How would you start marketing in 2016? (1)

In 2015, technology remains the leading role shaping the world. However, some marketers feel confused about the current marketing environment. What did marketers gain after 2015 and where should they go in 2016?

On New Year's Eve, all the people were crazy on "Shake"; "Red packets" spread rapidly within one night.

Since February, a "merge tide" appeared into the market. 58.com  partnered with Ganji.com (in April) and finallymeituan.com with Dianping.com (in October); Behind every merger, you can easily find the invisible hand of BAT.

1. Content Marketing Remains the Focus

For content marketing, the biggest event must be the emergence of "IP"; content discourse power is expected to exceed traffic distribution's rights.

According to a market survey from Smart Insights, content marketing was voted to be the No.1 business promotional campaign’s strategy, which accounts for 29.6% in the market; Big Data accounts for 14.6% and Marketing Automation accounts for 12.8%.

"IP" emerged, decentralization of Internet traffic distribution

In 2015, more and more people began to realize the importance of "IP". Not only because IP re-newed itself by not only focusing on Intellectual Property, but also becoming a new marketing concept. IP could perform on different platforms and gain traffic through posting contents on different websites. Through the marketing analysis of 2015, IP could be further classified into two categories, namely content IP and We-media IP.

(1) Content IP

Content IP: Due to the high quality of the contents, IP content has already gained some basic marketing knowledge before a second development. Meanwhile, compared with other contents, IP content will be more efficient and more powerful.

(2) We-media IP

We-media IP: they are content producers, which have traffic distribution rights; they produce high quality and distinctive contents. If, WeChat would be out-of-date in the future, they just need to change  platform and traffic will also be transferred.

There are some major platforms with the biggest traffic distribution rights, they are: Baidu, QQ, WeChat and Weibo, etc. The portal era lasts for 8 years; search era lasts for 5 years; WeChat and Weibo each hold the leading position for 2 or 3 years. Nowadays, all media platforms are developing in more diversified ways; traffic distribution is decentralizing and up to the second half of 2015, "We-media" became the biggest winner among other competitors!

Enterprises’ content marketing departments established their own We-media platform. From Durex' microblogging, to investment banks’ WeChat accounts, they are beginning to recognize and maximize the value of We-media. In addition to the pursuit of excellent content, the brand effect of IP marketing is also beginning to appear frequently in the brand case.

2. Content Presentation: More or One?

From an attentive analysis of mobile phones, PCs and Pads, results indicate that the usage of the mobile phone is increasingly growing while the PC side grows relatively slow; and Pad side is showing a downward trend in 2015.

Even the most excellent content cannot display on all platforms. Different media platforms have different features. How to distinguish the right platform and how to select the proper content remain the major problem in the market.