A guide to avoiding pitfalls when placing ads on Weibo and WeChat!

There was an article that went viral this morning. A client placed an ad on a major Weibo account owned by a media company, but the data was falsified and the traffic was inflated, resulting in dismal conversion rates. Such incidents are not uncommon in the industry. They wanted to make money, but ended up being charged an IQ tax by the small Vs.

Of course, it is not ruled out that writers are using negative marketing strategies to hype events and attract attention. At least for new media companies like us, we have long stopped running Weibo projects because of unsatisfactory data conversion.

Let me give you some basic knowledge first. If you want to do Weibo advertising, it is recommended that you use data tools to analyze it first, which can save you a lot of money.

The Weibo platform has the Weimanshi account management platform (http://weirenwu.weibo.com), which is the official Weibo account platform and one of the most comprehensive platforms in the Weibo KOL system. It is also the platform for Weibo to forcibly manage KOLs. If you contact KOLs on Weibo to place orders privately, Weibo will downgrade and block the content, resulting in the blogger's Weibo posts not being seen by his fans. Generally, experienced brand owners will ask KOLs to post on Weimanshi.

There are third-party Weibo media management platforms on the market, and large companies will independently develop internal testing platforms. Currently, there are almost no good social tools that can perform long-term testing. In daily work, we use the data from Weitask and Weibo platform, combined with solid practical experience, which can meet most of the needs for Weibo account selection. We can use the official Weibo data platform to select accounts.

Weibo official data platform to select accounts

In order to judge the quality of an account on micro-tasks, Weibo has created a Weibo Influence Index star rating for each account. It represents a comprehensive assessment of the account's number of followers and activity data. The higher the star rating, the greater the influence on Weibo, with 6 stars being the highest and 1 star being the lowest. The order acceptance rate indicates the number of advertising orders completed in the past week. For us, it can be understood as the degree of cooperation and the popularity of the account in receiving orders from other brands.

In addition to Weibo, WeChat public account advertising is still very popular. After all, WeChat has a huge user base and is a marketing position that brands cannot give up. Even though TikTok is in full swing this year, there are still many brands that stick to the public account position.

However, with 20 million public accounts, which are mixed together, is the reading volume real? How many real and accurate fans are there? How is the conversion? How to choose an account that matches your brand user tag?

Before I help clients place ads, I always ask myself a few questions.

First, what is the purpose of the launch?

Do you want to directly boost sales, or gain brand exposure, expand brand awareness, or drive traffic, increase downloads, and attract fans? Or is it to screen potential target users?

Because we adopt different delivery strategies for different delivery purposes.

If it is a promotion to attract traffic, then immediacy and short-term benefits are more important than long-term influence. Exploring multiple target user groups can reduce risks more than going all out. It is better to invest in multiple small accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers than in one large account with a million followers.

If you want to expose your brand, increase your popularity, occupy users' mental resources, and establish a brand positioning image, then self-media IP big Vs who bring their own traffic are the best choice.

In consumer psychology, there is a "multi-viewing effect", which means that you see the same brand in different places, and the content they disseminate is very convincing and has the endorsement of trust. Subconsciously, you will feel that this brand is trustworthy, and the brand's communication effectiveness is tied to trust.

In fact, many customers don’t understand the purpose of their advertising before they launch it. If you invest blindly, there will naturally be no good results.

Secondly, there is a very important misunderstanding. When many customers place ads, they always use the number of fans of a large account as the criterion to measure the quality of an account.

In fact, this is a serious mistake. Some marketing accounts with hundreds of thousands or millions of fans are actually not as good as an original account with only tens of thousands of fans. Original accounts are mostly operated by individuals, are not for the purpose of direct profit, are not over-commercialized, and the content does not follow the trend. They have their own unique views and positions. Such accounts attract accurate fans and have their own communities. Although the number of article readers is not high, the annual salary of fans is very strong. Such accounts are worth investing in.

Don’t forget that many of the early marketing accounts with millions of followers are now eager to whitewash themselves and transform themselves into original accounts.

Xiaohan’s personal public account has only five-digit followers, but is worth millions in the new media segment. Why? Because it belongs to vertical segmentation, the fans are very precise. It can be regarded as a small and beautiful original account. It can spread the brand for the company and generate business volume of millions every year.

Therefore, when placing large-scale advertisements, don’t simply look at the number of fans. You should consider the content operation of the account, the fan stickiness and loyalty. At the same time, the number of fans does not determine the fate of an account. It is more about the comprehensive fan activity, the number of article reposts, likes, readings and shares.

If you see that an article of an account has been read over 100,000 times, but you rarely see it reposted in your circle of friends, it means that there is something wrong with this account. Don't be fooled by the superficial data and waste your money on a zombie account.

I clearly looked at the background data and found that the reading volume is 50,000. Is the price of publishing a soft article reasonable? Why is it that this big account, which claims to have 500,000 followers, only has less than 10 orders after being launched?

Brushing data is the unspoken rule of this industry! Sharp eyes and golden pupils, you need to learn to identify!

There are some black technologies to diagnose an account, such as the public account weight test, which can also judge the account's activity and fan quality based on the number of readings, likes, and comments.

Furthermore, regarding the content of the advertisement, is it true that soft articles are more effective than hard advertisements? What kind of advertising content is effective?

No. We need to use different promotion forms for different types of public accounts and their own supply and demand relationships.

For example, if you want to advertise a real estate project, specifically a project in a certain area, then the focus should be on the location, services, facilities, transportation, price and other people-friendly content, because these are the core concerns of home buyers. Therefore, for this type of advertising, hard advertising is more direct and effective than soft advertising.

If you want to choose the brand of this real estate company, then soft articles that tell stories, express feelings, promote brand culture, represent quality of life, and trigger emotional resonance will be more suitable.

There is a misunderstanding that most people think that the advertisements posted by big self-media accounts are soft articles, but in fact, this is not the case.

For example, Mimi Meng’s common style is to tell stories that reflect a certain truth in life, and finally direct this pursuit to the brand. This is more like an independent article that is consistent with the brand’s tone + a hard advertisement at the end of the article, rather than a silent ad embedded in the story.

After understanding this, your thoughts will be much clearer when you look at the content. In the early days, some accounts embedded advertisements in a surprising way. Due to the novel and creative form, fans generally accepted it and even attracted a large number of reposts.

The truly effective advertising is to make users forget about the advertisement and focus only on the current product and related topics. For example, readers will leave comments on the article:

• 1) When will it be available on the market? Where can I buy it?
• 2) I just bought it yesterday, and today I saw XX’s recommendation, so I bought another dozen!

The surprising advertising format is losing its appeal. What kind of content organization is more effective?

When it comes to marketing, emotion always crushes rationality, so telling stories and selling emotions are always more effective than presenting facts and listing data.

The title is explosive and stimulates human nature, but different public accounts have different styles and different labels. Not being a clickbait title does not necessarily mean high conversion rates! If you are not careful, it may cause damage to the brand!

Every account has its own personality, especially some high-quality large accounts, which have their own unique style and tone. Brands need to look for accounts that are close to their own user labels and brand tone!

Don’t be a clickbait headline! Pay attention to the content!

In addition, data detection and conversion statistics are essential tasks. When placing an advertisement, you must look at the data, data, and data. You should let the data speak. Only accurate data analysis can improve the communication effect.

If you need to jump to the landing page by reading the original text, be sure to include parameters in the link and make statistics on the traffic contributed by each channel in order to monitor the actual effects of different channels and provide a more scientific reference for the next launch.

Once a public account article is pushed, it cannot be modified, so it is very important to preview the article before pushing it.

For advertising fees of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, if you discover after push that the link is incorrect, the QR code cannot be recognized, there is a layout problem, etc., subsequent mediation will be quite troublesome.

However, the title is good, the content is good, and the number of readers is high, but the actual sales conversion is not good, and the performance is not impressive. How to solve this problem of good results but not popular?

I’ll say it three times: product! product! product!

Finally, before launching, Xiaohan recommends that you at least evaluate the following points:

First, the type of public account: marketing account, enterprise account, or personal self-media? Although both have 100,000 fans, self-media has its own brand effect, so the fan stickiness and trust are naturally higher, and the conversion effect is naturally better. (But the threshold for self-media to accept advertising is relatively higher)

Regarding the cost of a single reading, generally speaking, the average cost of a reading is 0.3-0.5 cents per reading. If it costs more than 70 cents, please consider carefully. In short, the lower the cost of a single reading, the higher the ROI.

Second, the original proportion: a public account that is purely based on reprinting and patchwork is of little value. At most, it can increase exposure. However, some exposure is meaningless no matter how much it gets. This is related to the category of the fan group.

c. Xiao Ma Song said that channels represent the consumer group, which I totally agree with. For example, if you promote financial products on funny videos, how many conversions can you expect? I won’t go into the details of the common sense distinction.

You need to look at the open rate, fan stickiness, and user interactivity, and choose whoever is stronger. Don’t blindly believe in the number of fans, it’s just a number.

Third, the interaction situation: such as the like rate, number of praises, number of comments and even the number of likes of the first comment (if these data are available), and compare them with the industry average. If it is lower than the average level, the quotation should not exceed the industry average.

The number of likes at the end of the article is a magical number. It represents that the readers have read the article and expressed their approval.

Generally speaking, the number of likes is 1% of the number of views, which is a healthy ratio.

The number of likes for the first comment is very easy to fake. If the self-media wants to promote someone and releases that person, or hires internet trolls to promote them, it can be seen at a glance.

If you want to select a large account, reading comments is a good way. The quality of comments reflects the quality of the account. Long, heartfelt content and large number of comments indicate that fans have a high resonance with the article. The quality of the account is high and worth investing in!

Fourth, historical push: check the content tone of its historical articles. If the format is confusing and has no personality, it is not worth posting. The second thing is the frequency and type of advertising. If the advertising density in the past is high, or there is a history of the black five categories (weight loss and breast enhancement, etc.), no matter how much you invest, it will not produce any effect.

Fifth, posting habits: push cycle, whether the push time is fixed, whether the number of tweets is stable, etc.

For advertisers, advertising on Weibo and WeChat is not an extensive type of advertising. To be effective and efficient, in addition to big data analysis, it also requires manual familiarity and understanding of WeChat public accounts. Only "precise account selection with big data + excellent copywriting + third-party monitoring data + reasonable push rhythm" can achieve twice the result with half the effort, or even "achieve great results with small efforts"!

Author: Tang Xiaohan

Source: Tang Xiaohan