How to promote an event? 3 big steps!

Whether an activity can become popular has a lot to do with creativity, but I think promotion is more important than creativity. For example, the A4 waist is very creative and was once very popular. But if there were no celebrities joining in and no big accounts such as Weibo and WeChat promoting it, would it still be popular? I don’t think so! It’s hard not to be popular with creativity and awesome promotion.

Awesome promotion requires powerful resources, which ordinary companies do not have. So, how can we maximize the effect with limited resources? If you are interested, please continue reading.

The company's website has been online for a short time and has very few users. In June, the company held an event to attract new users, stimulating passive spread of the word through prizes. The goal was to get 10,000 registrations. The promotion budget was limited, and we couldn't afford to hire celebrities or cooperate with big accounts. We could only use some low-cost operations. In the end, we had nearly 20,000 registered users and more than 5 million transactions. The focus of this article today is not the data, but to share some of my own experience in event promotion, and I hope it will be inspiring to everyone.

1. Creative activities also require a good plan

Good event planning ideas are invisible and intangible in the mind, but they are extremely powerful when they are put on paper, in the computer, and in practice.

In my opinion, good event planning ideas cannot be created by relying on fatigue tactics or human sea tactics. What is needed are excellent creative people with rich knowledge reserves, broad vision, mature practical experience and leapfrog thinking. People are the key to all excellent creativity.

It can be said that good ideas are not something that can be produced by everyone, nor are they simply brought about by time. There are very, very few people who can come up with practical and feasible ideas. Scarcity makes things valuable, and thus good ideas are extremely precious.

Things at the execution level are basically replaceable, because there are so many execution companies in each place, the only difference is the quality of the materials and the price.

The emergence of good ideas is irreplaceable, and the value of excellent creative people is also irreplaceable.

The excitement of the event comes from its frequent innovation. Its charm lies in the constant breakthroughs in content and form, and in the attractiveness of the theme and guests. It has both innovative suspense and predictable expectations, thus driving up public participation.

The activities are still the same, building the brand year after year, and everyone's focus is on breakthroughs and innovations. For example: With the holding of the Olympic Games, everyone is looking forward to the unchanged Olympic flame. In what new form will it appear in the eyes of the global public this time? Who will be the next 100-meter sprinter? What will the theme song be like? The charm of an event lies in its frequent updates. Much of the excitement comes from the unknowns brought about by innovation. The unknown brings suspense, and suspense arouses the curiosity and attention of the public.

Take exhibition marketing for example. The highlight of the World Expo is the theme pavilions of various countries. Every World Expo will have new ideas and unknown temptations. We have no way of predicting what a country’s theme pavilion or theme day will present and in what form, so we go in anticipation of a surprise with excitement. What remains unchanged is the World Expo and the theme pavilions at the World Expo, but the content of the theme pavilions is renewed, and each session has innovations and changes in form and content.

Therefore, a creative event requires a good plan, and it is also best to learn how to leverage marketing opportunities.

2. Control the promotion rhythm of the activity

An activity is actually also a product. All products have a development process from inception to completion. Products that can continuously solve user needs will survive longer. Every improvement of the product may be a new breakthrough.

I remember that the traffic surged in the first few days of the event, and then declined after reaching a certain level. Each promotion would have a small peak, which is in line with the development law of a product.

We used our own channels to preheat the event three days before it went online. After the launch, all channels promoted it together. The traffic quickly rose to the highest point, and then quickly dropped. After the traffic dropped, reports on the progress of the event immediately followed, and various channels promoted it vigorously. The traffic quickly reached a small peak again. When the traffic dropped, we continued to follow up and report, write soft articles and release them to the media, and the traffic quickly rose to a peak again.

When the event was about to end, we intensified publicity and coverage again, and the traffic reached a small peak again, and then returned to normal after the event.

This is the entire promotion process of this event, including the warm-up before the event, the concentrated use of all resources after the event goes online, the follow-up reports on the progress of the event, and the real-time monitoring of data. Whenever the traffic drops, we will find ways to increase publicity and push the event forward. After the event, we will do a good job of reviewing and establishing a trusting relationship between the company and users.

All these tasks have been planned before the event. How to warm up before the event? After the activity goes online, which channels should be used for promotion and how should it be promoted? When should you follow up on a report? How to adjust the plan based on the data, etc., if you do all this work, at least the event exposure rate will not be bad.

The words may be difficult to understand, so let me give you an analogy. It’s just like when we cook, when should we add water and ingredients? When to warm up the fire? When will the fire break out? You have to know what is going on and control the heat well, then the dishes you cook will taste delicious. The principle is actually the same.

3. Channels used in the activity and methods of operation

After having a good event planning plan, the next step is to implement specific promotion channels and implementation operations. Although there are many promotion channels at present, it is difficult to find the one that suits you. Here, I will simply share some of the channels and operation methods used in this event.

1. Own channels

We have our own channels including PC websites, WeChat, Weibo, user communication groups, etc. We will do warm-up 3 days before the event, and all entrances will be launched together after the event goes online. The communication group will push information on the progress of the event every day. The website and WeChat will publish 1-2 news reports on the progress of the event every week, so that users can feel the entire process of the event, and can understand the progress of the event in real time, which stimulates users' enthusiasm for participation.

It is easier to control your own channels. Try to occupy as many entrances as possible and push information to users at the right time.

2. QQ group, WeChat group

We prepared about two hundred QQ groups and WeChat groups, and started promoting the activity on the day it went online, mainly in the form of advertising + red envelopes. If the group is frequently face-scanning, has a good relationship with group members and is relatively active, the conversion rate will be good. The conversion rate of a group with no sense of presence will be relatively low. In the age of face-scanning, we need to swipe more often. In addition, it is also very important to make use of some promotional techniques!

3. Witkey.com

Making good use of Witkey.com can save a lot of promotion costs. We have published two types of tasks on Witkey.com:

One is forwarding in the circle of friends. There is a limit on the number of friends you can have. At 1 yuan per piece, there are still many people willing to post.

The other is to publish information, which costs 1-2 yuan per piece. You can limit the websites you want to publish on, but the price will be a bit higher, otherwise no one will be willing to do it.

4. Cooperation with event websites

There are many websites of this type on the Internet. We found four or five websites of this type to cooperate with and spent about 500 yuan. The traffic diversion effect was not very good, but there is one advantage of cooperating with this kind of website. It can spread to a wider range, because if your event is very attractive, there will be similar websites that will copy your event, which is to actively help you promote it. Just like when you post an article to a website like Sina, there may be many other websites that reprint your article, so that your article can be spread on a large scale.

If you want to find this type of website, you must find some well-known websites, which can guarantee the effect.

5. Forum promotion

Nowadays, fewer and fewer people go to forums, but the role of forums cannot be ignored. If used well, they can still bring in a lot of traffic. We didn't post on many forums ourselves for this event. We selected 30-40 forums with high relevance and relatively high popularity. After posting, we would occasionally go to the top of the forums. External traffic forums accounted for about 15%, so the effect was pretty good.

At the same time, I also spent several hundred dollars to find someone to post on my behalf, which was to use software to send messages randomly. The relevance was not strong, the quality of the forum was not guaranteed, and the effect was not very good. It was just used as an auxiliary.

6. Online media

No matter what kind of promotion you do, if you want to be popular, you can't avoid the media. Similarly, our event also relied on media publicity. Before the third week of the event, we wrote a soft article and released it to more than 50 media, but most of them were unknown media. After the release, the website traffic reached a peak again, and the number of registrations increased significantly, but the overall effect did not meet expectations. This is related to the quality of the soft article, the media, and the column where it was released.

Comments:

The effectiveness of an event depends largely on its exposure. Only when more people know about it can more people participate. If an event page is only clicked 5,000 times, it is meaningless to analyze the conversion rate of the event. Even if the conversion effect is as good as 5%, it only means the participation of more than 200 people, and the traffic bottleneck is there!

The methods shared today are more down-to-earth. I believe that most companies can do it, and it does not cost too much money. However, whether the event can ultimately achieve the expected results depends on the execution of the event, details, details, details!

Source: Ma Haixiang's blog