Methods for attracting new users through event operations!

In recent years, I have seen many user operations people only consider how to conduct an event, what form the event takes, how much the event budget is, whether the KPI can be achieved, etc., but rarely pay attention to more detailed and focused thinking such as whether the event is liked by users, whether the frequency of the event is too high, the standard conversion of the event links, and how to reduce the event budget.

Although the purpose of the activity is to increase the value of a single product in the short term, wouldn’t it be better to increase the value more effectively and efficiently and acquire more active users who meet the product positioning? If you only want to attract new users, then what’s the point of buying a bunch of dead users?

1. Activity Positioning

Today is not the time to compare who has better or more beautiful user data, but to assess the specific net benefits of users.

Example:

The activity takes the form of a big roulette wheel, and the main prizes are pure red envelopes, with prizes ranging from 1 yuan, 3 yuan, 5 yuan, 10 yuan, and 20 yuan. The distribution method is to follow the official account and send the serial number to redeem the prize, and add the customer service red envelope assistant to receive the red envelope.

Under such logic, are the acquired users of any use to a translation company? Will a group of users who only want to get red envelopes pay attention to your product?

Therefore, this activity itself has committed the first problem.

Positioning is not only about positioning the theme and direction of the activity, but also about positioning the target group and purpose of the activity.

When an online translation company organizes an activity, the activity theme must be related to the translation or product itself (XX Translation Festival), and the activity direction must be focused on user education and activity impact for future development (a dissemination activity for xx translation product in the translation field).

Targeting the event audience is actually very important for the event, which will affect the selection of prizes.

Translation products should be targeted at users who need translation. Where do the users who need translation exist? Schools or foreign companies?

If it is a school, the prize should be resume translation, thesis translation, etc. If it is for a company, the prize should be contract translation, accompanying translation, legal document translation, etc.

The purpose of positioning is actually relatively simple. It is mainly to position the main purpose of this event, whether it is to attract new customers, promote activation, or promote the brand.

However, this translation roulette wheel activity had a deviation from the beginning of its positioning. It is unlikely that the customized group of red envelopes is the group that needs translation, so there is a certain bias in the positioning of this activity.

In an event, positioning is the first step in planning and the direction of execution. Therefore, for an event, the first point of activity positioning must be planned in detail and accurately positioned.

Positioning is mainly based on products, superior instructions, and the market. For example, if the product is a translation product and the personnel are those who need translation, the market and user needs can be analyzed. Regardless of attracting new customers or promoting activation, we will follow the instructions from our superiors to arrange and plan plans and activities based on the previous products and markets as the basis for positioning.

2. Analyze activity data

For many friends who are engaged in user operations, they will basically analyze data when conducting product activities . They will also analyze previous activity data and channel data, and at the same time they will also position products and users.

But is this really how user operations are done during activity operations?

During the activity operation process, the analyzed activity data plays a key role in guiding the operation direction, channel data, activity market data, etc. for the operation personnel, and the operation data of these activities are often easily overlooked.

In the process of operating activities, when analyzing activity data, most people simply look at the data of previous activities and channel data, and then start to do it. Some operators even start planning and executing activities without even looking at the data.

However, many people don’t know that activity data is divided into four major categories. Before conducting an activity, the activity’s past activity data, past channel data, past conversion data, and current conversion data will be analyzed and compared.

The main data extracted and applied from past activity data are traffic during the activity, user downloads during the activity, landing page types during the activity, and user types during the activity;

The main data extracted from the previous channel data are the number of exposures, clicks, and page reach of each channel;

The previous conversion data mainly extracts the conversion of each link, such as advertisement to page, browsing to registration, registration to participation in activities, etc. to form an overall conversion data;

The existing conversion data mainly comes from the analysis of the effects obtained after the preheating of the activity. The overall analysis data is the same as the data extracted from previous conversion data.

The main analysis methods for these four categories of data are almost the same. If we use an activity case table to demonstrate data analysis, we can find that analyzing simple activity data is not difficult.

Past channel data, past conversion data, and current conversion data are all analyzed in the same way as in the table above. The goal of the analysis is to improve the original data while achieving existing goals.

The difference between the analysis of these four types of data and the activity review data analysis after the activity is that one focuses on direct improvement, while the other focuses on the reasons after the failure of the activity, the recording and improvement of the data.

3. How to plan activities

Once the operational positioning and data analysis of event planning are determined, the event must be implemented into the actual planning process accordingly.

When it comes to events, the planning process is extremely important. In event planning, data and positioning can be used to conduct unified analysis and selection of planned activities. At the same time, the planning proposal should also reflect the specific activity form, content, rules, personnel, arrangements, budget and risks.

The relevant content of these influences in the planning proposal will affect the final effect and execution direction of the activity during the implementation process. Therefore, for an event, important event planning is like a beacon guiding the operations staff to execute it.

In event planning, the main planning objects and contents are event form, event prizes, and event process. Among them, the event form is mostly the final activity method obtained after positioning and data analysis.

Just like the earliest activities carried out when we were doing special price projects, the activities were carried out through a big turntable or voting, which was a special price platform, and the target audience was consumers who loved to take advantage of bargains. Based on the analysis of the crowd situation, we found that the activities that users would definitely play include roulette, voting, opening treasure chests, etc. Based on this idea, we determined the specific activities at that time.

Similarly, during the planning process, in order to increase the number of users and meet the product and user positioning, the selection criteria for prizes should be to attract the target group and increase the number of users.

According to the data analysis of the project at that time, 60% of the users on the website basically bought cheap and electronic products. At that time, it was decided to give three iPhones as the first prize, followed by direct-sale brands and other coupons as prizes. On this basis, a corresponding cash reward is set up for the first prize.

This setting method allows users to actively participate when they participate for the first time, while continuously stimulating users to participate through the first prize.

The entire activity must be simple and fast, so the entire activity process is as follows:

Browse>Participate>Register>Get Award

The overall process is simple, and it is based on letting users participate in the event first, and then inducing users to register and receive rewards. One of the main reasons for doing this is that no one wants their things to be lost, and they use this psychology of users to plan activities.

After the entire event format and process are determined, the most important thing is to design and develop the page with the technology and product departments. At the same time, the operations staff is also required to provide the product staff with the required function configuration sheet, draw out the specific activity process or provide a specific Word document, describing in detail the probability of prizes when users participate in the activity, and the functions that need to be developed (for example, if the user needs to participate in the activity first, then it is necessary to limit the participation of a single IP address in the activity, and it also needs to be cached until the user registers to claim the prize).

Therefore, during the entire event planning, we not only need to consider the form of the planned event, but also need to observe how the current event theme is determined, how the event process is designed, and the event development functional documents, etc., which are extremely necessary in the event planning process.

In event planning, it is also necessary to analyze and estimate the specific effects and event budget. After future event planning, the channel data and channel situation configuration that need to be configured will eventually be reflected in the event planning case.

Therefore, I will write a separate article after the event to elaborate on the overall event planning content. Because the overall conception and thinking of event planning is not suitable to be described from the perspective of user operation, because it involves all aspects of operation.

4. How to configure channels for successful activities

The success of an event is not only related to positioning, data, and planning, but also to the channels used during the event.

I don’t know if you have ever had this feeling: the most difficult thing when planning an event is not knowing which channels to choose. If you don’t have money, you don’t know which channels to promote it; if you have money, you don’t know which channels to use.

The process of thinking about which channels to use is to study how to configure channels for the event. The way and method of configuring channels will ultimately affect the success of the entire event.

Research activity channels

After studying Tmall Double 11 and other APP small activities (anniversary celebrations, big turntables, etc.), you will find that most of the activities are based on advertising + business in the process of channel configuration, and are exposed or promoted in the media.

Just like during Tmall’s Double 11 event, all advertisements were placed on the entire network (online alliances, DSPs, browsers, hijacked pop-ups, etc.), Yingke reached a business cooperation with Tmall, and news + self-media were used for preheating, exposure, and topic highlighting.

By studying some small APPs, we find that the channels for their activity configurations are mostly single or multiple advertising + small business cooperation.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the channel commerce + advertising configured for a successful campaign are inseparable. So how do you choose the channel of your choice from the vast number of channels?

Analyze channel suitability

At present, in the entire Internet industry, excluding business channels (strategic cooperation, traffic cooperation, upstream cooperation, and downstream cooperation), the remaining channels in the entire Internet industry are mainly divided into free channels and paid channels.

The main channels of free channels include social channels, such as Momo, QQ, WeChat, communities, Zhihu and other vertical communities and operation methods (EDM, SMO, SEO, etc.); the current mainstream and well-known paid channels include Baidu bidding and Guangdiantong advertising.

How should it be analyzed?

1) Conduct channel adaptation analysis based on the activity population

Channels are divided into vertical and non-vertical and user screening and non-screening. If your target audience is people in the financial or Internet industry, aged between 25 and 35, then the best advertising platform to place advertisements on is the DSP platform and the vertical industry.

Reason: DSP can deliver precise content through user big data screening, and vertical financial industry portals or platform users are inherently more precise.

2) Determine channels based on budget and conversion rate

After analyzing the channels, it is necessary to decide on the importance of abandoning or investing in them based on the channel’s conversion user data and corporate budget, rather than investing all of them.

After determining whether these activities are suitable for certain channels, final optimization and preparation are required for all channels. Because different channels require different images or texts, it is also necessary to optimize channel conversions before or during the pre-launch of event advertising to reduce consumption and increase conversion rates.

For example, before placing an ad through Baidu bidding, you need to deploy keywords based on the product. Divide keywords into long-tail keywords, event keywords, competitor keywords, industry keywords, etc., and prepare different creative ideas and titles for different unit keywords.

If you want your campaign to be successful and cost-effective, refined channel operation and analysis, channels and other operational means are also indispensable. But operations ultimately depend on people. If there is only one person managing the channel, he or she may only be able to manage two channels at most. Not having the time to accurately manage other channels will also cause problems in the channels.

As the fourth point of event operation, channel plays a role in publicity, promotion and attracting new members for the event. It is also the starting point of an event and has a great impact on whether an event will be successful. After deciding on the promotion channel, the subsequent warm-up of the activity will also be carried out, and the warm-up will be a good way to test the channel and increase the success rate of the activity.

5. Activity warm-up

Many people have asked me before how to take control of an activity and control its success rate independently. The key to improving the success rate of an activity is "warm-up".

I have previously written about the eight points of an event: positioning, data, planning, and channels. These four points are mainly about how to select and operate the direction, form, and promotion of the event. Although the success rate of operational activities can be improved, it still fails to completely and accurately improve the success rate of activities.

If you want to increase the success rate of your event, you need to start with event warm-up. Why do you say that?

Many people think that preheating is simply notifying users of upcoming events, but this is not the case. There are two types of preheating: the first is internal testing preheating, and the second is open preheating. These two types of preheating have completely different functions.

Internal test warm-up

Internal testing warm-up, as the name suggests, is to conduct internal user testing for the activity through seed user groups or employee user groups or core user groups.

Generally, internal testing is first conducted by operations personnel, and issues such as testing procedures and rules are examined. If there are no problems, it will be provided to seeds, cores, and employees for testing.

During the testing process, we analyzed the process problems of participating in the event, and the conversion rate of participating in the event, receiving rewards, and placing orders.

If the purpose of the activity is to increase user registrations, then each activity channel needs to be preheated for internal testing. Each channel should be run for 1-3 days for data testing, and the registration conversion rate brought by the individual data should be analyzed. At the same time, it should be analyzed how to improve the conversion rate to complete the data indicators.

Open preheating

The difference between open preheating and internal test preheating is that the first step is to start large-scale publicity for the event, and to conduct batch operations and material delivery in the open preheating using the methods and approaches previously used in the internal test preheating to quickly and batch acquire users.

At the same time, during the open warm-up, it is necessary to change the materials according to the usage time of the channel. For example, for GuangDianTong, it is best to change the materials every day to conduct channel testing. Generally, after the material results come out during the internal test warm-up phase, batches of related materials will be produced.

Generally speaking, during the open preheating process, operations need to pay most attention to whether users will behave according to your previous internal test preheating. Sometimes the results are very good in internal testing, but will decline or be worse than the same period last year during the open preheating period; at this time, targeted operational cooperation or additional channels are needed to increase the success rate of the event.

Most activities will have a warm-up, and warm-up is not very simple. Especially during the internal testing warm-up, it is necessary to test the conversion and loss in each activity process, and also to carry out targeted optimization. If an activity wants to have the best cost-effectiveness among all channels, internal testing and preheating are necessary processes to improve cost-effectiveness. Targeted optimization can be used to increase conversion rates and reduce delivery costs.

Activity preheating is the fifth element of successful operation in user operations. Friends who don’t know how to improve the success rate of their activities can improve it through preheating.

6. Activity Optimization

After an activity has gone through positioning, planning, channels, data, and preheating, the entire activity is basically in a state of completion. What should we do if we want to increase the success rate of the activity more?

There is only one way, which is to "optimize" the event, mainly through further optimization of channels, planning, and preheating data, with the ultimate goal of reaching the optimization peak.

However, optimization is the most easily overlooked by many operators during the activity process. For example, most operators will have the following two situations:

1. Sometimes we do a lot of optimization work but don’t know whether it is optimization or not.
2. Without doing any optimization work, they still think they have done the activity to the extreme, but this is not the case.

What is optimization?

Optimization refers to operational work carried out on the original basis.

For example, when I am making a sharing courseware, I have completed the courseware production, picture and color configuration. In fact, at this point everyone thinks that the production is already completed. However, I will further simplify the text that can be simplified, delete unnecessary pages, etc. This process is further optimization.

When it comes to campaigns, optimization is everywhere, and it’s hard to explain it in just one article. When I talked about channels and preheating before, I used cases to explain them. Just like the selection of channels and the placement of keywords, they are also optimizations. Like the internal testing of preheating, preheating itself is also a kind of optimization data.

So how to optimize it?

But what I want to say more is nothing more than the extreme thinking, refined thinking, and data-based thinking of operations, and these thinking are needless to say for operations.

7. Activity Execution

For Internet companies, the most troublesome issue for every activity is execution. Execution is also an essential skill for operations personnel. Now companies have higher and higher requirements for employees' execution capabilities and operational execution, and it is also becoming more and more important. Because businesses and operations personnel need to operate through execution, the same thing only takes 60 minutes for an efficient person, but 480 minutes for an ordinary staff member.

Therefore, when operating personnel carry out event operations, they implement them after event planning. Whether it is establishing an execution table for the event or detailed operation of the event, it is actually to help and guide better execution of the event.

The execution of the activity mainly consists of three aspects:

1. Execution efficiency
2. Implementation details
3. Execution attitude

The high or low execution efficiency will directly affect the preparation speed, resource quantity, and coordination speed of the activity. The execution details and execution attitude mainly affect the data recording, data analysis, resource regulation, and core attitude of the execution activity during the execution process.

Generally, an execution plan is prepared during the event planning process, and the purpose of establishing an event execution plan is to improve the efficiency of all event coordination and executors. Implementation plans like these are mainly intended to guide the relevant personnel in each activity to carry out the activities efficiently.

What’s funny is that some operators don’t even know what the execution plan is or how to do it specifically; some even make an execution plan but don’t follow it. So how can they be efficient?

The execution details and attitude in execution efficiency itself are also one aspect of improving efficiency. As an operation executor, every detail in the execution needs to be paid attention to and analyzed. Rather than analyzing a fluctuation in activity data the night before and discovering a problem three days later, analyze the fluctuation and make recommendations when it occurs.

There are many contingencies in activities. Although the success of an activity is not necessarily a matter of execution efficiency or attitude, it is inevitably inseparable from execution efficiency and attitude.

When it comes to execution attitude, some people treat it as a task, some treat it as just work, and some just do it to get by. During execution, the role and attitude you take will directly affect your development.

If you think it is just coping, then your work must be all about coping and you are confused about your career.

If you think of it as a task, then you will complete every task in your work well and have a full understanding of your profession.

8. Summary of the activity

The previous 7 points will maximize the success rate of the activity, but what if the activity fails? What should I do as an operator?

At this time, a summary of the data and content of the event is needed to showcase the strengths, problems and data of the entire event. This kind of presentation is called an activity summary (review). The significance of the activity summary to the activity is to summarize the data, planning, form, process, success and failure of the activity. At the same time, the problems encountered in the entire activity will be analyzed one by one, and corresponding solutions will be proposed.

In fact, everyone knows how to review an activity, and also knows the specific practices in the review. So today I will mainly talk about why activities (really need) to be reviewed. In fact, we have already mentioned above why review is necessary. Because it is mainly for preparation and improvement of subsequent activities, but how to improve it specifically?

Hypothetical Case

For example: In Activity A, due to activity problems, the registration rate of a single registration link in a certain period of the activity is reduced by 10%? (Not considering the actual significance)

How to solve this situation? Is the problem a process issue? Or is it because of coordination issues? Or is it because of the prize? How should we analyze it?

When faced with this problem, we should analyze the activity process. If the event process is well connected, then we need to analyze the experience of the registration page during the event, and also analyze the changes that occur within a specific time period; if there are no problems, we need to analyze the changes in promotion channels and operations.

There are many problems that need to be analyzed, and there are also many points.

As for whether to review the activity, my suggestion is to do so. At the very least, you can analyze many experiences and problems from this activity, which will be of great help for the next activity and your own development.

Author: Lin Huami

Source: Lin Hua Mi