How to use the 4-step growth mindset to create creative marketing plans for the Chinese Valentine’s Day?

The Chinese Valentine's Day is coming soon. Every year on the Chinese Valentine's Day, as a market operator , a creative marketing campaign is indispensable. So how should a creative marketing campaign be planned? And how to implement it?

This article will redefine the thinking process of event planning from the perspective of growth. Growth theory pays more attention to user experience and scenario atmosphere, identifying user needs from the user's actual scenario and proposing solutions. In summary, the planning ideas of growth theory include four parts: finding scenarios, finding users, finding needs, and finding solutions.

1. Find scenarios and brainstorm user needs through scenarios

Chinese Valentine's Day is related to love. Love is no longer just a thing for two people. Whether you are in love, breaking up, eating out, shopping, or even saying goodbye on WeChat , you have to post it on your Moments. When you really can't find a reason, you can say, "There is no reason, I just want to show it off."

Well, Chinese Valentine's Day is coming. As a popular festival, let's first do a simple user segmentation: those with a partner and those without a partner. Those who have a partner naturally show their love, and those who don't have a partner can also show their singleness. To break it down, there are mainly the following scenes on the Chinese Valentine's Day:

1. Gift scene: show off your cool props

The gift scene is the main scene for online e-commerce . During the special festival of Chinese Valentine's Day, gifts are necessary props. In order to meet the needs of the show, many businesses started preheating Chinese Valentine's Day gift boxes and customized products as early as early August. In the gift scenario, what users need is a product that can reflect love, express feelings, show value, and bring surprises. In a nutshell, it must be able to reflect TA's care for me.

2. Dating scene – a place to show off

The dating scene leaves room for offline stores to be clever. This year's Chinese Valentine's Day falls on a Friday. Facing the upcoming weekend, couples in love are eager to date until dawn, but where to go is often a painful question. In today's world where experience is the most important thing, young user groups pay more attention to new and unique offline experience spaces. Offline experiences may not be fun, but they must be suitable for taking photos. Offline businesses can attract consumers by creating a special atmosphere.

3. Confession scene - the connotation of showing off

The confession scene is a planning idea that takes into account both online and offline. The Chinese Valentine's Day is an opportunity to confess. The atmosphere is already heated up. How can love be sublimated without a few words of love? The idea behind planning is what role your product can play in expressing love? Confession of love requires a scene and props. A picture or a card with a sentence on it can be a prop for confession. Many girls like to confess their love in a romantic atmosphere. If you find a corner in a shopping mall, cover it with roses, light candles, and take a photo specifically for confessing your love to someone, it will surely be forwarded.

4. Single scene - a different kind of show

On this romantic day, don't ignore a tragic group: singles. When friends’ circles are flooded with photos and videos showing off, can singles only silently like them? No, try to find self-comfort as well. There are two ways for singles to find self-comfort. One is the mate-seeking type, where they show their loneliness and loss in the hope that someone can comfort them. The other is the self-reliant type, so what if they are single? Is there any brand that can make a singles declaration?

Depending on the scenario, many creative ways can be generated, such as confession cards, customized gift boxes, H5 games , customized posters, catering free dishes, etc. This is the brainstorming stage of discussing ideas. Every idea can be recorded, the more the better.

After analyzing the scenario, we need to move on to the second step, which is to find users and eliminate inappropriate scenarios and ideas.

2. Find users and filter creative ideas based on precise user levels

The link of finding users is often overlooked by planners, who think that the more users they target, the better. But in growth theory, precise user operation can be regarded as a core. Whether online or offline, when there are more and more competing products and users have more and more room to choose products, there will be a lack of a marketing "anchor point" for all users. Whether it is customized products or marketing copy , users will feel that they lack a sense of "belonging."

For example, when it comes to gift giving, giving skin care products to girls is a safe choice. However, if user segmentation is not done well, for example, products suitable for 40-year-old users are made into gift boxes, but the marketing is targeted at 20-year-old girls to help them reduce fine lines around their eyes, users will feel that it is not that important.

Therefore, user positioning is a necessary step from product customization to marketing copywriting. According to the characteristics of the Chinese Valentine's Day, I took the post-80s users as the starting point and stratified the users according to their relationship status and age stage.

In this chart, there are 6 categories based on relationship status. The last category refers to people who are not married and often change girlfriends. The grids of different colors on the icon represent the division of user importance levels. The user importance levels need to be determined based on the characteristics of existing users, and the user levels are defined based on the existing users of the online platform or the mainstream users of offline stores.

The user analysis process is somewhat subjective, especially the definition of the needs of different young users. Companies with the conditions can analyze user definitions based on data, or interview users who meet the corresponding conditions. By dividing users into different levels, planners can accomplish three things:

1. Find your position. Whose perspective do you want to speak from?

Marketing can be seen as a process of dialogue with users, and the marketing stance represents your relationship with users. Whether it is product marketing or new media content operation, you can play at least three roles: Male role: Why are girls so troublesome? Girl role: Why are boys so stupid? Yue Lao role: Come and use my things to express your love.

2. Find your position and what to say to your users

After clarifying the target group, you can prepare for a series of activities such as product design, copywriting design, VI design, etc. based on user portraits such as age, occupation, preferences, and needs, and perform subtractive screening on the creative results in the first stage.

3. Find channels to let users know what you say

Based on the target user portrait, we can find channels that can reach users, make precise online delivery, and find offline scenes that users can see, so as to reduce the cost of promotion and customer acquisition.

3. Find needs, arrange and combine to clarify needs

The stage of finding needs is to further clarify user needs through scenarios and user positioning. For example, with young couples aged 23-28 as the target users, there are three scenarios: gift scenario, dating scenario, and confession scenario. The following paragraph can be generated through the white-drawing method:

Confession of a boy in love: Friday is Chinese Valentine’s Day, but I haven’t prepared a gift yet. What should I give? I just got my salary and I still have to pay the rent, so I can’t buy gifts that are too expensive. After all, I still have to eat and go shopping, but where should I go shopping? It would be nice to have a cheap, fun and romantic place.

From this passage, we can see that users’ needs are cheap gifts, fun places and romantic atmosphere, so what are users’ core demands? It’s cheap and expresses your feelings.

The step of finding needs is often not taken seriously, and many planners believe that they can directly make plans after having scenarios and users. However, user needs are diverse, and the core demands can be better clarified through the combination of scenarios and users.

4. Find a solution and make a solution based on the product

After clarifying the core demands of users, start looking for solutions for them. Taking the above user needs as an example, how to meet the needs of male users who are young couples aged 23-28?

1. New media can be used to review and recommend content based on user needs

Localized new media can make recommendations for shopping mall activities, and choose activities based on user needs. For example, elegant concerts are not suitable for this group, and a drama with a ticket price of less than 300 yuan can be a good choice. For restaurant recommendations, you can try Western food with an average price of around 100 yuan per person. After all, we should strive to make the environment for the Chinese Valentine's Day look elegant.

2. New media can discuss pain points from the user’s perspective

It is crucial for content-driven new media to choose their stance. Only heart-wrenching content can lead to a screen-sweeping trend. When female new media are complaining about boys who don’t know how to give gifts, are there any otaku new media to complain about girls who have many ideas?

3. E-commerce merchants can customize cards or gift boxes

Customized cards or gift boxes are a common method used by e-commerce companies, but the key lies in the content, which is a sentence of copywriting. After clarifying the target users and needs of the product, you can better position the gift box. For example, we are used to seeing customized gift boxes for the Chinese Valentine's Day, so is it possible to make a gift box to thank the wife, a special gift box for confession of love, or a self-help gift box for singles?

4. Online H5 gives gift cards more ways to play

In this era of fancy displays of affection, although behind every show of affection there is the obvious symbol of RMB, the flag of love should still fly in the wind during the Chinese Valentine's Day. How can users of online education , financial management , etc. participate in the love show activities? Expressing your feelings has become a new way to try.

A gift card can be a physical plastic card or a string of digital numbers, but you can also try H5 gift cards, customized electronic gift cards.

Summary : The above is a creative plan for the Chinese Valentine's Day event based on growth theory. The era of refined operations is no longer a stage for doing marketing on a whim. Understanding users, finding scenarios, and making plans based on products should become the thinking inertia of every marketing planner and market operator. In one sentence, it can be summarized as: do the right thing at the right time with the right people.