How to plan a large-scale promotional event?

What are the big promotions?

It generally refers to festivals such as Double 11, brand anniversary celebrations, and 618. If done well, you can get 5% to 30% of the annual performance. In some industries, sales during one or two major festivals in a year almost account for 80% of the annual performance.

The promotion and operation of such large-scale events also tests the comprehensive capabilities of the operators.

In the past 10 years, we have managed at least hundreds of large-scale events for various businesses, including openings, new product launches, anniversary celebrations, Double 11, Double 12, 618, Valentine's Day, New Year's Festival, etc. Industries covered include commercial real estate, retail, chain stores, e-commerce brands, online education, etc.

After doing so much, we believe that in addition to solid operational capabilities, the most important thing for managing large-scale events is the rhythm control of the entire team.

Because we need users to have high expectations for the brand festival and have higher positive potential energy at the beginning of the festival. In the meantime, there are a series of ways to increase the potential energy rhythm of the festival. Therefore, every step of the entire team's transmission, the way of communication with users, and the increase in internal momentum to user potential energy during the festival, all require operators to have a strong sense of control over the rhythm and not deviate from the track.

I will not say much about the methods to increase potential energy. The potential energy activities at the third stop of the "Event Operation Park" have been fully discussed. Friends who need it can go to the GET Operation Laboratory official account and reply "Event Operation" to obtain it.

Generally, large-scale promotional activities will go through three stages: warm-up period - formal period - return period.

In 2019 and 2020, we used the same method to operate two Double 11 festivals for the same brand.

In 2019, the company achieved an 80% share of paying users and a 98.8% linkage rate.

In 20 years, we have achieved sales of 1 million with more than 600 paying users, and the average customer order of products priced at 200 has reached more than 1,300.

Putting aside sales volume, since sales volume is related to volume, we mainly look at conversion rate and average order value, which have nothing to do with volume and rely purely on solid operational basics and user stickiness.

That is to say, if you had 1,000 users before, then 800 of them made purchases during the holiday season, and almost everyone bought more than one item. You can compare your own project data to see how high these two data amounts are.

Warm-up period: selling goods and placing orders

First of all, students who have learned about potential activities in our "Private Domain Activity Operation Park" should know that the way brands organize big festivals in private domains is different from the way they organize big festivals on public domain platforms. The psychological value of users in the early stage and the key points basically determine the effectiveness of big festival activities.

Therefore, the core focus of the warm-up period is: selling goods and placing marketing points.

You read it right, the warm-up period is for selling goods. I mentioned in the previous article that, for example, if you can sell 100,000 per month, then if you have no sales in the month before the big promotion and no sales in the month after the big promotion, and you sell 30,000 in the month of the big promotion, can you say that the big promotion has increased by 300%? No, you may even lower your gross profit margin.

So if you look at those products that only tell you about the sales growth during big promotions but don’t tell you the sales data before and after, they are most likely trying to scam you.

During the warm-up period, you not only need to attract customers for the official festival, but also select products to sell. There are 3 key points here:

1. Try not to repeat the products selected in the preheating period and the main festival, and choose products with high joint rate as the products for the preheating and formal period;

2. There must be a way to hide points;

3. Be able to determine the price range based on user psychology.

Let’s talk about them one by one.

What does it mean to avoid repeating product selection during the warm-up period and major festivals?

For example, if you sell oranges during the pre-production period, you should still sell oranges during the official period. Either there will be no sales during the official period, or the official period will be full of returns and customer complaints!

Because if the price of oranges in the warm-up period is higher than that in the official period (that is, the discount in the official period is bigger), how can we lock in customers? If users buy during the warm-up period, they will not make any purchases during the official period.

If the price during the warm-up period is lower than that during the official period (the discount during the warm-up period is bigger), then after your official period activities are released, users who purchased at a higher price during the warm-up period will come to return the products for a refund or a refund of the price difference, resulting in unnecessary customer complaints and waste of manpower.

Therefore, the first point in product selection is to avoid duplication of products during the warm-up period and the formal period. And try to find products with a high correlation rate. For example, if you sell skin care products, you can mainly sell water in the warm-up period and mainly sell creams and lotions in the formal period. This not only differentiates the products, but also increases the correlation rate.

The second point is to learn how to hide points.

For example, during the warm-up period, if you spend 100 yuan, you can get a coupon worth 50 yuan off when the official period expires; or if you spend 150 yuan during the warm-up period, you can get a hot product together with the order during the official period. These are all ways to embed marketing tactics. If combined with good product selection, you can attract customers to the official period.

But how to increase the repurchase rate of users during the formal period? Then you need to learn the third point and set price segments based on user psychology.

Anyone who has bought a car knows that they might initially expect to choose a car priced around 150,000 yuan. But I found that if I added 20,000 or 30,000 yuan, I could buy a car with greater comfort. Then, when I looked at cars around 180,000 yuan, I found that only cars costing over 200,000 yuan would have really good handling and excellent three major components. When I looked at cars costing more than 200,000 yuan, I found that since I could accept 200,000 yuan, I could buy a luxury car by adding a few tens of thousands more. Anyway, there are financial plans, and the monthly repayments are acceptable.

After a week, you will find that you have seen cars from 150,000 yuan to the G-Class...

In addition, cultivating good traffic before major festival promotions is also a basic skill that everyone must have.

Generally, you need to cultivate your own new users at least one month in advance, combine distribution, task treasure, group fission, social media delivery and other methods to obtain traffic, then combine active activities to establish a trusting relationship with users, and then concentrate on conversion during the big promotion.

Formal stage: refined operation

The core of the formal period can be summarized into four aspects: focus on the target, create atmosphere, control traffic, and increase customer orders

Let's talk about flow control first, which is divided into three aspects of control:

1. Fission: Use social fission to let users help you promote the festival

2. Traffic aggregation: focus users’ attention on active time

3. Traffic distribution: Use active activities and traffic concentration periods to distribute traffic and increase the UV of users on certain conversion pages

In layman's terms, it means stimulating users to fission and bring traffic, then concentrating this traffic at certain times of the day, and guiding them to visit specific pages during these traffic-concentrated periods to make conversions.

Let's talk about keeping an eye on the target, which is the core means of our trading team:

Focusing on the target here does not mean that you should focus on the target data, but rather use refined means of contact, data guidance for operations, sales methods, and multi-channel integration to form a standardized sales process to achieve our goals.

This has been discussed in detail in the practical camp, and the operation is not complicated. In summary, there are only two steps:

1. Before the big promotion, refine the selling points of various big promotions (such as the selling points of certain big promotion products and combination packs, the strength of promotion, etc.), analyze the average order value and channels of various user groups (such as users in the group with an average order value of 300 and users in the group with an average order value of 500, how can each of them be reached, using a personal WeChat account, a public account, a store guide, or a distributor)

2. Pull order data every day during the promotion to reach users who have not placed an order during the promotion and whose average order value does not meet the promotion target. (Through the first step, we know that some users should buy 300 yuan, but only bought 100 yuan. Then we need to use the channels that can be reached and use the words to make recommendations to achieve conversion)

If you use this method well, I guarantee that your performance will improve significantly.

Return period: selling goods and spreading the message

What is the core focus of the return period? Selling goods, tracking points, and sharing.

Generally, 20% to 30% of our sales during the entire festival promotion period come from the return period, with new products being the main force.

If new products are not launched when customers spend the most money, are you going to wait until after the Chinese New Year when everyone is short of money?

We have a saying internally: There are no users that can be squeezed out, only activities that are not sufficiently matched. This same spiritual knowledge can also be used to guide people to stay focused during major festivals.

What can the new products bring?

Attention (traffic)

Why do users pay attention to new products?

New product attraction (temptation)

What does temptation bring?

Convert!

Did you notice it? A new product is a type of product that has no shortage of traffic, activity, and conversion (of course, if you don’t even understand user needs, and develop new products based on your own ideas instead of using user demand data, just ignore what I said).

Therefore, during the return period, you must produce new products, new products, and new products!

At the same time, in addition to the return of new products and regular hot products during the return period, it is equally important to focus on the timing.

For example, you can embed a buy-one-get-one-free campaign when everyone is buying new products and hot-selling products during the return period. Customers who purchase during the return period can get coupons or gifts after the big sale.

In this way, the traffic can be directed to after the big sale. Some users who missed the sale or did not buy enough will receive precisely matched coupons and can also make purchases after the big sale. This way, there won’t be a situation where sales after a big promotion fall behind daily sales.

Final Words

In today’s sharing, I am unable to explain clearly the operational details of each link, data algorithm examples, price segment algorithms, product selection and transaction scripts. Later, I will release some practical content in this regard to help you achieve better results.

For those friends who have not yet joined the "Private Domain Event Operation Park", it is also recommended that you join as soon as possible and systematically build your own event operation capabilities. Don't try to do it in a half-hearted way. Instead, learn systematically, join this valuable circle, get a set of methods that you can use right away, and communicate with a group of top operation teams. This will be much faster than figuring it out on your own.

Okay, that’s all for today’s sharing. Everyone is welcome to communicate with us during the practical process.

Author: Chen Shuaishuai

Source: GET Operations Lab