How to plan a lucky draw for the annual meeting? Share 1 set of theoretical formulas!

Attention, we are about to enter the "lottery" stage. After the year-end summary report is over, the boss suddenly proposed to take out several thousand yuan for a lottery on the spot. The rules are very simple:
100% winning rate, the size of the prize depends entirely on luck (100-500 yuan). In an instant, after a day of reporting, colleagues who were in a drowsy state were all revived and eager to fight.

Seeing this scene, I can't help but think of the lucky draw activities I participated in last night on WeChat Lucky Draw Assistant, Yu'ebao 1-cent Surprise, and even the lucky draw at the supermarket last weekend.

It’s the same lottery activity, why does it give me completely different feelings every time?

Today, let’s talk about the logic of the lottery from an operational perspective and see how to create a lottery that will make the audience feel explosive.

01. The essence of lottery

What is the essence of a lottery?

I call it "the stimulation brought by the uncertainty of the results". It doesn't matter if you don't understand it. You will understand it after reading the following experimental case.

In the 20th century, psychologist Skinner designed the following experiment to study operant conditioning:

A white mouse is placed in a transparent glass box (excluding external stimulation). The mouse can move freely in the box. There is a button in the box. When the mouse presses the button, food will fall out.

Experiment 1: Put a mouse in a box, and every time you press a button, food will fall out.

Results: The mice spontaneously learned to press the button, and the experiment successfully established a fixed behavior

Experiment 2: Put a mouse in a box, and gradually reduce the probability of dropping food from the initial constant dropping to every 1 minute, when pressing a button, food will drop.

Results: The mouse initially kept pressing the button, but after a while, it learned to press the button once every 1 minute. However, when the food stopped dropping, the mouse's behavior disappeared.

Experiment 3: Put a mouse in a box and press a button each time to drop food at random.

Results: The mice learned to press the button continuously, and when the probability of dropping food decreased, the mice continued to press the button for a long time.

According to Skinner's experiment, we can get:

When mice are rewarded under uncertain probability, they can maintain the behavior for a long time and actively, and maintain the continued behavior for a long time after the reward disappears.

The logic behind lottery draws is similar to Skinner's experiments. It is precisely because of the uncertainty of the results that people enjoy lotteries.

02. Purpose of the lucky draw

The essence of a lucky draw is a marketing interaction activity, and the process generally does not involve the product/service itself, and the effectiveness of the activity is not measured by the number of products ultimately given away.

Therefore, the main purpose of the lucky draw is brand promotion. Specifically:

a. Involve more users and increase brand exposure;

b. Improve users’ favorability towards the brand during the lucky draw process

If the purpose of the lucky draw is simply to get more users to participate and gain brand exposure, there are two feasible ideas.

01. Expand advertising channels and increase advertising efforts

Here we have to mention the "Big Three of Brainwash Advertising". Although the content of the advertisements is nonsensical, they are rich and broadcast every day. The brand exposure effect is definitely achieved.

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02. Give users enough expectations in promotional ads

User expectations refer to the user's desire and motivation before participating in a lucky draw. To put it more directly, it refers to the value of the prizes promoted by the event organizer in marketing. Of course, this is also what the user thinks before the event.

Speaking of user expectations, here are two classic lottery activities

One is the 2019 Alipay Koi event, which was forwarded more than 2 million times on Weibo; the other is the lucky draw held by Wang Sicong to celebrate IG's victory, which was forwarded more than 20 million times on Weibo. Both lucky draws were perfect.

Why?

Let's not discuss the operation plan of the lottery event. The former has so many prizes that they can circle the earth XX times, and the latter is directly 10,000 yuan in cash. Who wouldn't be tempted by such a generous prize?

In summary, if you want to get more users to participate in the lottery and achieve brand exposure, as long as the budget is sufficient, there is no need to worry about the effect.

So how do you improve users’ favorability towards a brand? Let’s look further down…

03. User Favorability in the Lottery

Compared with brand exposure, I think user favorability is more important. After all, there are many events that can be trending and exposed on the entire network, but there seem to be few that can truly shape the brand image.

For example: celebrity divorces, child abuse incidents, no one would think that any brand can benefit from them.

So how to improve users' favorability towards the brand in the lucky draw event?

Favorability is like a virtual emotion. To facilitate measurement and description, the author adapted it into a roughly quantifiable formula:

Favorability = Experience – User Expectation

As we mentioned earlier, expected value is the value of the prize in the merchant's promotion (the value of the prize that users think before participating in the lottery).

So how do we understand the experience?

In layman's terms, it refers to the user's emotions during the lottery and after winning the prize. For ease of measurement, the author has also adapted it into a quantitative formula:

Experience = Prize Value x Winning Probability – Lottery Cost

Now everyone should understand that the expectation is before participating in the activity, and the experience is during and after the activity.

As long as the real experience is greater than the expected value, then this activity can increase the user's favorability, otherwise it will reduce

So how can we increase users’ favorability towards the brand during the actual lottery process?

Keep reading!

04. How to improve user favorability

Let’s look at the first formula first: Favorability = Experience – User Expectation

It seems that improving the experience or lowering expectations is enough, but it is not. We have mentioned in Chapter 1 that increasing user expectations can allow more users to participate in activities and increase brand exposure.

If the expectations are too low, users will have no desire or motivation to participate; if the expectations are too high, the user experience will not be satisfactory, which will lead to a poor impression of the brand.

Therefore, the expectations that event organizers convey to users are generally based on reality and should be within an appropriate range without much room for adjustment.

So what we really need to consider are the prize value, the probability of winning, and the cost of the lottery.

01. Prize value

The value of a prize mainly refers to the user's subjective perceived benefit of the product, that is, the user can directly feel the benefit brought by the prize.

Generally speaking, perceived benefits can be divided into three dimensions: function, experience, and brand.

The benefits at the functional level are the most basic, the benefits at the experience level are the added value beyond satisfying the functions, and the benefits at the brand level are detached from the product itself and emphasize spiritual culture.

The same prize has different perceived benefits for different user groups.

For example, ordinary white-collar workers understand coffee as a way to wake up the brain (function), and Luckin Coffee can satisfy that need; while corporate executives understand coffee as a way to build their own image (experience), and Starbucks is the only choice.

If you use the same Luckin Coffee coupons as prizes for the lucky draw, the value of each person is different.

Or the "Five Blessings Cards" campaign launched by Alipay every Spring Festival. Even though each person only gets a bonus of RMB 2.50, it still attracts hundreds of millions of users and has even become a must-see during the Spring Festival.

What users care about is definitely not the economic benefits of 2.5 yuan, but the good luck in the new year after collecting the five blessing cards.

We can further subdivide perceived benefits into: product benefits, service benefits, image benefits, psychological benefits, economic benefits…

Regarding “perceived value”, please refer to “Is a hotel that costs 2,000 yuan a night expensive? ——The price is high, but the value is higher》

Of course, there are two points to keep in mind when considering the value of the prize: 1. The cost of the enterprise; 2. The relevance of the prize to the enterprise/brand

02. Probability of winning

The lucky draw is a probabilistic activity and also a game between the event organizer and the event participants.

The probability of winning is low, the organizer's cost is low, and users are not motivated; the probability of winning is high, the user's motivation is high, and the organizer's cost expenditure is high

The probability of winning is divided into two categories: overall winning rate and jackpot winning rate

The general lottery model can also be divided into two categories: 1. Sunshine type; 2. One-person type

a.Sunny type

The characteristics of the Sunshine Lottery are that the overall winning rate is high (even 100%), and the winning rate of the grand prize is extremely low.

It seems like a hug for all participating users, but if the same user wins a small prize multiple times, his or her enthusiasm for participation will definitely be greatly reduced.

Let’s look at two real cases:

The lucky draw wheel is a favorite of offline supermarkets. Usually, the prizes are marked on the 360° panel of the wheel, which means the overall winning rate is 100%, but the angle corresponding to the first prize is often less than 1/20, or even lower.

Alipay has a member weekly lottery event: first prize (4999 yuan), second prize (88 yuan), third prize (2 yuan), fourth prize (1 note in the next weekly lottery)

I participated in the lottery for 6 consecutive months (once a week), but either I didn’t win the prize or I won the fourth prize, so I gave up.

b. One-person-only type

The unique feature of the one-person lottery is that there is only one prize (the grand prize), and the winner is the grand prize

This type of lottery is actually a replica of lottery. Because the probability of winning is lower, in order to attract users to participate, it is often necessary to work hard on the prizes.

Here are two more cases:

Alipay Koi Event in 2019: Alipay officially launched a Koi gift package with hundreds of brands, and selected a lucky winner through a lottery on Weibo. The winner was finally @信小呆 on Weibo.

After the success of this event, koi lottery events were also launched in different cities and industries.

But what is more worth talking about is Wang Sicong's celebration of IG's winning the lottery:

In the 2018 Demacia Cup Finals, IG won the championship. In the first wave of lucky draws launched by Principal Wang, 113 people were selected on Weibo, and each person won 10,000 yuan in cash.

The highlight of this lottery is that the number of winners is 113. Although compared with the total number of participants (more than 20 million), the probability of winning is still very low.

But in the minds of the public, the chances of winning have increased by more than 100 times, and this is the most successful lottery event on Weibo so far.

03. Lottery cost

The lottery cost refers to the cost that users need to pay directly in order to participate in the lottery. Generally speaking, the higher the lottery cost, the worse the user experience.

Different lottery activities have different costs. Common lottery costs are:

a. Time cost

All lottery activities will have a time cost, because it takes enough time to complete the lottery process. The longer/complex the lottery path, the higher the cost.

In addition, some lucky draws will not announce the results immediately after the user participates, but will be announced on a specified date (for example, WeChat Reading announces the lucky draw results every Saturday), so there will be waiting costs.

b. Monetary cost

Free raffles are likely to attract buyers, especially if the prizes are physical. Therefore, most supermarket raffles have thresholds to control costs.

For example, you need to spend a certain amount of money and use up a certain amount of points (accumulated through consumption) to win a prize. If you regard the lottery as a lottery, you also need to pay 2 yuan per ticket.

c. Action cost

As mentioned earlier, Internet lottery activities often have the function of brand promotion, so it is inevitable that users will complete certain specific actions.

For example: like, leave a message, forward, collect likes, invite friends, follow a public account, download, fill in personal information...

d. Image cost

Taking the above-mentioned lucky draw activity of forwarding and collecting likes as an example, because the lucky draw information needs to be shared publicly, the content of the lucky draw will have an impact on the personal image

How many male compatriots are willing to share Durex’s lucky draw advertisement on their Moments? Similarly, how many female compatriots are willing to share Sophie’s lucky draw information on WeChat groups?

05. Summary

Finally, the author still summarizes with the lottery case of Wang Sicong winning the championship on IG:

Expected value: 10,000 yuan in cash, everyone understands; High prize value: 10,000 yuan in cash; High probability of winning (psychological): 113 people won; Lottery cost: forwarding/commenting/liking

OK, that’s all I’m going to share about the lucky draw for now. If there’s anything inappropriate, please feel free to point it out!

Author: Operation Brick Expert

Source: Operation Expert