chengdu for fun. I posted a tweet @ Meituan’s official Weibo account because of a problem with hotel accommodation. Meituan’s official Weibo account sent me a private message within 5 minutes of my post, providing me with a corresponding solution. In the following period, Meituan’s official Weibo also kept paying attention to my personal Weibo. After learning that I was dissatisfied with the hotel, it urged the hotel to apologize to me.

Throughout the entire process, the company and users used Weibo as a medium to achieve good communication, avoid the situation from getting worse, and thus establish a positive brand image. This phenomenon will become more and more common in the future. Weibo and WeChat have assumed the responsibility of interaction between brands and users. For such a medium, its status will become increasingly important in the future.

Of course, the operation of Weibo and WeChat has formed an independent operating system, including platform positioning, content operation, event promotion, data optimization and other categories.

The third-party carrier system is huge and cannot be ignored

Why are news media, forums and other platforms all planned as third-party carriers? What are the differences between them and official websites, Weibo and WeChat? We can try to understand it from these dimensions:

Compared with the company's official website and Weibo, news forums and other platforms are third-party platforms and belong to different entities;

Compared with official websites, Weibo, and WeChat, news forums and other platforms are third-party platforms with more restrictive factors, and companies have less room to play. For example, news and forums and other platforms have clear requirements not to carry related phone numbers, product links, and other information;

On third-party platforms such as news and forums, companies cannot directly display product and brand information and interact with users.

(The contents of these dimensions are still under study and are for reference only)

For enterprises, the scope of third-party carriers mainly includes news media, Baidu system products, forums, blogs, video platforms, etc. Each of these platforms is a product that has had or currently has a wide influence among users. The following is a detailed explanation.

1. News media system: When print media was popular and even in the early days of the Internet, due to the limitations of companies' external publicity channels, news media became the main channel for many companies to connect with consumers. Therefore, it also carries the youth and dreams of many older generation public relations people.

In the middle and late stages of the Internet, the news media team represented by the four major portals became increasingly large, and well-known media in vertical sub-industries became increasingly numerous. Therefore, online media based on the Internet once became an important platform for many companies to express their opinions externally.

There are two points to note in this process:

First, while paying attention to the quality of the content, we should optimize the news content brand and product keywords. Both the content and the title should be optimized, which will be conducive to the optimization and ranking of the content in search engines;

Second, the selection of news media. Due to the different weights of the media, the speed and quality of collection will also be different, and the same media will have different collection effects in different time periods (such as last month and this month).

2. Search engine system products. Take Baidu (Baidu Encyclopedia , Baidu Knows, Baidu Wenku, Baidu Experience, etc.) as an example. Because they are Baidu's own products, they have high weight, good ranking effects, and the Baidu search engine brings them a steady stream of user traffic, so they have become one of the most important carriers of the search engine system. It is recommended that companies increase their promotion efforts before promoting their products.

3. Vertical media. This is just a classification based on media attributes. If it is subdivided from the perspective of the industry, it can be divided into vertical media in the tourism industry ( Tuniu Travel ), vertical media in the e-commerce industry ( Xiaohongshu ), vertical media in the maternal and child industry ( Babytree ), etc.

4. Forum post bar system. A forum is what people often call BBS, and Tieba is essentially a forum as well. In the era when forums were the most popular, Tianya , Mop, and Xici once became synonymous with forums. Many well-known industry revelations were first detonated through forums and then fermented deeply on social media, attracting people's attention and discussion. Although the amount of user attention to forums has declined with the emergence of new social platforms such as Weibo and WeChat, vertical forums such as Baidu Tieba , Jifeng Forum, and Autohome still have a very large group of precise users, so they still cannot be ignored by enterprises.

4. Self-media platform . The second half of the Internet is dominated by mobile Internet, so self-media platforms represented by Toutiao , Baijihao, and Yidian Zixun have become the focus of many corporate operators.

Speaking of self-media platforms, we have to mention a very interesting thing. I often deal with clients and find that some company bosses or senior leaders, especially those in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, have a special liking for Toutiao . For example, we once had a client whose boss would like a news PR article very much every time it was published on Toutiao, but would complain if it was published multiple times on other portal media.

Coincidentally, when I later came into contact with another CEO, his subordinates told us that the boss reads Toutiao every day, and all the content he passes on to his subordinates comes from Toutiao. In my opinion, Toutiao has already achieved the sinking of third- and fourth-tier users, and the quality of its content is getting lower and lower. So why is it so popular among so many corporate leaders?

The reason is that Toutiao uses intelligent recommendation to distribute content. It can make recommendations by obtaining similar articles to those that the user has read. In other words, those company bosses who pay attention to industry news have browsed related news before, so the Toutiao client will assume that the user likes such texts, and will often recommend similar texts. Over time, a recommendation mechanism and process has been formed. This directly improves the efficiency of bosses in understanding industry information. Who doesn't like a software that can improve their efficiency? Then again, what information does this vivid case bring us?

Although self-media platforms represented by Baijiahao , Toutiaohao and Yidianhao have become a new trend, we do not recommend that corporate personnel devote too much manpower and energy to operations during the brand marketing process. You can adopt a speculative approach to synchronize the WeChat content published every day to all self-media platforms.

Of course, if you optimize the content, title , etc. according to the attributes of the platform before publishing on the self-media platform, you can indeed achieve good results, which has been verified by us many times. For example, an article that has only a few thousand or a few hundred readers on WeChat can get hundreds of thousands or millions of recommendations and more than 100,000 readers on a certain self-media platform.

5. Live video streaming . The content of this system is mainly divided into three categories: traditional video platforms represented by Youku, iQiyi , Tencent, etc., short video platforms represented by Kuaishou , Miaopai , and Meipai , and live broadcast platforms represented by Douyu , Huya , and YY, etc. Due to the unique attributes of this channel, it has high requirements for the content of promotion and the method of dissemination, and the cost that companies need to pay will also increase significantly. For example, when we promote a certain intellectual sports project for college students, we use multiple Internet celebrities to conduct multi-platform live broadcasts , which costs hundreds of thousands of yuan. This is not something that all start-ups can afford, and companies are advised to be cautious.

Due to different classification standards, some other third-party media may not have been mentioned. I hope this article can provide some inspiration for corporate marketers to make deletions and selections as appropriate according to their own needs during the promotion process.

3. Content

Explain the following two questions:

What is traffic drive: Since this article only analyzes from the perspective of communication, and traffic drive is another system of content, this article will not go into detail. Friends who want to know can pay attention to subsequent updates;

What is refined operation and how is it different from channel building ? In fact, channel building and refined operations are both content operations, but I have made a subdivision here. My personal understanding is that channel building focuses more on creating content from the perspective of multiple channels. When all channel content has completed a certain amount of preparation, it can come to a temporary end. The specific time node can be determined based on the project situation, team configuration, budget and other factors.

After the content of multiple channels has been accumulated for a period of time, the results can be directly presented in different time periods, and then key operations can be carried out on a certain channel. This is the so-called refined operation, such as Durex , which is famous on Weibo, Mimi Meng on WeChat, Chen Xiang Liu Dian Ban on short videos, etc. Of course, there is another situation of refined operation, which is creative or event marketing . Driving a line or a surface from one point is actually a refined operation.

Final Thoughts

I had originally planned to use ten thousand words to elaborate on the contents of this system in detail, but due to factors such as time, energy, and the final presentation effect, I was temporarily limited to just over 5,000 words. The selection of each segmented channel, the writing of content, the precautions for delivery, and the assessment of KPI are all things that we need to practice many times before we can master.

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

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