How does Valentine's Day operate?

Valentine's Day is here, and whether you are single or in love, you are all looking forward to this holiday full of love.

I don’t know whether you celebrate Valentine’s Day or not, but for operations people: holidays = overtime.

Valentine's Day is yours, but the planning and operation are ours.

The pendulum theory in marketing says that marketing is like a pendulum:

Only "raising the brand" without "raising sales" will not work today;

If you only "improve sales" but not "improve brand", you will not be able to survive tomorrow;

Similarly, this theory also applies to operations. The most important thing in operations is:

Conduct promotions once a month to “boost sales”;

Create an event every month to "promote the brand";

Only in this way can you gain both fame and fortune.

Before this year's Spring Festival, Alipay's "Collect Five Blessings" red envelope activity continued to be popular, and almost everyone around me was begging for the scarce flower cards.

As we all know, Alipay mainly wants to enter the social field.

The method is to guide Alipay users to add friends and send blessings to each other, creating a peaceful social atmosphere. And judging from the final amount of the red envelopes, this time people's blessing activity was just for "blessings".

However, Alipay used gimmicks to gain high-intensity exposure, and its dissemination volume and brand influence are immeasurable.

After the Spring Festival, the next operational hotspot comes - Valentine's Day !

Whether we can seize this opportunity to boost sales and achieve a good start in 2019 depends on how we operate during Valentine’s Day.

For e-commerce companies that wish every day was a festival, the best thing would be to “sell, sell, sell”.

So year after year we see a lot of messages like “Be nice to your significant other today”, “A good boyfriend is the one who buys things for you”, “Come and buy the hot-selling items to get rid of being single”, etc., or they use common tricks like “Show your affection and win big prizes”. But as such activities are held too often, consumers gradually lose the desire to participate.

So, what is the rational way to operate Valentine's Day ?

With the diversification of holiday celebration methods, the target group of holiday operations is also expanding. Valentine's Day is no longer a holiday for couples. Many people will choose gifts for their family members, colleagues, classmates, teachers and friends on Valentine's Day.

Another group of people that cannot be ignored is the "single dogs". Even if they don't have a partner, they cannot be without gifts. This group of consumers will usually reward themselves at this time.

This is good news for businesses and advertisers. Valentine's Day operations face a broad user group that has both sufficient consumption impulse and different consumption tendencies, which is more conducive to the formulation of operational strategies for different products.

After analyzing the consumption habits of target users and groups, it is time to formulate an operational strategy. There are a few points you need to pay attention to:

1. Characteristics of continuity

During the planning period, with the rise of self-media and the changes in people's living habits, consumers are no longer limited to a passive and dominated lifestyle in the traditional media era, and this should be taken into consideration in event planning.

Use self-media such as Weibo, WeChat, and short videos to build momentum and interact with consumers for topics you have planned, and make rational use of scenarios to get the audience involved and increase the interaction rate. And expand the scope of communication through interpersonal communication, group communication, etc.

2. Brand value and familiarity

The sooner you publish Valentine's Day-related content and information online, the more time you have to connect with your customers.

Among video websites of the same type, iQiyi has made a big move.

During this period, the popular youth romance-themed content resources on the iQiyi platform include:

TV series: "The Legend of Hao Lan", "The Legend of Chu Qiao", "The Story of Minglan", "Exclusive Memory", "The Little Girl Hua Buqi", "The Eternal Love", etc.

Variety shows: "Youth With You", "It's Nice to Meet You", "National Style Beautiful Boy", "The Little Sister's Flower Shop", "The Actor's Character", etc.

Then, advertisers can choose appropriate content resources in advance based on the target audience they want to reach .

3. Executable planning process

Seize the preheating stage. Good preheating and quantitative product operation will bring extraordinary results.

For example, during the Double Eleven event, e-commerce companies adopted the Double Eleven C2B reverse customization method and privilege coupons. Sellers took out one or several products, and consumers paid a deposit before Double Eleven and then paid the balance at the store on Double Eleven.

"Privilege coupons" are similar to "distributing discount coupons" in that they require consumers to purchase in advance and sign in to reduce the price of the product to the lowest price. At this time, the price will no longer be reduced as the number of people who pay a deposit in advance increases.

These methods can stimulate consumers' desire to buy . You should choose one of them based on your actual situation, or use a combination of multiple methods.

In addition to activities such as group buying and limited-time specials, stores can also use vouchers or gift certificates to make targeted push notifications to cultivate customers' shopping habits and loyalty.

4. Confirm the activity format

for example:

"Topic discussion" or "Featured hot posts"

"Post pictures to win prizes" or "offline activities in the same city"

5. H5 Mini Games

Online answering creates a competitive atmosphere and spreads knowledge

Micro-film communication can better express the communicator's thoughts and resonate with the users.

6. Copywriting

This form of operation of copywriting is relatively time-saving for brands.

Generally, it is sufficient to publish "a set of holiday posters" or "an article with pictures and texts".

The advantage of this type of copywriting is that the operator does not need to spend a lot of time planning, and can basically think about the content of the copywriting two or three days in advance.

The disadvantage is that this form is difficult to attract users' attention and the reading volume will be relatively poor.

7. Video Ads

Video ads are relatively easier for users to remember because they have more communication elements, and they are extremely easy to spread and screen. However, their disadvantages are that they have a long production cycle and high production costs.

Through a few minutes of advertising content with stories and plots, we can continuously promote the connection between the brand and the festival, and ultimately make the masses accept this story and this brand.

For example, the brands and their operating strategies that I have always admired:

DR Diamond Ring - See the True Form of Love

Like many festivals, it still cannot escape two challenges: touching and different

Giving unique customization to the unique you is an added value that brands must emphasize when launching customized products.

As a brand related to romantic proposals, the brand concept of DR diamond ring is "Lifetime·Only·True Love", hoping to make love better. It even specifically proposed a special purchase condition that "Men can only customize one in their lifetime".

The film does not blindly choose dreamy and romantic emotional scenes, but chooses to use the most life-like scenes to present everything in love and marriage.

What is real is the most touching. The love and happiness flowing in the details of life are easier for people to empathize with, evoking the audience's yearning for love and thinking about marriage.

These types of operation methods are probably the first ones to be considered. However, it is boring to play too much. Relying on festival events for operation also has certain defects. Festival events are held every year, and how to come up with new ideas to make the operation unconventional has become a problem.

Please understand: It is better not to do it than to force it.

On Children’s Day in 2016, Alipay launched a small activity called “Payment is Baby”: all Alipay users across the country were given a baby nickname. It took less than 16 hours from the creation to the release of all the PR ads, and my circle of friends only had a few pictures and the story behind the activity shared by a friend.

I believe the most ideal user state for this activity is like this: curiosity, the desire to spread the word, and create hot topics .

Why did I know this later? It comes from the collective attack from Zhihu and major Internet "public intellectuals".

It turns out that this nickname was added by Alipay without the user's knowledge, and users were not allowed to modify it initially. This kind of rude behavior makes me, who emphasizes user experience, particularly sensitive:

1. As the originator of financial tools, the core of Alipay is security.

Nowadays, names can be changed without the user's knowledge. Where is the security?

2. Disrespect for users, deprivation of user rights, and untargeted user experience.

As we all know, the term "baby" has been used by more and more adult women in recent years, but rarely by male compatriots.

So when Alipay adds the word "baby" to all users, including the elderly who come for the Spring Festival Gala red envelopes, the scene will be hard to imagine.

My view on festival operations is that I would rather not do it than force a connection between the brand and the festival.

As mentioned above, the biggest purpose of operations is to promote the brand or product .

Do not change the design style just to cater to hot topics. If you force yourself to do so, it may not only fail to achieve good publicity effects, but may also make users feel disgusted, which is not worth the loss.

When operations managers rack their brains but cannot figure out how to conduct good holiday operations, it is better to follow the previous pace and do what needs to be done. At least this way there will be no mistakes or gains.

Of course, the event is just the beginning, and the goal is to accumulate customer flow and turn it into resources .

Once the core target customers settle down and develop fixed consumption habits, they will bring huge purchasing power to the store.

In the new era, data is the new engine driving business progress. By integrating precise data analysis and rich operational tools, operational information can be accurately conveyed to the audience, ensuring the greatest operational effectiveness.

Source: Operation Publicity Xiao Leilei