After users experience something, all they can remember are the experiences at the peak and the end. The proportion of good and bad experiences in the process and the duration of the good and bad experiences have almost no effect on their memory.

Those who work in new media write content with their right hand, manage activities with their left hand, think about users, think about channels in their brain, and have data in their eyes 365 days a year... There is more and more fat on their stomachs and legs!

Recently a friend told me that persistence is useless. If time permits, everyone can succeed, so finding the right method is the best way. I think it makes sense. Especially in the area of ​​event operation , if the approach goes astray, persistence will probably only result in wasted budget, right? So, how can we effectively leverage user participation?

Daniel Kahnman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics, once proposed a law - the Peak-End Rule. He believes that after users experience something, what they can remember is only the experience at the peak and the end. The proportion of good and bad experiences in the process and the length of time of good and bad experiences have almost no effect on memory. Among them, IKEA and mobile communications are probably the ones that have made the most perfect use of this law. You can take a look at them first!

IKEA Peak-End Rule

So we first have to ask a question, regarding event operations , where are the peak and terminal values ​​of user participation? In order to derive the Peak-End Law that is suitable for our own new media activities, we need to clarify two questions: What is the purpose of the activity? What are the leverage points for user engagement?

1. Purpose of the activity

I classify the objectives of the activities into three categories: one is brand promotion , including brand exposure and trust; the second is information iteration, including trial and error and verification; the third is conversion retention , including sales, reading volume and number of fans, among which reading volume has the most direct impact on brand exposure.

I believe that the purpose of an activity is always the most important. It involves the intensity and methods of subsequent activities. If the purpose is confused, no matter how beautiful the results of the activity are, it will be in vain.

I still remember that there was a red envelope grabbing activity for a newly started public account . The budget was 20,000 yuan, and a total of 10,000 red envelopes were given out. The activity method was that people could grab red envelopes by replying to keywords , which meant that everyone who grabbed a red envelope was guaranteed to follow the public account! In the end, the total number of followers increased by more than 27,000.

Like many people at first, I thought this was a good result, but I was strongly condemned by the public account owner. The reason was that the tweet on that day had less than 3,000 views (usually the public account has 100 to 200 views)! Now you understand, the purpose of the client's activity is to increase the number of readings, and he doesn't care about the number of fans. In his opinion, the fans in the background are hidden, but the number of readings is transparent. He spent 20,000 yuan, which is not worth it!

On the other hand, the purpose of the activity is the user's first sense of participating in the activity. In physics, it is said that the action of forces is mutual. In fact, the same applies to the purpose of an activity. 80% of users can know your purpose. The difference lies in whether you only benefit yourself or benefit others at the same time! As the old saying goes: If you want to get something from your users, you must give it to them first!

I believe that new media simply needs to gain time, support, trust, and retention from users, and retention includes attention and interaction. Once we know what we want, we will know how to pay for it. The impact of the activity purpose on the Peak-End Rule lies in how much altruism you can make users feel. The more altruism users feel, the higher the peak will be.

2. Leverage fulcrum

I will focus on the second part, the leverage point. Xiao Mayu mentioned in the book "I Do Operations at Alibaba " that one of the four major thinking methods of operations is leverage thinking. It gives you a fulcrum to pry up the entire earth. This is especially true in event operations.

We already know what we want to get from users. Next, we need to figure out what users want.

What users want can be summarized into four points: useful, informative, interesting, and thoughtful!

1. Useful

This mainly involves the setting of prizes. I used to have a small online event every week and a large offline event every month. According to feedback, prizes that can be directly redeemed online have the highest participation rate, such as red envelopes with cash, data traffic and phone charges, memberships of major video sites, discounts on food delivery platforms, Taobao vouchers, etc., which can be won immediately; another popular type of prize is the one that can be received with free shipping, which shows that your event after-sales service is very good; and another type is items that users believe they have gotten a small bargain, and they are even willing to spend a certain amount of money in exchange for them, such as a one-yuan exchange. Even if it is a probabilistic event, users are willing to believe in their luck.

For example, I did a red envelope grabbing activity a while ago. The budget was not much, only 2,000 yuan, but the participation rate was very high and the number of fans increased by 3,778. Last week, I held an event to offer discounts on water chestnuts, but since I couldn't offer free shipping, it had little effect.

2. There is material

This is the fulcrum for many knowledge-based platforms to carry out activities, broaden knowledge, integrate information, promote innovation, and expand personal networks. We often see such activities forwarded in the circle of friends : friends can help scan the code to get a book, fission poster and free class; or follow the new account and reply with keywords to get 3G professional integration materials; in addition, you can complete tasks to join the community and connect with industry leaders.

Compared with "Youliao" and "Youyong", it seems niche, but it is more targeted and more accurately segmented. Most of the fans attracted by grabbing red envelopes are just idle fans, and very few of them can stay. However, users who come in through the fulcrum of Youliao will have certain expectations. At its peak, it is more valuable than useful.

3. Fun

Life is already so hard, so of course we should enjoy it together when happy things happen! I also divide fun into three categories:

• Li Dai Tao Jiang: Users will find the military uniform photos taken by People's Daily and the face-swapped photos of "Story of Yanxi Palace" very interesting. Even if they have never worn the costumes, they want to know what they would look like in them.

• Immersive experience: Many times, we clearly have not experienced it, but through an activity, it seems as if the event really happened, such as the WeChat group chat and voice calls in H5, and the dynamic gift-grabbing video launched by Douyin on Valentine's Day, all add a little fun and novelty to users' lives.

• Hit the funny point: If you want to achieve massive dissemination, you have to hit the funny point with your heart, so that people can resonate after laughing, such as that particularly funny resignation letter: It’s hard for me to do anything for you with this little money.

4. Be attentive

The main purpose is to understand the user's emotions:

• Sense of honor: Call it vanity or love of showing off, don’t think these words are derogatory. Without users showing off, how can you stir up the activity traffic pool? Just scan the QR code to generate various high-end invitation letters. Who is afraid of anyone when you show off?

• Competitiveness: A friend told me that when doing a lottery at an event, it is best to have first, second, and third prizes, because people like to compete for first place. If you make a ranking list , the effect will be better than random drawing. Many H5 mini- games make use of this kind of human psychology.

• Small circle: It is said that it is lonely when standing at the top, but no one cares about the cold, they only care about the top. For example, if you organize an event and want to attract people to a community, when users find out that anyone can join, they may quit immediately. But when you say that the group is limited to 40 people and that a certain big shot is invited to join the group, then everyone will actively complete your task in order to enter this small circle.

• Lazy Cancer: This actually relates to the way of participating in an event and the way of awarding prizes for an event. The way of participation must not be roundabout, it must be simple and direct. If it can be done in one step, there should never be a second step. Why? Because people nowadays are lazy! They have already thought too much about work and life, and don’t want to mobilize every brain cell to participate in an activity! When the final prize is announced, you can't trouble the users too much, or it's just because of laziness. This is your event after-sales service, and I have also mentioned this point in the useful point.

• Anxiety: Modern people are very anxious, and Mimi Meng is the most successful in selling anxiety. Everyone doesn’t want to fall behind, so you have to provide an opportunity for them to pretend to work hard, or a form of activity that can really make them change their anxiety.

• Curiosity: Humans are curious animals. They are curious about whether they are fat or thin, or what the end of the world will be like. As a result, various tests have emerged one after another, such as who you are in "Story of Yanxi Palace" and what your mental age is...

After talking about the purpose of the activity and the fulcrum, we should come up with the peak-end rule. If we want to rank the factors that affect the peak-end rule, I think it is like this:

OK, now let's draw the peak-end rule:

From the figure we can see that the best experience for users participating in activities is that the activities are heartfelt and grasp their psychology, while the way to receive prizes is simple and direct.

Just like when you buy something on Taobao, you are not very excited at the moment of purchase. Only when you receive the goods and the goods are in good condition is the best experience. It’s just like when you order takeout. After you place the order, you’re still looking forward to it. If the rider delivers it slowly, you’ll get crazy. The best experience is when you hold the food in your hands and eat it. In fact, participating in activities is similar to ordering takeout or buying things on Taobao.

In terms of user aversion, we can see that prize scams, too many advertisements, and fake items are the most undesirable. If a user participates in fission and finds that he has taken a perfunctory lesson, or participates in an activity and finds that he has watched a lot of advertisements but has not gotten to the point, or advertisements pop up from time to time when he is playing a game, these are all very bad experiences.

Therefore, according to the Peak-End Principle, I believe that in order to motivate users to participate in activities, we must grasp the following four points:

1) In terms of activity creativity, start from the user's emotions, touch the user's psychological character, and provide targeted, scarce and limited prizes.

2) In terms of the form of the activity, try to create a scenario-based participation method that is simple and direct without any twists and turns.

3) Provide more professional services after the event than before the event.

4) In terms of the purpose of the activity, reduce selfishness and enhance altruism. You need to make users feel that you are 80% doing this for them.

Event operation is a compulsory course that new media operations cannot escape. We often wonder why users do not want such expensive prizes, why users do not participate with such a high winning rate, why we spend the budget but still cannot achieve the goal, and what is the meaning of doing events? Back to the saying, if the method is wrong, then persistence is wrong. Let us all share this!

Source: Huahua Xiaomengzhu