Channel promotion: All the things you don’t know are here

He used to work for a large Internet company, where he was responsible for the company's advertising business, with an annual advertising expenditure of more than 15 million yuan, and advertising channel users brought in more than 26 million yuan in revenue. Today I will share with you a few points:

• Where did our money go?
• What are the techniques for delivering on each channel ?
• How to allocate the delivery cost to each channel?
• How to analyze the conversion rate of each channel and optimize it?

1. Where did we invest our money?

As a large Internet company, it already has a certain brand awareness and number of users. The core purpose of advertising is to expand brand awareness and seize more market share. So we will start from search engines , Tencent advertising platforms, technology websites, online media and other channels.

2. What are the techniques for advertising on each channel? 1. Search engines, seize traffic entrances

Mainstream search engine entrances are always a battleground for businesses, such as Baidu, QQ Browser , Google , Sogou , 360, Shenma and other channels. Among them, the more common form of advertising is Baidu SEM , which includes all paid products such as Baidu keywords , Baidu product transfer, Baidu Union DSP , knowledge marketing , as well as Google keywords, Google display, 360 product specials, keywords, etc.

Product Special: As a company with a certain brand awareness and a high repurchase rate, it is very necessary to launch a product special. It can enable people with brand awareness to retrieve the company's website entrance at the first time. Usually, the customer base of the product special has the highest payment conversion rate. Product specialties can prevent competitors from placing keywords and occupying the best search positions for brand words due to high bids. The keywords that product specialties can place are not limited to brand words, but also words related to the brand. I added product special keywords before, and the traffic immediately increased by 50%. Baidu will determine the product fee based on the keyword traffic. Since the keyword traffic in different quarters is floating, Baidu's quotation is also different. It is recommended that you apply for a product quotation during the off-season, so that the contract period can be longer, which can save a lot of money.

Keywords: Keywords are mainly ranked through bidding and paid on a CPC basis. Usually we will divide keywords into brand words, product words, competitor words , and industry words, and then expand the words through the keyword expansion assistant to create a delivery plan. If there is no dedicated product, the bid for the core keywords must be higher to avoid being overtaken by competitors in the first place. If a competitor takes the first place in the search, you can file a complaint with Baidu.

Usually the conversion rate of keywords is much lower than that of product specialties. Not all keywords will break even. Keywords need to be continuously optimized. Bids should be adjusted according to the quality of keywords. Keywords with low contribution and low search volume should be deleted. The keyword library should be optimized to reduce CPC costs and increase conversion rates. You can increase click-through rate by optimizing titles , and increase conversion rate by optimizing page experience. For example, if the landing page of an activity link has nothing to do with the activity, users will feel deceived, resulting in a very high bounce rate, so the title and details page must be closely related.

Online alliance: includes Baidu Online Alliance, similar ones include Google Display, Sogou Alliance, etc., which mainly rely on huge websites to display promotional information. When netizens click on the promotional information of these websites, the online alliance leader will earn commissions from it.

In general, network alliance advertising can increase exposure and clicks by raising bids, and improve click-through rates through precise targeted delivery. Compared with other advertising models, network alliance advertising has a very low CPC, but the user accuracy is not enough, and the conversion rate is the lowest. Usually, some websites will use machine-generated traffic to increase their revenue. Baidu cannot identify malicious traffic, but Google Display can. The Google account consumes fees. If it is identified that a user has maliciously swiped the traffic, the money for the malicious traffic will be returned to the consumer's account.

2. Tencent Ads

Tencent has the largest social data in China and has a huge amount of social data. Relying on Tencent's massive high-quality traffic resources, Tencent has launched a series of advertising platforms, such as Guangdiantong , WeChat advertising , App Store advertising, QQ browser , etc. Based on massive users, with big data insights as the core and intelligent targeted promotion as the guide, it provides advertisers with a one-stop online promotion and marketing platform with cross-platform, cross-terminal and other services, and provides advertisers with cross-platform and cross-terminal online promotion solutions.

1) Find the right advertising format

When selecting an advertising platform, focus on whether the user group is on PC or mobile phone, WeChat or QQ. If it is an app, then of course you should place mobile product ads. Tencent advertising products can be placed in a targeted manner, including keywords, regions, gender, age, living conditions, hobbies, education, etc. If the company itself has a more precise user package, it can also apply to open a whitelist and upload number packages for targeted delivery. The delivery itself adopts a bidding model and charges according to CPC. Guangdiantong and browser ads are suitable for brand promotion.

2) Identify the target group

In addition to screening based on the conditions of the advertising format itself, we also need to analyze our customer base, such as basic attributes such as gender, age, education, occupation, etc., and screen industry channels based on user portraits to locate target population gathering places. For example, for cloud computing products, the main customer base is divided into B-end customer base + C-end customer base. The B-end customer base makes the largest contribution to channel payment, accounting for about 80% of the total payment amount. Although the C-end users pay a small amount, their number is huge and their influence is huge, which can influence more users around them to become brand users.

Therefore, when choosing target customer groups, we should expand similar groups based on B-end portraits and C-end portraits respectively, plan different advertising content, and carry out advertising. For example, for merchants, we can mainly promote corporate support preferential policies, and for C-end users, we can mainly promote free trial related services.

3. Technology Website

Major domestic and foreign technology websites are also huge traffic portals, such as CSDN, 36kr , Aiheima , etc. The population classification is relatively accurate, and you can choose suitable websites to place soft articles or hard advertisements according to your own group. Although the conversion rate is low, the exposure is very high, which can effectively enhance brand awareness. We can also analyze which channels our competitors use, extract the best from them, and optimize our own channels.

We also need to explore more websites with precise target groups and whose users have not been filtered out by other competitors. Generally, the costs of advertising on such websites are relatively low. We have previously tried to cooperate with Jiuyi 160 and Lamamabang in terms of channel cooperation. We analyzed the quotations, whether they have cooperated with other financial products , and whether the target groups match. In the end, we chose Jiuyi 160, which has low prices, Internet consumption habits, and has not cooperated with other competitors, and achieved good results.

4. Online media

In addition to the above-mentioned traffic entrances, we cannot ignore social media platforms and portal websites such as Weibo, Sohu, and Toutiao . Weibo also has its own advertising system. You can ask professional Weibo operating companies to help with the placement. Portal websites can also find news media marketing companies to be responsible. They have connected to thousands of news platforms and can place ads with one click. The price ranges from 3,000 yuan to 6,000 yuan per article. Generally, they are purchased in packages. There are many such companies. Be careful not to be deceived when choosing. The effect of each company's placement is different. Some are based on the number of media placed, and some do not guarantee the number but only guarantee that they can make the headlines. At this time, we need to pay attention to the placement effects of these websites, whether they have been included in Baidu, Sohu, etc., and the rankings retrieved. Before choosing a partner, you need to judge the quality of the other party’s website. Some companies have a large number of website accounts, but the quality of the websites is very low and the investment has no effect.

3. How to allocate the advertising costs for each channel?

With so many channels for delivery, how can we allocate the proportion of delivery costs to each channel to maximize the delivery benefits?

• Analyze existing channels, which ones can improve registration conversions? Which ones can improve purchase conversions? Which ones increase brand awareness? Determine the core goals based on the company's KPI. For example, if the KPI is to attract new users, then the advertising should be placed on websites where potential users gather. The advertising content should focus on the benefits of new users, and more promotional welfare policies should be planned for old users to help attract new users. At the same time, it is necessary to increase brand awareness and enhance brand exposure through online alliances, Guangdiantong, etc., but such expenses are too high and costs need to be controlled. It is recommended to focus on attracting new customers and supplement it with branding.

• Analyze the existing channels that contribute the most to KPIs, and evaluate whether the effect of the additional costs will maintain the current conversion rate, increase the conversion rate further, or greatly reduce the conversion rate. The former two can be added continuously, and the lower the conversion rate, it is necessary to analyze the factors affecting the reduction and optimize them until the best balance point of delivery is found.
• For newly discovered channels, it is recommended to try them with small expenses and pay attention to continuous optimization of data. Classify them into the above three categories and then determine whether to continue to add expenses based on the goals. If the effect is poor, give up directly. I tried to run a 360 product campaign before and found that the conversion rate was very high, so I immediately increased the number of other search engine channels. Such as Shenma search , mobile engine search, etc.

4. How to analyze the conversion rate of each channel and optimize it?

First of all, we need to make clear the delivery strategy, both at the self-level (continuous traffic flow , gaining clicks, improving conversions) and the competitive level (seizing traffic flow, weakening competitiveness, and reducing ROI). Each channel has its own delivery characteristics, and the prerequisite is to do a good job of data embedding and data collection. Each delivery location must be configured with a different URL. For example, a product has many URL links. We configure different embedding information and can accurately collect the PV, UV, ROI, CPA, AR PU value, etc. of each location. In this way, we can track the data performance of different content delivered to each location to optimize the advertising content, as well as optimize the jump page through bounce rate, dwell time, etc.

If it is a keyword type, core keywords, such as brand words, core product words, and industry words, need to be searched irregularly every day to check their rankings with competing products and make timely adjustments to bids. Keywords can be set whether to be delivered or set different prices according to time periods. The traffic of each keyword can also be analyzed, and delivery can be suspended or bids can be lowered during periods of low traffic. During periods when competing products are not delivered, the first ranking of competing product keywords can be occupied.

During the delivery process, try to conduct AB tests as much as possible, and continuously optimize the copywriting and promotional images. For example, users on each channel have different interests in different types of ads. For example, it is obviously inappropriate to launch welfare policies for old users in new user channels. It is obviously inappropriate to launch new user welfare policies for old users. We need to do a good job in channel user analysis, advertising data analysis , and continuous optimization.

There are many pitfalls in advertising. It requires continuous attempts and exploration in the process of advertising to summarize your own experience. For students who want to pursue a career in advertising operations, it is recommended that they do not look for small companies when looking for a job. Small companies do not have the funds to invest in advertising. Even if you have extensive experience, you cannot do anything without the right materials.

To place an advertisement, you need to learn how to use different advertising backends, understand the rules for placing advertisements, complete account operations, and continuously optimize. Then you need to understand the differences between different channels, summarize the placement experience of each channel, and improve the placement effect through various means. Finally, you need to master how to plan the overall placement plan based on KPI to maximize benefits.