How to plan a “premeditated” event marketing?

Event marketing is highly timely and sporadic. In actual operations, we must achieve a comprehensive understanding, quickly adjust strategies, and implement them quickly. The article analyzes event marketing in different situations, summarizes several key issues that need attention, and shares them with everyone.

Event marketing can also be called hot event marketing.

Based on people’s social attributes, everyone will chase hot topics. In the era of media centralization, hot events often become topics of national concern. Hot events, like a stone dropped into the water, will cause ripples and trigger multi-layered communication effects.

In most cases, event marketing falls within the scope of marketing work, so marketers will pay special attention to hot events and always think about taking advantage of the opportunity to promote their brand. Do you need to master event marketing skills to do performance marketing? I think it is necessary.

From the perspective of traffic, hot spots = user attention = traffic.

As long as it is a way of gaining traffic, it is worth studying and exploring by operators. Event marketing does not require heavy investment in manpower and financial resources. It usually creates a national topic with low cost and makes a big event.

So, how to plan a “premeditated” event marketing?

1. Conventional event marketing to create hot spots

In addition to the right time and place, what is more important for event marketing is to plan the event and implement it in advance. When hot topics come, we must respond quickly and follow the most contagious topics.

A talent show variety show made the word "koi" a hot topic. In September 2018, Alipay followed the trend and launched the "Wish You Become China's Koi" campaign. This campaign touched the nerves of many marketers. The Koi campaign was another successful event marketing campaign of Alipay after the "Collect Five Blessings during the Spring Festival".

The main battlefield of the Alipay Koi event is Weibo. Let’s first review the entire process of the event. First, the official account of Alipay posted a Weibo about forwarding a Weibo post to win a chance to win a Chinese Koi. Then hundreds of brand owners participating in the event forwarded it within an hour. In just one day, the number of reposts exceeded 1 million, and the cumulative number of reposts in the later period reached 3 million. The topic continued to ferment, and subsequent media and big Vs spread it spontaneously. Related topics of Alipay Koi also entered the Weibo hot search list many times, gaining hundreds of millions of exposures, and the popularity of the event lasted for nearly a month.

Alipay launches the "Chinese Koi" lottery event

Before the event went online, Alipay did not do any warm-up on Weibo. But why can such an explosive spread effect be produced in a short period of time? There are two main reasons:

First, the hot spots are well grasped

At that time, as the variety show continued to be popular, it created many hot topics that netizens chased. Among them, "koi" became a hot word on social platforms, and many brands began to promote "koi". Alipay also firmly grasped this hot opportunity.

If it is just a simple content creation, the subsequent communication effect will not be produced. In fact, Alipay has given a second interpretation to "Koi". "Koi" not only represents the yearning for good luck, but also represents the luck of actually being able to receive surprise rewards. This new interpretation of hot topics has created an exciting "koi list" that is endless.

Second, the preliminary preparation work should be sufficient

The prize for the only "Chinese Koi" is quite luxurious, covering all aspects of food, clothing, daily necessities and transportation. There are hundreds of brands participating in the sponsorship. In this event, Alipay's business development capabilities were still very strong. Not only did it bring back so many rewards, but it also invited brands to repost on Weibo to build momentum for the event. It can be seen that Alipay had made sufficient preparations for the event content and promotion methods before the event went online.

Therefore, when a hot topic comes, being able to grasp it and convert it into traffic requires careful planning. Only a "substantial" activity strategy can produce an explosive communication effect in event marketing.

2. Leverage marketing to seize immediate hot spots

1. Vatti’s 2018 World Cup “Win ​​the Championship and Get a Refund” event marketing

The biggest marketing dark horse that emerged during the 2018 World Cup was Vatti.

Do you still remember the event "If France wins the championship, Vatti will refund the full amount"? On July 1, the French team unexpectedly defeated Argentina and advanced to the quarterfinals. Vatti's marketing rhythm immediately entered a white-hot state. This marketing campaign was launched at this time. Vatti immediately became the focus of public attention. For several consecutive days, content related to "Vatti refund" rushed into the Sina Weibo hot search list. Not only that, it has also triggered continued attention and coverage of this event from the news media. As the World Cup continues, whether Vatti will really refund the money has become a hot topic of discussion among the public.

From the perspective of traffic alone, Vatti's timely follow-up of hot topics and unconventional marketing strategy have indeed achieved good results. During the World Cup, it stood out from seven Chinese sponsors, bringing huge attention and product sales to the brand.

According to Vatti's announcement, from June 1, 2018 to July 3, 2018, Vatti's online and offline channel sales reached 1 billion yuan, a significant year-on-year increase, and the cost of the championship package accounted for less than 10% of the company's sales.

Just imagine, if Vatti simply provided brand sponsorship for the World Cup, it would be difficult for it to stand out among the many big brand sponsors and achieve such large sales. Against the backdrop of the World Cup, Vatti's marketing campaign took a different approach, creating another highly controversial hotspot, attracting the attention of fans and ordinary users on a large scale.

2. Shenzhou’s 2015 “BeatU, I’m afraid of black cars” event marketing

Earlier, UCAR’s “BeatU, I’m afraid of black cars” marketing campaign became a typical case of event marketing.

In 2015, the online car-hailing business was in full swing in China, and the competition among Uber, Didi and Kuaidi was particularly fierce. At that time, UCAR established a differentiated product selling point - "safety", so in June it launched a public welfare topic event "BeatU, I'm afraid of black cars" and invited some celebrities to endorse it. Approaching the issue from the perspective of user pain points and saying no to “illegal taxis” in the user’s tone can quickly arouse emotional resonance among target users. .

It has to be said that this event marketing spent very limited costs and brought a large number of users and orders to Shenzhou Special Car.

Data released by industry media showed that the UCAR WeChat official account added more than 200,000 followers that day, with the peak number of coupons redeemed approaching 20,000 per minute. The number of new daily users of Shenzhou Special Car increased by more than 10 times year-on-year, and the number of new users continued to increase by more than 3 times year-on-year.

The "BeatU, I'm afraid of illegal private cars" communication campaign successfully raised Shenzhou's public awareness, achieved mental positioning of Shenzhou's private car safety appeal, and successfully attracted many consumers to experience Shenzhou's high-quality private car service. It was a successful communication campaign that emphasized both public relations and effectiveness.

Developing marketing strategies by directly attacking the opponent's weaknesses is extremely controversial in China, because this strategy is "aggressive" and "confrontational" and can easily lead to a public relations crisis. However, such marketing cases of "fighting" between brands are very common abroad. For example, the marketing war between Coca-Cola and Pepsi lasted for nearly a hundred years, and many marketing activities were about talking about the opponents. The fight between competing brands can attract the attention of users and the media. Regardless of who wins or loses in the end, for both parties involved, gaining attention and traffic is real.

3. Durex’s event marketing philosophy

Many people say that Durex’s content is good. From another perspective, Durex is also unique in event marketing. Durex’s official Sina Weibo account always follows hot topics, and does a great job of following them.

Taking advantage of festivals is a very common tactic in event marketing. Many people who do marketing have their own "marketing calendar". For Durex, its "marketing calendar" is packed with activities, and almost no holidays are missed. In addition, Durex will follow up on many immediate hot topics. To the extent that later on, whenever a major event occurred, marketers would first check out what Durex’s official Weibo had posted to absorb creative ideas and inspiration.

On Thanksgiving Day in 2017, Durex’s official Weibo account released a series of brand-co-branded Thanksgiving posters. As soon as the Weibo post was released, it received links from brands such as Wrigley, Dove, and Snickers on Weibo. For a time, the marketing circle was in an uproar, and many brands joined the "Brand Gratitude" joint action, creating a lot of high-quality communication content.

Durex is able to keep up with hot topics and continuously output creative content. Whether it is posters or copywriting, a common technique is to humanize products and brands, cleverly integrating current hot topics with product selling point information.

Three elements of Durex event marketing philosophy:

1. When hot spots emerge, strike while the iron is hot and take the initiative
2. Always think about brand leverage
3. Create anthropomorphic content to make it more topical and spreadable

Durex Thanksgiving Hot Marketing Advertisement

4. Events without traffic are not good events

We have discussed several typical cases of event marketing above. While creating brand communication effects, they also contributed traffic to the brand. The traffic here includes but is not limited to new users/fans, orders, sales, etc. For traffic operators, event marketing that only brings volume but no traffic is not what we want.

Returning to the essence of traffic, let’s look at event marketing again. You will find that it is not that simple to achieve results through event marketing.

1. Three basic attributes of a good event

(1) Strong topicality

Whether an event can spread requires a broad mass base. A topical event is most likely to spread naturally among users. The breadth and depth of an event's dissemination is often determined by users' attention and is related to the heat of the topic discussion. If a topical event is "substantial" or has a "hot spot", it will be spread quickly. For example, common and easily spreadable topical events include: holiday activities, special weather, large-scale events, entertainment activities, people's livelihood issues, new technologies, new discoveries, celebrity anecdotes, etc.

Users' curiosity is the primary motivation for topic spread.

(2) Communication media

Only a few incidents can be presented to the public, and many incidents are spread within a small range.

In the communication class in college, we talked about the three elements of communication: communicator, communication content, and communication media. I still remember this vividly. Among them, the communication medium is a key factor in whether an event can be spread.

Since the advent of the Internet, the scope and efficiency of event dissemination have been greatly improved. However, even today when the Internet is so developed, there are still many communication "black holes", and the existence of these "black holes" has a lot to do with the media. For example, hot events in forums and BBS will basically be spread within this medium, limited to specific "circles" and groups of people, and the communicators and information receivers are basically the vertical audience of this section. However, many hot events on Weibo will break through Weibo's single communication medium and spread to media channels and WeChat, easily entering the public eye. This depends on the openness of the information dissemination platform. Weibo is a mass communication medium where topics can overflow; whereas forums are vertical communication platforms where topics are relatively niche.

(3) Associate with brand products

A good event marketing must be associated with its own brand and product information, otherwise it will just be "self-entertainment".

For example, when Beijing was hit by heavy rain, Durex posted a Weibo post saying that if you put Durex on your shoes, you don’t have to worry about water getting in, thus combining the rainproof and leak-proof selling points of Durex products. An ordinary hot spot has a wide-ranging dissemination effect because of its interesting combination with the brand's selling points.

Some events are quite special and cannot be touched lightly. For example, for hot events such as politics, security incidents, natural disasters, etc., do not try to do event marketing because they are related to the legal system and morality. This type of topic is quite sensitive and can easily lead to trouble if you are not careful.

2. How can event marketing quickly increase sales?

(1) Finding a unique “tipping point”

After every event occurs, it will be subject to various interpretations by the public in the dissemination of public opinion. How to find a unique and positive interpretation point is the key to event marketing.

At the beginning of 2013, the continuous competition between the two brands, Wanglaoji and Jiaduobao, magnified the effect of the "dispute over the pioneers of herbal tea" several times and became a hot topic among the public. Initially, public opinion was not favorable to Jiaduobao. However, on February 14, Jiaduobao released a series of "Sorry" posters on its official Weibo account, using apologies and self-deprecation to show weakness to the public and expose its own scars. The direction of public opinion changed accordingly, and it immediately gained the sympathy and attention of a large number of users, and the public began to have a new emotional understanding of Jiaduobao. This "emotional card" effectively narrowed the distance between consumers and the Jiaduobao brand, and took a different approach to plan a highly disseminated event marketing.

(2) Clever product placement

Only by embedding brand and product content into hot events can a traffic-generating effect be achieved.

In 2003, after the successful launch of the Shenzhou V spacecraft, many brands released posters to promote and congratulate the event. At this time, one company did a differentiated marketing campaign, and that company was Mengniu. As a cooperative enterprise that supplies dairy products exclusively for astronauts, Mengniu formulated an event marketing plan for "Mengniu Dairy Products for Chinese Astronauts" after the launch of Shenzhou V. By embedding the high-quality positioning of its own products into the publicity of aerospace events, Mengniu established the high-end positioning of the brand.

(3) Place attractive “bait”

After satisfying the “explosive point” and content implantation, the most important step in event marketing is to ensure the final traffic conversion.

How to convert volume into sales? An effective way is to place conversion bait.

The Shenzhou "BeatU, I'm afraid of illegal private cars" incident mentioned above added private car coupons as bait, and as the incident spread, the coupons were also distributed.

Event marketing is highly timely and sporadic. In actual operations, we must achieve a comprehensive understanding, quickly adjust strategies, and implement them quickly. If an event does not bring about an increase in brand or traffic, then we need to think about whether it is necessary to spend energy and financial resources on this event.

Author: Yiwen

Source: Rushiyiwen