But if others deliberately imitate your advertising ideas, you can defend your rights through "unfair competition" with sufficient evidence.
As far as a certain business operation mode is concerned, it is difficult for your situation to approach these four modes, which may not work in practice. If in doubt, you may wish to consult a patent agency;
I used to be an intermediary in the transaction of technical property rights, and I could deal with patents all day. To tell the truth, China's current intellectual property protection law has many loopholes and many defects. Not to mention the method, it is a specific patented product. It's easy for others to impersonate you. To solve this problem, the core is not only to improve the relevant laws of property rights, but more importantly, how to protect rights, and often won't get compensation even if you win the lawsuit.
I once witnessed the medical diagnostic equipment invented by a professor who led his research team for nearly 30 years. At the beginning, I applied for an invention patent in Britain, the United States, Japan and China, and the principle of its diagnosis method has even been written into the textbooks of domestic medical colleges. In China, there are very few such "invention patents". However, due to the poor management of professors, the domestic market is not ready to talk about the international market. Today, the products he invented have been cornered by many domestic counterfeiters. It was really "fake Gui Li" that killed "real Li Kui jy". In order to protect rights, the professor is now heavily in debt!
In your case, with all due respect, I'd better give up the idea of applying for a patent as soon as possible! Applying for a patent means that the information must be made public, that is, many "interested people" can quickly understand your method patent. This is undoubtedly a "disadvantage" far greater than the "advantage" at this stage. It is better to keep a low profile and wait for the actual economic benefits before implementing the transformation.
Bottom line: method patents can hardly protect your fundamental interests under the current system. Only by continuous innovation can we get more benefits.
(Off-topic: You can find that the well-known Wuliangye applied for numerous patents on the shape of the packaging, just to resist counterfeiters, but in the end, Wuliangye thought that the best way to resist costs was to innovate constantly, change the packaging constantly, and increase the counterfeiting cost of counterfeiters, so as to resist counterfeiting most effectively.)