I have just taken over an information flow delivery project. Where should I start?

I have received several inquiries recently, all asking the same type of questions:

Party A had never invested in information flow before, but now seeing that all industries are investing in it, Party A decided to follow the trend and give it a try, so they found Party B. The person in charge of Party B only cared about whether there were new cases, and he didn't ask many questions after the cases were accepted, and directly threw the project to the optimizer. The optimizer who took over was confused. He didn't know how to communicate with the client about the placement. If he didn't communicate, he didn't know where to start. If he didn't do a good job and lost the order, he might have to take the blame. So he asked me: "How do I place the order?"

Don't panic, take it step by step...

We say that when people are entangled in trivial matters, they are bound to lose their way. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to help optimizers sort out three issues that often confuse them during delivery :

1. How to find the direction of orientation?
2. Where is the direction of the copywriting?
3. Are these directions valid?

Usually, when we mention a new case, we mean that its brand , product, pricing information, and purpose of placement are all set.

We can also understand that Party A did not give us much room to play freely. We can only filter out information that is more conducive to the purpose of delivery from the limited amount of information to complete our delivery task.

Therefore, the first step for the optimizer after taking over should be to break down the known information of the case.

We all know that the key to information flow delivery is targeting and copywriting .

To put it simply, targeting means defining the direction and scope of the product's target audience ; and copywriting is what we want to say to the target audience .

The former requires us to conduct research and analysis on the audience , while the latter requires us to analyze the product selling points corresponding to the target audience .

So, what is the basis for the analysis?

In the known information!

We need to find the direction of orientation and copywriting from the known information.

Let’s talk about the direction first, that is, what is the target audience? Where?

There are two ways to acquire the target audience: one is for the client to give it to you, and the other is for you to find it yourself.

One is reliable, where the client tells you the population profile based on their research or past sales data.

One is unreliable. We can think of it as a group of people created by Party A himself. Of course, Party A will not tell you that this is his imagination. If you do not have enough professional knowledge or common sense, you may not realize that this is a trap.

Therefore, if you are targeting based on the audience information provided by Party A, you need to repeatedly confirm the reliability of the information with Party A. As for how to confirm that you will not be K out, that is a question of wording, and we will not discuss it in depth here.

The first is to collect free or paid secondary data , which is desktop research.

Usually we can understand the existing audience of a product and their characteristics by analyzing the sales data of e-commerce . For example, with Taobao data, we can analyze the cities where the consumers of this product are distributed, the gender ratio, age group, interest characteristics, etc. The acquisition of this information can lay a good foundation for subsequent targeting.

Secondly, if there is no secondary data, you can also obtain first-hand data on the product audience through expert interviews, field research, etc. For example, the sales manager, distributors, and customer service managers of Party A’s factory will also have a certain understanding of the target audience of the product. After all, they are at the forefront of the market.

The third type is when there is neither second-hand data nor time to obtain first-hand data through interviews. You can directly start advertising to obtain a portrait of the audience . However, we need a certain amount of data support to collect audience data. When the amount of data is too small, the portrait will be unstable. In other words, if you want to obtain the audience portrait through direct delivery, it may require a lot of testing fees and testing time. Moreover, it is best for you to understand basic data analysis knowledge.

In addition, it is best to make it clear to Party A in advance that this is a test, and no one knows whether the test will produce good or bad results. Most clients want to see results right away, but you need to remind them that this is almost impossible . Unless you are a household name and everyone needs to buy and can only buy your products, it is impossible to get immediate results. Of course, this also involves the skill of speaking, and it is also a question of your company's business strategy (for example, some companies are just trying to make money by cutting leeks), which I will not discuss in depth here.

There are also two ways to obtain copywriting ideas. One is that Party A already has mature product information for you to refer to, and the other is that Party A has newly developed a product and there is basically no ready-made and direct product information to refer to.

1. Company website;
2. Taobao store;
3. Offline brochure.

Regardless of the source, we need to organize the information into the following format :

1. The industry to which the product belongs;
2. The category to which the product belongs;
3. Differentiated selling points of products.

For example:

For example, if we want to advertise for a new restaurant brand, we need to tell potential target franchisees:

1. This brand is for restaurant chain franchise, not food sales franchise, that is, we are a franchise store, not a food agency franchise.

I often see franchise advertisements that don’t clearly state what the franchise is about. For example, it is clearly a franchise for a small hotpot restaurant (a hotpot restaurant that serves one small hotpot per person), but three or even more types of restaurants appear in the copy. This makes people confused. What on earth is this advertisement trying to promote?

Our suggestion is : since the client has given you all the information, you can ask if you are not clear. It is very important to distinguish the industries. This can make your copy clearer and help you find a more accurate target audience.

One of the reasons why some optimizers are reluctant to ask more questions may be that they are worried about social risks. For example, the client thinks that you have explained it very clearly, so why are you still asking questions? They may even question whether you have problems with your ability. Then you can use more skillful ways to find out, such as pretending to be a potential franchisee and calling the client for consultation. In short, as long as you want to know, there is always a way.

2. Is this chain restaurant brand a Sichuan restaurant? Hunan restaurant? Or a Northeastern restaurant?

Here let’s first explain the meaning of categories . Category is the last level of classification that consumers think of when making purchasing decisions .

For example, shoes. If we just talk about buying shoes, there is no way to give a purchasing direction because the scope is too large. But if we say we are going to buy a pair of leather shoes or sneakers, we will have a sense of direction.

For example, some urban users already have a higher level of understanding of sneakers. Just talking about sneakers would be too abstract, so we have to go further and talk about basketball shoes, tennis shoes, football shoes, etc.

In the final analysis, it is to classify products using product categories that users can understand, rather than directly stating the classification that the brand thinks of.

Now let’s get back to what we were talking about when it comes to franchising catering brands. Let’s think about what we usually say when we discuss “what to eat today”? Would we say we are eating Northeastern cuisine or Sichuan cuisine?

Correspondingly, potential franchisees will also consider whether they want to join Sichuan cuisine or Northeastern cuisine? Is this category in the growth stage in the area where he wants to open a store? Or in the maturity stage? Or a recession? How popular is it? Do young people eat a lot? Or are families the main customers? etc.

Therefore, before writing the copy, you must first clarify what category the product you want to promote belongs to. Only by clarifying the category can you attract target franchisees more accurately and effectively.

3. What is the difference between this restaurant franchise and other brands in the same industry?

Why should we highlight differentiation? Because this is the direct trigger for target franchisees to choose you. For example, we both serve Sichuan cuisine, but are ours authentic Sichuan cuisine? Or new-style Sichuan cuisine? Is the price cheap? Or a stronger taste? etc.

It is important to note here that the search for differentiated selling points is based on the needs of product buyers. That is, when you come up with a differentiating feature, you have to first ask yourself: How will this feature help the target audience?

For example, if you are running a restaurant franchise, can your characteristics help franchisees win the foodie market faster? Can it enable franchisees to quickly get ahead of their peers? If not, then this differentiation cannot serve as a basis for persuading franchisees to respond to joining, and it will have no particularly outstanding significance.

That is, the product launched this time is a newly developed product, and there is basically no ready-made and direct product information to refer to . Then the copywriting thinking direction is as follows:

First, for new products in old categories:

For example, Party A has developed a new cola to sell. Coke is old, but this product is new. We can classify it as a new product in an old category.

Based on the cola category, we can know the scenarios in which cola is consumed, what consumers’ existing perceptions of the cola category are, what kind of people consume cola, etc. These can provide us with a basic direction for writing copy.

With the product category set, we also need to find the differentiation point of the product itself. In other words, we need to convince consumers to choose you among many cola brands. Correspondingly, the direction we look for materials is this differentiation point.

For example, after tasting it, we found that the taste of this cola is different from the regular cola. Based on the different taste, can we say it is a new cola with a completely new formula? Or because of different degrees of bubbles, the carbon dioxide content is different, and so on.

You can also consider it from the perspective of market attributes instead of the physical attributes of the product, for example, the brand of cola that old Shanghainese people like to drink, etc.

Second, for new categories and new products:

In this case, we can find clues for copywriting through the root category of the new category.

For example, when the car was first invented, the earliest promotional copy was "a horseless carriage." At that time, consumers had no idea about this new category of automobiles. We had to find out what the root category of this new category was. Obviously, the root category of automobiles was cars. At that time, "cars" generally referred to "horse-drawn carriages". The marketing task of automobile manufacturers was to make customers who originally chose horse-drawn carriages choose cars instead. Therefore, the earliest copywriters would write copy starting from the "carriage".

In the actual operation, it is very important to find the right root category, because it involves consumers' existing cognition and psychological account of the category. Once the wrong one is found, consumers will misunderstand it.

For example, the herbal tea Wanglaoji was originally positioned as a medicinal drink. In the minds of consumers, medicinal drinks are something that people drink only when they are sick. And since it is medicine, it is impossible to drink it every day, because consumers already know that "all medicines are poisonous".

Later, Wanglaoji adjusted its positioning to the herbal tea category. Tea can be drunk every day. Chinese people have a saying about the “seven first things to do when you open the door”, and tea is one of the seven things. Therefore, the herbal tea category corresponds well to consumers’ existing cognition and psychological accounts. It is precisely because of the successful positioning of the new product category that Wanglaoji has achieved its current sales success.

After you have initially found the targeting and copywriting ideas, you may still be nervous because no one can tell you how effective it will be if you follow this idea. The simplest and most effective way is to do testing.

We say that data can never be exhausted. Due to practical limitations such as time and research costs, our early research was insufficient in most cases. It is also unknown whether the copywriting’s appeal direction will be effective, and we don’t know what the market feedback will be. Therefore, in order to avoid making big mistakes, we need to do low-cost tests first to determine the copywriting’s appeal direction and verify whether the previous research assumptions and inferences are valid before making large-cost investments. This will be more economical.

So how do you do the test?

You can refer to the following testing principles and perform tests based on the actual situation of your own case.

1. Clarify the purpose. Whether you are testing the title , landing page copy, or the sales pitch of a conversion button, you must first be clear about what purpose you want to achieve. For example, I want to test whether the click-through rate of a title that evokes desire or one that evokes fear is higher. Only when the purpose is clear can you conduct targeted testing.

2. Synchronous testing. The test version must be launched simultaneously to avoid interference from other factors on conversion rate and conversion cost.

3. Uniform sampling. Remember not to select traffic artificially. For example, putting version A in city A and version B in city B. Such a test will be distorted.

4. Ensure that the sample size is sufficient and use professional data analysis tools to help you make decisions. For example, you can use significance testing to confirm whether there is a significant difference in the conversion rates of versions AB.

5. Randomly distribute traffic. For example, after traffic enters the landing page, version A and version B are displayed in sequence, that is, AB -A -B...

6. Test only one variable at a time. Multivariate testing is difficult to attribute accurately in most cases. For example, if you change the price, delivery date, and warranty period on the landing page at the same time, if the conversion rate changes from the original basis, you will not be able to determine whether the change is due to the price change, the delivery date change, or the warranty period.

7. The most important principle: Before testing, you need to determine the priority of the variables to be tested. Generally speaking, test important variables first and then test variables with less weight. For example, before pricing, selection, warranty period, etc. are determined, it makes no sense to test whether the submit button is red or green.

The above are my suggestions for “getting out of confused thinking”.

If you don’t want to be blamed for “ineffective marketing”, then when you get a case that seems to have no clue, regardless of whether the client has a clear marketing direction and mature product information for your reference, you need to put aside the ready-made mentality of taking whatever you want and rely on your own professional judgment to sort out ideas that are truly suitable for product promotion.

The author of this article @Information Flow Advertising Precision Delivery is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services Advertising platform Longyou Century