13 creative ways to play events, a must-have for marketing in 2020!

The homogeneity of current market competition is becoming more and more obvious. Regardless of the industry, the copy-and-paste model has begun to be adopted in product research and development. When a brand launches a product that is loved by consumers, similar products in the market will spring up like mushrooms after rain.

However, in a homogeneous environment with diverse choices of similar products, the advantages of the product itself are weakened. If a product does not have obvious advantages or there are already relevant competitors in the market, it is necessary to continuously plan activities to attract users and make it stand out in the homogeneous market.

But when it comes to organizing the same activities, you will find that some people are very creative and the activities they launch are all over the screen in minutes, such as the first public class of Xin Shi Xiang, Vatti’s World Cup marketing, and the subsidy war between Meituan and Didi. Some people start to have trouble when it comes to event operation . They have no good inspiration; they can't think of the screen-sweeping ideas like NetEase and New World; the activities they run don't achieve the desired results...

In the new year, in order to save your hairline, the editor will give you a detailed introduction to 13 creative ways to play activities and 1 set of activity adaptation formulas to help you get rid of last year’s old routines and start new ways of playing activities in 2020!

Before introducing creative ways to play events, let’s first understand the basic working logic of event planning: clarify the purpose of the event, generate event ideas, and output event plans. Let us follow this logic step by step.

1

Clarify the purpose of the activity

A correct and clear goal is a necessary condition for the success of an activity. Therefore, we must have a clear purpose before planning an event.

The objectives of activities can be summarized into four categories: attracting new customers, retention, activation, and conversion. Different activity objectives correspond to different strategies. For example, if you want to increase your fans through an event, you should plan an event around attracting new users and fission; if you want to increase the stickiness and activity of existing users, you should analyze their needs based on the attributes of current users, and then improve the product or plan a retention event to maintain old customers.

At the same time, a single activity can only have one purpose, and all operations of the entire activity are planned and executed around this purpose. If multiple goals are set, you will lose sight of the original intention of the activity and ultimately affect the effectiveness of the entire activity.

2

Produce activity ideas

There are actually some skills in how to produce a relatively creative event plan. There are mainly the following processes:

• Collect activities: collect various activities and gameplay;
• Apply activities: Select the most appropriate activity gameplay from the collected activity gameplays and apply it to your own activities;
• Appropriate modification: Make appropriate modifications based on the original activity according to the purpose of the activity;
• Best choice: select the campaign creative with the best conversion effect through internal testing;
• Produce creative ideas: Determine the activity plan that ultimately meets the product and purpose and develop detailed steps.

3

Output activity plan (13 creative activity methods)

The activity plan includes 9 major elements, namely, activity background, activity theme, activity purpose, activity time, activity rules, activity process, promotion channels, resource requirements and activity budget.

Based on these 9 elements to determine the activity style, the editor has collected 13 creative activity methods for everyone:

1. Red Envelope

In line with the atmosphere of the Spring Festival, let’s first talk about how to play with red envelopes.

This simple and crude way of playing the activity is very suitable for attracting new customers. The amount of the red envelope does not need to be too large. After all, users just want to enjoy the feeling of "getting a bargain" . Just like the “Collect Five Blessings” activity launched by Alipay every Spring Festival, even though each person only gets a few dollars or even a few cents in the red envelope bonus, it still attracts hundreds of millions of users to participate and has even become a new Spring Festival custom.

Of course, not every red envelope can reach this level, but basically every brand can use red envelopes to stimulate users to place orders and pay, and promote user sharing and dissemination.

For example, financial management products usually give users a large amount of trial money, and the final profit belongs to the user, in order to stimulate users to place orders and pay.

Companies like Meituan Waimai promote sharing among users by giving out lucky red envelopes. If users want to get the biggest red envelope, they will share the red envelope with friends or WeChat groups, which greatly increases the spread of the activity.

2. Lucky Draw

Many people may think that lottery activities are too monotonous. It’s just spinning the wheel and drawing prizes. There is nothing new about it.

No, no, no, in addition to the common nine-square lottery and big wheel lottery, current third-party event marketing tools, such as event boxes, also have golden egg smashing, scratch cards, shake, lottery box, lucky flip, lucky eggs, opening treasure chests, opening lucky bags and other lottery games. You can come up with new ideas every time you draw the lottery, and the activity is simple to operate. The winning probability, winning ratio, number of winners, prizes, and participation conditions can all be set in advance. It is very interesting and the effect is explosive.

Various lottery gameplays can also be used in combination: set the knowledge quiz to draw a prize after meeting the points, promote sharing by setting the prize draw after forwarding, stimulate old users to bring in new users by setting the prize draw after following, give back to new and old users by directly holding events and drawing prizes... A variety of gameplays can meet all the activity scenarios you want.

3. Check-in

Punching in and signing in is the main means to increase user activity and stickiness . You can get rewards by clocking in/signing in every day. You will get more rewards by clocking in/signing in continuously. The rewards can be medals, points or other prizes. Commonly used in products such as fitness, reading, and shopping.

Left: Mint Health Center: WeChat Reading Right: Taobao

The key to the success of this type of activity is to set rewards that match the current user attributes. As shown in the figure above, for reading products such as WeChat Reading, daily sign-ins can give reading permissions; and for shopping apps such as Taobao, daily/long-term sign-ins will give gold coins.

4. Testing/Reporting Activities

Test/report activities usually involve generating a test report related to oneself through a few simple questions. This report also has the attributes of being shared and shown off. The more the content can showcase the user's personality, the more attractive it is for users to forward it to their friends circle or even flood their screen with it.

When it comes to this type of activity, NetEase can be regarded as a "textbook" marketing case, for example:

• NetEase News × DaDa: Test your philosophical temperament;
• NetEase Cloud Music: Your user manual;
• NetEase Yanxuan & Beike: Sociability Index Test;
• NetEase Cloud Music: "Your Jungian Psychological Archetype";
• NetEase: The first time to reveal the seven hidden personalities;
• NetEase Cloud Music: Who would you be in the world of Game of Thrones? ;
• …

I believe there will always be one that has swept your screen.

5. Prizes for guessing

This form takes advantage of the user's mentality of luck. If the answer is correct, they can get a certain reward, otherwise. There are rewards for correct answers and no loss for incorrect answers, which increases users' enthusiasm for participation. It usually appears in sports competitions such as the World Cup and NBA.

Like Vatti’s previous World Cup marketing, it used the form of guessing to launch the “If France wins the championship, Vatti will refund the full amount” campaign, which not only increased brand exposure but also promoted product sales.

6. Answer the questions

When users answer questions correctly, they can get certain rewards, such as physical objects, red envelopes, coupons, points, etc. It is suitable for attracting new customers and maintaining activeness, and can also be used for closing deals. The effectiveness depends on whether the reward is big enough.

7. Group buying activities

Group buying allows users to voluntarily forward messages to their friends so that their friends can get certain benefits together with them. The greater the price discount, the easier it is to stimulate users to participate in group buying. If the group leader has special discounts, it will be more conducive to the spread of group buying.

The purpose of these activities is often to convert payment into profit. Therefore, the strength of group buying and price setting must be well controlled. In addition, the higher the awareness of the group buying products, the better.

8. Bargaining

Bargaining activities are to use material incentives to users, so that users can voluntarily forward the information to their friends and let their friends get certain benefits together with themselves. This form of activity is widely used in the e-commerce industry, and Pinduoduo's explosion is due to this.

There are 3 key points when planning this type of event:

(1) The number of people bargaining needs to be controlled;

(2) Setting the difficulty of participation, including the bargaining amount, bargaining limit, minimum purchase amount, etc. (0 yuan or a low price that users can accept);

(3) Product quality must be up to standard and delivery must be timely to improve customer satisfaction.

9. Voting activities

After users participate in the event, they will ask their friends to vote for them in order to win prizes. The first person to vote can get a reward, or they can get a reward by participating in the vote. However, when using prizes to attract user participation, it is necessary to prevent users from cheating and it is best to declare it in advance to avoid disputes.

This method is generally used for brand communication and can gain a group of accurate fans. However, WeChat is currently focusing its efforts to crack down on this type of behavior, so you should be extra careful when using it. Be cautious when using a large WeChat account, as it can be easily blocked. You can try using a small account.

10. User Recruitment

Solicit content from users, and if the content submitted by the participants is selected, they can receive certain rewards.

This type of gameplay usually requires particularly attractive rewards, or the theme of the collected content directly hits the user's pain points, making users very eager to share, and it is easy to operate. However, this approach is generally not recommended unless the brand has great influence and strong user stickiness.

11. DIY activities

By simply clicking or dragging, users can complete a fun task based on their own free play. The guessing picture song and sleeping position competition that went viral some time ago...all belong to this type.

What these activities have in common is smooth, easy-to-operate and interesting content . While meeting the social needs of users, they also satisfy the curiosity of "peeps", killing two birds with one stone. Reposting and spreading is natural.

12. Do the task

Using prizes to attract users to complete a task is very suitable for increasing followers and is also a method that brands/merchants are very keen on. Because the task stipulates that a fixed number of people must be attracted, the cost of the activity is controllable. Commonly used in products such as finance and online courses.

13. Storytelling

Through storytelling, users can more deeply understand the brand’s point of view, but the development cost is also high.

Storytelling seems easy, but telling a story well is difficult. NetEase is the best storyteller on the Internet, for example: "Confession" and "Hero".

4

How to achieve fission growth?

After talking about the above 13 creative ways to play, we have compiled a set of practical activity fission formulas for you, so that you can easily play these 13 activity ways without worrying for the whole year.

1. Take advantage of the hot spots

In this fragmented era and the rich media ecology, users' attention is constantly being diluted, and all kinds of information are invading them around the clock and in all directions.

Brand marketing that is simply linked together by such fragmented information will ultimately find it difficult to leave a holistic brand impression on consumers.

This gave rise to the business logic of "wherever the user's attention is, there is the marketing position."

“No hot spots, no marketing” has also become a criterion followed by many marketers, especially in the current era of social communication.

As the Chinese New Year is approaching, various blessing and card collection activities led by Alipay are a kind of marketing activity combined with hot spots. After all, the Spring Festival is a super IP that comes with super high traffic and popularity, and major brands must take advantage of it.

2. Activity Overlay

Generally, we will choose at least two basic ways of playing to use in combination, such as: flipping cards + red envelopes, solicitation + voting/selection, group buying + check-in + red envelopes...

As long as you give full play to your imagination, any number of gameplays can be superimposed on each other, but be careful that the user operation process cannot exceed 3 layers. If it is too complicated, users will give up halfway, affecting the effectiveness of the activity.

3. Replace elements

The above gameplay includes many elements. You can replace these elements according to your own purposes and product characteristics, so that this gameplay can be more integrated with the product tone, making users more naturally and willing to accept this activity.

For example, for the same purpose of clocking in to get rewards, education and training apps can design continuous check-ins to get coupons or free trial classes, etc.; while tool apps can design continuous check-ins to get experience cards for a certain time period.

The above is all I have to share with you about event planning. I hope you can find the type of event that suits you here!

Author: Activity Box

Source: Activity Box Operation Society