How to plan a fission growth activity from 0 to 1?

Activities are highly homogenized, platform policies are becoming stricter, and users are growing by being "cut" time and time again.

01. WeChat Ecological Laws

I have always believed that when operating on any platform, you must first fully understand the underlying logic and operating mechanism of the platform before taking action. Only by knowing yourself and your enemy can you win every battle.

The public account fission activity is carried out on WeChat, so being familiar with the rules of the WeChat ecosystem is the primary condition for the success of the activity.

User circle effect

WeChat is a social platform that exists based on social relationship chains. What kind of person a user is, most of his friends are of the same kind. He is an operator, so most of his friends are operators; he is from Zhejiang, so what kind of people are most of his friends?

When planning an event, you must first think clearly about who your target users are and what kind of users you want to obtain, and then launch the event to the target group. In this way, the users brought by fission will be more accurate and more efficient.

KOL node effect is obvious

Social networks are centralized structures that spread out from a central point. It is not like decentralized platforms such as Toutiao and Douyin. As long as the content is high-quality, the system will recommend traffic.

The same activity, initiated by a person with 50,000 friends and by a person with only 500 friends, will have very different results.

Information islands

Based on the above two characteristics, the WeChat social relationship chain is divided into pieces, and the information island effect is very obvious. There is more to each other than mountains.

The same activity plan, after being overused in the operation circle, may still be effective when applied to other more traditional industries and groups, and may even trigger a screen-sweeping trend.

At present, the industries with the most fission activities and the fastest iterations are K12 and knowledge payment. We can learn from their successful activity plans and apply them to our own industry, thereby reducing the cost of trial and error and increasing the success rate.

02. 5 mainstream fission gameplays

Fission refers to the growth of the number of users or orders through existing users. At present, the mainstream ways of playing include task treasure, distribution, community fission, group buying, bargaining, etc. The gameplay is different and it is suitable for different industries and groups of people.

Mission Bao: Users can invite a certain number of friends to follow the service account and receive rewards by completing tasks. The efficiency of increasing followers is high, it is applicable to a wide range of industries, but the user accuracy is relatively poor;

Distribution: Users are channels, and you can get commissions by recommending others to buy products. The efficiency of increasing followers is high and the users are accurate, which is suitable for industries with low marginal costs such as knowledge payment and K12;

Community fission: Users enter the community and share activities to receive rewards, usually virtual items. The activity process provides poor user experience and is suitable for users who are not sensitive to social interaction;

Group buying and bargaining: By having multiple people buy together or working together to reduce the purchase cost, the number of orders will increase.

This article takes the most universal task treasure gameplay as the starting point, and takes you through the entire fission activity planning process from 0-1.

The gameplay is just the surface; the underlying logic and planning process of the activity are all interconnected. This article can also serve as a reference for distribution and other gameplay.

1. Clarify the purpose of the activity

Whether you are operating a personal account or a corporate account, the budget is limited, so spend as little as possible.

In today’s world where customer acquisition costs are high and competition is increasingly fierce, when we organize events, we must not only focus on low-cost traffic growth, but also on achieving a closed business loop in a single event. Only in this way can it be replicable and sustainable.

When many operators organize activities, they only focus on the number of fans, how much money they have invested, and the cost of acquiring a single customer. They do not consider the accuracy of the users, let alone whether they can ultimately generate conversion results.

I organized an event and brought in a lot of fans, which made me very happy. But after a while, I gradually realized that these fans were just numbers. They rarely read my articles and did not bring much value to my performance. From the perspective of overall ROI, I was losing a lot of money.

Therefore, when doing any activity, I suggest you plan from a higher-dimensional performance perspective to attract accurate users. It would be best to create a closed loop between attracting new users and converting business in one activity to maximize ROI.

Taking paid workplace knowledge as an example, a Taskbao activity that gives away workplace knowledge calendars is expected to add 10,000 new users, so we need to consider how to activate them and convert them to purchase courses in the shortest time possible.

When designing the activity path, we can embed the conversion link into it. When users complete the task of recruiting people to redeem the knowledge calendar, guide them to join the group and fill in the delivery address, and convert them to trial classes or full-price classes in the group as soon as the activity ends (depending on the course price and business conversion model). You can also push message templates and customer service messages to new users when they follow the official account to urge them to convert and purchase courses.

It should be noted here that the user stickiness brought by fission is not high, so they must be converted as soon as possible. If left for too long, the churn rate will increase.

What is considered a passing ROI depends on the company’s business and the purpose of the event. If the event is just to increase fans and expand influence, ROI may not be considered, but those who do operations must be aware of ROI.

ROI calculation formula: input-output ratio over a period of time, output/input

Input: labor cost + channel cost + logistics cost + hook cost + tool cost

Output: The revenue gained from acquiring users over a period of time. Taking knowledge payment as an example, the output is the income from new users signing up for trial classes + the income from trial classes converting to regular classes.

2. Determine the activity hook

Mission Bao is like a game of equivalent exchange. The platform takes out an item and explains the redemption conditions. Users evaluate whether it is worth the effort. If they think it is worth it, they will participate in the activity and complete the task.

There are three common conditions for exchanging mission treasures:

Level 1: Invite X people to follow the official account and get rewards

Multi-level ladder: rewards are set at different levels, inviting different number of people to follow and receive corresponding rewards respectively.

Enterprise WeChat: Invite X people, add enterprise WeChat friends, and get rewards

No matter how the redemption conditions change, the core is to ensure that the value of the reward (also called the "hook") is greater than the cost paid by the user, so that users are willing to take action to complete tasks and attract people. It is no exaggeration to say that the hook determines the success or failure of the activity.

1) Amplify the value of the hook

The value of a hook does not lie in its price, but in whether it can hit the user's pain points and meet their needs. As the saying goes, just when you need it, I have it.

Normally, three yuan for a bottle of water is considered expensive, but if you sell it to a dying person trapped in the desert, he would scramble to buy it, not to mention three yuan, even thirty thousand.

So, how do we know what users need for hooks?

User gathering place survey

Go to the vertical communities where target users gather or the vertical sections of large platforms to see what topics they are talking about? Which topics have particularly good data? Are there a lot of people interested? Which are high frequency words?

Competitive product analysis

What activities have competitors done? Which ones were successful? Which ones failed? What hooks are used? Can we learn from it and improve it?

User Interviews

One-on-one communication is the most effective way to understand users. Ask them over the phone what activities they are interested in. What kind of hook do you want? Which hooks have the strongest sense of value? Are you willing to participate in the event? Any suggestions?

It is not enough to just meet user needs. A good hook must also meet the following four conditions:

Strong scarcity

Users are not fools. If you use common and worthless things as hooks, they will definitely not buy it.

Social image

If users want to share activities, they have to consider their social image. A good hook should satisfy the user’s sense of superiority and presence, and be able to show off.

It’s a very LOW thing. Even if users want it, they are unwilling to share it on WeChat Moments and invite friends to participate due to image pressure.

Usually, hooks related to knowledge, self-improvement, patriotism, love for work, and love for family are most consistent with the social image and users are most willing to share.

Strong business relevance

What kind of hook attracts what kind of users? The hook must be strongly related to the business so that it can be better monetized later.

You are doing e-commerce knowledge payment, and most of the people you attract with maternal and infant products are mothers. It has nothing to do with sales business and you will definitely not be able to monetize it later.

Sense of achievement

The cost of getting started with the hook is very high, and users won’t use it even if they get it, so their sense of gain is zero.

A good hook should be simple and easy to use, allowing users to feel the value at the lowest cost, so that after using the product, they will have a sense of superiority of "learning a lot, knowing a lot, and knowing a lot". In this way, users will be more willing to participate in the next event.

In terms of form, physical objects can be seen and touched, and give people a stronger sense of gain than virtual products.

The following is a recommended list of hooks for different industries for your reference.

2) Reduce the cost paid by users

Every action a user takes is a cost, so it is important to reduce costs while increasing value.

In an event, the biggest cost a user pays is how many people he wants to attract.

The number of people should be kept within a reasonable range and should not exceed users’ expectations of the value of the hook. No matter how high-end the packaging of a practical package is, users will definitely not be willing to bring more than a dozen people.

The number of people to be attracted can be set based on the cost of a single hook/CAC (single customer acquisition cost, the industry average is 0.8-1.5 yuan). It is generally recommended to have 3-8 people, and no more than 12 people. Setting too many users will make it difficult to complete the task and will reduce their desire to participate.

When the activity requires a large number of people, we can set up multiple levels and give immediate rewards for each small stage task completed, so that users can see the hope of completing the entire task and stimulate the motivation to attract people.

Suppose we want users to pull 12 people. The first-level threshold is set lower. Pull 2 ​​people to get XXX. The second level gives users hope that they can complete the task with a little effort. Pull 5 people to get XXX. The third level is our most valuable and attractive hook: pull 12 people to get a knowledge atlas.

3. Sort out the activity path

The activity path refers to the various steps that users need to go through to participate in an activity.

As mentioned before, in an activity, it is best to establish a closed loop between attracting new users and converting business, embed the conversion link into the activity process, and activate and convert new users as soon as possible to maximize ROI.

Taking knowledge payment activities as an example, a typical activity path diagram looks like this:

The entire activity path must be the shortest and shortest. With every additional step, users have to take an extra action, which increases the risk of loss.

It is also important that the path is unique and the direction is clear. Users are too lazy to think. They will not use their brains if they can avoid it. If you give them an ambiguous step and ask them to think, they will not be happy.

Don’t underestimate these two points. If one step is not designed well, the loss rate will increase by 0.5%, and if there are ten steps, it will be 5%. So many people were lost just because of the activity path design. It’s not worth it.

4. Copywriting packaging

Users learn about activities through copywriting. Good copywriting can multiply its value and must be polished repeatedly to directly hit users' pain points.

1) Poster

Posters account for 30% of the success of the event.

If old users want to invite new users to complete tasks, they have to share the posters. New users can understand the content of the event through posters and decide whether to participate.

The poster should catch the user's attention and attract clicks at the first moment, then amplify the value of the hook, stimulate demand, and provide urgent copy to encourage new users to participate in the event.

An excellent fission poster contains 5 elements:

User ID

Everyone wants to create a positive image among their friends, such as being positive, loving learning, working hard, loving the country and the family.

Successful posters can be shared by users in their circle of friends as social currency, not just to gain hooks.

The posters must also be in line with the social circles of the target users. For employees, posters should be designed to suit their identities, and for bosses, posters should be designed to suit their identities. Identity confusion is a taboo.

Main Title

When sharing on WeChat, whether in a dialog box or Moments, the poster will be presented as a small picture.

The first thing users see when they see a poster is the main title. Only if they are interested in the main title will they be willing to click to see more content. Therefore, the main title must hit the user's pain points and solve a specific problem.

In terms of design, the font must be large, and the line of text should be visible in small image form without clicking on the image.

Selling Points

The selling points should be clear, with definite benefits that can meet user needs. Do not introduce product information in a hollow way.

If it is a physical or promotional product, you can also describe a beautiful scene that the user yearns for, so that the user feels that they can achieve it after participating in the activity.

Authoritative endorsement

Users have a natural sense of trust in big brands, big companies, and authority. Adding these elements to posters can allow users to transfer this trust to us.

Common authoritative endorsements include: big brands, big companies, famous teachers, KOLs, awards, honors, big clients served...

Sense of urgency

By using limited-time and limited-quantity copywriting such as only for the first XXX people, countdown to X days, and valid for X days, we can create a sense of urgency that this opportunity can’t be missed.

Based on the importance of posters, I suggest making 3 versions of posters with different entry points, different selling points and different styles for an event. Conduct user surveys and ask users which poster they are more interested in. You can also do A/B testing and decide which poster to choose as the main promotion for the event based on the result data.

2) Process Talk

Process language means that after the user scans the QR code on the poster, the official account automatically replies to inform the user of the next steps for participating in the event. Make sure your instructions are clear, without any nonsense, and use the fewest words to make things clear.

5. Prepare activity plans

During an event, a very small negligence may cause the entire event to fail, and all the efforts put into it will be wasted.

Therefore, before the event starts, we need to simulate the user experience of the entire event, anticipate various problems that may arise as much as possible, and make corresponding plans.

What problems might arise with the activity? How to solve these problems? What should I do if the activity is blocked? What if all the prizes have been claimed? The event is so popular and I’m too busy to handle it. What should I do? What if there are few participants? What if the hook does not meet user expectations? What should I do if there are a lot of complaints from users? What should I do if the background data is abnormal? …

6. MVP Testing

MVP testing is to verify at the lowest cost whether the core strategy and core design can support the achievement of goals, thereby reducing risks and eliminating uncertainties.

When we invested a lot of resources and energy in large-scale promotion activities, we found that users did not buy into it and the entire activity failed.

MVP testing can help us minimize losses or even avoid them.

Before the activity is officially promoted, we can first launch the activity to a small number of users and adjust the activity based on the result data feedback: Do users understand the activity path? Is the hook attractive? Which poster has better data effect? Which link has the highest attrition rate? Is there any abnormality in the conversion rate of the link? What problems did you encounter? Do the resulting data meet expectations?

When the entire MVP test data meets the target expectations, we can invest in large-scale promotion.

7. Event Release

Launching an event does not just mean posting a tweet on a public account, forwarding it to a friend circle, or sending a group message to friends; it also involves strategy.

Warm-up period

The warm-up period is generally 5-7 days before the event to build momentum for the event. You can post a countdown poster every day, and pair it with some WeChat Moments text or video accounts with messages like "working overtime to prepare", "planning big events", or "guess what we are going to do" to arouse users' curiosity.

If the budget is sufficient, you can also invite KOLs to warm up every day in their respective Moments or video accounts, influence fans through KOLs, and accumulate momentum for subsequent activities.

Official release period

All channels, resources and KOLs inside and outside the company must release the activities at the same time to create a screen-sweeping effect.

People have a herd mentality, so if an activity is not very popular and is pushed in groups of two or three, it will easily be ignored. If a large area of ​​the screen is flooded with content within a period of time, users will have the mentality of "what's so popular? I also want to participate in the event and see it."

During the event, content such as "The event is very popular, how many people are participating", "There are only a few hooks left, hurry up to claim them", "Highly recommended by big KOLs" are posted on WeChat Moments and Video Accounts every day to attract users who are waiting to participate in the event.

Closing period

After the event is over, you can publish muscle-flexing content such as "Excellent performance of the event", "Working overtime to send physical hooks to users", "Department celebration dinner", etc. to pave the way for the next event.

If you need to convert users quickly, you can publish some specific business benefits to users, what value users can get, what impressive results people have achieved, which KOLs recommend it, limited-time and limited-quantity content, and other promotional content.

8. Monitoring data and result review

What are the basic qualities of operations? I think one of them is definitely the ultimate control of data and the ability to iteratively optimize based on the data.

During the activity, we need to monitor the data at all times, solve any anomalies immediately, optimize and improve the conversion rate of each link, and decide whether to expand the campaign based on the result data...

The following are key metrics to monitor during a campaign:

Reached groups: How many users will this activity be pushed to?

Number of participants: How many users scanned the QR code? If the channel is accurate, the participation rate is 5%-10%.

Number of people promoting the task: how many users have promoted people, including those who have completed the promotion task and those who have not completed it

Number of people who have completed the task: how many users have completed the task of recruiting people, to determine whether the threshold for recruiting people is reasonable

New people attracted: How many new people were attracted by the activity

7-day retention number: the net increase in the number of people due to the activity, with a cycle of 7 days. Generally between 50% and 70%

K value: how many new users a participating user brings on average, number of participants/number of new users, the industry average is 0.6

CAC: Single customer acquisition cost, total investment/number of retained customers, the industry average is 0.8-1.5 yuan

Sales conversion rate: number of new customers/number of conversions. There is no absolute average value. It depends on product attributes, unit price, and decision cycle.

ROI: There are two ways to calculate

For the purpose of attracting new customers, ROI = (industry average CAC * number of retained customers) / total investment. If it is greater than 1, it means the activity is successful. If it is less than 1, it depends on whether the company is willing to lose money to acquire customers.

With conversion as the purpose, ROI = sales conversion revenue/total investment, and it is considered profitable only when it is above 1.5.

Reviewing, summarizing and improving are also basic qualities of operations. After the event, review the entire process and see what went well. What went wrong? What problems did you encounter? What problems can be avoided? How can it be improved? Which data are abnormal? Why does this happen? What is the reason? What is the user feedback? Are there more positive reviews or negative reviews? What suggestions do they have? What aspects can be optimized and improved for the next event? How to change it? …

No event can be successful in one try. A good event operator must have grown after repeated falls and failures. I hope you won’t be discouraged when you lose, nor be arrogant when you win, and that you can “dominate the screen” soon.

Author: Tomato Operation

Source: Tomato Operation