Is the ground promotion effect poor? You may be missing channel evaluation

Field promotions through multiple channels require real-time digital monitoring, and the previous plans must be modified in a timely manner based on market feedback, so that the idealized plans can be adjusted to the optimal level that conforms to realistic logic.

With the popularity of Internet O2O projects, the offline promotion model has gradually emerged, especially after the success of offline promotion of products such as Ele.me, Meituan, and Didi.

But at the same time, the risks of ground marketing are also getting higher and higher. On the one hand, the cost of ground marketing is constantly rising, and on the other hand, the competition in the industry is becoming increasingly fierce. Channel evaluation will become the key to ground marketing strategy.

1. What is ground promotion?

In many people's impressions, door-to-door marketing may just be a pure form of manual sales in which a group of people distribute flyers and issue gym memberships on the roadside.

In fact, after integrating the Internet gene, current ground promotion has developed new changes. Zhu Hongyuan, former marketing director of Ele.me, believes that the current ground promotion is essentially a kind of digital marketing with "people" as the basic element.

The key to digital marketing is to grasp various user behavior data: key indicators such as scanning, clicking, installation, registration, etc., and finally form a digital model.

The essence of today’s field marketing is a requirement for data, but we need to add execution management of people on top of the data.

2. What needs to be done for field promotion?

It mainly needs to go through three stages: planning and preparation, specific implementation, and effect feedback. These steps may even require multiple cycles, the reasons for which will be explained later.

1. Planning and preparation. The starting point of ground promotion should be considered in combination with the purpose of the activity. The general purposes include: attracting new customers, sales promotion, traffic diversion, brand promotion, etc. Different plans should be designed according to different purposes to achieve the desired effect.

The plan needs to cover all aspects, including target groups, promotion scenarios, promotion models, required materials, required manpower, time nodes, etc.

• Target group: Field promotion is the most direct way for products to face users. Therefore, the premise of making all plans must be a preliminary diagnosis of users: potential users can be labeled with attributes, such as industry, age, income, behavior, etc., and the following plans can be formulated based on this.
• Promotion scenarios: Determined based on the attributes of potential users, for example, car maintenance services are for car owners near large parking lots; food delivery services are for white-collar workers near commercial office buildings; gaming services are for students near schools and training centers.
• Promotion model: This aspect should be considered in combination with cost and effect estimates. In terms of cost, if you are only planning short-term marketing, then the investment can be relatively concentrated. If it is long-term marketing, it is recommended to take a steady approach. In terms of effect, different methods of ground promotion, such as small gift ground promotion, flyer ground promotion, experiential ground promotion, and cooperative ground promotion, each has its own merits in specific scenarios. For example, the scanning code to give away drinks in hot weather, cookie tasting and cookie discount coupons near elementary schools, and scanning the code to give away milk in cooperation with Meiyajia across the province will have better effects.
• Required materials: The simplest stall: roll-up banners + tables and chairs + banners + tents + flyers. Of course, the most important thing is the value of the small gifts. In addition, the material costs required for roadshows, photo walls, puppets, flash mobs, live broadcasts by internet celebrities, etc. are relatively high, but there are also spaces for rent in the same city.
• Time node: Large-scale theme activities are usually scheduled on weekends, with large flow of people and good exposure effects; local community-style promotion requires analyzing the behavioral habits of regional users.

All planning processes must put "feasibility" first. The plan must be feasible so that it can be fully coordinated in execution.

2. Specific implementation. The execution content is mainly based on the ground promotion plan. What needs to be emphasized here is human resource scheduling and risk planning.

• Human resource scheduling. The cost of finding a third-party marketing company is definitely higher than a part-time job for college students, but the execution and efficiency are relatively better, and it is also more planned from the perspective of long-term promotion. If costs do not permit and you only want to promote in the short term, experienced college students would be more cost-effective. In terms of settlement, the pay-per-performance model is now popular. As long as the data is not falsified and can be effectively monitored, the promotion results are still based on evidence.
• Risk plan. What the contingency plan needs to consider are nothing more than emergencies, that is, what to do if an accident occurs during the implementation of the plan. The main considerations are: bad weather, insufficient personnel, partners’ failure to support you, problems with on-site equipment, etc. You even need to be prepared for external factors such as community property, urban management supervision, etc.

In fact, the first planning plan is at a relatively ideal level. We have no way of knowing whether the effect will be good or bad before implementation. However, only by considering it comprehensively can we minimize the risk. The first implementation is a trial and error process used to incubate the third stage.

3. Feedback on results. This link is of utmost importance. Considering the complexity of ground promotion in reality, when we plan the plan in the first link, we should generally make a BI around several key indicators, such as how many people were sent out today, how much materials were sent out, how many registrations came, how much the activity increased, and which time period is more effective.

On the one hand, these key indicators are related to the assessment of field sales personnel based on payment results. On the other hand, they also have considerable reference value for operational strategies and can greatly shorten the trial and error cycle.

In combination with digital marketing, I will take the channel statistics of openinstall as an example to control the key indicators in the process of ground promotion:

It can be seen that it is possible to conduct real-time digital monitoring of local promotions through multiple channels, and these data can be used as evaluation indicators for ROI.

Taking the above picture as an example, the "Xinghe City" ground promotion team occupies two seats in the top 6, and the ground promotion effect is the best. This channel can be used as the focus of resource allocation for the subsequent ground promotion. At the same time, the reasons for the poor ground promotion effects of "Zhongshan Road" and "Dongmen" can be compared and analyzed.

After comprehensive consideration, we will promptly modify the previous plan based on market feedback, adjust the idealized plan to the best level that conforms to realistic logic, summarize experience from several trial and error plans, and accumulate experience for subsequent ground promotion.

Of course, this also involves issues of user experience and feedback cycle:

• User experience. The operating costs for target users need to be simplified as much as possible. For example, a common scenario in App promotion is that users are required to fill in an invitation code after registration, which is used to settle accounts with promoters and reward new users. This will actually cause user loss, or the settlement chain will be broken if the code is not filled in, which is a not very friendly link. But now some local marketing tools are able to identify statistics and feedback data even without an invitation code.
• Feedback cycle. The length of the cycle varies from product to product. For example, if the content of the same offline promotion is to download the app and watch a movie at 50% off, the conversion cycle may be slower, and the peak will occur on weekends, because both adults and children have time to watch movies together on weekends. If it is a catering app, the user may be hungry in the afternoon, or it may be lunchtime, and when they see the 50% off on ordering, they will actively convert, and the conversion efficiency will be relatively fast.

It can be said that the most suitable ground-based marketing plan for your own product is the result of continuous adjustment based on effect feedback. The essence of effect feedback is to evaluate the effectiveness of promotion channels, eliminate bad plans and channels, trace the process back to the first stage to re-plan new plans, and make repeated adjustments to form a virtuous cycle.

Conclusion

In field marketing, people are the first factor. Combining management with the concept of digital marketing will be more in line with the rhythm of the Internet era.

In general, door-to-door marketing is still an extremely efficient way of promotion, but when doing it, you must always ask yourself: Who am I promoting to? What can I do for you?

Source: Big City Small Things