4000 words of super detailed "content marketing" precise customer acquisition method

According to a survey conducted by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 9 out of 10 marketers in any size company will choose content marketing.

As Internet technology becomes more and more sophisticated and more and more companies engage in marketing, traffic and dividends are becoming less accessible than before, which in turn leads to higher costs. With the birth of social media, only high-quality content can attract users' attention. Therefore, it is particularly important for brands to produce high-quality content.

What is content marketing?

The official definition of the Content Marketing Institute: Content marketing is the production of high-quality content by brand owners through all media platforms and channels and pushing it to users, which should include a series of behaviors such as relationship management, user value and measurable standards.

In short, content marketing is different from other user guidance strategies in that it is about "giving to users" rather than "asking for" from users. That is, a marketing method in which a brand uses various media platforms and channels to produce some high-quality content and then push it to users.

For a business, the process of arranging and outputting content so that users can discover you, find you, believe in you, and be willing to pay for your products is a means of acquiring customers.

Why do content marketing?

In today's era of lack of high-quality content, users are not happy with any traditional feed-style ads or hard-selling content. In fact, users are more inclined to consume high-quality content that is truly valuable. On the other hand, they are no longer satisfied with just being passive recipients of content. They are more willing to be content producers and commentators on their own media platforms.

Why is "content marketing" so important? Based on more than 20 years of marketing experience, the author summarizes the following points:

01|Content marketing is a scalable long-term strategy

02|Content marketing helps improve brand image and increase trust

03|Content marketing can build long-term relationships with users

04|Content marketing can bring long-term and accurate traffic

How to do content marketing well?

After understanding what content marketing is and why we should do content marketing, companies will definitely ask: How can content marketing get the expected ROI (return on investment)?

Today I will share with you methods of content marketing from three aspects. When companies are doing content marketing, they can directly apply them to acquire customers accurately and obtain higher returns.

01|What content is more likely to attract customers

02|How to produce good content based on existing content

03|How to get more exposure

01|What content is more likely to attract customers

Generally speaking, common content is divided into: basic content, daily content and high-quality customer acquisition content. Among them, cases are the most important form of customer acquisition.

Basic content: PPTs, copywriting, etc., such as company introduction, product introduction/solution introduction and customer success stories. All companies should be equipped with these contents.

Daily content: refers to the content that the company outputs on a daily basis, including corporate news, columns, customer success stories, industry information and analysis, methodological articles, etc.

Corporate news: Corporate financing information, customer contract information, strategic cooperation information, and product dynamics information can all enhance user confidence, relieve concerns, and trigger a sense of urgency in customers. By relying on high-profile partners to output content, the company's visibility can be further enhanced and the customer acquisition rate can be increased. When writing this type of content, focus on creating value for customers and showcase major updates.

Column: Column is a form of carrier of relatively high-quality content. Generally there are boss columns/executive columns/big shot columns. When writing, topics should be selected based on the company's core business positioning. However, it is generally difficult to invite big names to help with this type of column at the beginning, so companies should regularly sort out their customer resources and learn to use them reasonably.

Customer success stories: Topics are generally selected from three aspects: industry, customer business scenarios, and product/solution directions. Generally speaking, for To B companies, packaging cases is a routine action, but when doing so, they also need to make trade-offs and priorities based on the company's business development direction.

Industry information and analysis: starting from the company's core business positioning, industry hot spots, customer dynamics and information, in-depth analysis and trend interpretation. According to a WeChat research report, long articles with in-depth analysis have a higher forwarding rate. You can write them based on topics of concern to the industry. In addition, trend interpretation is information that bosses are more concerned about.

Methodology articles: This is the largest type of content that is output daily. When producing, it is important to base it on solving user problems.

High-quality content: more suitable for customer acquisition purposes. Topics are selected from several aspects including sharing courses/books, publications/white papers/case studies, etc.

How to judge whether you can get customers

Whether the content quality can exceed users' expectations of the content, whether the content can help customers solve key problems, and whether the content plays an important role for customers are judged from three dimensions to determine whether the content can increase the company's customer acquisition rate.

The choice of topic is only one aspect; the key lies in the quality of the content.

02|How to produce good content based on existing content

After learning how to select topics, you should start producing content. We will share the above-mentioned four contents: industry white papers, courses, books/publications and case analysis.

Industry White Paper:

Step 1: Collect relevant content and data from foreign websites and media organizations

Step 2: Afterwards, add the company’s interpretation and understanding of its content to form a white paper with corporate style

Product related courses:

Find PPTs with company-related content, such as: industry pain points, industry trends, solutions, cases, company introductions, product introductions, etc., reorganize and optimize them, and continuously form new PPT content.

When developing course content, you may want to break down a large topic into smaller ones and divide the work internally, with each person completing the corresponding part of the course content, and then one person integrating it at the end.

Books/Publications:

01. The boss and partners publish books

02. After sorting out the enterprise or product framework, carry out internal division of labor and fill in and publish the content

03. Organize the PPT or lecture recordings and hand them over to a third party for publication

04. Invite external experts to conduct interviews and publish books

Case analysis:

01. Make multiple cases into a case set

02. Share the client’s case closing PPT and make it into audio, video, or text

03. External reporters and KOLs interview bosses, executives, etc.

03|How to get more exposure

After the content is completed, you have to consider the distribution of the content. Only by forming a good distribution matrix can more people see the content produced by the company, thereby increasing the company's exposure.

No matter what size the company is, if it wants to use "content marketing" to acquire customers, then the matrix of the content platform must be planned. Only by operating multiple accounts independently can the "content" gain more attention. For different platforms, content distribution needs to be combined with the styles and target audiences of different platforms in order to gain better attention. Of course, if a company wants to build brand awareness, some fixed opening and closing remarks still need to appear repeatedly in the content to form an impression on users.

Of course, when operating a platform, you must have the following four core capabilities:

1. Understanding of the platform

When doing content operation and distribution, you must have a deep understanding of the platform's review mechanism, crowd preferences, platform strength and trends, so that you can achieve personalized creation when producing content.

2. Cross-platform integration capabilities

When an enterprise engages in content operation, the efficiency of the platform should be 1+1>2. Content distribution cannot be carried out simply for the sake of distributing on multiple platforms. It is necessary to integrate across platforms and perform matrix operations in a linked manner to enable the platform to exert greater efficiency.

3. Platform data driving force

Only by conducting a data-based survey of the platform, drawing up a user portrait, and then distributing content across platform channels for different audiences can we reach users more accurately.

On a daily basis, it is necessary to organize and compare data from each platform, and to adjust the layout in a timely manner based on experience + data-based operations.

4. Focus 80% of your energy on no more than 3 platforms

In content operations, the focus is not only on coverage, but more importantly on making the content good and in-depth so as to effectively form user reputation in the long term and thus acquire customers.

04|How to obtain more user leads through channel promotion

The purpose of "content marketing" is to increase the rate of accurate customer acquisition. Therefore, whether it is content selection, content production, or content distribution, the ultimate goal is to obtain user leads and convert them into corporate users.

When doing content marketing, it is often not possible to acquire customers in one go. When designing a customer acquisition path, it is often necessary to sort out past logic, break down the target problem, and conduct multiple tests and adjustments before the goal of acquiring customers can be achieved.

Among them, "selecting incentives" and "selecting appropriate customer acquisition paths" are the basic steps in acquiring customers. Only products that are strongly relevant to users and attractive to them can interest users.

Select incentives:

Regardless of which platform, it is necessary to trigger users' purchasing behavior. Generally speaking, factors that can trigger user desires can be divided into two parts: "common inducements" and "stimulation points".

Common causes:

1. Use industry white papers/e-books and other professional in-depth content to attract the attention of To B users

2. Use customer success stories to induce

3. Output industry information and solutions to help users solve existing problems

4. Use tool packages and courses to guide and assist users in solving problems

Stimulating point:

Generally speaking, limited-time/limited-amount/free offers and trials can quickly obtain customer information, while additional services, discounts, etc. are also good choices, especially for companies to gain customer attention in a long-term and stable manner.

Common customer acquisition paths:

For To B companies, the commonly used customer acquisition paths are nothing more than:

1. How to obtain positioning clues

2. Match target optimization and choose appropriate channels

3. Choose your ad location

4. Optimize the method of collecting clues

5. Collect data and continuously optimize

How to obtain positioning clues

Leaving clues in your own product selection form or guiding users to register are both good ways to obtain positioning leads. However, when guiding users, overly strong advertising information can easily make users feel disgusted. Therefore, when adopting this type of approach, we should also start from the standpoint of solving user problems and avoid being too eager for quick success.

Channel Selection

When choosing a channel, you must first identify the target audience and the key people to connect with. For example, if you are negotiating with a To B company, the channels and methods required will be very different depending on whether the person you are connecting with is the boss or the sales manager. However, official owned channels, KOLs and vertical media, and top traffic platforms are all channels that the public often browses and pays attention to. Therefore, when companies distribute content, they might as well choose this type of platform.

Select ad location

Different channels and advertising positions have different costs. When choosing an advertising position, you should first clarify the user group and purpose, then calculate the upper limit of the cost, study the rules of each platform, and finally analyze and screen based on experience and data.

Finally, for the already perfected "content marketing" plan, continuous data collection and optimization adjustments will be carried out to acquire customers more efficiently and accurately.

Nickname: Miss Treasure Box

Source: Lu Songsong's blog