How to write an excellent marketing creative plan?

When it comes to creativity, it is difficult for most people to combine product features to carry out creative marketing, and it is even more difficult to come up with marketing ideas that are recognized by bosses and users. But is there really no pattern to marketing creativity? The author believes that this is not the case.

Why choose this topic?

To be honest, creativity is a headache. It's like farting, it's not something that will appear just because you say it does. And if not, I really can't hold it in.

Such a thing that depends solely on fate is really too unreliable. I have always wanted to come up with a way to make "creativity" more stable.

Besides, creativity is generally interesting. When I was young, all kinds of weird things were running through my mind, and I just wanted to write them all down. Maybe I’m getting old now, and creativity is a bit “too old to have” for me. In addition, because I was obsessed with practical knowledge and did not practice creativity deliberately, I found a dry well in my heart when I needed to use it.

Those who have read my articles before know that I have summarized a universal marketing formula:

The universal formula for marketing planning = exploring user needs (internal and external motivations) + making use of advanced gameplay (creativity + form + technology + channel + motivation) + reducing user costs

So someone asked me: "Teacher Wang, I know motivation is very important, but I can't think of any creative ideas and don't know how to play it :)" I said, "Oh, what a coincidence, me too."

But there should always be a pattern to follow. I will study it. I looked for some recent screen-sweeping cases and found some patterns when I looked closely. In this article, we will:

1. Based on different users’ intrinsic motivations, summarize common matching creative forms

What's the meaning?

Because the first thing I ask you to do in marketing is to find out the user's motivation. The different stages of marketing are:

1. The user end is the process of satisfying needs
2. Marketing is the process of meeting user needs

User side (the process of satisfying needs): generating motivation - finding the target - judging the cost - participating and purchasing.

Marketing side (the process of meeting user needs): attract the attention of the target audience, stimulate demand (give trigger points) - give clear targets - empower users - trigger user participation & purchasing behavior.

At different stages of marketing, it is appropriate to call on different motivations.

Different motivations call for different creative forms. For example: in the marketing stage of attracting the attention of the target audience and stimulating demand, it is more appropriate to use psychological factors such as sense of mission, sense of accomplishment, unknown and curiosity, and reciprocity to attract users.

Motivated by a sense of mission, make good use of group competition and conflict. For example, the PK mechanism in the game, the gangs of idol fans; or the use of public welfare methods, it is easy to inspire users' sense of mission.

These methods have been used in previous screen-sweeping cases, and we can summarize and organize them.

The next time you are doing a marketing campaign and need to mobilize users' sense of mission, you can refer to these summaries and cases to give yourself some inspiration.

To sum it up in one sentence, because motivation is the root, I have compiled a group of creative forms that are suitable for stimulating this motivation from the dimension of motivation.

Just like your collarbone is beautiful so a one-shoulder top will definitely look good on you, if you want to mobilize your sense of mission, you can’t go wrong using the pk mechanism.

2. Start from some of the methods used by big names and summarize their creative logic

For example, how does Xiaomi’s chief planner plan creative activities? How to combine with product selling points? What formula did Lao Jin, who created the interactive surround view product that went viral on Durex, come up with? We can all learn from this.

3. From the perspective of daily collection and maintenance, how to build your own creative library

From which dimensions can we collect ideas, such as classifying by population? What creative ideas do women like? Ideas that employees like? Creative ideas that sensitive people like? etc.

Based on different users’ intrinsic motivations, summarize common matching creative forms

Phase 1: Attract the attention of target audiences and stimulate demand (give trigger points)

Break it down by motivation:

1. Sense of Mission

It is human nature to be motivated and willing to make sacrifices because we are destined to do things that transcend our ego.

use:

1. Make clever use of group competition and conflict: such as the PK mechanism in games, idol fan gangs, etc.
2. Use public welfare purposes to inspire people's natural sense of mission.

Tips:

It needs to be significant, actionable, and scarce enough to actually influence user actions.

Example:

(1) Philanthropy - Protection of the natural environment: Alipay Ant Forest's philanthropic activities are endorsed by an official and ceremonial "tree planting certificate"; by viewing its own tree planting maps and satellite images, it continuously increases its sense of mission.

(2) Public Welfare - Protection of endangered animals: Netease News' long cartoon "She Died After Struggling for 48 Hours" calls for the protection of endangered animals. It has almost no commercial purpose, but will trigger public participation.

(3) Philanthropy - caring for mentally retarded children. Children's Gallery, "1 yuan for the most beautiful charity", users can participate by scanning the QR code, and then they can "buy" their favorite paintings for only 1 yuan or any amount, and can share them and use them as mobile phone screensavers.

(4) Public Welfare - Caring for migrant workers: Public Welfare Storytelling

• Creativity: Generally, the content is about laborers or civil servants who are not paid much attention, showing the ordinary and subtle lives of these people. The copywriting is positive and provocative to inspire sharing.
• Format: Show the character’s life/work scenes → Make readers moved and ashamed → Share and support.
• Case: "If possible, let's go home together"

2. Sense of achievement (goal approach, goal obstacle)

People want to grow and accomplish specific goals. Can inspire us by showing a path to progress and growth.

use:

1. Cultivation games, such as Duoduo Orchard, Ant Forest, and Traveling Frog.
2. Quiz games (knowledge)
3. Light games (competitive, decompression)

Tips:

Two key elements to building a sense of accomplishment:

1. Appropriate challenge difficulty: There is a certain degree of difficulty, rules and restrictions.
2. Staged feedback and achievement symbols: gain-oriented stimulation, such as the most typical PBL system. Enjoy the sense of accomplishment from accumulating challenge points, getting medals, and being on the leaderboard.

Example:

• Creativity: For example, a game may last no longer than 1 minute, with simple rules and high difficulty. However, the difficulty decreases rapidly as proficiency increases, giving players the illusion that they are very smart and have achieved high scores, thereby encouraging sharing.
• Format: Play directly → Get achievements → Share.
• Typical cases: "Hold for One Second"; "Surround the Nervous Cat", etc.

3. Unknown and Curious

It drives us to explore the world

use:

• Leverage marketing and take advantage of freshness
• Take advantage of users’ curiosity, gossip, and herd mentality

Example:

(1) Gossip Psychology

For example, "Pig Brain Triggers a Major Public Relations Crisis for NetEase" has a strong sense of immersion from a first-person perspective. Then there is the curious question in my mind: Why would pig brain cause a public relations crisis? What crisis is happening to NetEase?

Youdao Translator: Late at night, a male colleague asked if I had slept yet? The same goes for this.

There is also a hot event, "One-minute Tour of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge" by NetEase News and Xinhua News Agency. Curiosity ranks first. Are you interested in what the bridge looks like? Patriotic superiority comes second.

(2) Take advantage of the sense of novelty and add a sense of surprise when seeing something for the first time, such as the weekly free heroes of League of Legends, scratch cards of Ant Pay, and gift packages opened when signing in to JD.com. The following ways of playing are summarized in the form of freshness, which requires imagination + high-tech gameplay:

1) Physical simulation

• Creativity: The fusion of multiple dimensions has both the sense of space of the real world and the wild imagination of the two-dimensional world. Basically, it impresses people with creative design and content experience.
• Form: Panorama, parallax, interactive GIF, panoramic video...
• Typical case: Durex Venue

2) Virtual venues

• Creativity: By simulating the shape of specific objects and adding interactivity, an AR (augmented reality) effect can be produced, such as the newspaper that can play videos in Harry Potter and the toilet seat that can play advertisements in The Three-Body Problem.
• Form: simulated calls, WeChat conversations, newspapers/novels/magazines, TV, Nokia...
• Typical case: "Do you dare to answer this strange call?"

Reference article: What are the creative types of H5? Which ones are most likely to become popular? 》

4. Profit-seeking, mutual benefit, altruism

use:

"Commission-based" activities (opening red envelopes, receiving physical gifts, etc.), and distribution rebate courses, such as NetEase Xijing Course and New World Marketing Course.

technology:

Fission rebates, reminders, distribution commission rankings, and the design in which the course price increases with the number of people (and the commission increases accordingly) can all stimulate people's profit-seeking mentality.

Example:

The lucky draw (variant: Alipay Koi event), with its low entry threshold and extremely high profit temptation, caters to the laziness and greed in human nature.

5. Fear (Fear + Guilt can be turned into action)

Application: Extend to common topics of anxiety among young people.

Example:

(1) “Michael Wang was late for the plane” from UCAR, and NetEase Julia showed her work life.

(2) “The older you get, the less likely anyone will forgive you” erroneous poster.

(3) Don’t break up when people are in trouble! Sad Tea VS Breakup Flower Shop, a little sad indeed.

(4) “Health is What It Should Be” – 999 X’s swordplay and shadow play, a public service advertisement that swept the screen.

6. Seeking novelty/nostalgia

Application: Integration of new and old, cross-border marketing

Example:

(1) New wine in old bottles + crossover + cute contrast. For example, the storytelling routine of Douyin's "The First Cultural Relics Drama Conference" basically completely copied the plot of the movie "Night at the Museum", with crossover Douyin soundtrack and painting style, palace maids dancing seaweed dance, and terracotta warriors dancing in a row, full of a sense of time and space interweaving.

(2) The brand promotion campaign “National Trend is Coming” also uses cross-border marketing. Liushen and RIO have jointly launched a cocktail with floral water flavor; Zhou Hei Ya and Yunifang have launched a lipstick with duck neck flavor; Weilong has launched a rice dumpling with spicy noodle flavor, etc.

(3) The one-shot Pechoin advertisement: A modern girl in old Shanghai in 1931, seemingly strolling on the street, is actually completing a murder mission. The unexpected twist in the advertisement placement at the end is very satisfying.

Phase 2: Empowering Users

The motivations used are:

1. Social influence and relevance

(Showing off, achievement, social currency, image cost, identity-commitment and consistency)

The starting point of image shaping is to create an ideal person for yourself, or a positive impression in the eyes of others, to show off your own personality and preferences, to attract attention and recognition from similar people, etc.

"Contagious" defines it as social currency: just as people use currency to buy goods or services, using social currency can gain more praise and more positive impressions from family, friends and colleagues.

1. Provide conversation topics
2. Spreading value
3. Showing friendliness/bringing closer rapport
4. Attract attention

It is usually based on user comparison and competition, and seeks a sense of superiority through showing off.

use:

(1) Show off achievements - gamification marketing

Games: They are interesting and can increase users’ sense of involvement. Through game elements such as achievements, scores, friend PK, and rankings, they can stimulate users’ desire to share and show off (it is best to include the forwarder’s avatar to make it more realistic and personalized).

(2) Using scarcity to stimulate a sense of showing off

The "Alipay Five Blessings" campaign during the Spring Festival of 2016-2017 took advantage of the scarcity of the "Diligence Blessing" and seized the demand for showing off, triggering a nationwide campaign to show off their cards and share and give away cards among friends.

(3) Provide topics for conversation

1) Spark social topics by sharing content and keep in touch with others; provide novel and interesting topics for conversation.

It is human nature to love chatting and want to be noticed. Once new and interesting topics come up, you become the center of the conversation. This has also given rise to professional "jokers" who only seek exposure without any reward. By cleverly integrating your brand into topics that have the power to spread, you can make your product self-propagating.

Durex is the originator. Many years ago, when it rained heavily in Beijing, a Weibo post about a young man wearing Durex as shoe covers was forwarded crazily because it provided good topic for conversation.

2) Inventory activities: Based on user personal data and major events, provide a common topic with others.

For example, annual reviews of a marketing nature are shared, such as "NetEase Entertainment Circle Pictorial", "Baidu Boiling Point List", and NetEase Cloud Music's annual playlist. The data dimensions selected are those that users care about most. There is also the "Alipay Annual Bill", which summarizes the user's total consumption for a year, as well as rankings and keywords, to stimulate users' desire to show off or deprecate themselves.

(4) Show your presence

1) Sense of superiority and existence

Sharing shows your good qualities: being smart, caring, interesting, and giving yourself an identity - commitment and consistency.

Personalization Test-Identity

Creativity: fortune-telling, New Year's sign, fortune, career, zodiac sign, IQ, appearance, personal style, psychology, etc...

Format: Enter name/other personal information → Answer questions/participate in other interactions → Randomly generate results with name variables → Share. Test results generally carry personal attributes and are of a show-off nature, thereby encouraging sharing. Such as "XXX makes a living by his face", "XXX's New Year's fortune is good luck", "XXX's appearance is completely defeated by Fengjie"

Drawing lots test (people want to understand themselves): Drawing lots reflects people’s strong desire to understand themselves and the future. This kind of interaction will always be in demand and will never go out of date. Various disguised activities will also occur frequently like menstruation.

At the beginning of 2015, the “New Year’s Sign” took the WeChat Moments by storm as soon as it came out, and various imitators emerged one after another. Although WeChat now has many restrictions on this type of marketing, it still appears from time to time.

Typical cases:

①Testing: (XX test, XX signature)

"My Philosophical Temperament", "Personality Test", NetEase Cloud Music's "User Manual", and Amazon Prime's "Everyone is a Strange Book" that was all over the screen on World Book Day.

②Knowledge (XX industry reports, practical information) and public welfare activities.

③Creative activities: "New World Escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou" is an online + offline communication and creation activity, which requires participants to make an "escape" (travel) decision within 4 hours. Although many people did not really take action, forwarding it also shows an attitude.

2) Identify with your appearance

Tiantian P-pictured photos of youth in previous life

People’s Daily: Look! This is my photo in military uniform, with festive highlights and powerful photo-editing techniques.

3) Understand me better and get closer to me

In NetEase News’ “Sleeping Position Competition”, everyone customized and posted their own “private bed photos”, which is a typical sign of superiority and sharing of one’s private life.

Small products for friend impressions: Use a series of small activities, such as "Describe me in three words" and "Do you understand me?" to help users build relationships with their friends.

Show off/parody DIY parody page:

• Creativity: Generate Moments, news reports, conversation records, marriage certificates, contracts worth hundreds of millions... The generated pages are high imitations of common user pages, creating a sense of dislocation that is difficult to distinguish between reality and fiction, such as Moments homepages, news pages, magazine covers, and even some more specific ones, such as marriage certificates, student ID cards, etc.
• Format: Enter personal information → Generate a personalized page → Share.
• Typical case: "I want to be on the headlines of NetEase News" PV50 million (the official data released to the public, it is said to be within 2 days).

2. Authority and celebrities (generate trust and reduce decision-making costs)

Authoritative and recommended by big names.

3. Follow the crowd and social recognition (generate trust and reduce decision-making costs)

Application: Marquee, rankings, etc.

Phase 3: Triggering User Engagement & Purchasing Behavior

1. Loss and avoidance (fear of losing or missing out)

use:

"Loss aversion", the desire for quick success, and the mentality of getting something for nothing can be exploited through bug marketing and the bait effect.

Example:

The stealing vegetables game was once popular all over the country. How many people set alarms in the middle of the night to harvest and steal vegetables? Isn’t it because they are afraid of losing money?

(1) Bug marketing: Baidu Netdisk’s bug marketing

On the evening of June 21, 2013, a widely circulated message appeared in major forums, Weibo, and QQ groups: "The payment system of Baidu Cloud Disk seems to have a major bug. The price of all paid packages has become 1/1000 of the original price. You can buy a one-year membership for 0.1 cent, and the highest-level package with 100GB is only 0.5 cents. Hurry up and grab the benefits!!" For a time, netizens went crazy. Regardless of whether they had a Baidu Cloud Disk account before, they all rushed to buy it.

(2) Using the decoy effect

For example, the idiotic decision-making design of Pinduoduo's group buying page, with "purchase individually" and "initiate a group buying" on each product page, allows users to make choices. Purchasing individually costs 155 yuan, while initiating a group buying costs 18 yuan. Normal people will choose to initiate a group buying. Both options are presented, giving people the feeling that "they have made a profit." Compared to low prices, users prefer to "get a bargain" through their own efforts. So this multiple-choice question gives users this feeling.

For example, AirDroid has set up a method to obtain advanced features: by recommending the product to friends, you can "unlock" advanced features including unlimited traffic remote data transmission, increasing the size of a single offline file to 200MB, etc., or users can choose to pay for the feature.

The bait effect is used here: two options are given. If you want to unlock the function, you can choose to pay or share it on WeChat Moments. Sharing appears to be easier, thus triggering more sharing actions and completing the dissemination. The user motivation exploited is the loss mentality, as if if I don’t share, I will miss out on “a great feature that I could have had”.

2. Like (stay away from pain), like fun

Application: game entertainment, content interaction, story-based games.

(1) Game interaction: Interaction that is entertaining can also be considered a game.

For example, the spelling bottles that Weiquan released every day were originally intended to get people to spell out phrases like "resistance", "Happy New Year", "send red envelopes", and "please give me a hug for warmth". But users with more creative ideas came up with more interesting sentences.

Weird effects such as "I wish you gain more weight in the new year", "Don't resist your period", and "I want to have sex" stimulate the user's sense of participation, which is very interesting.

Then there are the typical H5 games: Surround the Nervous Cat, 1024, If You Are a Man, Hold On for 20 Seconds, etc.

(2) Content interaction: The comment section of NetEase Cloud Music vividly tells us that users are talented and willing to show their talents.

What we need to do is to provide users with a creative platform and stimulate their creative desire. For example, the "Divine Turning Point" essay contest held by Jianshu and Meizu had over one million visits in just two weeks, and the total number of words submitted exceeded 10 million. Jianshu officials said: "In terms of word count alone, this may be the largest UGC in the Chinese world."

(3) Story games (old stories remade, dialogue stories)

Creativity: Simple RPG, adding game elements based on a certain storyline, usually good at storytelling, and the game is just an element to enhance the interaction. You can create content with the help of hot topics, such as popular movies, novels, TV series, etc.; for example, a new version of an old story, the well-known "Chang'e Flying to the Moon".

Format: escape room, detective puzzle, plot adventure, girl development...

Typical case: "My Girlhood"

3. Creative form: WeChat graphic simulation

Creativity: Simulate the common WeChat graphic and text layout. Usually the layout and format need to be difficult to distinguish between true and false, but add many interactive elements to create a "surprise" effect.

form:

Typical case: "Four mentors save Mai Zha" - visual GIF + imitation.

4. Scarcity

Various limited-time flash sales and limited-time special offers are applications of this method. Limited edition skins, limited edition heroes, the limited edition Xiaoai speaker to be released in December, etc.

use:

Scarcity of products - hunger marketing, urgency of time, creating uniqueness - sense of exclusivity.

Example:

When Xiaomi launches a new product, users always have to make reservations, queue up, and grab an F code, which makes users have a stronger desire to own it. Alipay’s Spring Festival Five Blessings Collection is also a typical limited-time hunger marketing.

Time is of the essence:

Besides, the Baidu bug marketing mentioned earlier also hides two kinds of scarcity: first, it is rare for a big company like Baidu to have a bug, and you won’t encounter it next time. Second, since it is a bug, it will definitely be fixed soon, so act quickly!

The rarity of probability and the urgency of time make users not hesitate. So the principle of scarcity is also applied.

Creating uniqueness: The strange rule of "only giving to one person in a lifetime" formulated by roseonly creates two uniquenesses.

1. I am the only one who dares to sell roses in this way; the brand is unique.
2. Once purchased, it can only be given to one person in a lifetime, and the use of the product is unique. This uniqueness makes users desire and cherish it more strongly, and the brand’s uniqueness and premium also emerge.

In summary, we have made an overall review of the different motivations applicable to different stages of marketing and what kind of creative activities are suitable for different motivations.

Before you start a marketing campaign, you can

1. Find motivation.
2. No matter what, referring to creative ideas should be able to stir up some water in your dry soul.

The article is too long.

2. Starting from some methods used by big names, summarize their creative logic.

3. From the perspective of daily collection and maintenance, how to build your own creative library.

Related reading:

1. How does user operation implement fission marketing plan? Start from these 4 points!

2. How does user operation implement fission marketing plan? Start from these 4 points!

Author: Mumu Xinzhi

Source: Mumu News