Event operation: How to acquire 220,000 customers at 0 cost!

Taking a recent project as an example (Financial Verification), from July 2018 to September 2020, through more than two years, I gained nearly 220,000+ users on the entire network at almost zero cost.

In a single event, 3 WeChat accounts were added within 4 days, and 99.99% of them were accurate users.

Without spending any advertising money, we made 10% of the industry’s users know us through just one event...and so on.

Early in the process of doing the project, both team members and friends around me always found it difficult to obtain traffic. A sentence they often heard was: the traffic bonus is gone.

In addition, in the early stages of entrepreneurship, I believe that most entrepreneurs do not come from outstanding backgrounds, at least in terms of resources, so it will be even more difficult.

Has the traffic dividend really disappeared?

Is it becoming increasingly difficult to obtain low-cost products?

I want to say, no, opportunities are always there. I just think that this is caused by the fact that many teams are thinking in different directions or their awareness is not yet high enough.

Next, I will share my own traffic methodology with you without reservation based on the projects mentioned above, actual cases, and how I think every time I make a decision. I hope it can provide some small help to you.

1. Social fission

When it comes to acquiring users at low cost, social fission always comes first.

What exactly is social fission?

Simply put, it is a platform based on which users can communicate and connect with others, and then based on this platform, traffic is obtained through event planning and some operational strategies.

There are many such "platforms", such as: Weibo, WeChat, Zhihu, Douyin, Kuaishou, Tieba, WeChat groups, QQ groups, etc.

There are many similar articles on the market that are written to gain traffic. The most common ones are giving away books/gifts through Mission Bao, sharing on WeChat Moments, etc. But I believe that anyone who has been engaged in operations for more than half a year will know the methods mentioned above. You may also have doubts. It seems that the methods are all good and others have successful cases, but why does it not work when you do it yourself?

In my opinion, the main reason is that the team is not mature enough.

For someone who has just started to work in the traffic industry, they tend to do whatever they see and follow the crowd. Their attention is focused on the specific gameplay and execution level, and they usually ignore the most essential things, so the results are generally not ideal.

As for more mature traffic operators, they usually plan first and then act. After making effective actions based on the actual needs of users, the characteristics of the industry, and market analysis, they will focus on the specific execution part.

You will find that the two work in completely opposite ways. Next, I will explain it to you with representative real-world cases.

In October 2018, I led my team to organize an event, and we added 1,300 friends on WeChat in one day.

At that time, our initial users were less than 3,000 people, and these 3,000 people came through their previous interpersonal relationships and posted on WeChat Moments.

Since the products have not been finalized yet, the activity level and other indexes are particularly low.

This activity is mainly based on the principle of social fission, and aims to achieve growth by allowing users to forward posters through free courses.

Before this campaign, we had also conducted 3-5 similar campaigns and found that no matter what we did, users were unwilling to forward the content, and it ultimately ended in failure.

At that time, we also came to a conclusion that seems to be a wrong perception now, which is that users in this industry may be very concerned about their reputation and do not want others to know that they are preparing for the exam.

But looking back now, there were two reasons why this happened:

1. Low trust in institutions;

2. The user pain points are not accurately grasped .

Same fission mechanism, why did it succeed this time?

Specific analysis:

First of all, analyzing from an industry perspective, we belong to the financial certification sector.

If we divide it by certificates, there may be junior, intermediate, senior, CPA, tax accountant and other certificates. We found that some of the people here overlap, so talking about the topic of exams should be very effective.

But the result was a failure?

The reason is that in the early stages of a business, if the institution has no reputation and no good network effect, users are unlikely to come to listen to an unknown teacher talk about specific content. To put it in the words of a user: I can’t finish listening to the famous teachers’ classes, why should I listen to yours?

So at this time, I led the team to continue thinking, in addition to the rigid demand for certification, what other needs do users have that are worth exploring?

Next, we will analyze user needs.

We found that as working people, most of the demand for certification is for better employment, and October happens to be the industry recruitment cycle.

In order to verify that our ideas were more reliable, we also asked people to complete a simple questionnaire survey. The feedback was very good, so we adopted the theme of helping users find jobs for the event. The final result is as I just said, very good.

When doing fission activities in the early stages, you must analyze them from these three dimensions: time, user needs, and industry analysis.

Next, let’s talk about some specific implementation aspects.

There are many articles on the Internet about the specific implementation level, but I value these two aspects the most:

1. Poster

When doing fission on WeChat, posters are a very critical process, and their main responsibility is to spread the message.

① It should have a certain aesthetic taste, but not be too fancy, as it will distract users’ attention;

② The main title must be attractive enough to help users save time and stimulate their curiosity, because everyone has a voyeuristic mentality;

③ The main title must be large. As for how large it should be, I think the criterion is whether users can see the main title clearly before clicking on the picture when sharing it in WeChat groups and Moments. If they can, then it means it is in place.

④ The content logic should be clear, so that others can immediately know what the poster is about;

⑤ After users see the poster, the process of participating in the event should be smooth. The general path is: what to talk about - what is the outline - who will speak - how to participate.

2. Talking skills

Why is it rhetoric?

As mentioned before, all of our previous campaigns failed, partly because the ratio of users who responded to the campaign and those who forwarded the campaign was seriously disproportionate.

It is difficult for us to change the mechanism of the activity, so starting from the wording, we must have altruistic thinking .

Previous words:

Welcome to participate in the event, how to participate, forward the message…

Very stiff.

Adjusted wording:

Welcome to your successful registration for a certain event. In order to achieve better results for you, we have prepared a set of information for you. Please remember to save it. In addition, if you have friends who also have this need, we would like to ask you to share this event with them. If there are a large number of people participating in this event, our teachers will also be full of confidence. Below is the poster.

In the end, you will find that even though only a few words are changed, 80% of people are willing to send it to their friends .

All activities must be based on user needs.

Along this line, we later found many successful cases based on social fission.

for example:

21 days of early rising check-in camp, through 2 fissions, 17 days to fill up a WeChat account;

Get a book for 1 yuan and top up a WeChat account in 3 hours;

Traffic class, 7 days, more than 20,000 people participated

…

Here I would like to share with you a practical and practical method, which is mainly used to solve the problem of having no ideas when analyzing user pain points.

Using this chart, we compiled more than 1,000 demand tables.

Specific subject categories: how to learn accounting, how to learn the most important accounting, a summary of the most important accounting materials, 6 subjects...

Study tools: basic books, exercise books, sprint books, notebooks…

Study methods: exam preparation methods, exam preparation experience...

Other needs: other exam-related information, employment, habit formation, companionship...

Behavior and action: QQ group, Meituan, Dianping…

Time category: before and during the exam, find out what the user needs are each month, and make different products based on the user's learning progress

…

We will make different products based on different needs to obtain traffic at low cost.

In the later period (May 2020), we formed an ecosystem in the entire industry. Even if we did nothing and did not spend a penny, about 150 precise users would be added to our personal account every day.

You can also think about and organize that in your industry, the user demand echelon can be divided into several dimensions and what the corresponding needs are in each dimension. Once found, the efficiency of acquiring traffic in the early stage will be very high.

To summarize this part:

1. Analyze around user needs;

2. Conduct investigations to verify whether the analysis is reliable;

3. Use altruistic thinking to sort out activity paths.

The above is about social fission.

2. Content

Good content can always attract traffic.

The education industry cannot do without good content. The content referred to here is content in the form of pure text/pictures, which is mainly for the convenience of dissemination. Once you find a platform/channel that has a high degree of match with your user, you can quickly acquire accurate users.

On this basis, we used the Weibo channel without spending any money and gained nearly 10,000 users in one month.

Why did we choose Weibo instead of official accounts or other platforms?

Back to the users, the closer vocational education is to actual needs, the stronger the willingness to pay will be, and the higher the requirements for teachers will be.

In view of this, humans are inherently social animals, so in the examination ecosystem, teachers are the KOLs of the ecosystem. Wherever they are, there the crowd will be.

Similarly, you can also switch identities. If you are a candidate preparing for the exam, starting from scratch, you must first look for experience posts, methods, teachers, and institutions.

So Zhang Xiaolong once said that user thinking must be able to switch yourself into a naive user in a short period of time.

To obtain traffic through content operation, it is necessary to have good content, identify the key points according to the characteristics of each platform, and then make efforts to maximize the effect.

Here I share with you a universal formula that I have summarized:

Traffic = content × exposure × operation strategy.

Take Weibo as an example:

1. Content:

Produce good content according to user needs, such as learning methods, information summary, etc.;

2. Exposure:

How can we maximize exposure when we have no resources (no money, no people)? Study the platform mechanism. If there are topics on Weibo, users will naturally be gathered together. There are also Weibo groups of various teachers and KOLs.

3. Operation strategy:

The mechanism of topics is the same as that of Tieba. The first screen will always only show the latest news, which means that we only need to keep posting on top of topics where users are more active. (Some organizations have attracted many users by using only this trick)

The same is true for Zhihu. The operating strategies are different, but the thinking path is exactly the same. However, Zhihu’s ecosystem is mainly based on questions, so we only need to find more exposed questions.

I would also like to add here that there are also hot spots to focus on in vocational education. If you can grasp the hot spot well, it is possible to bring in hundreds of users in a day.

Let me share with you a real case:

A few years ago, we had a friend who spent a week specifically collecting information and highlights of a well-known teacher, and then posted it on Weibo @that teacher. A few hours later, the teacher not only liked his post, but also forwarded his Weibo. My friend gained thousands of users overnight.

Weibo also has a mechanism. If A likes B’s post, the liked post will appear in A’s information flow. Similarly, A's fans will see everything.

You can review the formula I just mentioned here, and I think you will have a new understanding.

Some people may ask, besides Weibo and Zhihu, can other platforms be used?

My answer is: Yes.

But you have to make judgments based on the stage your business is in and then focus on doing one thing.

For example, when there is neither money nor people in the early stage, it is too slow to create a public account.

Therefore, you must first be clear about what to do.

3. Personal IP

I used to think that personal IP was only important in the later stage of monetization, but later I found that IP construction must exist from the very beginning. It can help you solve many difficult problems for entrepreneurial companies, such as: cost, time, conversion, and traffic.

What is IP?

Simply put, it is the person in our company who uses a personal WeChat account. He can make users feel that he is a particularly reliable, professional and trustworthy person through his WeChat account.

Why do we need IP?

Help you save money on traffic and conversion. Most small organizations do not have their own APP, and most of them store traffic on their personal WeChat accounts.

The most important function of IP is to increase users' trust in the organization.

Once trust is established, no matter what fission activities you carry out, their participation rate will be extremely high. He is willing to help you invite your friends over without you even saying anything.

When the epidemic was severe in 2020, in order to ensure the company's revenue, I had to manage traffic myself.

At that time, I didn’t need any resources from the company, and I could still obtain traffic continuously without affecting revenue.

The core idea is to build your own IP in a short period of time and make a group of people trust you. By analyzing the needs of users, we can come up with some strategies that are beneficial to them, and use the method of old customers bringing in new customers to obtain accurate traffic.

For example: At that time, I felt that most of my users were working candidates. For working people, online learning has no atmosphere and they have relatively little time.

So I set up my own exam preparation group, serving in the group every day and organizing some of the information they wanted.

Then from time to time they would say that everyone can bring in the people around them, and later on they will automatically bring in all their friends around them.

Through IP construction (gaining user trust) - analyzing user needs (making operational plans and building groups) - bringing in new customers (obtaining accurate traffic)

Speaking of this, the first 1-2 sections are large-scale ways of gaining traffic, and the third section is a small-scale internal way of gaining traffic.

For small institutions, when there is no large influx of funds.

If you can connect every point, it will form an ecosystem, and it will be easy to form industry barriers, so in the later stage, it will be very easy to obtain traffic.

What everyone may be more interested in is how to build personal IP?

I think I can sum it up in one sentence:

Abandon the external methodology, there are not so many rules and regulations.

On the basis of creating revenue for the company, as an operator, you need to always think from the user's perspective. When you think of something good for the user, post it on your Moments so that users can clearly feel what kind of person you are.

The circle of friends is an efficient display platform, and private messaging/social networking are the best means to demonstrate personal charm.

4. Brand

Unlike the previous one, brand is difficult to define and is also a relatively long process.

What we want to talk about here is not how to build a brand, but to return to the topic and how to generate traffic through branding.

Brand is a subtle process that will continuously occupy the minds of users.

Brand is also a traffic amplifier.

In the actual operation of the company, this matter should be placed in the dimension of important but not urgent. Take my own summary of the company as an example:

Brand traffic = results × number of users × conversion cost

What's the meaning?

1. Results

In the education and training industry, the most valuable result is the pass rate.

The pass rate plays a vital role for entrepreneurial institutions in the first three years.

In order to ensure the pass rate, it must be implemented every day, including teaching, research, service, companionship, etc. This is a relatively long process.

If it is done well, and then exposed at critical moments through operational strategies, its power will be enormous.

For example, two commonly used methods:

(1) PR exposure;

(2) Referrals from old users.

2. Number of users

To be precise, it should be the network effect here, and the corresponding network effect should be productization. Looking back, if our products are used more and more by users within a year, at least a long-tail effect can be formed.

For example, if 100 people receive information within a year, if the information is indeed good, these 100 people will continue to spread it. If each document contains contact information and some operational strategies, it will be very helpful in terms of traffic;

3. Conversion Cost

This point should be whether the quality of one's own products is sufficient.

If 100 people have used our product and you ask them to switch to another product, if the cost paid by the user during the conversion process is smaller, then it means the conversion cost is lower.

If this happens, it will be difficult for organizations to retain users.

The above is my methodology for obtaining traffic in vocational education.

In fact, there are many ways to obtain traffic. In this process, there are two places that I value most:

The first is that no matter when, you must look for answers from users, otherwise you will always be swimming with a swimming ring.

The second is that there are many methods on the market, and you must plan before you act. After thinking clearly, you can then focus on doing certain things. If you want to do everything, you can accomplish nothing.

Author: Zhang Zijie

Source: Zhang Zijie