I analyzed the data of 176 information flow advertisements and found that as long as these 4 points are achieved, it will be a good advertisement!

"My boyfriend actually did this secretly in the bathroom behind my back...";

"The 90s boy took only 3 minutes to win over his mother-in-law";

"Shocking! 98% of newbies don't know that this is the reason for their frequent insomnia!"

…

Titles like these are full of interest, and users can't help but click on them. Only then do they realize that they are just advertisements for games , loans, or home improvement companies...

What’s the point of such a high click-through rate? When users enter the website and see that it is not what they expected, they will inevitably exit the website. They have no time to figure out who the advertiser is or what the advertiser is doing. Advertisers who are unaware of the truth think that their money has not been spent well: the click-through rate is so high, why is no one converting? That doesn't make sense! Keep burning! Burn until the conversion occurs!

But, will continuing to burn really produce any effect?

The purpose of advertising is to sell goods. There are many ways to persuade users to buy goods, which are by no means limited to the creative flow of jokes and singing mentioned above. This article summarizes the creative rules for information flow advertising from more than 170 information flow advertising cases. Whether you are an advertiser or a pitcher, it is recommended that you read in depth before participating in the actual delivery work.

A complete information flow advertisement includes: a friendly advertisement entrance title + accompanying picture, a landing page combining selling and marketing, and an interactive design that is easy to operate. The quality of these three contents will directly affect the quality of the overall information flow advertising.

The quality of information flow advertising is positively correlated with the distribution quality of big data . If we want big data to help us find matching users in the vast user data, we must first have information flow advertising ideas that are highly compatible with users in order to achieve effective distribution.

So, what kind of creativity is reliable?

Practice shows that the creative ideas of information flow ads that meet the criteria of burning money must have at least the following three characteristics:

For example, a user may only occasionally pay attention to some information about staying in shape, and then we use advertising creativity to remind her : just reading is useless, you must act immediately, otherwise there will be serious social risks - once you successfully arouse the user's interest, 80% of the marketing work is completed.

For example, a user already has the intention to lose weight, but has shelved the plan because she does not know how to do it more easily and healthily. Then, we can hint to her through creative advertising that the effect can be achieved by eating some food with lower energy than before. The user is likely to take action and learn about our products/services.

When I was a student, my composition teacher often told me that one should have a sense of ownership when writing, and the same is true for creative information flow advertising. A reliable idea can make users feel that “it’s about me” and make them consciously identify with it and gain a deeper understanding of it. If you only talk about the product, it will be difficult for users to associate themselves with the product.

We will start with a case and analyze how a high-quality idea is generated.

Suppose an advertiser wants to place an olive oil information flow advertisement on Toutiao at the end of July (the selling point of this olive oil is the same as other olive oils on the market), then the first step of the placement is to first figure out who the target users of this olive oil are.

In the process of information flow advertising , the accuracy of the target users directly affects how much money the advertiser will spend. Because of this, advertisers have a very contradictory mentality. They don’t want to spend more money but want to cover more users.

Take the olive oil ad, for example. Many users don’t need to see it :

They may still be in the market education stage. For example, they do not believe that olive oil can be used directly to moisturize the skin, and they are still a long way from "buying" it.

Or they are not in the current purchasing scenario, for example, they don’t fry foods very often (in theory, olive oil has a high smoke point, is relatively stable during cooking, and is not easy to deteriorate, so it is more suitable for frying), so they will not react even if they are advertised;

Or there used to be demand but no longer is, for example, you used to be a baking enthusiast and olive oil is very suitable for baking, but now you don’t have time to bake and are no longer the target group…

Only those users who need, will need, or are ambiguous about whether they need or do not need this olive core are the target users who need advertising the most at the moment.

For example, we can assume that when June (summer) comes, people will care about their figure, and will have a poor appetite due to the hot weather, etc. At this time, if olive oil is shown in advertisements as a companion to cold dishes, it can make the food delicious and low in calories, and may attract users who are concerned about their figure and health. This type of users are often already interested in information about health, fitness, and beauty. They only need to cross the minimum behavioral change threshold to generate purchasing demand, allowing the "rabbit to eat the grass near the burrow first."

After finding the target users, the next step is to find ways to "interfere" with their purchasing decisions .

According to the classic purchase decision model, the user's entire purchase decision process includes five stages: confirming needs - information search - evaluating and comparing alternatives - purchase decision - post-purchase behavior . In other words, the purchasing process begins long before the actual purchase occurs and will continue for a long time after the purchase, so we need to pay attention to the user's entire purchasing process and realize that the marketing tasks corresponding to each decision-making stage are different. The target user is in which stage, and the corresponding creative design must be matched according to the decision-making characteristics of that stage.

For example, when the user is still in the information search stage, and you have not yet entered his selection menu, he will not think of you in the plan evaluation, nor will he compare the differences between you and other plans, let alone buy your product later.

Take olive oil as an example. In the Taobao environment, users who enter Taobao are at least in the stage of evaluating and comparing alternative options (they know about olive oil and are willing to try it, but just don’t know which one is better). Then the marketing goal of the sales details page is to help users quickly enter the purchase decision stage. Correspondingly, the marketing task of the details page is to answer users’ questions through copywriting about the difference between your olive oil and other olive oils, or, if it is the same brand of olive oil, users will not perceive any risk when buying yours, which can motivate users to smoothly enter the purchase decision stage.

However, users on Toutiao, Tencent, and Sogou platforms are often still in the stage of confirming needs and searching for information. Users at this stage hate the forced interference of advertisements. In order to prevent users from feeling interfered with, the industry has set up information flow ads as disguised, more humane, closer to user preferences, and similar to information forms from the very beginning. Its mission is to inspire user interest, make users aware of the need, and thus enter the user's alternative menu.

For example, we can tell users who are paying attention to information about fitness, weight loss, beauty, fashion, health, etc. that they don’t need to spend special time and energy on fitness, nor do they need to eat boring fruit salad every day. They can use a healthier oil to reduce calorie intake and maintain FIT, etc. We can guide users to enter the advertising landing page to obtain new knowledge and introduce olive oil to users in a friendly manner.

When it is determined that the target user is at a certain decision-making stage, the next step is to confirm what the user’s default choice is at this stage? We need to tell them why their default choices are irrational, provide them with a frame of reference for comparison, and give them a reasonable reason to change.

For example, if someone originally planned to spend time on fitness, we can tell them that fitness requires persistence to be effective, but you are very busy and may not have the time to persist;

For example, for people who eat fruit salad every day, we can tell them that this way of eating is monotonous in taste and unbalanced in nutrition, and they cannot stick to it for a long time.

For those who like fried food but force themselves to endure it because they are afraid of the high calories, we can tell them that as a foodie, endurance itself is more torturous than losing their figure... and so on.

In comparison, using olive oil is something that is very easy to stick to : cooking is something that can be done every day, even if it is a very simple cold dish, which saves time and effort while achieving the health effects that users want.

It is said that there is no harm without comparison, and there is no trade without harm. A reliable advertising idea is to be good at using products/services to defeat the target users' [default choice] and make better sales.

After successfully drawing users’ attention to olive oil through the first three steps, the next step we need to take is the key challenge of information flow advertising: think about why users did not pay attention to or buy from you in the past? Is it because of lack of understanding? Lack of motivation? Or lack of trust? etc.

98% of advertisers will give up all their efforts after reaching this step. They think they are caring about the users, feel that their products/services are omnipotent, and believe that users will pay for your products/services. As a matter of fact, everyone knows that even if the user already knows what he needs and how unreasonable his previous choice was, he can still have 10,000 reasons not to buy from you.

The correct approach is: conduct research, expand your thinking, and sort out your own products/services, your competitors' products/services, and products/services that are in different industries but have similar user groups. What are the characteristics that attract users? Why users choose them instead of you - asking the right questions is the most important step in solving sales problems.

For example, "understanding". If users don’t understand what you are, it will be difficult for them to take follow-up actions. For example, the earliest advertising copy of Coca-Cola was "The great nation's non-alcoholic beverage", which was to help consumers understand that Coke is a beverage, rather than the current concept of sharing happiness. Because users at that time were still in the stage of evaluating alternative options when it came to buying beverages, Coca-Cola needed to implant its product information into users' brains and put it on their menu of alternative options.

Similarly, people's understanding of olive oil has always been confused about how magical this imported product is and whether it is really different from domestic edible oil. What we need to do is to implant the seemingly complicated ingredient descriptions into the users’ brains through easy-to-understand copywriting, making it easier for users to understand and spread the information.

Another example is "motivation" . Motivations can be divided into explicit motivations and implicit motivations. The focus should be on implicit motivations. For example, some people go to Starbucks not only to drink coffee but also to pursue face and show off. For example, consuming olive oil is a healthy, fashionable, and low-carbon lifestyle. "What oil do you usually use? I use olive oil at home!" The creativity should reveal its full style and the product characteristics of olive oil itself to meet users' pursuit of healthier and fitter needs, so as to smoothly enter the user's decision-making list.

There are other factors (such as convenience, etc.) which I will not go into here. In short, you need to observe from the user's perspective and think about why they don't do what you want them to do.