Event planning: How to organize an online event?

When many people start planning events , they will reuse competitors' products or effective events on the market. However, because they only learn the form and fail to grasp the essence, the event ultimately fails and they suffer huge losses.

At the end of 2018, due to the launch of a new project and my own busy schedule, I let my team members independently plan a small fission growth event. Although the final effect of the event was not particularly bad, it failed to achieve the goals they set, so it can be regarded as a failed event.

However, through this event, I also discovered the pitfalls that newbies usually fall into when planning events. This article is a summary of my friends' activities and personal thoughts, and is mainly intended to provide some guidance and help to novice operators. A successful online event needs to do the following three things:

• Clear purpose of the activity
• Comprehensive planning
• Timely feedback during the execution phase

1. Only by concentrating our efforts can we accomplish great things

Before an event is launched, the operations team must reach a consensus on the purpose. Although this is something that all operators understand, once they start planning the actual event, they often forget this point. Judging from the results of the review of the activities by our friends, the seeds of error were planted in the first step of the activity.

In this event, the initial purpose of the friends was to attract accurate fans as seed users and accumulate potential for future conversions. However, during the planning process, they were eager to convert and monetize, which led to unclear purpose of the event and distracted their attention.

Therefore, when discussing the purpose of the event, operators must reach a consensus and cannot change it at will. They should not be greedy and expect to achieve all operational goals through one event.

Secondly, one point that most people overlook is that they do not consider this question: Is this activity appropriate at this stage and can the purpose be achieved?

The team members want to attract accurate users by planning a fission growth event. However, the project is still in the start-up stage, and seed users from external channels are still being accumulated. It is necessary to enhance the trust relationship with users. At the same time, the quality of the existing seed users is unknown, and the number is only about 300. The only other channels available are the user’s circle of friends and colleagues from other departments of the company. Therefore, there is a lack of user base for fission activities in the circle of friends.

Therefore, before planning an event, you need to determine whether the event is suitable, that is, to clarify whether all the resources required for the activity, such as materials, budget, channels, number of launching users, etc., are available. You cannot do an event just for the sake of doing it.

2. Prepare everything in the planning stage

Once the purpose of the event is clear and it is confirmed that it is suitable to carry out the event, you should start preparing: user research, quantifying event goals, clarifying available resources, poster copy design, welfare material preparation, planning event routes, small batch testing, and risk control.

First, user research before an event is often overlooked, and team members often fail to carry out this step, resulting in poor design of posters and even product pricing and other marketing methods.

The purpose of user research is to find a reason for users to participate in activities: Why do users want to participate in the activity, and what problems does the activity solve for users?

Generally speaking, the information that needs to be collected in user surveys includes: basic user attributes and user's usual consumption behavior. By collecting this information, a user portrait can be formed.

The basic attributes of users include gender, age, education, city level, occupation, salary level, etc.

In terms of acquisition methods, if there is a CRM system, user information can be exported from the CRM system. If not, it can be obtained through the WeChat group or QQ group where the group is located. Generally, group members will be required to modify the group business card when joining the group. In addition, user information can also be found in recruitment information.

Users' usual consumption behaviors usually include: the users' prices for similar products, the channels through which they learned about the products, understanding the users' purchasing motivations, and the problems they encountered when using the products.

This type of information can be obtained by conducting one-on-one interviews with 20 target users, by observing competing products, or through CRM systems.

In the process of summarizing the information collected above and forming user portraits, the key point is to focus on most of the similar information and use similar pain points as the attraction of the activity. Do not think about meeting everyone's individual needs.

Second, the activity goal set by the partners is 100 paying users (calculated based on the proportion of core users)

The goal setting this time is not clear. The purpose of the activity is to attract new accurate users, so it is necessary to clearly define accurate users as new paying users, and accumulate seed users by attracting old users. Some old users will pay during the period, but they are still classified as new users. In addition, since no tools are used to track the process data, it is impossible to draw a more convincing review conclusion during the testing phase and activity review.

If process data monitoring is added, it is recommended to focus on the three-level traffic funnel, based on the number of users contacted, the number of poster scans, and the number of paying users. Through data feedback, the channel quality, the quality of poster words, and the fission index K can be judged during the testing phase. If it is found to be unsuitable, modifications can be made in advance, or the activity can be suspended to stop losses in time.

The data collection points can be communicated with the technical department. If there is no technical support, live code statistical tools such as forage QR code and sesame QR code can be used to assist in statistics.

Third, the friend only used his personal WeChat Moments as the initial exposure channel, and later hastily added the Moments of colleagues from other departments for exposure, but this failed to generate potential energy.

The effect of the activity may be better if all available resources are taken into consideration in advance. For example, by using multiple friend circles to conduct centralized small circle screen swiping, arousing users' curiosity through the exposure effect in psychology, thereby increasing exposure.

Therefore, during the event planning stage, it is important to identify available resources in advance: channels, KOLs, budgets, etc., so as to make full use of the resources around the purpose of the event.

Fourth, when designing poster copy, the core is to awaken users’ pain points. Due to the lack of preliminary research, the poster copy was based on a self-centered perspective, that is, a sales mindset. Even though several versions were subsequently revised, they could not be improved from the user's perspective.

The general poster formula is: user attraction = headline (user pain point) + title explanation + specific products or services + credit endorsement + price discount + sense of scarcity (limited time and limit)

In order to verify that the user pain points are real, we need to have user empathy and think from the user's perspective:

Is the user currently having a headache doing something?

Are users willing to change their behavior to solve this problem?

Do users have alternatives besides you?

What are users worried about when making choices? Can you solve them?

The above questions can be used to preliminarily verify whether the user pain points really exist, and then accurately verified through A/B testing.

Fifth, welfare materials should also be designed with care and based on user needs. Recently, a concept is often mentioned by operations personnel: gamification thinking, which has a very famous formula: action = motivation ability trigger. Simply put, in order to encourage users to complete specific behaviors, sufficient reasons must be given and the user's behavior costs must be minimized.

At first, the friends considered using the distribution model to achieve fission, but because the distribution amount was too low, it was actually unable to impress users (the social cost of recommending friends to purchase was greater than the benefits obtained from distribution). Subsequently, a learning materials package was urgently added, and users responded strongly, which shows the importance of understanding users' real needs.

Sixth, when formulating the activity path, it is necessary to do a good job of data monitoring to provide a basis for modifying the plan in the subsequent execution phase. In addition, when reviewing the activity, problems can be better discovered, providing a basis for iterative improvements to the next activity.

Seventh, small-batch testing can quickly identify problems, such as unreasonable poster wording design and poor channel quality. However, this time the team members did not conduct any testing and directly launched the activity, resulting in multiple modifications to the poster wording during the activity, which failed to leave a deep impression with a repetitive effect on users.

Small batch testing is intended to rehearse an activity with a small group, so that when the activity is officially launched, channel placement and exposure can be refined, reducing unnecessary waste of manpower and time during the activity.

Eighth, make risk plans for key links. However, my friend still did not do this step, which led to the subsequent blocking of his WeChat account and the diversion of poster copy in Moments, and these could not be handled in a timely manner.

Even if everything is ready, there will inevitably be emergencies during the execution phase. Making risk plans in advance can ensure the normal progress of the event. Even if the event is forced to be suspended, follow-up measures can be taken quickly to reduce losses.

3. Execution phase: follow the numbers

During the execution process, the most important thing is to do a good job of execution management to avoid directional deviation during execution and deviating further and further from the goal. This requires that the latest information such as event data, poster copy, etc. be synchronized with the staff involved in the execution, and the division of labor and responsible persons be clearly defined, and progress be fed back in a timely manner to ensure that the event proceeds in an orderly manner.

However, no matter how complete the event planning is, emergencies may occur during the event warm-up period, detonation period, and cooling-off period. At this time, it is necessary to monitor the event data. The partner responsible for data operations should synchronize the daily event data to the executors in a timely manner and report any abnormal data in a timely manner.

Executives should be enthusiastic about their work, handle conflicts calmly, and quickly transfer risks when it is necessary to initiate risk plans. If the daily targets are not met, the executives will discuss improvement measures based on data feedback to ensure that the goals of the entire activity are achieved.

In this activity, due to the lack of experience of team members, they are prone to mental breakdown when encountering emergencies. Fortunately, after finding a solution (which can be easily thought of after calming down), they can act quickly. Therefore, I found that it is very important to maintain a good mentality in the process of executing activities.

The above are the pitfalls that the team members encountered in their first event planning. In conclusion, to make a qualified event, you need to do the following three things:

• Agree on the purpose of the event and ensure it is appropriate.
• In the planning stage, we should not only make routine preparations, but also prepare risk plans.
• During the execution phase, synchronize activity information and data, maintain a good attitude, and ensure the achievement of goals

Source: Yidou University