An advertising experience that cost 8 million yuan

Today I will simply share with you some traffic acquisition experience from the perspective of an information flow optimizer.

1. Learn how to get traffic from information flow advertising

1. Information flow advertising exposure mechanism

Many people think that as long as they spend money on advertising, the ads will be exposed. I also thought so before I became an optimizer. In fact, it is not true. For information flow optimizers, increasing the volume (exposure) is always a big problem.

It is not like our public account advertising. As long as we pay to publish a soft article, it will immediately appear in front of users and determine whether the information flow advertisement can be exposed. There is also a set of advertising mechanisms here.

As a user of TikTok or Toutiao, when you open the app and scroll down to browse information, an advertisement message will appear among the multiple messages presented to you.

When an ad position is about to be displayed during the sliding process, this display opportunity is an ad request, and for each ad request, there will be N ad creatives competing for the opportunity to show you.

But in the end, only one advertising idea is successfully displayed, and what determines who can be displayed is the logic behind the delivery.

Look at the picture above. This is an advertising exposure mechanism of the system. Let me give you a brief explanation. Although most of the people in the group are operations personnel, you can still learn a little about it. It is still quite interesting.

When we refresh information, there are actually a bunch of advertisements waiting to be exposed in front of us. These advertisements are placed in a so-called advertising warehouse.

There are so many ads in the ad warehouse, so how does the system decide which ads appear in front of which users?

Everyone should know that as users, we have actually been labeled with various user labels on the platform, such as whether you are a boy, a girl, how old you are, where you are, what you do, what you are interested in, etc.

And each advertisement has its own attributes, which are the targeted screening done by our optimizers when it is placed, that is, finding the target audience through advertisements.

So there was the first ad matching, which filtered out some users who did not have the same attributes. The industry term is called coarse sorting. For example, if I am an advertisement about English training, and you may just want to learn English, then this advertisement will match you.

But after matching, it may not appear in front of you, because there is not only my English training advertisement on the entire platform, but also many other similar English-related advertisements.

Therefore, we need to do another detailed ranking to decide who is number one and who will appear in front of the user first.

A formula is used here: ECPM = estimated click-through rate * estimated conversion rate * target conversion bid; ECPM is the estimated display revenue of the ad. In layman's terms, it means which ad the system thinks it can make more money from.

Finally, the larger the ECPM value, the greater the chance of appearing in front of users.

There are actually many details in this formula, including frequency control, flow control, etc., which I will not go into detail. The reason why I say all this is that I want to express a point. When we do information flow, we must first understand these rules so that we can better expose the advertisements. Only when the advertisements are exposed can there be traffic, otherwise everything is nonsense.

This is what I want to talk about next, the importance of understanding platform rules.

2. Understand the importance of platform rules

Many operators subconsciously know that they need to understand the platform rules first, but I think many people still do not attach great importance to the platform rules, including some of our common operating models and operating cases, and few people talk about this.

To give a few examples, for example, if you are doing private domain traffic, you must now know how to maintain your WeChat account so that it will not be blocked. If you don’t understand how many people you can add to WeChat in a day, and how many times you can post to Moments in a day, then having your account blocked will cause great losses.

Our company had two WeChat accounts blocked some time ago. The new employees were not given clear instructions during the handover. Those WeChat accounts all had precise users, and we spent tens of thousands of yuan to acquire them through information flow advertising.

So you see, sometimes you can save a lot of money just by understanding the platform rules.

This is one aspect. If you want to obtain traffic, you also need to know a lot of platform rules.

I don't know if anyone here has ever used Baidu Tieba to attract traffic. To do this, you have to constantly push up the posts. If you don't, they will sink in an instant. This is because Baidu Tieba's exposure mechanism is sorted by time. Only by constantly replying and updating the posts and keeping them on the homepage can you get more exposure.

For example, when it comes to Douyin and Toutiao, many people should know that they have a recommendation mechanism.

When I was working in new media, I started by writing for public accounts and then for headlines. I think writing style is very important when writing for public accounts.

But since I started writing for Toutiao, my writing style has changed. I still remember that there was a newly graduated kid in the company who published a popular article not long after joining the company. I was very scared at the time.

Because the quality of your writing has nothing to do with your reading volume, but is related to the interaction rate of your article, and these interaction rates affect the platform's recommendation mechanism.

When I was writing for Toutiao before, I would deliberately put a few typos in the article, or deliberately put a few incorrect opinions, so that users would comment and complain after seeing them. Sometimes I would even use a small account to guide users to complain in the comments, all in order to increase the interaction rate of the article and gain more exposure.

Including those who are engaged in Douyin matrix and batch group control, the official account of the Operation Research Society has written many related articles. Those who engage in batch control have mastered the platform rules and then made full use of these rules to amplify them.

There is also the Zhihu platform, Xianyu, Douban and too many others. Each platform has its own algorithms and platform rules.

If you want to get more exposure from these platforms and want to drive traffic from them, you need to understand the rules of the platforms.

2. How to improve conversion efficiency through the marketing funnel model

1. Marketing Funnel Model

I think many people have seen the marketing funnel model a long time ago.

Before I started working on information flow, I didn’t have such a deep understanding of this model, but since I started working on information flow, I feel that this model is simply tailor-made for information flow advertising.

Why do I say this? Because in the past, most traditional advertising was exposure-based, and it was easy for a gap to appear from exposure to conversion. There is a saying in the advertising industry, "I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I don't know which half is wasted."

In fact, I think the other half of the advertising fee is not wasted. It just turns into brand awareness through advertising display, but the path from advertising display to the final conversion is broken. It may take a long time for the user to complete the conversion in a certain store. It is lagging, so it feels like the advertising is wasted.

However, since the advent of information flow advertising, users can quickly complete the conversion from ad display to conversion in one place.

Let’s take Douyin advertising as an example. When you see this video ad, it is an exposure. Then you click to view the details, which is a click. After clicking, you jump to the landing page, which is a visit. Finally, placing an order completes a conversion.

You see, the entire process is completed in the same place.

This is why information flow advertising is called performance advertising. The entire path from advertising display to conversion has been shortened a lot, which has greatly improved the conversion rate.

Therefore, the first step to improve conversion rate is to reduce the number of paths as much as possible.

In addition to reducing the number of paths, we also need to improve the conversion rate at each level. Why do users click after seeing an ad? Why do they take action to convert after clicking on the landing page? Each level has its own elements, which are the second point in this section, the three major elements of conversion.

2. Three major elements of transformation

Each layer of the marketing funnel model can improve conversion rate through these three elements.

For example, the presentation layer. Our information flow for the presentation layer is called "creative material", which is the advertising video that appears when you watch Douyin. Its purpose is to guide users to click on the landing page.

So, the conversion rate here becomes how to increase clicks.

Then the three elements of transformation can be used.

Let’s take a look at some of the more popular advertising videos below.

New Oriental Online Advertisement

The video begins by pointing out the theme of high scores in the postgraduate entrance examination, and then creates suspense through the tense scene of a girl being chased, which attracts the user's attention and creates curiosity about the subsequent plot development.

Through interactive communication and recommendations with boys, users can intuitively understand that the course can help users develop scientific and effective learning strategies, and that the course is completely free, thereby improving user satisfaction.

Advertisement of Whom to Learn

First, by showing the girl’s excellent grades, we can attract users’ attention to the video and increase their trust in the video recommendation.

The latter part, through the communication between the girl and her mother, demonstrates the product's feature of using mind maps and affixes and roots to quickly memorize words, and uses free publicity gimmicks to stimulate users to convert to the product.

Advertisement of Zebra English

The video features three mothers sharing the courses they have signed up for their children. By comparing the three products, the advantages of the products are deepened.

It also combines the product's low price, AI interactive teaching, and course support for unlimited playback to satisfy users' curiosity and constantly stimulate users to replace products.

In fact, the rhythm of classic videos is mostly like this:

As soon as the video is played, the cover should be eye-catching - the golden 3-5 seconds, set incentives/interest points to stimulate user interest (the CVR will be highest if the interest points or contradictions are highlighted in the first 5 seconds) - in the first 20 seconds, introduce product selling points to let users recognize the value of the product - after 20 seconds, highlight the brand and other means to enhance trust, clarify action guidelines, and guide purchases.

To sum up, there are three elements of conversion: attracting attention, building trust, and guiding action.

In addition to advertising videos, the access layers of landing pages can also follow these three elements of conversion. I will not elaborate on them here, as the methods are similar. In short, if each layer contains these three elements of conversion, the conversion rate can be greatly improved.

There are many ways to attract attention, but I think the most important thing is to "be related to you". What does that mean? Suppose you are walking on a crowded and noisy street, with people dancing here and singing there, and a super sexy beauty walking towards you in front of you, but she may not attract your attention.

But at this moment, someone in the crowd suddenly calls your name "XXX", then you will definitely look over there in the direction of that voice, right? It’s like if your name appears in an advertisement, you will definitely want to click on it.

This "related to you" can be expanded to include user-related needs, selling points and benefits that users want to obtain, pain points that they want to solve, and so on.

So how do we build trust after attracting customers? The common method we use in information flow is to demonstrate some authority to increase trust, and also to take advantage of some herd mentality, such as the message scroll bar, which will be displayed after someone places an order, giving people the feeling that many people will buy.

There are many ways to build trust, but I think the essence is still familiarity. The more familiar you are with someone, the stronger the trust.

Then comes guiding actions, which are mainly reflected in scarcity, such as limited time, limited quantity, original price XX, current price XX, etc.

Most of the online education routines are to use traffic-generating courses + high-priced courses for conversion. Optimizers are generally responsible for importing traffic. As for the conversion of high-priced courses in the back end, we don’t participate much.

Some companies’ backend is operated through social networks, while others are directly converted through customer service. Although I haven’t had much contact with back-end conversions, I think these three elements can also be used to go through it.

If you are engaged in community operation, have you ever thought about why you need to do community operation to achieve conversion, and why you need to use drainage courses first and then convert to high-priced courses?

In fact, I think the essence of a traffic-generating course is not only to attract traffic, but more importantly to build trust. It makes users feel that if they can learn so much from a trial class, then they can learn even more from a large class. The essence is to build trust.

If you have broken down the operation rhythm of some larger communities, the main steps are to attract attention, build trust, and then guide action conversion.

It is not only used in these places, but also includes writing copy. For an advertising soft article, you must first find a way to attract users to read it, then build trust, and finally guide action conversion.

Including offline merchants, when you are shopping, especially in some tourist attractions, you will often see people clapping at the door of some stores. Their purpose is to attract your attention, but this way of attracting attention is not related to the product and is difficult to convert.

But the approach is still correct. Whether online or offline, as long as you want to sell goods, you can use these three elements in the steps to attract attention, build trust, and guide action.

3. Use “information flow” thinking to measure the value of operational work

Finally, let me talk about my experience of switching from new media operations to information flow. Why did I switch to become an information flow optimizer? Because the budget given to me by the new media operations company at that time was very small.

If you are an operations staff member who is not working in a large company or a leading company in the industry, I think you will also encounter this problem. Many bosses are reluctant to give you a budget, and it is considered good to be able to give you one or two thousand yuan for event planning.

Most of them want you to bring in as many fans as you want at zero cost, or write 100,000+ posts in a few minutes.

At that time, I felt that if I didn’t spend money, I would never be able to accomplish anything big. My daily work is to write some articles and organize an event occasionally. I do some insignificant things. I always feel that the value I create is not big enough. If the company is without me, it will have almost no impact. .

Then I felt very unfulfilled, so I changed my career to work in information flow. After changing my career to work in information flow, I found that what I did before was still very valuable.

Because the main settlement method for information flow is OCPM, to put it simply, it is paid according to the number of times it is displayed. When I was running clothing before, the fee for each thousand times of display was about 100 yuan. Now I am engaged in vocational education, the fee for each thousand times of display is about 30-50 yuan.

Comparing it with before, when I was writing for Toutiao, I often published small popular articles with 100,000+ views. If you have written for Toutiao, you should know that 1,000,000+ is considered a real popular article, and it is common to write articles with 10,000-20,000 views.

Therefore, at this time, the operation staff should use the information flow settlement method for conversion. For example, if you have written more than 100,000 articles, the cost per thousand impressions is calculated as 50 yuan, 100,000/50. In fact, you have saved your boss 2,000 yuan, which is a lot, isn’t it?

And this is just the value brought by one article. We have to write a lot in our daily work, including the number of Douyin views and the exposure of the activities we usually do. In fact, they can all be converted in this way, but the advertising will be more crude, directly promoting the product, and the content we usually create will be softer or a monetization after long-term accumulation.

This is the cost per thousand impressions in the advertising backend, you can take a look.

In addition, our operations department often organizes activities to increase fans, because the operations staff will use various means to carry out activities, some low-cost new customer acquisition and fission methods, and the average customer acquisition cost for an activity is about 5-10 yuan, or even lower.

However, the customer acquisition cost of paid advertising is high. For example, what I am doing now has an average customer acquisition cost of about 30 yuan. After deducting the payment fees, it is about 20 yuan. You will think that the customer acquisition cost is actually very high.

But in fact, it is already considered low in online education. The normal price for acquiring customers in the industry is around 60-100 yuan.

So in comparison, the cost of 5-10 yuan for our operations staff to organize a fan-increasing activity is already very low. We should give ourselves a pat on the back. If you think about it from another perspective, we are actually creating great value for our boss.

So, let’s work hard together. That’s all I have to say. Thank you everyone.

Author: Sanhe

Source: Sanhe Talk about Drainage (sanhevip8)