What does a complete set of event operation planning ideas look like?

When I was chatting with you before, I made the following analogy about the relationship between operations and products: products are like singers, operations are like agencies, and the purpose of operations is to allow a potential singer (product) to enter the market. The agency constantly arranges for singers to release records (and the website outputs content) to attract more attention.

However, usually the agency will arrange for singers to attend certain activities from time to time, such as fan meetings, concerts, press conferences, charity events, etc. These activities are like an indispensable part of our operations - event operations ! Whether it is to increase interaction with users, attract more attention, or build momentum for product launches, events are a very common method. For novices, this seemingly complicated thing can be a headache. Today He Yang will talk to you about what a complete event operation planning idea is like. I hope it will be helpful to novice friends.

First, I would like to ask everyone to think about three questions:

1. Why do we need to organize activities? Or what are the benefits of the activity?

As mentioned before, event operations can run through our entire operation process, and can help us attract new customers, retain existing customers, make conversions, and optimize strategies. However, your goals are different for different events, so knowing the benefits of the event itself will help us determine the event goals; this is what we are talking about below;

2. Before planning an event, ask yourself, what do you want?

This is the first thing we do when planning every event, that is, to determine the event goals, which should be determined based on the actual situation in the operation;

For example, when a website is just launched, it is necessary to increase exposure and attract new customers.

After the number of new users on the website increases, the focus of our activities will be on how to interact with users, keep them active, and retain them;

When the time is right, we can offer some promotional activities to old users to stimulate their better conversion.

If you want to know whether your website experience is good or not, you can also interact with users through activities and collect feedback, which can quickly help us discover our shortcomings.

The above are all different operational goals at different stages, and the activities at different stages are used to serve these operational goals, so your goal is to achieve the operational goals, and the activities are just a means;

3. How much do you know about some common types of activities?

Regarding this point, in fact, I briefly mentioned it in the previous article. After determining your activity goals, you need to determine a suitable activity form to complete the entire process. This is also where many novice friends are easily stuck;

When I chatted with many novice friends before, the most common question about event planning was probably "I want XXX (event goal) now, how should I do the event?"

The fundamental reasons for this phenomenon are that the first is unfamiliarity with the entire event planning process, and the second is that the common event forms (gameplay) are not known in the mind. In fact, what I want to say is that the ways of playing events are ever-changing, and everyone may come up with many ways of playing, but no matter what the way of playing is, it must arouse the interest of users;

For example, common ones include: small tests, voting, selection, collection, lucky draw, game experience (such as many WeChat marketing plug-ins, big turntables, scratch cards, etc.), interest interaction (such as Sina Weibo's #Help Wang Feng get on the headlines# topic interaction), online communication (such as live broadcast activities), etc.

In addition to watching more often, we also need to pay attention to our competitors to see what good activities they are planning. These can be used as materials when planning our activities.

After thinking about the previous questions, we can start with our own goals, determine the type and method of our activities, and then think in reverse to organize the ideas for executing the activities. The general thinking process can start from these squares:

1. Determine the activity theme

The event must have a theme (also called a gimmick in plain words). The theme is formulated to achieve your goals. Once the theme is determined, you will have a focus when promoting it, and users will be able to form a preliminary impression of you at the first opportunity!

Everyone must be familiar with the promotional slogan of this year's event, "The first advertising auction in China's new media world." This is the theme slogan that Luo Pang thought of to package the Papi Jiang patch advertising auction event. Luo Pang, who is good at marketing, once again made a fuss about "first". After all, China's various "first" cultures have long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and then used the "first bid winner in new media" to create a gimmick.

Another example is the "Didi Spring Festival Homecoming" campaign launched by Didi during the 2016 Spring Festival travel rush. The distinctive campaign theme of "Open the car door, and you're home" fits the external environment very well and can arouse users' emotional resonance. The theme is very clear and it is also very successful in letting users understand its product (ride-sharing) and meet their experience needs.

2. Composition of participating user groups;

First determine what the target user group of your event is, that is, who will be more likely to participate in your event. This is similar to the target user positioning of our website. Why do we need to determine the composition of the user group? Because we need to conduct pre-event promotion for target users, which is actually the same as finding the target fish pond we mentioned before;

For example, Xiaomi likes to promote its activities on WeChat, Weibo, and community forums. This is because its activities are generally aimed at young people who are born for enthusiasm, and the above places are the gathering places for these groups!

3. When is the best time to hold it?

The timing of activities is also very particular. Traditional activities are generally held during store celebrations and major festivals. The Internet has given activities more ways to play and choices. In addition to the above, activities can be held from major holidays to minor hot events. As long as you can think of it, it is possible.

But there is one thing: the time selection should be in line with the theme. Sometimes the effect of activities at different time points will be very different. For example, 11.11 will naturally remind you of Taobao's Double 11 event, and 6.18 will remind you of JD.com's store anniversary (JD.com's 618 Quality Carnival).

Different festivals have different labels, and we can select the ones related to the theme of the event as the event date. For example, the most common keywords for the Spring Festival are red envelopes, blind dates, gifts, and Spring Festival travel. The most common keywords for the Mid-Autumn Festival are reunion, shopping on May Day, travel, etc., and romance on Valentine's Day, roses, and marriage, etc.

4. What kind of interaction mode (rules) to adopt;

This issue is the most critical. To sum it up, it is how to interact with your users, or how users participate in activities, which is what we often call activity rule setting. In fact, once the theme and gameplay of your activity are determined, rule setting is a natural thing. In He Yang's opinion, the most important thing for rule setting is to meet the following requirements: simple and fun!

Simplicity means allowing users to participate in activities in the most direct way. If it can be done by scanning a QR code, never let users search for a public account on WeChat and then click to follow it. If it can be done by filling in their name and phone number, never let users fill in any other additional information. In order to avoid user loss, in short, the steps are simplified to the minimum!

Fun is a stimulating factor that attracts user participation. Capturing users' interests (such as love of taking advantage, love of gossip, emotional resonance, etc.) is to give users a reason to participate in the event. That is why users actively participate, which we will discuss next.

5. Why do users actively participate?

Users actively participate because we provide an activity scenario that users like. Whether it is the fun of the scenario itself or the temptation of the results after the scenario, it may become the initial motivation for users to participate in the activity. We know that there are many points that arouse users' interest. What we need to do is to build a scenario to meet users' interests.

1. Baidu Encyclopedia joins hands with Beijing Botanical Garden

In April 2014, Baidu Encyclopedia launched the "QR code" in the Beijing Botanical Garden, creating a new "May Day" garden experience for tourists. The general content is that both parties will work together to hang 3,000 nameplates for 270 species of plants in the garden. There is a QR code on the name tag, and users can scan it with their mobile phones to learn detailed encyclopedia information about the plant.

This scenario of scanning to acquire knowledge satisfies the user’s desire to learn about unknown things;

2. Luo Pang promotes the auction of Papi Jiang’s patch

Luo Pang will give the auction winner one Papi Jiang video patch advertisement and Luoji Siwei's full planning and supervision services. In Luo Pang's own words: the company is responsible for the money, Logical Thinking is responsible for the operation, and Papi Jiang is responsible for the advertising;

The bidding scenario itself may not attract much interest from users, but the results described by Luo Pang are very interesting to advertisers;

6. Is it shareable?

This is a very important part of our event planning process. Through the above series of planning, we finally let users participate in the event, but this is far from the end. The next more important thing is the spread of the event, which is especially important in the new customer acquisition event.

The question is: Why should users help you share and spread the word? Let's look at two small examples:

1. Alipay's "Five Blessings" activity: This may be the most popular activity during the 2016 Spring Festival. You can collect five blessings and exchange them for red envelopes, or you can ask for five blessings from friends. The motivation for spreading and sharing here is to use all relationships to collect five blessings and exchange them for red envelopes;

2. Ele.me red envelope sharing: After ordering food through Ele.me, we can share coupons in the circle of friends. After receiving them, our friends can enjoy discounts on ordering food. The motivation for sharing here is to help friends enjoy discounts on ordering food;

Did you see anything? If you want users to help share and spread your information, you must meet two needs: it is good for the users themselves (monetary benefits, giving gifts, free draws, participating in interactions, emotional needs, etc.), and it is good for the people around the users.

As long as one or both of these two points are met, your communication mechanism will be established;

Don’t think that you are done just by following this line of thought. At this point, we can only say that the planning of the event itself has come to an end, but there are still some things that we need to consider in operation. Don’t forget:

1. Event staff arrangement

This has been explained in the article on operational responsibilities. One person cannot complete the entire activity planning, final execution, and effect tracking. Therefore, as an operations manager, you must not only plan the activity process, but also arrange appropriate personnel to execute it. Otherwise, no matter how good your planning ability is, it will be in vain.

2. Preheat the event in advance

Generally, small-scale events will not last very long, ranging from one or two days to a week. In order to ensure the number of participants, pre-event publicity is essential. We need to let more people know the time and process of the event, and more importantly, let users know what benefits they can get by participating in the event.

As for where to preheat, I won’t go into details here. Friends who are interested can look through my previous article on the positioning of target users in the fish pond;

3. Activity effect estimation

Regardless of the type of event, you must make a conservative effect estimate. Whether it is written in the event plan for feedback to the leader or budget control, it is a very valuable reference indicator. The general estimation process is to first calculate the approximate number of exposures, and the conservative conversion ratio based on past experience, and then output the approximate effect data.

4. Activity cost estimation

To put it simply, it is about how much money is needed to complete the activity, such as publicity costs, personnel costs, activity rewards, offline costs, etc. Through the cost and estimated effect, we can roughly estimate the return on investment of the activity and measure whether the activity is valuable. This is what the boss is more concerned about;

5. Activity data collection

This needs to be combined with your event goals. For example, if your goal is to attract users to follow your WeChat official account, then focus on analyzing the data on fans added during the event and the channels through which they came. If the goal is to increase conversions, then count the changes in conversion rate during the event compared to usual times.

But no matter what, the effectiveness data of the activity must be tracked and analyzed, because only data can tell us the value of the activity!

6. Announcement of activity results

The publication of performance data (if the activity effect is very good, it can be slightly embellished) has many benefits. It can let participating users know the results of their participation in the activity (such as whether they won a prize). Most importantly, sometimes we can pave the way for the next activity and even create momentum.

For example, when the result of the auction for Papi Jiang’s patch ads is announced, in addition to letting users affirm Papi Jiang’s commercial value, it is entirely possible to raise another question to arouse user participation and help the winning advertiser to build momentum: How will the winning advertiser’s first patch ad be played, and in what form? This also allows users to continuously participate in the discussion;

Conclusion

That’s pretty much all there is to event operation planning. Many details need to be discovered and adjusted in practice. For friends who are new to website operation , it is best to make a detailed event operation plan before organizing an event so that you will have a direction during the operation. If you have any ideas or questions about event operations that you would like to discuss, you can follow me on WeChat or leave a message on my blog.

Source: He Yang