A Guide to Avoiding Pitfalls in Event Operations

Sales promotion is the most common means of online and offline marketing, and is also the activity that the public is most familiar with. Simply put, it is nothing more than discounts, price reductions, buy-one-get-one-free, and other related variations.

This is very common whether we are shopping in shopping malls or on e-commerce platforms. Are there any methods and techniques? What I want to say is that the final result of using promotional methods correctly and not using them can be more than ten times different.

I wonder if many stores have encountered many embarrassing things: I offered discounts, but the store traffic didn’t increase much; I held activities but users still didn’t buy in; I sold at a loss, but can I only make money by advertising?

Only by mastering the correct promotional methods can you drive users crazy and make the company profitable.

1. Selection of promotional products: high-frequency products with wide price recognition are more likely to impress people

Users' perception of price needs to be based on a full understanding of the product, especially for price-sensitive, high-frequency, and urgently needed products. Price promotions for products with low awareness cannot have a psychological impact on users.

Supermarkets like to use eggs and milk for promotions because a pound of eggs, a box of pure milk, these high-frequency products that are commonly used by everyone, users have a basic price perception because they buy them frequently. When the price is lower than the user's psychological price perception, it is easy for users to have the urge to buy; but if you use a product promotion with a chaotic price system, the effect will be discounted because users do not have a clear price perception of this product.

Therefore, choosing standard products with a broad price recognition base as promotional items is more meaningful and can attract more users' attention, thereby increasing users' recognition of the platform's promotional activities.

Promotional price < User psychological price = Purchase

Promotional price > User psychological price = Indifference

2. Understand the user's consumption level and value needs at different levels

The essence of commercial sales behavior is the process of products satisfying user needs. Every consumer consumes at his or her relative consumption level, and they often choose the cost-effective products they want to buy within the consumption range they can afford. Therefore, companies must first classify users, and it will be more meaningful to provide different forms of promotions to users at different consumption levels.

When buying liquor, some people like to look for value for money within 100 yuan, while others like to look for value for money wine over 1,000 yuan. People at different levels have different understandings of the value for money of products. People at a higher level pursue quality more, and the products they buy will match their consumption ability and social status. People at a relatively subsistence level pursue practical value. Therefore, the marketing department of an enterprise must fully understand the user consumption level of its platform, and satisfying user needs is the fundamental goal.

3. Promotion is a means, not an end; product selection strategy is the key

The ultimate goal of a sales promotion is to increase overall product sales through the activity and stimulate user enthusiasm for participation. Sales promotion is one of the means to achieve sales. When choosing promotional products, you must have a good product selection strategy, such as combining high-frequency products with high recognition with high-gross products with low price sensitivity. High-frequency products tend to have more transparent prices, making it easier for the audience to perceive the strength of the discount. At the same time, it drives high-gross products to increase corporate profits and offset marketing costs.

This is similar to what is often said on the Internet: the wool comes from the pig and the dog pays the bill. Through the use of high-frequency products with rigid demand, users can feel the cheapness of the platform products; thereby users will establish a mental perception that the platform is cheap, increase user stickiness, attract more traffic, and then make profits through high-grossing products and user lifetime value.

4. Promotion is not a magic weapon for success

The same promotional method should not be used frequently. If you use it occasionally, users will feel the sincerity of the activity. However, if you use it too often, users will think that your product prices are too high and that the promotional price is the real selling price. This will not be worth the loss. As the saying goes, too much is as bad as too little, which will make users lose their expectations for promotional activities.

The purpose of promotion is to attract users rather than to sell products at a low price. Frequent promotions will only sell products at a low price but will not bring in more high-quality users. Therefore, strategic promotions can create more sense of expectation and gain, and make users feel sincerity, thus enabling users to make friends.

Therefore, it is crucial to establish the asymmetric competitiveness of the platform, and promotional activities cannot solve this problem; what determines the development of the platform is the asymmetric competitiveness established among many competitors, and we must have products that others do not, have all that others have, and be better than others.

On this platform, users can find something that attracts them and is different from other platforms - this is the winning formula.

Asymmetric competitiveness: I have what others do not, I have all that others have, I am better than others

Capture the hearts of users: have a sense of anticipation, a sense of achievement, and make friends

5. High discounts are the norm, and it is increasingly difficult to experience freshness

A platform should pay attention to giving users more freshness and experience no matter whether it organizes activities online or offline, and should not always use the same format. Shaping the atmosphere of the event, enhancing user interaction, stimulating user demand, and inspiring user desire are the effects that an event should have. Strategic planning can be carried out in terms of vision, interaction, service, and product updates to make users feel that this is a surprise prepared for them rather than a simple product promotion.

At present, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain a sense of novelty, and high-discount promotions have become a common practice on major platforms, with discounts ranging from 20% to 30% off, to 0 yuan purchases, and many other forms. At the beginning, it had a great psychological impact on consumers, but now everyone is used to it and it has become a normalized form.

This requires that the product pricing system needs to be more complete and able to support various forms of promotional needs; at the same time, it also forces companies to integrate their supply chains and strive for greater product and service advantages.

6. The simpler the promotional means, the more effective they are

In terms of promotion methods, many platforms will use compound promotions, with multiple methods coexisting. The process is very complicated, with many links, and users are confused; they can't figure out how to get a better deal. Promotions that make people feel headache are not user-friendly and will affect the purchasing decisions of many users.

Users are often in a state of blind obedience and are too slow to do complex mental work. If you can let them enjoy the discount happily and simply, don't make it too complicated.

Less is More

7. Always think from the user’s perspective

The purpose of promotional activities is to build the relationship between users and platforms and to deliver effective information to users. When conducting activities, we must stand from the user's perspective, understand the user's psychological needs, and understand the user's behavioral data; we must shift the idea of ​​simply selling products to the idea of ​​providing users with solutions to their needs. Such promotions will be more targeted and easier to achieve results.

Author: forwarding

Source: Forwarding