How to plan an excellent online event?

In Philip Kotler's book " Marketing Management", it is mentioned that there are five decisions that need to be made when developing an advertisement, namely the "5Ms": mission, that is, the advertising goal; money, that is, the money to be spent and its allocation among different media types; message, that is, the information to be launched; media, that is, the media to be used; measurement, that is, how to evaluate the results.

Operational activities are essentially advertising, and the goal is to generate revenue through cost-effective means. Now I will analyze how to plan an excellent online event according to the "5M" method and combined with actual cases.

Setting a Mission

The goals of operational activities must be specific and quantifiable. Whether the goals are specific is directly related to the data follow-up during execution. Ambiguity in the activity follow-up process is likely to lead to poor activity results. Moreover, the more specific the goals are, the more resources needed for the entire activity can be inferred, and then a better promotion plan can be formulated to maximize resource utilization.

For example, if an activity is done to attract new customers, you cannot just say that it is just for the purpose of attracting new customers. If you are asked how many customers you want to attract, you say of course the more the better... If you do not spend energy on specific target analysis, both activity follow-up and result analysis will become formalistic.

Your goal should be as specific as adding XXX new users, or even as detailed as a stage goal. To achieve this goal, you need to coordinate and integrate internal and external promotion resources. To what extent do you need to "integrate"? You need to have a general understanding of the data situation of each channel and whether it meets the target expectations. During the promotion process, it is necessary to closely follow the data results. If the stage goals are not achieved, it is necessary to consider optimizing and adjusting the activities.

Determine activity resources (money)

The resources here mainly refer to the activity budget (clearly defining the cost of acquiring a single customer) and promotion channel resources. The determination of activity resources is related to the activity objectives.

The cost of acquiring a single customer is generally a better result obtained by the company after comprehensively considering various factors and historical activity experience. Event operators do not have to be too limited by this cost when planning an event. A well-designed event format and exciting content output can generally make an event that achieves great results with little effort.

Activity plan planning (message)

After clarifying the event goals and resources, the next step is event inspiration, that is, creative strategy. Generating good activity inspiration requires the following basic conditions:

• 1. Have a deep understanding of the company's products and the business you are responsible for
• 2. Deeply understand the target user group
• 3. Establish a connection between the product and the user, either emotionally or rationally

I personally think that material incentives are a rational connection. As the saying goes, "Brothers should settle accounts clearly", which means putting feelings aside and just talking about business and each other's needs. It is easy to establish a rational connection by deeply understanding the product and user characteristics (such as human greed, anger, and ignorance). However, event operations must not only establish a perfect rational connection with users, but also establish an emotional connection to "touch their heartstrings."

For example, in the following case, after fully refining the product selling points and deeply analyzing user needs, we successfully established a rational connection with users. Users successfully got the value of the activity output, combined with their own desire to improve, and actively joined the activity.

Compared with the daily promotional activities of simply giving out coupons, the promotion effect of the open class has tripled the total amount of orders.

The promotion of knowledge posters directly attracted more than 10,000 users to participate, while the number of participants in a simple and crude way of distributing posters was generally around 2,000.

Copy 1:

To master suturing skills, you may need

3 years of clinical experience

500 surgical practice drills

A 20-minute open class

Get various sewing techniques easily

Copy 2:

If this knowledge:

Anaphylactic shock, statin use

Breast cancer screening, primary prevention of stroke...

Perfect summary with one picture

No one would refuse to take a second look.

Just like no one would reject a

A beautiful woman with both good looks and good looks

Let me give you another example of a creative H5 activity. I was previously responsible for user operations in a niche vertical field. The product functions were mainly information sharing, information exchange, and personal skill improvement. Through analyzing the needs of the target group, I think knowledge quiz activities can be made into a series of activities: fun + professionalism + material incentives + users' competitive psychology of showing off.

Gradually retain users through multiple incentives:

1. The first incentive: clear theme, 1,000 yuan cash incentive
2. The second incentive: novel form, full of excitement and challenges
3. The third motivation: the competition and showing off mentality aroused by the ranking list

The above three incentives establish connections with users from the rational (material incentives) and emotional (psychological incentives) levels. Compared with activities with the same promotional resources, the number of participants increased by more than 60%, and the activity forwarding rate was nearly 30%.

Media

Media selection in advertising refers to the choice of media type, time and space for delivery. As for online operations in the Internet era, I prefer to understand the media strategy here as the evaluation and selection of promotion channels. That is to say, you need to find the channels where your target users are relatively concentrated, as well as arrange the promotion time, location, and effect evaluation for this channel . A public account with many fans may not necessarily be your ideal promotion channel. This is related to your target user positioning and activity goals.

Evaluate the effectiveness of activities (measurement)

I will not elaborate on the importance of activity review. What I want to say is that when KPIs are tight, event operators often bear greater pressure. The launch of an event (determining the purpose of the event - program planning - follow-up design, research and development, testing - online promotion - data tracking - announcement of results - event review) often requires a lot of effort, but the frequency of events cannot be reduced, so operators need to constantly summarize event experience and form standardized, serialized event templates that can be quickly launched, so as to reduce planning costs and improve promotion efficiency. This template refers to the templateization of activity forms (such as slot machine draws), modularization of copywriting, templateization of design, etc. As long as you are willing to spend time summarizing and precipitating, you can always create something valuable and get twice the result with half the effort.

Finally, I would like to emphasize that when running an event, you must avoid starting well but ending badly. You should run the event like you would manage a project, clarify the project objectives, time points and division of responsibilities, and follow up strictly. A great idea with only 80% execution is worse than an average idea with 100% execution.

Finally, let me share a self-congratulatory failure case.

The reading plan (just hearing about the need to make a plan makes you less motivated to participate) has a very high threshold for user participation. Users need to fill in five books they want to read, as well as the time they plan to finish reading them, and share them on WeChat Moments . The high cost of participation directly leads to a poor user experience and dismal participation numbers. You can go back to the “Activity Plan (message)” above and easily see the reasons for the failure:

This activity has no direct relationship with the product, does not accurately capture user needs, and does not establish any connection with users. It is a typical self-indulgent failure case.