4 types of marketing activities that are most likely to go viral!

There is another type of activity that is driven by satisfying users' higher-level psychological needs. For example, a Heartbeat Laboratory activity launched by the well-known social experiment self-media "Probability Theory" satisfies users' psychological needs such as curiosity, playfulness, conformity, respect, and personality. It eventually gained 500,000 followers and became famous.

Of course, activities that meet users' higher-level psychological needs also frequently appear in major companies such as Zhihu and NetEase.

In this sharing of the four most effective communication marketing cases, the underlying logic from the perspective of user psychological needs is actually quite simple, and there are roughly two categories:

A. The activity itself satisfies the user's higher-level psychological needs such as personality and dignity;

B. When activities cannot meet higher-level psychological needs, strive to innovate to make the activity more effective. This is mainly reflected in the setting of "activity rules", that is, sharing is generally required to proceed to the next step. The setting of this "sharing" mechanism is the most challenging part for operators, because users are easily dissatisfied with "forced sharing" mechanisms.

Below, I will share with you 4 categories of 7 most common and also the most effective cases of using sharing activities to achieve brand exposure or product marketing operational indicators. In terms of activity form, they are roughly classified into four categories: sharing rewards, daily tasks, social laboratories, and viral spread .

Appendix: To understand users, you need this "User Psychological Needs Table" ( old version )

1-1 Share to get rewards: Open the gift box

1) Definition

As the name suggests, opening a gift box means that the operation staff plans a "gift box" that users will like and be happy to share with friends based on their own product positioning or main business operation indicators. This gift box is the reward that the user wants, which can be virtual or physical. Activity indicators are generally intended to promote activity and share new users.

2) Gameplay

Opening the gift box looks similar to what we usually see, but it is not. To open a gift box, a user wants to receive the prize in the gift box. He needs to invite friends to help. When a certain number of users help, he can get the prize in the gift box.

However, given that this type of gameplay is too prevalent, it is neither new to users nor they are worried about disturbing their social circles of acquaintances, so this type of gift box opening gameplay is difficult to catch users' attention.

We need to transform the “unpacking gift boxes” and create a marketing campaign that users are happy to share and can achieve operational results.

3) Case

Do you "open a gift box" when a user wants a prize, and then shares it with friends to open it and get the corresponding reward?

No, or we can keep up with the times!

The next case to be shared is a gift box opening activity with the theme of "Good Luck and Gifts in Your Wallet". The core indicators are divided into two parts. The APP focuses on promoting activation, while the WeChat public account focuses on attracting new users.

How can we optimize it to make users more willing to share and have more fun?

To address this issue, in terms of the APP, the author adopted a simple method of continuous sign-in to open the gift box, and in terms of the WeChat public account, the author combined the gameplay of group buying.

Group leaders can get experience money (financial management experience money, which can be withdrawn in the end) when they start a group, but how can they share it? We have set up a level for the team leader similar to that of a game - there are a total of 5 small groups with different levels, with groups of 5, 20, 50, 80 and 100 people. There will be different rewards for unlocking each group.

When the team leader shares the gift box with friends, friends who help open the gift box will also receive experience gold rewards. Therefore, this innovative way of playing allows the team leader to share with friends continuously like leveling up and killing monsters, because the more the team leader dismantles, the richer the reward, thus achieving the effect of continuous fission.

At the same time, friends who open the gift boxes will also receive rewards.

Of course, friends who open the gift boxes can also open their own group in the name of "distributing their own gift boxes", and then continue to split the group leaders.

4) Summary

It’s 2020 now, can we still have fun opening gift boxes? To be honest, the effect of simply opening gift boxes is average, but this communication model is still worth inheriting. As long as we make reasonable modifications, we can also achieve better results.

In the case of "Good Luck and Gifts in Your Wallet", the WeChat public account gained approximately 7,000 users, with new users accounting for 30.2% of the participation. From the perspective of satisfying users' psychological needs, it is still remarkable, such as: taking advantage, laziness, fear of losing, love of play, following the crowd, comparison, etc. This way of playing also once caused users to cheat through third-party channels.

Therefore, this is also a great lesson for the author. How should we avoid these wool-pulling behaviors?

By that time, the activity had already been launched and had produced obvious results. Taking various factors into consideration, it was impossible for it to be suddenly taken offline.

We let the technology provide timely feedback of user data in the background, and when the cost of an activity reaches the threshold at that time, we will go offline. Until the end, we compared the data and found that the proportion of users who took advantage of the opportunity was not high, so the activity remained online before the specified time.

To avoid such accidents, we can adopt a user reward threshold, which can be used as a flow-limiting measure to remind users to take a break once the threshold is reached. An even more advanced way to play is to set up a "reward mechanism", that is, the invited friends need to download the APP to receive the reward before the group leader can withdraw the reward.

1-2 Share to get rewards: Double the rewards

1) Definition

The main reason for doubling the reward is that the sharing reward mechanism increases the number of shares and the uncertain doubling of rewards can be obtained after sharing. For example, the case shared with you here - "Year after Year of Abundance" is from the Spring Festival of 2019. Alipay launched an interactive activity with the theme of "Year after Year of Abundance" in the money fund special project, Yu'ebao. It is an interactive game activity with prizes aimed at promoting user activity and attracting new users.

2) Gameplay

I believe many of my friends have played it. Next, let’s review how to play it. During the countdown time, click the cursor button to make the fish jump up. After jumping over the dragon gate, you will have a chance to win a prize. The same user has three initial jumping opportunities and has the opportunity to increase the corresponding number of game times by completing designated tasks. Activity rules: (as shown below)

3) Case

From the entire event process, we can see that it is particularly simple to get rewards just by clicking the cursor. In the program settings, the height of the fish jump is determined by controlling the speed of clicking the cursor. This experience can well motivate users.

According to the rules of the game, each user has three chances in the invitation phase. After the chances are used up, they can get up to 1 million yuan in experience money by inviting friends, or they can get game opportunities by completing designated tasks.

Prizes Page

Like many investment and financial management platforms, the experience money obtained by users through activities is automatically distributed to the user's account. If users want to use it, they need to operate it themselves to obtain benefits.

4) Summary

From the perspective of the entire activity and the innovative gameplay, there seems to be nothing remarkable. It is also a common mini-game, but its gameplay is very simple and does not make users feel boring. On the contrary, it can successfully mobilize users' enthusiasm for participation because the fish will jump to different heights as the user continues to click the cursor, which makes users feel fun.

The author believes that what is worthy of praise for this event is the reward setting.

Generally speaking, the trial period for trial money is 7 days, but this time the trial period for Alipay is only 3 days.

Won’t users think Alipay is stingy? They are very smart. They directly expanded the amount of experience money reward to balance the shortcoming of the short experience period, and made the experience money reward the biggest highlight of this event. Most users will be tempted by the experience money reward of hundreds of thousands or millions.

What do you think are the lessons we can learn from this case?

2. Complete tasks every day: receive cash every day

1) Definition

The category of daily tasks refers specifically to activities with a longer cycle, and the activity mechanism set in the activity allows participation every day. This type of activity is common in Internet products. Its characteristic is that it is a communication activity that can be cashed out and combines multiple operational purposes such as attracting new users, active users, and retaining users. From the perspective of the long-tail effect, this type of activity makes full use of the fragmented time of users.

Here I would like to share with you an activity called “Get Cash Every Day” from Pinduoduo.

2) Gameplay

At the beginning, this method of gameplay was only used on e-commerce platforms, comprehensive information media platforms, or in the form of activities on WeChat public accounts. Thanks to the good results of this method of gameplay, it is now being used by more and more products.

On e-commerce platforms, cash rewards are generally used to stimulate existing active users to invite new friends to participate in activities, ultimately achieving the goal of attracting new users; on comprehensive information media, the user's reading time is converted into cash, which can be withdrawn to the account balance, ultimately achieving the goal of increasing activity.

3) Case

How to play Pinduoduo

Why do I want to share the Pinduoduo case here? As we all know, Pinduoduo is currently the most famous for group buying. The author hopes that through sharing, everyone can be inspired.

A The inviter opens the "Get Cash Everyday" activity page, clicks "Open" the red envelope, and gets a small cash red envelope. A pop-up window prompts: Invite friends to help speed up cashing.

After sharing to the group/WeChat friends, you can open the second red envelope. (Clearly inform users that they will receive rewards if they share again, but don’t tell them the specific amount. After users receive it once and get a taste of the sweetness, the sense of surprise and mystery is maintained to stimulate their interest. People will think, “Will the reward be even bigger if I share it again?”) This satisfies the user’s mentality of taking advantage and curiosity.

After sharing again, a pop-up window will pop up on the page:

The user will be reminded that they still need XX yuan to withdraw, which will again encourage the user to continue sharing. (The introductory copy has changed to further imply that users can get cash bonuses, stimulating users to continue sharing.)

There will also be a scrolling reminder in the upper left corner of the page, saying that XXX has withdrawn XX yuan, constantly reminding users that this goal is achievable and the withdrawal is absolutely real, in order to encourage users to be happy to share.

B The invitee receives the invitation link with the title: Please click for me, and you can get cash with me. The subtitle of the link is: 0 threshold for withdrawal, and the payment will be made when the number of people is full.

This detail is also worth studying. First of all, it conveys several messages to the invitees: a. It is a friend’s share, so it’s okay to give him a thumbs up; b. I can also get cash if I click it, so should I click it or not? c. The withdrawal threshold is not disclosed. This is actually the first step to try and reduce the user's participation cost.

When the invitee clicks on the link, he or she will start to repeat the actions of the inviter. In any case, a group of people will share and open the red envelopes together. In this way, the purpose of communication is achieved.

Isn't this just throwing money around?

Yes, but although Pinduoduo’s way of spending money is a bit rough, it is still quite effective. Because while Pinduoduo has set a low sharing threshold, the withdrawal threshold is relatively high. (As shown in the picture, the threshold for cash withdrawal is 5 yuan, but the average cash withdrawal is only 0.5 yuan each time, which means that you need to spread the message to 10 users and help them open the red envelope.)

How to play Taojiji

Taojiji is an e-commerce dark horse that has been frequently mentioned in the operation circle in recent months (mid-to-late 2019) and has attracted nearly 100 million users in just 6 months since its launch.

In fact, when it comes to user growth, Pinduoduo, which has been established and listed for less than three years, has long been known to be "fast". We also know that its rapid growth is inseparable from the massive number of WeChat users.

Now there is a platform that is growing faster than Pinduoduo. Without a traffic platform like WeChat as a backer, what does it rely on for its counter-cyclical growth?

Simply imitating others will only lead to mediocrity. Since Taojiji is a new online e-commerce platform with an astonishing growth rate, it must innovate.

The author specifically compares three products: Pinduoduo, JD Pinduoduo and Taojiji. Compared with Pinduoduo and JD Pinduoduo, Taojiji introduced the "red envelope" model. Users can get a supporting red envelope after placing an order on the platform. After sharing and inviting friends to help, users can withdraw the red envelope.

At the same time, friends who participate in the support will also receive a red envelope.

This model, in which both the task initiator and the helper can receive rewards, is obviously more popular with users. According to relevant data, the probability of active sharing under this reward model is 60% higher than that of group buying. It is precisely because of the gameplay of helping red envelopes that Taojiji's customer acquisition cost is about 25% of other special sale e-commerce apps.

What is even more noteworthy is that Taojiji has improved the red envelope receiving model and added a "cash withdrawal" function. This means that every effective sharing by users can earn real cash benefits and monetize their network.

Specifically, any red envelopes received after purchasing goods can be withdrawn after sharing with friends for support. The key point worth noting is that after friends successfully help, they can get cash that can be withdrawn, rather than shopping vouchers, which greatly increases shoppers' desire to share.

Although the withdrawal function button is on the third-level page of the platform and the entrance is not obvious, 210,000 users triggered the withdrawal demand on the first day of the launch. In this way, Taojiji solved the problems of attracting new users and launching new products in disguise.

Whether it is Pinduoduo, JD.com or Taojiji, they have all deeply realized that there is no such thing as "outside the Fifth Ring Road", there are only users whose needs are not met. Small cities below the third tier are in the midst of a mobile Internet growth trend. Whoever can serve them well will be one step ahead.

4) Summary

In addition to the sharing method of "earning cash every day", there are also common group buying methods such as "help to get a free order", "bargain and get it for free", and "help to join a free group".

The author suggests that if you are interested, you can download Pinduoduo, JD.com and Taojiji to experience the sharing process yourself and think about its sharing logic. By the way, there is also Qutoutiao, which has been very popular in the past two years. It also uses this simple and crude way of spending money to share and spread the word.

"The world is bustling with people, all for the sake of profit. The world is bustling with people, all for the sake of profit." As long as you can give users enough concessions, you can achieve very strong growth in a short period of time. This is a growth logic that has been repeatedly verified, and in the future, this growth logic will continue to be repeated.

However, a typical trend shown by products in recent years is "born from attracting new users, died from retention". Giving users certain short-term value and letting them use the product for a period of time is not a big problem, but how to keep users staying will ultimately depend on whether users can get enough value from the product.

At the beginning of this year, Toutiao changed its slogan from "What you care about is the headlines" to "Information creates value." In a sense, this proves the point. In the long-term competition among all products, only those products that can continuously create value can truly survive.

3 Social Lab

1) Definition

Social laboratory is a large category, and is an activity type with strong social attributes (requiring in-depth interaction between both parties in the social circle).

Here is a classic case to share with you - "Heartbeat Laboratory" is a social case that went viral on WeChat Moments at the end of October 2018 under the WeChat public account [Probability Theory]. The case gained 500,000 followers for the public account in 48 hours, which is an extremely rare case in WeChat public account traffic generation in the past two years.

2) Gameplay

In the Heartbeat Experiment (I will do xxx for you, the xth person who clicks on it), user A first selects the experiment he wants, such as being his/her girlfriend/boyfriend for a day, and then sets the xth user to open the link. After the setting is completed, user A can share it with friends or to WeChat groups. In this way, user A will have the opportunity to conduct a thrilling experiment with the xth user who opens the link he set.

For more detailed gameplay, you can take a look at the following experimental process.

3) Case

On the homepage of the heartbeat experiment, select the experimental project: for example, call him/her to wake up, sing to him/her, draw an avatar for him/her... Set the interactive users: the Xth person who opens it will become your experimental subject.

Experiment sharing page

Waiting for experimental users: Share with friends and start waiting for target users. Target users appear: Target users open the experimental page and the two begin to interact.

4) Summary

According to relevant information, 10 minutes after the event was launched, the backend was paralyzed due to the excessive number of participants; 48 hours after going online, the event PV (page views) exceeded 30 million, and the number of participants reached 6 million, bringing 500,000 new fans to the official account "Probability Theory".

The reason why the "Heartbeat Experiment" has achieved such good results can still be concluded from the satisfaction of users' psychological needs. The case mainly satisfies users' psychological needs such as curiosity, love of play, personality, and following the crowd.

Another reason is that the activity has a strong social attribute and is a basic need for social chatting. After many people have tried it once, they will forward it many times and play it repeatedly. In terms of user level, 80% of the users who participated in the "Heartbeat Experiment" were born after 1995. The author believes that this is because users who have been in the workplace for a relatively long time will have a weakened desire for socializing in this regard, and the activity still has an element of risk, so it is really unknown who will be selected, and they may not be as receptive as those born after 1995.

As time goes by, those born after 1995 have already stepped out of school and entered the society, and they have quickly become the main consumer force in the market. This activity, which is very popular among those born after 1995 and even the millennials, should be taken seriously not only for social products but for every product in an era when everyone is scrambling for traffic.

Social interaction projects represented by the "heartbeat experiment" are definitely worthy of our careful discussion and research.

4-1 Viral spread: Counting money

1) Definition

Before we begin, let’s talk about what kind of activities are called “viral transmission?” Before answering this question, we need to understand the underlying logic of viral transmission:

General communication funnel:

This communication funnel is based on a platform with a certain number of users. It is a process of converting a part of the traffic users into communication users (or monetization users) by planning activities.

Viral funnel:

In the viral funnel, viral activities are planned to allow some truly loyal users to bring more shares to the platform, thereby achieving exponential growth in the number of users (or marketing indicators).

Therefore, the underlying logic of viral transmission is to first understand the details of those loyal users, and then make targeted plans to solve the pain points that they urgently need to solve, or create new demands for these users, so that users can become addicted naturally and share the idea of ​​spreading the virus while becoming addicted.

Viral communication can be a news event, a picture, a video, a piece of information, or an activity or a product, which spreads rapidly from one source to another.

2) Gameplay

In fact, according to the above understanding, the early QQ, WeChat a few years ago, today's Douyin, Pinduoduo, Taojiji, etc. are all products with viral properties. They basically have the ability to solve pain points and make users addicted, and their user growth is also growing exponentially.

Next, I will share with you a case with a viral effect - Suishouji: 100,000,000 cash, as many as you count.

3) Case

How to play with this 100 million in cash? How to interact with users? How to achieve the effect of viral transmission?

Let’s see how to play Casual Notes. You need to count the money. The 100 million yuan requires 1 million 100-yuan notes. These are real money, so users can count until their hands cramp. From the screenshots below, we can see that the money counting competition was held on-site, and live broadcast was also used to synchronize the lively atmosphere of the event on the Internet.

According to relevant data, this money counting competition attracted 1,057,690 users to watch and interact in real time, and the live broadcast popularity ranked first!

4) Summary

Note: 100,000,000 cash, count as many as you want and get as much as you want

First of all, it has already attracted a wave of onlookers offline. From the police protection at the scene to the live broadcast of beautiful internet celebrities, the user money counting competition has not only attracted the attention of the onlookers, but also achieved brand exposure while endorsing the authenticity of the event. In terms of user psychological needs, it takes advantage of people's desire for "money" and satisfies users' psychological needs for addiction and love of play.

The author is wondering, what conditions must be met for an activity to become a viral phenomenon? In addition to the underlying logic of viral spread and meeting user needs at the tactical level of activities mentioned above, activities with novel gameplay are more likely to achieve viral spread, because attracting users' attention is the first step to gaining a larger user base.

4-2 Viral Spread: Alipay Koi

1) Definition

Koi, a popular internet term. Refers to everything related to good luck: such as lucky people, or things that can bring good luck.

"Alipay Koi" is a lottery event launched on Weibo on September 29, 2018.

2) Gameplay

The gameplay of the Alipay Koi event is different from the general Weibo lottery gameplay. The general gameplay is to set up 3-5 prizes for prizes, and then set a unified lottery time. Finally, the system automatically draws several winning users according to the conditions set for the event.

"Alipay Koi" only has one winning user, and as long as you forward the event Weibo, you will have the chance to win the reward. That is to say, only one person can win the prize, and the lucky user drawn is the legendary koi. The prizes are provided by many well-known brands around the world, and the categories basically cover clothing, food, housing, transportation, entertainment and fun. Relevant sources revealed that the total value of the prizes is about 1 million RMB.

3) Case

Alipay's operations team is full of creativity and drama. How did they perform in this "Alipay Koi" campaign? Let’s review: Data shows that the event’s Weibo posts were forwarded over 1 million times in 6 hours, with a forwarding frequency of 2,777.8 times per minute; by the end of the event, they had been forwarded over 3 million times, making this a phenomenal marketing case on Weibo in recent years.

Activity forwarding volume

A very long list of event prizes

4) Summary

Alipay is a financial service tool known to everyone. Without considering its fans on Weibo, the author believes that there are three noteworthy aspects of this successful communication case: brand collaboration, leveraging hot topics, and creative gameplay.

Brand alliance: Brands that provide prizes will interact with users in the message area, which will not only enhance the trust endorsement of the event, but also provide exposure for their own brands.

Taking advantage of hot spots: Koi represents good luck and has a long history. In fact, this is a very popular word on Weibo in recent years. Last year (2018), Yang Chaoyue from Rocket Girls 101 (the name of a girl group in the entertainment industry) was hailed as the God of Luck by many fans. There were various Weibo posts such as "Retweet this Yang Chaoyue, and you can not only pass the second subject, but also the third and fourth subjects in one go."

After a long period of fermentation, the word "koi" is basically known to the vast majority of netizens. This Alipay Koi event provides a very good warm-up environment, so how could Alipay miss it? It then took advantage of the momentum and eventually reached 3 million reposts.

Gameplay creativity:

The general way to play a lottery on Weibo is to list the first, second, and third prizes, and then draw different lucky users based on the forwarding.

However, Alipay did not do this. "Alipay Koi" only sets one winning user. Have you ever thought about the motivation for such a setting?

As users we are first influenced by the value of the prize, and then focus on the probability of winning. In fact, the probabilities of 1/10000 and 3/10000 have the same impact on users. What attracts users' attention at this time is the value of the reward. That is to say, in an activity with a large number of participating users, setting up a winning user can better mobilize user participation.

Extend

The clock keeps ticking. Ten months after the great success of the Alipay Koi event, on July 29, 2019, Alipay, which never gets tired of it, used the same routine to stage the Huabei version of "Alipay Koi" - Baobei Youth.

This time, the forwarding lottery activity is based on the Huabei data of the post-90s generation and is themed "Baobei Youth". The way to play is to forward the Weibo post to enter the lottery, which also has the shadow of leveraging marketing, just like "Alipay Koi".

What kind of momentum did you borrow?

The recently popular "Dictionary of Interpretations of Gone Jokes" is still going strong and its popularity is not going down. Alipay has created a "Baobei youth" - specifically referring to young people who use Huabei while transferring unused funds to Yu'ebao to earn income. What a talent!

After the Alipay Koi event became popular, our operations team immediately planned related lottery interactions for the purpose of increasing fans. Compared with the usual lottery activities, we achieved good results and the fission cost was significantly reduced.

4-3 Viral Communication: NetEase’s “100 Things You Must Do”

1) Definition

According to incomplete statistics, among all the cases that caused screen-sweeping spread in the circle of friends, more than approximately 70% were produced by the NetEase team. After the 2020 Spring Festival, the NetEase Dada team and NetEase News jointly launched a campaign with the theme "How many of these 100 things have you completed? 》's hit H5.

The screen-sweeping phenomenon like "100 Things You Must Do in Life" is called "menstrual hot spots" because such topics have always been very attractive and will never go out of style. They are similar to "100 Movies You Must See in Life", "50 Books You Must Read in Life", "100 Things You Must Do between Couples", "100 Things You Must Do with Children" and so on.

But the reason why this work of NetEase Dada can go viral is that in addition to meeting the needs of users, it is also easy to operate and has penetrated a wide range of user circles. Let’s take a look at how to play it.

2) Gameplay

Steps: Enter H5 - enter your name - select the completed things among the 100 things - finally generate an exclusive card, long press to save the picture/share it directly to Moments.

3) Case

NetEase Dada: "How many of these 100 things have you completed? ”, let’s take a look at the specific experience process.

Putting aside the issue of mobile phone performance, the experience of the entire process of this work is very smooth. 100 options are not a small number. In terms of UI design, the designer used a circle with a fixed center to present the entire selection process. Users can hide or present the options displayed on the fan shape by rotating left and right. The seamless UI combined with the left and right sliding interaction design effectively solves the problem of option presentation and also provides a smoother interactive experience.

4) Summary

This popular H5 case is not innovative in terms of topic selection, as there are many similar gameplays in daily life. However, it is innovative in terms of UI and interactive design.

Then why is the screen flooded? Judging from the characteristics of viral transmission, there is no doubt that the case study "100 Things You Must Do in Life" awakens users' yearning for beautiful things. 100 things like "seeing the aurora, bravely confessing your love, writing a letter to your future self, opening a store, being financially independent, owning your own house, having a six-pack/abdominal muscles, going crazy for your dream, writing a book, graduation trip, registering for organ/body donation..." almost cover users' food, clothing, housing, transportation, and all the beautiful things they yearn for, greatly stimulating users' desire to pursue beautiful things and their memories of beautiful things.

(There is also a question about the timing of the release. Due to the impact of the 2019 novel coronavirus epidemic, people have been stuck at home, and most of them have not left the house for a whole month. Many things have not been completed, just like the things mentioned above that have been completed or not completed have become the spiritual sustenance of users. Then, once people have this opportunity to express their thoughts, this demand for "living a better life" again will inevitably explode.)

In fact, the NetEase Dada team carefully compiled these 100 options. Its underlying logic is to satisfy users' psychological needs for curiosity, personality setting (self-expression, showing off), and self-realization (self-centeredness, vanity, achievement) as widely as possible. At the same time, by covering more audience needs to reduce communication barriers between circles, favorable conditions are created for screen swiping.

Well, that’s all I have to say about the three cases of viral communication. Have you found any common features in the reward settings of these activities?

Okay, here are the four most effective communication marketing campaign cases.

Author: Operational Evolution History

Source: Operational Evolution History