As a popular marketing method in the marketing world, content marketing has always been mistaken for a new trend and new method of marketing. In fact, content marketing is no longer a new method. People have applied content marketing for more than 100 years. The "Michelin Guide" produced by Michelin, the world's top tire company in 1900, and Haier's investment in the animation of "Haier Brothers" in 1995 are examples of the originator of content marketing.

In the current business and communication environment, content marketing has become the first choice for corporate marketing. Whether it’s the creative king of copywriting, “Durex”, Jiang Xiaobai, who became popular with his “literary and artistic style,” or a series of stories about Xibei and Haidilao in the catering industry, or a fellow chicken who relied on the “hand-teared employee joint letter” during the 2020 epidemic. It is a successful example of content marketing.

The reason why content marketing is so popular is mainly due to its soft placement of content, which is more acceptable to consumers than straightforward advertisements.

ONE

What is content marketing?

David Ogilvy, the "Godfather of Advertising" who founded Ogilvy in 1948, mentioned in his book "Ogilvy on Advertising" that the number of people reading ordinary articles in newspapers is about six times the number of people reading advertisements. From this, Ogilvy came to the conclusion that editors have a better understanding of communication than advertisers. At this time, the value of content marketing has been recognized by advertisers, but there is no clear concept yet.

The Content Marketing Institute of the American Content Marketing Association believes that content marketing is a way to attract target groups by producing and publishing valuable, relevant and continuous content to the target group, and to change or strengthen the behavior of the target group to produce commercial conversion. Purpose of marketing.

With the widespread use of content marketing, the concept of content marketing has gradually become clear. In the modern commercial marketing system, content marketing is a marketing method that conveys relevant company-related information to customers through media such as pictures, text, and videos to promote sales.

Content marketing is a marketing method that does not require advertising, but only uses content to encourage customers to identify with the product and promote transactions. It provides the information content needed by the target market through printed matter, digital, audio and video or activities, rather than relying on sales.

1. The form of content:

Different from traditional promotional advertising, content marketing uses "content" to deliver the information required by the target market. So, what does "content" refer to?

First, according to the classification of delivery carriers, the form of content can be divided into Weibo, WeChat, video, news, soft text, broadcast, etc. Different delivery carriers determine the different characteristics of the content. For example, refined short sentences on Weibo, warm chicken soup in WeChat Moments, interesting scenes in short videos, clever stories in soft texts, etc., different carriers give different forms of expression of marketing content.

Second, according to the actual application, the form of content can be divided into hot content, timeliness content, and story content. Hot content refers to a form of extending the application of hotspots in the current social environment to content creation; timeliness content refers to content that provides timely reports on the activities and news within an enterprise or brand, industry, etc.; while story content is It is the content specially compiled according to the marketing needs. It can be story-based, or it can be other content forms that are irrelevant and not time-sensitive. Hot content pays attention to the same line as the hotspot, timeliness content pays attention to its timeliness, while story content pursues the interest and readability of the content.

2. Content platform selection:

With the changes of the times and the rapid development of network technology, the choice of content marketing platforms has become more and more diversified.

First, traditional media. In the era when Internet technology has not yet become popular, traditional media such as television, newspapers, printed matter, outdoor, communications, and broadcasting are the main platforms for content marketing. Restricted by the media, the content is mainly expressed in graphics, broadcasting and video.

Second, new media. The development of Internet technology provides a more diversified, convenient and rapid platform for the dissemination of content. Online media, mainly self-media, has become the main carrier of content marketing. New media such as Weibo, WeChat, short video, live broadcast, Q&A platforms and other new media have gathered a large number of users, which is naturally a must for business content marketing.

Two different types of platforms have their own emphasis on the value of carrying content marketing. Content marketing usually published on traditional media is relatively weak in communication, but due to its official authority, the content will be more credible, and the trust and endorsement value for catering brands is greater.

New media is based on the Internet platform, coupled with the popularization of mobile Internet, its content creation ability is stronger, the transmission speed is faster, the penetration range is wider, and it presents the characteristics of decentralization, fragmentation, and self-media. Everyone is from the media, which creates a very good communication environment for content marketing, and is more conducive to the occurrence of fission-type communication phenomenon of "sucking marketing".

Case: Xibei’s content marketing matrix

Successful content marketing is often not limited to a certain form of expression or the dissemination of a certain platform, but to trigger the widespread dissemination of information through the distribution of various contents and multiple channels. Taking the content marketing matrix of Xibei Noodle Village as an example, let's take a look at the complete content marketing strategy of a restaurant company.

In the content marketing matrix of Xibei Youmian Village, the power of nine platforms is aggregated-WeChat, Zhihu, Toutiao, Weibo, Miaopai, search engine, official website, public comment, and other channels.

Behind the 9 major platforms, Xibei has conducted in-depth insights into the restaurant's core target groups of 25-35 years old in terms of consumption preferences, life needs, and Internet usage habits.

First, Xibei has realized that target users prefer instant communication tools like WeChat, so WeChat is the most important content marketing channel. In Xibei’s WeChat content array, there are not only public accounts targeting different functions, such as Xibei’s Noodle Village, Mr. Xi and Miss Bei, and Taste Morning Reading, so as to facilitate real-time interaction with users. There are also Xibei store managers. ’S circle of friends, the manager’s WeChat group, etc. Through the establishment of WeChat official accounts in different positions and various WeChat communities, Xibei You Noodle Village has established a long-term, stable, and real-time communication channel with employees and consumers, so that brand information can be accurately and quickly reached.

During the 2020 epidemic, Xibei relied on its solid content marketing foundation. The managers of more than 200 open takeaway stores across the country interacted with users through WeChat groups and Moments to transform orders. In January alone, the number of online users increased by more than 30,000, and the daily takeaway turnover exceeded 2 million yuan.

Second, compared to newspapers and televisions, Xibei’s target users are accustomed to receiving all kinds of information through the Internet. As a result, self-media such as Yidian, Bigyu, Netease, and Penguin have become important channels for Xibei to publish content. When Xibei Youmian Village bought out the hollow noodles in "A Bite of China 2", we can see that these self-media are the core content distribution channels.

 Third, people aged 25-35 are keen to share and gain experience through the Internet. Therefore, Xibei added Dianping, Zhihu, Weibo, Q&A platforms and other media to its content marketing matrix. Through these platforms, consumers can see the "more authentic" Xibei Noodle Village from the "third perspective" of other users, to further enhance consumer trust.

In short, wherever there are customers, there is Xibei You Noodle Village. The screening of each content platform in Xibei You Noodle Village can be said to be targeted. Through a media matrix that caters to the "content reading habits" of target consumer groups and high-quality content output, Xibei Noodle Village has won more than tens of millions of fans and formed a stable private domain traffic pool.

 3. The characteristics of content marketing

Through the content marketing matrix of Xibei Youmian Village, it is not difficult to find that content marketing mainly presents the following four characteristics.

1) Low cost

In traditional rigid advertising marketing, advertising needs to pay a lot for different media, different time periods, and different layouts. The carrier of content marketing is self-media, and the cost is relatively low. If you don’t find some self-media KOLs to launch soft broadcasts, it is just a daily routine content push, and the cost of using restaurant self-media channels is almost zero. For example, during the epidemic, Xibei Youmian Village pushed an article on the theme of "Takeaway with Peace" through the WeChat official account, and then tens of thousands of employees shared it in Moments of Friends and customer WeChat groups. These marketing behaviors were free.

However, due to the low cost of content marketing, marketing information on platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, short videos, and social groups has also been flooded. If you want to stand out from the vast network of information, you also need to "work hard" on content and operations. . To this end, Xibei Younian Village has meticulously planned a WeChat official account on different topics such as parent-child education, reading clubs, and food sharing; Jiang Xiaobai has set up a copywriting team with "high salaries".

 2) Diversity

 In the past two years, successful content marketing cases in the catering industry have emerged one after another. In these cases, there are companies like Xibei Younian Village that have established a matrix slowly, and there are also catering companies that have bombed them with short-term content. Due to the diversification of content marketing carriers, the manifestations of content marketing are also diversified.

Zhang Tianyi popularized Funiutang (now renamed Baman) with an article "Why do I sell rice noodles when I graduated with a master's degree?" The "abnormal service" story on the article has made Haidilao's reputation in the field of catering services... the variety of content expressions confirms the diversity of content marketing.

 3) Value orientation

Content marketing is to attract users' attention through valuable content and promote consumption conversion. In the face of a complex information group, customers will naturally filter out information that is valuable to them. Therefore, the "effectiveness" of content marketing depends on whether the content has "value".

So, what kind of content is considered valuable information? This is a question with no standard answer, because facing different audiences, the value of content information will be different. For example, I am a male classmate, and I browsed a message on the Internet during the school season, "How can I invite class flowers to be more creative in the school season?", I would click into it out of curiosity or some potential demand to take a closer look. Look! But if I were a white-collar young woman, this news would be worthless to me.

Therefore, before shaping valuable content, it is necessary to fully understand the needs of the target audience, and on this basis, content creation can be targeted. Of course, some content principles with universal value, such as popular science education, novelty, hot news, etc. can stimulate most people's inner desires, curiosity, etc., and can attract most people's interest.

4) Good effect

Compared with rigid advertising and promotion in traditional marketing, content marketing uses soft implants to gradually penetrate into target users, and is driven by value to promote users to purchase behavior. Consumers accept this soft approach. The higher the degree, the better the effect.

The good performance of Xibei's food delivery data during the epidemic, and various new catering brands that have leveraged content marketing to become popular, such as Naixue, Xicha, Funiutang, Xi Shaoye, etc., have all confirmed the good effects of content marketing.

TWO

The value of content marketing to restaurants

Content marketing is an indispensable marketing tool for catering companies in the new consumption era. Its value is mainly manifested in the following four aspects.

 1) Connect the most valuable communication chain for users

"When will you find the other half?" "When will you pass the exam?" "When will you lose weight?"...In the Douyin short video, customers can ask questions randomly, and they can always get unexpected answers on the milk cover of the answer tea. Thousands of users have liked and commented and interacted with the answer tea.

Through the process of answering tea Douyin's popularity, we found that those interesting short video content played a very important role in it. It set up a chain of communication between the brand and the user, and relied on interesting and fun "divination" ideas. , Aroused the curiosity of users, triggered fission-type spread, and finally made it popular almost overnight.

2) Favorable tools for creating brand differentiation labels

The development of catering to this day, the homogenization of competition has been very obvious, and content marketing is a favorable tool for creating brand differentiation labels.

As ordinary consumers, most people learn about Haidilao’s abnormal services, mainly through interesting “little stories” of Haidilao’s services. For example, Haidilao is a service to help see babies, send ginger sugar water during menstrual periods, send long hair ropes, and be single. Hot pot brands and so on. These "little stories" are an important component of Haidilao's content marketing, which helped Haidilao to shape a differentiated label-abnormal services.

Of course, brand differentiation is a continuous process. In the process of restaurant branding, content marketing is like a pen in a person’s hand, whether to write a poem, draw a picture, or write an article. How to conceive the composition, etc., are the core manifestations of the person (brand).

3) The core method of constructing restaurant private domain traffic

Private domain traffic is a must for every restaurant in the future, and content marketing is the best weapon for restaurants to seize this territory. Behind Xibei's excellent new retail transcript is the result of its long history of accumulating private domain traffic through content.

Answer tea used more than 20 short videos to not only make it popular overnight, but also gained 55 million views and more than 1.1 million likes, and accumulated the first batch of fans for it. Some of these fans became the franchise of Answer Tea. Quotient.

When the platform traffic dividend becomes weaker, the value of private domain traffic becomes more obvious, and the advantage of content marketing is to attract and impress users through valuable content, increase user stickiness and conversion rate, and lay a solid foundation for the precipitation of restaurant private domain traffic.

 4) Amplifier to improve brand awareness

Whether it is for “net celebrity” catering brands such as Answer Tea and Naixue, or for leading catering companies such as Xibei Noodle Village and Haidilao, the important role of content marketing in brand image building and awareness enhancement is obvious.

Even, the various marketing methods we have described in the previous chapters, including product marketing power, user marketing power, brand marketing power, channel marketing power, especially the nine major strategies described in the brand marketing power section, almost every strategy is separated from each other. The presentation of content is not open, because the delivery of any marketing information has to rely on content as an important carrier. Therefore, the success of any brand marketing case can be said to be the success of content marketing.