Only focus on conversion rate when promoting activities? We also need to explore the demand!

In theory, a good activity must have a smooth activity path and a suitable operation rhythm. ( What is operating rhythm? It is the difference between a tenth-grade piano player and a beginner. It is not that you can produce a beautiful melody by pressing the piano keys.

The important thing is: Why do you want to do the activity?

1. Don’t do activities just for the sake of activities

Does organizing activities equal growth?

Many friends who are involved in events have a wrong idea, that is, doing events is equivalent to doing growth. We can see this from many job postings on the Internet, so I won’t take screenshots here. 

Activity equals growth. This is a typical business mindset that is out of touch with reality. As long as you look at it from the user's perspective, you can see that activity does not equal growth.

What really achieves growth is creating value for customers/the public that meets their needs. Growth occurred because you discovered a way to meet user needs and then organized an event. So don’t do activity just for the sake of growth.

Once you agree that activity equals growth, you may fall into a blind spot and focus only on the path and scope of the activity. This can easily cause an activity to go astray and lead to actions that have no practical benefits. For example, please refer to our first version of the activity planning design:

This is our initial version of the activity roadmap. At first glance, although the entire activity process is a closed loop, it is very messy and has many elements. Apart from looking good, it does not have much value. Real users will not follow this process to complete the entire activity, so we emphasize: Don’t do activities just for the sake of doing activities.

Almost all the motivation for users to participate in activities comes from the demand for the value of the output of the activities. First understand the user's needs clearly, and then start planning activities, so that you can get twice the result with half the effort.

2. Three Laws of Activities

After the starting point of the activity is clear, the next thing we need to think about is how to improve the user's experience of the activity. After carefully reviewing and analyzing the "Shuang 11" event, we found that some of the design processes and operations of the event violated several event laws:

First: the longer the path, the lower the conversion rate will be. For users who normally participate in activities, most of them have a more obvious characteristic: they never read group announcements and activity information.

The real user scenario is that users participate in activities just to receive benefits or rewards. What is the activity? The activity is just a threshold in the process of receiving benefits.

A user who participates in an activity to receive benefits will not spend time participating in a long-path activity or learning about some new paths of the activity. Unless the reward is very generous, like running 5,000 meters just to drink a bottle of water, most people won't do it.

For routine activities, users will only respond with conventional thinking. If the cost budget is insufficient, do not make users have to bear the learning cost.

Second: User needs also have priorities. The purpose of users participating in activities is to receive benefits, so what kind of benefits will users be willing to fight for? So what are the real needs of users? To find out. Accurately identifying needs is the key factor in whether an event is successfully held.

Usually an event will not have only one benefit. Now when we watch many activities, the benefits are all combined. Taking the event we planned this time as an example, we planned a total of 9 event benefits.

Some needs will change over time, for example, some materials: Graduation season - send resume PPT. Some needs have no time cycle, such as money.

It was not until we reviewed the event that we realized that if the event is a threshold, then the setting of requirements must be directly sorted by priority, and users participating in the event should be given as little choice and thinking as possible, because this essentially increases the user's participation cost.

As for deciding what to give away, it also depends on some detailed factors such as the platform's tone; we have put a picture here for your reference.

If today's event is not added with the word fission, it will seem a bit inferior.

So what is the basis of fission in fission activities and the prerequisite for the network effect formed by fission?

It should be: trust. Trust is the biggest network effect in human society. It is the basic network for self-organization and positive feedback in human society.

In ancient times, there was a typical fission activity: "moving wood with heavy money" during Shang Yang's reform.

However, when this "activity" was announced, people's participation was not very active. In theory, "Moving Wood with a Big Money" is a very simple and straightforward activity. Let's analyze it:

First: The reward is money, which is enough for the basic needs

Second: Just move it, the process is simple enough

Third: Issue notices to reach enough people so that everyone is discussing it

Until one day, the young man decided to take a risk and give it a try, which made the "activity" a perfect completion. Helping Shang Yang establish trust among the people really advanced the progress of the entire activity.

The same goes for the content of the event. Trust is the signal mechanism in this network. It is important to make users willing to quickly participate in the event and believe in its value.

How to demonstrate trust in fission? That is to make users feel that they are getting a good deal quickly.

In the entire path design of our event, every time a user enters a community, he or she can receive an extra small benefit. You can also choose to give out red envelopes when the event starts to warm up, so that users participating in the event feel that they are getting a good deal. Allowing users to feel the value of the group at the first moment is very beneficial to the promotion of subsequent activity processes.

3. Finally, let’s talk about mining demand

After reviewing the event, let me share some of our gains from this event:

1) It actually diverts some traffic to the community

2) Verified a small demand of an operation friend: side job ( after-sleep income)

The success or failure of an activity is strongly correlated to the accuracy of demand. So how do we identify the demand for an activity? This can be analyzed through the concept of "demand triangle" (quoted from Li Jiaoshou):

"Demand" is understood literally:

Need: need, want, the difference between ideal and reality, a manifestation of lack;

Ask: to appeal, to demand, that is, a plan to fill the gap, which is the embodiment of the target object.

Lack of feeling + goal = motivation. When we help users build motivation, marketing is half successful. For example: A student who studies operations is actually a "working man". His ideal state may be financial freedom (economic dimension), being an operations trader (skill dimension), and being a popular figure (life dimension).

In short, the gap between the ideal state and the current state in different dimensions is the reason for the sense of lack.

If we have a plan to help him achieve financial freedom (economic dimension), this will form a motivation for him to participate in activities, but this is not enough. Just like when a flight is delayed and you have been waiting for hours in the terminal, you often wish you had a private jet (at this point you have the motivation to buy one).

But we won't actually buy a private jet. The reason is simple, because we can't afford it.

Because: consumption capacity (not only refers to the consumer's economic ability, but also learning ability, trust cost, etc.) is hindered. The last step is to come up with a feasible solution based on user characteristics.

We use the "demand triangle" to restore how we test the entire "side job demand" process:

Lack of money: Most of my friends in other positions are short of money (including me). Lack of money is a very rigid point.

Target: Increase income sources, either get a promotion and a raise (We Are Improving), or open up a second path (Sideline Alliance)

Ability: Why is it applicable to operations friends? Because for operations friends, both the needs of the side job market and their own right to choose a side job are greater than those of other positions, and also include time costs and execution costs.

IV. Summary

1. Like many educational institutions, they will choose to offer some free trial classes to attract user participation. Methods like these all apply the logic of this activity: making users feel like they are getting a good deal.

2. Don’t hold activities just for the sake of holding activities. Activities are the threshold for users to receive benefits. It is more important to understand user needs.

3. The focus of welfare should be prioritized, and users should be given clear path guidance, and there should be no participation costs for users who participate in the event.

4. Trust is the biggest network effect in human society. It is the basic network for self-organization and positive feedback in human society. The content of the activity is the signal mechanism in this network. How to make users willing to participate in the activity quickly and let users quickly feel that they have gotten a good deal.

Author: Yang Junorlo

Source: Yang Junorlo