The most effective content marketing promotion skills and methods!

01. The History of Content Marketing

The term content marketing has been very popular in the past two years, but this idea may have existed fifty or sixty years ago. Ogilvy, the father of Ogilvy, put forward an idea called "advertising with editorial thinking" when Ogilvy was first founded. He found that the number of users who read articles in newspapers was six times that of those who viewed advertisements. At that time, he was already consciously using editorial thinking to advertise.

Many public accounts that talk about copywriting use two classic cases when promoting Ogilvy. One is the advertisement Ogilvy made for Rolls-Royce, and the other is called "The Man in the Hathaway Shirt". According to current logic, this is still a very classic content marketing copy.

Case: The man wearing a "Hathaway" shirt

Americans are finally beginning to realize the folly of buying a nice suit and ruining the whole effect by wearing a cheap shirt. Therefore, "Hathaway" shirts became popular among this class of people.

First of all, the Hathaway shirts are extremely durable - for many years. Second, because of the "Hathaway" cut - the low slung and "tailored" collar - it makes you look younger and more distinguished. The entire shirt is tailored with great care to make you more "comfortable". The hem is long and reaches deep into your waistband. The buttons were made of mother-of-pearl—very large and very manly. There was even a kind of antebellum elegance to the sewing.

The most important thing is that "Hathaway" uses the most famous cloths imported from all corners of the world to sew their shirts - cotton and wool blended twill from the UK, woolen rippled silk from Australd, Scotland, Sea Island cotton from the British West Indies, hand-woven silk from India, broadcloth from Manchester, England, and linen from Paris. Wearing such a perfect style of shirt will give you a lot of inner satisfaction. The "Hathaway" shirts are made by devoted craftsmen from a small company in the small town of Waltaway, Maine. They, young and old, have been working there for 114 years.

If you would like to purchase a Hathaway shirt at the store nearest you, please write a postcard to "G. F. Hathaway," Wortville, Maine.

In the first paragraph, Ogilvy showed everyone the "impact of adverse consequences". He told users that if you buy a good suit but pair it with a cheap shirt, it will ruin your overall image. According to the idea of ​​content marketing, this is to attract users with curiosity in the first stage so that users can continue to read on.

In the second part, he told users that Hathaway shirts are particularly durable and their tailoring and overall craftsmanship are very appealing to users, which made them interested in buying the shirts.

The third part is that the raw materials for this shirt are shipped from all over the world, from England, India, Manchester, and Paris - this is what is now called "endorsement". The e-commerce industry particularly likes endorsements, such as my raw materials are developed by scientists and research institutes, my formula is the same as high-end cosmetics, and so on.

Finally, the users are harvested directly. In the past, the users could only place orders by writing letters, but now it is different. After being attracted by the products, users can place orders immediately. They can also get limited-time discounts, gifts, and other limited-time offers when purchasing immediately. Merchants have directly realized the harvest.

"Ogilvy on Advertising" and "Shi Yuzhu's Autobiography: My Marketing Experience"

In China 20 years ago, Shi Yuzhu had already put Ogilvy's approach to full use. In 1998, when he started his business in Jiangyin, he published a lot of traditional media, such as newspapers. The copywriting he wrote for Melatonin is very classic. When we saw Melatonin advertised on TV, it was already at the peak stage of development. Television advertising is relatively expensive. In the early stages of marketing, Melatonin mainly relied on content marketing, which was much cheaper than TV channels.

His famous work is called "Woman 40". This book is basically the same as Ogilvy's. He points out that when women reach a certain age, they will experience various physical changes such as sagging skin and poor sleep, which gives the audience an "adverse consequence" and causes women to panic and think that they do have such problems. At this time, Shi Yuzhu tells you that to overcome these problems you should take Melatonin and start taking it. Finally, he will use the words of an American expert to endorse the benefits of Melatonin. No one knows who this expert is. But as long as it is endorsed by experts, everyone thinks that Melatonin is very good.

We can find that no matter whether it was 60 years ago, 20 years ago, or now, everyone is using a content-based mindset to do advertising and marketing to achieve the ultimate commercial goal - selling goods. So what is the difference between content marketing and traditional marketing as we understand it?

02. Content Marketing VS Traditional Marketing

First of all, the two marketing methods have different ways of occupying the users’ minds.

Traditional marketing captures the user's mind through intensive advertising bombardment, which may be three times in seven days, and repeated advertising using memory thinking methods for a month. The Boss Direct Hiring advertisement during last year's World Cup was remembered in this way, but word of mouth may not be good.

Content marketing is different. It achieves commercial goals indirectly by meeting user needs and solving user problems. Zui'e Niang, a wine video blogger on Weibo, has more than one million followers on Weibo, and the number of readers of each of her articles on WeChat is basically around 10,000, and not even 100,000+ for each article. But the annual sales of her store on Tmall are in the tens of millions. She delivers value to users by posting wine tasting videos and sharing how to buy good wine. Users are willing to pay only if their problems are solved.

Secondly, the two marketing methods rely on different product advantages.

In traditional marketing, when users buy products on Taobao, the first step is always to search. For example, when users buy craft beer, they first search for craft beer, and then measure which brand product is better based on several dimensions such as price, monthly sales and reviews. In this process, price is a relatively important advantage, otherwise e-commerce platforms would not offer crazy discounts during the 6.18 and Double 11 periods.

Traditional marketing delivers price advantages to users

But content marketing is not like that. Content marketing attracts users by delivering product value. There is a brand in the craft beer field called "Zebra Craft Beer", and its founder is also the co-founder of "Call a Duck". Last year, Zebra Craft Beer generated sales of RMB 342,000 through a WeChat article, with a very high ROI.

This article tells users the difference between craft beer and ordinary beer, the original intention of the craft beer founder, the special features of the entire process and factory procedures, etc. In this process, users will ignore the price of the product and pay for its value.

Third, the two marketing methods have different communication effects.

Traditional marketing can be easily blocked. We are exposed to a lot of advertisements every day, and basically we either don’t watch them or close them immediately after watching them. But content marketing is softer and is particularly easy to be shared by users. For example, in "A Bite of China", there is a typical example "Zhangqiu Iron Pot".

In the 2017 Taobao Maker Festival, the Zhangqiu iron wok was not yet on the market. The Taobao Maker Festival lasts for three days, and this store only repeats one action every day: banging the pot. When people walk into the Maker Festival, they can hear the sound of pots banging. Because he said it takes 36,000 knocks to make a pot. The banging sound of the pot was very loud, and the pot was very expensive, so I wondered how I could sell the pot, and indeed the sales were not good in those three days.

But after the Zhangqiu iron wok appeared on "A Bite of China", everyone turned this iron wok into something more worthy of showing off than Melatonin. If you could buy this pot, you would be happier than buying limited edition cosmetics. You would actively spread the word about this pot and forward its articles and advertisements everywhere. At this point everyone will find that content actually plays a big role.

03. How to conduct content marketing

Content marketing can be simply summarized into two key words: content production and content distribution.

1. Content Production

First, content production requires the use of keywords.

How to produce good content? Small pot tea is a good example.

From a marketing perspective, Xiaoguan Tea is indeed doing quite well. Xiaoguan Tea has invited eight masters to offer you a cup of good Chinese tea. If there was only one master here, it wouldn't feel like much. At the same time, the overall image design is very similar to Chinese Kung Fu, and the masters are all relatively old, which is also a little trick.

Marketing case: Xiaoguan Tea

Xiaoguan Tea made a video to tell how to find these masters and their tea-making techniques. Some keywords are worth learning, such as "I have been making tea for 60 years", which is a trust endorsement for users. Xiaoguan Tea likes to tell stories with numbers. It walked 30,000 kilometers, visited 8 masters, and took so many hours. This hour was measured in tens of thousands of kilometers and recorded in minutes, which would shock everyone.

Second, content production needs to provide good scenarios.

Brands like to provide a scenario when doing content marketing. When Dove appears, there must be a couple; Lee Kum Kee is tied to family; Wong Lo Kat appears together with hotpot and friends’ reunion; lipstick must be paired with a beautiful woman, because what is being sold is not the lipstick, but the girls’ desire to become beautiful.

Lipstick with beauty scene

Including WeChat businessmen, they are not selling goods, but selling the dream of getting rich. I have talked with many micro-businesses. What is the difference between micro-businesses and private domain traffic? They say the biggest difference is that WeChat businesses do not sell goods, but the dream of getting rich. Moreover, most of the goods sold by WeChat businesses are not circulated to ordinary consumers. Because of their dreams, they are hoarded in the hands of agents and become a circulating currency.

Third, content production requires exploring creative points.

Content marketing should find a very creative point to enter. For example, in the dairy industry, brands are all talking about their own milk, pastures, production processes, and sterilization technologies, but users have become numb to this information.

This milk brand also talks about cows, but it tells the details of the growth process from the perspective of the cow's growth experience, such as what kind of grass it eats and what kind of air it breathes. The brand highlights milk by telling the story of the cow.

There is a particularly classic Japanese advertisement that shows a chicken with two chopsticks stuck on its back, telling the story of a chicken's journey. The chicken said, "I'm going to the kebab shop." Then he traveled all the way from the chicken coop to the kebab shop and reported to the boss, "I'm here." This highlighted that the chicken was free-range and proved that the raw materials for the kebabs were very good.

2. Content Distribution

First, a large channel is not necessarily a good channel.

Many Party A brands like to advertise on the “big accounts” of WeChat public accounts. But we found that large channels are not necessarily the best channels. Big accounts all have their own tone. They need to write some of their own content at the beginning of the article, then build an emotional line, list seven or eight stories, and finally introduce the brand products.

For a large account like this, it is very good to make some investments based on the brand, but if you hope to harvest and achieve e-commerce conversion through the large account, it will basically have no effect.

Second, the more precise the channel, the better the effect.

When we want to place food advertisements, apart from vertical accounts and large accounts, we may not think of looking for beauty and fashion accounts, but in fact these accounts are also very effective solutions.

How would bloggers write advertisements for food or beauty products? For example, when Tmall was promoting premium hairy crabs, beauty bloggers would take particularly beautiful photos of the products. Users don’t need to read the text, they will want to place an order just by looking at the pictures.

Therefore, the top channel is not necessarily a good channel. The more precise the channel, the better the effect.

Third, be cautious when choosing an MCN account that suddenly appears.

Brands are also dealing with many MCN agencies. If this MCN account is one that has suddenly become popular within the past year, no matter it has 50,000+, 60,000+, or 100,000+, in order to avoid stepping on landmines, just don't choose it. The data may look very good, with emotional accounts having over 100,000 followers, but basically, investing in them will lead to failure. For accounts that have been in operation for two or three years, the probability of brand failure is basically very low.

Fourth, bloggers with personal personas are more effective.

The promotion effect will be better for bloggers with personal profiles. For lipsticks, blushers, and products with particularly good appearance designs, using too many words in the copy is not actually effective. You must use a large number of pictures to attract target users. Tmall once used different accounts to promote the same lipstick. Compared with articles with a lot of text to describe the product, directly posting pictures on WeChat has a higher conversion rate. Therefore, the effectiveness of the delivery does not entirely depend on the quality of the account, but more on what kind of content can better attract the brand's target users.

For products with eye-catching appearance, more pictures should be used in the copy

From 2018 to date, Perfect Diary and HFP have been very popular in the beauty and fashion circles. Perfect Diary made its fortune on Xiaohongshu and does not have a widely used WeChat account. Because it is a cosmetics brand, users will be more easily attracted by directly posting exquisite pictures of lipsticks and blushes than telling stories to users with the same amount of text. HFP focuses on skin care products, and users will pay more attention to product safety. In marketing, it is more appropriate for brands to tell users about functional topics, such as how advanced the laboratory is and how good the ingredients of the product are. This goal can be achieved through long pictures and texts on WeChat.

04. Content Marketing

1. Content marketing strategy: make good products + tell good stories

In content marketing, I think the two most important points are: first, the brand must have good products; second, the brand must tell a good story. A good product is the foundation upon which the story is built.

Storytelling is not limited to the product itself. The story of the founder, the story of the product process assembly line, and even the story of the place of origin can all be spread to users. Why do brands have to tell stories? Because it has to do with human nature. People have been listening to stories told by their parents and people around them since they were young, so when they grow up, users still like brands to tell stories.

2. Pay close attention to changes in the environment

As for content marketing, we must pay attention to changes in the environment. First, the content form, second, the distribution channel, and third, the target audience.

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Author: Copywriter and Art

Source: Copywriting and Art