6 Major Trends for Content Marketing in 2016 (2)

2. The value of content marketing: contributing to the purchasing chain and pursuing better users’ experience

In recent years, some companies have realized the importance of content marketing. They try to use content marketing as a link for the purchasing process.

Through content marketing, users can gain more knowledge about products and enjoy the benefits; products can even inspire a new life style, which will increase customer loyalty and lead to a second purchase.

Case: L'Oreal creatinga "content factory" for product, giving practical knowledge to users on "become beautiful"

In order to provide more solid contents for its beauty brands (such as Maybellin and Kiehl's), L'Oreal creates a "content factory" posting beauty makeup tutorial and images on social media platforms. Besides, L'Oreal also cooperates with YouTube and Facebook to post its videos and visual contents.

YouTube indicates that beauty tutorial video is the top search item in the cosmetics category. For example: the "content factory" released 8 of "How To" practical videos for ShuUemura skin care brand, which is ultimately owned by L'Oreal. Among them, one of the most popular searches was the video of "how to shape your eyebrows", which is very popular among viewers. The popularity of those videos lead to organic search, which ultimately resulted into many new subscriptions. All without recurring to paid media.

Case: 700Bike: deliver a lifestyle with content

700Bike was co-founded by Zhang Xiangdong. This year, the "Internet Bike Company" goes to the public. Through the research of its products on the official Wechat and Weibo pages, and through both online and offline activities, we can easily note that 700Bike is not only a bike brand, but also a community that connects life and bikes.

Official Website

700Bike website is a community featuring content, online and offline activities and purchasing channels. Users can get knowledge about products’ styles, functionsand make an order through the official website. The funniest thing is that they can read some stories about bikes and lifestyles and they can also share their own stories and feelings and feedbacks about bikes with the online community.

Wechat

From the early stages, when 700Bike began to advertise their products, they posted feedings on Wechat mainly including cool cars, equipment, Lifestyle, news,visiting shops, Bike Girl and promotion. Later, they successfully linked car holders to information about cars, riding stories and life. Through a variety of propaganda activities and social media influence, they built their own way to connect cars and people together and expand to cycling. That’s how more and more people began to know cycling and fall in love with it.