Why do we need to seize node traffic?

The previous article said that "marketing is only about campaigns, not daily activities". The core idea expressed is to focus, penetrate, and pay more attention to the depth of communication. This is from the perspective of brand strategy.

From the perspective of traffic, we need to seize node traffic and create brand highlights.

What is a node? It is the peak traffic. In the past, advertisements and content were opposed and completely separated. It was very annoying to suddenly hear an advertisement in the middle of watching a TV series.

The same thing happened on the Internet platform. While watching videos of young men and women, an advertisement for hair growth products suddenly appeared.

Under this model, even if the advertisement is particularly well made, it will ruin the audience's mood.

What has changed now is that information flow ads are still there, but platforms and brands are co-creating content, integrating brands into content, and advertising and content are moving from opposition to integration.

Let’s talk about why we need to seize node traffic and how brands can integrate into the content ecosystem.

Below, enjoy:

Insight: Commercial Traffic Nodeization

Let’s talk about the trend first. Commercial traffic is being integrated and becoming increasingly node-intensive.

From the brand perspective, all major brands are creating festivals. Even if they are not creating festivals, there are more and more campaign projects, more and more marketing IPs and marketing nodes.

For example, Double 11, Black Friday, Christmas marketing, New Year’s Day, Spring Festival, Valentine’s Day and so on.

From the platform perspective, traffic nodes are becoming increasingly dense.

Whether it is a video content platform or an e-commerce platform, they are creating more and more traffic nodes. The marketing IP of the e-commerce platform and the content IP of the video platform are essentially integrating traffic through strong content and obtaining higher traffic premiums based on commercial purposes.

Therefore, from the brand demand side and the traffic supply side, both are promoting the nodeization of commercial traffic. It is already a consensus in the marketing industry that node traffic has more brand value.

More and more scenic spots are appearing on the long river of flow.

So what is the marketing value of node traffic and what brand problems can it solve?

One is peak attention: in the fragmented era, attention is scarce. Many users see the information but have no perception of it, so such dissemination is a waste of budget.

The problem solved by node peak traffic is to maximize traffic in a short period of time, break through the user's attention threshold, and allow the information to be remembered.

For the same resources, if you can accomplish it in one day, don’t spread it out over a week; if you can penetrate one platform, don’t spread it out over multiple platforms.

The second is strong content attributes: the reason why traffic is aggregated to form node peak traffic is the clear content attributes behind it. Different content attributes achieve different marketing purposes.

For example, Valentine's Day and the Spring Festival have different content attributes, entertainment content and interview content, interactive activities and live sales, etc. Different content attributes shape different brand temperaments.

It is essentially an evolution from placement to dissemination.

Advertising is necessary. When new information needs to be delivered quickly or when brand awareness needs to be expanded quickly, traffic can be placed without classification.

But brand communication is not enough. To build a brand, one must be picky about the attributes of content and traffic, have clear traffic nodes, and create a clear brand image.

This is the overall trend. In the future, there will be more and more node traffic to serve the different needs of different brands and users.

Next, we will move on to the specific strategies:

Integrate into the ecosystem and seize nodes

Next, let’s look at the perspective of content platforms and see how they can create traffic nodes and improve dissemination efficiency and traffic premium.

In terms of traffic commercialization, Bytedance is very successful, and the insight for this content also comes from Bytedance.

In the process of getting to know them, I found that whether it is content platforms such as Douyin, Toutiao or Xigua Video, the commercialization model is no longer simply based on traffic thinking. They are increasingly deploying commercial marketing content IP matrices based on marketing nodes, integrating traffic through content, and serving brand communication.

From traffic thinking to brand marketing .

From last year's New Year's Day to the Lantern Festival now, Bytedance has integrated the entire period into the "Bytedance New Year Season", outputting multiple content IPs, attracting more than 30 brands to participate in depth, and helping brands in multiple industries achieve their respective marketing goals.

Through the marketing strategy of this period, let’s talk about the value of node traffic and see how ByteDance thinks about the commercialization of content:

Integrate into the content ecosystem

First, penetrate a traffic pool and integrate into the content ecosystem.

Commercial advertisements, platform content and users are in a state of separation, which can only be called advertising placement, using traditional advertising strategies on new social media.

Brands need to integrate into the content ecosystem and communicate with users through dissemination.

The entire "ByteDance New Year Season" is carried out under the guidance of the "native, integrated, and scientific" marketing strategy system. Every implementation plan of more than 30 brands must be compared to see whether it meets these three standards.

Nativeness is based on the platform's expert ecology and content ecology. By continuously developing standardized interactive marketing products, it helps brands form scalable native content, which becomes long-lasting brand word-of-mouth content.

Integration means more integration, including various content forms such as pictures and texts of Toutiao, short videos of Douyin, and medium and long videos of Xigua Video, while connecting the conversion and e-commerce modules to help brands meet different marketing needs.

Scientification is the measurement support. Sub-brands of Bytedance, such as Bytedance Arithmetic, Bytedance Creativity, and Bytedance Cloud Map, have in-depth insights into the behavior of users on the platform, output forward-looking marketing reports, and assist brands in formulating more precise communication strategies.

Through these standards, we can see that Bytedance has evolved from traffic thinking to communication thinking, which is also the evolutionary direction of commercialization of Internet platforms.

Seize node traffic

Node traffic can either be created by yourself or by taking advantage of the platform's node traffic.

More and more brands have chosen to co-create big content with content platforms, using the power of the platforms to integrate traffic and content.

Back to the "ByteDance New Year Season", by creating a "full-node pulse marketing" system, the four core nodes from New Year's Day to Lantern Festival were accurately located, among which a total of 10 content IPs from 4 lines were presented, and 30+ brands participated in these node traffics, each completing its own Spring Festival marketing goals.

Including the influence line "Toutiao 2021 New Year's Speech", a high-end speech jointly launched by TV and the Internet after the Lantern Festival; on the entertainment line, there is the large-scale entertainment festival "Tik Tok Star Night" launched after New Year's Day, and "Star Year Gifts" launched during the Spring Festival, with stars presenting various New Year greetings; the interactive line's Spring Festival Gala red envelope battle, "Hometown Reunion Year" five innovative gameplays to create a golden marketing field for the brand; there is also the content IP line, including "New Year Time Machine" launched on New Year's Eve, and "Year of the Ox Friends Win Ten Million" launched during the Spring Festival.

These node traffics have different content attributes and form attributes. For example, if a brand needs to balance traffic exposure and user interaction, it can cooperate with the platform for large-scale interactive projects during the Spring Festival. If it needs to strengthen its own influence, it can choose a New Year's speech. If it needs trendy content to tell the brand's New Year story, there are many content IPs for customers to choose from.

Without introducing each brand case one by one, it can be seen that according to the "full-node pulse marketing" system of "ByteDance New Year Season", a variety of brand solutions are provided for important time nodes such as New Year's Day, New Year's Eve, New Year's Eve, and Spring Festival during the golden marketing period of the New Year season, which are optimized into personalized solutions for the brand based on the brand's specific marketing needs.

It is becoming more and more like content marketing and more and more like the business of an advertising company.

Create brand memory

Integrating content to seize nodes is to make the brand seen and remembered. Node content is like a scenic spot on a river of traffic. People will not remember an ordinary river, but they will remember a spectacular waterfall.

Think from a brand perspective, how to be more deeply remembered and promote action. My view is to integrate, establish a brand role, and become part of the content, rather than just being a sponsor.

There are even some node traffic that serve commercial brands themselves, such as the red envelope interaction during the Spring Festival Gala, which is a highly commercialized node. But at the content IP level, it is a more scenario-based integration into the brand, taking into account both user experience and brand appeal.

From the perspective of platform commercialization, the essence is to reintegrate scattered and smooth user traffic into clear content IP for more efficient commercial output.

To sum up

The Internet is inevitably becoming more fragmented, and in this environment, centralized node traffic is more scarce.

Marketing needs to deliver complete brand information and communicate fully with users. It requires complete attention and clear content attributes to achieve more efficient communication.

As Dylan Thomas said in his poem, "Do not go gentle into that good night." Burn, rage, shout, rage, shine, rejoice, but do not go gentle into that good night.

Now when we talk about Internet communication, there are countless creators, countless content, and endless information flows. Commercial advertisements are the most vulnerable and the easiest to be overlooked.

Our communication strategy can be loud, burning, firm, and shining... but we must not do lukewarm communication.

Therefore, the trend is very obvious. Brands create their own festivals, including Double 11, 618, etc., and conduct IP marketing, which are all traffic nodes centered on the brand.

From the traffic platform side, traffic is being integrated at an accelerated pace, creating more and more traffic nodes and commercializing more efficiently and on a larger scale.

For commercial platforms, if the number of daily active users is 100 million, the value of flat and featureless traffic is not high. However, by giving a name to these 100 million daily active users and integrating them with the content, the value to the brand will be more prominent.

So when Bytedance saw this trend, it developed a clear strategy to accelerate traffic integration throughout the Chinese New Year season. Under the native, integrated and scientific strategic logic, we output the "full-node pulse marketing" system to help brands integrate into the ecosystem and seize node traffic.

When making a communication strategy, first choose a main platform and penetrate a traffic pool. Communication should be focused, not scattered. It should reach 10,000 people instead of meaninglessly exposing 1 million people.

The second thing is to choose the highlight moment. There must be a node, which is the moment when the attention of the entire communication is most concentrated. This is what we call node traffic.

Because communication is not like a TV series, the audience will not follow it all the time. We need to do warm-up at the beginning and long-tail sedimentation at the end, and the core information is concentrated in the highlight moments.

To sum up, a few key words are: integrate into the content ecosystem, seize node traffic, create highlight moments, and precipitate brand memory.

Of course, these are all formal and strategic methods. The most important thing is the content itself, whether it can become node traffic and whether it is worthy of user attention.

above.

Author: Yang Buhuai

Source: Yang Buhuai