How to promote an event without money or resources?

How to run an event without money and resources? Let me first say the conclusion: clarify the supply, demand and demands of all parties, integrate internal and external resources (repeatedly leverage), build a resource ecosystem, and thus expand the influence of the event.

To put it bluntly, you need to use the only resource you have to leverage 2 points of external resources, then use the newly added external resources to ask your boss for 3 points of internal resources, and then package the overall 6 points of resources to leverage other external resources. By repeatedly leveraging and packaging resources, we can build a large enough resource pool to expand the dissemination and influence of the event.

Isn’t it a bit confusing? Let’s take a familiar example - Didi Chuxing , to illustrate this principle.

How is Didi’s resource ecosystem constructed?

Didi hopes to build a travel ecosystem for both drivers and passengers, hoping to achieve an organic balance of resources between drivers and passengers. At the beginning of their business, they encountered a problem - just like the chicken or the egg, should they develop the driver market first or the passenger market first?

• Without a driver, what would the passengers sit on?
• If there are no passengers, what will the driver do?

The problem Didi faced at the time was that it had no resources on both the driver and passenger sides, so they chose to start with drivers. Why?

(1) Passengers are relatively scattered and independent, while drivers are relatively concentrated and organized (various taxi/private car companies)

In the early days when there was a shortage of manpower, instead of handing out flyers to every passenger you met on the street, it was better to directly find a specialized taxi/private car company and talk to the boss.

(2) From the perspective of product operation, Didi has stronger control over the driver side than the passenger side.

Passengers cannot control where they take the taxi and where they want to go; but drivers only care about the effective itinerary and cost. As long as the departure point is not too far away from them, it doesn't matter where the taxi goes. As long as Didi effectively controls the distance of issuing orders, it can ensure the driver's satisfaction. Therefore, Didi chose to find a driver first. After trying to fool everyone (and failing), a small company in a remote area finally agreed to cooperate, and Didi finally had its first few dozen drivers.

But the question is, what if there are no passengers even though we have a driver? It’s too late to find passengers one by one now. The driver will definitely unload the car if there are no orders in two days.

Here Didi came up with a particularly clever idea – pretending to be a passenger.

They specially recruited several employees whose daily job was to use Didi to hail taxis, one order after another. After arriving at the destination, they got off the car, walked a few hundred meters, and then got on another one.

In this way, Didi retained the first batch of drivers and continued to leverage other taxi companies in this way.

1. When the number of drivers reached a certain level, Didi began to leverage passenger resources through "generous user subsidies" and "sufficient driver supply";
2. When there are enough real passengers and the driver supply resources are tight, continue to leverage more driver resources through "driver subsidies/rewards" + "passenger orders";

This cycle repeats itself, continuously leveraging resource supply on both ends, which has created Didi's current travel empire.

Of course, Didi’s success is not only due to its good resource leverage. The most important reason is that matching driver and passenger resources is a real, long-term and indispensable demand.

Like the once popular question-answering app, it integrated resources and channels and became a quick hit in the short term. However, because video Q&A was not a real demand, if its function was just to kill time, it could not compare with Zhihu and official accounts in terms of professional knowledge, and could not compare with TikTok and mobile games in terms of entertainment. So it quickly became popular and also quickly declined.

Of course, as a business of epoch-making significance, Didi must have many factors to satisfy. We only draw on its strategy of repeatedly leveraging resources. If it is just a short-term operation, the threshold will be relatively low. Let’s go back to the original topic -

How to run an event without money and resources?

In the conclusion just now, each comma is a step:

1. Clarify the supply, demand and demands of all parties;
2. Integrate internal and external resources (repeatedly leverage);
3. Build a resource ecosystem;
4. Thereby expanding the impact of the event.

Next, I will explain these four steps to you through a case I worked on before , the "Mobile Charity Festival" .

1. Clarify the supply, demand and demands of all parties

First determine:

• Our needs are : to enhance brand influence from the public welfare side, and to drive the growth of the company's e-commerce business. We hope to obtain more channel resources and prize resources, and need to produce some high-quality materials (in addition to short-term exposure during the event period, we hope to be able to deposit them on the company's official website and SEO for continuous exposure). We hope that the event can generate some orders.
• What we can provide is : a definite budget (not more, not less, just tens of thousands, not enough to support large-scale events alone), public welfare brand endorsement (with a foundation license), and some internal resources (in short supply, pending communication).

After understanding your own situation, look at the situation of your cross-industry partners.

• Partners’ needs: positive, large-scale brand exposure, possibly requiring business conversion and PR coverage;
• Partners can provide: If the conditions are good enough, they can provide channels and welfare prizes.

In addition to my own department, there are some other departments in the company that may be able to help me:

1. Demand from other departments of the company: number of orders;
2. Other departments of the company can provide: product development resources, site resources, etc.

Analysis completed.

1. Integrate internal and external resources (repeated leverage)

This step may be the most important step, and the key is to pry repeatedly.

2.1 Analysis and Disassembly Path

After understanding the supply, demand and demands of all parties, first look at what you have in your hands: with a budget of tens of thousands, people inside and outside the company look down on you. At best, you can make an H5 and add some prizes. You may not be able to afford video posters and you don’t have money to buy channels. What should you do?

The cost of H5 is the biggest expense. If we can’t ask the partners to cover it, then let the partners provide the channels and prizes.

So what can the partners get?

Activity themes and content accumulation planned around its business characteristics.

I want to apply for internal resources, and other departments within the company happen to be doing e-commerce promotions. Then our activities must find a way to bring in e-commerce orders in exchange for H5 development resources and product resource positions.

Conclusion: Look for external channels and prizes to give them high-quality brand exposure; look for internal channels and development resources to bring them business order conversions.

2.2 Use existing resources for initial communication and prioritize benefits

Communicate with internal e-commerce colleagues: We are going to hold a mobile phone charity festival, design it around mobile phone usage scenarios, and guide users to buy second-hand mobile phones (what they want) from you to do charity.

Result: You can give it a try, but e-commerce allocation of development resources requires effect estimation. Currently, the channel resources for this activity are insufficient, so the effect is not expected to be very good.

We found suitable partners (we chose Dada Bus and Faceu Camera at that time), and through focusing on product functional scenarios, we highlighted the social value of the functions (occasionally ordering takeout to help parents share the pressure of housework, and taking photos to leave memories for parents). The other party was willing to provide channel resources to distribute H5, but was unwilling to provide prizes.

Preliminary conclusion: Given the current situation, it is necessary to increase the budget for purchasing prizes. It is estimated that H5pv will be 100,000. You can apply for internal channels, but you cannot apply for development resources.

2.3 Repeatedly leveraging resources

Find other partners that fit the mobile phone scenario and can provide prizes and channels (ZhongAn, Ali Koubei): "We have an H5 with more than 100,000 views. Would you like to come? We need you to provide channel resources and prizes." Successfully obtained channel and coupon prize resources, as well as endorsement from a big brand, but the other party hopes for PR news coverage;

Find e-commerce colleagues: "Now the H5 traffic is at least 200,000+, you can help develop it, there are channels such as Alibaba and ZhongAn, it can bring at least XX million GMV", successfully obtain development resources, but the e-commerce company requires to increase offline activities (not enough budget), willing to provide physical prizes and new ones;

Finally, the big move was to find the boss and ask for a budget: "This event is attended by brands such as Alibaba, ZhongAn, and Toutiao. It is estimated that the H5 will reach 250,000. The channels and prizes have been BDed. I want to increase it by 20,000 yuan to do an offline event that can have 30+ media reports." The budget was successfully increased and all resources were leveraged.

1. Building a resource ecosystem

Do you think it's over? No, the leveraged resources are scattered and not organically integrated. They are just scattered channels and prizes. Only by planning the output content and form of all channels and ensuring that the same information is output to users can we successfully build a resource ecosystem.

3.1 Overall theme and content control

First of all, because there are too many demands from partners, we need to wear a big hat - [Mobile Phone Charity Festival], and integrate all resources with the theme of mobile phones.

• Partner - the partner's product function, which belongs to one of the usage scenarios of the mobile phone;
• E-commerce - selling second-hand mobile phones;
• Our side - increase the influence and credibility of the event through public welfare endorsement.

3.2 Sorting out channel information by category

Then, according to different needs, different links of the needs are split out:

1) Online

• What needs to be exposed - a mobile video class for parents, in which product function information is cleverly implanted through the video;
• Need to be converted - second-hand mobile phone promotion page, parents' mobile phones are not good, you can buy a cost-effective second-hand mobile phone so that they can use the functions taught before;

The content organization of free channels and the content organization of external channels both require careful consideration in the CTA copy.

2) Offline

Where does the traffic come from—H5 sets up the registration entrance, welfare home and nursing home staff.

Offline organization (for example, trivial matters, such as the location and mechanism of on-site promotion, event linkage, media coverage angle (that is, why nursing homes are involved), etc.)

Effectively plan and manage the content output by all channels. The more channels there are, the higher the requirements for content uniformity and differentiation.

(A series of posters combining ZhongAn, Koubei, and Faceu product scenarios)

1. Expand the impact of your event

After successfully building channel resources, should we just let it go naturally? No!

We still have to think about the last level. There are 5 cards in my hand. How can I make him play the effect of ten cards?

Answer: Fission and sharing.

Use social currency to increase users' sharing and forwarding rates. If an activity does not have a viral factor (K coefficient), the effective traffic of the channel is 100,000, and the final data is 100,000. However, if you set up a clever sharing mechanism to allow users to shape their personality and express their emotions through sharing activities, even if your K value is only 0.1, the traffic will definitely exceed 100,000.

So I set up a personalized sharing page, with customizable avatars, nicknames, and text (to express different moods), participation numbers (which can easily induce a herd mentality when enough people participate), etc.

Finally, the K value of the activity reached 0.45 . Each user who shared the activity could bring in 0.45 new users to participate. H5 also gained an additional 20,000 PVs through this mechanism.

After all this (of course there are still many execution details), the final effect achieved was that the H5 reached 200,000+ PV, the overall exposure of the event was nearly 3 million, and it brought in an e-commerce GMV of more than 300,000. The cost does not exceed 60,000.

Summarize

To sum up, let me state the conclusion again: how can we organize an event without money and resources?

——Clarify the supply, demand and demands of all parties, integrate internal and external resources (repeatedly leverage), build a resource ecosystem, and thus expand the influence of the event.

Event operators who have no money and no resources, next time your boss assigns you a task, please learn to make use of the chips you have, introduce more internal and external resources, and maximize the impact of the event by repeatedly leveraging resources and organically integrating them.

(But boss, to leverage resources, you must at least have cards in your hand. I can’t get 100,000 followers with 0 budget. Please find someone else.)

Source: Xie Xiaoyang