Why didn’t the activities you planned work?

Event operation is an explosive operation method carried out to achieve goals in a short period of time. It is an important operation method in Internet product operations . A good event delivered through the correct channels will bring about a very powerful communication effect!

As an APP operator, you often need to plan activities to quickly attract new and active users. You have done a lot of activities and encountered many pitfalls, but can you avoid the pitfalls in the next activity? Today I will talk to you about how to avoid some pitfalls and do a good operation activity, as well as what points need to be paid attention to during the operation activity. I hope it will be helpful to novice operators.

1. How to prepare for the event

If you want to do your work well, you must first sharpen your tools. Before we organize an event, we must first understand why we are organizing it? What is the purpose of the activity? Who is the target audience of the event? When is the activity expected to go online? Whether an event can be successfully launched and carried out, some preparations in the early stage of the event provide support for the operation personnel to plan the next step of the event, help the operation personnel to maximize the use of resources, and best achieve the event goals.

1. What is the purpose of the activity?

When planning an event, the first question is to determine what the purpose of the event is? Is it to attract new customers, retain customers , promote activation or conversion ? How to clarify the activity objectives? First, determine the general purpose; corresponding to different activity objectives, they can be broken down into specific activity indicators.

2. Analyze the target audience of the event

Sort out the target audience of the event and understand their preferences and characteristics. It does not just focus on external information such as gender, age, and region, but looks beyond the phenomenon to the essence. By analyzing users' personal information, preferences, and other behaviors, and combining them with the characteristics of the product itself, it ultimately determines the core target user group. Establishing a rough user portrait can help us carry out operational activities more targeted.

3. Determine the activity time

The timing of an event is also an important factor that affects the effectiveness of event communication, so it must be carefully considered during planning. You can choose to take advantage of the situation, but try to avoid some large-scale events, such as Taobao's " Double Eleven ". A head-on collision will only cause your activities to be overshadowed.

The purpose, target audience and time of the event set a framework for the event, and the form of the event is to find ways to attract the user group of the event within this framework. So, what are the forms of activities?

2. Several forms of activities

There are only a few common forms of activities, but the ways of playing are diverse. Each simple form can evolve into many ways of playing, but no matter what the way of playing is, the most important thing is to arouse the interest of users.

1. User rebate

For consumer products, the main method is to stimulate the activity of new and old users through red envelopes, lucky draws, and discount promotions, with the intention of retaining some users who are valuable to the products through activities.

(1) Various vouchers and red envelope subsidies

This form of activity is directly linked to monetary relief and is driven by interests, so users are generally easily attracted. It is a very frequently used form of activity for life service products. However, such activities should not be too frequent. Too many of them will suppress loyal users who really have the willingness to consume and users with potential consumption intentions, and in the long run will damage the brand's image in the minds of users. Of course, if you focus on cheapness and discounts, that’s a different story.

Case:

① Red envelopes from Didi and Meituan Waimai

Red envelopes are an important means of operating O2O products. Whether it is to attract new customers or to recall users who are about to lose, it is achieved by sending red envelopes. Of course, the specific strategies are different, such as which users to send to, how much money to send, and what the usage requirements are. There are many ways to operate here.

Figure 1

(2) Discount and promotion activities

The simplest and most user-attractive form of activity. Products offer certain discounts or promise certain benefits to attract users to buy more products, or even products that were not originally on their shopping lists.

1. Case:

Lechun, Qixi limited edition gift box

We specially customized rose-flavored yogurt for the Chinese Valentine's Day, limited to 2,000 copies, which not only brought a wonderful experience to users but also increased product sales.

Figure 2

(3) Retweet lucky draw (taking Weibo as an example)

This is currently the most common form of activity on Weibo, and it is inevitable for everyone from individual users to brands. The main forms of the lottery are as follows: forwarding with a topic, @x friends and forwarding, following and forwarding, and a combination of multiple methods.

Case:

①McDonald's #I just love French fries#

In order to promote its newly launched French fries, McDonald's used the topic "I love French fries this way". Users who forward the post and @3 friends can participate in the lucky draw.

Figure 3

② OPPO mobile phone #flash charge, continue fighting#

OPPO launched this event to promote the robot competition, requiring participants to bring up the topic and forward it in order to have a chance to participate in the lottery.

Figure 4

2. Brand communication

Tend to build brand image and convey the brand's spiritual attitude to users. In terms of content, it is necessary to advocate an attitude and a theme, and in terms of design, it is necessary to use a visual language that is consistent with the brand's temperament to leave a deep impression on users. Its activities take various forms, and what is important is the creativity of the activities.

(1) Topic Interaction

Through attractive topics, you can let users participate in your topic discussions and motivate users to be active; by encouraging users to provide positive topics, you can achieve the effect of the activity. There are many forms of topic interaction, which can be carried out through festivals, current affairs, etc.

Case:

① Keep: "1st anniversary, tell us about the changes that Keep has brought to you"

Fitness experts like to show off their fitness achievements, and community topics provide them with a good space to display their achievements for fitness novices to look up to. On the other hand, it is also an incentive for fitness novices.

Figure 5

② Weibo’s #TravelWithWeibo#

It makes good use of the hot topic of "holiday" and guides users ' UGC through topics. Later, it began to be commercialized.

Figure 6

(2) God-level content planning

Through the power of content planning, let the masses spread it on new media platforms. The content or gameplay needs to be interesting, well-structured, and relevant.

Case:

①Alipay : Why did Van Gogh commit suicide?

By telling stories with familiar characters and events, the readers are drawn in step by step, and the Alipay brand is introduced "naturally" in the end. Regardless of whether the story is true or false, it can make readers smile and achieve a good communication effect.

Figure 7 (More content, please check for details)

② Quick comics: Sorry, I only live 1% of my life

"Sorry, I Only Live 1% of My Life" uses comics to tell a story about dreams in a very cute way. The texts in the comics all describe fragments of daily life. These details can easily evoke people's feelings and generate emotions.

Figure 8 (partial content)

(3) H5 full of participation

The most important thing about H5 activities is that they are interesting, fun, cool and can bring surprises to people, so that users will actively participate and spread them.

Case:

① Douban : My spiritual corner

Douban has always been a gathering place for literary and artistic young people, and is therefore labeled as literary and artistic by netizens. This time, Douban proposed an imagination through 5 small games and took the "literary" style to a new height. The creative starting point is very unique, looking for a "Douban" that has not been seen for a long time. It adopts a gameplay similar to escape room, rendering the brand characteristics of "Douban" extremely brilliantly.

Figure 9-10

②Today’s headlines : Fresh meat is not that popular

People always have an inexplicable sense of trust in "numbers", and this H5 just starts with " big data ". We also used data comparison of five groups of keywords to prove that the reading rate of annual hot words is lower than that of daily words. In this way, the warm copywriting improved the brand favorability of "Toutiao"; secondly, the display of "big data" cleverly highlighted its product features.

Fig.11

3. Fun games

By playing games, you can embed product information or get product discounts. The best thing about the gaming activity format is that it provides feedback and predictable results. As long as users put in the effort, they will be rewarded; as long as they keep working hard, they will win.

Case:

① Alipay Jifu

Alipay's Five Blessings Collection Event: This may be the most popular event 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.

Fig.12

②#樱花冰淇淋跑酷# on Baidu Maps

Users only need to pick up their mobile phones, open the Baidu Maps APP, and search for nearby McDonald's to participate. It's like a game that combines online and offline elements, which is very interesting. The event page received over 20 million visits, more than 500,000 shares, and nearly 70 million views on social media , topping Sina Weibo’s popular search rankings .

Fig.13

4. Charity activities

Charity activities mainly use online communication to create momentum, collect content, and carry out offline activities. The greatest significance of such activities is that they can establish a positive image and increase reputation.

Case:

"Headline Missing Person"

Toutiao Missing Persons is a public welfare missing persons project initiated by Toutiao in February 2016. It leverages the Internet+'s precise regional pop-up window technology to push precise, targeted regional push of missing person or family search information, and relies on Toutiao's massive user base to help family members find missing persons and help suspected missing persons rescued by rescue management agencies find their families.

Fig.14

As of August 30, 2017, "Toutiao Missing Persons" has pushed out 18,237 missing person notices and found 3,000 people, of which 35% are elderly people, and the oldest missing person is 101 years old. Nowadays, for every 100 missing person windows that pop up on Toutiao, 16 people can be found.

3. How to plan an excellent event

There are several key points in planning an event:

1. Fun

The activity itself is interesting and gives users a good reason to participate, which is a favorable factor to stimulate users to participate and share. Capture users' interests, meet the personalized needs of different users, and satisfy users' vanity.

2. Simple process

According to the funnel principle, from the time users enter the activity page to the time they complete the activity, each step will result in approximately 50% loss. Therefore, the overall process design should have fewer operation steps. It is best not to let users choose which page to jump to, but to directly guide users to continue participating and reduce user loss at each link.

3. The rules are easy to understand

The rules for participating in the event should be as simple as possible so that users can see at a glance “what they need to do to get what they want”. Put the core information in the most prominent position of the page and keep other descriptions brief to reduce the user's reading cost.

4. Highlight user benefits

Users participate in activities in order to obtain certain material or spiritual rewards. On the activity page, the user's benefits should be placed in a prominent position so that users can obtain information about vested interests in the shortest possible time and cater to the user's selfish psychology.

5. Give users a reason to share

Studies have shown that 71% of users are reluctant to share content. The most common method we use in activities is to encourage users to share through material prizes. There are only two forms of incentives: one is to meet the user's spiritual needs, and the other is to meet the user's material needs.

IV. Five issues that operators should pay attention to

Finally, event planners also need to pay attention to:

1. Don’t do activities just for the sake of activities;

2. Activities must be “done”, not waited for;

3. Activities are a long-term process, not a magic weapon that can be achieved overnight;

4. The activity needs to be tracked throughout the process, and the strategy should be continuously optimized based on real-time feedback;

5. If you were a user, would you participate in this activity? If you don’t want to participate, then don’t do this activity;

6. Reviewing must be done. Many problems and experiences will be summarized in the review, which can better guide the next planning.

Finally, I want to say that no matter what kind of activity it is, it needs to be adapted to local conditions. The above basic summary of event operations is not necessarily a universal formula. Many detailed issues can only be discovered during the event, and then constantly adjusted and summarized from experience.

Source: Activity Box