Talking about Internet advertising from the Tencent Lao Gan Ma incident (Part 1)

The biggest hot topic today is the Tencent Lao Gan Ma advertising incident, which was also a misunderstanding.

On the one hand, it shows that Tencent’s risk control is still not strict. Forged official seals and business licenses can be used to open accounts and invest. The review of the qualifications of the companies investing is not rigorous enough. On the other hand, Internet fraud is so powerful that as long as it is something, it can be made.

From another perspective, the general public and self-media celebrities are all watching this event, with all kinds of opinions. This is equivalent to a wave of free brand exposure for Lao Gan Ma, which is a way of making money without doing anything.

Xiaohan will not jump on this hot topic. Starting from this event, I want to talk to you about Internet advertising today. I have written a lot of useful information on this topic before, ranging from the Internet traffic structure, advertising channel classification, how to improve conversion, how to measure advertising indicators, etc. I plan to review and release it soon.

The day before yesterday, I was invited by an old client to visit the Rose Town and Rose Manor in Dapeng. The boss is my old client. Three or four years ago, I worked deeply with another company of hers to help their online marketing and new media business grow more than 600 times per quarter. When we met this time, she said: Since I started working with you, I don’t like anyone anymore. This is my last project before retirement. I regard it as a completed work, and the first person I thought of was you.

In fact, from the bottom of my heart, I am very grateful to her for giving me such an in-depth cooperation opportunity, which allowed me to deeply invest real money in an industry to do new media operations and paid advertising on the entire network. It was also because of her high requirements and high standards that we worked together for two years before we achieved the following results. This project also gave me great confidence, so I can start my own business and serve more customers.

In the field of new media marketing, there are not many people who can truly master brand planning, content creativity, event marketing, and advertising. If you can practice to this level, you will definitely have your own place in this field. The reason is simple. It can help customers achieve real marketing growth. Only when customers make money can marketing services continue to be invested.

I once wrote an article about the Internet traffic map. From traditional store customer acquisition, to Baidu search engines, to traditional e-commerce such as Taobao and Tmall, to today's rapidly developing mobile Internet and the explosive growth of new media such as Weibo, WeChat, Kuaishou, and Toutiao, traffic is migrating along with the platforms and smartphones.

WeChat traffic was in a huge bonus period from 2013 to 2017. Whoever could quickly obtain a large amount of low-cost traffic could quickly solve the brand's trust problem and close deals.

What about 2018? With the negative growth of WeChat users, the bonus period has faded. Now the cost of acquiring WeChat traffic has also increased from a few cents to dozens of yuan, or even hundreds of yuan. In this case, how should we deal with advertising and traffic generation?

When it comes to advertising and traffic generation, there are two types: free and paid. You need to always pay attention to changes in platform rules. Generally, the bonus period of a new platform is only 6-9 months. After the boom period, it will enter a sedimentation period, and what matters is operation.

There are many free promotion channels on the Internet. They should be done over a long period of time and continuously, with the main focus on exposing the brand and implanting keywords, with brand output being greater than traffic. For example, Baidu's Wenku Q&A forum and Wenku Tieba have paid news sources. Tencent has QQ spaces, groups, Weibo, mutual fan platforms, and other apps such as Douban and Tianya Tieba. All of the above are for brand trust endorsement for promotion and to cover information flow on the Internet.

The main paid advertising channels on the Internet are Baidu, WeChat big accounts, Moments, Toutiao, Weibo Fans, traditional e-commerce bidding ads, TV, newspapers, and outdoor advertising.

There are only a few mainstream Internet advertising platforms at present, and we can roughly understand the attributes of each platform: Weibo, which is open and suitable for topic dissemination, public relations, and interactive activities; WeChat, which is suitable for content brand dissemination and customer sedimentation, conversion and transaction; Baidu 360 Sogou, search engine bidding advertising, and brand keyword trust endorsement; Toutiao, a news information stream that has rapidly emerged in the past two years, with intelligent push and precise delivery; Kuaishou, Yingke, and Meipai, which are live broadcasts by Internet celebrities, and are suitable for event promotion and early preparation and dissemination, and the traffic of anchors and Internet celebrities can be exported to WeChat.

Tik Tok, short videos, elevators, outdoor billboards, subway and transportation TV ads, which are extremely popular this year, are traditional media brand ads that are suitable for assisting traffic ads in conversions.

In short, advertising content is divided into soft articles and hard advertisements. Soft articles are suitable for information flow and passive display, while hard advertisements are suitable for active search and paid promotion.

On the Internet, we like to refer to traffic as fans.

Fans, fans, what exactly are fans?

I was thinking about this question while eating rice noodles for lunch today. If you break the word "fen" into "mi" and "fen", "mi" means money and "fen" means sharing. So fans are people who share with you. What you share can be money, knowledge, experience, stories, and emotions. So, if you want to gain fans, you must first learn to share, know how to give, know how to spend money, and share ideas and interests. Only then will others become your fans.

Fans, also known as traffic, are divided into general fans and precise fans. In fact, many people cannot distinguish between these two concepts. What are precise fans? Take Xiaohan's clients as an example. They search on Baidu, add me on WeChat through my articles, and actively seek cooperation with me through recommendations from friends. They are people with clear needs, have a certain degree of trust in me, and are more accepting of my content and cases. Such users are my precise fans, with high conversion rates and low customer acquisition costs.

In fact, this is how we have been doing new media marketing to help ourselves attract traffic and conversions, so we can help companies copy our model.

So how do we understand pan-fans?

For example, if a company organizes interactive activities, such as forwarding a message for a lottery, leaving a message and liking it to get a gift, grabbing red envelopes, and sharing coupons, these fans are gathered together because of their interests. They have no perception of your brand, no clear needs, and are not interested in your products. Such fans are general fans. It takes a long time to convert them and cultivate trust and consumption needs, so the conversion rate is also low. A general fan can cost only 30 or 50 cents, while a precise fan base can reach hundreds or thousands. It can also be operated very cheaply through high-quality content.

As for the so-called consumption upgrade, how do you think our first-tier cities need to upgrade? In fact, the young people who need to upgrade come from third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities. If your target user group is them, it is recommended that you combine online and offline, and traditional media with new media, in order to truly reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Jiang Nanchun proposed a 30:70 principle for brand advertising at the positioning conference, that is, in the early stages of a brand’s establishment, 70% should be used for traffic and 30% for brand advertising. As the brand gradually matures, brand advertising should account for 70% and traffic advertising should account for 30%. In the end, companies must rely on their brands to win the market.

Therefore, the media advertising strategies adopted by the brand are different at different stages.

If a startup brand is in the start-up phase, the focus of its marketing campaign at this time must be on attracting traffic, and precise marketing campaign is the best strategy to shorten the transaction cycle and reduce the cost of market expansion. At this time, it is recommended to accurately lock in industry circles and core user circles, and give full play to its professional knowledge and brand influence to attract the right team. Core users are not the same as ordinary users. Before marketing, you must fully analyze who the users are, where they are, what they like, and what their labels are, draw an accurate user portrait, and then sort out the appropriate marketing platform based on these data and labels.

In short, every penny must be spent wisely, and strive for high conversion. At the same time, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Test several different channels first. If you find a dark horse, immediately increase investment to obtain low-cost user traffic.

Advertising, attracting traffic, finding fans, and trial and error are often phased. What is the best method?

In fact, no strategy is better than a strategy. Just use the most effective method to the extreme, instead of looking for a better one while still working, and changing your mind frequently. There are several criteria for measurement: simple operation, replicability, and scalability.

For brands, content marketing in new media is a long-term and systematic job. Content is about attracting traffic and conversion, which requires time accumulation, trust and connection.

Therefore, creating content is about creating channels, and operating new media is about building brands. It takes at least three years for traditional enterprises to establish a complete channel covering 2,853 counties. New media combined with store and online traffic can be relatively complementary. Stores have stable traffic and trust endorsement, while online traffic is fast but not as vital as stores. The integration of the two establishes a customer and agency service center to gather traffic and enhance experience, which is the current mainstream new retail model.

How to choose the right advertising channel?

From the era of traditional stores, traffic was obtained by good location, to the era of search engines dominated by Baidu, traffic was obtained by bidding ranking, to the era of traditional e-commerce such as Taobao, Tmall and JD, traffic was obtained by burning through trains, to today's rapid development and explosion of mobile Internet, new media platforms with information flow mainly based on Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, Toutiao, etc., traffic is obtained by high-quality content.

1. Classification of Internet Traffic

Internet traffic is also divided into free and paid promotion channels.

There are many free promotion channels on the Internet. You have to do it over the long term and continuously, focusing on exposing the brand and implanting keywords, with brand output being greater than traffic. For example, Baidu has the Wenku Q&A forum and Wenku Tieba, Tencent has QQ space, groups, Weibo, mutual fan platforms, and other apps such as Douban and Tianya Tieba. All of the above are for brand trust endorsement for promotion and to cover information flow on the Internet.

In fact, paid channels can be summarized as search engine advertising mainly based on Baidu, traditional e-commerce bidding advertising mainly based on Taobao and Tmall, and information flow advertising mainly based on WeChat Toutiao and Douyin.

Every new platform that emerges has a bonus period, and marketers need to always pay attention to changes in platform rules. Generally, the bonus period of a new platform is only 6-9 months. After the boom period, it enters a sedimentation period, and what matters is operation.

On the one hand, traffic is migrating with platforms and smartphones. On the other hand, users' tastes in marketing are also changing, and the cost of trusting marketing content is also increasing.

2. Characteristics of different channels

Many companies have developed to a certain stage and chosen a content marketing matrix. Here you need to have a general understanding of the attributes, user portraits and rules of each platform. Take the core platform I am familiar with as an example.

Weibo is open-ended and dominated by entertainment stars, making it suitable for topic dissemination, public relations and interactive activities.

WeChat is suitable for content brand communication, customer retention, and transaction conversion.

Baidu, 360 Sogou, and search engine bidding advertising are more about completing brand building and keyword trust endorsement.

News information streams such as Toutiao are intelligently pushed and accurately delivered, which is suitable for exposure and traffic generation, but the actual purchasing power of the population is relatively low.

Douyin, Kuaishou, Yingke, Meipai, and live streaming by internet celebrities are suitable for event promotion and early preparatory communication, exporting the traffic of anchors and internet celebrities to WeChat, as well as the increasingly popular live streaming with goods.

Traditional elevators, subways, buses, and outdoor billboards are suitable for assisting traffic advertising for conversions.

3. Look at the development stage of the enterprise

Every company is at a different stage of development and has different advertising needs. Most small and medium-sized enterprises are still in a period of wild growth and are resource-intensive. They accumulate seed users through cold starts, such as relying on the founder's original network resources, or content marketing like Xiaohan to find accurate customers from fans. This method has relatively low costs and is easy to start, but it is also easy to have a ceiling.

To grow rapidly, you will need funds for marketing and advertising, and to scale up your campaigns to bring in more users and resources. At the next level, when a certain amount of users have been accumulated, you can detonate existing users through fission marketing planning, and reach more of the existing users’ circle of friends until you can open up new business lines, continuously iterate, upgrade, and repeat previous actions.

4. Look at the characteristics of the company's products and services

The different product and service characteristics of a company will inevitably require different appropriate advertising channels.

If you are engaged in life/business services, search engines are more suitable. Users have the habit of actively searching for keywords, and you can acquire customers through bidding rankings. If you are engaged in mass C-end products, the supply chain is mature and user habits do not need to be cultivated. Obviously e-commerce is more suitable. If you are engaged in new services and the market is not yet mature, then information flows such as WeChat Moments headlines are more suitable.

5. Core delivery principles

Jiang Nanchun proposed a 30:70 principle for brand advertising at the positioning conference, that is, in the early stages of a brand’s establishment, 70% should be used for traffic and 30% for brand advertising. As the brand gradually matures, brand advertising should account for 70% and traffic advertising should account for 30%. In the end, companies must rely on their brands to win the market.

Therefore, the media advertising strategies adopted by the brand are different at different stages.

A core principle is: advertise where your users are.

If a startup brand is in the start-up phase, the focus of its investment at this time must be on attracting traffic, and precise investment is the best strategy to shorten the transaction cycle and reduce market expansion costs. At this time, it is recommended to accurately lock in industry circles and core user circles, and give full play to its professional knowledge and brand influence to attract the right team.

Core users are not the same as ordinary users. Before launching the campaign, you must fully analyze who the users are, where they are, what they like, what their labels are, draw an accurate user portrait, and then sort out suitable delivery platforms based on this data and labels.

In short, every penny must be spent wisely, and strive for high conversion. At the same time, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Test several different channels first. If you find a dark horse, immediately increase investment to obtain low-cost user traffic.

Advertising, attracting traffic, finding fans, and trial and error are often phased. What is the best method?

In fact, no strategy is better than a strategy. Just use the most effective method to the extreme, instead of looking for a better one while still working, and changing your mind frequently. There are several criteria for measurement: simple operation, replicability, and scalability.

6. The essence of content marketing

Recently, I have rethought the essence of content marketing. Creating content is about creating channels, and operating new media is about creating brands.

It will take at least three years for traditional companies to establish a complete channel covering 2,853 counties. New media combined with store and online traffic can be relatively complementary. Stores have stable traffic and trust endorsement, while online traffic is fast but not as vital as stores. The combination of the two establishes a customer and agent service center, gathers traffic and enhances experience, which is the current mainstream new retail model.

Knowing how to choose advertising channels is only the first step in marketing. How to refine selling points, create content, improve conversion rates, and trigger orders are more core issues, which we will talk about later.

Author: Xiaohan Tang

Source: Tang Xiaohan (ID: tangxiaohan007)