A case study of the WeChat Moments distribution that sold 8,000 copies

Event background: On November 13, 2019, I saw a circle of friends post from Yafatou, who is responsible for the "Daily Operation Case Library" of Zero One Paid Community. In the end, I originally just wanted to be a small participant, but because many acquaintances in the group joined in the fun, I ended up becoming the head of the strategy group for the popular case library. Finally, I was responsible for the promotion and operation of the entire hot-selling case library, working with the project manager Lao Zhao. He was responsible for the content, and I was responsible for the formulation and implementation of the strategy. In the end, we produced the year-end screen-sweeping case, which is the "Hot-selling Case Library" project.

The project lasted more than a month, and the actual preparation and promotion time was about 20 days. It was blocked twice, and then taken offline for rectification, before it was put back online to continue its sprint. In the end, with 0 cost and 0 resources, it sold more than 8,000 units (excluding offline sales).

Activity data

The fission level reached 14, the distribution conversion rate was close to 30%, and the total sales were over 8,000. This is the overall data of the "Hot-selling Case Library" project. Judging from the fission and distribution conversion data model, this is a small-scale screen-sweeping activity. (Judgment criteria: fission propagation level > level 10, overall distribution conversion rate > 20%. It is more difficult to meet both conditions at the same time). Next, we will review the entire process. I will try my best to restore my thoughts during the process and why I made some trade-offs to help achieve the goal. I believe you will gain a lot after reading this. The following is the table of contents. There is a lot of content and you need to read it patiently:

Target management, team management, division of labor, user portrait, demand analysis, competitive product analysis, selling point refinement, strategy formulation, strategy splitting, program design, cold start, first fission, offline rectification, second fission,

Then I will review the whole process with you.

Management by objectives

Having a clear goal is the foundation for a project to proceed. However, at the beginning, the goal we get is vague, so we need to try to define it clearly.

As you can see from the picture above, the goal we get at the beginning is vague, with only a simple description and an introduction to some available resources, but we need to find the most important goal that can drive the realization of the other two goals. Here you can understand it as the North Star indicator. That is the most direct and quantifiable sales volume. So we directly selected the 1 million posts posted by Yatou on WeChat Moments as our direct target. Previous decision: By analyzing Zero One’s past channel conversion data, we broke down the sales indicators into each channel, and then designed gameplay to achieve the goal.

Obstacles encountered: At this step, we actually faced a new problem. Since we were not Zero One staff, we could not obtain Zero One's channel conversion data, let alone calculate the minimum amount of resources we needed for promotion based on this data. Subsequent decision: Therefore, we first define the overall framework, design the gameplay based on the framework, and finally set corresponding indicators according to the goals that the gameplay needs to achieve, find corresponding channels and conversion methods, and see how to adjust to get as close to the goal as possible.

Think about it: Some problems in the process do not need to be solved. Instead of getting entangled in one problem, it is better to find another way as long as it can help you achieve your goal.

Team Management

When I became the team leader, I was actually completely confused. I had no idea what to do and had to face all kinds of questions from team members. And I didn't even know them. As it is the end of the year, it is the time for companies to rush for performance, so collaboration will face the following problems:

1. It is impossible to clearly know who the team members are, let alone who is good at what, what they can do, and whether they are willing to accept the arrangement? 2. At the end of the year, everyone is busy working to achieve performance for the company, and their schedules are not fixed. How do we coordinate? I believe that during this epidemic, many companies also faced similar problems in online collaboration. Here I will share some of the practices at that time for reference. Faced with this situation at the time, we designed a grouping questionnaire to conduct preliminary grouping based on the members' strengths, resources, willingness, and whether they were willing to serve as group leaders.

Previous decision: Use the Group-based App to randomly group people and directly select the person in charge. Obstacles encountered: The mini program grouping effect was not ideal, and there was no understanding of the team members, which made the whole process very unsmooth. In addition, the random grouping of each person would bring a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of time would be wasted just on the grouping. Subsequent decision-making: Combine those who are good at, have resources, and are willing to lead the team to design the questionnaire, fully consider the needs of the personnel, be able to quickly divide the groups first, and proceed to the next step. Thinking: The division of labor is not complete at this step. We just have a preliminary team, but the division of labor has not yet been made. It is necessary to further establish the team leader, but before that, it is necessary to clearly define everyone's goals so that all participants can reach a consensus to make the division of labor more efficient.

Establish division of labor

After selecting the team leader, we need to clearly define the goals of each module. Only when the goals are described clearly enough can we ensure that the execution level is not distorted and advance the goals in an orderly manner. As long as the goal is clearly defined, no amount of description is too much.

Key points:

First understand the team members' understanding and doubts about the matter, and provide ideas. Take stock of team members' willingness and ability, establish team division of labor (fill out questionnaires and divide into groups) and clear meeting rules:

There must be a theme before the meeting, and everyone is required to think first and come up with a plan for the meeting. No judgment or interruption should be made during the meeting. After a resolution is established, everyone must repeat their understanding to ensure that they are on the same frequency. Previous decision: The team leader will be directly selected based on the questionnaire results. Obstacles encountered: Even if someone is willing to be the team leader, due to the busy year-end, it finally becomes that there is willingness but no time. Other members wanted to go through the entire project process.

Subsequent decisions: Summarize the time each team leader can use for collaboration, and make plans based on the schedules of most people. For other members who want to go through the entire project process, I finally suggest changing the nickname on their business cards to "+XX team main force" or "+XX team assistant" in their group. For groups that are not primarily responsible, group members can see the discussion content and give corresponding suggestions. The team leader will directly deploy the team that is in charge.

Thinking: From reaching a consensus on the same goal to holding meetings to divide the work, it is very important to confirm everyone's understanding of the goals one by one and know who needs what kind of collaboration with whom. Consistent understanding and goals can ensure the correct direction of execution.

User Profile

After establishing the goal, we need to look at who we want to sell the product to, who are the target users, what these users care about, and what influences the users' decisions. Therefore, we conducted more than 200 user surveys targeting operators and obtained the following user portraits:

Image 1

Name: Xiao Chen

Position: New Media Operations

Company: An educational company

Working experience: 1-3 years

I usually look at industry cases or try to disassemble them myself.

Familiarity with the industry's rules: I know a little bit about some of the industry's rules

I hope that by analyzing the cases, I can have a reference when writing a proposal, improve my ability, and understand the rules of the industry.

Pay attention to whether the case contains: analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the case, summary of the methodology, and restoration of the operational process

Willing to spend 41-60 yuan to buy

Image 2

Name: Xiao Li

Position: User Operation

Company: An e-commerce company

Working experience: 3-5 years

I usually look at industry cases or try to disassemble them myself.

Familiarity with the industry's rules: I know a little bit about some of the industry's rules

Hope to understand the industry rules and improve your own operational capabilities by analyzing the cases

Pay attention to whether the case contains: methodology summary, advantages and disadvantages analysis, and operation process restoration

Willing to spend 61-80 yuan to buy

Image 3

Name: Xiao Wang

Position: Community Operations

Company: An Internet financial company

Working experience: more than 5 years

I usually look at industry cases or try to disassemble them myself.

Familiarity with the industry's rules: I know a little bit about some of the industry's rules

Hope that by analyzing the cases: you can understand the industry rules, have references when writing proposals, and improve your own operational capabilities

Pay attention to whether the case contains: methodology summary, advantages and disadvantages analysis, and operation process restoration

Willing to spend more than 100 yuan to purchase

Previous decision: We hope to entrust the questionnaire design to the team and submit the results of the questionnaire analysis when the questionnaire is completed. Obstacles encountered: The questionnaires collected by the team only contained basic data summaries without any further analysis. Such data were raw data and had not been analyzed, making them difficult to use as reference. If you get stuck at this step and cannot move forward, it is easy to have no follow-up. The subsequent decision was to let only the small team be responsible for collecting the questionnaires, and I would conduct a relatively detailed analysis to ultimately come up with a clearer user portrait. Thinking: This is a temporary project, and I am not responsible for training team members. Therefore, I need to think from the perspective of achieving the goal. So when the project is stuck at a node, I must be responsible for solving it.

Demand Analysis

We need to further understand what users may care about in terms of our products and services. Once we have a user portrait, we need to think about what user needs our products meet. Because it is a library of popular case studies, the most intuitive carrier is "books." Therefore, I arranged for the team to search for evaluation data of operational books on e-commerce platforms such as Dangdang and JD.com, conduct data analysis, and see what users may care about.

After obtaining these data and conclusions, we certainly cannot solve all the problems, but we need to find breakthroughs to satisfy users as much as possible. To do this, we need to further consider from what angles our products can meet user needs and what opportunities we have compared to other competing products. This requires us to conduct a serious competitive analysis.

Competitive product analysis

Selling point extraction

Through analysis, we gradually refined our selling points, which are as follows:

Once you know who your users are, their needs, and the selling points of your product, you need to enter the solution design stage. In order to design a good pre-sale plan, you need to learn from some high-quality gameplay of competitors. This is exactly the meaning of disassembling cases and reusing cases that we advocate. Then we moved into the strategy development phase.

Strategy Development

The entire activity is divided into four stages according to the four-character principle of "introduction, development, transition and conclusion". Each stage has goals to be achieved:

Warm-up: diversion + locking traffic (purpose: storing water in the traffic pool), start-up: user fission + KOL launch superposition effect (activation: traffic pool blowout), climax: topic (such as guessing sales) design of guessing gameplay (secondary dissemination), fermentation: live broadcast review? or integrate various promotional resources and publish review articles to accumulate users (acquire new users and secondary conversions). Such a simple setting is far from enough. At this time, it is necessary to carry out detailed decomposition based on these goals to form an overall promotion path.

Step one: We need to activate the planet, the community, and the traffic we can reach, and merge them into the community we can operate, continue to operate, and promote the topic of "Best Case Library". (Interactive gameplay needs to be closely linked to the popular case library to keep users’ attention in the community and continue to pay attention)

Step 2: Start looking for traffic and KOL linkage to create topics. (Design the association between users and KOLs. I don’t know if it is possible to get KOLs to join in and share some cases. This needs further consideration.)

Step 3: The topic needs to be strengthened during pre-sale, and support is needed (distribution practice + promotion strategy + sales volume guessing)

Step 4: Live broadcast or linkage with other resources for secondary detonation and secondary conversion in new traffic.

Strategy Split

After we have a preliminary idea, we also need to clarify the specific content of the work. It must be specific enough and attach reference objects as much as possible to ensure that the team's understanding will not be too distorted, which will lead to the distortion of project goals. Therefore, I have divided specific matters in each stage and attached reference materials, as follows:

Solution Design

Finally, I integrated all the contents. It happened that I had three lessons on the operator's overtaking plan. I thought a model diagram was very suitable for me to explain the plan. So I used this template and formed the following plan:

After having a complete project plan, we need to think about how to ensure that the project can achieve its expected goals and what are the key nodes that the project must complete. To this end, we need to find sufficient reasons to support breakthroughs in the key points of the project.

Key point 1: Are there enough people joining? Confidence point: In the industry, operators generally have a great interest in watching operation events. The Operation Research Society and Lao Guan’s new bonus courses have achieved good results. We only need to continue exposure. Support point: By promoting through the operation loudspeaker, attracting traffic will not be a big problem. Powerful point: By expanding the circle of friends of the crowd innovation group members, it can also attract a wave of traffic.

Key point 2: Are the big guys willing to spread the word?

Confidence point: The topic of the "Operation War" event itself has enough spread points. It is interesting and fun. Bosses are willing to express their opinions on fun things. Helping point: We can prepare some texts and pictures in advance for bosses to spread. Helping point: You can invite some of your KOC friends to spread it.

The reference draft is as follows:

Key point 3: Are you willing to organize group distribution?

Confidence point: There is a special distribution SOP to help, provide materials, and design scripts for the circle of friends to help you overcome the difficulties of closing deals. Support point: The excitement of real-time payment can increase participation enthusiasm as much as possible. Support point: There are additional incentives for reaching the specified number of sales orders.

Key point 4: Whether the user is willing to participate in the guessing game, Confidence point: Through guessing, there is a chance to get benefits and become the one of the million best-selling koi. The fierce competition creates a tense and exciting atmosphere, increases suspense, and makes people feel more involved. Support point: By participating in the guessing game, you can get benefits (points OR discounts). Support point: The koi grand prize is based on a data package (the packaging of the data must be bound to the best-selling case library).

In addition to finding supporting reasons for the various key points mentioned above, we also need to seriously consider the user's psychological path. Therefore, on this basis, I further tried to deduce the mood or doubts that users may have when seeing the poster.

Previous decision: Follow the plan exactly. Obstacles faced: Since most of Zero One’s resources were invested in the Ten Cities Summit, many conditions were not met, so the distribution PK betting game could not be carried out, so this part was not implemented. Subsequent decision: Prioritize efficiency while minimizing impact on results, abandon all community points and PK guessing methods that were originally considered, and focus on "lightness". Think about it: When facing big problems, you cannot be indecisive and must make some choices, otherwise many things cannot be carried out.

Cold Start

The first melon-eating group was formed through the attraction posters. The progress of cover design/content production/game design was updated in the group, so that this group of "melon-eating people" could understand the progress of the project and prepare for community fission.

Activities need potential energy. At that time, because all the key work of Zero One was invested in the Ten Cities Summit, only the project manager Lao Zhao and I were left to coordinate this matter, and the originally prepared resources could not be used. Therefore, in this case, if there is no point that can attract users to enter the fission group for fission, it is very likely that the previous plan will be ruined. Therefore, in this case, what I thought of was that Zero One and the crowd-creation team are two main bodies, so it is better to arouse the curiosity of users in the form of PK. This is also the birth of this idea. Because the people always expect heroic results.

We temporarily designed two sets of posters, allowing users to choose the team they represent and share it on WeChat Moments, and send screenshots to the group to choose their own distribution team.

After attracting people to the group, add people who are willing to become distribution team leaders using their personal accounts, and use the original fission group as a project introduction to make as many conversions as possible. In this way, more than 1,200 users were attracted to the distribution PK community in the early stage, and each user who shared the poster added friends individually to prepare for the subsequent distribution. The number and progress of both teams were updated through group announcements every day.

When launching the game, Lao Zhao and I considered using some detailed conversion methods, such as coupons, red envelopes for sharing, etc. Since almost all the technical resources were used in the Ten Cities Summit, we finally used Zero One’s own distribution tool and started directly with the template. I have to say that this tool is very simple to operate and easy to use. There is nothing particularly outstanding about the posters and detail pages this time. For details, you can refer to the six elements of fission poster design.

First fission

We have collected useful articles on operating the trumpet to help members of the distribution team to attract traffic, and provided them with copywriting for their Moments. The purpose is to help them build their own traffic pool as much as possible before the launch. And preheat it in advance before the launch of the sale, and finally start the conversion.

The first fission time was at 8:30 pm on December 17th. About 800+ were sold that night. In the early morning of the next day, around 6-7 o'clock, I observed that the data began to soar across the board, increasing by another 1,000+. Around 10:30, we received the news of the ban. So we urgently switched the domain name, and soon after that, at 12:30, we received another ban message. After communicating with the team, we decided to urgently shut down the event. Close the poster generation entrance and guide purchased users in the after-sales community to check their orders from the latest domain name. Before being banned, nearly 2,400+ were sold.

With the first wave of bans, there were many customer complaints and after-sales issues, so our offline time initially increased from 3 days to about a week. If there is no action during this period, not only will the potential energy of the activity be consumed, but more challenges will also be faced. Therefore, our focus is to notify friends through Moments while reminding them of the progress of the case library. At the same time, we also try to eliminate the risk of violations as much as possible in order to go online again.

Offline rectification

After reviewing the situation, we analyzed the violation risks, including the risk of inducing sharing in the page and the wording at the bottom of the page. After recalibration we are ready to go live again. So we started to re-optimize and adjust the page, changing the misleading words into ordinary words, no longer prompting distribution income and other content on the page, and the main distribution guidance was placed in the community that users entered after purchase.

Online again

After going online again, we did not promote it immediately. Instead, we conducted security tests. Only after we determined that the risk was low did we start the promotion. After the promotion again, I went to communicate with the distribution bosses again. In addition, as the Zero One Team’s Ten-City Summit was coming to an end, they also joined the promotion army one after another. Subsequently, another 5,300+ were sold.

Project review thinking

What are the areas where the project can be optimized and how can it be optimized? Risk investigation: Try to avoid the risk of illegal bans on the page as much as possible. In addition to preparing more domain names for timely switching, you must also eliminate the risk of illegal speech guidance in advance.

After-sales service: During the formulation of the entire plan, we actually took into consideration the points that users care about. However, in actual implementation, the customer service entrance on the page was not obvious enough. After the payment was successful, the user could not find the customer service entrance and the service entrance, which caused us to lose contact briefly. However, considering that directly creating a group during the sales period will cause considerable customer service pressure, in the future when setting up, you can combine functions such as service number order query, and then provide unified after-sales service based on the information filled in by the user. Here you need to prepare the corresponding script in advance.

Seed users: In addition to the traffic pool we have created ourselves, we also need to help distribution team leaders establish their own traffic pools, as well as prepare corresponding operating procedures and materials. Make preparations for both seed user acquisition and seed user fission. In this regard, the script preparation was not comprehensive enough. For many people, this was their first time doing organizational fission, so they were unable to understand our point immediately. Next time, we will need to provide preliminary training to the team leaders.

Community operation: The points-based gameplay designed earlier was too complicated, and the subsequent implementation was too simple. In subsequent fission activities, emphasis should be placed on the number of product selling points and the complexity of operations. Neither too light nor too heavy will do.

What are some reusable techniques in the project?

Goal management: In fact, when we study goal management, we break down the indicators into each channel for measurement. If there is no historical reference data, we will use the approximate industry average as the basis for measurement. After this activity, we can use the basic data indicators of this activity to estimate the approximate effect of the next activity.

Solution design: Online operational activities generally start with the four-character formula of "introduction, development, turn and conclusion", so the above process design interpretation and key point support can still be reused when writing solutions in the future.

User psychological path: When completing the process design, we need to deduce the user's psychological path according to the process. On the one hand, we can know what psychological changes or doubts you might have if you were a user. If we can answer or guide as much as possible, the whole activity will go more smoothly.

Some final conclusions

My sense of accomplishment throughout the project is not the final data and growth, but the gradual verification of some methodologies that I had previously summarized during the process. This includes the previous experience of the online management team, the re-application of the OGSM model, the knowledge learned in the three classes, and the user psychological paths that I have not yet fully summarized.

The most important inspiration is that we have a deeper understanding of the existing private domain traffic operations. In the past, we were used to the idea of ​​product first. For example, when many people in the circle of friends are doing marketing, they still use the idea that my platform is awesome, my product is awesome. Most people don’t believe this, especially non-well-known platforms. Compared with this, the existing idea should be the user's interest point. What I can help users achieve or what I can help users solve is the most important thing.

In addition, someone asked me before why I didn’t add users to my personal account first, but chose to join the group first and then screen and add them. I can also explain this here. If you make an open QR code, it is not difficult to reach thousands or tens of thousands of people, but the people who really help you achieve your goals are the people who act with you. If irrelevant people are added to your personal account, they will neither cooperate with you to complete the task nor convert. In addition, the subsequent cleanup will be a huge workload.

If I were to summarize a few points and share them with you, I would probably talk about these:

As long as the team can reach a consensus and unify the goals, no matter how you describe it as a team leader, it is not an exaggeration. The unified goal is the basis for all execution. Compared with rash execution, it is extremely important to have a clear plan. Planning is not a simple list of things, but must be able to carry out the entire execution idea throughout. In combination with actual practice, reusing excellent cases can ensure that you avoid many pitfalls. A good tool and a good team are very important (Zero One is the top in the fission field, and he remained calm even when we were blocked)

Author: Current Operations

Source: Shixian Operation (ID: yyshixian)