Getting Started Guide to Internet Finance Operations: 2 cases to teach you how to master Internet finance activities!

This article will first share with you what elements are included in event operations? What is unique about Internet finance industry activities? Next, I will talk about the soft and hard skills of event operation based on two events I have done, and finally share some of my own experience in learning event operation.

1. What exactly does event operation do?

An event is nothing more than a "party" created by concentrating traffic, manpower, funds and other resources in a short period of time in order to achieve a certain operational indicator with the help of a theme or a form. Since it is a party, it must have a theme, program arrangement, big names as gimmicks, foreshadowing and a finale, and finally, the most important thing is to make the audience happy and want more.

The above simple description of the event contains the four core elements of event operation:

(1) Activity theme and purpose

This is the origin of all activities. Planning an activity without a purpose is just a one-person carnival.

The themes of the activities are roughly divided into the following categories:

1. Festival category, fixed activities on fixed holidays such as New Year’s Day, May Day, and National Day every year.
2. New product category, auxiliary activities carried out in conjunction with the launch of new products and new functions.
3. For promotions, we usually select a few popular products and carry them out regularly at the beginning or end of the month or every quarter.
4. The hotspot category is more flexible than the previous three categories and is usually planned temporarily based on sudden hotspots. The objectives of the activities are divided into attracting new customers, conversion, activation, retention, brand promotion, etc.

When planning an event, it is important to clarify the purpose and theme of the event as early as possible, so that the planning will be more accurate and the results can be better measured.

(2) How to play the activity

The way to play the activity is like a girl’s ever-changing skirt. Every time it appears, you want to take a second look. The gameplay of an activity is the part that requires the most innovation and creativity. It not only requires individuals to pay more attention to new things, but also requires the team to brainstorm together to generate inspiration. However, there are also routines for playing activities, such as: common lottery types, likes collection types, support types, free trial types, subsidies types, etc.

Therefore, the requirement for the gameplay of the activity can be summed up in one word - change it up but stay true to its essence.

(3) Activity rhythm

In fact, activities have a rhythm. Why does Taobao Double 11 last 21 days? What is the difference between the first week and the second week of promotion? Why does Xiaomi always link new product launches with pre-sales? These we call rhythms. The rhythm of the event is similar to that of an evening party, with preparatory work in the early stages, gradually speeding up the pace in the middle stages, and finally reaching a climax. The learning of activity rhythm is completely explored through continuous exploration in the work of activity operations, and cannot be achieved through theoretical learning alone.

(4) Activity review

This is the most critical step. How well the entire event went will depend on the final review. Reviewing is definitely not just to see whether the KPI has been achieved, but to look at what was done well and what was not done well from all angles, including rules, users, copywriting, and pages, and how to optimize next time. These will eventually form our own methodology.

After talking about the four core elements of the activity, let’s talk about how to play Internet finance activities?

2. Three major trends in Internet finance industry activities

Finance has always been a highly regulated industry, with endless documents constantly reminding us that we cannot guarantee principal, cannot offer discounts, cannot give free gifts with purchases, cannot mislead users, and cannot sell bundled products... In addition, financial products themselves are cold and boring, with all kinds of yields, closed periods, and notification clauses that are both difficult to understand and serious, and most users do not have the patience to study these products.

Therefore, Internet finance activities have begun to be bound to specific things, life scenarios, and emotional appeals, integrating financial services into users' lives.

So now there are three major trends in the activities of the Internet finance industry :

(1) Cross-border

Integrate boring and difficult-to-understand financial products into interesting things, for example: Entertainment Bao launched by Alipay integrates movies and financial management through movie crowdfunding; another example: Baixin Bank’s Zero Money Plus is embedded in iQiyi membership, and you can enjoy 1 month of free membership by depositing 1 yuan in your change.

(2) Scenario-based

Embed financial products into scenarios, use financial products to enrich scenario experience, and let consumers feel the real product value. For example, Tencent Wealth Management's Dream Plan allows you to set a life dream, such as buying a house or a car, and then start a fixed deposit plan to save money every month to realize your dream. There is also the flight delay insurance on Ctrip. For most business travelers, the most feared thing is flight delays, so it is very reasonable to buy a flight delay insurance as a risk hedge when buying a plane ticket.

(3) Emotional projection

In reality, financial products are not cold money, but appear in every important moment of our lives, such as buying a house, getting married, going abroad, and having children. Therefore, many financial products use emotional projection to impress users. For example, last year, China Merchants Bank launched a video called "Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes". It used the perspective of a child studying abroad asking his mother how to make scrambled eggs with tomatoes to introduce China Merchants Bank's customized study abroad card.

Another example is Yirendai’s Dream Plan campaign, which collects everyone’s life dreams through the Internet and sponsors start-up funds for free, conveying Yirendai’s brand of providing loan services to young people.

3. 2 Case Studies on the Soft and Hard Skills of Event Operations

In this part, I will analyze the soft and hard skills of event operation based on actual cases in my work, so that everyone can understand how to organize a heartfelt event and the practical tools for planning and operating an event.

Case 1: Guess whether it will rain in Guangzhou on the 19th?

This is a case where we cold-started the insurance channel. At the beginning, users had no knowledge of insurance and few actively visited the site. In order to attract the first wave of traffic, we combined this activity with a topical weather insurance in the community. This topic may seem obvious at first glance, but the rule of our activity is not that the one who is correct wins, but the one who ultimately bets less wins .

Now it gets interesting, the entire voting becomes a psychological game, similar to the Dark Forest Theory in The Three-Body Problem. As a result, users were very fond of this new way of playing, with a message rate of 15%. We also took this opportunity to attract the first wave of traffic to the insurance channel.

This is the soft skill of event operation, and you must grasp the human nature and psychological motivations behind it. Greed, anger, and ignorance are common psychological characteristics of all users. Learn to use human nature to mobilize users to play. Regarding user psychology, I recommend you to watch "Seven Deadly Sins".

Case 2: Fortune Season Event

Usually an event involves a long period of people, resources, and time, so the planner must have a complete set of workflows and tools to assist him or her. Next, I will share the hard work of event operation - event operation tools - in combination with the entire process of an event.

The Fortune Season is a large-scale event for the entire company's business lines that I have experienced. It is the first time that the company's three major business lines have been connected together. It took two months and cost 100 million yuan. It brought together various departments such as investment resources, novice conversion team, financial product team, and big data team to jointly create a feast of wealth.

After reading the previous description, I hope that in addition to thinking about awesome and great, you can also think of the norm of kneeling on research and development, design, and product development every day, the feeling of powerlessness when the situation is out of your control, the scramble for resources in exchange for interests, and the need to guard against sudden potholes and pitfalls.

In summary, the success of an event depends not only on the creativity, gameplay, and fun perceived by users, but also on a series of work hidden behind it. How well these tasks are completed also affects the effectiveness of the entire activity. So, here I would like to share with you my set of event operation tools - 4 tables.

The first table - activity progress control table

This table is similar to the project management schedule, which actually reduces time uncertainty and ensures that activities are launched on time. The vertical axis of the activity schedule lists all the aspects of the activity, such as: creativity, review, development, etc. The horizontal axis represents the time scale, which is measured in weeks and can also be refined to days. Then mark the time required for each task in a bar graph so that the progress of the entire activity is clear at a glance.

This table will last until the end of the entire activity and needs to be updated and adjusted in real time and synchronized with the colleagues involved.

The second table - personnel division table

The personnel division of labor table breaks down tasks and assigns them to individuals to ensure that each task is feasible and traceable. This not only empowers others, but also avoids a situation where a group of people are busy like headless flies and end up losing things.

The personnel division of labor table also lists each task and clearly defines the objectives, deadlines, personnel involved and key persons responsible for each task. The key person in charge is especially important, and we must ensure that his understanding of the task is consistent with ours. At the same time, empower them and provide them with necessary support to assist them in completing their tasks accurately.

The third table - activity promotion plan

The launch of an event is just the beginning of operating the event. What is more important is how to promote the event?

This requires making a promotion plan before the activity goes online, which is this promotion plan. It includes several stages of promotion, each stage focusing on promotion channels, population groups, expected promotion effects and emergency plans. The purpose of this table is to ensure that promotional resources keep pace with the activities and maximize the effectiveness of the activities.

The production of the schedule must be coordinated with all operations personnel to ensure that everyone has clear tasks. At the same time, we must ensure the coordination and support of product and design resources.

The fourth table - activity data monitoring table

The data monitoring table is the most important table. This table is similar to a sandbox simulation, which can help us break down activity goals and estimate resource inputs. At the same time, it can also monitor activity data in a timely manner during the activity and guide the next step of plan adjustment.

The data monitoring table contains two sets of data: one is the estimated target, and the other is the actual completion data. The monitoring fields include business data such as traffic, registration rate, activation rate, average order value, as well as financial data such as estimated expenditure, expected profit, and ROI. With these two sets and two types of data, we can have a clear idea and make decisions based on facts.

This set of event operation tools is the hard work of event operation. We can apply this set of tools to arrange work for each event in the future. At least it can help us proceed step by step and avoid getting confused.

4. How to improve event operation capabilities?

(1) Look at more competing products

In fact, many good activities can be learned from competing products, which can not only enrich your own thinking, but also help you think about the problems that exist in the other party’s activities. It is recommended that everyone download at least 30 competing apps, including e-commerce and O2O apps, on their mobile phones, and insist on checking out what activities others are doing at least every half a month.

Not only should we look at the form of the activity, but we should also study why the rules of the activity are set in this way and what the purpose of the activity is. If you stick to it for about a year, you will find that your horizons and ideas have broadened, and you no longer have to scratch your head when doing activities.

(2) Establish a material library

Pay more attention to the popular activities of NetEase, New World, and WeChat, and learn more about the gameplay of BAT's large-traffic platforms; you can also follow the official account [H5 Case Sharing], which contains a lot of good materials. When you come across good materials, collect them and categorize them. Next time you do activities, you can look through the material library.

(3) Learn more about the business

The planning of all activities is definitely not for self-entertainment, but ultimately to promote business growth. It is impossible to plan a good event without understanding the characteristics of the business. Each type of business has its own characteristics. For example, financial management business has cyclical characteristics. February to May every year is the golden time for financial management business, because most people have a year-end bonus to manage after the Spring Festival.

The order of insurance business penetration is generally from medical and critical illness insurance to life insurance and annuity insurance. When planning an event, you should pay attention to the business order. Therefore, only by understanding the business logic can you plan a good event. Learning more business knowledge and chatting more with business classmates can increase your understanding of the business.

The event chapter ends here. If you have any questions or want to consult more about event operations, please leave a message~

Source: Beijing Soldier