Focus on contents

When people think about "marketing", mostly they will concentrate on their products. This is not wrong, but today I will give you a new idea of marketing.

First, just think of yourself, every single person could reach many advertisements and search for information online. Now think carefully of the good content that you would read. I bet most contents are not about the product itself. For example, when you search "the best refrigerator", there is an article about the product and promise you that this is the best refrigerator, would you trust or be interested in this article? Probably no. How about an article called "how to choose the best refrigerator based on your need?" I believe most people would like to read this type of article. Therefore, this example gives you another way to rethink marketing, that is, stay consumer-focused. My suggestion is to produce contents that consumers would be interested in, and the contents are helping them. Again, focus on customers rather than your products. Once you establish a stable customer group with high loyalty, it would have a great influence on expanding the number of customers. This is because your loyal customers are willing to recommend your appliances spontaneously and this kind of "mouth-to-mouth" advertising is extremely useful. According to Bughin (2010), even though most companies spend plenty of money on advertising, most of the time that people making purchases is resulting from a "word-of-mouth" recommendation from who they trust, and the data shows that 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions are made through "word-of-mouth".

Now we all know that good contents are useful, then let's figure out how to produce good content.

The first thing you need to do is to discover what do your potential customers care about. Next, I will give you a couple of ways to discover the needs of your customers. The most effective way to collect information about what kinds of articles are attractive to your customers is the questionnaire. You can ask your current customers directly through questionnaires. The form of the questionnaire is totally up to you. For instance, you can use Facebook or email, and sometimes you can set up some gifts for those customers who provide the ideas. If your current customers are not enough or you just start up your appliances business and there is no customer base, it is okay, and next, I will give you other solutions to find relevant questions in the home appliances area. First, use Google as a free tool. Type the keywords of your products into Google and see "People Also Ask". You will find many relevant topics about your products and the home appliances industry. These results will show the real questions that people often search. Therefore, start from this point and you can find the objective of your content. Also, related search and video can be other methods to discover relevant topics of your content.

In addition, other websites such as BuzzSumo, Quora and Answer the Public are goods places where you can get popular and real questions in your area. Meanwhile, don't forget to collect feedback from your current customers because these are the most relevant problems generated by your customers. Besides these, you can find other topics from other channels. Then after you realize what content that people are interested in, it's time to generate answers for these questions. The point is when you write articles, do not copy others' works. It is important to keep the originality and your contents must base on your real experiences because the objectives of your article are not only attracting your customers but also trying to solve problems for readers. Only if the readers (potential customers) find that your articles are solving their problems that they will feel good about you and your brand and will read your content regularly or even subscribe to it. Therefore, it is important to know "who you are?", which means, you need to decide your character based on your advantages. You have a better chance of producing better content where you are good at it. Meanwhile, keep in your mind that the contents you are producing should not be too far away from the home appliances and potential customer groups.

There are many channels you can choose to convert potential customers to customers. To give you a general idea of what this channel looks like, I will describe an actual example. There are seven stages of the whole channel, which include meeting, interest, familiar, product introduction, receive help, credit transfer and make a deal.

MEET. Post some useful information about the home and commercial appliances, including an installation guide, decoration advice, repair tips, and also special recipes that can be achieved in the home during the quarantine. Our objective is to attract people who are interested in increasing life quality and making cooking not boring but full of sense of ceremony. When people get into trouble in installing their appliances, our articles would be helpful. Or in other situations, when people worry about which style of appliances to choose to fit their decoration. For instance, what color microwave oven is suitable for the warm color decoration. People could choose their microwave oven based on our recommendations. And later on, we could launch a new program named "AI TRY" which enables customers to try different style appliances in different decoration styles.

INTEREST. As mentioned above, our contents contain some practical solutions for the repair and installation of appliances. Besides, decoration advice and special recipes can be found in our posts as well. Our installation guide and repair solutions must be detailed as possible. This should be in a way of the video so that differentiated ourselves from the normal user manual. In addition, our recipes must be special to attract more subscribers. Subscribers can obtain practical solutions when they face trouble in installing or repairing their appliances. They can also get plenty of recipes on our blog.

FAMILIAR. Our contents must keep updating (twice a week) and in detail. If people find the solution from your content, it is most likely that they would subscribe to your account. Decoration advice and recipes would keep updating more often. These contents should be connected so that readers could click on related content.

PRODUCT INTRODUCTION. At this time, we could post some content about the product. For instance, how to choose a good refrigerator? What aspects should you concentrate on when you make a purchase? In these articles, you can tell your audiences what is good. Most people do not understand the appliances and when they choose what to buy, most people are relying on the brand. However, after reading our articles, they would know more information about the appliances and understand which type is suitable for them. What we try to tell is that we can offer i.g. refrigerators with same functions but at a lower price.

RECEIVE HELP. Since our installation video and decoration advises are applying our products, once people like our advice, they are very likely to purchase our products. (At the beginning, do not sell products directly. It is better to wait for readers to ask something like "where can I buy the refrigerator in the video?" Once people think our products and decoration are matching well, they could make a purchase directly for the same products in the video, so they don't have to find similar products in markets.

CREDIT TRANSFER. Encourage followers to share our products with their friends. Try to increase customer reviews and feedback.

MAKE A DEAL. Increase the quality and services in order to increase customer satisfaction.

Overall, this article highlights the importance of content in marketing your products. Social media becomes a free and important field to market your business. If we can make good use of it, it will bring us considerable profits.