How to choose channels for app soft promotion?

There is another big pitfall in App soft promotion : channels . Because there are so many channels and their properties vary greatly, the same set of materials can even show worlds of difference in different channels. If all channels are covered, the cost will be very high and most companies cannot afford it. Therefore, it is very important to choose channels that are suitable for the promotion of their own products.

In this article, I will focus on explaining the channels of soft promotion and some of my experiences in actual promotion, hoping to give some inspiration to students who are doing soft promotion.

This article will explain from the following two aspects:

1. Channels for App Soft Promotion

2. Some Experience in Promotion

App soft promotion channels

I organized the soft channels that I had promoted before, which are roughly: websites, Weibo, forums ( Tieba ), WeChat , videos, etc. It should be noted that you can choose one channel or combine them freely.

website.

Websites are still the most mainstream promotion channel .

I classify websites into four major portals and vertical websites. The four major portals are generally chosen due to their large traffic , authority and sufficient budget. Vertical websites can screen some websites with attributes close to their own products, which is essentially to screen target users .

For example, if we are promoting a game app, vertical websites can choose media such as 18183, Pocket Bus, and Renwantang. If it is an educational app, the choices are maternal and child , life service and other websites.

The traffic of a single website may not be large, but dozens of small vertical websites can still have a certain effect.

Prices for website promotion.

The price of ordinary website content is around 50 to 200 yuan. If it is the homepage, the price will be higher. For example, the homepages of the four major portals cost around 500 to 600 yuan.

The price of a website is also determined by its traffic. An ordinary website can basically be built for 100 yuan per article. It should be noted that some websites have requirements for soft articles, such as not being able to contain links, QR codes, etc. Since top websites are expensive and have large traffic, but the results are not necessarily guaranteed, it is recommended to launch two or three large websites plus dozens of small websites together to spread the cost.

The role of website promotion.

My understanding of soft promotion on the website is to make a name for yourself in front of users and also to show it to Baidu.

Showing your face in front of users is actually exposure. Telling users that there is such a product, users only know about it and will not convert . Only when they see many people talking about it, will they convert.

It is even more difficult to get many people talking about it, so many people who do soft promotion of apps have reported poor results because there was a gap and they only had one face scan. It is made for Baidu to see and for Baidu to crawl. When users search for keywords in Baidu , they will see their own soft articles or news, which will increase persuasiveness and improve conversion. For example, if I saw a recruitment software on the website and didn’t know if there were any scams, I would go to Baidu to check whether the software was reliable. At this time, the soft articles caught by Baidu would come in handy.

Weibo.

In my opinion, Weibo is a black box. There is no standard price and the effect is difficult to control. However, the current pricing system has become more complete, unlike the early days of Weibo, when there was a lot of water in the system.

There are also distinctions in the types of advertising on Weibo. One is Weibo celebrities, or KOLs , and the other is Weibo big accounts. Weibo can also create hot searches, which can be purchased with money or promoted through other means. Due to the soft delivery of Weibo, which has many entrances and many ways to play, we, as a small company, are always on the sidelines.

The price of Weibo.

The price of Weibo celebrities is in tens of thousands, and it is common to charge hundreds of thousands of RMB for a single retweet. This depends on the company. For example, some companies may only have a promotion budget of 20,000. The price of a large Weibo account is more affordable, around 1,000 yuan, and the number of fans ranges from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

If you are doing mobile game advertising, you can try to advertise some. The budget for mobile game advertising is large, starting from one million. It is acceptable to take out tens of thousands of it to advertise on Weibo.

The effect of Weibo.

When it comes to the effects, many people will smile knowingly, haha.

We all know that many fans on Weibo are zombie fans. The effect of a blogger who claims to have 1 million fans may not be as good as that of a blogger with 70,000 to 80,000 real fans. Moreover, it is impossible to distinguish this. The effects we can see are reposts, comments and topics. I asked some people, and they found out that most people use Weibo to read celebrity gossip, and the age group is relatively young, so we can use this as a basis to decide whether to place advertisements.

forum.

Although the forum is an old product, it cannot be ignored when promoting apps softly. Especially when promoting mobile game products, forums are an indispensable promotion channel.

Because all mobile game products have the need for offline interaction, and this offline refers to outside the game. For example, in Honor of Kings , you can play games within the game, communicate on the forum, share strategies, battle records, etc. Many channels have game sections, and you can also apply for sections for popular games.

If it is an application, you can go to the vertical industry forum to post to increase exposure. It is cheaper than the website and easier to operate. If you hand it over to a professional posting company, hundreds of posts will be published in minutes. I once tried to promote my public account "Tiger Talks Operations " on the forum, but what was the result! Cough cough!

Forum prices.

If you just post, the price will be relatively cheap, ranging from a few cents to a few dollars for one post. If it is mass posting by machine, the price is 50 cents per post without screening the website. It is based on volume, and the effect is not guaranteed.

If it is a designated website and requires pictures, it will cost 3 yuan per post. Since there are not many vertical forums, the budget is only a few hundred yuan, which is much more cost-effective than a single portal news article. In addition to posting, forums and BBS also have the service of pinning posts to the top, which costs about 200 yuan each time.

The role of the forum.

The role of the forum is conversion, followed by exposure. One advantage of a forum is that users can post comments and interact with each other, which leaves a much deeper impression than simple news.

The average number of readers of a post is about 100. You can change the selling point and post more posts to increase the conversion rate .

Soft articles in forums should not be too direct. It is more appropriate to post them in the user's tone, otherwise the post will be deleted. This depends on the temper of the forum. Some forums are very strict and will snap down any slight leniency. Some forums are not so strict. A lot of soft articles have been posted and have never been deleted, and the volume is not small.

Post bar.

I classified Tieba into the forum. The properties of Tieba are similar to those of the forum, but the form of expression is slightly different.

Compared to the decline of forums, Tieba is still quite popular now. In some small Tieba, it is easy to make a post to the front. It is also quite cost-effective to pay some money for promotion in popular forums.

WeChat.

WeChat has two entrances to promote soft articles, official accounts and Moments , and there is also performance advertising, which I will not mention here.

Posting soft articles on public accounts is currently a popular form, and the popularity of public accounts is obvious to all. After reading the promotion plan we have made, the boss will always ask, what public accounts have been posted?

But in fact, according to feedback from many advertisers, the effect of soft articles in public accounts is not very ideal. For example, the conversion rate of e-commerce is almost negligible. Although some of their own accounts have achieved profitability through e-commerce monetization, many of the practical , informational, and emotional articles that are promoted in a rigid manner have had terrible results.

The price of WeChat.

The prices of public accounts vary greatly, with the most expensive ones costing hundreds of thousands and the cheapest ones costing only a few hundred yuan. It’s all based on fans and reading volume.

For example, after a certain public account gained 500,000 followers in one day, the headline quotation increased the next day. There is a second article or picture in a public account, and the price of the second article is generally similar to that of the first article. I roughly calculated that on average 1,000 yuan can buy 5,000 reads, and it would be higher if it is a vertical type.

Advertising in the circle of friends is interesting. Although I have never bid for it, I have learned about the prices. For an ordinary marketing account with less than 5,000 friends, the price is about 200 yuan. For a more famous person, it is more than 2,000 yuan. For someone like me, Lao Hu, it is estimated to be more than 20,000 yuan, although no one bids for it!

The effect of WeChat.

The effect depends on personal opinion. To ensure safety, the best practice is mutual promotion. Now almost every company has a public account, so just find the same type and level of mutual promotion.

If the effect is really good, you can consider spending money on promotion. Otherwise, if you spend tens of thousands of dollars pushing out a message and it doesn’t make any splash, the boss will probably beat someone up.

video.

The video here refers to the way of video implantation. For example, during a live broadcast , the host can recommend their own products. A larger way is to soft-implement in online dramas and variety shows. The one who is best at this is "U Can U Bibi" .

Shows like Happy Camp , Day Day Up and some reality shows often expose brands. This type of gameplay was quite effective at the beginning, but now with the overwhelming implantation, the effect has been greatly reduced.

Videos are suitable for companies with sufficient budgets, and this kind of implantation is usually combined with offline or other platform promotions, so it is not recommended for small companies to do this.

Some experience in promotion

How to spend the least money to get more results?

My strategy is to test on a small scale and then promote on a large scale. The most important factors affecting advertising effectiveness are materials and channels. When we actually promote, we often choose the channel first and then produce the materials.

Although this process is incorrect, most companies do it this way. Now that you have chosen the channel, you can upload 5 to 6 sets of materials to test the conversion. The modification of a title or a picture can have a great impact on the data.

Therefore, it is necessary for us to be careful when doing this work. By analyzing the converted materials and channels with good conversion, you can gradually form your own understanding. Then when you take over other promotional projects, you can do it all at once and achieve the greatest effect with the least money.

Are the more promotion channels the better?

The answer is yes. However, in the actual operation process, we found that being able to promote a channel is already a success. For example, a hot product in the circle of friends is a success, and so is a screen-sweeping product in the subway.

Large companies have full channel coverage. My judgment is that since there is no guarantee that users will actively spread the word, then they will just spend money to buy it. This is also the benefit of having capital. When promoting, small companies are advised to dig deep into one channel, such as Weibo promotion, so that they can survive. Other channels will be covered when they are capable.

The best promotion strategy : run daily advertising with full channel coverage and run a single channel for emergencies.

This means that for daily publicity and promotion, it is better to promote through 2 channels than through 1 channel, and more than 95% of promotions are daily promotions, so multiple channel coverage is the best strategy. Temporary emergencies generally refer to soft events that are imaginative or non-human-made, such as BUG events, which are suitable for promotion in one channel.

The above is my summary of App soft promotion. In fact, there are still many details to be explored. In the process of our operation, we should think more about how to produce results. What are the characteristics of the channel? Those who are meticulous in their work and can really achieve results are those who have a good grasp of details. Those screen-sweeping events that we see are the results of a team that has been thinking about them day and night and constantly testing. Come on, operations guys!