Event budget and execution promotion for event operation!

Many people who do operations will encounter a big problem - budget. How should the budget be made reasonably? How much budget should be requested? How should the promotion budget be allocated? What is a scientific budget? The author of this article analyzes the activity budget and execution promotion of operations. Let’s take a look.

I believe that many of my friends who are engaged in operations have a highly similar boss, who often makes a request such as "free promotion", "explosion without spending money", and "doing big things with little money". Every time these requests come out, you will feel a heroic feeling of "if I don't go to hell, who will?"

But to be honest, it is not impossible for a marketing event to achieve big success with a small investment, but it is full of randomness; many marketing events that truly achieve big success with a small investment are accidental and become popular unintentionally, or behind a person's success is the accumulation of countless failed experiences.

The boss is willful because he doesn't execute. Those of us who have been doing operations for a long time cannot just look at the appearance of success, but also look at the entire process logic behind it.

There are 365 days in a year. Instead of hoping for a small chance of becoming popular, it is better to be down-to-earth and give your all to every activity, doing well enough within the capabilities of the team.

Today, let’s talk about a relatively scientific approach from the perspective of budget-related promotion - within the two major directions of budget and goal-oriented.

1. Principles of key links within the budget

The first is to use the budget to determine all subsequent planning directions and details. Within a limited scope, each link needs to be optimized to the best of its capabilities.

There are three key links: creativity, channels/media, and execution:

1. Creative principle: Don’t be too self-indulgent

Good creation can attract enough exposure, in simple terms, it can make more people click on your ad.

Whether it is a tweet or a banner, it is more closely linked to the key stage of exposure. The relevant indicators are mainly the number of readings, views, clicks, and participation rates of the event. Creative, social, and topical activities can often attract more people's spontaneous participation. Here, you must be careful not to get too excited.

Self-satisfaction is a mistake made by most people who organize events, create content, and even make products. Classic quotes include: "I was moved to tears, didn't you?", "This idea is awesome, I actually thought of it", "It's a small probability that you don't like it, our audience will definitely like it", etc.

Still the same sentence: "You can't represent your target audience. Don't make things based on your own subjective feelings, and don't make things based on your own subjective preferences."

Therefore, in the early stages of event promotion, it is best not to look for people who are exactly the same as you to brainstorm. For example, if you are a single straight man born after 1995, don't look for straight men like you. The thought of a group of single straight men brainstorming a cosmetics event is disastrous.

It would be better to brainstorm together with people of different genders, age groups, backgrounds and educational backgrounds. After deciding on a few initial ideas, find more different people to see if they would be interested.

Correct approach: Determine the target population to be reached, and divide the population into target groups based on their characteristics.

for example:

• High topic participation crowd - forwarding - exposure;
• Target group—click on landing page—pay.

Determine the target group and the corresponding guiding actions, and the creativity will not be too far away from the execution, so as not to be too fanciful and make mistakes accidentally.

2. Channel/medium principle: multi-dimensional and comprehensive evaluation

Many people are very direct and rough when choosing platform KOLs, just looking at the number of fans or reading volume. This way it is easy to find that the activity conversion is not satisfactory or even a mess.

It is recommended here that KOLs or platforms should be evaluated in a multi-dimensional and comprehensive manner. The quality of KOL fans can be evaluated based on conversion rate, and whether the platform is suitable for its own products and businesses can be evaluated based on the activity and consumption capacity of the target population.

1) KOL: Extract the main key indicators. Don’t just pursue one or two superficial values. It is often more effective to look at the conversion rate than the numbers. For example, the open rate and click-through rate are more valuable than the number of fans, and the number of interactions is more valuable than the number of readings. Then you need to manually open your "golden eyes" to check the quality of the comments, which can basically rule out most of the watered-down accounts.

2) Platform: Many people like to do what everyone else is doing. Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether a popular thing is a trend or just someone deliberately hyping it up. When you can't tell the difference, the most direct answer is, don't look at the surface data such as the platform's daily active users, but see whether the proportion of the platform's population matches its own products? Have your peers chosen this platform for advertising? HOW DOES IT PERFORM? ——Regarding the effect, we can go back to what was said above. Although we cannot see the actual data in the background, we can still judge whether the actual effect of this activity is good or just a carnival of water army from the comments, interactions and actual level of comments.

3. Execution principle: fast, accurate and ruthless

Execution requires speed, accuracy and ruthlessness.

1) Fast execution: Inefficient execution can easily lead to missed opportunities and discouraged teams, so it is very important to maintain a high pace and quick response during the execution process.

So how can we ensure the speed is fast enough?

Of course, it is not just about speeding up the work at hand. The key point lies in repeated verification of the plan itself and preparation of Plan B, so that the error rate of the user experience process is low, user problems are handled in a timely manner without causing negative impacts, and the activity is completed smoothly as expected.

Let’s think about these issues more:

• How to react if the results exceed expectations?
• What to do if there is no effect (it’s not just sitting and waiting)?
• What should we do if we hear unfriendly voices or behaviors (buyers appear, freeloaders come into town to massacre, etc.)?

All of these require strong execution and sufficient speed to make the good ones better and stop the bad ones in time.

2) The crowd and the place must be accurate: you have already spent the money, and if there is no effect, you will not be able to apply for the budget next time. Therefore, before you work hard every time, you should pay more attention to where the target audience gathers. There are some major categories or mainstream platforms that everyone knows, such as the mothers and babies group in the moms group, Internet practitioners on Zhihu, little girls on Xiaohongshu, etc.; but many platforms will have more subdivided sections, and there are many precise small and beautiful "fish ponds" that actually have a lot of room for exploration, such as Zhihu circles, Xianyu fish ponds, etc.

Here are some mining methods:

• Keywords: Use keywords for search and mining.
• Path experience: simulate users to conduct fish pond mining, such as following users with obvious characteristics of the target group in a certain BBS, clicking on his follow-up sections and users, and then looking at them one by one...you will get a series of things you need.

Regularly search the app store for the top ten, twenty, or thirty apps in different categories. Often, newer or relatively niche apps will have a purer atmosphere and environment (weak overall marketing and fewer advertising parties), and therefore will attract a lot of accurate users.

3) The activity must be strong enough: target the target audience, select the channels, and have the KOLs. At this time, don’t be stingy with some incentive policies such as prizes.

I once saw a furniture store owner who insisted on doing a trade-in campaign. There was nothing wrong with that, but the key was that his preferential policy was that the same product must be used for five years before the purchase of the same style or the same set of furniture could be discounted by 10%.

Why should people buy furniture of the same style and color that they have used for a long time? With such a high average order value, you can offset 10%, which means you get a 10% discount, and they will also return the old one to you.

Ultimately, you are thinking too much from the merchant’s own perspective. You think your promotion is very favorable, but users may often think: That’s it? ! To be honest, you are not the only company selling things in this world, and users can choose other companies.

For the operator, all the previous layouts were done well, but in the end they failed because of being stingy with users.

Please remember to take advantage of the public's unchanging desire to get a good deal, and a big one at that - if you've spent money on promotion, remember that the prizes can't be outdated.

2. Apply for more budget under the goal orientation

As the name suggests, a marketing campaign that applies for a budget in a goal-oriented manner means setting the goal first, breaking down the target data, and selecting the appropriate KOLs and platforms to work backwards.

1. How to set goals?

Of course, the target KPI cannot be set randomly. It can be specified based on the purpose, landing account, existing sales, existing customer base, resources and manpower.

You can refer to relevant competitors for this, but be careful to make sure it is formulated scientifically. For example, if a competitor has more than ten years of brand accumulation, and you are a new 0-1 brand that no one knows, but you also want to achieve the same goal as them, then you need to carefully consider whether it is appropriate.

2. How to break down the set goals?

The decomposition goal is mainly to take inventory of resources, take inventory of the available, free, discounted, and high-quality media, take inventory of the manpower that can be invested and the materials and other resources owned, after internal and external calculations; then arrange the proportions in order of closeness and importance, calculate multiple times, and discuss several times within the team to find a relatively appropriate value.

3. How to apply for a budget?

It is impractical to request a budget without an upper limit, and it is unlikely to be approved. A suitable budget should be formulated based on the minimum and maximum range data of the above resources. Of course, the boss will look at the input-output ratio.

In addition to the above, you can also link resources from all parties as much as possible:

Cross-industry cooperation: Look for industries with the same customer base for cross-industry cooperation, and provide gifts, advertising space exchanges, sponsorships, product replacements, bundling, etc. For example, for maternal and infant food, you can look for children's clothing, children's education can be combined with adult (parent) education, and so on.

Coupon marketing: In addition to the prizes that may be given to event participants (to attract people and customers), you can use coupon marketing as much as possible (to attract new customers and promote orders). Don’t worry that no one wants or uses it, and don’t be discouraged by low take-up rate and low usage rate. Coupon is meant for target users.

3. Some additional suggestions

1. Executor: Keep a good attitude + ab plan

For those friends who are doing execution in operations, you should not lose your expectations in life (such as finding a partner) just because you have less hair.

You still have to do your work well, keep a good attitude, and have some confidence in your work, but you can't be blindly arrogant; whether it is investment, promotional activities, theme activities or other marketing events, refer to how others do their activities, and make adjustments based on your own industry, products, and population characteristics. After the activity path is determined, try to optimize and improve the details as much as possible, do a good job of risk control, and prepare Plan B.

The suggestion during implementation is to pay close attention to each key node to prevent various problems; you can also check whether the current effect is different from the expectation, and why? How to optimize and adjust, and handle it flexibly throughout the process.

If the initial launch is effective and generates considerable enthusiasm, we can take advantage of the heat of discussion to do a secondary push to deepen and prolong the public's enthusiasm and time for participating in the discussion.

2. Managers: Be pragmatic + provide support after setting the general direction

A manager is first and foremost a manager and a leader, not a troublemaker. He should not spend all day thinking about digging holes and then perfectly passing the buck.

First of all, you should have a correct attitude. Don't spend all your time thinking about doing big things with little money or going to heaven without spending money. It is important to be pragmatic. Otherwise, deviating from the actual goal setting will only make the executors Alexander, and it will be meaningless to surrender before the battle even starts.

Secondly, managers need to grasp the degree of activity creativity and overall activity direction to determine whether it will bring some negative impact on the brand.

Then you can step back behind the scenes and provide support to the team when they need leadership to coordinate resources and communicate.

The greatest help you can do is to have a little understanding in your mind, do what you are supposed to do in your position, and not always think about showing off and causing trouble for the team.

Author: Guo Lvxia

Source: Guo Lyuxia

Related reading:

1. Event operation from entry to advanced: review

2. Activity operation review data indicators!

3. Event operation from entry to advanced: program design

4. A complete method for event operation!

5. The most comprehensive guide to event operations from entry level to advanced level!