These 4 pages of PPT will help you understand what Internet "content marketing" is

In recent years, content marketing has become a hot topic in the marketing industry.

Research shows that 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing, 86% of B2C marketers use content marketing, marketers spend an average of 25% or more of their budget on content marketing, and 78% of chief marketing officers (CMOs) believe that content marketing is the future development trend.

However, the concept of content marketing in China has always been vague, and many people naively believe that content marketing is just taking advantage of a hot topic and writing a soft article. In fact, the connotation of content marketing is far more than that.

So, what exactly is content marketing? Regarding content marketing, the existing concepts at home and abroad are abstract, complex, lack of examples, and there is no consensus yet . Therefore, Sister Chen decided to compare it with the traditional marketing you are familiar with and use a 4-page PPT to help you understand "content marketing".

Providing solutions vs. showing products directly

"Brand bombing" and "product bombing" are common tactics in traditional marketing , especially when new products are launched, this bombing is particularly fierce. For example, since its launch on the market, Six Walnuts has been repeating the slogan "Use your brain regularly, drink more Six Walnuts", which has left a deep impression on users.

Xiangpiaopiao’s advertisements have achieved huge success, from “Xiangpiaopiao sells 300 million cups a year, enough to circle the earth once” to “Xiangpiaopiao sells 700 million cups a year, enough to circle the earth twice”, to the most recent “When you are a little hungry or sleepy, drink some Xiangpiaopiao”. Moreover, they all have one thing in common: they all remember to repeat the brand name “Xiangpiaopiao”.

These advertisements that are so familiar to you are all successful examples of traditional marketing. They succeed in making you remember them by skillfully (for specific techniques, please refer to: an old article by Li Jiaoshou) constantly repeating the brand/product .

Different from traditional marketing that directly displays products and repeats brands, content marketing first provides solutions to help users solve practical problems and cultivate user trust . On this basis, guide users to purchase products. In many cases, when the user trust value reaches a certain level, users will spontaneously ask to buy products from you.

For example, the public account "Penguin and Cat" focusing on red wine has gained a large number of fans in the early stage by providing professional, systematic, interesting and free solutions to red wine-related problems, including how to order wine, how to taste wine, how to choose wine, etc.

On this basis, "Penguin and Cat" launched paid products/services such as "Penguin Group Wine Membership (200 yuan/month)", "Penguin Group Selected Wine Monthly Subscription", and "Penguin Group Selected Mall", and successfully achieved paid conversion of fans (with an average of 5,000 readings on the subscription account , sales have exceeded one million, indicating that the high combination of content and products can achieve an extremely high conversion rate ).

In fact, "solutions" and "products" in content marketing are not separated . In fact, a good solution must become a part of the product, or even a core component of the product. Products created by traditional marketing often take "brand" as the core asset and build a series of products around the brand.

Relatively speaking, products created by content marketing have the characteristics of high added value, high competition threshold and high user stickiness. Products created by traditional marketing are relatively single, and users can only identify products by brand, which poses certain safety risks. The trademark dispute between Wanglaoji and Jiaduobao is a typical case.

Value attraction VS price attraction

Content marketing likes to convey the unique value of products to users, while traditional marketing often prefers price wars. Why? Because there have been new changes in the shopping scene.

In traditional shopping scenarios, whether it is offline supermarkets or online shopping malls, there are a large number of homogeneous products for users to choose from. The main problem facing consumers is "which one to buy". At this time, the price and whether there is a promotion are the key factors that many users consider.

In the context of the rapid development of new media , new shopping scenarios have emerged: you are lying on the bed, leisurely browsing your circle of friends , and suddenly you are attracted by a title like this: "15 minutes to perfectly replicate a bowl of Japanese ramen."

After opening the article, I found that it was well-made, with rich pictures and detailed content, and I couldn't help but like it more. In addition, the article also contains a large amount of "Japanese Ramen Encyclopedia ", which greatly enriches your understanding of ramen.

At the end of the article, several classic Japanese ramen were casually recommended with beautiful pictures attached. Oh, I instantly wanted to eat noodles!

At this point, a thoughtful sentence was added at the end of the article: "Don't worry, click 'Read original text' to purchase." It couldn’t be more thoughtful! If you make a purchasing decision at this point, you will still take a look at the price to make sure it is not too outrageous, but you are more concerned about: when will it arrive? I really want to eat it!

It can be seen that in the new shopping scenario, content marketing can better attract users' attention through interesting titles, and then through scene building, strengthen users' attention to product value, weaken users' attention to price, and encourage them to make emotional consumption.

Independent media vs. dependent media

In the era of traditional media, information was transmitted in a one-way linear manner, the right to create content was controlled by a few mainstream media, and corporate marketing and promotion had to rely on mainstream media. In the new media era, information is transmitted interactively in a network, and everyone can produce content and become their own media.

Content marketing and brand self-media strategy are inseparable . On the one hand, brand self-media is the most important soil for content marketing. The release and dissemination of solutions in content marketing, the construction and conversion of shopping scenarios all need to be based on brand self-media in order to be sustainable and effective.

On the other hand, content marketing is the key to building brand self-media. By continuously and stably producing high-quality content, brands can have media functions and directly reach target users through their own media without having to rely on third-party media.

Therefore, successfully building a brand’s own media is an important prerequisite for implementing content marketing . However, building a brand’s own media is not an easy task. Many companies think that opening a few public accounts and publishing a few company or product-related information every day is considered building a brand’s own media.

But may I ask, what is the difference between such brand self-media and corporate official website? Who would take the initiative to subscribe to a company’s official website or billboard?

The essence of self-media is still media. Referring to the characteristics of traditional mainstream media, if you want to build a qualified self-media and implement content marketing, you need to meet at least the following three requirements:

• There are enough fans. How to spread content if you can’t gather enough fans within a certain period of time?
• Continuously and steadily produce content that meets user needs. Good content is the key to the healthy development of the media, but it is very difficult to continuously and stably produce content that meets user needs. Companies should establish professional self-media teams (at least professional content editing, art design and promotion ) to ensure the stable operation of brand self-media.
• Have a viable profit model. The purpose of building self-media is marketing, and marketing is for profit. Whether it relies directly on advertising or indirectly on e-commerce , brand self-media must have a practical profit model, otherwise it will become a bottomless pit of burning money.

Sharing interests vs. sharing products

Sharing product experience is an important part of user behavior decision-making . The rise of social media has amplified the impact of this word-of-mouth effect on brands and has also made companies pay more attention to user word-of-mouth.

However, under the traditional marketing model, users usually only share after personally experiencing the product, and the content shared is generally based on product experience.

Under the content marketing model, user sharing may occur at any stage of user decision-making . As long as the content is valuable and arouses user interest, users will be happy to share relevant content about the product even if they do not ultimately purchase the product. This shows that content marketing can better utilize the communication advantages of social media and expand the influence of brands and products.

Why is there such a difference? Because traditional marketing treats users as "consumers", while content marketing treats users as "people", this difference in treatment will produce completely different marketing results.

When a company treats users merely as "consumers", it only focuses on their "consumption needs". That is, you can only see the parts that are directly related to the product, such as whether consumers will buy the product? What price range of products can consumers accept? What is the consumer’s word of mouth after experiencing the product?

When companies treat users as "people", they will pay attention to their "all needs" , for example, what kind of news may the users be interested in? What kind of content are users likely to share? What kind of (industry-related) problems might users encounter? How can I help users solve the problem? Therefore, more flexible marketing strategies can be adopted, integrated into users' lives, and better product experience can be brought to users. Even if users do not purchase the products, they will spread the word about the products spontaneously.

summary

Compared with traditional marketing, content marketing generally has the following four characteristics:

• Content marketing first provides solutions to help users solve practical problems. Instead of showing the product directly;
• Content marketing delivers the unique value of products to users by building emotional shopping scenarios, rather than using price wars;
• Content marketing generally relies on brand-owned media rather than traditional mainstream media;
• In the content marketing model, user sharing can occur at any stage of user decision-making, not just after the experience.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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