10 steps for event operation!

This time, we have combined some examples in the hope that everyone can follow the shoulders of their predecessors and avoid repeating the same mistakes in the operation of events .

1. Three Values ​​of Activity Operation

First of all, you need to understand the three major values ​​of event operation, which are:

Attract traffic

Increase conversions

Strengthen your brand

Basically, an activity will have one main core and the other two are incidental effects. No matter what other expectations other departments or colleagues have for the event itself, an event that is divorced from its main core value and wants everything is like a shoddy construction that cannot bear any weight.

All online activities can be divided into three categories: activity type, activity purpose, and user needs, and finally combined into one sentence that can synchronize the core purpose of the activity for everyone.

Example: This is a subsidy activity for the purpose of attracting new users, and the activity method is in line with the user's profit-seeking psychology;

We will explain the basic categories of online activities through some cases and illustrations.

2. Three types of activities

1. Activity Type

1. Subsidy activities

It is common in hot industries, such as Ele.me food delivery, Kuaidi Didi taxi, etc., through red envelopes or other money-burning activities. This kind of gameplay started in China with the battle between thousands of groups and reached its peak in the competition between the two major players in the taxi-hailing business. Now the capital market of the Internet industry is facing a cold winter. It is difficult for general small businesses or non-hot industries to maintain the same scale of activities.

In particular, users' sensitivity threshold for subsidy activities is getting higher and higher. Red envelopes of 1 to 2 yuan are difficult to maintain strong appeal in this era. How to expand the gameplay of subsidies is an area where operators in the new era, that is, you, need to use your brain to demonstrate value.

2. Topic Activities

This is common in community products, such as Same's "Send you a voice message" and Keep's "I want to be on the top picture". The official influences users to produce community content on corresponding topics through specific topics, which can easily create an active community effect in a short period of time. The corresponding product value will have a small peak in a short period of time, usually appearing in product activity planning in a periodic form, with the substance remaining the same.

3. Prize-giving activities

As the name implies, users are motivated by offering rewards. For example, Douyou.com's original article collection with prizes, Jiuyou Forum's comment selection with prizes, etc., the prizes are mostly in the form of product peripherals.

The least thoughtful prizes are Q coins, JD cards, etc., and slightly more thoughtful prizes are pillows, trophies, and customized theme T-shirts. Remember that only physical objects that represent cultural identity are the most attractive and valuable.

4. Game activities

The most famous one is Alipay’s “Collect Five Blessings” activity that has been held for several consecutive years, allowing users to participate in the game process, and the game process itself is interesting. Do you think that hundreds of millions of people really enjoy playing for a few dollars every year?

Therefore, this type of game activity is relatively the most difficult one, and it tests the design skills of the activity itself. Generally speaking, if you can plan a successful game event, you are already a senior event operator.

2. Purpose of the activity

1. Attract new customers

It is mainly used to add new products. Especially in recent years, growth hacking has been very popular, and more and more products are added through activities. Taking fission-type activities as an example, generally speaking, during the peak period of the activity, if the number of users participating in the activity/the number of new participating users it brings is > 1, then the activity can continue indefinitely.

Of course, there is no activity that can maintain this ratio, just like a rolling ball can move forever on an absolutely smooth infinitely large plane. Generally speaking, if out of 100 users participating in an event, 50 new users are eventually generated, the event is considered very successful.

2. Active

It is mainly to improve the activity data of specific sections within the product. For example, the number of times a user posts content, the number of actions, etc. Taking the most basic sign-in activity as an example, increasing the rewards for consecutive sign-in days, allocating high rewards at the nodes where the continuous sign-in conversion rate drops the most, and reducing the drop in conversion rate are all activity interventions made for the purpose of activation.

3. Promotion

Common e-commerce/paid products increase the average order value, merchandise turnover, and ultimately increase product sales.

4. Brand maintenance

There are more market-oriented ways of playing, which can enhance the popularity of products and brands and is more of an implicit value. As the famous saying in the advertising industry goes, you know that 50% of advertising is ineffective, but you never know which 50% it is.

It is mainly a means for some big brands to maintain their brand voice after the products mature and the commercial closed loop is established.

3. User needs

1. Demand scenario

Taking the carpooling service launched by Didi during the Spring Festival as an example, it is to reintegrate and package products and services based on specific user demand scenarios. Especially for products that provide essential services such as food, clothing, housing and transportation, this type of activity combined with the scenario is most effective.

2. Focus on hot spots

For example, like Yang Chaoyue who made a wish on Weibo, do you think so many people really did it spontaneously in the early days? Whether it is the official operation of Weibo or the marketing team behind the scenes, everyone plays a preset role in a carefully planned event.

The same plan is being performed every day, but you only see one successful case, which is so successful that more and more real users are participating in it. The core of this kind of hot spot-focused activity lies in the initial process of ignition → detonation.

3. Profit-seeking mentality

For example, JD.com and other e-commerce companies have activities for products worth 299-100 yuan, which are held every day to make users feel that they can buy cheap things every time they come online. This profit-seeking mentality is inherent in human nature, so e-commerce can be reused to this day.

3. 10 processes of event operation

Part 1: Planning period

1. Determine the purpose of the activity

This is the most critical step. Only by clarifying this step can all your actions not deviate. Only by making this clear can you be persuasive enough to gain others' understanding and support when your activities are questioned.

In simple terms, the purpose of the activity is a banner, the reason for the army of justice to declare war and the motivation for continuing to fight, and it is also the criterion for whether the counter-activity is successful.

2. Quantify activity goals + time

Assuming that the purpose of your event is to attract new users for your product, then the quantified goal is what can define the effectiveness of your event, such as adding 100,000 new users through the event within one month. Remember, there must be a time explanation, otherwise your activity will be a rogue.

3. Planning activity form

This part is the process that tests creativity and teamwork the most. And not all activities have positive effects, sometimes they may backfire.

There was once a product that had a free, reusable sign-in activity, and their purpose at the time was to improve product retention. Let’s take a look at what their sign-in activity is about. 10 yuan in the product can be withdrawn. 9 yuan will be given for signing in on the first day, 0.5 yuan will be given on the second day, 0.11 yuan will be given on the third day, and so on, giving users the illusion that they can withdraw the money immediately.

According to their algorithm, basically no one can raise 10 yuan within 1 month. Although this approach can be effective in the short term, it will erode user trust in terms of the long-term benefits of the product, so both the positive and negative effects of the activity need to be considered during the planning stage.

In addition, the activity rules must be simple and easy to understand, and it is best if they can be explained clearly in one sentence. If users cannot understand your activity in a very short time, the conversion effect of the activity will definitely be extremely low. It is best to configure a visual presentation of the activity progress to continuously give users positive feedback.

Part 2: Preparation period

4. Departmental collaboration

This mainly refers to the planning of the time points for activity design, development, and launch, as well as the collaborative configuration of various departments. For example: product requirements, UI design, development cycle, external cooperation, preparation of customer service feedback scripts, etc. Be sure to assign the overall planning of the activity to the responsible individuals, use specific feedback and time as constant standards, communicate and negotiate in advance, and ultimately copy everyone via email.

Because this link is the time that most tests people's connection ability, resource allocation ability, and overall control ability, it is often the most difficult time. Many times, the person in charge of event operations is not the leader of these departments, and even the colleagues in the department who need to cooperate with you have higher ranks than you. Many people will be told off at this stage and give up some of the originally designed matters. The original 80-point event may only achieve a result of 50 points or lower.

5. Resource promotion preparation

Activity resources: scheduling planning for online progress, corresponding material design, data monitoring background/indicators

Channel preparation: Banner placement, push, system notifications within the site; resource exchange, advertising, soft articles, etc. outside the site

These must be prepared in advance. If you try to solve them at the last minute, there will definitely be many pitfalls.

6. Risk control and emergency plan

There are quite a few pitfalls here. If you are an experienced event operator, you will have your own set of experience to deal with them. If you are a newcomer to event operation, you will be confused if any unexpected events occur. There are six main types of activity risks:

Promotion: Resources cannot be provided on time, and the location is inconsistent with expectations

External environment: sudden hot events, distracting users from hot activities

Technical: Bugs in activities, delays and interruptions in online launch, etc.

User type: Users do not buy at all, and the conversion rate is very low

Legal: Infringement of activity, or similar situation occurs to users

Vulnerability: Users discover loopholes in the rules, a large number of fake orders, etc.

7. Activity warm-up

There are two main methods

Direct notification of event information

Package activities to create suspense, create gimmicks, and attract attention

For example, Zhuo Wei’s “See you on Monday”, every time there is a major entertainment news, it will be preheated on Weibo in advance to whet the user’s appetite. Didi Dache was renamed Didi Chuxing, using the same method to release the suspense of important news: Goodbye Didi Dache.

Part 3: Occurrence period

8. Pay attention to progress

At this stage, there are actually very few operational actions that can continue to be intervened. The activities are like your children. At this stage, they are largely out of your control. However, you still need to pay attention to the data trends of the activity and user feedback to see if they meet expectations.

And during the activity, collect materials with strong communication power, screenshots of user feedback, peaks and troughs of data, etc. The most important thing is to experience the activity in person with the users and record the results.

8. Announcement of results

What I am most worried about is an event that starts with a lot of fanfare but ends in obscurity, which can easily make users think that you are a liar and will greatly erode their trust. Therefore, the event needs to inform all users of the results, especially those who participated in the event, and! It is necessary to provide users with a channel for feedback to make the event completely transparent and fair.

Par4: Inventory period

This is probably the most valuable stage of the activity. The results of your activity need to be synchronized with every colleague who collaborates in the activity so that they can understand the value of their cooperation. This will affect the smoothness of your next cooperation. If you consume a lot of your colleagues' time to cooperate, and the final activity effect is very bleak, will you have the courage to mobilize department resources next time? We use a case study to analyze what frameworks are needed for activity summaries:

Case: Rantu (game review community)

Background: User output rate for community content is too low

Goal: At least 1,000 popular games with 3 user reviews each within 1 month

Effect: The activity achieved the expected result

Strategy: Encourage core users to produce content

Specific measures: (1) Introduce 200 core users and give them customized peripheral rewards; (2) Launch limited-time rare titles and promote them on the platform

Lessons learned:

Advantages: Users are very aware of scarcity, and limited-time rare titles also attract non-core users to participate, and the number of activity contributors increased by about 300%

Disadvantages: 30% of the content is homogeneous

Subsequent plans: sort out the user spiritual incentive system and promote it across all platforms. Content launches advanced upgrade standards to encourage high-quality content

Having said all this, I believe you already have a considerable understanding of event operations. As long as you can build a knowledge framework about event operations, you will not be confused by such basic questions as how to organize an event.

Source: Operations Professor ( ESxiaowang )