How to master content marketing thinking?

How to infect our users through content, how to help users change themselves for the better, and even call on them to contribute themselves and reach a certain level of value change, this is the most important part when we are thinking about how to connect with users.

1. What is content marketing ?

What is content marketing ? It is to create content that is relevant, valuable and attractive to consumers, and share this content with our target audience, so as to attract them to buy through this content, or to attract existing customers to buy again. This way of thinking is content marketing.

The understanding of content marketing in China is very confusing. You can search and find many explanations. In fact, many of these explanations are misleading, and several distorted explanations can be found:

The first misinterpretation is that content marketing is social marketing ; the second misinterpretation is that content marketing is content planning; the third misinterpretation is that content marketing is film and television implantation. In fact, explaining content marketing in such a simple and low-end way makes it seem incredible to us who are into content marketing. But in fact, these are just misinterpretations of the concept by many marketers in order to promote their own business. Let us first analyze with you which are the real masters of content marketing and which are the fake masters of content marketing.

Misunderstanding 1: The difference between content marketing and social marketing

Social marketing refers to creating some interesting ideas on social media such as Weibo, forums, etc., and shaping brand preferences by spreading these ideas. Content marketing is to place the main battlefield of communication on our own official website. This is very critical: placing the main battlefield of communication on the official website of communication, which is also the biggest difference between content marketing and other marketing methods.

This has several advantages. The first is that we have our own media. Through long-term dissemination, we develop our own media into an information portal for vertical categories. We operate our own dissemination from the perspective of media operation , thereby establishing our image and improving this year. Another advantage is that it has no restrictions.

The second benefit is that you can think about it. When we place a lot of advertisements and spend a lot of money on advertising in other media, once we stop investing, will all the advertisements stop? Consumers will not be able to access our information. However, if we develop our own media into a portal for a vertical industry, consumers can get our information at any time through search. This is its second and greatest benefit.

The third advantage is that there is no 140-character limit like on Weibo, and there is no distraction to users such as video borders. Therefore, these three advantages fully demonstrate that content marketing is not social marketing, and it is very different from social marketing.

Misunderstanding 2: It’s actually content marketing, not content planning

In fact, there are many people doing content planning work in companies, such as archiving and other such work. Content planning is to classify and organize various information about a company's products or brands, including text, pictures, and videos, and plan them, and then publish them.

Content marketing is about creating the content that users are looking for with precise and targeted content through in-depth understanding of customers, and subtly guiding users to make purchases by solving practical problems for them.

The biggest difference is that it is self-centered, while content marketing is user- and consumer-centered, with the starting point of solving problems for consumers.

Misunderstanding 3: Many people say that content marketing is just product placement in movies and TV series

I know a lot of companies that do film and television marketing. In order to promote the film and television product placement business to their clients, they say that film and television product placement is content marketing, because content marketing is still very popular abroad.

In fact, it is not like that at all. What is the form of film and television implantation? Film and television implantation is a very rudimentary form of traditional marketing. Strictly speaking, it is to implant product information (such as product packaging, product brand) into a certain plot through payment. This form of passive implantation and strong promotion is a traditional form of communication, and it has nothing to do with content marketing.

The reason why many advertising companies promote and distort this concept is very simple and their purpose is to promote their own film and television product placement business. However, this will cause a big misunderstanding to consumers and marketing practitioners.

2. Create a content marketing strategy

After reading this what is wrong content marketing, let’s take a look at what real content marketing is?

Content marketing is a marketing method that does not involve marketing. It influences potential and existing users by creating valuable, targeted, and attention-grabbing information without interfering with users. Basically, you can create a content marketing strategy in four steps.

The first step in creating a content marketing strategy is to understand what problems your customers are facing. The key point here is to provide users with solutions rather than product information.

Many people think that the solution is to package their own product into a self-speaking solution, and then sell the unchanged solution to potential audiences. This method is wrong. It is still a very traditional and forceful marketing method.

The biggest difference between content marketing and traditional marketing is that one starts from the practical perspective of solving problems, while the other starts from the perspective of selling products. The purpose of content marketing is to provide potential consumers with practical solutions rather than selling products. This method may include training, products, and services.

Of course, the solution may also include competitors' products, not just your own products.

The second step is to consider what benefits can be brought to users and present them directly and concisely. In fact, the entire communication environment is very oversupplied, and information is very oversupplied. If we cannot grab the user's attention within 9 seconds, we will most likely lose him.

Just like we are in the consulting industry, what people care about is not the consulting process, but what kind of benefits the consulting can bring to them. We often see many products that are about convenience, money saving, smarter and so on. Because a lot of people are no longer interested in these piled-up, vague and gorgeous words and articles, they have become very tired and make consumers feel no stimulation from these words.

The third step is to turn owned media into the entrance to the category. Our traditional marketing method was to release pre-planned ideas, advertisements, etc. through many media.

But content marketing is different. Content marketing uses our content to attract users and draw them to our own platform. In this way, over time we will establish an industry vertical portal. The benefit of this has been mentioned just now. It allows consumers to find our information even when we do not have the budget. This is just like Alibaba has acquired many content media, such as Century Media and Wanda’s acquisition of China Times. It is the same, with the same intention.

There is another thing. In fact, whether it is content marketing or other operations, there is a very important point, which is to pay attention to details. For example, our title , is it attractive enough, but not making people feel that it is clickbait ? Using clickbait too much can cause many side effects.

The second is whether there are some hooks. Can the hooks of our language stimulate consumers' desire to buy?

The third thing to consider is the scenario in which users use our content - in what scenario and at what time they will receive our information and then use our information. The third thing is to have a call to action. What is this? It may quickly stimulate consumers to buy our products. Okay, let us tell you a case and explain to you what is a practical method of content marketing.

Communication will encounter many obstacles, and there are several prominent problems. The first problem is that the audience has opened the information barrier. For example, the Internet generates tens of billions of pieces of information every day, but less than 9% of it is actually processed. Why? In order to better obtain information, the brain automatically sets up a filtering system, which automatically blocks out information that is irrelevant to it and that it does not want to receive. At this time, we have to find a way to let consumers actively search for our information. For example, let me tell you a story. There was a joke. A teacher was giving a lecture, and the student below was playing with his mobile phone.

The teacher was explaining a text about "Dates". While the teacher was explaining, a student was playing with his mobile phone. The teacher got very angry and said to Zhang San, "Please repeat what I just said." Zhang San became confused and said to the teacher, "Teacher, you said 'Give me a date'." The teacher got very angry, threw the eraser at him and said, "I'll give you a pear." At this time, many people actually do not have a state of information focus and concentration. It is difficult to reach such a state. So how to do it? Stimulate them to actively search for our information.

The second important issue is the serious fragmentation of the media. In the past, we often used a method of advertising called screen domination, which means that we simultaneously placed advertisements on various mobile terminals, PC terminals, and even TV terminals, and they were overwhelming in one day.

For example, how I first promoted it in 2000 was to hire lots of migrant workers in the middle of the night and cover the entire city with advertising banners, lanterns, etc. When citizens woke up the next day, they found the entire city was red, in an overwhelming way. This method is completely impossible to do now because the media is too fragmented.

The third problem is that brands are no longer controlled by companies. Brands are no longer controlled by enterprises. Let me tell you a funny story: Wanda invested billions in Wuhan to develop a project called "Han Show". The project was really good, but at the beginning, many aspects were not very satisfactory. At this time, our young master Wang Sicong went to the Han Show to watch the show. Of course, he was very dissatisfied after watching it. He thought that our investment of billions was not as good as the investment of several hundred million abroad. So he posted a message on Weibo saying that I think the "Han Show" is too poor and I am not satisfied at all. At this time, many of his wives thought, "Oh, husband, you are so fair and just." There were thousands of comments.

Then these wives began to think, “Oh, Wang Sicong, I love you so much, husband, I really like you, you are putting justice above your own, this is worth learning from”, and just after thousands of comments, we have an employee of Wuhan Han Show who said, “Wang Sicong, you are so stupid, you can’t see it anyway when I scold you”, and said some unpleasant things.

Then, I never expected that many, many wives would like this very bad comment. As a result, this comment was pushed to the top. The person who wrote the comment was certified as an employee of Wuhan Wanda Han Show. This shows a problem: our information is no longer controlled by ourselves, and our company's brand information is no longer controlled by us. Instead, it is controlled by those fans and netizens.

3. Direct Relationship with the Audience

Our relationship with our audience can basically be divided into three levels. The first level is "pan-relationship", which refers to those people who have no contact with or knowledge of our brand. What should we do at this level? We need to open their information barriers and let them find and accept our information. What is the method? I would summarize it in two words: "hookup".

The second level is called "weak relationship". The weak relationship level is when people have awareness, contact, and a certain understanding of our brand, but have not yet formed a strong stickiness. What should we do at this time? We should create topics and use the same topics and the same interests to open up the context of this brand. I have summarized it in two words: "play".

The third level is "strong relationship", which is to make consumers feel that they own your brand and give them a legitimate identity.

There is a magazine that I don’t know if you are familiar with. It is a very famous comic magazine in Japan called “Jump Square”. In fact, it ceased publication a long time ago because traditional paper printed magazines no longer had room to survive under the impact of the Internet. But later, the president felt that this kind of paper magazine was something with deep feelings, and everyone knew that this kind of sentimental thing was becoming popular again, so he wanted to revive the publication. The president set the distribution target at 500,000 copies. At that time, the circulation in Japan was around 200,000 copies, which means that the entire task exceeded the average circulation by more than double.

At that time, Dentsu was trying to achieve this mission and goal. In addition to attracting fans who attached great importance to comics, it also had to attract 300,000 new readers. This task was extremely arduous. How could we arouse the interest of those who originally had no knowledge of Jump Square? How could we do this? We thought of a very simple but very radical method.

We did this the opposite way. Many people would use Internet media, but this time we used traditional media. We put out a very simple ad at midnight. The ad was very simple. You can imagine that it was a gray background with only four words on it: "Important Notice". It was very simple. You can imagine that in many foreign media environments, which are different from those in China, most of them are TV shopping programs at midnight, which are very rough and messy ads. But we put out a very simple ad, which was very attractive. It only had four words on it: "Important Notice".

The most powerful one is the second picture. The second picture says this. Please do not search Jump Square on the Internet. Think about it. People are actually very rebellious. When I was a child, there were often fairs in my hometown. There were many large tents with videos played in them. There was a sign hanging at the door. What was it called? It says "No entry for persons under 18 years old". You can imagine that when many people see this sign, they will wonder whether they want to go in or not. People are very rebellious. The more you don't want them to do something, the more they want to do it.

So you can imagine what they will do when they see this "Please do not search for Jump Square on the Internet".

The next picture is that you can only understand him through reading. The focus of this sentence is on the word "reading". Reading is a word that is both unfamiliar and familiar. You can think about how long it has been since we last read through paper books. We now read through e-books and the Internet. When we read on paper, it immediately gives us a very emotional feeling. The next picture is that Jump Square will be open on November 2nd. When this advertisement was released , there were still more than 20 days away from November 2nd. You can imagine those super comic fans, can they wait? They certainly can't wait, they will do something right away. What do they do?

I think you have all guessed it. These comic fans immediately went to search, but when they searched, they suddenly found that the website had really been shut down and there was no information at all, except for the title. Many people are puzzled at this time, saying that the website was still open a few days ago, why is it stopped now? It was too strange. While he was stunned, several pictures appeared on the website, including classic comic characters and a letter of apology. The letter said, "Don't search for Jump Square, it will be launched on November 2." Many of those who were not heavy comic fans left, but many people who liked comics very much continued to search like crazy. When he continued to search, a sentence appeared.

When they searched frantically, a sentence appeared, which was "We are completely impressed by your persistence." Then, a lot of content about the first issue appeared, such as writers, cartoonists, videos, and comic characters. Think about it, when many fans go through a lot of hardships to get these contents, they will do another thing, what is that thing? It is sharing. He would immediately share it with his friends, saying “I went through so much hardship and got so much good information about Jump Square.”

We can see the process from beginning to end, from attracting users to search to finally attracting them to share, we have completed a very good wire transmission design.

4. Content Marketing Communication Strategy

In the entire communication process, there is a very critical point, that is, the entire communication strategy is to attract users from traditional media to our own official website, rather than to websites such as Weibo. Why?

As I said just now, we want to build our website into a portal, a gathering place for information. In the future, when consumers or our fans want to find similar content, they can quickly optimize to our website through search. Over time, we will become an authoritative publishing platform in this vertical field.

There are two key points in the entire communication process. The first point is to attract users to search for our information and let them actively obtain our information instead of forcing it to be pushed to them. As I said just now, many people have set up an information blocking system. When you release strong information, they will not accept it. On the contrary, when you attract them to search, they will easily accept it. The second action is to stimulate them to share. When we set up a link or a mechanism to allow your fans and users to share, our communication will have the ability of self-marketing. I have always suggested that many companies set up two important positions that users can accept, one is the Chief Surprise Officer and the other is called the Chief Surprise Officer. The Chief Surprise Officer is responsible for attracting people and stimulating consumers to share.

The case we just shared is about using content marketing thinking to attract users to our official website. Over time, our official website is built into a portal information platform. This is the first step, called "hooking up." How to hook up with people at the general relationship level is what we just talked about.

Next, let’s talk about “playing”, which is how to create a brand context that allows us to play with people at the weak relationship level.

Many friends know that Wanda is doing e-commerce business. Last year when I went home for the Spring Festival, my leader assigned us an assignment and asked each of us to summarize a classic O2O case. I found many classic O2O cases. In fact, it is really difficult to succeed. Some people say that O2O is on line to off line, but others say it is open to over. The faster you open, the faster you die. At that time, I really didn’t find any particularly good cases in Beijing, but when I returned to my hometown, I found a very good case, which is the convenience store owned by my cousin.

My cousin’s convenience store is very interesting. In fact, there are many such small convenience stores around, but his is the only one that is particularly popular. I would like to ask you why this convenience store is so popular? He told me that what he has is actually the real O2O. He said that he uses WeChat to spread his message and build groups online, and he has a physical store offline, where he can deliver goods to homes or to customers who want to pick up the goods in the store. Payment is made through red envelopes, which is very simple. A closed loop is all it takes, and a very embryonic O2O e-commerce is formed. But the key is not here, because anyone can do these things. The reason why it is so popular is that it is a lottery community.

Let me tell you another interesting case, which is about Li Yundi. When Li Yundi just started to become popular, I wrote an article analyzing Li Yundi, and it was widely circulated that night. Everyone is very concerned about this pair of good friends. You may have an impression of how Li Yundi became popular at that time. It seemed that he suddenly appeared in your own world. In fact, he became popular because of his good friend, Wang Leehom. Why did he cling to Wang Leehom? Many people said that Li Yundi was already very famous before. He would give this kind of piano concert every year. But you can think about it. The concerts Li Yundi gave before 2012 were all for a few hundred people, but after December 31, 2012, all his concerts were for tens of thousands of people.

How to make up for such a huge gap? He thought of a way, which was to cling to Leehom Wang, because he had very few fans at the time, while Leehom Wang had a lot of fans, tens of millions of them. He started to cling to Wang Leehom, and then the most popular time, you may all remember, was on Thanksgiving Day, when Li Yundi posted a Weibo about a Thanksgiving family dinner. As you may know, Thanksgiving is a very important holiday in the West, second only to Christmas , just like China's Mid-Autumn Festival. On this day, families from all over the country get together for a family dinner. But we accidentally discovered this photo of Li Yundi's family dinner, and found a person who shouldn't be there, that is Wang Leehom. At this time, many people had wild imaginations, and with some suggestive comments from some promoters, the rumor began to spread.

Later, Li Yundi used Southern Metropolis Entertainment Weekly, Weibo, and many opinion leaders to spread the news of his concert at the end of the year. After many media hyped up the topic of this good friend, his number of fans and the amount of publicity continued to increase, and this concert at the end of the year was also very popular.

I just talked about two cases, one is about lottery e-commerce and the other is about Li Yundi. These two cases illustrate a problem, that is, at the "weak relationship" level, that is, when consumers (or your fans) have a certain understanding of you, we have to throw out many topics, constantly give them a sense of freshness, let them play, that is, let them participate.

For example, you may now know JD.com , Liu Qiangdong and Milk Tea Sister. He constantly throws out a lot of topics, which saves the company a lot of money on traffic and eliminates the need to purchase traffic. Then a lot of traffic is attracted. This is playing with topics with your fans, allowing those who understand the topic to comment, participate and forward together. This is how to play with your fans in the field of weak relationships.

5. Strong and Weak Relationship Marketing

In fact, you can see that Li Yundi is very particular about communication. His outfit is basically the same every time. His slogan is "China's Chopin" and "Prince of Piano". His clothes and hairstyle are very similar to Chopin's. This is a very concise way of communication, like a knife blade, very fast and penetrating, with a unified visual image.

For example, Chaplin, it’s hard to imagine, right? Why didn't Chaplin use his handsome image? Because he wanted to create the image of a world drama master, he didn't want to be a handsome guy. This is why his content and his image form a good unity.

Let’s take a look at how “strong relationships” give consumers a sense of “identity” and a feeling that they own a brand. Do you know that Coca-Cola did not register a Facebook homepage in the early days? When it wanted to register one day, it suddenly found that the name had already been registered and was operating well, with millions of fans.

If this situation happened in many domestic companies, what would they do? He will immediately ask for the account and say, "This trademark is mine, this company is mine, why are you using my name?" But Coca-Cola did not do so. Instead, it recruited the students who operated this Facebook into the company, gave them high salaries, and allowed them to operate this brand and this account with legitimate rights and interests. What kind of effect did this produce? They feel that they own this brand and they feel that they are the directors of this brand. It is conceivable that they will help me spread it.

Many people say that Xiaomi’s success is due to “participation”. I have never thought so. I think Xiaomi’s initial rapid development was because it gave many fans a favorite role called “enthusiast”. Its die-hard fans are “born for enthusiasts”. At the earliest, Xiaomi entered a community of technology enthusiasts and let these technology enthusiasts study the MiGame system. Later, he used this system to create a mobile phone. You can imagine that the people who developed these systems at the beginning would feel that the Xiaomi brand belongs to them, and they feel that they own the brand. When Xiaomi releases a mobile phone, they will take the initiative to buy the phone, spread the phone, and defend the brand. But now Xiaomi has become less of a enthusiast. Will there still be people to defend it? So Xiaomi is facing big problems in marketing now, and how to transform its identity.

Okay, just now we talked about what real "content marketing" is and several steps of content marketing operations , and shared several cases, including the Jump Square case, the Li Yundi case, and the Xiaomi case. I shared with you some issues that we should pay attention to in the content marketing process.

In fact, content marketing is a big change based on traditional communication methods, because the entire communication environment has changed, consumers are proactive, and companies are no longer in a one-to-many dominant situation. Therefore, content marketing may dominate the entire marketing trend in the future, including the new advertising law that does not force, right? No coercion, no inducement, this principle is also very suitable for this method of content marketing.

Comments:

Content marketing is a marketing method that does not involve marketing. It creates valuable, targeted, and attention-grabbing information to influence potential and existing users without interfering with them.

Source: Ma Haixiang's blog