Event planning and promotion sop!

Event operation is the most commonly used promotional method in our work.

Especially when the market is highly homogenized and a product does not have a clear advantage, it is particularly important to obtain traffic through high-quality event planning.

Events like the subsidy war between Meituan and Didi, the Vatti World Cup, and the first public class of New World View can all be considered phenomenal hit events!

But how to create such an event? We can divide event planning into the following steps:

1. Multiple Solutions with One Mind

2. Formulate promotional themes

3. User portrait and channel

4. Design content form

5. Rhythm Control and Staffing

6. Budget Distribution

VII. Data Results Prediction

8. Summary and Feedback

Next, let’s break down these points in detail.

1. Multiple Solutions with One Mind

Each question has a central objective.

The activities are described in a variety of ways and with a lot of fancy words, but in the final analysis, they are nothing more than the goals of branding, attracting new customers, conversion, and activation .

Is the purpose of holding activities to attract new customers? Or do you want to convert?

The goal must be clear to ensure that you do not deviate from the direction in the subsequent activities.

For example: Pinduoduo’s free rewards are designed to attract new customers; China Mobile’s gratitude rewards and free draws every day are designed to activate users; Meituan’s instant discounts on orders are designed to convert users.

One focus, multiple solutions, that is, clarify a theme goal and break it down into subdivisions. Give the team a clear and quantifiable indicator and break it down to determine what specific things to do in the future and guide their actions.

The ultimate ideal state of decomposition: big things become small, and small things become nothing. Many times, the reason why a goal cannot be achieved is that one cannot break down a “big thing” into “small things”, and thus cannot complete the “small things” through action execution.

Therefore, when your boss gives you a big goal instruction, you must first follow the SMART principle to split the big goal into several small goals that are clear, specific, quantifiable, feasible, achievable, meaningful and have a clear deadline. The more detailed and specific the better.

As for the decomposition method, it can be either according to modules or according to natural processes.

2. Formulate promotional themes

The so-called promotion theme is also derived from the purpose of the activity and is also the guiding ideology of the entire activity.

How to formulate an activity theme? Then we need to analyze why users will participate in the dissemination? Does the product have problems that other products cannot solve? Or is it because of the well-known brand?

That is to say, we should take the highlight of the product as the theme of our promotion. Assuming that the outstanding feature of our product this time is the treatment of the problem of "large pores", then our theme can also be centered around "solving the pore problem" to write related articles.

Not only that, we need to let users grasp what we do at the first moment they see it, which is also the core of the activity.

I believe we all have had this experience. When we encounter a new activity, we usually use the title to judge the content of the activity. Only when the theme of the activity attracts you will you take the next step, otherwise you will ignore it directly.

The same goes for our users.

3. User portrait and channel

1. Find the right crowd

The essential element in an activity is the participants. This reminds us that before promoting, we must first create a user profile and identify the target audience. Then, we design different activity paths and gameplay according to different ages, cultural levels, user habits, etc.

Only by combining precise user groups and pain points can we determine the best and most effective event theme.

If you don’t understand your target users and pain points, then your event will definitely not resonate with them, and will inevitably affect the number of participants and fail to achieve your targets.

For example: Fan Deng Reading Club’s free reading of good books during the Spring Festival is aimed at book lovers; Keep’s 14-day zero-based vest line development activity is aimed at sports enthusiasts.

The crowd is clear and like-minded. If you have accumulated such a group of seed users in advance and then cater to their preferences, then under their influence, there will definitely be better activity results.

Once you know your target audience, you can determine the subsequent promotion channels.

We generally choose from the following perspectives:

Among them, it is necessary to explain:

• External media: This area requires the event organizer and executor to contact and choose some media platforms with similar themes to their own events for publicity. For this kind of cooperation, resource exchange is the optimal form of cooperation. The same goes for promotion on event platforms, you need to take the initiative to contact. However, activity platforms generally charge more.
• Industry friends: It is recommended to choose people who have a certain influence and popularity in the circle, or friends who bring their own traffic.
• Registered users: Generally speaking, users’ social circles are relatively consistent. If you ask registered users to help promote the event, you can attract more people who are interested in the event. But this is best done in a preferential manner, such as reducing or waiving the registration fee.
• Industry organizations and communities: Find communities and organizations with similar themes to the event and ask them to help promote it or register collectively.
• Other methods: such as sending emails, one-on-one contact on WeChat, etc., can all be tried, and there will be some effect, but relatively speaking, the user experience is not very good.

As long as you have enough budget, you can promote it online or offline, on PC or mobile devices! but! The budget is always limited, so how can you achieve more exposure goals with less money?

It would be great if you could find a channel that costs very little but produces great results. Only by choosing channels that match the target user portrait of the event can we achieve better publicity, preheating and momentum-building effects.

And before the event starts, you must clearly list all the resource channels you have and quantify the effects and indicators of each channel.

For example, if your event channels this time are only official accounts and social networks, then you need to judge whether these channels can achieve the expected indicators of your event after being used.

If that doesn't work, then you have to explore other channels. For example, find other big accounts to promote each other, post on Douban Tieba, etc.

Activities must be targeted to achieve good results.

4. Design content form

Adapt to local conditions, different channels, different content forms.

Common forms of event content presentation include: pictures, soft articles, videos, audio, H5, etc. If you choose different channels, you need to design a content presentation method that is most suitable for that exposure channel.

Not only that, whether this event can stand out is also closely related to the formal design of the event itself. This step is a key step and will directly affect the number of participants in the event, thereby affecting the final effect of the event.

I have listed several points worth noting in the activity interaction mode and rule determination:

1) Interesting, fun and innovative

The activities are interesting and stimulate users to participate and share the benefits. Capture users' interests, meet the personalized needs of different users, satisfy users' vanity, etc., thereby forming secondary or multiple dissemination to achieve the purpose of activity diffusion.

2) Users are profitable

Mainly to cater to users' desire for small bargains, rewards can be physical objects, coupons, virtual currencies, props, titles, etc. If it is a physical object, place its photo in the most prominent place on the event page. Many times, although users know that the winning rate is very low and they may not win the prize even if they participate, they will be attracted to this activity from the bottom of their hearts when they see the actual photos of the prizes.

3) Take advantage of opportunities (holidays, hot events)

Psychology has a "psychological arousal" effect. When planning activities, operators should promptly grasp current hot news events and hot figures, combine their own activity plans, and go with the flow to achieve the purpose of communication.

4) Simple process and less thinking

When planning an event, the process must be simple. If the entry threshold of the event is high, users will find it troublesome and give up participating in the event. Invisibly, users are turned away.

The number of users from seeing an activity to completing it is like a funnel, decreasing at each step. In order to avoid user loss, it is very important to simplify the participation steps!

Previously, the threshold for Google’s AI “Guess the Picture Song” was too high, which led to many users finding it too difficult and it did not gain widespread coverage or swirl.

5) Strengthen user guidance

The general process of the activity should be determined, and the user's actions should be clear, although it is not necessary to go into detail about how to perform each step.

For example: to grab train tickets during the Spring Festival, as long as you enter the train ticket page of Ctrip, Meituan, etc., a "Grab Tickets" button will appear. When you select the itinerary and go to the next page, you will definitely see the "Grab Tickets" button again. Even after there are no seats on the train, the label "Tickets Available" will continue to appear. This is to strengthen user guidance and enhance the purpose of our activities.

>>The picture is a screenshot from the Ctrip APP<<

5. Rhythm Control and Staffing

Rhythm control means arranging promotion time. Time control can actually best reflect the ability of an event operation.

How to promote different topics and channels? When will it be pushed? When will the gifts be distributed? When to end, etc., all involve the issue of rhythm. Many planners often fail to control the time and details during activities, which affects the continuity of subsequent operations and ultimately leads to poor results!

It is difficult to tell the exact time. On one hand, it requires data support, and on the other hand, it requires your promotion experience.

My experience is to make a time schedule, specify what needs to be done in each period of time, who is responsible for it, and things must be delivered before the deadline. Ensure that all staff cooperate well and everything is well organized.

Please refer to the following figure for details:

I won’t go into details about how to arrange the person in charge of execution and acceptance. Design, technology, operation, copywriting, media…

Big or small, all kinds of execution need to be done by each specific person in charge, and the acceptance person is responsible for checking and supervising the content.

It's also simple to execute. The main person in charge makes an Excel spreadsheet based on these factors and gives it to all executors, and everyone can record and report on time.

6. Budget Distribution

After determining the process, the approximate cost of each link will be determined. Using Excel to calculate the budget for each channel and each link will help us control the activities and achieve flexibility.

In this budget, you must leave some emergency funds! ! ! , so as to be foolproof and ensure that the event goes smoothly without major mistakes.

For example: Zhilian Campus’s Koi activity directly gives out cash red envelopes, with the amount and quantity clearly written out. Let’s not talk about the effect of this activity for now, because it also involves the cost of previous publicity and so on. But the hard cost of this activity is very clear.

>>The picture is a screenshot of the poster in the campus recruitment service account<<

In addition, we sometimes need to coordinate relevant resources, such as channels for publicity and promotion and support for financial gifts, and we can even discuss cross-industry cooperation.

VII. Data Results Prediction

There are two situations involved here. The first is a channel that has been cooperated with many times or verified in practice. In this case, the promotion effect can be directly estimated based on experience.

If it is your first time planning an event, you should of course actively communicate with the channel manager at the beginning to understand the exposure location and estimated effect.

For example, the homepage banner of a certain website, historical data about how many people it brings; the pre-video post of a certain website, how much exposure it has had in the past, you can even ask them to give you a screenshot of the background data...

With this understanding, if we make an estimate near the average value, the final data will basically not deviate too much.

8. Summary and Feedback

Without a retrospective summary of the activities, the activities will only get worse and worse.

The principles of review are roughly as follows:

Review your goals: What were your original goals?

Evaluation results: What are the highlights and shortcomings compared with the expected goals?

Analyze the causes: What caused the failure/success

Summary: Optimize to the next step plan

Reviewing is not only for preparing for the next activity, it can also allow your abilities to be improved quickly through reflection!

Finally, I would like to give you some tips on how to improve your operational capabilities.

In addition to the activities you perform yourself, you should also pay more attention to the activities of others, especially the cases that go viral, to see what other people's ideas are and how they operate in the process. This can help you think and summarize quickly so that you can reuse them in your own products.

Author: Liu Erha

Source: Liu Erha