Taking Kaola.com as an example, we analyze the event planning process and innovative gameplay

I won’t keep you in suspense here, let me go through it with a picture:

The following content mainly revolves around the theme of "product marketing" to share with you some of the author's experiences, observations and thinking models.

Why “Product Marketing”?

Let’s first look at the definition of marketing: Marketing refers to the process by which an enterprise discovers or explores potential consumer needs, allowing consumers to understand the product and then purchase the product.

Let’s review the definition of operation - from a broad perspective, all manual intervention surrounding the products on the website is called operation, which is an inevitable product of the Internet age.

This description is a bit too general. In terms of vertical subdivision positions, there are channel operations, content operations, event planning, user operations, community operations, data operations, product operations, etc.; in terms of capabilities, there are writing and creation, innovation planning, data analysis, product marketing, and the ability to master various operational tools; product operations focus more on the comprehensive capabilities of the operator himself. All these show that operations is a profession that requires very strong comprehensive capabilities. Although there are different divisions of labor, they are inseparable.

We can see that the division of labor for "manual intervention around products on the website" is becoming more and more clear, but it is undeniable that these divisions of labor are all for maximizing the platform's revenue. From the definition, these segmented operations are marketing-oriented, and the purpose of the early operations to promote transactions is to provide more efficient services and a more detailed product experience to gain the trust of users.

Generally, each product’s homepage has fixed goods/services with fixed prices, relatively fixed locations, and relatively fixed audiences. However, in many cases, event planning is indispensable when doing activities such as attracting new customers, promoting activity, brand communication, and monetization. It is also an indispensable part of product operations.

In the era of mobile Internet, planning is generally referred to as event planning or event operation; in any case, the ultimate intention of event planning is to promote the growth of core indicators and business transactions.

It should be noted that in the following first chapter, the author uses the actual event planning - "May 1st Brain Hole Festival" as a case to record the entire process of producing an event idea from beginning to end. In the second part, we discussed "traffic diversion and customer acquisition", because now simple channel delivery cannot meet the continuous growth needs of the product itself. Facts have proved that we can continue to acquire users more accurately and at a lower cost through on-site operations.
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In short, this part mainly shares a series of activities planned around product marketing, such as traffic diversion, marketing, sharing, activity, creativity, brand communication, etc. In actual cases, it will combine the previous content - "To understand users, you need this user psychological needs table" to analyze in detail and derive summary marketing skills, and at the same time share with everyone the secrets behind the success of the event.

Without further ado, take a seat on the small bench~

1. Activity establishment

1.1 Establishing indicators

The establishment of an activity usually begins one month in advance. The author often makes overall guidance based on the "operation calendar", which ensures that we can seize some festivals that have their own hot spots.

The first step in establishing an activity project can be understood as the process from establishing the activity purpose, activity creativity to producing an activity plan. After completing these steps, we say that the activity project has been established.

Some people say that the purpose of the event is to attract new customers, drive traffic, and realize revenue... I believe that this is the direction of the event, and the operational indicators we want to achieve are the purpose of the event.

On the other hand, the direction of the activity can be roughly divided into traffic acquisition, marketing monetization, sharing and communication, promoting activity, brand exposure, etc. The author will analyze these five parts in detail in the next five chapters.
Once the purpose is determined, in order to ensure that the activities proceed in an orderly manner and are implemented step by step, we need to establish an SOP table.

SOP (Standard Operation Procedure): Standard operating procedure describes the standard operating steps and requirements of an event in a unified format to guide and standardize daily work. The essence of SOP is to quantify the details. In more common terms, SOP is to refine and quantify the key control points in a procedure.

If you were asked to be the planner of a large-scale e-commerce promotion event, what core issues should you pay attention to? How to integrate core issues into the SOP form?

Usually when planning an event, we will start from the operational indicators, establish a general theme and cycle of the event based on the resource type and consumption quantity, and then study the specific gameplay, creativity, design style, emergency plans and other details.

Next, we will use the "Kaola Global Shopping" e-commerce promotion event as the background to talk to you about the preparations before "activity project establishment".

In this promotion, Kaola.com mainly sells products directly purchased from its own stores. First of all, we need to sort out all aspects of the activity, which can usually be clearly listed using a mind map.

As shown in the following figure:

Kaola Global Shopping Activity Operation Mind Map

After clarifying the general idea, break down the indicators for the overall revenue target, such as by stage: warm-up period, official period, return period; user split: new user revenue, old user revenue; and category split: Category A, Category B, Category C.

What is the significance of establishing these indicators at different dimensions?

First of all, these indicators are generally set by superimposing a growth rate on historical data. Basically, they guide the rhythm of the entire activity.

Indicator breakdown

After a rigorous review, it is time to draw up an SOP table, the purpose of which is to clearly express the key nodes of the entire process of the activity, as well as information such as core persons in charge.

According to the preparation needs of the event, the time dimension is divided into preparation period, warm-up period and formal period; the overall project arrangement is divided into three lines: sales promotion line, promotion line and product line; with these two top-level ideas of the project, the rest is the execution and implementation stage. What are the important events in each work line? Who is responsible for each matter? These issues can all be presented in the SOP form.

As shown in the following figure:

Koala Overseas Shopping Activity SOP (Table)

At the event execution level, we divide the event matters and assign them to each responsible team/person, such as event design, market communication, channel promotion, product planning, user marketing, institutional incentives, data support and other matters.

Core module collaboration and division of labor (example)

For example, the table below is an activity plan prototype (simple prototype) that activity operators need to provide. (We will also talk about the prototype below.)

Activity plan (main venue)

Activity plan (branch venue)

At this point, after the initial operational indicators, brewing activity plans, finalizing plans and formulating SOP sheets, the project establishment of an activity is completed. The next step is implementation. The departments responsible for event operation, UI design, product management, front-end and back-end will start working.

However, we usually think from the perspective of the entire event: what are the highlights, service upgrades, price advantages, or innovations? Service upgrades and price advantages are actually beyond the capabilities of event operations, so the author believes that innovation is a very important part while ensuring that it does not affect the core of the event (i.e. selling goods). The Koala Global Shopping promotion shared above includes creative presentations such as game coupon distribution, hot-selling lists, time machines, and multiple H5 activities.

Given that some of the top e-commerce events in recent years (Double Eleven, Double Twelve, JD.com 618, etc.) have had different creative ways of playing, in such an e-commerce shopping experience, users' "high points" will only get higher and higher, industry competition will become increasingly fierce, and users' experience needs will change rapidly... It can be seen that for a big promotion event, the innovation-driven module cannot be ignored.

In fact, I have always advocated innovation. Now I will talk to you about the topic of “How to innovate in activities” based on a recent case.

1.2 Activity Creativity

Creating creativity for an event is the key to establishing an event project. But the question is, there are successful cases every year, can’t we just copy those successful cases?

We all know that there are very few successful cases, and the reason for success is that there are dozens of failures behind them. We all know that in addition to NetEase's Xijing Operation Course, Xin Shixiang's marketing course was also a hit in early 2018, but an insider of Xin Shixiang confessed, "In 2016, Xin Shixiang was doing event marketing every day. Compared with unknown events, the number of known hit events was extremely small." Copying other people's successful cases may not necessarily achieve good results, and it is likely to not adapt to the local conditions.

New World Screen Fission Poster

A. Unlocking Creativity

Why innovate?

First of all, innovation is an essential basic condition for a qualified operator; from the perspective of implementation, innovation is a means, not an end, and it is achieved through a series of innovative means to achieve business goals. However, we should not think that innovation is something lofty and out of reach. Innovation is a skill that can be acquired through acquired experience.

Here is a quote from the viewpoint of Xunlei founder Cheng Hao at a "Product Innovation" conference where everyone is a product manager:

Innovation is solving the four-element equation: X+y+Z+W=innovation. The "four" here is a symbol, referring to the many factors of innovation, which may be four, X, Y, Z, and W, or three, depending on the specific situation.

For example:

If your goal is to increase active users by 30% and use "May Day" as the holiday background, how should we innovate?

First, we find out several incentives for innovation, and then use them as innovation factors to think divergently. (The following part is the author’s understanding. Regarding the topic of activity innovation, everyone is welcome to leave a message to share)

As shown in the following figure:

The process of solving the four-variable linear equation

From the above problem-solving process, we first derived the four factors X, Y, Z, and W, namely keywords, gameplay, upgraded gameplay, and communication mechanism. In the process of step-by-step divergent thinking, we will derive many innovative sub-factors.

Next, we will reorganize the sub-factors with good compatibility according to the operational indicators or objectives, and finally come up with an interactive game project with the theme of "May Day Brain Hole Festival" and answering questions.

In order to make the activities closer to life, shorten the distance with users, and reduce the bounce rate, we also need to scenario-based and story-based the activities. Try to use a story to connect the entire brain hole section.

On this basis, the event operation team and the design department had another brainstorming session. Below, I will present the summaries of the internal meetings to you one by one.

B. Creative Records

Creative brainstorming record of the May Day Brain Hole Festival (1)

Time: 15:00-15:30, March 6, 2019

Location: Small meeting room

Participants: Operations Department

Confirmed content:

• Preliminary project establishment: An interactive game project with the theme of "May Day Brain Hole Festival" and question-and-answer style has been determined. The questions are divided into two categories: multiple choice questions and human-computer interaction.
• Activity prototype diagram: The activity prototype diagram is further modified and preliminarily finalized. In preparation for further discussion with the design department.

Creative brainstorming record of the May Day Brain Hole Festival (2)

Time: 11:00-11:40, March 7, 2019

Location: Small meeting room

Participants: Design Department

Confirmed content:

• The entire "brain hole" activity needs to be connected by a main story. After the user passes each level of guessing, there will eventually be a fun and interesting ending.
• The "guessing puzzle" scene in each level needs to be daily so that users feel familiar and involved. The gameplay is to let users make certain operations or choices in an everyday scenario, but the correct choice in the end is definitely not in line with common sense, and requires imagination to make the right choice. There is no limit to the number of choices, the gameplay is more open, and you can get clearance hints by sharing.
• Although the specific visual style has not been determined, it must not be the usual style of our previous activities. It must be eye-catching, special and magical.

Some suggestions:

A core element can be added to the design, and the entire game revolves around this element, such as the "game console" in "Mom Hide My Games". Our activities can be carried out in series around elements such as "hole" or "gold coins", "wallets", and "mobile phones".

Can the visual images use a first-person perspective to make the entire activity more immersive?

Should the main storyline or levels be related to the product brand? For example, here is a story about financial management.

Creative brainstorming record of the May Day Brain Hole Festival (3)

Time: 15:00-15:30, March 7, 2019

Location: Small meeting room

Participants: Design Department; Operation Department

Meeting topic: May 1st Brain Hole Festival story sharing and selection

ZXM: He Xiaobao travels through the second dimension, where he will meet different characters on the way, interact with them and answer questions. After successfully passing the levels, he will obtain props and return to reality (reversal).

CMY: Lying down and drinking water and playing with mobile phone, water splashes onto the ground, the mobile phone falls into the water world, He Xiaobao reaches out and pulls it in, answers questions and looks for clues, and passes the level successfully.

XZN: In order to prevent He Xiaobao from becoming a dramatic actor, it is necessary to stop brain cells from dividing. Different types of drama queen characteristics are divided according to the content of the questions, and users can prevent division by answering questions.

Meeting suggestions: Take the funny route, be interesting, fun, and make people want to forward the H5 activities

Meeting conclusion: come up with a storyline - generate corresponding questions - each question has different interactions

Creative brainstorming record of the May Day Brain Hole Festival (4)

Time: 15:30-16:00, March 7, 2019

Location: Small meeting room

Participants: 10 design team members

Meeting topic: Determine the solution to eliminate brain cells and start the game to answer questions - title "Eliminate Brain Hole Bacteria"

Meeting recommendations:

• The story version of eliminating XX brain cells is introduced into the game
• Tell a complete storyline
• Improve gameplay and details (to be optimized)

Meeting conclusions:

• Text version Story version
• Graphics and style

Story summary:

(1) Transition:

May Day is finally here, and XX Bao (character IP) stays at home and prepares to enjoy his holiday. "What should I do to enrich myself?" XXbao began to think.

"Buy an unfinished building and wait for it to appreciate in value?" "Or, pay a celebrity 2 million per hour and play a thrilling game of King of Glory with her for an entire afternoon?" "How about building a high-speed rail to the M78 Nebula and going there to keep in touch with my friends in AOTU." "Oh, everything is so troublesome. Is Mercury retrograde recently? I feel so irritated."

Why does XX bag keep coming up with so many unrealistic ideas? Maybe it's because my imagination is too big and I have too many brain cells? Those brain cells that kept overflowing with love for making trouble were spreading in his head, shouting in his ears with a shrill voice, "Make trouble! Make trouble! Make a big one! Make one for me too!"

Countless voices filled XXbao's ears. He began to feel irritated and crazy. He was going crazy! He shouted desperately: "Someone help me kill these brain hole bacteria!!"

There have always been heroes in the world. Come and help XX Bao eliminate these evil brain-hole bacteria and save the children!

(2) Enter the game:

Players can help XXbao eliminate the evil brain hole bacteria by doing brain hole questions. There are 5 questions in total. You can get hints by sharing.

(3) Conclusion:

Finally eliminated them! The rocks that pierce the sky become heroes, and the light is revealed when the thick fog is cleared away!

The whole world became brighter. A ray of sunshine shone on the fat boy He Xiaozaibao who was lying on the sofa eating potato chips. He looked so happy and cheerful. The Coke around me seems like holy water, the potato chips seem like royal food, and the bulging wallet also makes people feel unusually at ease. It turns out that being a fat otaku can really make you happy all the time~ This may be the power of philosophy.

just you kmow why ~ why you and I ~~ BGM came out from the speakers beside me, and XX was completely immersed in this man's romance. . .

Sudden! ! ! Ta-da! Ta-da! Ta-da! Suddenly! ! It seems like something flashes next to the pillow of XX bag. Let's zoom in a little bit, and then zoom in a little bit more. . it turns out! There are still two remnants of the evil brain hole fungus! They suppressed their anger, and even though their hands and feet were bandaged, they were still whispering to each other: We will be back!

TO BE CONTINUED…

Go to WeChat and help XX package to eliminate the remnants of the evil brain hole bacteria!

May 1st Brain Hole Festival Activity Record (5)

Time: 11:00-11:40, March 8, 2019

Location: Conference Room

Participants: Development, Design and Operations Group

Conference content:

• Activity functional requirements review: determine the design prototype and feasibility of development issues
• Design schedule: March 12-March 29, 2019
• Expected launch time: April 29-May 5, 2019

May 1st Brain Hole Festival Activity Record (6)

Time: 11:00-11:20, March 11, 2019

Location: Small meeting room

Participants: Design Department, Operation Department

Requirements:

• Confirm Z's storyboard plan, and Z will be responsible for the main visual of the story animation
• C is responsible for answering questions on APP and WeChat
• Design process, quality and output are the responsibility of X
• Creative peripheral gifts: Offline peripherals will be on the 18th (Monday) Z and L will be connected to the main visual

After several rounds of brainstorming meetings, we finally finalized the creative gameplay of the "May 1st Brain Festival" with the purpose of promoting activity and increasing activity by 30%.

From this we can see that in the entire project, the creative part is often the most core, involving brainstorming between the design department, operation department and development department. For operations, learning cross-departmental coordination is also an essential skill.

Among them, it needs to be emphasized that in the planning project, the operation department plays the leading role, and the design department and the development department cooperate according to the needs of the operation department. Therefore, as an operation, you need to understand your role positioning, learn to start from the operation indicators, learn to raise demands, and more importantly, learn how to coordinate resources and communicate across departments. Next, I will continue to share with you the aspects that need to be paid attention to between departments.

2. Collaborative division of labor

2.1 Draw a prototype

Activity prototype diagram. Generally speaking, we use prototype diagrams to vividly express our operational needs. This is also the only reference for design and development work, so the prototype must be accurate. For product operations, although you don’t need to draw as professionally as a product manager, this is the basic ability of product operations.

There are different ways of operation. Some require you to draw a mind map or flow chart of the activity first, while others directly draw a prototype diagram. There is no good or bad, it’s just a difference in working habits.

Generally, you can draw the main trunk first: activity homepage, loading page, then jump page public page, etc.;

Now that we have the trunk, we have the branches, such as pop-ups, prompts, etc.

The last part is the leaf part, including buttons, copywriting, instructions, etc. Now that we have the trunk, branches and leaves, what remains are the connections between them. The connections are often the trigger points and displays of link functions, have the function of guidance and explanation, and are also the embodiment of the logical direction.

Screenshot of the prototype

Screenshot of the prototype

APP/WeChat homepage design

2.2 Activity Joint Debugging

How long do we need to prepare before an event is finalized?

Just like the "May Day Brain Hole Festival" case above, the event that was launched at the end of April had to start in early March, spanning more than a month. But this is a relatively complex activity and the work cycle required will be extended. Generally speaking, a one-month cycle for an activity is more reasonable.

The author's operations team launches an average of 3.2 activities every month. From project preparation (early planning, material preparation, clear goals, etc.), design to development, testing, version release to online launch, customer service Q&A to activity review, a complete activity cycle basically takes 3-4 weeks. How can we squeeze in 3-4 activities in one month?

In fact, this is mainly based on cross-departmental coordination. I will use a chat flow chart to explain it to you:

In the table, each department of operations, design, technology, and customer service has its own division of labor. There is one feature we should notice: in the same time period, each department is responsible for different projects. For example, the first activity "Activity 1" has been launched, and "Activity 4" has begun preparation.

It can also be understood as: in each participating department, every time an activity project is completed, another new activity project will begin. Such an orderly work order is the guarantee for maintaining a high frequency of activity projects.

3. Activity launch

(slightly)

4. Activity review

4.1 The essence of review

Zengzi said: "I examine myself three times a day - am I loyal when I work for others? Am I trustworthy when I interact with friends? Do I practice what I have learned?" This is a review of oneself. What does activity replay mean?

Reviewing the game, which comes from the terminology of Go, refers to replaying the record of the game after the game is over in order to check the pros and cons of the moves and the key gains and losses in the game.

Activity review plays a connecting role. Continuing from the previous refers to which advantages of the previous activity this activity has adopted and which disadvantages it has avoided; and leading to the next means that after the review, we obtain the advantages of this activity that can be inherited by the next activity.

Therefore, the essence of review is to learn from experience, continuously improve one's own abilities, and increase business indicators.

4.2 PDCA Cycle

The PDCA cycle was first proposed by Dr. Shewhart, an American quality management expert. The ideological foundation and methodological basis of total quality management is the PDCA cycle.

The meaning of PDCA cycle is to divide quality management into four stages, namely planning (Plan), execution (Do), inspection (Check), and action (Act). In quality management activities, it is required to plan all work, implement the plan, check the implementation effect, and then incorporate the successful ones into the standards, and leave the unsuccessful ones to be solved in the next cycle. This working method is the basic method of quality management and is also the general rule for all aspects of enterprise management. That is: plan → plan execution → effect check → optimization/processing → next cycle.

Source: Baidu Images

In fact, the author quoted this quality management methodology in order to make the process of activity review more reliable.

4.3 Review process

A. Project Description

What is the motivation and background for doing this?

B. Goal follow-up

Looking back at the operational indicators of the event project, what are the strategies and plans used to achieve this indicator? What are the actual results? Were the objectives and key results achieved? If it is implemented, what advantages can be inherited, whether there is room for optimization, record your optimization plan.

What is the reason for not achieving it? What aspects did not meet expectations, how to improve, and write down improvement plans.

C. Analysis results

Analyze the "advantages" of the "Goal Follow-up" summary:

• What are the subjective reasons? What are the objective reasons?
• What are the key success factors that actually work and are they inheritable?

Analyze the "deficiencies" in the "Goal Follow-up" summary:

• What are the subjective reasons? What are the objective reasons?
• What is the most important root cause and how should it be solved?

D. Distilling Experience

To extract experience, we need to review it again and again and come up with a reusable methodology.

For example, in an activity project, the psychological needs of users often do not change, the commonly used gameplay remains basically unchanged, and the operational indicators generally include attracting new users, promoting activation, monetization, sharing and dissemination, etc. The problem is how to operate the essence of the review into the new activity project for optimization and iteration.

Author: Operational Evolution History

Source: Operational Evolution History