Monetization activities: How to make users willingly pay for your products?

Below, let’s start with the premise of monetization activities:

1. Prerequisites for monetization: long-term traffic diversion through multiple channels and planning “eye-catching” hot spot activities

Whether it is the "butterfly effect" in sociology, the "herd behavior" in psychology or the "spiral of silence" in communication, they all illustrate the simple truth that group behavior will lead to blind obedience of individual behavior. This means that the prerequisite for monetization is to have a certain level of "popularity", and the "popularity" here refers to the number of users and user activity. There are certain differences between online and offline activities in terms of gaining "popularity". The following is a detailed explanation:

1.1 Online products: Long-term traffic diversion through the new media matrix creates explosive popularity

To "direct traffic" to a product means to "attract new users" on a long-term and continuous basis. The previous article about the activity of attracting new customers is " Activity Operation : How to carry out activities aimed at attracting new customers?" 》 has said too much, so I will not elaborate on the repeated content here. The following is a supplementary method of "attracting new customers" that does not require deliberate "new customer acquisition activities" but is a long-term and sustainable way of "attracting new customers". This method is to divert traffic to the product's new media matrix. Today I recommend several general drainage channels with large user volumes, which can be used as long-term drainage channels.

Sohu Self-media : also known as "Sohu Account", is a self-media platform under the old news and information website Sohu. Relying on Sohu's powerful user pool, the traffic is self-evident. The key points of Sohu self-media "traffic diversion": First, the Baidu inclusion rate is high, which means that the Baidu inclusion rate of products and brands can be increased to the greatest extent, which in turn allows more users to search for tweets and pay attention to products/brands. I usually visit various self-media platforms for the purpose of experimental exploration. In comparison, the content of Sohu self-media ranks higher on Baidu; second, the relaxed advertising placement policy. It can be said that Sohu self-media’s policy is the most relaxed regarding advertising placement. Generally speaking, tweets with product information or a follow-up to the product’s official WeChat account can be approved (I haven’t tried it with pictures, so please add your comments). This means that more users can pay attention to the product platform directly through the advertising information in tweets.

Zhihu: Zhihu is a social platform that has gathered a large number of professional "experts" in various industries. You can use Zhihu Q&A and Zhihu columns to attract users. Do a good job of answering questions on Zhihu and attaching product promotion information. On the one hand, it can attract traffic, especially some KOLs, and on the other hand, it can increase the industry visibility of the brand. Another feature of the Zhihu platform is Baidu's high inclusion rate and the leniency of advertising placement, which is similar to Sohu's self-media and will not be elaborated on here.

Toutiao / DaYuhao /Toutiao: These platforms have powerful “user pools” and all adopt a recommendation system. The style and format of tweets are basically the same.

You can use non-QR code images to promote information on the platform. Anyone who complies with the platform's tweeting style and format can get a good recommendation mechanism and easily obtain hundreds of thousands or millions of reads. These high reading volumes will also indirectly gain user attention.

After long-term online traffic generation, it is still necessary to artificially create user "activity". This kind of "activity" will have a certain guiding effect on the monetization of other users. Common ones include e-commerce platforms, product reviews, etc.

The above are several effective online "traffic diversion" methods. The following is an explanation of offline entity traffic diversion methods.

1.2 Offline entities: “Eye-catching” traffic-generating activities assist “full-reduction” promotions

Compared with online monetization, offline entities need more traffic to artificially enhance their "popularity". There are two ways to attract traffic: one is the "eye-catching" short-term traffic-attracting activities that gather popularity; the other is the long-term activities of industry alliances.

Speaking of the first type, let me give you an example. This example is about a local shopping mall in Xi'an (let's call it Xiao A for now). Xiao A is a mid-range shopping mall that integrates food, drink and shopping. The business district where this shopping mall is located is not in the city center, and there are 5 similar shopping malls in this district, some of which even integrate food, drink, play and entertainment. However, in this fiercely competitive environment, Xiao A is extremely popular inside and outside shopping malls every day and is crowded with people during holidays. Meanwhile, several other nearby businesses were indeed deserted. In theory, they are in the same business district, have similar user groups, geographical locations, and even the same brands. But why is there such a big difference between monetization rate and popularity?

After observing for a long time, I found that compared with several other shopping malls, Xiao A is very good at conducting activities to attract users' attention in the square at the entrance of the shopping mall. Moreover, most of these activities are launched in series by leveraging festivals and hot topics, and are cleverly integrated into monetization activities such as "discounts and full-reductions". For example, in March and April when spring is in full bloom, Xiao A launched the "xx takes you on a spring outing" traffic-generating activity, turning the 500-square-meter area at the entrance of the shopping mall and inside the mall gate into a pink "cherry blossom forest." For a while, many female users stopped here to take photos and post them on social media. The cherry blossom forests set up inside and outside the mall naturally lead users from outside the door to inside. Coupled with the powerful "full-discount promotion", it naturally triggered users to monetize. Xiao A is well aware that only with "popularity" can it be monetized, so regular traffic-generating activities have accumulated a lot of popularity for him. On the other hand, other nearby shopping malls either have no activities or have naked promotions without any highlights. They fail to catch the users’ eyes and curiosity, so users naturally won’t stop by and their monetization capabilities are naturally not as good as Xiao A’s.

The second way to attract traffic for offline stores is to cooperate with business alliances. This type of cooperation is more common in certain vertical industrial chain industries, where industries in the industrial chain reach a certain cooperative relationship and provide different stages of traffic for the same user.

2. Monetization and promotion: grasp the promotion cycle and reap the fruits of feedback

The event promotion period is a very important period for monetization activities. It belongs to the communication cycle of the activity and is related to whether the activity will be known by most people. During this period, the following two points need to be done:

2.1 Grasp the communication cycle and adopt a series of promotion methods that combine "soft" and "hard".

If the communication cycle is too short, the activity will not be known to most people and will not be effectively spread; if the communication cycle is too long, it will keep users in suspense and easily cause user fatigue, affecting user participation. It is best to carry out a series of "soft + hard" promotions in a certain period of time to build up momentum for the event. This view has been partially explained in "Event Operations: Grasp These 5 Points to Increase Online Event Participation" and will not be elaborated on here.

2.2 Channel placement should be as accurate as possible

Baidu Alliance's full-network online promotion and outdoor offline light box advertising are undoubtedly a good way to spread widely and attract attention to the event. However, this high advertising fee is not affordable for ordinary companies and the monetization effect is unknown. Therefore, it is necessary to choose some channels with low cost, good effect and precise positioning for promotion. Here are some channels with high cost-effectiveness and good monetization effects:

• Sina Fans Pass : The conversion cost is high, with CPA as high as thirty or forty. If done well, it can be as low as three or four yuan. The users are concentrated in women born after 1990, which makes it easy to form an explosion. E-commerce and Haitao categories can be used for placement. However, it tests the creativity of the copywriting and the self-propagation of the content, which can lead to cost reduction.
• Toutiao : High spending power, users are aged between 20 and 40, 70% are male, and most of them are urban male users. Suitable for male products such as financial management and automobiles
• Momo : Most of the users are loser men, aged between 19 and 30 years old. Launch low-priced supplies for local consumption, etc. The investment in high-end consumption is not good.
• Youku UTV : Suitable for monetization activities for brands and e-commerce overseas shopping products.
• Mayu : Targets women aged 18-35, completely filters out men, and can offer products for women.

3. Realization: The role of customer service, communication, sincere recommendation

Whether online or offline, the role of customer service plays a vital role in user monetization. First of all, customer service guides need to be familiar and professional enough with the products and even the industry being monetized. You should be able to answer all the questions from users 100%, so that users will think you are professional and have enough trust in you.

Secondly, treat users as friends and sincerely recommend products that are suitable for them, which will increase users' sense of intimacy and familiarity with you. Once they feel your professionalism and sincerity, they will naturally choose the products you recommend.

I have personal experience on this point. In 2016, the wedding B2C product I operated finally reached the monetization stage. When users consult and communicate with me, I will first ask about their needs and ideas, and then recommend suitable and cost-effective products based on their requirements. Many users made reservations directly after listening to my introduction. If there is a hesitant user, I will also communicate with him sincerely and encourage him to compare prices and visit other platforms. And tell him that if he encounters any problems he can continue to consult me ​​and I can still give him sincere advice. The final user chose my recommendation because of my professionalism and sincerity.

Finally, customer service should always answer inquiries and have a good attitude. In this regard, we can learn from Taobao customer service. No matter it is holidays or one or two in the morning, if users have questions, they will definitely answer them with an enthusiastic attitude. This timeliness is actually a good way to strike while the iron is hot for users to monetize their consumption. Provide users with consultation and answers when they are most eager to consume, thus capturing their enthusiasm for purchasing. On the other hand, it can also make users feel your enthusiasm and professionalism.

4. After monetization: Regular feedback to build a good reputation

After selling the product, the next thing to do is to provide after-sales feedback. Regularly providing after-sales feedback to consumers will not only allow them to feel the enthusiasm and professionalism of the service, but will also create a good reputation, and users will also recommend this good reputation to their friends. However, it is important to note that you should try to use the online feedback mechanism instead of making rash phone calls. Because everyone generally has a certain aversion to unfamiliar phone calls, which is not conducive to the formal feedback of our mobile phone products. Second, rash calls will also cause certain interference to users who are working.

The above are some of my insights on monetization activities. This is also the last article in the activity operation classification section, which describes different types of activities.