A poster that goes viral requires these 8 elements

An important marketing component of an event is posters, especially for activities such as member recruitment, paid courses, and offline conferences. We often see these posters.

However, some posters shared on WeChat Moments are ineffective, with extremely poor traffic generation effects, and even the most basic information is not made clear. Some posters will stimulate many people's desire to scan the code so as to learn more about the event.

So, today I will share with you how to make a marketing poster that has built-in fission/conversion.

1. Three-step goals of marketing posters

Before making a poster, you have to figure out why you want to make it. You can't just do it for the sake of making a poster, otherwise no one will share or forward it.

I personally think that a poster should have the following three functions, and they should be gradually deepened:

1. User Notification

First you must tell your target customers what you do or what you plan to do?

If users don’t understand the content of the poster you share, it’s a waste. Even the suspense posters of press conferences like those of Apple, Xiaomi, and Hammer at least clearly tell users that they plan to hold a press conference + launch new products, including the time, place, and viewing method.

What we fear most are some self-congratulatory posters, such as those with text like "The future has arrived on December 1st". It is unclear whether the entire poster is about launching a new product or a new strategy.

2. Attract attention

Telling users what you are going to do is only the most basic first step. How to make users curious and pay attention to you is the second step. As I just said, at the annual press conferences of technology products such as Xiaomi and Tesla, what people look forward to most is their upcoming new products.

How does it look, how does it perform, what is its configuration and how much does it cost. As for how to attract users' attention, you can choose any of the above angles, such as asking users to predict prices on posters, such as 1X99, XX99 yuan.

Or choose a certain angle of the appearance to trigger the user's imagination. Of course, attracting attention is not necessarily driven solely by arousing user curiosity.

It is also possible to directly and clearly tell users what it is, because sometimes the product, price, and function itself are enough to attract users' attention. To explain it from another perspective, it means what the user can get after reading the content of your poster.

Is it an opportunity for personal growth, or to obtain cheap benefits, or what kind of problem is solved for users.

3. Sales Conversion

You send out a poster for a press conference, which is at least the first step in conveying your message. The most important purpose is to hope that users can go to the press conference on the day of the press conference or watch it online, providing you with an opportunity to explain and educate users.

If you post a poster announcing a new car, your ultimate goal is to encourage users to come to the store and buy it one day. Similarly, the ultimate goal of paid knowledge courses and community member recruitment is to generate conversions.

Therefore, from users arriving in person or watching online, joining groups, initiating bargaining, making appointments and even paying, these are the ultimate goals of our poster making. Whether users can convert or not depends on whether the products, services and policies we provide can impress users.

2. Eight Elements of Marketing Posters

Only when we are clear about the goal of making marketing posters can we know how to design the elements needed on the poster accordingly.

1. Clear theme

First of all, you have to clearly tell users who you are and what you want to do?

For example, Shili Village community recruitment, Shili Village investment promotion conference, Shili Village community summit forum, Shili Village new product launch, Shili Village fan festival, etc. This is the theme of our entire event.

For the theme of the event, I think simplicity and directness have an impact. For individual conference-type activities, the sub-theme can be accelerated.

2. Event time

Whether it is the launch time of the press conference or the deadline for product promotions, users must be clearly informed to create a sense of urgency.

3. Quantity

For products such as courses, fruits, and clothing, three types of numbers can be indicated on the poster:

• Limited share: Let users know that the preferential benefits are limited;
• Number of purchases: Let users know that many people have participated in this activity. Here is a little trick: add some user avatars in front of the number of purchases;
• Remaining quantity: Let users know that if they miss this opportunity, it will be gone.

For the number of items that have been snapped up, an initial value should be given in the system at the beginning, instead of 0.

4. Price

Regarding the display of prices, it depends on what the purpose of this event poster is?

• Preview: If you are doing a preview of a new product launch, rather than a direct sale, you can make suspenseful guesses.
• Special offer: Another type is for pre-sale or direct sale, where the price can be clearly stated.

Of course, the prices clearly written down generally show two prices.

1. Strike-through price: generally refers to the price of the product after the promotion ends or the original price of the product.
2. Special price: The affordable price you can enjoy by participating in this event. Of course, some posters will directly indicate the special price reduction.

But from my personal point of view, if the price of a direct discount is less than 100, there is no need to mark it as a direct discount. There is also a type of price that increases in a step-by-step manner, for example, the price increases by 50 or 100 yuan for every X number of people.

One of the effects we need to achieve from the above description of the three dimensions of price, quantity, and time is to emphasize scarcity, time limit, and sense of urgency.

5. Endorsement

From the marketing posters of common press conferences, meetings, courses, books, memberships, and investment promotion, authoritative and trusted endorsement can help improve conversions.

There are three dimensions of enhanced endorsement:

1) Authoritative endorsement

It is mainly reflected in government honors, media exposure, association awards, and scientific and technological content, such as an honorary unit of an association, authoritative quality inspection recognition, and winner of an association's grand prize.

This is why many brands are never tired of winning awards. Ordinary users are willing to pay for this kind of self-flattering thing.

2) Celebrity endorsement

There are different groups of celebrities, the most common ones are entertainment stars. Of course, we can also invite some well-known entrepreneurs, start-ups, and internet celebrities to make joint recommendations.

3) Word of mouth endorsement

It mainly refers to user word of mouth, which can be a set of data or the feelings of real users. For example, if there are more than 20,000 students on the entire network, you can also express your personal experience based on a particular student’s experience.

Another user endorsement detail that is easily overlooked is that the posters shared by users should preferably include the user’s own portrait + recommendation text, which can both strengthen trust and enhance relationship attributes. The specific manifestations of endorsement are honor, data and authoritative recognition.

6. Benefits

If it is an event poster with sales attributes, price is naturally the most important factor, but it is not enough. We need to give users reasons why they cannot refuse us, so we have to double the benefits.

So you will find that many courses, memberships, and investment posters, in addition to special prices, also offer information packages, consultation times, surrounding courses, policy support, limited-time rebates, and even physical gift packages.

But generally speaking, you don’t need too many supporting benefits. Generally speaking, three gifts are enough, otherwise it will seem cheap.

7. Outline

For the four types of marketing posters, namely training courses, expert sharing, offline meetings, and paid communities, you must extract the most core content outline. That is, what can users get for their money? For example, what are the main contents of a paid training course?

For some physical goods, these are selling points other than price. However, I hope that the number of selling points does not exceed 6, otherwise there will be no focus.

8. Action Points

We just said that the ultimate goal of making marketing posters is to generate conversions. Since you want conversion, you have to give users a chance to connect with you. I think based on the actual situation, you can choose from the following aspects.

1) Telephone

It can be a 400 phone number or a mobile phone number, especially for sales of houses and cars.

2) WeChat ID

In order to quickly establish contact with customers, you can directly place your personal WeChat account.

3) Address

If you need to direct customers to your store, such as supermarkets, stalls, shopping malls, real estate projects, training centers, etc., mark the exact address.

4) Official Account

If you need to push other service information to users, you can guide users to follow the official account.

5) Group code

If you plan to direct traffic to a WeChat group and then make conversions, you can directly display the group QR code. But generally speaking, from the perspective of fission, whether it is a personal account or a group code, in order to avoid being blocked and restricted from entering the group, a live code must be used.

6) Mall

If you want users to place an order directly, then directly display the single product order page or guide them to the mini program or app store. These are some options for action points. The most important thing is not to forget to guide users to scan the code.

3. Three things to note when marketing posters

Making a poster is just completing one part of the marketing fission activity. Sometimes, the poster is well made, but it appears during the early promotion and mid-term acceptance process, which is also a waste.

So I will just briefly mention three points here, and I can explain them in detail later.

1. Promotion and marketing coordination

You should all have experienced the work of recruiting members, renewing memberships, and promoting community calendars on some well-known platforms. In order to better organize these distributors, appointments, training, and publicity, including the setting of distribution benefits, need to be made in advance.

Especially the rhythm arrangement of publicity and promotion, who are the first and second waves, which posters need to be sent, and how much distribution amount should be set.

2. Subsequent acceptance

When users see the poster through Moments, they scan the QR code to join the group, personal WeChat or event special page. In addition to considering the stability of the activity, it is more important to think about the entire user participation process.

If users scan a QR code to join the group, what kind of words should be sent to users, how can users receive rewards, how to encourage users to forward the message a second time, etc. The most worrying thing is that there are three things missing in an event: no one to organize it, no one to answer questions, and no one to provide after-sales service.

3. Combine with reality

The last point is my personal experience while working on the project these days. Our recent business is mainly offline, especially serving users in third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities.

We have a lot of posters and roll-up banner materials, but our copywriters and designers have never been to the front line and don’t know our users’ habits and cultural level. Therefore, the copy written is either professional and famous, or flowery and out of touch with reality. Simply put, offline users cannot understand it.

The design takes into account aesthetics and various details of the pattern design, without actually considering the actual usage scenarios of our posters and X-stands.

For example, at some sites in the county, many posters and roll-up banners are red and yellow. If we design a red one, when they are placed together, they will be completely indistinguishable.

You have to consider that this is extremely easy for users to overlook in offline flow scenarios. Therefore, I hope that when you make posters, you will fully consider the actual usage scenarios and optimize and create more templates.

Author: Shili Village

Source: Shili Village (ID: shilipxl)