How Knowledge Matrix Achieves 'Content is King' in a Billion-Dollar Market with 5 Billion Annual Views and Over $1.1B GMV

Why Has a Market Poised to Reach RMB 100 Billion “Eliminated” 90% of Its Companies in Less Than Three Years?

On one hand, according to iResearch’s forecasts, the market size of the digital marketing and traffic value ecosystem related to the health industry—with the pharmaceutical sector at its core—is projected to reach RMB 100 billion by 2025, while the potential monetization scale of the content ecosystem centered on vertical medical and health content is also expected to reach RMB 30 billion.

On the other hand, competition in this potential trillion-yuan market is unusually fierce—the number of enterprises has plummeted from 1,000 in 2020 to fewer than 10 (Source: 21st Century Business Herald, “A New Era of Digital Marketing: Can Healthcare MCNs Seize the Opportunity? The Key Lies in High-Quality Content Supply”), a testament to the brutal intensity of the rivalry.

Why Is the Corporate “Survival Rate” Less Than 10% in a Market Whose Monetization Scale Is About to Reach RMB 30 Billion? The Underlying Reasons Naturally Cannot Be Separated from Increasingly Stringent Regulation.

For example, the National Health Commission, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and other departments jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Establishing and Improving the Mechanism for the Publication and Dissemination of Health Science Popularization Knowledge Across All Media, which requires the establishment and improvement of such mechanisms to promote high-quality development in health science popularization. Additionally, the Code of Conduct for Online Streamers, released by the National Radio and Television Administration in conjunction with relevant departments, explicitly stipulates that streamers engaged in the medical and health sectors must possess corresponding professional practice qualifications.

Furthermore, new media platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou have successively issued regulations, with platform oversight rules for accounts featuring medical-related content becoming increasingly stringent.

Against this backdrop, while some medical MCN agencies are voicing strong complaints, Ding Zhaoliang, Founder and CEO of Hangzhou KNOTRIX Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “KNOTRIX”), stated, “Stricter regulation will be a long-term trend, as healthcare is inherently a serious sector critical to public welfare. We must not allow poorly produced health content to enter this industry. More importantly, we should influence society as a whole by delivering high-quality science popularization content and promoting advanced health-oriented values, all in compliance with regulatory requirements.”

“KNOTRIX positions itself as a ‘deep operator and service provider of healthcare content.’”Prior to founding KNOTRIX, Ding Zhaoliang spent several years working in the consulting and investment industries.

In the latter half of his investment career, Ding Zhaoliang engaged with consumer e-commerce and indirectly entered the field of healthcare content operations. “At that time, we observed that certain business models in the healthcare sector were relatively outdated, and that new technologies, innovative business models, and fresh concepts could all help drive the healthcare industry toward better and faster development.” This insight inspired Ding Zhaoliang to launch a venture in the healthcare content operations space, leading to the creation of KNOTRIX.

In 2023, KNOTRIX was also named “Annual Potential Enterprise” at the 2023 Future Healthcare Top 100 Pengshu Awards.

And,Aligned with the aforementioned positioning, KNOTRIX has strategically laid out three major business segments in the consumer healthcare sector (such as maternal and infant care, postpartum rehabilitation, and anti-aging): precision marketing, live-streaming e-commerce, and cross-platform traffic conversion.

And the foundation for the development of these three major business segments is incubated by KNOTRIX.With nearly 100 health and wellness IPs, KNOTRIX has accumulated a total of 30 million followers across all platforms and over 5 billion cumulative views. Meanwhile, KNOTRIX has established precise private-domain fan communities, which are growing at a rate of more than 10,000 new targeted followers per month on top of an existing base of 130,000, thereby providing omnichannel traffic empowerment to partner enterprises across the industry chain.

Among them, the so-calledPrecision marketing services refer to providing "seeding" and exposure services for big health product brands with science popularization and education needs through short videos by influencers.The logic behind achieving “precision” is that KNOTRIX selects target audiences based on the characteristics of user groups for promoted products, then identifies corresponding influencer accounts. Meanwhile, it leverages its self-developed “CheeseCake” AIGC algorithm platform to provide customized and personalized video script design as well as filming and editing guidance for these influencers. By utilizing the decentralized algorithmic logic of new media platforms, it maximizes the exposure of core content, thereby achieving a “twice the result with half the effort” effect.

As for the live-streaming e-commerce business, no further explanation is needed. However, it should be noted thatKNOTRIX’s product promotion formats are not limited to live streaming; they also include video-based and private-domain sales.Furthermore, in an interview, Ding Zhaoliang stated, “The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic propelled healthcare content operations into the spotlight and gave rise to a wave of physicians engaging in product promotion through live streaming. However, such activities by physicians may involve various compliance issues. Therefore, from the outset, KNOTRIX has not supported physicians in conducting live-streamed product sales, a stance that remains unchanged to this day. The primary entities engaged in product promotion on KNOTRIX are numerous nutritionists, rehabilitation therapists, and parenting bloggers.”

Platform-wide traffic conversion is primarily driven by an insight from KNOTRIX: traffic on new media platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou experiences significant spillover due to consumer behavior patterns, resulting in product search data on external e-commerce platforms being substantially higher than internal search data within these new media platforms. Therefore,To address the ambiguity in directing users to “off-platform” products, KNOTRIX has launched a cross-platform traffic conversion service. By leveraging methods such as keyword targeting, this service precisely identifies the specific store selling a given product on external platforms, enabling consumers to make more accurate purchases.

Taking AMH ovarian function testing products as an example, KNOTRIX’s promotional strategy focuses on locking in and emphasizing the keyword “AMH at-home testing.” Meanwhile, through SEO optimization and the KNOTRIX omnichannel marketing model, a series of keywords and core brand elements (partner brand stores) are uniformly and centrally exposed and converted on “off-site” platforms (such as Tmall and JD.com), thereby significantly improving the off-site sales conversion rate of partner products.

“Fundamentally, we are a healthcare content commercialization company. Our commercial capabilities are demonstrated through precision marketing, product-driven sales, and cross-platform traffic conversion. Building such commercial capabilities is not particularly difficult—we have simply adapted the commercialization strategies of the consumer goods industry to the healthcare sector,” said Ding Zhaoliang. “Our core competency remains the creation and iterative improvement of content.”

“In the next three to five years, or even a decade, any company that aims to wield significant influence in the healthcare content operations market must possess strong capabilities in content creation and iteration,” said Ding Zhaoliang.

As such, KNOTRIX has been continuously cultivating this “internal strength.”

From the perspective of ensuring the professionalism and medical rigor of its content, Ding Zhaoliang introduced that KNOTRIX currently boasts a comprehensive team of medical professionals and nutritionists, with well-established production workflows and review mechanisms for health and medical content. Meanwhile, KNOTRIX has also accumulated substantial knowledge reserves.——“For the pediatric-specific knowledge graph alone, we compiled over three hundred pages, amounting to hundreds of thousands of words.”

Moreover, in terms of content production, KNOTRIX has not only established a comprehensive system but also continues to iterate.。From the perspective of the production system, KNOTRIX is deeply involved in every stage—from topic selection and script finalization to filming, editing, and post-production operations—for each health influencer under its partnership. It conducts comprehensive reviews and analyses of viewership data for every video. Meanwhile, KNOTRIX has independently developed the “Cheesecake” AIGC algorithm platform, with algorithm servers integrated online and deployed internally. To date, the platform has trained on over 100,000 health content scripts, providing intelligent content creation services to all partnered health influencers.

“This is our most distinguishing feature compared to other companies in the same sector—our capability to create and iteratively refine high-quality health content. In the process of building this capability, we have also grown alongside health influencers, earning consistent recognition from all our partnered health influencers,” remarked Ding Zhaoliang.

andWhat further differentiates KNOTRIX from many healthcare content operators is that it is incubating its own private-label brands for general health and wellness products.During the course of business operations, KNOTRIX identified product gaps or issues with product quality and suboptimal efficacy in certain highly specialized niches. Consequently, KNOTRIX conceived the idea of “developing solutions in-house.”

According to Ding Zhaoliang,KNOTRIX’s product R&D team boasts many years of experience in the nutritional supplements industry, and KNOTRIX has established collaborations with higher education institutions and research centers such as the College of Biotechnology and Food Engineering at Zhejiang University and the Ningbo Institute of Life and Health Industry, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

As for KNOTRIX’s original business, Ding Zhaoliang appears highly confident in its development plan:Over the next three years, capture China’s largest traffic gateway by achieving the highest follower aggregation and view counts in a single vertical on platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, and WeChat Channels. Simultaneously, build a comprehensive commercial ecosystem—encompassing precision marketing, product promotion, product sales, and service sales—tailored to the characteristics of distinct niche audiences.

Overall, next-generation content operations should not be limited to impersonal scientific popularization; rather, they should adopt a new approach grounded in trust, integrating both humanistic warmth and scientific rigor. The entire healthcare industry should embrace a broader vision, focusing on enhancing its professional expertise and service capabilities. It should help build high-quality business and consumption models across the entire industry chain, foster the growth of the broader health sector, reduce healthcare costs for all, and contribute meaningfully to the nation and its people.