How to operate and promote activities without money?

Event operators often face the embarrassing situation of having no money. Based on the principle of leverage, the author explains how to run events when you are poor.

Starting from the common pain point of insufficient activity funds or simply no money, we use excellent industry cases to prove that the leverage principle is feasible. "Small investment for big wins" is not opportunistic, but is introduced through creativity and emotion, using free methods, free channels, and leveraging resources.

Start with the results and iterate the connections diligently.

When the demand really exists and there are points of interest connection between different groups, they can output value to each other, consume value from each other, exist with each other, and achieve a symbiotic balance.

After the traffic dividend gradually disappeared, refined process management became the main task of operations personnel. They screened users many times and established various models. Silent users needed to be activated, ordinary active users needed to become high-frequency, and high-frequency users needed to be monetized. The main means to achieve these goals was activities.

As an important means to reach users, we should concentrate resources, focus on the main points, and then hit the target with one blow.

However, the reality is this...

Boss: National Day is coming. We should fully integrate the product features and organize an event to attract silent users. Me: Yes, I got it. What’s the budget? Boss: Um...you want more money?

What is the “leverage principle”?

Leverage is a labor-saving tool in basic mechanics. In economics, it means to make a small investment to achieve a big return, to use small amounts of money to accomplish big things, and to use very little of one's own capital to leverage large projects.

For example, building a real estate project.

At the beginning, a few people came to the local government and said, "I am from a certain group. I want to build a CBD here to prosper the local economy and increase the political achievements of local officials." The local officials were of course happy and said to these people, I can grant you a piece of land, but you have to buy it.

So these people first paid a part of the deposit and signed a letter of intent with the government. Then they took the letter of intent from the local government to the local bank and said that the government would grant us a piece of land. They would use the land as collateral and get a loan from you.

After seeing the approval document with the government seal, the bank would definitely give him a loan. These people used the loans from the bank to pay off the balance of the land and signed a formal land transfer contract. These people got a formal contract and went to another bank to borrow more money. They then used the borrowed money to set up a construction team and buy construction materials. Once everything was ready, they started construction and sold the houses at the same time, using the money from the sales to repay the bank loan. If everything goes well and the properties can be sold, once these people pay the balance to the bank, the remaining money will be enough to make them a fortune.

Did you notice it?

From beginning to end, the only funds these people used of their own were the down payment for acquiring the land in the first place.

These people used a series of financial means such as loans and a small deposit to leverage the entire real estate project - this is leverage, using the bank's money to do things for themselves with a small investment.

In Internet operations, the "leverage principle" is this: when human and material resources such as channels, gifts, and development are limited, use fewer of your own resources to leverage large projects.

It is good to have a lot of marketing costs, but the reality is that the marketing investment and target output in event operations are not proportional. Either, as in the story at the beginning, no money is invested; in a better case, there is a marketing expense of 100,000 RMB and the hope is to get an output of 10 million.

This article aims at the pain points of most operators in event operations, combined with the "leverage principle", to put it bluntly, it is to make a small investment for a big return, using various cases and methods to help everyone solve their doubts.

Reality: Poverty limits my imagination?

Here are two paragraphs:

1. The Queen's Counterattack

A rural girl came to the city, with no education, no money, no connections, nothing, and wanted to have a good future, but the result was a story of a queen's counterattack.

There are many girls with such reasons, but very few with such results.

The only difference is that the girl’s first city was Dongguan.

1. XX Bank recruitment H5

Background: XX Bank campus recruitment.

Effect: The traffic exceeded 30 million in one day after the release.

Analysis of the cause: Let each of the 500,000 employees make a transfer once, thus generating fission.

Basic thinking logic

Although the jokes are crude, the logic is clear and they answer three questions:

1. What resources do you have?
2. What demands can it meet?
3. Without a budget, how can you attract people?

Case 1: Zero-cost Didi Taxi

The development history of Didi Chuxing has been talked about many times.

Group: Passengers and drivers.

The company’s core demand: to solve the problem of mismatch between passenger and driver information.

Passengers’ demands are: get a taxi and save money.

The drivers’ demands are: take more orders and earn more money.

For passengers, the demands have always existed; for drivers, it is a new content.

If you want more drivers, you need more passengers; if you want more passengers, you need more drivers.

Coming from the Alibaba team, they have a natural talent for field marketing, such as at bus stations, airports, and places where shifts are concentrated.

Keywords: hiring people to take a taxi, taxi companies, gathering places for drivers, investing in airports, radio stations, the 190th taxi company. Non-RMB players can only play games with their brains day and night.

1) What resources do you have?

It can accurately target two groups: passengers and drivers; the team has rich experience in field promotion and has a very accurate grasp of the demands of the two groups.

2) What demands can it meet?

Passengers’ demands are: get a taxi and save money.

The drivers’ demands are: take more orders and earn more money.

3) Without a budget, how can you attract people?

Solve the problem of mismatch between passenger and driver information.

Case 2: Zero-cost web drama director

Background: He wanted to shoot a web drama. He was a good storyteller and a good director. But first of all, he lacked money, actors, and media resources.

1) What resources do you have?

Very good at writing stories.

2) What demands can it meet?

The media, the media needs original series.

He went to the media and told them that he had a film starring ABC, which he could authorize to iQiyi for exclusive broadcast. The copyright fee was low, but it had to be recommended on the cover. He could be responsible for offline promotion, which would increase the market influence of iQiyi's videos.

He looked for another company.

We told him that this film could be used for deep product placement within the drama, that iQiyi had a large number of promotional resources, and that there were a series of offline promotion plans. We then gave the company a quote and also provided iQiyi promotion examples under the same circumstances.

He found investors again.

Tell him that there is a film, a company is willing to invest in it, and it has Tencent's promotion resources. There are a series of offline activities that can be used to test the waters, and there are plans for a series of films later.

He found another actor.

The actors were given enough money and filming began.

3) Without a budget, how can you attract people?

Understand the pain points and needs of key people in the entire industry chain, and combine your own projects to meet these key needs.

There is an extended concept here: information asymmetry . It refers to the unfair information asymmetry between the game participants and other people involved in the game, which creates profit space between the asymmetric information.

What are the consequences of information asymmetry?

The reverse effect is to increase transaction costs and reduce transaction efficiency; the positive effect is that the party with information advantage has a permanent advantage.

The best example is the stock market. Some people know inside information, but most retail investors do not. Those who know the inside information make money, while retail investors are the ones who take the blame and get trapped.

It is not about asking people to take advantage of information asymmetry to do bad things, but to start with fooling people with results and diligently iterate connections.

When the demand really exists and there are points of interest connection between different groups, they can output value to each other, consume value from each other, exist with each other, and achieve a symbiotic balance.

Three key points

Purpose: Introduce through creativity and emotion, use free methods and channels, and leverage resources.

1. Energy Law

Connecting something with energy creates greater energy.

1) Purpose

It’s not that the idea is really good, but “it’s so good, I want to buy it.”

2) Positioning

What do I want to push and to whom do I push it?

3) Competition

What are competitors? What are his weaknesses? What are your strengths?

4) Contact

What contact point would be better?

5) Topic selection

Which hot spots/major contradictions/concerns of the people are it related to?

Is it possible to change the angle or the concept?

6) Packaging

• Title copywriting: refer to copywriting rules.
• Content logic: refer to the pyramid principle.
• Emotional mobilization points: refer to the rules of emotion mobilization.
• Format: H5, soft articles, offline roadshows, videos, and long-distance.
• Symbolization: relatable, human-speaking (analogy), more interesting.
• If there is no dissemination point, give users reasons to spread the word, such as creativity, scarcity, and golden sentences.

7) Transmission carrier

• Let users see it everywhere, and many people forward it to create hot events;
• Media (vertical-public media);
• User gathering places;
• Own channels (product platform, employee sharing);
• Cooperation channels (gathering places for non-competitive products with the same users, such as Renrenche and Driving Test Guide);
• Distribution channels;
• Opinion leaders (celebrity, industry leaders and other influential figures).

8) Tipping Point

• Continuous detonation, with connections between the past and the present, from point to surface, from 1 to 10.
• Popular figures participate and UGC is generated (forwarding, modifying pictures).
• Pre-buried hot spots increase the texture (from online to offline, from online media to print media, from one person to a group of people to a category of people, from the core to the periphery).

1. Focus on core details

Think about the problem from the user's perspective. The intrinsic value of marketing is the result, and the origin value of marketing is the process. Understand the success points of truly successful planning and let users become communicators.

Keywords: Tell users why they spread the word, and gain added value by spreading the word; gain the same amount of money at a lower cost; gain greater value with the same investment.

1. Fission propagation of X

Benefit = (resources*1.x) to the power of N X = iterative energy

Keywords: Gifts are updated weekly, continuously appreciated, traffic acquisition, more cooperation, more gifts, more uses.

Me: Do you really have no money? Boss: Really, and there will never be enough.

Author: Gao Gao

Source: Gao Gao