Learn event operations from Alibaba: a premeditated "sudden" incident

It is often said in the Internet industry that "for technology, look to Baidu; for products, look to Tencent; for operations , look to Alibaba ." Today I will share with you how Alibaba operated the Tmall Home Furnishing Festival in March, which just ended. At the same time, we also hope to present to you a picture of Along the River During the Qingming Festival of Alibaba’s event operations.

What is event operation?

Baidu explains it this way: Event operation refers to the operation of different activities and activities of different natures by event companies, including event planning , event implementation, and grafting related industries to create an industrial chain.

In the Internet era, event operations also need to distinguish channels . For example, for pure online event operations, the data that need to be paid attention to include UV, PV, conversion rate , number of shares, number of reviews, sales, etc.; while offline event operations are divided into store sales, meeting sales, etc., and more attention is paid to customer store entry rate, signing rate, and sales, which are different from the data points that pure online event operations focus on. For Alibaba, they may prefer the former.

In any case, event operations, like other operations, serve the purpose of "performance", and they play a good "catalyst" role in the service process.

What does Alibaba’s event operations do?

Alibaba’s event operations are the same as those of other Internet companies. They are doing the same thing. The difference lies in the platform and the results of operations (you can compare JD.com and Alibaba. The effects of activities in the same time period are completely different).

Zhaopin @Aliexpress-Event Operations

Through Zhilian Recruitment, I found a recently published recruitment post for "Aliexpress-Event Operations". In the job description, we can see that Alibaba's event operations involve the following tasks:

• Event Planning
• Event Organization
• Activity Packaging
• Event Communication
• Data Operations
• Activity review

Now that we have clarified the work content of Alibaba's event operations, we can then analyze from different dimensions how Alibaba planned this event step by step during the past March Home Improvement Festival.

1. Event planning: theme/purpose/crowd

Activity Theme

The theme of this Tmall Home Improvement Festival is still "Easily Renew Your Home". In the topic, we can see two key pieces of information:

1. Easy, which represents the characteristics of Internet home decoration, tells consumers that Tmall Home Decoration can help you reduce the troubles of decoration;
2. Renew your home describes what kind of services Tmall Home Furnishing can provide you. It takes "home" as the core point and covers all merchants/products related to home.

From the perspective of potential decoration users, such a theme can directly trigger the hearts of consumers, which not only reflects the product characteristics but also clearly explains the services that can be provided. In the actual event planning process, in addition to considering such a theme clearly, it may also be necessary to use the " subtitle " form to express the preferential strength of the entire event to consumers in order to promote performance growth, such as: a 1,000 yuan decoration fund, a whole house of furniture for decoration, 10 yuan to exchange for the whole house of lighting, etc.

Purpose

In the eyes of industry insiders, the "Tmall Home Decoration Festival" in March is the real Tmall "Double 11". There are two popular sayings in the decoration industry:

1. Gold three, silver four;
2. Wear in spring and hang out in summer and live in in autumn and winter.

The former, mainly for businesses, means that March is the busiest season for home decoration, and it is also the time when consumers are the richest because they have just made money in the past year. However, the demand for home decoration in April is slightly worse.

The latter is mainly for property owners, meaning that spring is suitable for house decoration because of the weather, summer is suitable for drying the house because of air circulation and removing formaldehyde that affects health, and you can move in in autumn and winter.

Based on the explanation of the above two sentences, we can understand why people in the industry regard March as the real Double Eleven , and why Alibaba specially planned an event to help merchants acquire potential decoration users. This is the purpose of Alibaba's planning of the "Easy Home Renewal" theme event: to promote activity ( attracting new customers and retaining existing customers are not the main purpose of the event).

Consumer Group

Any activity or advertising work will involve the locking of “consumer groups” (commonly known as: circle users). The label attributes related to the consumer group include: gender, age group, education level, Internet habits, consumption level, region, etc. Accurate population positioning will be able to maximize the value of the investment.

Here is an example of age group:

Regarding TV shopping, I believe most of us born in the 80s and 90s would think that its main user group is uncles and aunts over 50 years old, and that there are more viewers in third- and fourth-tier cities. However, through the Baidu Index query, the actual data obtained is unexpected.

Data shows that people who shop on TV are mainly concentrated in developed provinces and cities such as Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Shanghai, which is completely opposite to what we imagined that the population is in third- and fourth-tier cities.

TV Shopping@Crowd Region

As a person born in 1989, I personally think that the mainstream group of TV shopping cannot be our generation. However, data shows that those born in the 1980s are the main force of TV shopping, accounting for as high as 45%, those aged 40-49 account for 28%, and the mainstream population of 50 years old, which we think of, only accounts for 12%.

TV Shopping @ Age Distribution

Through the example of "TV shopping" crowd positioning, I hope to convey a message to everyone: Never judge the direction of things based on your own standards. In more cases, you may need to use accurate data to make correct market judgments.

2. Event organization: merchants/products/content

Once the activity plan is confirmed, the next step is for the activity operator to integrate the resources of operators in various positions. In Alibaba’s various large and small activities, we can see that the activity organization work is mainly concentrated on: screening and organization of merchants/products/content.

Merchant screening and organization

In every corporate system, different employees, customers, and partners are classified into different levels, and this is even more obvious in Alibaba's case.

In the entire Tmall merchant hierarchy system, merchants are stratified according to their Alipay transaction amounts in the last 30 days, and this system is constantly changing. There are SKA, KA, and ordinary merchants. Generally speaking, official promotions are mainly targeted at large merchants such as SKA and KA. They have both brand advantages and back-end implementation capabilities for products and services.

Tmall@Merchant Tier Division

Taking the March Home Decoration Festival as an example, there are as many as 9 categories of merchants involved: decoration design/construction/supervision, residential furniture, home decoration main materials, whole house customization, household daily necessities, bedding, large appliances, office equipment/consumables/related services, and kitchen appliances, covering all merchants related to "home".

Product selection and organization

Merchants in the same industry may have certain differences in the goods or services they provide. For merchants in the category of "decoration design/construction/supervision" (commonly known as: masonry industry), the main services they can provide are:

• All-inclusive renovation (providing main materials/construction)
• Move in ready (main materials/construction/soft furnishings provided)
• Semi-package renovation (providing construction)
• Partial decoration (providing main materials/construction for layout space)
• Style design (providing pure design services)

In view of the different serviceable products mentioned above, the goods need to be stratified and differentiated by venue floors so that potential users can quickly find the products that suit them.

Content selection and organization

In terms of content format, based on different presentation methods or marketing strategies, I divide it into three categories: product shopping guide list, venue/floor design, and resource matching.

Product Shopping List

Tmall Home Decoration Festival @ Product Shopping List

By sorting out the contents of the product shopping guide list, we can convey each store's popular products to potential users as soon as possible, encourage users to buy through various preferential policies, and achieve rapid business performance.

Venue/Floor Design

The design of the venue and floors has a lot to do with the merchants and products. This time, the Tmall Home Furnishing Festival was divided into 21 venues (including 1 main venue, 18 category venues, and 2 marketing venues) according to different merchant categories and marketing methods. At the same time, each venue is divided into levels according to the categories of goods.

Taking the "home decoration design venue" as an example, according to the differences in product attributes and prices, the following 8 floors are divided: stores with good reputation, stores with the help of experts, worry-free guarantee, smart cube, decoration for the common people, decoration for the petty bourgeoisie, decoration for the rich, and whole house customization. On each floor, limited merchandise slots are divided to stimulate merchants' ambition to grab traffic .

Among the incentive policies, the most commonly used one is the horse racing rule, where rankings are based on "sales volume" (note: this is the core idea of ​​all e-commerce platform operations and the secret for merchants to grab traffic. Therefore, it is extremely important to convert potential users into real users on the day of the event).

The layout of the floors enables potential consumers to quickly find products that suit them, while the packaging of the venue will affect the acquisition of potential users. Share the copywriting of several different venues:

• Children's venue: good stuff is waiting for you, essential for happy growth;
• Home decoration design: Home decoration giants offer benefits, and everyone has home property insurance;
• Jiancai Venue: 1 yuan limited time sale, buy 1 get 1 free at the beginning of the year;
• Fine furniture: 1 yuan for the best products, 1800 yuan for home delivery in urban areas;
• Quality Home Venue: Grab millions of discounts and enjoy high-quality life;
• Whole house customization: customize our home, get 2,000 off for orders over 10,000;
• Home improvement shopping in the same city: same style and price in stores, grab store gifts;
• Smart venue: more than 50% off, understanding life is more important;

…

3. Activity packaging: research on marketing methods

The packaging of events is the same as that of celebrities. If a star wants to become popular, he needs to create hype. There are several tricks to create hype: telling stories, creating accidents, inviting quarrels, scandals, exposing privacy, and finally finding ways to make a 360-degree turn to tell the public that I am the victim, I am the true prince who has gone through all kinds of hardships.

This time during the Tmall Home Decoration Festival, he packaged himself as a fashionable person who loves the Internet and life.

Keyword 1: 3D

When it comes to home decoration, ordinary consumers may find it difficult to imagine how to do it on Tmall. In other words, there is no better shopping scenario to tell consumers what their home will look like after choosing your service. Based on such needs, 3D virtual home came into being.

3D virtual home is a virtual 3D network home where consumers can see what their future home will look like in 360 degrees. There are main spaces such as living room, dining room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, etc. At the same time, each space has soft furnishings provided by the corresponding merchants, giving consumers a complete home experience.

Keyword 2: AR

AR, or Augmented Reality, uses computer technology to apply virtual information to the real world. The real environment and virtual objects are superimposed on the same screen or space in real time and exist simultaneously.

The video shows the scenario-based shopping achieved by merchants using AR technology during the Tmall Home Furnishing Festival. When consumers start the AR scene and aim it at any space in their home, the corresponding products sold by the merchant will be displayed on the screen, achieving the effect of presenting online products in their home.

Keyword 3: Live broadcast

During the Home Decoration Festival, in addition to the live broadcasts organized by merchants independently, Tmall also jointly carried out live shopping activities with China National Radio Shopping, Tmall Home Furnishing, and Taobao Live. On the day of the live broadcast, the number of online viewers reached over 400,000, and the number of interactions exceeded 20 million times.

Live @Brand Team GO

From the above three keywords, we can find that this year's Tmall event focuses on "scenario-based" shopping, abandoning the dry and tasteless window-like shopping of previous years, allowing more potential consumers to integrate into the interaction, generate purchasing desire from the experience process, and thus achieve transaction volume.

Through this event, perhaps our view of Tmall will change in the future. It turns out that it is:

A fashion person who loves the Internet and life.

4. Event Communication: Creativity/Channel Development

The event’s dissemination forms are diverse, including creative H5, Weibo, official accounts , streaming media, paper media, PUSH, etc. The choice of communication channels is not about quantity, but about cultivating the channels carefully and making the content thorough so that potential users will want to buy the product at the first sight.

Streaming media: Refresh your home with ease

During the event, this video was released on Tmall’s Weibo and WeChat official accounts to further deepen Tmall’s image of “fashionable people who love the Internet and life.” The "aesthetics of life" is interpreted through three different segments: "Smart Lifestyle, Fashionable Matching, and New Ways to Enjoy Health".

Tmall official microblog said:

Whether it is a large house of 200 square meters or a small house of 30 square meters, a refined life should never be restricted by space. By adding a plant corner and a goldfish tank, you can give your home a new lease of life and the air will smell different.

Creative H5

In the creative H5 "The first Tmall drama troupe is open for business", the protagonist "Virgin Heart" uses funny/comic performances and switches between different scenes to vividly express the service advantages of Tmall Home Appliances "door-to-door delivery, door-to-door installation, door-to-door return and return", relieving consumers' worries that "the decoration company is not good enough; the delivery speed is super slow; the return and exchange of furniture is very troublesome..."

5. Data Operation: Sorting out Core Data

The scope of the data is too broad. The most basic ones include UV, PV, IPVUV, average length of stay per person, average page browsing depth per person, sales, conversion rate, return on investment , etc. If it is H5 or live broadcast, it is also necessary to analyze data such as the number of participation, number of shares, and number of fans growth.

As for data operations, after clarifying the data that needs to be analyzed, it is necessary to establish a data model to judge the success or failure of future activity operations. It is best to present the data in the form of a chart to clearly indicate where the dividing point between good and bad data is.

Mature platforms generally have their own data backend. If it is a separately developed page, such as Creative H5, you may need to prepare data points in advance. For example, Digital Communication and Future Applications, both products can perform H5 data statistics.

6. Activity review: analyzing activity problems

Activity review is actually what we often call activity summary. Summarize the problems encountered during event planning, execution, and follow-up, and provide solutions as experience for the next event.

Many people think that activity review is completed by just listing what has been done. This is a wrong understanding. A complete event review, like a competitive product analysis report, integrates event goals, target audience, data, problem summary and other content.

Finally, let’s summarize:

Event operation is a premeditated "sudden" event.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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