Case analysis of Toutiao information flow advertising

Based on our actual promotion situation, the effect of headline information flow can last for a long time, or it can bring in leads and customers steadily.

Hello everyone, today I will mainly share two topics with you:

Theme 1: What fundamental changes have taken place in the understanding of information flow?

Topic 2: What are the effective operations in promoting Toutiao information flow?

This time, I will mainly share with you some problems and ideas that I encountered at work during this period. I hope to bring you some useful information.

I am currently working in a K12 education company doing SEM bidding and information flow promotion. The company's product is to provide writing tutoring and training for students in grades 2-8. The company's product line is very narrow, focusing only on composition tutoring in the Chinese language subject. The company has two business lines: one is direct school enrollment training; the other is investment and franchising for composition projects.

Direct-operated schools are only located in Zhengzhou city, and there are no franchise schools in Zhengzhou; there are only franchise schools in other cities, not directly-operated schools. I am responsible for the online enrollment of directly-operated schools and the online investment promotion of franchised schools.

Our main promotion platforms now are Baidu and Toutiao (including Douyin, Huoshan, and Xigua). WeChat Moments and Kuaishou also tried it, but failed to show any results. The enrollment of directly-operated schools is mainly based on Toutiao information flow, while the investment and franchising of franchised schools is based on Baidu bidding and Toutiao information flow.

As for why direct-operated campus recruits do not use Baidu bidding, it is because the product line is too narrow and it only promotes the urban area of ​​Zhengzhou. There are too few people who actively search for composition tutoring, so it is impossible to acquire customers.

I introduce these to you because what I am sharing below are all my recent personal experiences at work. Without these introductions, I am worried that it will cause trouble for your understanding.

Now let's talk about the first of the two topics.

What fundamental changes have taken place in the view of information flow?

There are three points of change in views.

1. It was originally believed that information flow is only suitable for brand exposure and it is difficult to produce results, which means it is difficult to obtain leads and customers. Because the characteristic of information flow itself is high exposure, which will bring a large number of clicks, and information flow advertising is based on interests and tags to identify customers, the accuracy is naturally not high, so if you want to obtain leads and customers, the cost will be particularly high.

But from recent work, it can be seen that information flow can bring results and is no longer just a simple role in brand exposure.

Our company has tried the information flows of four platforms: WeChat Moments, Kuaishou, Toutiao, and Baidu. Toutiao had the best effect, while the information flows of the other three platforms failed to achieve satisfactory results. The so-called effect is to bring leads and customers within an acceptable cost.

In actual promotion, the lead cost of Toutiao information flow is more than 20 yuan lower than Baidu bidding.

However, because Baidu bidding is based on active search and consultation, while Toutiao information flow is actively pushed, visitors leave their phone numbers after seeing the advertisement, so the efficiency and quality of leads from Baidu are much higher than those from Toutiao.

Baidu's bidding wins in terms of efficiency and quality of leads, while Toutiao's advantage is that it obtains a large number of leads. As for the specific ROI and which platform they are willing to choose, each company can make a choice based on its actual situation.

But in terms of the cost of obtaining leads, Toutiao’s lead cost is lower than the bidding cost. This is the situation in our company. The situation will be different in different companies and industries.

Summary: Toutiao information flow can produce effects, and brand and effect integration can be achieved.

Of course, compared with information flow and bidding, the leads from bidding are more accurate. However, high exposure in information flow is its advantage, and the cost of acquiring customers is lower. Although the accuracy is not high enough, it is still an alternative customer acquisition channel.

2. It was originally believed that: the information flow has a large exposure, so after a period of promotion, the user group of this platform will be washed by advertisements several times, the lead cost will increase, the customer group will become smaller, and this platform will no longer be suitable for promotion.

I won’t go into details about other platforms because I don’t have data. Just the headlines.

We started to work on information flow in March. By June, the traffic and leads dropped a lot. When we were thinking about the reasons, we thought of two main reasons:

First, it was during JD.com’s 618 event, and the platform gave all the traffic to e-commerce;

Second, after three months of promotion, Toutiao users have been exposed to our advertisements several times, and the target users have been fully tapped.

Because our directly-operated schools’ online enrollment is only promoted in Zhengzhou city and in a single region, coupled with high exposure in the information flow, it is normal for the core group to see the advertisement four or five times. There was even one parent who left his phone number six times. Then the number of times you see the advertisement will not be less than 10 times.

June was a really tough month for me.

However, from March to now, the number of leads has been increasing every month compared to the previous month. Regardless of whether students are on vacation or in school, the number of leads is slowly increasing every month. Of course, except for June, because the number of leads in June decreased.

The activities of e-commerce giants will indeed take away the traffic of small companies.

Judging from our promotion time of more than half a year, it is incorrect to think that the information flow platform can only be promoted for a period of time and then it will have no effect.

Of course, this conclusion may not necessarily be correct. It is also possible that our promotion time is not long enough, and drawing this conclusion based on our company alone may not be correct.

However, based on our actual promotion situation, the effect of headline information flow can last for a long time, or it can bring in leads and customers steadily.

Why do I say so?

A. We promote a single region (only Zhengzhou city)

B. We have been promoting for nearly 7 months. Except for June, the number of leads has increased every month.

C. The cumulative number of advertisements displayed has exceeded 30 million times, but our core audience on Toutiao (including Douyin, Huoshan, and Xigua) is only more than 300,000, and more broadly speaking, it is less than 500,000. The core population is calculated as 500,000, and the advertising exposure to the core population is calculated as 20 million, so each person can see the advertisement 40 times on average.

If the information flow platform can only be promoted for a period of time, then if it can be converted out of 40 exposures, it would have been converted long ago. If it cannot be converted, it will be difficult to convert it no matter how many times it is displayed.

But the fact is that our monthly lead volume is increasing every month.

From this point of view, it is incorrect to say that high exposure will quickly convert the platform's target audience.

Summary: Toutiao information flow can be promoted for a long time to obtain leads and customers.

3. It was originally believed that information flow is only suitable for to C business and industries with a relatively wide audience, but not suitable for to B business and industries with a small audience.

But now, this view has changed.

Because our company's customer base is C-end people, we cannot provide you with real data and experience from the toB industry. You can only learn relevant information through communication with peers. I learned from my peers and Toutiao marketing consultants that toB industries such as mechanical manufacturing, lathe processing and cranes can obtain customers from Toutiao.

If your company is really facing traffic difficulties, you can try information flow and see the specific effects.

The above three points are what I feel most deeply during this period.

After this incident, I truly understood that before I delve deeper into a field, all hearsay, subjective judgments, and initial understanding are one-sided. I need to try it to know the real situation.

This is what I want to tell everyone. You can only know the truth by doing it. At the same time, when you encounter difficulties, wait a little longer, there may be a turning point.

Next, let’s share today’s second topic:

What are the effective operations in promoting Toutiao information flow?

The second topic is more conclusive and will not share too many operational details and data.

Because before organizing this sharing, I also learned about the work of the group members from the group owner. Not many friends in the group are engaged in information flow work. If there is no practical experience in information flow, it will be difficult for everyone to understand thoroughly if too many operational details are given.

So I will just organize the effective operations and share them with everyone. If you really use information flow one day in the future, just try it directly and compare it with the operations discussed today.

1. Toutiao allows you to open multiple accounts. With one company qualification, you can open multiple accounts. Opening multiple accounts can increase the total number of leads. It is also beneficial for stabilizing the overall promotion costs.

2. The same set of materials (videos and pictures) will have different effects in different accounts, which is why you choose to open multiple accounts.

3. Different targeting combinations have different effects, but because the information flow selects the appropriate audience based on interest tags, it is necessary to test different combinations of targeting. Moreover, the same targeting will have different effects, which is normal.

4. Normally, the creative classification is to choose the industry you are in, but if the effect becomes worse, you can try other creative classifications.

For example: Our company is engaged in composition tutoring for primary and secondary schools, so we should choose the category of primary and secondary education. Then, there was a period of time when the promotion effect was particularly poor, so we chose categories such as dance and art under interest training, and we were able to attract some customers.

5. Toutiao has cooperation with third-party APPs and platforms, and the cooperation platform is called Pangolin, which is similar to Baidu Alliance a long time ago. The effect is that in the Toutiao promotion background, you can choose to place advertisements on third-party APPs outside the Toutiao system.

Pangolins are effective and can bring in customers. In terms of cost, there is not much difference compared to promoting on Toutiao’s own APP.

In the promotion of headline information flow, the following operations are relatively effective and useful. In the account operation of information flow, the workload is relatively large due to the need to constantly create/pause plans. The difficulty mainly lies in when to start/pause the plan. Of course, data analysis is also an important task.

Author: Atom Wei

Source: LZX's study notes