Online activity operation process!

The operational activities mentioned here include both online activities in the conventional sense, which mainly appear on the Internet platform; and offline activities used in physical business formats, such as promotional activities in shopping malls. From different business scenarios, we can see that the essence of activities is the same and the thinking methods are also very consistent.

Since the essence is the same, it is more important to figure this out. The value is: when using "activities" as ammunition, you know how to think and how to start, and it is applicable to different scenarios and goals, so that problems can be solved easily.

Let me first say the conclusion. The essence of the activity is:

Build user scenarios to allow users to observe and learn, generate reasonable behaviors, and ultimately achieve preset indicators.

There are several key words here, namely setting up scenes, observation and learning, reasonable behavior, and preset goals. Let’s talk about them in detail.

1. Build the scene

Why do we need to use activities to build user usage scenarios? Doesn’t the product itself have scenario attributes?

That’s right, but the scenes built in the form of activities are often blurred by the products or are not clear enough. Based on the specific goal at hand, this scenario is strengthened in a targeted manner, which is the "small scene in the big product."

User scenarios in large products require products to build; small scenarios or segmented scenarios can be presented through activities.

What does scene mean? From a practical point of view, it means borrowing or strengthening certain user cognitions and providing a high conversion path.

The most typical example is the IKEA home flow diagram , which fully meets the above two points, as shown in the figure below.

IKEA home dynamic map

When users go shopping in a mall, their routes are generally unplanned and disorderly, which can cause huge differences in customer flow in different areas. Products with good positions are more likely to be seen (exposed), while products with bad positions are less likely to be seen (exposed).

In traditional retail, this is a question of shelf display; in the Internet, this is a question of maximizing traffic revenue. Essentially the same.

Kitchens, Bedrooms, etc. borrow user cognition and strengthen usage scenarios. When users enter this area, they will know what products are sold here.

The dotted line is the user's movement route, and it is almost the only choice for users. IKEA hopes that users will shop along the routes they have planned, ensuring that every scene is not missed as much as possible, which maximizes traffic revenue and provides a high conversion path.

To extend this, one might think that IKEA in this case is a product, so this flow chart should be the user scenario created by the entire product, rather than the one created by operational activities.

This understanding is correct, but in a certain scenario (such as Bedrooms), operations can achieve promotion goals by organizing activities. This is the "small scene in the big product" mentioned above, so it is self-consistent.

Let’s take “Taobao Double 11” as an example. We created an online shopping festival scenario, giving users the impression that these days are just like buying New Year’s goods during the Spring Festival, which requires them to buy and stock up, otherwise they will miss out on something.

Just imagine if there was no Double 11 "scene", this time period would be nothing more than an ordinary early November, with no sense of existence at all. It would be not long after the National Day holiday and the Double 11 and Spring Festival are still a bit far away. It would be a period of time when you don't have to do anything and there is nothing to do.

In addition, the Double 11 event also provides users with a high conversion path, from browsing to ordering and payment. Whether users care about brand or price/performance, want to shop for women's clothing or digital products, search for products or use coupons to find products, these are the paths provided by the event. Because it is clearly defined in a certain scenario, the user operation path can be optimized in a targeted manner to improve the conversion rate.

2. Observational Learning

This is a psychological term, which specifically refers to the process of users paying attention to, understanding and trusting things, that is, the process of this activity truly penetrating users.

In psychology, the steps of "observational learning" are divided into: attention, memory, reproduction, and motivation , as shown in the following figure:

Steps of Observational Learning

In theory, observational learning can be explained as follows:

Note: The observer pays attention to the actions and consequences.

• Sense: receptors, vision, hearing, smell, etc.;
• Perceptual organization: The brain integrates evidence from the senses and prior knowledge about the world to form internal representations of external stimuli.
• Recognition and identification: giving perception and meaning. For example, the previous stage of perception is "what does this object look like", and this stage is the recognition question "what is this object" and the identification question "what is the function of this object".

Memory: mental operations: encoding, storage, and retrieval.

• Encoding: forming a mental representation of external information. For example, what is the best birthday gift you have ever received? You can describe it by drawing a picture or telling a story.
• Storage: If the information is properly encoded, it will be stored for a while;
• Extraction: Clues are easier to extract, such as background, character relationships, stories, pictures, and symbols.

Reproduction: The observer's ability to reproduce the model's behavior.

• Suitable role model: Identify this role model and be close to your own class;
• Appropriate behavior: behavior that observers recognize in terms of competence and values;

Motivation: The observer has a reason to reproduce the model's behavior.

• There are instructions: what specific things to do;
• Gain: what reward can be obtained, or what loss can be avoided;

In practice, the "observational learning" theory can hardly directly guide application-level issues, so it is transformed into: circle users, select channels, place hooks, and present cases.

"Observational learning" is the core of the activity and determines the success or failure of the event. Only by doing this step well can you penetrate the user's mind and generate the next step of behavior.

1) Circle users

Let me explain this question first. Theoretically, before doing an activity, you should first figure out what kind of group the target audience is and what characteristics they have.

When thinking about this problem, I found that it can be expressed by describing the characteristics of the audience. The best way to describe is to combine multiple conditions to draw as objective and comprehensive conclusions as possible.

Therefore, the step of "circling users" answers the two questions of "who are the users" and "what are the characteristics of the users", but it is achieved by characterizing the characteristics through a combination of multiple conditions.

Simply put, it is to use a few conditions to attract users.

The purpose of circle users is to accurately deliver and operate, so that target users can participate in the activities. It is also important that only after the users are circled out can we know which channel to choose and what hooks to place, which will serve as a guide for subsequent practices.

When setting conditions to target users, it is important to strike a balance.

If the conditions for defining users are too strict, the selected users will definitely be accurate and the conversion rate of participation in the activity will be high. But the problem is that the volume will be very small, and when converted into participating users, it will be lost, and the number obtained will be so small that it is meaningless.

If the conditions for defining users are too loose, the number of users screened out will be large, but they will include a large number of non-target users. Not only will the conversion rate be low, but it will also be harmful to irrelevant users and waste promotion resources.

Therefore, when attracting users, we must take into account both accuracy and quantity. Nothing is absolute and requires human control.

For example, if you have created a beginner’s course on Internet operations, you want to promote it to the target audience and encourage them to pay.

Using the tightened criteria for defining users, that is, "Internet operation professionals with 1-3 years of experience", this group is accurate enough. But maybe only 1,000 people are screened out, and based on a 10% conversion rate, only 100 of them will pay, which is a huge gap from the project expectations.

Using a loose user criteria of "Internet-related practitioners", 100,000 people were screened out, including jobs such as product, R&D, marketing, and sales, and covering all age groups. Pushing operations courses to them will bring far more negative benefits than positive ones.

The recommended method for defining users is to use a combination of objective and subjective methods.

The objective method refers to demographic characteristics , which is basic information such as gender, age, occupation, education, and income. Describing people in this way is too cold and often fails to show the characteristics behind them. In other words, there is only description but no conclusion.

The subjective approach refers to using insights and conclusions themselves to characterize people. For example, "a group of middle-aged men who have strong content appreciation skills but face the problem of information overload", "moms who control the family finances but most of the things in the shopping cart are not their own", etc.

I feel that it is more difficult to obtain through subjective means, but this is a test of your business capabilities. If you can't describe what kind of people your users are, you are not a qualified Internet person. And don’t say that your users are so scattered that they have no characteristics. The various businesses of WeChat and Tik Tok can be portrayed, so there is no reason why other products cannot do so.

By combining subjective and objective descriptions, you will find that the identified group of people immediately comes alive, no longer just numbers, but faces.

2) Select channels

In fact, after "circling users" is completed, "selecting channels" is actually also completed.

Because the subjective and objective descriptions of users are very clear, once we know who the users are, we can choose the channel where such people are.

The "where" mentioned here includes physical location and virtual space.

For example, college students in Beijing are mainly concentrated in the area from Xueyuan Road to Wudaokou in Haidian District, and parents of elementary school students gather at the school gate to pick up and drop off their children. This is a physical gathering place.

Various vertical communities, social groups, and practitioner associations and groups belong to virtual spaces.

Only by knowing where the users are can we try to reach them and start the conversion process of the activity. But the channels here are broad, so different types of channels have different applicable scenarios, and you have to make trade-offs in choosing.

When choosing channels, the trade-off is between "cost" and "efficiency".

If it is an online activity, divide the channels into internal and external, online and offline, and measure them by cost performance (cost and efficiency), and you can get the following priorities:

For online activities, the conversion rate of online channels is definitely better. The matching degree of internal resources is better than that of external online resources, but the magnitude (especially the increment) of external online resources is better than that of internal resources.

Of course, this does not mean that offline channels are meaningless. It depends on the type of project and who the target audience is. For example, for a large company-level project like the Spring Festival Gala, the communication channels must cover all land, sea and air, so external offline activities must also be done, and ROI is not considered.

3) Place the hook

As the name suggests, it throws hooks to users, prompting them to pay attention to, remember the activity, and have interest in participating.

Step 1: Pay attention and get the user's "eyeballs" and "fingers"

Attracting user "attention" is the process of gaining user "eyeballs" and "fingers". Eyeballs refer to sight, fingers refer to clicks. Most of the time, the two are in a sequential relationship.

The eyeballs here refer to all human senses, such as vision, hearing, smell, touch, etc. For online products, except for videos and games, the focus is basically on visuals. If it is an offline business, the stimulation to people's senses will be richer. For example, shopping malls will also pay attention to hearing, smell, etc.

There are methods and rules to gain users' attention.

"Psychology and Life" mentions: People's brains integrate evidence from the senses and existing knowledge of the world to form an internal representation of external stimuli.

In simple terms, users will integrate their "new feelings" with existing "old knowledge". Therefore, the easier it is to integrate information, the easier it is for users to accept it.

The most common typical case is the red envelope activity. The essence of red envelope activities is to provide gamification gameplay, so that users can have actual benefits and thus bring about user behavior. Red envelopes are just a way for users to get actual benefits. Theoretically, other forms can also be used.

Then why, after so many years, major companies still give out red envelopes in their large-scale events or express versions?

Because the Spring Festival activities and the express version's reward policy are "new feelings", and red envelopes are users' "old knowledge", the two can be perfectly matched and have zero threshold to understand. Even though customs and cultures vary from place to place, the understanding of red envelopes is the same and there is no ambiguity. Looking across China, the red envelope is the most suitable item.

Therefore, when planning activities, we should try to match "new feelings" with "old knowledge" so as to maximize the efficiency of attracting users' attention.

Let’s get back to the topic of “catching eyeballs”. Another way to think about it is to focus on the title. Wouldn’t it be easier to write a copy that would make you nervous even if it wasn’t clicked, and then make a promotional image that would be visually stunning?

What do you think of the behavior of clickbait?

The logic behind "clickbait" is: what determines the focus of attention. The answer has two aspects, namely, goal-directed selection and stimulus-driven capture.

Goal-directed choices refer to what users pay attention to, the choices they make themselves, and are related to their goals. For example, if you are looking for a book in a bookstore, your purpose is very clear and only books that meet your criteria will get your attention.

Stimulus-driven capture means that the external environment grabs the user's attention and is independent of the user's current goals. For example, if you can’t stop watching short video products, it means that your attention is captured.

The former is actively controlling and having the ability to control; the latter is passively acquired and not what one originally wants. Human nature dictates that the latter phenomenon is more likely to occur, but people who are successful in their careers and have a greater sense of happiness tend to do better in the former because they have a stronger sense of control over their lives.

After explaining the logic behind it, let’s take a look at the clickbait headlines.

The term "clickbait" refers to titles with "bad intentions", such as titles that are irrelevant to the title, maliciously fabricated, deliberately exaggerated, or morally corrupt. By using the "stimulus-driven capture" method, the user's attention is captured when the user is not in control of his or her attention.

From the psychological logic above, we can see that this method is more likely to get user clicks and takes advantage of human nature. However, people's emotional loopholes are often temporary. In the long run, they can still give relatively rational and objective evaluations.

Therefore, clickbait headlines can quickly gain short-term profits and make the numbers look good, but this is a typical case of "users will read but criticize even more". They gain the behavior but lose the support of the people. In the long run, the lost long-term benefits will be far greater than the short-term benefits, and may even be fatal.

So what is a good or normal title?

A good title is one that truthfully expresses and distills the main content, but is also very attractive.

You have to believe that if the planned activity or the content itself is good enough, then as long as you write the selling points carefully and maintain your consistent style, you will be able to catch the user's attention, and the accuracy and quality will be much higher. Such users will generate subsequent behaviors such as forwarding and recommending, which can bring about the possibility of geometric growth.

Taking the public account "Operation Dog Work Diary" as an example, most of the titles directly describe the complete topic, without exaggerating the facts, leaving question hooks, or using hot words. After a long time, users will naturally recognize the style of the content, which is the personality of the text.

Here are some examples:

• To create good content, you need to balance long-term and short-term benefits, and also know how to make trade-offs.
• When I think of community, I think of these three things: definition, practice, and atmosphere.
• Why do we need to do communication? What is its value?
• What is a platform and what is the underlying logic?
• Why can the head drive the whole? What is the logic of operation?

These titles are normal descriptions of the article topics. They may not be considered good titles, but they are definitely not malicious titles. The number of article views brought by some articles is quite good, while some are quite small, but this cannot be simply attributed to the problem of the title. You should work on the quality and frequency of your content, rather than venting your anger on the title.

Step 2: Remember, retrieve clues and repeat

Most activities are not one-time transactions, but require users to participate continuously and multiple times. In addition, user attention and user participation are likely to occur in two scenarios separated by time or space, so users need to remember this matter in order to gain benefits.

The act of "remembering" requires a person's memory ability.

Memory is a human's information processing ability, and the whole process is divided into encoding, storage and retrieval. The logic is the same as that of information transmission, except that the entire process of memory is centered around me.

In other words, if users need to remember the activity, it must be easier to understand (encode) and recall (retrieve). There are two specific methods: retrieval clues and repeated repetition.

First, retrieval cues are the stimuli used when searching for a memory. When a memory needs to be retrieved, it must be for a purpose, and this purpose is the clue.

For example, during the Spring Festival, one would think about where to grab red envelopes. The clue provided by this purpose is: one can get them on the JD app because one saw an advertisement for them during the Spring Festival Gala.

The user's starting point must be their own interests, to achieve a certain goal, so an activity needs to be the first thing that users think of and have the strongest understanding of. This is equivalent to this activity seizing the track of a certain type of user demand. As long as the demand exists, the activity will not be afraid of no one coming.

Event planners should not indulge in their own professional perspectives. Most users will not participate in this project just because of a line of copy or a certain design method. This situation may only occur in discussions within the industry circle, and pure users will not pay attention to it.

Tell users clearly and directly what needs this activity can meet, so that users are more likely to remember it when retrieving memories.

Secondly, repetition is the easiest to understand and execute, but also the easiest to be overlooked.

In order for users to have a solid memory, repeated transmission is required, allowing users to perform the encoding, storage and retrieval process multiple times.

If the activity itself is something new, it will take time for users to accept it. It is not possible for them to understand it as soon as they see it and remember it as soon as they understand it.

In short, memory requires a process, and the process needs to be repeated.

From an executive perspective, we need to do these two things:

• Try to do a long-term series of activities, don't just shoot and move around;
• Communication must be done continuously. Short-term communication for only a few days is very cost-effective.

Activities must be long-term in order to strengthen user awareness and seize the slowly accumulated potential energy. If you do an activity with a different form, different core and different goals every month, the result will be devastating.

First, even if users are very satisfied with an activity, it is of little value because they cannot find the next one. Then the user's satisfactory experience is wasted, and there may also be negative reviews. Just like a restaurant’s signature dish, it will always be on the first few pages of the menu and won’t be available this time and gone the next time you come.

Secondly, it is not easy to carry out an event well because there are too many factors involved. Not only the planning itself needs to be done well, but also internal traffic, R&D, financial resources, etc. need to be taken care of; external cooperation resources and environment will also affect the effectiveness of the event.

The reality is that either R&D cuts demand or the cost is low. We finally got everything done, but the partner failed again. We finally waited for the event to go online and just started spreading the word, but then a celebrity got divorced and all the attention shifted.

There are many uncontrollable factors, and it is difficult to expect perfection. The only way is to do the same thing over and over again and accumulate team experience so that we can get better and better. Doing it once and then stopping or changing it wastes time and resources.

To think clearly about the issue of event dissemination, either don’t do it, or invest heavily and do it continuously. There is no value in the middle ground.

The core reason is that the benefits of communication are delayed and take time to digest. If the communication period is shortened and the budget is tightened, it will just be a show and have no practical value. If the project can still explode in this situation, it is the power of the project itself, not caused by dissemination.

There are two paths to achieving communication benefits: either to be overwhelming or to trigger in-depth thinking in a small circle. These two paths have different play methods and require different resources, but the same thing is that they must be done continuously.

Step 3: Interest is motivation

Interest is motivation. Motivation precedes behavior. It is a necessary link.

Motivation is divided into two parts: intrinsic drive and inducement. Intrinsic drive refers to the internal response to physiological needs. For example, drinking water when you are thirsty is an internal drive; inducements are external stimuli and rewards, which have both material and spiritual aspects.

In addition, motivation can also be stratified from the perspective of human needs, which is the well-known Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, namely physiological (food and clothing), safety (job security), social needs (friendship), respect and self-actualization.

When planning activities, you can correspond to the above-mentioned division method, with clear matching correspondence, and the effect is more controllable.

A common misunderstanding in practice is that activities can only attract users by money. If the company does not approve the money, the activity cannot be carried out.

Two examples can be cited to support this view:

Case 1: The large-scale event of the top 100 up-masters at Bilibili relies on honor, not bonuses. Of course, it can also be said that this honor itself will bring more cash benefits, which is also the powerful part of this activity.

Some people may say that this cannot be considered an activity. But you have to know that in order to participate in this award ceremony, the up-host has to do a lot of things and invest a lot of time and energy. In this respect, it is the same as participating in an official event.

Case 2: Kuaishou’s new knowledge broadcast event has many knowledge KOLs participating, and there is no invitation through bonus. It depends on the event planning itself and the resources within the site.

For every event planner, planning is an activity that must be undertaken, and they all have some resources in their hands to a greater or lesser extent. But whether the planned things can attract KOLs and whether the resources can be used well are other questions.

In addition, even if there are activity fees, we should also pay attention to how to motivate users to participate. The essence is to study psychology and follow the above user needs.

By telling an interesting story and making good use of psychology theories to motivate users, he achieved his goal. The story comes from Social Psychology, which was published in a previous article:

An old man, annoyed by a group of noisy boys playing downstairs, called them up and said he liked their pleasant noises and would give them 50 cents each if they came back tomorrow.

The next day the children came again and made even more noise. The old man gave them some money and promised more for their next visit.

On the third day, the children came again and the old man still paid them, but it was changed to 25 cents.

On the fourth day, the reward was changed to 15 cents, and the child was told that he had no money left. Could they still play tomorrow for 10 cents? The children said disappointedly that they would not come again because it was not worth it and they could only get 10 cents for playing for an entire afternoon.

The elderly use rewards as an incentive to destroy the children's play that is driven by their intrinsic interest. When the rewards become smaller and smaller, the children can no longer be motivated and stop playing.

"Social Psychology" calls this phenomenon the "over-rationalization effect": in order to motivate people to become interested in an activity and continue to do it, unnecessary rewards sometimes bring invisible costs, making people think that doing what they like is for the sake of getting rewarded, which weakens their self-intuition - doing it because of interest.

Therefore, to study the motivations of users to participate in activities, we must think clearly about the needs of users, find the corresponding ones, and satisfy them.

4) Case Study

From a biological perspective, imitation is human nature and this behavior occurs spontaneously; from a psychological perspective, people have social attributes and will pursue group convergence under the leadership of opinion leaders.

In short, having role models to imitate can greatly improve learning efficiency.

In practice, one way to quickly attract user participation is to present cases. Information such as “They have already settled in”, “These companies are successful cases”, “This anchor has a high income”, etc., will become role models for those who come later.

The existence of role models gives the majority of hesitant people expectations and hopes. I would think: As long as I can achieve this level, I can be like him!

Whether in society or on online platforms, truly successful people are a minority, and the proportion is definitely less than 10%. So why do people continue to join in? It is because there are role models. Role models give people hope, and this hope is a huge motivation.

Just prepare a wave of target cases in advance before the event and put them there (as shown above). After the activity is launched, these cases will naturally bring in new tap water.

From another perspective, cases can be divided into positive and negative sides, which can play different roles.

What I mentioned above are more positive cases, that is, the power of role models, which bring about the effect of imitation. But equally, negative examples can have the effect of deterring certain behaviors.

The application of both positive and negative cases will bring about the effects of encouragement and suppression. For an event, users also need to know what the official wants to see and what they don’t want to happen.

3. Reasonable behavior

This refers to the way to achieve the goals of the activity, whether to take short-term benefits or focus more on the long-term.

In most scenarios, long-term benefits need to be paid attention to, or at least cannot be sacrificed, otherwise the project will have no meaning to exist.

However, this form of operation, activities, is inherently phased and requires the pursuit of explosive power, so it is easy to go astray and only focus on short-term profits to make the numbers look better.

This mainly requires that the team leader provide guidance and that a healthy work culture be formed within the team. If something is right and points to long-term gains, and if it is a loss when evaluated from a short-term perspective, then it should be protected.

The attitude of the company and team leaders plays a guiding role for employees. From top to bottom, everyone pursues short-term goals while protecting long-term benefits. This is a healthy and positive team style.

4. Set a goal

The characteristic of an activity is that it hits the nail on the head and hits the target directly. Any activity that does not point to a target is not a good activity. Even if the goal is not achieved, at least the direction is right, it is an attempt, and there will be gains.

The most worrying situation is that event planning and coordination takes a long time, and superiors, collaborators, and parallel partners all participate in giving opinions, which ultimately leads to a loss of direction, a lack of clear pursuit of preset goals, and a loss of original intention.

This situation is very common in actual work. Once a campaign begins development or goes live, it’s hard to undo it. When reviewing the market, the person in charge of the activity needs to face a completely different trend, which is very uncomfortable.

Activities can be simple and crude, and may even fail to achieve targets, but they must not lose their way. Chaotic and unclear projects are of no value.

The above is my thinking on the nature of the activity. If you think it is valuable, please forward it to your friends. I will try my best to update this "I haven't figured it out" series.

Author: HanXu

Source: Operation Dog Work Diary (ID: yunyingriji)