Online Marketing Promotion: How to Spend the Big Money? Fine-tuned operation of large traffic!

0 cost, small budget, replicable, attracting hundreds of thousands of fans, a hit...

Almost all practitioners, including all the masters, are researching and teaching how to achieve high output with small investment and how to make a hit product with low cost. But no one tells you that making a hit product with low cost basically depends on luck.

In public discussions in the marketing industry, almost no one studies how to spend big money and how to run large-scale campaigns, the kind with a project budget of over 100 million yuan. It seems that everyone thinks that spending money is an easy thing.

In the marketing industry, which is close to metaphysics, I firmly believe in the power of money. If you want to quickly and easily distinguish someone's professional level, just look at how much marketing budget he has personally spent and how he spent it. Just as the most effective way to measure a person's IQ is to look at his profitability in the open market.

Many practitioners think that if you give me 100 million, I can immediately make the brand awesome. Isn’t it just overwhelming advertising? There are keyboard warriors full of blind courage everywhere.

I have never made a lot of money, but I have spent a lot of money in my work experience. Being able to spend a lot of money is really a very advanced skill.

For example, there was once a media budget of 500 million to 600 million, but for various reasons the money was spent in a very scattered and unsuccessful manner. Four or five years ago, KOLs were not that expensive. With a new media communication budget of 5 million, we bought out all the KOLs on Weibo and Weibo within three days. We didn’t buy them individually but by Excel tables, and we bought a lot of Excel tables of resources. These are all failure cases.

When you have a huge budget in your hands, it’s really hard to spend it, and even harder to spend it correctly.

At present, how to spend a lot of money well is a very urgent issue, because there is no correct path. In the past, just buying CCTV would be enough, and it would never be wrong. But now there are too many choices. The Chinese media market should consume tens of billions a day, so a budget of 100 million in your hand is just a drop in the ocean. How should you spend it?

For example, new car launches, flagship mobile phone launches, large-scale brand upgrades, giant brand events, and new Internet trend campaigns, the brand budgets for these categories are mostly over 100 million yuan.

So today, let’s talk about how to spend big money and how to manage large traffic in a refined manner. Enjoy:

1. Public exposure

First of all, when you are facing a large-scale battle and need to fight as an army, precision, circle, segmentation, small and medium-sized KOLs, all these are ineffective. You need to gain mass exposure with huge traffic.

Currently, many brands are still using the "wide-net" exposure method, buying a little here, buying a little there, and it feels like they can be seen everywhere. This is undoubtedly wrong and a huge waste. I have mentioned the concept of "cognitive dome" before, but this concept is suitable for circle-based communication and not applicable to mass communication.

Sustainable exposure under a fixed traffic pool, operating deep traffic.

This is the conclusion I have come to recently. Choose a suitable mass platform as the main battlefield, complete most of the communication path on this platform, spend more than 80% of the budget, and deeply integrate with the platform, platform KOLs, and platform users.

There are not many similar popular platforms, such as Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, Taobao, and even CCTV is one of the options. The principle is to bundle a fixed traffic pool and carry out in-depth cooperation.

Let me give you an example. I recently talked with a friend from vivo about their two new products, iQOO and X27. They tried a new communication strategy. Next, let’s talk about our thoughts on large-scale communication campaigns based on the vivo case.

In terms of public exposure, vivo chose to carry out in-depth cooperation with Douyin. Douyin has become a popular platform for young people, regardless of their circle or region. It should be fine to regard Douyin as the CCTV for young people.

The overlap between vivo's audience and TikTok's users is quite high, so choosing TikTok is a relatively correct choice. I remember that Redmi should have had a deep cooperation with QQ Space back then, which was also pretty good.

I will not elaborate on what kind of resources were purchased at the exposure level, the frequency of content, etc. Generally speaking, for this kind of deep bundling cooperation, the platform can usually do some customized development based on customer needs.

Content output is the appearance, which is the information release, such as what product, shocking release, what is coming, what is on the market, etc., simple and direct notification. The effect to be achieved is that daily active users across the entire platform see it at least twice.

There isn’t much to say here, it’s just a mandatory appearance, remember to make it cooler and a little higher than users’ expectations.

2. Word of mouth acceptance

This step is very important, very important, very important. It is a step that is overlooked in many brand campaigns.

Usually, people either cooperate with the official for hard advertising, or with KOL for content, and rarely cooperate on a large scale at the same time.

If you only cooperate with the official splash screen, information flow, or even customized forms, it is still just an advertisement in the eyes of consumers. It is no different from the first 1,000 advertisements I have seen today and can be ignored directly.

If you buy a lot of platform KOLs to cooperate with, it will be less imposing and too scattered, which is not a group army strategy.

Therefore, while increasing exposure, we need to work with the platform’s top KOLs to produce in-depth content and launch it online together. When working with platform KOLs, it is best to let the platform participate as they have a better understanding of which KOLs are more valuable, what kind of content is suitable for them, as well as the various forms of creation, how to recommend them, etc.

In addition to KOLs, word of mouth among ordinary users is also very important, or in other words, KOLs are meant to guide more ordinary users to participate. Hard advertising and PGC drive the generation of UGC and form topics within the platform.

In the cooperation between vivo and Douyin, the content of its own spokespersons is presented in hard advertisements and information flow, combined with the original content recommendations of KOLs within the platform, ultimately creating topics within the site.

For example, the X27 on Douyin is presented as #一升就变美#. The official created a shooting template and ordinary users applied it to imitate it. Form a content matrix of celebrity hard advertising - KOL content - native UGC.

Let’s imagine that when we first open TikTok, we see a hard advertisement for a celebrity. There are only very few conversions here because there are often advertisements in this position and it is nothing special. When you enter Douyin and see celebrity ads in the news feed, they are, OK, just hard advertising.

When you see the original content created by KOL, the conversion rate will increase. Then I found that ordinary users also used templates to play with topics. At this point, I should be unable to ignore this advertisement. In short, the goal is to integrate the brand into the public opinion of this platform, not just to buy advertisements.

For example, when opening the screen, vivo used content endorsed by celebrities, which roughly meant "I'm here", and used it as a loudspeaker to launch a new product, which is very impressive.

Then there is the PGC of the platform KOL. This type of content is mostly scenario-based display, showing the product's appearance, functions, features, usage scenarios, etc. in different ways. For example, the most distinctive feature of vivo X27 should be the lifting camera, so the topic for ordinary users used #一升就变美#.

To sum up, the above two steps are carried out on the platform's public domain traffic, and are basically based on display and exposure. The core purpose is to display the product features and selling points in a more comprehensive and three-dimensional manner without users being annoyed. This is also about creating a cognitive dome for users within the platform.

Within the same traffic pool, repeated reach is achieved through multiple touchpoints, multiple forms, and diversified content.

3. Traffic Sedimentation

The third step is that users enter the brand’s private traffic pool. No matter which platform you focus on, you must open up the conversion path and make it very simple and easy for users to enter the brand's private traffic pool.

This private traffic pool takes many forms, depending on the platform. It may be an official WeChat account, a landing special page, a public account or a Taobao store. In short, users should be allowed to settle in a channel where a brand can communicate sustainably.

The core of this step is to retain users. When people come to the brand page from the public page, it is the last step before conversion, so it is particularly important. Any slight disturbance may scare away potential users because they are not that familiar with you yet, even though they see some people chatting outside.

If you come in and find that the page experience is not good and you can't find what you want, you will leave; if you come in and find that the product introduction is not clear and different from what is discussed outside, you will leave; or if you come in and find that the outside is very busy but there is nothing to say inside, you will leave.

In fact, it is the management of user expectations. When coming to the brand’s private domain page, it is necessary to further enhance user expectations and strengthen purchasing decisions.

Take vivo for example. Its hard advertising looks very cool, and it should be cool. KOLs are all praising it. It must have cost money, but it looks really good and easy to use, and it takes beautiful photos too. I also saw that ordinary users were discussing the topic, which was indeed quite good.

The next step is to jump. No matter it is a hard advertisement, KOL content, or a topic of ordinary users, you can directly jump to vivo’s official Weibo, or vivo’s Douyin pop-up store, and you can directly make an appointment and place an order, that is, purchase. There is no need to jump to other e-commerce websites, you can complete the order and purchase on the Douyin site.

For vivo, they pre-prepare content on the official Douyin account in advance, provide good user experience in the pop-up store, and just wait for users to come in. So should the official Weibo account pin a few related contents to the top, and should the official Weibo account put the topics and pop-up store jumps in a prominent position? That is, don’t let everyone look for it, and don’t let everyone use their brains to look for it.

To sum up, the in-depth cooperation between vivo and Douyin has built a brand path using three traffic modules, namely commercial domain traffic, public domain traffic, and private domain traffic.

Commercial traffic refers to the platform's paid media, such as the opening screen, information flow, etc. This part plays the role of informing and exposing, and requires concentrated and saturated delivery to let as many people as possible know that a new product is coming.

Public domain traffic refers to the KOL traffic within the platform.

The important value of this module is the native content, which helps brands integrate into the platform's public opinion. At the same time, KOLs are responsible for brand reputation and product scenario-based display, allowing the audience to understand the product features more intuitively and three-dimensionally.

Private domain traffic is the brand’s own traffic pool that enables it to communicate with users sustainably. External traffic must eventually be directed into private domain traffic.

When entering private domain traffic, users have already developed great interest in the product and hope to learn more about it before seeing whether they want to make consumption conversions. Therefore, in private domain traffic, it is necessary to manage user expectations and establish the simplest and most direct conversion path.

Three steps, each one is very important. If you fail to do the above three steps well, there is no way to talk about effect conversion.

4. Conversion Arrival

Here, a road is about to reach its end.

Why say arrival instead of sales? Not everything will eventually be sold, or not necessarily sold at this step. What needs to be done at this step is to sign a contract with the user. After signing, it may be the end, or there may be more road to go.

The key point of this step is that you need to predict the user's tolerance threshold and the maximum cost they can bear.

At this point, can users leave personal information, make a reservation, pay a 99 yuan deposit, or directly buy a 3,000 yuan mobile phone or even a car? This is a moment of negotiation between brands and users. If the user's threshold is to pay a 99 yuan deposit, then the brand will lose money if it makes a 0 yuan reservation, and will lose even more if it makes a full payment.

Finding the upper limit of what users can accept is the core of the conversion moment.

For example, at this time, vivo used the Douyin pop-up store to make free reservations, and the total number of reservations eventually reached one million units. You must know that the number of reservations for a mobile phone exceeding one million is a very, very large number, and it is only on the Douyin platform, and it is just a communication campaign. In addition to the conversion of online pop-up stores, we also divert traffic to offline stores. After all, some people still want to hold the product in their hands to feel at ease.

Another very important point is that the rhythm of the entire campaign needs to be very well controlled, the timing and content of each section must be well coordinated, and the entire process must be completed in a relatively short period of time to achieve conversion.

People always lose their passion in hesitation, and the whole process is to guide the public sentiment to reach a certain high point and then make an immediate transformation. This is a large-scale battle of the army group system, which tests the project operator's perception of changes in public sentiment.

To sum up

Core Questions:

The vast majority of marketing practitioners in China lack the ability to fight big battles, spend big money, and operate large amounts of traffic, especially in the current Internet communication environment. Maybe someone has spent a lot of budget, but was it spent successfully and effectively?

So the question is, how to fine-tune large-scale brand campaigns in the Internet communication environment? I thought about one of these directions today.

Action Guide:

1. Choose a suitable platform for centralized delivery. Old readers know that I mentioned the “cognitive dome” before and asked everyone to invest in a scattered manner. Now I ask everyone to invest in a concentrated manner. Is this a slap in the face? Not really.

Channels are scattered but users are concentrated. When you only target audiences at the million level, you should find the places where these users are frequently reached and cover more touch points. But when you are targeting an audience of over 100 million, you can’t invest in a scattered manner, because when you find that you have purchased 100 million or 1 billion in one channel, it still doesn’t feel like it is everywhere.

Therefore, we should focus on one popular platform. Weibo, WeChat and Douyin are the more suitable online platforms at present. Concentrating on one platform is the most effective delivery strategy.

2. Fusion, fusion, fusion. When a brand focuses all its energy on a single platform, it must not just buy advertising, but during this period of time, it must integrate the brand into the platform's public opinion environment and become a topic of discussion on the platform. It is important to integrate your brand into the platform.

For hard advertising exposure, KOL provides PGC scenario display and guidance, mobilizes UGC to generate content, imports private domain traffic from public domain traffic, and converts results in a timely and effective manner. It is difficult to do everything in one go, without leaving any gaps, without rushing, and with everything being just right.

3. What if multiple platforms cooperate? Finally, let’s break out of the above logic and framework. For example, variety show sponsorship can only provide exposure, Xiaohongshu focuses on word of mouth, and Taobao focuses on selling goods... Can these platforms be combined into one path? Everyone can think about it.

There is a high probability that there will be more and more money in the marketing industry in the future. Spending a budget of ten thousand to achieve a result of one hundred thousand is not a skill; it is just guerrilla warfare. People who can spend 100 million yuan and achieve 100 million yuan results and who can manage large-scale brand campaigns are scarce talents.

I wish you a big project.

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Author: Yang Buhuai

Source: Yang Buhuai