How to plan a marketing campaign?

Why do businesses conduct marketing activities ? How should marketing campaign objectives be formulated? How to plan a marketing campaign? How to choose mall activities at different operation stages? You will understand after reading this article.

Event operations run through the entire operational workflow of merchants. Whether it is to attract user attention, enhance user stickiness, or improve conversion and repurchase, marketing activities are one of the very common operational methods.

A successful marketing campaign can efficiently link "people, goods, and places", not only effectively helping merchants to attract new users, retain and convert existing users, and continuously repurchase users, but also convey the core value of the brand and enhance brand influence.

1) Attract user attention and actively reach users

Merchants can attract a large number of new users through various marketing activities, and can also reach users efficiently through various means during the activities.

2) Cultivate user sharing and encourage user contribution

Because merchants have limited channels and numbers to actively reach users during operations, they can use marketing activities to stimulate and promote users' spontaneous dissemination and sharing.

3) Promote mall activity and strengthen user awareness

Merchants can set up regular marketing activities, and at the same time use official accounts, social groups and other channels, and combine corresponding marketing plug-ins to promote and drive traffic for the activities, thereby improving mall sales conversions, strengthening users' awareness of the brand and the mall, and maintaining a sense of freshness about the mall. For example, you can set up regular weekly activities in the mall, such as group buying and bargaining; you can also plan large-scale marketing activities around the theme of the month or year, such as traditional Chinese festivals, winter and summer vacations, and Double 11.

1. “How to set marketing activity goals”

The goals of marketing activities should be formulated based on the mall's marketing goals for the whole year. Merchants can start with the four segmented goals of sales, traffic, products and member management to determine the annual goals:

1. Sales target: The sales target for this year can be calculated based on the formula: sales volume of the previous year × (1 + sales revenue growth rate). The growth rate is the average sales growth rate over the past 1-3 years.
2. Traffic target: You need to first calculate the conversion rate and average order value of all channel traffic in the previous year, and then estimate this year’s traffic target based on this year’s channel promotion target and sales target.
3. Product goals: It is necessary to mobilize the operation department and the merchandise department to formulate this year's product operation plan through seminars to determine the proportion of popular products, traffic products, promotional products, etc. in this year's products.
4. Member management goals: Member management goals mainly involve setting targets for transaction volume, conversion rate, and repurchase rate for new and old users. The previous year’s data can be used as a reference for target setting.

After determining the annual target through the above four sub-targets, the annual target will be further divided into various annual marketing activities. When planning a single marketing campaign, in addition to undertaking annual segmented marketing goals, the formulation of single campaign goals must also adhere to the following two principles:

1. The purpose is important and unique: It is less likely to achieve multiple operational goals through one marketing campaign. When planning an event, businesses need to be clear about what the purpose of the event is.
2. The goals are specific and quantifiable: Merchants should break down and quantify the activity goals and assign responsibilities to individuals so that all operational personnel involved in the activity can clearly understand the activity goals. For example, the purpose of this marketing campaign is to attract new users, and the expected number of new users is 500. Each operation team needs to complete the KPI of attracting 100 new users.

2. How to plan marketing activities?

The following 12 steps are essential for a successful marketing campaign.

1. The activity goal is clear: clearly define and quantify the important and only goal of this activity.
2. Target user analysis: Conduct a profile analysis of the target users of this marketing campaign to understand user characteristics, needs and hot topics.
3. Setting the theme of the event: The setting of the theme of the event should not only refer to the event goals, but also take into account the current market hotspots.
4. Determine the activity time: Merchants can analyze the consumption behavior characteristics of their users to determine the best activity time. Through repeated tests, we found that user activity is generally higher between 8:00-9:00 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and pushing activities at this time can achieve better results.
5. Determination of activity form: The choice of activity form is mainly based on the three principles of sufficient fun, convenient operation and outstanding benefits.
6. Integration of promotional resources: Integrate own and external promotional resources that can be cooperated with, prepare in advance and coordinate promotion according to the rhythm of the activities.
7. Activity cost formulation: Estimate and formulate promotion costs, user incentive costs and activity ROI, and use this to predict the final effect of the activity.
8. Promotional copy planning: prepare event rules description and promotional copy in advance. The copywriting must be closely related to the event theme and current hot topics.
9. Activity details and division of labor: formulate an activity execution schedule, clarify the division of labor for each activity link, and determine who is responsible for all details.
10. Preheating the event: Since the online event peak time is short, it is necessary to do a good job of preheating and promotion in the early stage to better control the rhythm of the event.
11. Activity data monitoring: Monitor and provide feedback on activity data to adjust activity strategies in real time.
12. Event summary and review: After the event is over, pull all event data and analyze it to measure whether the event has achieved the expected goals, review the shortcomings of the event, and prepare for the next event.

Activity Case

In order to attract fans to its official account, a certain merchant planned a "micro-voting" activity, which ultimately achieved an exposure of over 380,000, attracted over 100,000 fans, and had 21,000 activity shares.

• Activity theme: Looking for the popular goddess;
• Activity form: micro voting;
• Activity period: 15 days;
• Activity purpose: attract fans to the official account;
• Target customers: 18-28 young women;
• Activity rules: Users can cast 3 votes per day. In the early stage, 3 votes are not allowed to be cast for the same player, but in the later stage, there will be no limit on the 3 voting opportunities. The top 70 contestants can receive physical prizes, and voting users will also receive physical prizes for every N votes. At the same time, set a "keyword" reply in the official account to trigger the prize redemption.

1) Activity promotion process

Merchants adopt a two-pronged promotion model of internal resources and external cooperation, and first complete the accumulation of initial users of the event through internal employee sharing.

2) Setting goals and rules for each stage of the activity

After the event ended, the merchant took two steps:

1. Data statistics: timely collect activity data to understand information such as the number of participants in the event and the number of shares.
2. Activity review: Call together all operational personnel involved in the activity to review the activity, summarize the results, data, and unexpected problems encountered during execution, and accumulate experience for the next activity.

3. “How to plan mall activities at different operation stages”

1. How to choose marketing activities for a mall starting from scratch

If the mall activity is carried out under the premise of "0" budget and "0" fans, merchants need to make "attracting traffic" the primary activity goal, inventory their own resources and analyze the product situation, and plan interesting marketing activities through cross-industry cooperation and mall marketing plug-ins. This can attract user attention and stimulate user fission to achieve the effect of quickly attracting fans.

Activity Case

A certain driving school designed a "micro-assistance" activity in July, in which users registered online for driving school learning and invited friends to help get discounts. The activity eventually achieved more than 320,000 views on the mini program and more than 300,000 monthly sales.

Activity rules: Users fill in their personal information to register online and participate in the micro-support activity. Forward to friends and invite them to help. The background will rank them according to the number of help points of friends.

1) Award Setting

Ranking is based on the number of support points, different awards are set and distributed, and all registered users (with more than 50 support points) will have their driving lessons reduced by 100 yuan.

2) User retention

All users participating in the event who add customer service on WeChat can also receive an additional gift package for free.

Note: This can effectively collect users who are interested in learning to drive, which will then facilitate follow-up by customer service.

2. How to choose the first event for a store with a small number of fans

When the mall and official account already have a small number of fans, merchants should focus on two goals when planning marketing activities:

1. Utilize existing users to generate new users;
2. Convert existing users into consumer users.

The common user fission activities on the market currently include gifts for recommending customers, group buying and bargaining.

Activity Case

When a well-known household products brand first launched its mini program, it hoped to motivate existing users and generate new users through marketing activities and welfare distribution, so it set up a 15-day price-cutting campaign. Ultimately, the activity achieved over 240,000 product views and over 8,000 bargaining attempts.

Event Highlights:

1. Start preheating 48 hours in advance and notify users to participate.
2. Before the event, fans of the official account will vote to select the three most popular products that are most likely to be sold at low prices as bargain items.
3. Items with higher original prices are uniformly offered a 10% to 20% discount and limited inventory is set to stimulate users to quickly split up on a first-come, first-served basis.

Note: The activity enables double forced attention, i.e. forced attention for users who help bargain and forced attention for those who initiate price cuts, to help stores attract new customers.

3. How to choose mall activities when in a rapid growth stage

Through regular activities, such as fixed weekly activities, monthly theme activities and annual holiday promotions, we can stimulate users' continued attention to the mall, so as to achieve the goal of continuous fission.

Activity Case

A well-known snack brand has long set up group tasting and hot product bargaining activities on its mini program. Through this activity, it attracts users' attention in the long term and increases users' visits to the mini program.

Event Highlights:

1. Attract new customers - build a traffic pool: focus on low-price group buying, and use 1 cent raffles for tastings to achieve the first wave of brand dissemination.
2. Active - Traffic Aggregation: For lottery group products that are more popular with the audience, 2-3 people can form a low-price group to gather traffic. The threshold is low and traffic can be aggregated.
3. Conversion - Traffic monetization: Use discounts, coupons and other marketing to stimulate customers to place orders and increase the average order value of the mall.
4. Fission - Retention fission: Fission distribution takes loyal and active users as the first layer of fission relationship to expand the traffic pool and realize fission.

4. How to carry out marketing activities for a mall that has been operating stably

Merchants in a stable operating state can focus their marketing activities on membership operations and community operations.

1) Membership operation

When users become members, it not only achieves private domain sedimentation but also strengthens the connection with merchants, preparing for more marketing actions in the next step. Use member-exclusive discounts and privileges to enhance user experience, stimulate user consumption desire by upgrading membership levels, cultivate user consumption habits and loyalty through services, improve retention and build stable customer relationships, thereby increasing the frequency of repeat purchases.

2) Community Operation

Private domain traffic is generally considered to be user assets that can be linked, reached, and operated personalized more than twice. And the community is precisely a form that can more efficiently take on the value of traffic marketing. Through community operations, merchants establish and strengthen relationships with users, and ultimately achieve user retention, conversion and rapid monetization through this trust relationship.

Activity Case

In order to promote its newly launched slimming products, a certain beauty brand chose to attract new users and retain users through social networking activities, and ultimately achieved the activity effect of retaining more than 5,000 friends in the community and sales of more than 180,000.

Event Highlights:

1) Grasp the user's psychology

By recruiting female users through weight loss activities, we attracted the attention of female users and created a community "21-day challenge of weight loss camp" to guide users to join the group and participate.

2) Conduct scenario marketing

By creating topics, we can arouse users' resonance and achieve rapid sedimentation.

3) Conduct content marketing

Activate users through interactions such as in-group expert training.

IV. Conclusion

A marketing campaign involves many operational links. If merchants master the basic skills of campaign operations and continuously improve relevant operational capabilities, they can find more points of strength in leveraging private domain growth and achieve significant growth in performance!

Okay, that’s all for this issue. If you want to know more, you can still go to the relevant video official website WeMall Think Tank or the public account WeMall Think Tank to search and watch the video directly.

See you next time.

Author: Xiao Y's Operation Notes

Source: Xiao Y's Operation Notes