The 4 core elements of Internet activity operation and promotion!

Recently, a friend talked to me about issues related to event operations, because he saw that there are many events on the current e-commerce platforms one after another, with many events going online every day, but how do these events work? Why are today’s e-commerce platforms so fast? So distinctive? Is the discount still that big?

In fact, it is very simple, because there are tens of thousands of brands and categories on a platform, and they will use activities to obtain the platform's traffic resources to form conversions. Secondly, periodic activities are often fixed, and different categories have different activities and preferential policies in fixed periods.

The advertising resources of e-commerce platforms are relatively limited, so there will be endless activities. In addition to effective event scheduling, the advertising space on e-commerce platforms also has "different faces for different people", that is, different people see different activities. This is mainly based on the platform's big data mining, so I will not explain it in detail here.

Next, I will share with you how to operate an event. Event operations are mainly divided into several parts:

01 Who organizes the event? What is the process?

Many friends would say that of course the event is organized by the event planner. It is true that the event is organized by the event planner, but who initiates the event?

Event planning often involves fixed event planning, such as festival event planning, seasonal event planning, e-commerce festival event planning, emergency event planning and other fixed and relatively fixed event planning.

This type of activity is initiated by the event planner in terms of the theme and format of the activity, and then coordinated by various commodity/product (fixed commodity, service or product) departments to match certain preferential promotions to the target users of the activity. This type of activity is initiated by the event planning department.

Can activities only be initiated by event planners?

Wrong, because due to cross-departmental event planning it is often difficult to know whether there is currently any promotion for the goods/products? Does the brand want to organize an event? Is there any pressure on inventory at present? Which brands and categories have the best sales recently? What are the extended products/goods of brands and categories with good sales?

Therefore, activities cannot be initiated entirely by event planners. The right to initiate should be given to the merchandise/product operations department that is at the forefront. These departments initiate activities based on product activities, brand activities, inventory pressure and sales data. However, due to limitations in planning capabilities and control over resources, this department often passes preferential policies and activity objectives to the planners, who then design the theme and mobilize internal resources to complete and launch the activities. Such activities are very helpful in clearing inventory and alleviating financial pressure, while also helping to promote brands and products.

Activities initiated by multiple departments will help increase the number of platform activities, thereby improving the user stickiness and activity of the platform.

02 How to plan an event?

When it comes to event planning, many friends will think it is very grand and often have no idea where to start. When they see the activities of certain cats and certain JDs, they always sigh again and again. In fact, event planning is not very difficult. It mainly involves simple things such as the theme of the event, the form of the event, the cycle of the event, etc. However, the principles to be followed in doing these are:

• What is the purpose of the activity? (Celebrating festivals? Brand activities? Promotions? Inventory pressure? ...)
• Who is the target customer of the event? (age, gender, class, etc.)
• What form of activities will be taken and what resources can be mobilized? (Existing technology product support, new technology product development, development cycle and scheduling restrictions, etc.)
• What is the event policy? (Promotional efforts, brand concessions, marketing cost support, etc.)
• What is the event release channel? (Design and copywriting optimization based on channels, mainly coordinated by the marketing department)

As long as you follow the above principles, you can design a relatively perfect event plan. Of course, sometimes it will also have a certain relationship with the copywriting quality of the event planner. Here is an example I have done:

At the end of 2018, I was assigned to a department of Haier Group as the operations director. At that time, the main products were orange rice and vegetables, home appliance cleaning, housekeeping and other services. It was the Spring Festival of 2019, and I made the above analysis with my event planning:

• The purpose of the activity is to promote sales on the platform;
• The target users are the tens of millions of users accumulated on the platform;
• The available resources are difficult to provide support due to technical schedules;
• The activity policy is a partial discount with a very small scope;
• The activity channels are mainly self-media, supplemented by data marketing, and other channels...

Here are some screenshots of the activities at that time:

The event was divided into several sections: "Orange" bright future; "Orange" immediate success; "Orange" everything you wish for. There were three sections in total, and the platform's various orange products were packaged in three sections and recommended to customers.

The event was divided into several sections: Health is Prospering; New Year is Prospering; Career is Prospering, a total of three sections. The platform's various rice products were packaged in three sections and recommended to customers.

03 What is the direction of the activity?

There are two parts here: internal and external

Internal resources mainly refer to: platform advertising space; brand-centered self-media matrix; data/member marketing channels...

External resources mainly refer to: paid and free publishing channels that the marketing department can control.

(Paid resources often refer to advertising such as SEM and DSP that focus on precise traffic diversion, CPM of hard media advertising that focuses on brands, etc.; free BD cooperation, word-of-mouth and social media, etc. I will not go into too much detail here. If you want to know more, please leave a message to communicate.)

04 How to evaluate the effectiveness of an activity?

The completion of event planning and its launch does not mean the end, but the beginning of event planning work, because the purpose of event planning is to increase user activity and achieve GMV growth. So, is the event successful? How can event planning be improved in the future? It becomes the key to subsequent activity data monitoring.

The above are activity data monitoring items. Based on these data, we need to analyze the following issues:

Based on operational data analysis:

1. The attractiveness of campaign ads, copywriting, and design, i.e. the number of ad clicks and click-through rate
2. The attractiveness of the event page, namely, dwell time, bounce rate, registrations and orders, etc.
3. The attractiveness of the activity format, that is, the traffic engagement.
4. The attractiveness of an event’s discount refers to the strength and form of the discount and the number of participants who participate.

Data analysis based on membership marketing:

1. Whether members are interested, that is, the opening rate after being exposed to the advertisement.
2. Whether members take action, that is, their participation in interactive activities and repurchase rate.
3. Whether the relevance recommendation is successful, that is, when screening member data, whether activities in the same category promote member actions or related categories promote member actions. Used to analyze member behavior to form a more accurate user portrait.

Marketing-based data analysis:

1. Analyze the creative ideas and forms of advertisements, that is, analyze which types and copywriting of text, pictures or videos are more attractive to users.
2. Analyze the attractiveness of the landing page and analyze whether the landing page is suitable for advertising creativity and channels based on information such as the user's stay time, bounce rate, registration, and orders on the landing page.
3. Analyze advertising channels and optimization directions, analyze channel effects and input-output ratio to optimize input ratio and optimization direction.

The above is a brief sharing of event planning over the years. Of course, these sharings only cover the scope of some event operations. I hope that they can help you open a door to event planning, and I hope that you can explore more in-depth content on your own.

Author: Beimo Source: Beimo (beimo0627)

Related reading:

The 4 core elements of Internet activity operation and promotion!

Event operation and promotion: How to plan the core gameplay?

How to build an event operation and promotion framework in 4 steps?

Event operation and promotion | Large company event operation process and routines!

Useful information | Product activity operation and promotion planning program!