How I increased my company's followers by 300,000 through an event

Special Forces-style tourism - when the whole network is chasing hot spots and watching the excitement, how do we participate in the hot spots themselves and convert 300,000 fans? In this article, the author wrote the whole analysis and thinking process for your reference.

I recently did a user repurchase analysis and found a very interesting data phenomenon: the repurchase rate of a group of users who came in at the beginning of last year was significantly higher than the average level;

By analyzing the customer acquisition channels, we found that these users basically came from an event last year, and this event was a typical " using social hot spots as leverage to acquire customers through content " event;

It turns out that those who are attracted by the content are the true fans!!

Let’s review the content acquisition strategy of the event in full~

1. Background

On February 22, 2023, on a green train full of college students heading to Lhasa, "Youth has no price tag, hard seats go straight to Lhasa!" The passionate words of the Xinjiang uncle resounded throughout the carriage, attracting applause from the college students around him;

Under this banner, some people took photos and some signed their names. This may be the beginning of a special forces-style tourism boom.

Special Forces-style tourism: Due to its characteristics of "tight time, many attractions and low cost", netizens joked that it is more like special forces training.

I left after class on Friday, visited dozens of scenic spots in Beijing in two days, and took the Sunday train back to school overnight, so as not to miss the class on Monday morning;

As for rest, it is optional.

I traveled to Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou over the weekend, walking 70,000 steps a day.

With the promotion from a large number of college students, this special forces-style tourism quickly became popular on the entire Internet!

Douyin’s #特营兵式旅游 has been read 2 billion times, and Xiaohongshu’s #特营兵旅游 has over 200,000 related notes;

This is another new tourism concept born from young groups after the popularity of the concept of "travel on a whim".

2. Topics

As a new-generation travel platform, Tongcheng naturally wants to seize this wave of traffic in the face of this hot spot.

My core goals are:

How to create brand awareness among this young group represented by college students, establish a brand image in consumer memory, trigger positive brand judgment and feelings, thereby enhancing brand equity and boosting sales;

Breaking down this topic:

The key is to create and deliver valuable brand content, the core concept of which should be consistent with the brand's core values ​​and the interests and needs of the target audience in order to attract and maintain the audience's attention.

• Tongcheng's core brand value itself tends to be youthful and fashionable, so the content tone needs to reflect a youthful and fashionable style;
• Characteristics of the special forces tourism group: they pursue individuality, cost-effectiveness, and hope to find recognition and resonance on social media; therefore, the tone of our content must also suit the tastes of this group;
• Differentiated content output is required based on the content recommendation preferences of different platforms;

Based on this understanding, we quickly produced a large amount of content during the hotspot outbreak phase through a two-step approach of self-construction and co-creation of content , ensuring the effective penetration rate of content under the topic so that the brand can continue to occupy an exposure position;

1. Be the first to create special forces marketing topics on the Douyin platform;

The content characteristics preferred by the Douyin platform can be simply summarized as being very [awesome], with great topics, tricky angles, and intense conflicts;

We have taken into account the pain point of special forces-style travel for college students and created the topic #Tongchenghelps special forces college students travel across the country , encouraging Chinese college students to post TikTok videos to tell us where they want to go, and we will directly reimburse their air/train tickets!

The topic instantly attracted active participation and attention, and the number of video views under this topic has reached 180 million;

Secondly, in terms of official content planning, we also have insight into the psychology of young users.

For example, for college students who have just graduated and entered the workplace, their workplace leaders must be ranked in the top three of the "on-the-spot explosion" list. We use the official account to complain about sensitive workplace topics such as the leaders' overly heavy tasks and the leaders' inability to complete tasks, so as to attract young groups to participate in topic interaction;

This one Douyin video has gained over 20,000 followers;

2. Xiaohongshu content coverage

In addition to the Douyin platform, Xiaohongshu platform is also the main battlefield for this hot marketing; the number of views of #特兵旅游 related content on Xiaohongshu reached 520 million times;

Different from the content tonality of the Douyin platform, the content characteristics preferred by the Xiaohongshu platform can be simply summarized as being very [beautiful], with beautiful pictures, beautiful artistic conception, beautiful lifestyle, and style. Based on this, combined with brand elements, my team has produced a large number of travel guides for popular special forces destinations, such as "Special Forces Tour Nanjing", "Special Forces Tour Sanya" and other special forces city travel guides;

Secondly, combined with another hot topic at the time, "Zibo BBQ", we planned #Tongcheng helps special forces take down the Zibo BBQ topic, further pushing the popularity to a new height;

3. Content matrix construction

In addition to Xiaohongshu and Douyin, we also conducted simultaneous topic follow-up on all media channels, including Weibo/video accounts/official accounts, etc.

While building our own content, we actively incubate high-quality university student resources, and through content co-creation and brand placement, we continuously increase the amount of high-quality content and reach the audience, maximizing the exposure of dissemination;

Through the deployment of content and the support of media placement, this topic marketing has resulted in more than 500 million exposures for Tongcheng Travel’s brand, and the number of fans on Tongcheng Travel’s new media platforms has increased by more than 300,000.

#Tongcheng helps special forces travel around the country. The creative activity has been featured on Weibo hot searches, CCTV reports, financial magazines, China Business Network and other mainstream media, and won the 2023 DTA Digital Tourism "Best Innovation" marketing project;

4. On-site traffic handling

In addition to maximizing external voice, how to guide traffic to the site for effective traffic conversion is also a core issue that my team needs to think about. We believe that the following two issues are key:

1. The guidance link should be smooth to reduce loss
2. The brand must be consistent, and the brand perception that users receive when they arrive at the site must be consistent with what they receive in the media segment;

Based on these two cognitions, we use keywords/call-to-action methods (different media channels have different methods) to guide users to the main site, and plan a separate receiving page for this part of the traffic, setting up special interest points to receive this part of the traffic;

Finally, the GMV of direct customer conversion reached tens of millions, and the new customer rate was as high as over 85%. The cost of new customers was reduced by over 80%, and the subsequent repurchase of these users was far higher than the average level of the market.

III. Organizational Guarantee

The entire project involves different functional positions such as content, advertising, activities, and new media, as well as different business lines such as air tickets, hotels, and scenic spots. Cross-departmental resource integration and personnel collaboration are the guarantee for the smooth progress of the project;

We established a virtual team oriented towards core goals and used the completion of daily indicators as a reference for personnel assessment to improve the enthusiasm and commitment of personnel throughout the project.

IV. Conclusion

Hot events can become a lever for brands to break out of their circles. Marketing must use crowd insights, content insights, platform insights, and brand insights to capture the traffic from hot events!