2022 Annual Review (Part 2): The underlying logic of good content, good operations, and good results

In the era of scarce traffic, good content is still a magic weapon to occupy users' time. There are three key elements in the content battlefield: good content, good operation, and good results. So, how to create these three elements? This article analyzes and summarizes, let's take a look.

In the previous issue, we used the CEO performance dashboard (see the figure below) to interpret the product battlefield. In this issue, we will focus on interpreting the three key success factors in the content battlefield.

01 How to create good content?

First of all, I have to answer a question. Some people think that it is enough for me to have a good product. Why do I need to create good content?

The answer is simple:

• In the product battlefield, because products are homogeneous, it is important to create good products;
• In the content battlefield, because of information overload and content homogeneity, it is important to create good content.

What is good content?

Information that drives action and simplifies customer decision making.

Then let’s also be simple and crude and see what kind of performance empowerment good content can bring in sales scenarios, marketing scenarios, and mental scenarios?

1. Good content for sales scenarios

Here are three sentences:

1. Transform intangible value into tangible value;
2. Transform perceived value into logic;
3. Translate logic into a call to action.

Let’s take an example. For example, Ramen Says, which quickly gained popularity in the early days, had 1+3+1 sales empowerment.

First of all, 1 refers to high-end instant noodles (category), Japanese dine-in ramen that can be eaten at home (value anchor).

Secondly, 3. Good noodles (fresh semi-dry noodles, short shelf life) + good meat (large visible chunks, aerospace preservation technology) + good soup (32 kinds of ingredients boiled in 24 pots).

The last 1 is the visual symbol (box).

I won't explain it any further, the above three sentences are all used. So Ramen says starting from 0-1 is particularly efficient.

2. Good content for marketing scenarios

The two methods we commonly use both result in 50% waste.

The first is brand advertising, which is used to break through the channel traffic limit, but the link is long and 50% of the advertising fee is wasted;

The second is precise traffic investment, which is used to quickly increase the volume, but customer loyalty may not be high. The marketing costs of some Internet celebrity brands account for more than 50% of GMV, which is unsustainable.

Good content must overcome the shortcomings of the above two methods. This is mainly reflected in:

1. Content brings traffic;
2. Content becomes a traffic entrance;
3. Content empowers S-CRM.

Regarding 1, for example, Pechoin released a piece of content with a long scroll image telling a story. The traffic increased dramatically.

Regarding 2, it is much more difficult. For example, the content produced by Li Ziqi has no connection with the snail rice noodle that the company later sold, but it does not affect the traffic entrance at all; Dianping is the largest online catering content traffic entrance, which helped Meituan Waimai consolidate its status in the industry; and Michelin three-star restaurants helped Michelin establish a wide range of communication points and reputation.

Regarding 3, it is to transform the static CRM into a social S-CRM. This is quite complicated, so I won’t go into details.

3. Good content for mental scenarios

Many traditional companies like to use grand narratives of brand stories, values, and emotions to capture the minds of customers. However, modern consumers have fragmented, emotional, and induced attention, so this approach is not as influential as before.

We focus on three key points here:

1. Create a keyword matrix;
2. Create group memory;
3. Create customer decision points for groups.

Let's take another example, Bosideng (brand name) + windbreaker down jacket (category name), just eight words. The brand is equal to the keyword matrix, and the category is the large-scale customer decision point. After large-scale publicity, it mobilized the existing cognition of customers, that is, windbreaker down jacket = both figure-flattering + warm. When quite a number of customers think of the shortcomings of traditional down jackets, they will follow this cognitive signpost and think of the Bosideng brand, and then the performance dynamic line will be opened.

4. Summary

What is the use of good content?

• Good content builds consensus in sales scenarios.
• Good content brings about change in marketing scenarios.
• Good content forms an anchor point in the mental scene.

02 How to build good operations?

What is good operation?

That is, performance comes from the three dimensions of products, content, and customers, as well as integrated strategies and actions across land, sea, and air.

We simply and roughly divide operations into three aspects: underlying logic, top-level strategy, and operational means.

1. Underlying Logic

The underlying logic is three sentences:

1. Achieve traffic conversion through product operation.
2. Achieve pre-sales through content operations.
3. Realize value anchoring through customer operations.

In the past, consumption was one-dimensional and all that was needed was to sell the product well in the channel.

Now it is a two-dimensional consumption. Before product consumption, there is also content consumption.

Basically there is an experience value:

• For 2C products, 95% of the information is obtained online.
• For 2B products, 75% of the information is obtained online.

Drucker once said: Marketing is to make sales redundant.

Therefore, we need to simultaneously lay out the content battlefield in addition to the product battlefield.

2. Top-level strategy

In traditional marketing, voice and traffic are separate.

The biggest problem here is that the lost customers cannot be recalled.

Not having a second chance to finish off the opponent may be the biggest waste of traditional advertising.

Modern marketing is an integrated operation of product quality, effectiveness and sales.

What is integrated product, effect and sales operation?

Quality is volume.

Effectiveness is traffic.

Sales refers to sales volume.

Products, focus on customer perception management.

Effectiveness, focus on customer behavior management.

Sales, focus on customer decision management.

Customer perception management means making customers look at you with a higher regard.

Customer behavior management means significantly reducing the churn rate.

Customer decision management is to trigger motivation and guide decision making.

3. Operational means

• Let most of your weak ties know you, and let a small number of your weak ties recognize you.
• Let the majority of strong relationships recognize you, and let the minority of strong relationships identify with you.

Correspondingly, the key points of content operation are:

• Spread the symbol, the reason to buy.
• Repeat purchase word of mouth, emotional resonance.

4. Summary

What is good operation?

Brand is repeat purchase, and operation is retail.

Product battlefield + content battlefield, that is, achieving two-dimensional competition. Through good content, empowering brand, effect, and sales, achieving product, effect, and sales integration, and raising the company's performance level to a new level.

03 How to create good effects?

What is a good effect?

This is a huge problem.

In the product battlefield, sales volume may be the only quantitative indicator.

In the content battlefield, there are no quantitative indicators for effectiveness.

So, we were thinking, are there any qualitative indicators? Yes, there are three.

1. Content can expand the traffic pool

Why do we advertise? Because the channel traffic has reached its limit, and we can only find traffic outside of advertising channels.

Why do we create content? Because the traffic in shopping scenarios has reached its limit, and we can only find traffic through non-shopping scenarios.

Moreover, shopping scenes only account for less than 1% of a person’s work, life, etc. This is too low.

2. Content can enjoy asset compounding

For example, once the advertising is terminated and the advertising resources are cancelled, the effect of the advertisement often disappears.

But content is different. There is no such thing as content resource position. Good content may still be searched for 10 years later, which is the asset effect. Some content will bring user growth every year, which is the asset compounding effect.

3. Content broadens sales dimensions

Traditionally, our sales flow is people looking for goods. When customers have needs, or when they are browsing in shopping malls or e-commerce platforms, we intercept them.

Now that we have content, we can design a new retail sales route where goods find people. Suddenly, it becomes a real global traffic competition.

These are the three qualitative values ​​of good content in the content battlefield.

Next step, the question arises again, how do we implement it?

The answer is three pools: content pool, traffic pool, and customer pool.

There are three indicators for the content pool: search power, richness, and exposure.

Search power means that when customers search for keywords, they cannot find you. Then your search power is very poor.

Richness means that if you can search, there will be two small dimensions: quality and quantity. If the information is all company news that is only for your own benefit, or if the amount of information of your competitors is many times greater than yours, then the richness is relatively poor.

Exposure means that customers actively share and spread your content.

There are many ways to divide traffic pools. We simply divide them into 4 types:

There are four major types of traffic: before transaction, during transaction, after transaction, and no transaction.

1. Before the transaction, customers want to compare products, so we need to design communication symbols.
2. In transaction flow, we need to design reasons for purchase.
3. For post-transaction traffic, we need to refine the repurchase reputation.
4. There is no transaction flow, which can be divided into two categories: weak relationship and strong relationship. Weak relationship is still a communication symbol; strong relationship is an emotional connection.

There are many ways to divide the customer pool. We simply divide it into 4 categories:

1. Mind pre-sale customers are like a business religion, with extremely high loyalty.
2. Conditions trigger customers, and some keywords can trigger customer actions.
3. For heavy-duty customers, the probability of customer triggering should be low and the cost should be high.
4. Random purchasing customers are customers with a particularly high churn rate.

Finally, let’s summarize.

Good results, in the content battlefield.

• It is to build content assets and generate long-term benefits;
• It is to create two-dimensional consumption and realize product pre-positioning;
• It is to open up business traffic flow and make it easier for goods to find people.

04 Conclusion

A CEO with a big picture will focus on the product battlefield, content battlefield and value battlefield. Among them, in the content battlefield, he will focus on the three key success factors of good content, good operation and good effect.

The core of good content is to penetrate into the minds of the public in a layered and step-by-step manner, and play a role in empowering performance in sales scenarios, marketing scenarios, and mental scenarios.

The core of good operation is to achieve traffic conversion through product operation, achieve sales pre-positioning through content operation, and achieve value anchoring through customer operation. All three operations are inseparable from good content.

The core of good results is to build content pools, traffic pools, and customer pools, turning content into long-term assets, expanding from people looking for goods to goods looking for people, and establishing a continuous and stable performance trajectory.

Author: Cao Sheng, founder of Grayscale Cognitive Society, WeChat public account: Grayscale Cognitive Society (ID: HDrenzhishe).