Event planning: How to design an excellent event format?

Whether we are individual entrepreneurs or event planners in a company, we will feel uneasy and embarrassed when preparing for an event for the first time due to lack of experience. What I want to share with you here is how to systematically understand the planning process of an event and the key factors that need to be paid attention to. I hope it can help you plan an event better.

Common activity forms

Last time, I shared two traps that you may fall into when designing an activity format. This time, I will introduce how to design an excellent activity format. First, we need to understand some common activity formats so that we can have a basis for subsequent designs.

1. Tool-type products

Tool-type products are software with instrumental value, such as reading software and translation apps. They generally make money by paying for more advanced services or advertising. The common feature of tool-type products is that the activity cycle is very long and the form is simple and crude. This kind of activity is not for users to play, but for users to have fun. The activity is carried out in the form of simply throwing bait → achieving the goal.

2. E-commerce products

E-commerce products have an operating formula: transaction amount = traffic * conversion rate * average order value * repurchase rate * sharing rate. This is also a complete conversion process: introducing traffic → converting into customers → increasing average order value → inducing repeat purchases → bringing in new customers for us, forming a complete closed loop. If the guidance in each link is perfect enough, customers will continue to increase in number. Therefore, we can set up corresponding activities at each link of the process to increase our overall transaction volume.

3. Internet financial products

The operating formula of Internet finance products is exactly the same as that of e-commerce products, but there are two main differences between them and e-commerce products: because Internet finance is risky and the transaction costs are relatively high, and the procedures are complicated, this determines that the trust cost and operation cost of Internet finance products are relatively high, so when designing the activity form, we must pay attention to reducing the user's trust cost and operation cost.

For example, the activity of getting 8,888 financial management funds for 1 yuan is to reduce the user's trust cost. If the investment is hundreds or thousands of yuan at a time, most people will definitely hesitate. But if it only costs one dollar, many people will be willing to try it. After trying it and feeling the effect is good, they will repurchase. At this time, we will throw out appropriate bait and use the return value to attract them to continue investing. After a few times, shopping habits will be formed.

4. Content-based products

Content-based products are platform products that are divided into the supply side and the receiving side, just like NetEase Cloud Music. Therefore, our activities can design special incentive forms for the two sections respectively. The best form of incentivizing creation is of course positive feedback, and the form of incentivizing recipients is similar to the logic of launching a hit product, which is to gather the users' favorite elements and ignite their enthusiasm again.

5. Educational products

Educational products are special because there are many teaching materials on the Internet, and free teaching materials are everywhere. How to convert traffic is our top priority. In addition to doing a good job of content stratification and bait, we can also guide user conversion through a "quasi-free" approach.

Efficient activity form composition

Now that you have learned about the common forms of activities, let me introduce the underlying logic of efficient activities. Here I will introduce it in two parts. The first part is the mind method: the essential function of the activity, and the second part is the body method: the key elements of the activity.

There are only two reasons that drive human behavior: emotional motivation and rational motivation. The rational motivation is us, at least the activities are difficult to change, because rationality only looks at demand and profit and loss ratio. No matter how much we organize the activities, the impact on the profit and loss ratio is still very small, unless we do money-burning marketing... and the demand cannot be influenced by us.

I have to explain something here: Usually, everyone must have heard about exploring user needs and grasping user pain points, and you may think that at this time the user makes judgments based on his or her own rationality, but this is not the case. In fact, if the user really has a strong demand, this product would have been within his consideration range. A very important step in our activities or marketing process is to guide users to believe that their demand is strong, so that more users will buy. But in fact, many users do not have such a strong purchasing demand and willingness, and they are instigated by our words.

Therefore, if we change the user's mind through words and copywriting, making him think that he really needs this product and then make the purchase, we are actually influencing him through his emotions rather than his rationality. However, there are also activities that can make people want to consume by adjusting rational motivations. We have previously mentioned the one-dollar strategy of Internet finance products, but this is ultimately a minority.

Does this sound convoluted to you? It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand. Just remember that when we organize activities, we always achieve our goals by influencing users’ emotional motivations rather than rational motivations. Among emotional motivations, there are emotional motivations with high arousal value and emotional motivations with low arousal value. Generally speaking, motivations with low arousal value have a weaker impact on human behavior, while those with high arousal value have a stronger impact.

For example, happiness is an emotion with low arousal value, which basically does not drive people to act, but the intensity of excitement is much higher, which will stimulate many people to act. The core of our activities is to mobilize other people's high-arousal emotions and let them act according to our expectations based on emotional motivations.

After introducing the role that the core of the activity is to achieve, let's look at what elements can help us achieve this role.

Interesting interactive scenes

The purpose of providing a scenario is to encourage users to invest their emotions and labor. The egg theory in psychology shows that the more emotions and labor a person invests in something, the more he or she overestimates the value of the thing itself. Therefore, we can design interesting activities to increase users' sense of participation and cost in the process of obtaining marketing tools, thereby enhancing the value of the product in the minds of users. Common ways include group buying, bargaining, flash sales, lotteries, and free gifts for purchases over a certain amount.

Any scene that meets the above four characteristics can be called an excellent interactive scene. Next we are going to talk about

Effective marketing tool

Marketing tools are the bridge between our business purposes and user behavior, including red envelopes and discount coupons. Newbie privileges, redemption vouchers, virtual services and physical items. When using marketing tools, we should pay attention to three principles:

First of all, the use of marketing tools cannot be separated from operational purposes. For example, if we want to increase new customers, then issuing discount coupons will actually have little effect. However, if we give red envelopes for inviting friends and add new user privileges, the effect will be much better.

Secondly, we need to prescribe the right medicine according to the user's status in the conversion cycle. For example, for new users, our work indicator is to help them quickly pass the novice period. For mature users, the more important indicator is the ARPU value.

Finally, we need to define the usage rules of fan-attracting marketing tools based on user scope, category scope, regional scope, channel scope, time scope, payment scope, exclusion scope and effective scope. Maybe not all of them will be displayed to the public, but we ourselves must know what we are doing.

Informative product packaging

A good packaging and title are particularly important to users. We generally classify titles based on the above four dimensions, but we can also classify them by celebrity style/interaction method/country region, as long as it fits the theme of our event. The four main points of copywriting are to mobilize people's emotional motivations to the greatest extent through rhetoric. For example, authority can mobilize awe, and scenario-based copywriting may mobilize surprise, amusement, or fear. We just need to design it according to the characteristics of our own products and the theme of the event.

Author: Drunk Uncle

Source: Drunk Uncle ( guodada128 ）