Comprehensive Operational Solution: Event Planning and Execution

Activities are often used as a very important means to improve product indicators in a short period of time at a certain stage of product development.

Event planning , or the act of planning itself, is essentially the logic and thinking of solving problems. This is why event planning positions generally do not recruit newbies or fresh graduates. That is, the problem-solving capabilities and specifications have not been verified.

Internet companies of a certain size generally have a dedicated event operation department or marketing planning group to do this.

Today’s article will give you some information about event planning and execution, I hope it will be helpful to you. In order to illustrate the problem more clearly, I have put more pictures in this article, and you can save them by yourself.

1. Positioning and purpose of the activity

1. Activity Principle

As mentioned earlier, activities are used as a means to improve product indicators in a short period of time during product development. To better understand this sentence, draw a picture:

As shown above, activity creativity (or hook) is a means to achieve the purpose of the activity.

A common misunderstanding here is that when a festival comes or a hot topic occurs, people want to organize an event. Think about the activity ideas first and ignore the purpose of the activity.

The result is either that when you submit an activity plan, your boss asks you what the purpose of the activity is, and you are completely confused; or you have been doing the activity for a long time and have no idea what you are doing, as if you are just spending money to fool users.

Therefore, festivals and hot spots are just levers we can use. The key is to clarify the purpose of the event.

2. Activity Objectives

Activity goals are usually given by the boss or supervisor. They are all formulated with reference to the North Star indicators of the current product development stage (current business development priorities and goals) .

Regardless of the product development stage, the purpose of the activity may be to attract new customers, promote activation, marketing, and communication.

The target groups will be different according to the purpose of different activities, so let’s make a table:

3. How to understand the role of activities

Let me say a little more here. Activities as a means to promote the development of stretch products should not be excessive. For example, excessive marketing, random gifting of points, etc.

The red line represents the effect of activities, and the blue, green and yellow represent conventional growth methods.

For example: The relationship between activities as a means of attracting new customers and conventional growth channels should be like the picture above. Once an activity consumes too many users, it may destroy the long-term value of the product.

Just like the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", excessive activities will continue to reduce user trust. The decline in collective trust among Internet users in the past two years is closely related to excessive misleading activities.

2. How to generate more activity ideas

1. General activity collection

First, you need to understand what basic and common activities are. You can go to Renrenxiu, Yiqixiu, Tuzhan, Fanke... and other similar websites that provide marketing tools to check out the basic activities.

Figure: Screenshot of common activities

You can collect and build your own activity creative library. In specific activity ideas, we can choose to directly apply, superimpose and adapt (such as: sign-in + lottery) and other methods.

Industry-related events, hot topics, important festivals, etc. can all be used as leverage for activities.

Generally speaking, holiday hot topics will be mentioned on various platforms one month in advance, and will enter the incremental stage (i.e. the number of people discussing and paying attention will increase) 5-10 days before the holiday. The period from 3 days before the holiday to the holiday day will be the peak.

2. Analyze the hot sale activities cases

Pay more attention to the activities of some first-tier companies that are famous for their event innovation. For example, NetEase often organizes some highly disseminated activities. Also keep a close eye on the activities of competitors and peers.

Try to disassemble these activity cases. It is strongly recommended to do this yourself.

There are many data sets on the market that analyze cases of popular activities, operation case libraries, etc. But that is the analysis by others. Only by participating in these popular activities from beginning to end as a user can you truly learn the essence.

The dimensions of the analysis include but are not limited to: purpose of the activity, how to play the activity, user path, highlights of the activity, your own extended thinking, etc.

3. Creative Choices

In terms of the general direction, creative choices must correspond to the purpose of the activity. There are two more dimensions to check:

(1) Choose ideas based on the product development stage

In the early stages of product development, there are generally fewer activities, and the user base is small, so there is no need to hold activities frequently.

Because the most important thing in the initial development is to run the MVP, it is necessary to attract user groups that meet the product positioning. If you don’t have a good grasp of the activities, it will easily disperse the group of people using the product, affecting the subsequent optimization and precise product positioning.

Therefore, in the early stages of product development, when organizing activities, you need to give priority to activities that can allow targeted users to participate, such as giving away vertical field information.

If your product has a broad user base, you will have a wider range of targets and creative ideas to choose from. For example, the 2017 Douyin campaign of "shaking and shaking up world famous paintings" is a typical activity with the purpose of dissemination.

The broad target users do not mean random things. Think about why this activity is not about rural houses or village scenes - because Douyin's target users are working people and young people, and young people know better what "Mona Lisa" is.

I put several ideas together and compared them in a table:

(2) The specific creative content is consistent with the product tone

For example, regarding testing activities, the specific content of the questions will be different in different industries.

This is easy to understand, so I won’t go into details here.

4. About the selection of prizes

There are two core issues:

(1) Whether the gifts for an event are physical or virtual, they must match the user . After setting the prizes, you may want to ask yourself some key questions:

• Why should users participate in activities?
• Do users feel the urge to participate?
• Are the prizes attractive to users?
• Is the combination of prizes scientific and reasonable?
• Do I need to bring my own coupons?
• …

When choosing themes and gameplay, you must consider user value, find reasons, and anchor them to value points.

(2) Balance between activity complexity and participation enthusiasm.

It is not necessary to develop H5 yourself for the event. In principle, it is better to give priority to lighter events.

For example, lucky draws for forum posts and article comments are also very light forms of activities.

If the activity has a certain degree of complexity, it is necessary to strike a balance between user participation enthusiasm and complexity. The more complex the activity, the more difficult it is for users to understand, so be cautious.

3. Data Burial Points and Statistics

Data is very important. Without data, there will be no evaluation criteria and optimization references, so I will talk about it separately.

After the activity idea comes out, you should draw more user path maps and imitate user operations.

Look at the example below: After drawing the user path, the copywriting scenarios and key data required for each process will also appear. Make arrangements in advance for data that cannot be counted by tools or websites.

Figure: Example analysis of activity user path decomposition

During the event, you should check the user participation data of the event from time to time and do a good funnel analysis. Pay special attention to those data that fluctuate, are too large or too small:

For example, if 1,000 people click on the test, but only 200 to 300 people complete the test, this data may be problematic, because once users choose to participate in the activity, it means they have expectations for the creativity. The probability of completing the test is so low, there may be two reasons:

First, there are problems with the test questions: the content of the questions is not interesting to users, there are too many questions, there are questions about years and numbers, there are subjective questions, etc., which are not advisable;

Second, if there is a problem with the user's operation process, quickly find the developer or third-party tool customer service to resolve it.

In addition, the path map for users to participate in activities should be comprehensive, as users may enter the activities through different channels and paths.

Look carefully at the sharing path diagram below. How many are there?

4. Writing of activity plan

The program contents of the activity include but are not limited to:

• Purpose of the event: What is the reason and purpose of this event?
• Activity theme: Write the theme of your activity in one sentence.
• Target population: Special groups need to be pointed out.
• Activity time: Specific activity time.
• Activity rules: gameplay, rules, format? What are the prizes?
• Event promotion: On which free and paid channels will the event be promoted?
• Activity budget: List the resources and prizes required
• Expected effect: What is the expected effect of the activity? ROI? …

Generally, for Party A, the activity plan is internal and is submitted to superiors for approval or for discussion in meetings. There is no need to write in specific details, such as page copy for specific activities, and then do the specific details work after it is approved.

If you are providing a solution to Party B, you will also need to add more "presentation layer" things. For example, the advantages of resource channels, data evaluation, the awesome results of previous planning, specific creative demos, etc.

Let me talk about resource inventory & budget assessment separately:

Take inventory of resources, giving priority to free resources inside and outside the company and those you own. The budget assessment should be complete and the expenditure should have a clear range.

For example:

Small events are usually paid for by the client themselves and then reimbursed, while large events may require expense approval procedures and special event project establishment.

V. About the Implementation of Activities

1. Material preparation and demand communication

The material copy should be prepared as comprehensively as possible, including but not limited to:

1. Event-related copywriting: event title, copywriting on the event page, copywriting of event rules, copywriting of event publicity and promotion (announcements/text messages/WeChat articles, etc.), copywriting of various exposure entrances of the event, etc.;
2. Design the event page and communicate with designers to design materials; some channels may require two versions of AB testing;
3. Activity development and testing: If your activity requires H5 development, please contact the developer or product manager in advance to schedule it;
4. Prize purchase: Will the prizes be shipped directly after the event or do they need to be purchased on-site? How will they be packaged?

In addition to communicating with the above personnel, there may be other departments. For example, if your event is to bring in more leads, you need to greet customer service and sales. During the activity, make sure to report progress to your supervisor.

2. Execution Scheduling

That is, list all the materials needed to prepare for the activity in a table, mark the time, progress, and person in charge.

Make sure the other party knows exactly what he needs to cooperate with, what he needs to do, and when. What role do they play in the activity? What are the potential consequences of not meeting the deadline and how seriously your boss takes this matter.

Regarding horizontal communication management, please refer to this article: How to manage a small team of four or five people.

6. Review of the activity

First of all, in addition to the user participation path data mentioned above, the activity statistics also include data on the activity goals that are hoped to be achieved through this activity. Then, we will check, analyze, and summarize to form a closing report.

The above are what I think are the key points in event planning and execution.

Finally, I have listed a complete event planning flowchart for everyone, which can be used as a specific self-examination checklist.