How to run a marketing campaign with high conversion rate

This article summarizes my experience and feelings in marketing for both parties, and gives a suggestion: one of the future development paths for marketers is to embrace e-commerce.

This article is suitable for the following audiences:

• Party B's marketing promotion personnel
• People who want to work as a brand manager for the client in the future
• Brand marketing team for startups

Why you should read this article:

• Know yourself and know your enemy. Fully understand the problems that Party B encounters in marketing activities, and fully understand how Party A actually conducts marketing activities
• Improve your marketing knowledge system, better communicate and review with Party A, and achieve a win-win situation

The entire sharing consists of the following three parts:

1. Based on my own experience in brand marketing as both Party A and Party B, let’s talk about some possible problems in the underlying marketing thinking when Party B conducts marketing activities.

2. Regarding these issues, let’s take a look at how Party A conducts brand marketing activities internally, what thinking and methods it uses, and whether it is worth learning for Party B.

3. Regarding how to conduct marketing activities with high conversion rates, I will provide some suggestions in terms of cognition and skills.

1. Case-guided thinking

First, let’s look at a case.

This is a marketing promotion plan that an advertising company is working on for a new product launch of a fast-moving consumer goods product.

This is a necessary step in the strategic analysis section when most advertising companies are making marketing promotion plans: there is preheating at the beginning, topic ignition in the middle, and secondary dissemination in the end.

Everyone uses different words when writing a plan, but they are basically three-paragraph. Each promotion stage is subdivided into small themes, keywords, media combinations, content creativity, etc. The previous activities pave the way for the subsequent activities, which progress step by step and finally achieve the conversion from volume to sales.

It seems unbreakable and perfectly self-consistent.

This is what I did when I made proposals to the client before.

But I believe that many people do not know the reasons behind writing plans in this way, and whether there are problems in executing the plans written according to this strategy.

2. Common problems faced by advertisers in marketing activities

Advertising is closely related to people’s behaviors and needs. All advertising is designed to better influence people’s attitudes and even behaviors.

Therefore, when we make a marketing plan and campaign, its core is based on our understanding of consumer shopping behavior and psychology. We think about the psychological changes she will go through before consumption, and we will create targeted advertisements based on these changes to influence her and make her buy.

So, let’s take a quick review and talk about some theories that all advertisers know.

AIDMA Theory

In the era of traditional advertising, media channels were single and consumers’ decision-making psychology before shopping was like this, going through these five steps.

This is a funnel, and the number of people who ultimately buy is definitely less than the number of people who see the ad.

Because the media is single, either TV, newspapers and magazines, or outdoor, the only purchasing channel is offline, and the product categories are not rich enough, so the brands and advertising companies pay the most attention to the first link. Note that as long as more people see it and keep seeing it, it will be implanted in the consumers' brains. When consumers shop in offline channels, it will arouse their memories and finally generate purchasing behavior.

The reason why everyone strives to earn prime advertising space on CCTV, repeatedly brainwash people on TV, and use newspaper ads and outdoor ads is based on the shopping decision-making psychology and behavior of consumers in the above particular era.

(Does this type of advertising have any effect at the moment? Of course it does, but it requires a lot of advertising money for saturation delivery)

AISAS Theory

In an era when the Internet is popular and almost everyone is using mobile payments and social media, Dentsu of Japan has proposed a new theoretical model. They believe that in the Internet age, the psychological decision-making model of consumers before shopping is as follows: people first see the advertisement, then become interested, and finally take the initiative to search and compare online to learn more about the product information, and then go to Taobao stores to place an order. After having a good experience, they will share it in their circle of friends, Xiaohongshu or Weibo.

In comparison, two things have changed: search and sharing.

Because at this time, media is fragmented, there are more choices, and consumer attention is scarce. People are no longer passive accepters, but will actively choose and compare, and after consumption, they will check in and share.

Therefore, in this theoretical model, brands and advertising companies value search and sharing the most. This is why grass-roots marketing is so popular and why businesses encourage more sharing through red envelope benefits to create a word-of-mouth effect.

Nowadays, almost all the marketing plans and executions made by advertising companies are based on the AISAS theory.

So after reading this, have you discovered the problems with this theory?

If not, let me give you another example.

For example, in a public account campaign we did before, ROI=1. No profit or loss. Moreover, the average opening rate of public accounts is 1%-3%, the jump rate is 5%, and the order rate of e-commerce pages is 5%. We have achieved 10% and are neither profitable nor losing money. Think about those who cannot achieve this conversion rate, they will most likely lose money.

So after reading this, you will find that there are problems with marketing activities based on AISAS:

The shopping process will be disturbed by many factors, resulting in low conversion rates and waste of traffic.

For example, if I see an advertisement in GQ, after reading it, will you immediately copy the password and place an order on Taobao? Maybe you just copied the password and closed WeChat, and suddenly saw a Weibo push, which you found very interesting and attracted you to click on. After reading the Weibo, you went to Bilibili to browse around, but in the end you completely forgot about it or found it troublesome and never went to Taobao at all.

From the time you see the ad to the time you finally complete the purchase, there are factors of uncertainty in the middle that affect you, so the conversion rate is getting lower and lower every year, and this is the case for basically all content platforms.

Everyone wants to find a traffic depression, but the result is that the traffic dividend is quickly consumed and traffic becomes expensive...

Let’s take a look at Party A’s actual demand for marketing activities: buy, buy, buy…

Party A seeks short, fast and timely conversion in marketing activities.

How can we tolerate A-I-S first and then purchase?

I believe everyone has had this experience: Party A attaches the most importance to sales volume, especially this year.

For many companies, survival is the most important KPI.

The premise for survival is that the company has sufficient cash and a fast enough capital turnover rate.

For Party A, any marketing budget spent is like an investment. As I mentioned above, the current media, channels, and information are changing very fast, and the input-output ratio is getting lower and lower. So for many people, the investment in advertising is very risky. In order to quickly recover the money, they hope that consumers will have the urge to buy when they see the advertisements at any time and through any channel, and finally place an order to buy, thereby bringing in a steady stream of cash flow and maintaining the survival of the company.

Party A has sales targets before launching each marketing campaign, and then splits these targets into various project teams and turns them into performance evaluation indicators.

This is why Party A focuses on money and sales volume.

As a result, Party A pursues timely conversion in marketing activities, and any marketing activities that prolong the purchasing behavior will be passed.

From the above, we can see that when Party B is doing marketing activities, they are good at and like content creativity, creating social topics, and increasing brand exposure. You can see that when they are proposing, they can analyze the strategy and creativity incessantly;

When it comes to marketing activities, Party A is always result-oriented, looking at the cost, how much sales an activity can bring, and how much money it can make;

There is always a gap between the two.

So, when I was at the client side and started a competition for new product launches due to staff shortage, any proposal strategy part that used the three-part format of first...then...then...would basically be passed over.

Moreover, as far as I know, many advertising cases in recent years have either been silent or just for fun within the circle. They have voice but lack sales. After a few of them have finally become popular, everyone is arguing about which is more important, voice or sales.

Therefore, when the media, the survival needs of the client, and the shopping psychology of consumers are all changing, some advertising companies are still doing marketing activities according to AISAS, which will cause some problems:

1. There are 4 steps from noticing to shopping. Once the conversion path becomes longer, there will be many uncertain factors in the middle, which will lead to a lower conversion rate and finally a waste of traffic and budget.

2. AISAS is certainly effective, but it also faces some problems. Enterprises are under operational pressure, and the easiest thing for Party A to cut is brand advertising and invest in performance advertising, and AISAS is basically behind brand advertising.

3. Understand the methodology of Party A's internal marketing activities

This is the sales ranking of each category on Double 11 this year.

These brands will conduct online and offline marketing promotions before Double 11, spending a lot of budget on placements, and even cooperating with advertising companies to create content and topics on social media.

In short, everyone is scrambling for traffic.

We can think about how an event is started within these companies? At which stage did Party B start cooperating with Party A?

Let me tell you about my experience of doing Double 11 marketing activities for both the B-party and the A-party.

Looking at the promotion of these brands from the perspective of a second-party, it may start with receiving a brief. A larger second-party may make an entire marketing plan with a budget of several hundred million or tens of millions, then think about strategies internally, brainstorm ideas, and finally create content and write a media strategy, which will be handed over to the client for execution. A smaller second-party may just work on a single project such as a Double 11 TVC, H5, pre-heating posters, etc., complete the brief, and hand it over to the client, and the second-party's work is done.

This is all that Party B can see. Party B cannot access or understand the full picture. He only receives a single content creative project, so the focus is on thinking about how to be creative and how to create content.

But I am on the client side, so I look at the issue from a different perspective.

From my own experience in brand marketing for the client, all marketing activities can be divided into three steps: finding people, attracting traffic, and conversion.

This is the entire transaction closed loop and traffic closed loop.

First of all, I need to analyze the population that I need to cover for this year's Double Vision 11 based on this year's sales goals and population characteristics. Should I increase sales by growing new customers, or increase sales by attracting repeat purchases from old customers, or should I do both at the same time?

After determining the target consumer group, I will find a way to attract this group of people to Taobao through advertising, that is, to direct the traffic to Taobao, and finally on Taobao through various methods such as user operations, grass-planting, page optimization, welfare, etc., to stimulate people entering the store to place orders and form purchasing power.

For Party A, the second step of traffic diversion and the third step of conversion are equally important.

But most of the cooperation between Party A and advertising companies will be in the traffic generation part. Advertising companies are needed to use creativity and content to attract more accurate traffic to Taobao stores, and then the client will make the conversion.

This is a bit like a relay traffic game, where Party B is responsible for generating traffic and Party A is responsible for consuming the traffic.

But for advertising agencies, there is a problem.

That is, advertisers worked overtime and stayed up late to finally come up with a plan, creating big news on social media, and a large wave of traffic entered the Taobao store. However, after the traffic entered the store, how did the purchase rate form? This most important step determines the final sales volume, but the second party does not know this, and many second parties do not realize the importance of this part.

If you have learned about e-commerce operations, you will know that there are a lot of variables between anyone entering Taobao and making a purchase.

You may directly click on the jump link to enter the store and place an order, or you may stay on the homepage for a few seconds after entering the store and then leave. You may also browse the store for a minute or two and finally collect some of the items or add them to the shopping cart.

These are all different results, and each result can be analyzed from the data mountain, including the promotion done by advertisers outside Taobao, whether the audience coverage is accurate, whether the content is creative and attractive enough, what the click-through rate is, etc.

These results can, to a certain extent, verify the effectiveness of the promotions done by advertisers in the early stages.

But advertisers did not realize this link and missed it.

If you are running a relay race but you don’t know the final direction and goal, how can you run well?

This is partly because, due to the lack of division of labor in the company, Party B is only responsible for creativity and content. However, if Party B can better understand the final changes in traffic, would it be more purposeful when creating creativity and content in the early stages?

There won’t be many self-entertainment projects.

Therefore, if we step out of Party B and start from the source of the entire marketing campaign, we will have a better understanding of how Party A starts a marketing campaign internally, where Party B starts to participate, and what role it plays in it.

We can look at the blue, which is a breakdown of the overall goal.

The yellow part includes one that operates and promotes within Taobao, and the other one is outside Taobao, which is the part where most advertising companies participate.

The traffic, conversion rate, number of orders, transaction amount, etc. of each medium, every step from consumer seeing to purchase is provided with detailed data indicators and advance estimates.

Party A's brand marketing activities are all data-oriented, traffic-oriented, and result-oriented, and all creativity, content, and topics serve the ultimate goal.

This is a very delicate job.

The advantage of this is that after the event, you can track and analyze the data to understand whether the delivery and promotion of each channel is OK.

For example, if the final sales are 1 million, we can analyze from the background data whether the 1 million gap is due to low conversion rate after traffic enters the store or insufficient traffic entering the store;

Is it because the in-store operation is not good, or is it because when we do marketing activities outside Taobao, the target audience is not accurate enough, the content is not good enough, resulting in a low click-through rate, etc.

The success or failure of many advertising or marketing projects can be seen through the background data.

Many cases that are considered good in the advertising circle may not be good in the eyes of the client.

Once we understand how Party A carries out project work internally, we will realize that for Party A, every dollar spent has its own mission, and every bit of traffic must realize its own value, because it is a complete chain, and any error in any part will affect the final sales.

From my understanding, when Party A does marketing, it is a bit like filling holes. We will break down the tasks and traffic into the smallest units step by step according to the sales target, set goals, and then fill the holes one by one and achieve the goals through operations and promotions.

In this process, the role that Party B can play is to use creativity and content to help Party A fill the gap quickly, efficiently and economically.

So how can we fill the hole quickly, efficiently and economically? Are you still using the previous AISAS theory to carry out marketing activities?

AISAS is available, but as we just analyzed, it also has problems.

Therefore, if we want to better understand the entire closed loop of traffic and purchase, and better develop activities that can be implemented and have conversion rates, we must understand e-commerce thinking.

Why learn about e-commerce?

1. To better cooperate with Party A and achieve a win-win situation.

Because the final effects of all content creativity and marketing done by advertisers can be seen in the most authentic feedback in the client's backend data. If advertisers want to avoid making self-indulgent advertisements, they must understand traffic, data, and e-commerce better, so that the results can better guide the process, ensure that creativity can be implemented, and generate sales.

2. It is also to continuously improve and expand one’s career development.

E-commerce has basically become a standard feature of all 2C companies, and today's e-commerce platforms, such as Taobao, are not just a channel for selling goods, but a content platform that is large enough and is actually no different from WeChat, Xiaohongshu, and Weibo.

If you want to do brand marketing in the future, want to create your own brand or want to work for a client to create a brand, for example, many advertisers will switch jobs and work for the client to become a brand manager or director, then you must understand e-commerce operations.

3. E-commerce operations are part of the entire digital marketing system.

So far, we have discussed some of the problems that may arise when advertisers use the AISAS model to carry out marketing activities, and also briefly understood how Party A starts marketing planning and promotion internally.

The conclusion is that AISAS is still useful, but advertisers must also constantly update their marketing knowledge and understand e-commerce.

Then, we come to the final stage of recommendations.

4. How to use e-commerce thinking to carry out high-conversion marketing activities

To get everyone to embrace e-commerce does not mean to understand the methods of e-commerce operations in detail, but to understand the entire process of where the traffic comes from, where it goes, and how to convert it.

First of all, in the advice part, I will not talk to you about how to write a marketing plan or how to execute it. In fact, there are many methodologies on the Internet, and they can all be used.

I will mainly give some suggestions based on my personal experience working with both parties A and B, as well as my understanding of my peers in the same field, and then I will make a preliminary introduction to some e-commerce operation methodologies and tools so that we know how to use them.

1. Advertisers must at least complete a marketing campaign from planning to execution.

2. Understand media traffic and how to spend the budget

3. Learn to use some basic e-commerce analysis tools

1. Create a complete marketing campaign

The prerequisite for a successful marketing campaign is that you have actually carried out an activity from planning to execution, stayed up all night to write the plan, and followed up on the execution online and offline.

Some advertisers are now facing the following situation:

1) They either work in large advertising companies or advertising companies with a very vertical positioning, specializing in copywriting, creativity, planning, and media, which makes it impossible for many people to fully participate in and follow up a complete marketing project;

2) Some advertisers have the opportunity to work on large and small marketing planning activities, but most of them remain at the stage of writing plans. After the plan is written, it is handed over to Party A for execution. As for the actual effect in the end, it is impossible to know;

This has led to many advertisers having a narrow vision and lacking understanding of the market, market conditions, clients and consumers.

As a side note, as far as I know, some people around me who have worked in advertising companies for five or six years and want to switch to client brand management are generally not easily accepted by the client, and it is also for this reason.

My suggestion is to talk more with the client and avoid being isolated from information.

1) Take the initiative to communicate with your customers about the conversion data of the implementation of the plan. Even if you are a copywriter or a creative person and are only involved in part of the project, you should always ask the client for the final data whenever you have the chance.

These data cannot be effectively fed back by simply relying on exposure, clicks, and readings. The reason is well known: the phenomenon of brushing data is too common nowadays.

2) You can also contact your friends or netizens on the first party to understand how they start their marketing activities internally and their true attitude and needs towards the second party. Including today's sharing, it is actually a window for everyone to understand the client.

2. Understand media, traffic, and budget

Why do you want a medium?

A. One reason is that all traffic comes from the media and finally flows to the e-commerce platform for conversion. Understanding the media is to understand where the traffic comes from, why it comes, and where it goes.

B. Clarify the traffic links and loop logic. E-commerce focuses most on traffic, users and operations. Traffic and users come from media, and media is also the most expensive part of the marketing budget of most clients.

Before we understand e-commerce, we need to understand media. What aspects of media should we understand?

Mainly ROI input-output ratio and traffic link.

Media purchasing fees are the bulk of Party A's marketing budget, and largely determine how much traffic can eventually enter Taobao for conversion and form purchasing power. Party A often gets stuck in the budget at this stage. Moreover, all of Party B’s content and creativity must rely on media to connect with consumers.

However, because positions in advertising companies are extremely segmented and media is also a highly specialized matter, the problem is that planning and media placement are separate. Planners don't know which parts of a marketing campaign the money will be spent on, what the placement of different media and KOL purchasing costs are, what the input-output ratio of different categories is, and they have never really touched money, so they don't know how to spend it, and they lack cost thinking and effect thinking.

Content and media complement each other. If advertisers want to achieve the greatest effect, the content they create must be adapted to the platform attributes of the media.

Investing in Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Douyin are completely different. Each platform has its own content ecology and traffic logic.

How to maximize ROI by advertising on different platforms is what every brand has been doing.

3. Learn some basic e-commerce analysis tools

The first two points mainly share the meaning, thinking and consciousness levels, and the following points will share some practical skills.

The underlying thinking tool used by advertisers for marketing is AISAS. Some advertising companies also have their own methodologies. In fact, e-commerce platforms also have their own operating theories and tools.

For example, the three consumer-centric tools launched by Tmall are mainly aimed at helping brands truly achieve "consumer-centric refined operations" and achieve the integration of product quality, sales and effectiveness.

Next, I will take AIPL as an example to explain how to carry out refined operations and improve marketing conversion rates based on this theory.

AIPL is a set of theoretical tools based on user operations proposed by Tmall according to the platform attributes.

The premise of this theory is that brand growth and e-commerce sales come from two major sources: one is to attract more new customers to buy, and the other is to get more repeat purchases from old customers.

So, you see, this theory is user-centric, dividing a brand's users into four different dimensions, and then conducting refined operations and promotions for different customers to continuously improve the order conversion rate.

Simply put, he divides customers into four types: cognition, interest, purchase and loyalty. The cognition interest here is different from the AISAS we mentioned earlier. It is completely based on user purchasing behavior.

Awareness refers to people who see the ad, interest refers to people who click and actively search for the brand name, purchase refers to people who have already made a purchase, and loyalty refers to people who make repeat purchases and comment and share after purchase.

OK, after briefly introducing the concept of this theory, how can we use it in specific promotional activities? How can we carry out refined operational promotional activities?

For example, for this year's Double 11, we generally launched the project internally two to three months in advance.

Before launching the project, we will first sort out the traffic routes of various media and channels internally, and continue to split them until they can no longer be subdivided.

What are the specific behaviors of the four different types of customers: cognition, interest, purchase, and loyalty? How can we influence her with each behavior.

For example, interest refers to people who actively click on ads on Taobao and actively search for brands or product names. So why do consumers come to Taobao to actively search for brand names?

He will come to Taobao to actively search and click on ads, mainly because he has seen advertisements about the brand outside Taobao, such as the grass-roots ads in Xiaohongshu, the super fan channel on Weibo, or the splash screen ads on Douyin. He was attracted and wanted to go to the store to see the product introduction, so he clicked to jump to Taobao or opened Taobao to search for the brand name, and then entered the store.

So, you see, before Party A carries out an activity, they will analyze all the factors that can affect the sales target based on the population segmentation, and they can be related to each other and interact with each other, making it clear at a glance.

After completing the previous preparations, we will propose this year’s Double 11 sales target based on the company’s past growth path.

Then split this sales target from the perspective of new customers and old customers. This is how many new customers should be obtained for Double 11 this year, the sales target for new customers, and the repurchase rate and sales target for old customers this year.

The conversion rate and average order value are a little difficult to calculate. Simply put, it is estimated based on the conversion rates of customers of the same level and type in the past.

Let’s take a look at a reference picture. The yellow part in the middle is the estimate for placement outside Taobao. Then, considering the limited manpower and resources, we started looking for advertising companies to create content and placement.

At this time, we generally will not directly tell Party B that we are looking for you to cooperate just to achieve sales of 1 million, because Party B cannot guarantee it.

Therefore, we can only choose a company that has a high probability of achieving conversion rate indicators in the content and delivery stages through comparison and screening. As long as the process is ensured, the result will be OK.

After seeing this data table, everyone can understand why Party A places great emphasis on the budget and final sales volume when reviewing Party B’s proposal or during the cooperation process.

This is because the data in these tables are the KPIs of Party A's marketing and brand departments. If the final sales volume is not achieved, Party A can find out which link has problems through background data analysis and tracking.

Therefore, after understanding the client’s internal marketing thinking and tools, some people may ask: I don’t have this. It is impossible for advertisers to see these background data that only the brand side knows in advance.

I'll give you two personal experiences:

1. Self-study. Learn the basics of e-commerce through Alibaba’s knowledge base Yuque system. Search for Yuque on Baidu, click to enter, and search for words related to Yuque e-commerce in the search box, and you will find a treasure trove of e-commerce knowledge.

2. Change the communication issues with Party A. Next time when you communicate with the client about marketing goals, please don’t start by talking about creativity, strategy, or content. Instead, use the client’s marketing activity process you learned in this article to first ask about their e-commerce data, indicators, and data.

In summary, the entire article analyzes the user insights of advertising companies based on AISAS, and finds that when conducting marketing activities, there will be problems such as long user conversion paths, traffic waste, and conversion rates;

Party A’s current pursuit of marketing activities is short, flat and fast, and the pursuit of timely conversion. Simply put, it hopes that consumers will keep buying.

Therefore, there is a gap between the services provided by Party B and Party A’s demand for marketing activities. How to make up for it?

Party B needs to fully understand how Party A conducts marketing activities internally. It is completely data-oriented and highly refined, and all budgets and activities are aimed at achieving pre-determined data indicators.

Next, we shared how to use AIPL in e-commerce for marketing, achieve precise user marketing, and improve conversion rates.

above.

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Author: Brui

Source: Brui