APP Promotion Activities: How to plan a screen-sweeping event?

Wang Zaixing, co-founder of New World, said in an interview: "I like to make hit products, but before the hit products, we were doing hard work like digging ditches and trenches every day."

These "hard work" are the preliminary planning.

Operators always dream of planning a "screen-sweeping" event to achieve high brand exposure or immediate traffic monetization, but the results are often disappointing.

In fact, there are some tricks to creating screen-sweeping activities. How to plan a viral event? How to attract potential users of the brand and ultimately achieve traffic conversion?

Planning activities can go viral because the activities grasp user demands in the early planning stage. Therefore, be fully prepared before starting the activity.

1. Clarify the purpose of the activity and combine online and offline activities

There are three purposes for corporate event planning:

The first is to increase brand exposure and build brand awareness, such as celebrity endorsement activities;

The second is to increase sales and realize traffic monetization, such as holding a new product launch conference;

The third is to attract potential users and increase the fan base, such as scanning the QR code to follow the official account.

At different stages of development, enterprises have different activities and purposes. Therefore, planners need to discuss and determine the form of the activity based on the purpose.

• Online Activities

Online activities are not restricted by venue or personnel, have a high degree of freedom, and allow close contact with the audience. And since the event initiator holds the initiative, it is more conducive to the promotion of the event.

Common forms of activities include voting, raffles, subsidies, games, red envelope grabbing, solicitations, guessing games, etc.

Event planners need to have an "internet sense" and understand the characteristics of each social platform.

The "Little Friends" Gallery launched by Tencent Charity is a popular charity event. From August 2016 to July 2017, a total of 5,806,608 people participated in the donation and raised a total of 15 million yuan in donations.

In the Children's Gallery, users can buy paintings for 1 yuan. The threshold for participating in the event is low and the payment operation is transparent.

Charity donation projects themselves have a sense of ritual and can awaken human nature. Users expressed kindness when spreading the link, creating a special sense of participation, which ultimately led to the children's gallery going viral on WeChat Moments.

As Shuying wrote: “Using emotionally charged forwarding texts to mobilize the audience’s emotions and create a unique sense of participation ritual for them is an important factor in increasing participation enthusiasm.

Children's Gallery

• Offline Activities

Offline activities are the most direct and effective way for companies to directly face core users and potential users.

Common offline activities include: training, product experience, holiday marketing, product promotions, charity exhibitions, brand anniversaries, product launches, exhibitions, etc.

Offline activities are more expensive than online activities due to personnel and venue requirements. However, the interaction between enterprises and audiences is better and deeper, and brand implantation is clearer and more straightforward.

In October 2014, the WeChat public account WhatYouNeed launched the “One Hundred Cups of Starbucks Coffee and Betting on the Future with You” campaign, inviting 100 lucky winners to drink coffee in a relay manner.

The activity requires users to follow the official account, forward articles and provide feedback in the background. The event went viral that night, with the article push reaching over 80,000 views and the number of fans growing from 1,600 to 6,000.

I want WhatYouNeed to start spreading to all Guangzhou residents based on a base of 100 people, in order to achieve the goal of attracting new fans.

Event poster/WhatYouNeed official account

• Combining online and offline

Connecting online and offline and jointly planning activities can sometimes be more effective than a single online or offline activity.

NetEase Cloud Music launched a flash mob event called “See the Power of Music” in March 2017. The quality of UGC (user-generated content) on QQ Music is relatively high, and many people will leave comments while listening to songs.

NetEase Cloud Music covers Hangzhou Metro Line 1 with lyrics. After viewing the posters, users will feel a sense of ritual and have the urge to listen to the songs.

The subway is a closed space with a large flow of people, which inevitably makes people feel lonely. Cloud Music’s subway ads display heartwarming lyrics and emotional comments, giving users warmth and resonating with them.

The copywriting comes from the 5,000 most-liked high-quality music reviews on QQ Music, and is screened online before being implemented in offline subway advertisements.

Subsequently, NetEase Cloud launched the H5 "Music Review Museum", which lists wonderful reviews. Users can also jump to Cloud Music to listen to songs from the H5 page.

Music Review Series/NetEase Cloud Music Weibo

2. Build user portraits and locate accurate users

Know where the fans are, determine the gender ratio, age group, likes and dislikes, occupational composition, interests and hobbies, income status... and finally complete the user portrait.

Advanced event planning is like having a love affair with your users. Cater to his preferences and use them for my own benefit.

Event planners need to use events to build a communication bridge between companies/products and users.

In the book "Screen Sweeping: A Replicable Methodology for Creating Screen-Sweeping Communication Events", the author Almighty Uncle proposed that "circles" and "resonance" are the core of event planning.

Event planners need to answer two questions: Which circle does the event want to reach? Can insights trigger resonance and establish a community of shared destiny with users?

A detailed user portrait can tell event planners how to communicate with them in terms of method, tone, rhythm and timing.

It can help companies establish deep connections and even resonance with users.

A marketing campaign by the football app Dongqiudi during the 2016 World Cup was described as textbook-level.

The Chinese team qualified in the Asian qualifiers for the World Cup. From 7:00 p.m. on March 29, 2016 to 8:00 a.m. on March 30, Dongqiudi kept pushing this information to users.

In addition to several live broadcasts of stadium situations, Dongqiudi pushed "Hot sale! The Chinese national football team's magical poster is here", "The Chinese team is brave enough to enter the World Cup, it's not just a fantasy!" "It's just willful! Dongqiudi spent 1 million to celebrate the Chinese national football team's qualification!"

These Push messages used memes to celebrate the Chinese team's victory. Excited fans would not miss them, and the server crashed many times.

Each push from Dongqiudi is coherent, creating an exciting atmosphere for winning, and finally using 1 million as a highlight to attract user participation. It not only talks about the feelings of fans, but also reflects a unique tone.

This online activity within the client won strong recognition from users and used users' positive emotions to expose the brand, which not only attracted new fans, but also recalled old users and increased stickiness to the APP.

Dongqiudi page/article "Four ways to reduce the APP uninstall rate after push"

3. Be bold in thinking and innovate the form of activities

Years of operational experience have shown that innovation means making the best use of the resources at hand .

Fun, novelty and value attribution are the three most powerful tools for event planning to attract fans.

The format of the activity remains fixed, and the only way to solve the problem is to reorganize and innovate the content of the activity, put new wine in old bottles, and meet the psychological needs of target users in different scenarios.

NetEase News teamed up with Ele.me to innovate and opened a "Sangcha" pop-up store, which quickly became an Internet celebrity.

In 2016, the mourning culture represented by Ge You's paralysis, sad frog, and horse man Bojack began to become popular. "Sorrowful tea" appeared at this time, taking aim at the living conditions of contemporary young people and relieving negative energy with a self-deprecating attitude.

"Sangcha" focuses on "small but certain sadness", focuses on the spiritual needs of users and resonates with users.

This flash "Sorrow Tea" event successfully went viral and became a classic example of "sorrow culture" marketing.

Sangcha/Article "Why is "Sangcha" so popular? 》

In addition to playing with creativity, what other tricks are there?

• Create a sense of value

Jianshu APP and Meizu Mobile Phones have collaborated on a "Magic Turn Contest" to collect articles that contain Meizu brand exposure.

The activity was launched on May 6, 2016. As of May 24, the articles submitted to the Jianshu platform received nearly 1 million views.

The essay contest uses a name to attract participants: "I just want to give you 10,000 yuan! Jianshu's magical twist competition". "The title "10,000 Yuan" directly points to the interests, and the "amazing twist" attracts the curiosity of users.

In addition, the competition rules are clear and concise, two sample essays are provided, and there is clear guidance, so the threshold for participants to understand is low.

Not only are the title and rules interesting and eye-catching, the event also constantly mentions rewards during the submission and creation period, and pushes daily high-quality articles to the homepage recommendation position, bringing popularity to the event with high exposure.

Jianshu gained a lot of user attention and high-quality content during the event. In addition to promoting its brand image, Meizu also received many promotional soft articles.

This event uses material rewards, with 3 first prizes and mobile phones as prizes, to create a sense of value for users and stimulate their participation in the action.

In addition, article push caters to users' desire to be "valued" and "respected", prompting users to be willing to interact with the platform.

Top three in the voting for the main text contest/Jianshu activity highlights

• Riding on the trend

Hotspots are divided into foreseeable hotspots and emergent hotspots.

For example, the premiere of "Avengers 4", the 24 solar terms, Chinese and foreign festivals and other time nodes. When companies organize activities, they can plan related activities in a targeted manner based on brand characteristics to attract user attention.

Sudden hot spots are hard to come by, and require the entire event planning team to be very capable.

• Using new technologies

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, AR, and VR, companies can apply new technologies when conducting activities, which is also a way to attract audiences.

Ele.me launches its first intelligent food delivery robot - Wan Xiao E.

Are you hungry? The robot "Wan Xiao E"

Robot food delivery is fresh and interesting, but it is rare. Wan Xiao E delivers food in a faster and more efficient way to attract users' attention. When users think of food delivery robots, they think of Ele.me.

After preparing the above three points, you can start planning an event. How should a complete event planning be carried out?

1. Online event planning:

• Determine the purpose and theme of the event : The purpose of the event determines the form of the event, and the target audience determines the method of communication.

• Accurately locate target users : Draw user portraits based on preliminary research results.

• Plan creative solutions: Based on user demands, determine the form of activity presentation and user participation.

• Communication and execution work : Event planners must take the initiative to communicate fully with product developers to clearly explain the content of the event and the required software and hardware support.
• Effect and risk assessment : Before the activity goes online, be sure to do a warm-up test to avoid bugs after the launch. At the same time, adjust the communication channels, frequency and forms in a timely manner according to the effectiveness of the activities.

• Online promotion : Control the rhythm of the event and release event information some time before the event (usually 7-15 days) to attract the attention of the target audience.

• Monitoring data : Monitor the details of the activity results at all times to see if they are consistent with the expected goals. If not, adjust the activities as soon as possible to achieve the goals.

• Publish results : Users have the right to know and should be respected, so the results should be announced to the public after the event, such as announcing the transaction volume after the Tmall Double Eleven event.
• Do a good job of reviewing the past: The last step of the activity is to summarize successful experiences and learn from shortcomings.

2. Offline event planning:

The difference between offline activities and online activities is that in addition to determining the purpose of the activity, program planning, activity promotion, and activity review, offline activities must also emphasize the following points:

• Agree on the user registration method and conditions : announce registration precautions, event procedures, event rules, award settings, security guarantees and other key points.

• Periodically remind users : During the activity warm-up period, target users need to be reminded to continue to stay tuned to activity-related information.

• Be prepared for division of labor : The event site is also the most important moment to showcase the team. Team drills should be done in advance and the division of labor among personnel should be clarified, including adequate training for volunteers.

This part tests a team's execution ability. If a good event plan is not implemented properly, the effect will naturally be greatly reduced.

The rating activity is not a one-person stage. Only teamwork can make the activity come true quickly.

A planning event requires a plan with clear regulations. With this detailed event planning guide, you can be the one to organize the next screen-sweeping event.

author: Da Da Er

Source: NetEase H5