How to make your marketing reach high-value people on Zhihu?

Zhihu is a platform that brings together a group of knowledge elites. Successful cases such as "Mercedes-Benz to the Sky" and " Audi BBQ" have demonstrated how Zhihu can expand the imagination of content marketing with knowledge. Brand promotion on Zhihu will be able to reach a wider and higher-quality audience.

Why do brands have to be on Zhihu?

From "widely informing" to "widely recognizing", how should brands effectively carry out knowledge marketing ?

This is a question I have been thinking about for a long time. Ever since the so-called first WeChat open class of New World that swept the circle of friends , some people have pointed out that this phenomenon would definitely not happen on Zhihu and Douban . The reason is probably because of what Wang Gaofei once said, "Douban users are a group of worthless people."

What this sentence actually means is that Douban users are difficult to generate commercial value, not that they are truly worthless. For this reason, Douban users once joked about themselves as "worthless Douban users."

I start with this topic not to teach you to give up Zhihu marketing, which is also a high-value user group, but to use this example to prove that users of Zhihu and Douban are not a group of worthless users. Otherwise, how could they speak out collectively in the face of doubts? These users who have thoughts, cognition, judgment, and a sense of right and wrong are actually the high-value users that brand owners most desire to have.

Compared with the recently popular earthy marketing platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin , brand owners are willing to step down from the clouds and dig into the earth, but so far, I have not heard of a brand owner who has truly achieved success in this regard.

On the contrary, I still remember vividly the scene where the rumor that " KFC 's ice cubes are dirtier than toilet water" was once widely circulated but was re-analyzed on Zhihu and then spread to the entire Internet and staged a reversal.

1. Marketing advancement from "widely informing" to "widely recognizing"

The reason for this performance is actually related to the advancement of the advertising and marketing industry. The ultimate goal of marketing is to touch consumers, and people-oriented is the core of everything.

The birth of early advertising was motivated by an opportunity. The rapid rise of manufacturing in all walks of life, the vigorous expansion of consumption, and the large-scale leap made consumers enter a state of confusion in shopping. They urgently needed to be informed of the brands sold in the market, such as "Use 999 for a cold" and "L'Oreal, you deserve it." The form of advertising at this time was the "widely inform" type.

As time goes by, more and more brands are rushing into the consumer market. They imitate the successful products. There can be thousands or even tens of thousands of brands of shampoo. Brainwash advertisements of the "widespread notification" type are everywhere, attracting consumers' attention every day.

This time it’s not that consumers have changed. They just want to find a shampoo that suits them. It’s just that the mixture of various false advertisements makes it difficult for them to distinguish the true from the false. Faced with so many choices, they once again return to Xiaobai.

When consumers who have returned to being newbies start searching for questions like “Which shampoos leave a nice scent after washing your hair?” and “Which cold medicines can help prevent drowsiness after taking them?”, it indicates that the advertising industry has ushered in a new form of “widespread awareness”. Users need more valuable popular science and knowledge Amway marketing, rather than pure slogan marketing.

The first product in history to taste the most unpalatable herb, the white snake grass water, brought new value to the brand: it was sold out on the same day, and trucks were needed to restock it. The hemorrhoid cream from Mayinglong can remove dark circles, which made the product sell out and helped this old brand to become younger.

Knowledge marketing based on user demands is bound to be the direction of the future, and “widespread cognition” is the trend of the future. In film marketing, this proposition has basically been realized. Consumers in third- and fifth-tier counties may still be influenced by the cast, but in first-tier mainstream cities, the life and death of a film is completely controlled by word of mouth.

2. Knowledge trust is the basic logic for building “broad and cognitive” marketing

“Broad and cognitive” marketing is actually not a new proposition. The existence of this marketing model has been proven since the birth of the “50 Cent Party”. The synonym on the other side is opinion leaders ( KOL ).

Why some knowledge can be successfully promoted, but some is labeled as water army? This depends on whether there is a trust relationship between the audience and the speaker.

The online world itself is rough. If I trust you, I will approve of everything you do; but if I don’t trust you, then no matter what you say, I will think you are a 50-cent party member.

After sorting out layer by layer, the logic becomes very clear. The basic implementation logic of "broad and cognitive" marketing comes from knowledge trust.

Zhihu, which is based on knowledge Q&A and sharing, has become the best platform for knowledge marketing because it has an ecosystem of knowledge trust established by Zhihu users over many years.

1. Bringing together experts from all walks of life

The original Zhihu was an absolute high-end elite community. Since the early Zhihu team was basically from the Internet circle and it adopted a real-name recommendation system, Zhihu was basically an Internet communication community in its early days.

Later, because Zhihu often published some high-quality TMT analysis articles, a lot of its content was reprinted by major technology media.

In 2013, Zhihu opened for registration. Influenced by its original genes, a large number of "experts" from all walks of life began to flock in. They are happy to share their knowledge and insights on Zhihu, and appreciate the new knowledge that this platform brings them.

2. Pure knowledge sharing builds a trust system

Influenced by the first point, the common characteristic of Zhihu users is that they all have a strong desire for knowledge, and they basically all have a special skill.

They come to Zhihu for two purposes: to read answers and to output answers. The purer the purpose, the easier it is to build a trust system. Once trust is established, every user's words will have a high degree of credibility.

Zhihu users will take answering a question very seriously. They will quote from classics and provide pictures and texts. Such answers are no less than a high-quality interpretation article. This results in Zhihu answers often being picked out and circulated again on WeChat Moments and Weibo.

It started from Zhihu but is not limited to Zhihu. Only Zhihu can spread it to the entire platform by relying on the endorsement of knowledge trust.

Zhihu, where experts and knowledge trust coexist, allows for the coexistence of recommenders and those being recommended, forming a complete ecosystem. The output of high-value content benefits from Zhihu's sedimentation into a point of public opinion explosion and then spreading outward to form tap water.

Cases such as "Mercedes-Benz to the Sky" and "Audi BBQ" that make marketers envious all prove how Zhihu uses knowledge to expand the imagination of content marketing. Brand marketing on Zhihu starts from Zhihu but does not end with Zhihu.

Reach Zhihu users, if you are serious you will win.

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

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