Distributor friends, do you understand fan marketing? Many people say that distributors are not suited for fan marketing. Who said that? It's just that you don't know how. The following case is a fan marketing campaign operated by a traditional liquor company, but it still offers valuable lessons for distributor friends. Bomb Erguotou is a traditional liquor company. The boss admires Xiaomi's fan marketing and aspires to it, but like most people fascinated by Xiaomi's fan marketing, he doesn't know how to implement it. What's more, he doesn't even know what his fans look like. However, Bomb Erguotou has a very solid consumer base, especially in Hunan, which is a key market, and its products are visible in restaurants and supermarkets. Such traditional enterprises are too many and too normal. Everyone claims on their carefully crafted brochures and glamorous stages that customers are their foundation and that they are user-centric, but they have neither met their "foundation" nor know what their "center" is thinking. How can a brand in this state build a fan-making project? Like some so-called social marketing companies, posting on Weibo, doing reposts, planning lucky draws, giving away iPads—is that fan marketing? Does it make sense for sales? Does it make sense for the brand? The zombie fans on Weibo are already more active than real people. They have avatars, even beautiful female avatars; they repost with comments; they are active, posting dozens of times a day. So, merely doing online fan marketing is now meaningless. You must do direct, face-to-face offline activities. Friends who have never met are never close; fans who have never met are not true fans. If they are not willing to meet you, how deep can their affection for you be? Meeting makes it intimate; meeting makes it more intimate. Isn't Xiaomi's fan marketing driven by one city meetup after another? Most importantly, after meeting, there are always unexpected stories. Coincidentally, Bomb Erguotou was about to hold a forum in Changsha. Could they take this opportunity to organize a consumer meetup in Changsha? Find 60 fans and hold a small gathering. This task fell on my old colleague, Ding, and for the next two weeks, she and her team worked day and night. Finding Bomb People: How to Recruit Fans To have a catchy name, they named the brand's fans "Bomb People." There is also a tradition among drinkers of this liquor: drinking one bottle is called "blowing one up." This slogan and terminology are the genes of the fan-making project! However, the most practical question: Who will bring sixty people? Where do we find sixty people? What kind of people are suitable to participate? Why would they come? Should we assign it to the local branch or distributor? Force it on them? No way! If they casually bring a group of elderly people, what's the point of this activity? Fans must be found by themselves. Where to find them? They didn't even know a single person in Changsha! So, the process of recruiting fans was the hardest at the beginning. There was no good method; they had to explore step by step and took many detours. First, they widely posted activity announcements on all social platforms: Weibo, Tieba, communities, Douban, WeChat... everywhere they could think of with city activities. But from the results, Weibo and Douban were the most effective. I have summarized the execution details: First, Weibo.
- Finding people by themselves was too tiring, so they arranged for recommendations of nearby Bomb People and offered rewards. This worked well.
- They precisely searched for Weibo bloggers related to Bomb Erguotou and invited them to participate. This process was quite tough because many people from other cities in Hunan would indicate they were from Changsha, and even Changsha people living elsewhere or abroad would say they were from Changsha. However, this step also had some effect.
- At the same time, they mobilized their team to precisely send private messages to local fan leaders, big accounts, media, etc., and spread activity information on Weiba and Tieba.
- They guided interaction. Using the topic "Blow one up at a certain moment," they encouraged people to recall the moments they drank this liquor. Topics that evoke memories often have higher interaction frequency. What to mix with Bomb was also an interaction topic. This liquor has high alcohol content, so it is usually mixed with juice or Sprite. Netizens also developed mixing it with coffee or pomegranate juice. Second, Douban. Douban's city activities are well-known, attracting people with a bit of talent who enjoy gatherings. These are exactly the fans the event hoped to find. This part is very important, and I will discuss it in the final section, "Igniting the Event Site." Whether they were lucky or not, after a few days on Douban, their city activity was promoted to the homepage of Changsha activities, dramatically increasing exposure. Third, others. Fans were really naive; they spontaneously helped promote. On Changsha's Momo platform, fans spontaneously posted activity information, and without any promotion, 116 people signed up. Note, here comes the key point! With so many registrations, they absolutely could not just leave an email or phone number and then send a text reminder before the event. That would waste the fans they had worked so hard to gather. To strengthen cohesion, all registrants were pulled into a QQ group called "Bomb Erguotou Changsha Branch." People gathered for the same hobby, like relatives who haven't seen each other for a long time, and they chatted a lot. The group atmosphere grew better and better. Unexpectedly, this group played a huge role! I'll mention it in the next part. This vigorous fan-finding campaign ultimately succeeded in achieving a new fan interaction model of "starting from zero" and "from online to offline." In the end, they accumulated over 80 people, exceeding the target of 60. But the influence brought by the entire recruitment process was probably more than 60,000 people. However, reading this, you might find it strange: how could a recruitment activity be so popular? Although the copy was enticing, it shouldn't be that popular, right? Actually, they weren't just recruiting people; they also planned another interactive topic, which was the soul of this event: "Truth After Wine." Truth After Wine: How It Became a Trending Topic on Weibo If there were no topic, inviting fans to a meetup would be too stiff. What would they come for? Draw a prize, sing a song, get a gift, and leave? That would be meaningless! They came up with a theme: "Truth After Wine"! Let everyone share their experiences of speaking truth after drinking. This topic was excellent. Anyone who drinks regularly has definitely had such an experience. It fits the group's characteristics perfectly and is full of substance. These truths must be things people have kept in their hearts for a long time. When time passes and years go by, recalling those stories, can they not be filled with emotion? First, they asked fans in the QQ group to each write a Weibo post about "Truth After Wine," and then each mobilized all their QQ groups, relatives, and friends to repost their posts. By the time the city meetup started, the one with the highest repost count would win the first prize, and others could win second or third prizes. This move radiated fans' personal behavior into their relationship chains, instantly boosting influence. Later, there were over 80 people in this QQ group, and each mobilized their own fans, relatives, friends, colleagues, etc. A local event held in Changsha had influence far beyond Changsha. It was said that to canvass votes, some fans promised to post nude photos if they got 200 reposts, others promised snack gift packs, and some even notified their kindergarten classmates. To add fuel to the fire, they invited a campus belle to participate. They were still not reassured, so they invited two big accounts to help repost, bringing over 2,000 reposts and comments. The official Weibo account also grabbed the topic moderator role (moderator, you know, can freely and ruthlessly insert the brand's ads), which played an obvious role in guiding the topic. Later, this "Truth After Wine" activity was discussed by over 13,000 people within a week, and three core fan Weibo posts were pushed to hot Weibo! Finally, on the evening of the 21st, they successfully hit the trending topic of the night on Weibo. Manually creating a trending topic on Weibo is a technical task. The recruitment phase was the reserve period, the core fans in the QQ group were the engine, and then the campus belle, big accounts, etc., created waves of momentum. A series of actions finally hit the hot Weibo. Igniting the Event Site The site is the key. If the site is cold and quiet, the fan meetup is a failure. We also know Xiaomi's fan city meetups; other brands have also done city meetups, but what exactly do they do at the meetup? How to mobilize the atmosphere? There are some patterns to follow. I won't detail every activity, only the highlights: First, atmosphere creation. They made some provocative posters, some with Changsha dialect rhymes. For such on-site activities, posters are still the most provocative. At the event site, the most enthusiastic moment was when everyone read their "Truth After Wine" stories. This resonated the most because they were all about everyday things, like telling jokes. Moreover, those who went on stage introduced themselves by their group names. Everyone was familiar in the group but couldn't match names to faces. Now meeting face-to-face, they matched them, and the crowd got even more excited. The function of building a core fan QQ group was utilized again. Another segment was "drum and pass the bomb." When the drum stopped, the person holding it either had to "blow one up" (drink a bottle) or perform a show. One fan performed a very professional magic trick, and the audience cheered. This is why places like Douban are the best for recruiting fans—they all have a bit of talent. There was also on-site drinking competition to see who could "blow up" the most, and the atmosphere was very intense. On the contrary, the band they hired made fans complain that the atmosphere was not harmonious. These artistic youths still prefer grassroots entertainment. Gathering fans is one level; forming fan culture is another. The so-called sense of participation is actually about digging out fans' interests. What do they like? What do they care about? Find their high points to mobilize their enthusiasm. The biggest taboo in fan activities is forcing something on them, which causes resentment. The entire activity was tightly linked: recruiting fans, building a core fan group, mobilizing everyone in the group to write "Truth After Wine," turning it into topic marketing, competing for reposts, triggering word-of-mouth, and then the event site was the release opportunity for recruitment and topic marketing. One link after another, and after the event, it was the next round of word-of-mouth. This was a very successful fan-making campaign. Although it was just an attempt, those who are attentive can summarize the methods and essentials of fan-making. The value of fans is immeasurable. You don't know what abilities or energy fans have behind them. Their talents and the stories they write can bring over 500 natural reposts. This is not using them, but giving them a stage to release themselves and giving all fans a chance to make friends. When you turn such activities into a platform for fans, you become more and more valuable. Fans will post what interests them at the site to Weibo or Moments, which brings more brand exposure opportunities. Speaking of this, I suddenly think of the huge value of Moments as a micro-channel. Many people earn 10,000 to 20,000 yuan a month just from Moments.