When prospective consumers make purchasing decisions, they may seek information to help identify and evaluate the products and services aligning with their needs. A marketing approach called' knowledge marketing' has been advocated to help consumers get a comprehensive and objective understanding of existing products in their buying process.

'Knowledge marketing' is where enterprises introduce their brand stories and products on knowledge-sharing platforms in Q&A formats to drive exposure. "Zhihu" and "Baidu Zhidao" are the mainstream Q&A platforms in China. Advertisers can share their brand and product information through these channels from an objective perspective, gaining credibility among Chinese consumers and insert advertorials on the platforms or link content to their websites.

After understanding knowledge marketing, you might wonder how does it help with a brand's marketing? See the answer below.

1. Use the platform's authority to build brand reputation and customer trust

Zhihu and Baidu Zhidao are both valuable information sources in China with large coverage and creditability. Zhihu claims to have 160 million registered users in Q2 2022. Baidu Zhidao claims to have more than 900 million users, and the cumulative number of questions collected has exceeded 590 million. Marketers can use these authoritative platforms to considerably promote their core offerings and establish a direct connection with consumers.

Take Zhihu as an example; authenticity and professionalism are their core value to users. When customers access the brand information through Q&A format and other UGC on Zhihu, these contents are more convincing for them and thus effectively increase user interest.

As most customers trust Zhihu as an authoritative source, users might republish Zhihu articles to other media or users, which would further enlarge brand exposure without an extra cost.

(Users search for a question on Zhihu and learn brand information from the answers)

2. Improve brand positioning in search engine results and increase organic traffic

Search engines shall crawl content from leading platforms like Zhihu and Baidu Zhidao to capture insights on various topics. Creating knowledge marketing campaigns on Zhihu will help boost the SEO effect by increasing the visibility of the positive information in the search engine result pages. The more visibility your information has in search results, the more likely you will garner attention and attract prospective customers to your business for the long haul.

(Gaotu.cn improves search rankings for positive content by SEO)

Knowledge marketing is a fast, cost-effective, and interactive way to advertise online. To know more about developing knowledge marketing for your brand in China, don’t hesitate to reach us at enquiry@so360.hk.