Soft article marketing refers to the text mode and oral communication that uses specific conceptual appeals to make consumers enter the “thinking circle” set by the company in a way of presenting facts and reasoning, and quickly achieves product sales through powerful targeted psychological attacks, such as news, third-party comments, interviews, interviews, and word of mouth. Soft articles are a text mode that conducts targeted psychological guidance on consumers based on the conceptual appeals and problem analysis of specific products. Soft article marketing strategies can be divided into the following types.
(I) News strategy
People are curious and eager to learn new things and learn new knowledge, so news soft articles are easy to get people’s attention. When operating, please note that news soft articles generally highlight the word “new”, and the content in the article must be unknown and unfamiliar to people, such as new things, new views, new knowledge, news topics, etc. The form of the article must conform to the news writing standards, and the media and specific sections of the release should also be regular columns, and never send it to the advertising section.
(II) Experience Strategy
Experience-sharing soft articles mainly use the “reciprocity principle” in the psychology principle to share experiences with the audience for free and give them free help to achieve the effect of moving users.
Moreover, this type of article is generally given free of charge. Consumers do not have any psychological burden when reading, and they read with an active learning attitude. Therefore, the information in the soft article is more easily accepted and recognized by users, and some users will even actively spread word of mouth after reading. For example, we often see articles like how to make a good PPT and how to become a copywriting master. As long as there is a need, readers will take the initiative to read it and are also happy to share it with those who need it.
(III) Concept Strategy
Create a concept that is closely related to the target users, transcending products and enterprises, and defining a new market phenomenon for the industry. This concept must be highly in line with user needs and can attract strong attention and sufficient attention from the audience. Only in this way can it easily become an industry standard and become an independent noun in the history of industry development.
(IV) Technical Strategy
People often associate technology with “professional”, “profound”, “high quality” and “exquisite”. Therefore, if you take the technical route, it will be easier to gain user recognition. In particular, some innovative technologies will be popular with the media. For example, the 3D printer mentioned earlier is the result of a breakthrough in 3D technology, and the media will compete to report it. Because these technologies can promote social progress, the characteristics of media people determine that they will pay attention to these things. In fact, 3D technology has achieved good results in many fields, and every new technology and product will receive attention from the global media.
When we use this strategy, we should pay attention to the fact that the key to this strategy is to impress users with technical things. Therefore, the technology proposed must be real, must have a certain degree of advancement, and can really help users solve some practical problems. And when describing it to users, don’t be too profound.
(V) Topic Strategy
Sufficiently hot topics can allow users to talk spontaneously and achieve the effect of its dissemination. There are two better ways to get sufficiently hot topics. The first is to create topics around and in combination with social hot spots; the second is to cause controversy based on user preferences and needs. For example, a soft article by Wanglaoji, “Wanglaoji Herbal Tea Sold Out in Chongqing, Donated 100 Million and Became Popular All Over the Country”, was a topic created during the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake. Then, through a series of marketing initiatives, it exaggerated the patriotic sentiments and brotherhood of Chinese netizens to the extreme, and established a very positive and positive image of the Wanglaoji brand in one fell swoop.
(VI) Authority Strategy
People are more convinced of authoritative things. Therefore, establishing authority is also a strategy for soft article marketing. For example, we are more certain about the quality of products from large companies; we generally do not question the products sold in large shopping malls.
We can build authority through corporate background, and quickly establish authority through a good corporate background.