Three steps to launch the event!

Event operation is different from content operation and user operation which are long-term and meticulous. It pursues more short-term burst.

Just as the cost of acquiring new users is getting higher and higher, it is also becoming increasingly difficult for marketing to "ignite activities and continue to attract attention." Moreover, the current information overload and the arrival of the fragmented era have brought irreversible changes to marketing. The era of becoming an overnight success and remaining young forever is gone forever.

Generally speaking, if a hot spot does not have a secondary fermentation, its life cycle is often only three days. After three days, it will gradually fade out of people's sight. Not to mention the high channel costs. Now the advertising cost of a soft article of Mimi Meng is 650,000 yuan, 220,000 yuan for Ergeng Canteen, 100,000 yuan per day for the first 5 seconds of CCTV News Broadcast, and 150,000 yuan per day for the first 10 seconds. This cost is very high, and the conversion rate of the channel is not controllable, especially for TV ads, which are difficult to quantify into hard data to evaluate the quality of the channel.

Traditional marketing methods that once worked well seem to be becoming increasingly weak in the Internet environment. So is there any marketing method that is suitable for the current Internet environment? I think, if there is one, "key person marketing" is definitely one of the most efficient and targeted methods.

Before introducing the specific methodology of key person marketing, let us first talk about the essential advantages of Internet marketing .

1. The essence of Internet marketing

1) The cost of being seen has been greatly reduced, approaching zero cost

In the era of paper media, if we want to make information public, we can only rely on various media platforms: newspapers, magazines, television, radio, etc. I don’t need to tell you how expensive it is. But with the information on the Internet, it can be said that everyone is a self-media , and everyone has their own voice channel. Even ordinary people have hundreds of WeChat friends. After being forwarded by friends, they can write it into information and spread it again, not to mention some Weibo celebrities and WeChat public accounts that have a large number of fan resources. From the cost point of view alone, it can be said to be almost zero.

2) The efficiency of "being spread" is greatly improved, approaching zero waiting time

Let’s take the era of paper media as an example. At that time, the dissemination of information had to be printed and scheduled before it could be published and broadcast. But now social platforms can release news anytime and anywhere. Even WeChat subscription accounts only allow you to post once a day, but there is no limit on the time and number of articles you can post.

3) The threshold for being trusted has been greatly lowered, approaching zero endorsement

In the past, companies would basically invite so-called celebrity experts to take charge of publicity and marketing, but these people are far away from us. But now, more and more ordinary people have convinced more people by using the Internet to convey persuasive messages, and have even become KOLs . Many authors of public accounts that everyone follows are not actually experts in the traditional sense, but they can still gain our trust because of the rationality of the content they output.

If traditional media reaches users more through influence, then in the fragmented era it relies on connectivity to split information. This is why key person marketing has become an efficient Internet marketing tool in the fragmented era.

2. Key person marketing

Speaking of key person marketing, I have to mention Malcolm's Law of Individuals again. In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm proposed the three laws of popularity: the law of individuals, the law of adhesion factors, and the law of environmental power.

Key person marketing is actually the practical application of the law of individual people. Malcolm divides the individuals who spark trends into the categories of connectors, mavens, and salesmen. Contacts have rich personal connections, insiders have in-depth knowledge of information (products), and salespeople are good at convincing others to believe in the information (use products).

The book "Diffusion of Innovation" mentions a point: only 25% of all our users are our core users. If this is used as a reference standard, then only 1% of all users are the key people we need, but this 1% determines 99% of the brand's success. So the key people are the core users among core users.

We need to be clear that the ultimate goal of every marketing campaign is to allow good products to find the right users.

The essence of key person marketing is to create word-of-mouth fission by finding the “right users”.

2.1 Three steps of key person marketing

Clarifying selling points, finding key people, and driving key people are the three steps of key person marketing.

2.1.1 Clear selling points

When we plan an event, we always need a selling point based on the event to attract users. Generally speaking, the selling points of an event are often also the selling points of the product. After all, the ultimate goal of the event is to make the product known to more users or to strengthen the stickiness between users and the product.

Generally speaking, the selling points of a product mainly exist in three places: in the minds of product designers, in the unmet expectations of users, and in the shortcomings of competing products. This is also why operators must be sufficiently familiar with the product in order to become qualified operators. Because in a sense, we are the bridge between products and users. Users' cognition and trust in products are established through us. If we ourselves don't know the selling point of the product, how can we attract users?

Now that we know where the selling point is, we still need to find the selling point from it. Selling points are not decided on a whim, but must be based on facts and data. In many cases, what product designers think are the selling points are not the real selling points of the product. Just like "you like to eat strawberries, but fish don't like to eat strawberries."

Take Cheetah Browser as an example. The selling point they came up with through brainstorming was: faster, flashier and safer. However, this selling point failed to address users’ pain points at all and the response was mediocre. What ultimately allowed him to carve out a niche in the browser market was his selling point of “quick ticket grabbing”. If Cheetah had been complacent with the selling point of "faster, flashier, and safer" from the beginning and had not carried out more than 20 marketing plans in the later stage (from its launch in May 2012 to its explosion in December of the same year, basically one marketing event per week), I think they would not have discovered the core selling point of "ticket grabbing" that can make users excited.

Therefore, when we are planning an event , we must not rely solely on the brainstorming of a few people in the team, but we must combine the forms and effects of previous events with the results of competitors' events, find out activities with high user participation, and package the relevant selling points.

2.1.2 Finding key people

Now that we have the selling point, the next step is to find the key people and discover the core users who can play a decisive role in the spread of our activities. Where should we start with this?

Unlike in the past, we are mostly accustomed to determining our target audience through labeling. For example: age, gender, region, consumption level, interests and hobbies, etc. When looking for the key person to trigger the explosion, returning to the scene and simulating user behavior can often help us hit the target more accurately.

In 2014, Cheetah Mobile launched an IP web drama "Meow Star Can't Get It". When they were planning the marketing for this new drama, they used the method of returning to the scene to find accurate and high-quality key people.

Where is the key person? Regression scenario, simulating user behavior

Since it is an idol drama with cats as its IP, they returned to the user scenario and began to think: What kind of people would like to watch content about cats? What behaviors will they have in common? What content will attract them?

Through this kind of scenario-based thinking, they finally determined that this group of users would appear at the same time as cat-related content. So they started searching for words like "cats are so cute" and "cats are so adorable" on Baidu to see what content would appear, and then laid out the content under the relevant information. Based on this scenario, they also looked for the producers and publishers of cat-related content as their key figures. Finally, they found 4,586 key people of Cat and collected 21 QQ mailboxes. Through the information fission of these key people, the corresponding official account of "Meow Star Can't Get It" gained more than 10,000 WeChat fans in 11 days, and the opening rate of the official account was 300%.

2.1.3 Driving key people

We have said that the key people are actually the core users among our core users. The traditional marketing method of delivering information to core users is often through media channels. However, this method can only allow key people to receive information, but it is difficult for them to fission the information.

Therefore, in order to drive key people to "serve" us, we need to do more than just let them passively receive information, but actively reach out to them and facilitate their experience.

Generally speaking, the effect of key people obtained through friend recommendations is the best, because with friends as a bridge in the middle, cooperation between the two parties is often easier to achieve and more likely to generate trust. The second best way is to take the initiative and convey our intention to cooperate through private messages and other means.

There is a saying that goes, "There is nothing in this world that can't be solved by a barbecue. If there is, then have two barbecues." Through face-to-face communication with key people, it is often easier to understand the other party's demands and reach cooperation efficiently. Of course, this cost is relatively high and only applies to the most core key people.

If the company itself is in a relatively weak position, we need to adjust our position slightly, propose cooperation more from the other party's perspective, and care about what the other party needs. After all, at this time, we need the other party's help more. If necessary, key people can be given privileges, such as co-producing products and being the first to share experiences, so that they feel psychologically superior to ordinary users.

The secret to word-of-mouth fission is to make sharing a part of the experience and let users enjoy sharing. From the perspective of sharing effects, benefit sharing (such as sharing in the form of free phone bills or coupons) has the worst effect, emotion sharing is slightly better (for example, users share their good fitness routines by sharing keep), and the best is content sharing. High-quality content can allow more users to understand the product and the activity itself, and content with a communication gene can produce a very strong fission effect.

There is one thing we must make clear: never pay to be seen until the product’s reputation is proven to be malleable. Just like the MVP of a product, marketing also needs an MVP. If the activity itself does not have the fission gene, excessive resource investment will be wasted.

To sum up, there are three steps in key person marketing:

1. Determine selling points through testing and observation rather than brainstorming;
2. Find key people and simulate user behavior by returning to the scene instead of labeling them;
3. Drive key people and reach out directly rather than through media placement.

Of course, no matter what marketing method is used, the premise for its ultimate success must be that the product itself is strong; otherwise, no matter how efficient the marketing method is, it will be in vain.

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

The author of this article @糖愫尔 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!