Tips for choosing advertising channels!

As of today in 2020, with the rapid rise and maturity of platforms such as Toutiao, Xiaohongshu, and Kuaishou, users' decision-making paths have quietly changed, and user attention (traffic) has been dispersed to multiple platforms. Each platform itself seems to have a lot of traffic and can all be utilized. However, because there are too many platforms to choose from, under the constraints of various objective conditions, people don’t know which channels to choose for advertising.

With so many channels, how do companies choose the right advertising channels ? To solve this problem, we need to figure out the following 8 questions.

1. What problems do we want to solve for which types of people? In other words, who are the target groups?

From the user's perspective, figure out what their basic user portrait is, what pain points and pleasure points they have in different scenarios, and once these are clear, a more detailed target group will emerge.

User portrait: refers to who your users are and what they look like. Generally, the following elements are considered

Basic attributes: male or female, married or not, zodiac sign, age (born in the 90s, 00s), education level, income level…

Social/life attributes: what industry they are in, what job they do, whether their children are in primary school/college or infants, what brand and price range of mobile phones they use...

Behavioral habits: where do you usually live, what is your daily routine, and whether you stay in an economy or mid-range hotel.

Interests and preferences: what brands do you like when shopping, what styles of clothes do you like, what TV shows and movies do you like, what music do you like...

Psychological attributes: This is relatively implicit and generally needs to be summarized based on the previous related content, such as lifestyle (does he have a regular work and rest schedule? If he likes to put on makeup, it means he likes to dress up. If he often watches health programs, it means he pays attention to his health, etc.); personality (is he a fresh and artistic person? This can be summarized from his usual attire and work content, etc.), and values ​​(he prefers to buy things that are good quality and cheap, which means he pays attention to cost performance, etc.)

Scenario/Pain/Pleasure Points : Under what circumstances do I need this product, what makes me uncomfortable, and what is the ideal situation. For example, when it rains, I will get wet without an umbrella, which makes me very uncomfortable. Having an umbrella can solve the problem of getting wet at the moment, and I don’t have to worry about it anymore.

2. What are the characteristics of your products?

Refers to specific features, such as specific product features or special processes, effects, etc., and other details worth noting; for example, Xiaomi mobile phones have high cost performance and good appearance, which are all product features of Xiaomi mobile phones

3. What are the common channels on the market (as shown below)

(Photo source: Aiqi live broadcast sharing, live link www.aikewang.com/course/139)

4. What are the specific attributes and characteristics of each platform?

Here we can analyze based on the number of people covered by each platform, the ratio of men to women, gender ratio, geographical distribution, usage time, and content characteristics. Specific analysis details: Some outlines in the first point of target group analysis in this article can also be used as a reference. For more detailed platform data, please refer to the relevant data compiled by Aichi every month (click to view: the latest data of 59 information flow platforms)

Take Douyin as an example: From the figure below, we can see that first- and second-tier cities are the most active. Although the ratio of men to women is close to a balance, there are more active female users, and they are mainly those born in the 1980s and 1990s... In addition, everyone usually uses Douyin, and you can know that the popular content on Douyin is relatively dry, trendy, exquisite, and interesting. The video production also pays attention to technology (such as the use of shooting techniques and special effects)

5. Whether the target population matches the platform population

For example, for a certain type of vocational education, the target population is basically employed people, aged between 25 and 40, with more active working hours. The main population is on the PC side, and the conversion on the mobile side is very poor. So when choosing a platform, we will definitely choose ads related to information flow and 360 display ads on the PC side, and we will not consider platforms like Xiaohongshu information flow, which mainly have traffic on mobile platforms, for the time being, or plan to postpone it, unless we want to grab the platform's bonus period first.

6. Budget allocation restrictions

Although we want to launch on many platforms, we have to consider budget allocation and give different proportions of budget to different channels, with more budget given to major channels. However, if the overall budget is not sufficient, it is recommended to decisively abandon those channels that have data but high costs, even if they are popular channels; or directly consider those bonus channels with low trial and error costs, which have less competition and low prices.

Let’s take our vocational education as an example. At the beginning, there were not many peers on Zhihu investing, and the prices were cheap. When our budget was not sufficient, we would consider choosing this platform to enjoy the traffic dividend.

Or we can change the way we play in existing highly competitive channels. For example, in Baidu search ads, if our budget is insufficient, we can move the keyword ranking backwards from the previously planned ranking without affecting the overall situation.

7. Conversion paths and goals

First, consider the decision-making path of today’s consumers ( noticing you → being inspired by you → searching and confirming → purchasing → sharing and commenting ). In the entire conversion path chain, different nodes will have different channels.

For example, when I am browsing Tik Tok or reading content related to a certain KOL on a certain content platform, I see your advertisement (notice you), which happens to meet one of my potential needs, so I become interested in you (be attracted by you), and then I want to know more about you, so I go to Baidu to search for more information related to you (search confirmation).

Notice that you then search on the search engine to confirm more information. The channels involved are content KOL or information flow related (WeChat + Tik Tok...) + search engine (Baidu + 360 + Sogou...)

Then it is also necessary to combine the actual assessment goals. Enterprises have different assessment goals at different stages.

For example, there was a stage when our company focused on brand. During that period, we concentrated on product promotion and exposure. At this stage, our choices were very diverse. We would use Baidu, 360, Weibo and other brand exposure related products such as Baidu Product Special, Baidu Encyclopedia, Weibo brand advertising, etc.

In addition, for skin care products, if you focus on online sales, platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin are recommended.

8. A/B Testing:

That is, comparative experiments. Through repeated comparative experiments,

a. Summarize and find out the real cause of the problem: For example, using A/B testing can help you figure out what kind of landing page will convert better, what content on the first screen will have a higher conversion rate, where to put the button for more conversions, etc.

b. The process of data accumulation helps reduce the cost of repeated trial and error, and continuously optimizes to achieve a healthier state

c. Eliminate disputes over different opinions and determine the best solution based on actual results

Note: In order to ensure the accuracy of data results during implementation, try to ensure unique variables during testing.
For example, we use two plans to test which of two creative ideas is better. When the two plans are set up, except for the different ideas, everything else is exactly the same.

The above are some of the points I will systematically consider when choosing advertising channels. When implementing them, it is also necessary to combine the company's actual objective situation, according to the consumer's decision-making path, the characteristics of the target population, etc., to screen out a channel combination delivery strategy suitable for your own company.

Thank you very much for your reading and time. This is just a rough summary of my views. I look forward to more voices and insights from different angles (you can speak out directly in the comment section). If you feel that you have gained something, please share it with more friends who still have questions about this, so that we can make progress together!

Author: alisa

Source: Aichisem