What is the most taboo in activity operation for product managers...

I suddenly realized that I haven’t written an article summary for almost a month. The promise to write a summary every two weeks was really a lie. I found myself to be really bad, so today I will talk briefly about event operations .

Don't worry, I am still working on product development and have not changed my job. Although I didn’t actually do much operations-related work at work, I was constantly observing and summarizing some operational considerations in my product position.

I dare to think that the general steps for operators to do an activity are as follows:

1. Intend to do the activity because of a clear purpose;
2. Determine the activity plan based on the purpose: the nature of the activity, the time of the activity, the form of the activity, the process of the activity, the risks of the activity and the response methods, etc.;
3. Find assistants (product, operation, design) to ensure execution is successful;
4. Find a third-party partner to confirm;
5. Find the company to confirm resources;
6. Implement various activities;
7. Keep monitoring and adjusting during the activity to respond to emergencies;
8. Conduct a review and summary after the event;

Of course, it is impossible to analyze every point in one article, so I will mainly talk about the following three pitfalls:

1. Activities without purpose, but only make you climax

The nature of operations work is actually the same as that of products. It is also necessary to understand the business content of the product in order to understand the industry and users. Unlike products, they focus on how to do operations in a targeted manner. For example, event operations are more concerned with which activities are more attractive, which activities are more effective, what kind of cooperation is more cost-effective, etc.

Generally, there are several possibilities for operators to organize activities:

Doing activities without purpose;

Carry out exploratory activities purposefully, which is a bit like AB testing;

Do clear activities with a purpose;

In daily life, situations b and c often accompany each other. Operators are not born knowing what activities are effective. Even operators who have worked for a while will need some time to explore when entering a new industry.

Try it first and see how it works. After a few attempts, I began to realize that some activities might bring good results, while some were of no use at all. In the process of continuous experimentation, I accumulate my own event experience, but at the same time, I am constantly trying new things to try to improve operational results.

However, no matter what the situation is, you must carry out activities with a purpose. Operating activities without a purpose is like sy. How can you spend the empty "sage time" after it is over? It seems that everyone is very busy during the event, doing various communications, following up on materials, and adjusting processes. However, what is left after it’s over? Nothing at all.

Everyone in this world is doing things that waste time every day, and the same is true at work.

Some people use 10 years of work experience, while others accumulate 10 years of work experience in one year;

Some people just experience it; some people not only experience it, but also turn it into experience.

How to set the purpose of the activity? I think you can try the following steps:

1. Ask yourself a question first: What is the current situation of our product?

This question is of course very broad, but it can be divergent and help to think:

Can’t add new users? Daily active users cannot reach a new level? Need to increase your profits?

The whole industry is in trouble? What about other competing products?

Are some effective ways of doing things no longer effective? Are there new platform policies? A new cost-effective channel emerges?

…

2. Ask yourself another question: What should we do in various situations?

Want to acquire new users? Or do we need to improve the retention of new (old) users? Or is it to increase the activity of existing users? Or is it to increase users' transaction volume?

Do we have to hold on until the industry improves?

Looking for new ways to get active? Looking for new channels? Responding to new platform policies? Trying out a new and great channel?

…

3. Through the above two steps, the requirements can be concretized into specific values, such as acquiring more than 20,000 new users. (It may also be necessary to achieve multi-valued results)

Of course, different purposes will be accompanied by different operating methods. For example, acquiring more than 20,000 new users and acquiring more than 20,000 new users while the next-day retention rate is more than 60%. These two operating purposes require completely different activities. I will talk about this later when I have the chance.

2. A process full of loopholes only makes users pass by

I think many people don’t realize that the process of an activity actually requires rigorous logic.

For example:

Xiao Ming wants to organize an event on WeChat where users can receive prizes by participating in the event. The rule is: after participating in the event, users share it on their Moments, and then they can receive the prizes through the app.

Xiao Ming thought that since the design draft had been made, in order to "maximize the benefits", he might as well put this activity in the app.

So, here comes the problem: all the copywriting is "Please download xx product", and all the links point to the product download page. After participating in an event, do users in the app have to download the product again?

The above is a typical example because the scenario of the event was not thought through before the event went online.

So, what parts should the process thinking of an activity include at least?

1. Determine the target group of the activity:

• People who are already users;
• Attract people who are not yet users but may be users;
• Appeal to everyone;

2. Scope of activities:

• Inside the app, outside the app;
• Online new media , online others, offline;

3. Form of activity:

• Are the rules easy to understand?
• Is the participation process simple?
• Is the result orientation clear?
• Is the format easy to spread?

To simply state the above three points, it is: what kind of people discovered the activity, where they did it, and what results they got.

Only after thinking through the above issues clearly can we arrange different copywriting, design, development and other collaborations according to different processes, while also relatively guaranteeing the results of the activity.

3. Without a review summary, what can you use to save your next time?

In fact, I have often mentioned this point in previous articles: If you want to make progress, you must summarize, otherwise it will only become experience but not experience.

The event is over, is it really over? Not really. It not only means the proficiency of the next activity, but it may also change the starting line of the next activity.

Reviewing and summarizing can help us do two things:

1. Find the flaws in the activity itself

It may be that the event format is not smooth enough, the communication during planning is not efficient enough, the coordination is not good enough, the adjustment during the event is not fast enough, or the unexpected situation of the event is not taken into consideration...

There may be too many things that are not done well, but it doesn’t matter. Every failure makes you wiser, find the flaws, and then reflect on how to do better. Then next time, just do what you reflect on.

2. Select the preferred forms, channels, and partners

– Test the performance and suitability of each channel in different types of channels;

– In the same type of channels, keep partners with high cost performance and eliminate partners with low cost performance;

– Screen the authenticity and reference level of different information sources;

…

Operations are too difficult to do, and it is easy to be deceived by various lists. Partners that appear to have extremely high numbers of fans and extremely high reading volumes may not actually perform well, and may even be said to be worse than one can imagine.

The above is the nonsense of a product dog who has never actually operated an activity, but always pays attention to the results of the activity and has done several data reviews with incomplete information asymmetry.

－－－－The final dividing line for chatting－－－－

The feeling of observing data in recent period is:

Operations are so difficult. Even if you do everything perfectly, you will still be deceived by various people: your programmer will deceive you unintentionally, and the third-party data statistics platform will deceive you intentionally... I can't love anymore...