How to create a hit marketing plan?

In 2019, we saw all kinds of people spreading knowledge maps of various industries and occupations on Jike, Maimai, and WeChat Moments. It felt like knowledge maps suddenly became popular.

Why are knowledge maps so popular?

If we regard knowledge map as a small category, let’s review the timeline of the development of the knowledge map category.

In 2018, distribution became popular in the domestic Internet circle, and small Vs who were famous but not very famous decided to quickly monetize their influence. Many influential distribution projects have emerged, such as Xin Shi Xiang’s writing courses, NetEase’s drama courses, and Sanlian magazine membership distribution.

For every sale that a buyer helps make, the platform will give a certain commission. For some projects, the commission is as high as 50%. After a year of market education in 2018, a large number of people in the Internet circle have accepted distribution, which was originally the specialty of cosmetics micro-businesses.

In early March 2019, the Operation Research Society discovered that the Operation Skills Map had a good effect in attracting traffic. The Operation Skills Map 2.0 version was released and sold in printed form at a price of 49 yuan. A large number of knowledge distributors participated in the event. It eventually sold more than 40,000 copies.

In the following months, we often saw people publishing knowledge maps in various fields or occupations on UGC platforms. Some people have also compiled the various knowledge maps they have seen into a document, which includes more than 20 knowledge maps.

It seems that knowledge maps are really becoming a little popular.

1. Why are knowledge maps so popular?

1. Collecting

Collecting is a common phenomenon. In long-term life practice, we will gradually form the habit of collecting some things. The purpose of collecting is to ensure that if one day we really need something, we can easily find it . Although we will hardly use it again, collecting it will make us feel safe. We may lose out if we don’t collect it, but there is definitely no harm in collecting it.

When we come across a piece of information and it may be difficult to encounter it again, we will choose to collect it.

To stimulate a person's collecting habit, he must feel that it is relatively difficult to encounter this information again. There are many strategies you can use:

a. Unsearchability.

If it is an article, people will feel that it is easy to search as long as they remember the title, and the desire to collect it will not be so strong. However, if the content of this article becomes a picture, people will feel that it is not so easy to search.

b. High information concentration.

If an article only contains one sentence of core information, people are less likely to collect it. If the article contains a lot of information , people are more likely to collect it.

If an article has only 1,000 words and contains less information, people are less likely to save it. If the same wonderful article has 10,000 words , people are more likely to save it because they cannot digest it all at once and will mark it first and read it later.

If an article is organized into a mind map with two levels and ten items, people are unlikely to collect it. But if a book is organized into 15,000 words and hundreds of items , people are more likely to collect it.

c. Free for a limited time.

The spread of something has its usual cycle. For example, the traffic of an article in a public account is mainly generated in the previous week. So a one-week time limit will actually have little impact on the traffic, but it may increase the transaction rate.

Version 1.0 of the Operations Skills Map of the Operations Research Society has been widely circulated and collected, but in fact, few people really read the contents carefully. Everyone is just worried that they might need it in the future.

2. The effect of buying horse bones with a lot of money

Paying a Thousand Gold for Horse Bones is a story in "Strategies of the Warring States". There was a king who spent a large sum of money to buy a thousand-mile horse, but no one offered a horse. After a lot of effort, someone found a thousand-mile horse, but the horse died. However, his subordinates still spent a large sum of money to buy the horse bones. Not long after, three thousand-mile horses were really presented.

The lesson from spending a fortune on horse bones is that by creating demonstration activities with huge returns, many people can follow suit and participate.

The widespread dissemination of the Operation Skill Map Version 1.0 has let many people know that this thing can be popular. This is actually a move of spending a fortune to buy horse bones. The Operation Research Society then updated the content and printed paper versions to increase the collection value, and a group of influential organizations participated in the distribution. In just one or two weeks, more than 40,000 copies were sold. Based on a 1% purchase rate, more than four million people saw the news, and these people’s circles are very clear.

The operation skill map product has become a hit, which is another way of making good use of one's money. More people will know that making similar things may help to gain traffic.

3. Public IP

When 4 million people in the same circle know about the operation skill map, the operation skill map becomes a small public IP. Since people will reduce the burden of memory through abstraction, the most obvious features that people generally remember are the black background, colorful words, and densely packed logical relationship diagrams. And since this product has not been trademarked, there is no need to worry about infringement.

When Zhou Hei Ya becomes popular, many people will start brands like Zhou Hong Ya and Little Black Duck, actually just to take advantage of this IP.

Once a public IP appears, there will inevitably be a lot of people who want to take advantage of it. Because this way the cost of action for people to learn new things will be very low.

Therefore, many knowledge maps with black background, colorful text and high information content appeared later.

4. Social Currency

The receivers do so because they are collectors, while the disseminators do so because knowledge maps can be used as social currency.

When we are socializing, talking about something can make us feel less disliked and satisfy our sense of existence, or it can show our value in the social environment. Such things are social currency.

For example, the weather in British chats, and emoticons on the Chinese Internet. Informative knowledge is often a kind of social currency, which makes your friends feel that you are useful to them.

2. How to create a hit product?

Creating a hit product is often a one-off, short-term endeavor, so there is no need to necessarily look for pain points. All you need to do is find the common psychological traits of people and cater to their tastes in marketing; you can drive a group of people to join in the dissemination by spending a fortune on the product; and when more people see the influence of the hit product, they join the competition in the industry, further increasing the influence of the product.

Although these competitors have gained a portion of the market share, it is precisely because of the publicity from these competitors that the sales volume of this leading hot product will be higher. When the potential market is saturated, the industry begins to decline and enter a red ocean. This process follows the laws of the product life cycle.

There are many ways to create a hit product, and it is not appropriate to discuss the various operating models in this article. But we can think of it another way: as long as we can define the problem well, we can usually find a feasible solution.

To make a hit product, three important issues must be addressed:

• How to achieve a certain purchase rate?
• How to attract a group of traffic to join the dissemination?
• How to ensure a certain return?

1. How to achieve a certain purchase rate?

The commonly used method recently is MVP (minimum viable test), which involves first conducting experiments on a small scale at a low cost. After the data from the small-scale experiments is verified and a conversion rate that meets the requirements is obtained, you can consider releasing the product.

After discovering that the Operation Skill Map 1.0 was very popular, the Operation Research Society decided to sell a paper version. But looking at it from the other side, it is entirely possible to assume that they wanted to make a product that could be sold, so they made a low-level version of the operation skill map as a public account traffic tool, found that the effect was very good, and decided to make this hit product.

During the period of lack of experience, develop the habit of doing experiments. The experience gained from these experiments will be used as your common sense when you are managing larger projects in the future.

2. How to attract a group of traffic to join the dissemination?

A commonly used method is to spend a fortune to buy horse bones. Focus on building a case with good data, or make it look like early adopters are making money, and you’ll have a large number of traffic carriers ready to move.

For example, a few days before August 18, a friend in my group asked me to pay attention to a case:

Simba Xin, a host on Kuaishou, is determined to hold a concert at the Bird's Nest and has invited dozens of celebrities to assist. After watching the videos of these celebrities' assists, I guessed that Kuaishou was involved in the operation behind the scenes.

After the concert ended, someone made a summary as shown in the following picture: the live broadcast of the concert brought in 100 million yuan in sales. This is like buying a horse with a lot of money. Seeing such impressive data, many people may be eager to try out Kuaishou live streaming.

3. How to ensure a certain return?

This is usually calculated using a formula, and the various parameters in the formula can be routinely estimated in advance.

For example, using the commonly used income formula: income = traffic × conversion rate × average order value

In the Operation Skills Map project, it is assumed that based on experience, the conversion rate in WeChat Moments promotion is predicted to be approximately 0.5%, and the average order value is set at 49 yuan. This is a price that has been found to be easy to sell in many previous projects, and it is a predicted consumer price that the average operator will not feel pain at. Then we estimated that to achieve a revenue of 1 million, we would need to sell 20,000 copies. Based on the conversion rate, we would need 4 million page views, 50% of which would be provided by cooperating KOLs, and we would find about 100 KOLs.

A more detailed formula can be found in the figure below. You can also summarize formulas that are more suitable for your own business.

A solution that can solve the above three problems is a qualified marketing plan for explosive products.

Related reading:

1. From 0 to 1, how to write a marketing plan with “soul”?

2. Marketing promotion: Is your marketing plan effective?

Author: Jiang Liu

Source: Jiang Liu