How to plan an event from 0 to 1?

As a planner and operator, online activities are one of the most important means of acquiring customers and promoting sales in online marketing. So how do you plan a successful online activity?

First of all, we need to understand the definition of online activities: activities that rely on the Internet, are initiated on the Internet, and are conducted entirely or mostly on the Internet, publishing activity information on the Internet, recruiting activity personnel, and the process of conducting activities on the Internet - Baidu Encyclopedia.

The planning proposal for an online event is divided into two parts: the creative proposal and the execution proposal.

Creative proposals generally require 2-3 alternatives, which include the source of the ideas, the basic content of the activity, and clearly state the theme, time, platform, and method of doing it.

The execution case is the execution plan for the entire activity process from project establishment to the end of the activity. Let’s take a look at what are the main elements to pay attention to in a complete online event?

(Online event planning mind map)

1. Purpose of the activity

The purpose of the activity is aligned with the purpose of the product or service in the product demand. Any demand must be a combination of product purpose and user needs.

Activities are no exception, and the classification of activity purposes is roughly the same as that of product purposes. It can be summarized into the following four categories:

Brand: For example, in an education industry where competition is so fierce, how can you quickly spread the brand awareness of your platform? How can users recognize your brand at a glance among many training schools? This is a problem that every corporate brand promotion needs to solve.

Attracting new users: that is, developing new users and using material rewards from activities to attract potential target groups to become our new users.

Retention: In the process of building a new product, due to the insufficient user base, the main job of product managers is to discover needs and acquire users.

As the product becomes more mature, the user base has reached a certain scale, but the old users who came with it are also constantly leaving. As the number of competing products increases, the cost of acquiring a new user continues to rise.

Activation promotion: that is, to activate the existing user base and use activity rewards to attract old users to become active and make secondary purchases.

2. Activity Theme

The theme of the event must be novel and attractive. Generally, the theme of the event can be conceived from two aspects: festivals and topic events.

Festivals can be created around national statutory holidays (Chinese Valentine's Day, Mid-Autumn Festival, National Day) or artificial holidays (618, Double Eleven, Member Day, etc.).

The event types generally use real-time hot topics on the Internet, such as: Peppa Pig Social People, Story of Yanxi Palace, Asian Games, or internal company events (new product launches) to gain popularity. Hot topic events can be found from Weibo hot searches and Baidu search rankings.

3. Activity content

Product discounts: such as common discounts, promotions, one gets one free when two people travel together, etc.

Gift prizes: Prizes for winning this event: such as movie tickets, vouchers, shopping vouchers, physical prizes, etc.

Activity rules: clear, detailed, transparent and fair activity rules.

Four: Activity time

There are different activity times for different types of activities, which need to be determined based on your actual needs.

The event can be promoted and warmed up in advance before it goes online. The duration of the formal online event should not be too long, as it will affect users' interest in participating. It is recommended to end it within 15 days, so that users can have a certain sense of urgency and enthusiasm for participation.

Five: Activity form

The form of activities needs to be designed around novelty, fun, and low participation cost. Online activities include leaving comments, sharing photos, forwarding with prizes, password red envelopes, lotteries, mini-games, fun tests, etc.

If you count them carefully, there are at least dozens of them. The key is to choose and innovate based on the purpose of the activity and the characteristics of the platform.

6. Activity Budget

First of all, we need to prepare the activity process, start counting the materials directly according to the process, list the things we need one by one, and fill them in the Excel table.

After the material statistics are completed, classification begins. Classify and organize according to project, purchase, quantity, and amount so that the data in the table is clear at a glance.

7. Promotion channels

A good event also needs good channels to promote it. After all, even good wine needs to be promoted in a remote alley.

When the activity plan is designed, the design of the activity promotion plan should be started simultaneously. Activity promotion includes on-platform promotion and off-platform promotion. On the platform, you can choose to promote on WeChat public accounts, corporate official websites, Weibo, mini programs, APPs, etc. Off-platform promotion can be through SEM, Tieba forums, news sources, Moments and other channels.

8. Risk Control

Before the activity goes online, the risks that may be encountered after the activity goes online should be predicted in advance and countermeasures should be prepared. The following are some of the problems you may encounter during the activity:

Technical risks: For example, the website is attacked and the special page of the activity cannot be opened.

User risk: Users are not interested in the content of the activity. There are even loopholes in the gift and prize setting, which leads to fake orders and wool-pulling.

External environment: WeChat tweets were banned for allegedly inducing sharing violations.

9. End of the activity

10: Implementation plan

The above 9 points talk about the planning of each node of the online activity. The last step is to implement each link of the activity. By using an Excel table to clearly list who will follow up and complete each link, you can intuitively see the progress of the activity.

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