Teach you step by step to build an online training camp from scratch!

This year, private traffic pools have made many courses popular, and training camps are one of the typical business models. Prior to this, many well-known educational institutions have used training camps to explore and verify a mature conversion model for full-price courses, such as English Fluency, Changtou Academy, and Python Mini Class (Fengbian Programming), which are opening new drainage training camps almost every day.
Recently, Youdao Premium Courses, a subsidiary of NetEase Dad, which takes education as its second strategy, has also begun to adopt the routine of training camp + full-price course conversion. Preliminary observation shows that more than 130 classes have been opened. Let's take a look at what kind of magic the "training camp" has.

Why is the "Traffic Generation Training Camp" regarded as the "growth flywheel" for an organization's online operations ?

The online "training camp" model is an online learning model that combines real offline course learning scenarios. By limiting the registration time, limiting the number of students, and automating the management of WeChat communities, we can achieve continuous, planned, and strongly supervised learning.
There are many ways to run a training camp. The most popular way nowadays is to achieve "traffic-generating classes" + "conversion of regular-priced classes" through a series of operational combinations such as low-priced live/recorded classes + official accounts + personal accounts + WeChat groups.
For institutions, it is difficult to track the progress of each student in ordinary online courses in batches, let alone provide tutoring, because students have different learning speeds, progress, and learning times. The cost pressure of hiring additional teaching assistants to provide follow-up tutoring will also increase dramatically. The training camp model came into being precisely to unify progress and improve learning outcomes. According to the teacher's teaching plan, we set up course training camps with different themes and contents, and unified the admission time, learning progress, and operation management. This will not only improve the teaching effect, but also greatly reduce the operating costs for supervisors.
One teacher can maintain 3 to 4 WeChat study groups of 500 people. The teaching assistant can track the learning progress of each class study group, answer questions encountered by students in their studies, and create a positive learning atmosphere. Based on the training camp model, the biggest highlight of the "Traffic-generating Course Training Camp" model is that it adds an efficient online conversion path to the course system. Institutions can use training camp courses as new low-priced selling points to attract a large number of potential students at a low cost, thereby increasing the conversion rate of paid students for full-priced courses. The training camp model centered around half-price courses and special-price courses provides students with a good opportunity to understand the institution’s learning model and supporting services, establish an initial sense of trust in the institution and teachers, and be more conducive to subsequent payment conversions.
It is worth mentioning that due to the cyclical nature of the training camp, after becoming familiar with the training camp model, teachers can simultaneously and continuously open multiple training camps, covering trial classes, traffic-generating classes, and full-priced classes to obtain the largest private traffic pool. After each batch of training camp ends, the next training camp can be pushed, and secondary propagation and fission activities can be carried out to form a fission-like growth with an ever-expanding base.

How to use the Short Book Bootcamp?

The configuration is simple and the results are outstanding.
1. Unified enrollment to maintain stable class membership

Customized settings for time and quota: Teachers can customize the start time and limit the number of students to be enrolled based on the course teaching schedule and the enrollment goals for each camp period. Ensure that a certain number of students can be recruited during each camp period to facilitate unified management.

(Basic settings for camp period)

2. Unified teaching and synchronous management <br />Create training camp periods: Teachers can create multiple camp periods based on different themes and customize the course content within the camp period. For example, create three public speaking training camps, with three classes in each camp and 50 students in each class. The course content of each camp is different, and personalized class teaching is carried out.

Course matching unlocking mode: Teachers can set the unlocking mode according to the course start time, so that the students' learning progress can follow the teaching plan of the teacher, which is convenient for unifying the learning progress of the whole class. For example, for vocational education and entrepreneurship education courses, classes can be set up only on weekends to provide time for concentrated learning and discussion.

(Create a training camp session)

Underline: How to play the training camp of “NetEase Youdao Premium Courses”? Details determine transformation!

NetEase Youdao went public this year and reoriented its business towards online education. Among them, Youdao Premium Courses is the main source of revenue for online courses. According to public data, Youdao Premium Courses had 12.1 million registered users, 338,000 paying users, and 105,000 K-12 paying users in the first half of 2019, a year-on-year increase of 80.8%.

(Poster for "Learn English with Formulas in 5 Days")

This time, we have chosen the popular training camp in the K12 field of Youdao Premium Courses, "Learn English with Formulas in 5 Days". We will break down the case from the following 3 aspects so that teachers can also cleverly use the training camp's conversion method to double the conversion KPI!

1. Design elements of the lead generation training camp

2. How to create a learning atmosphere in the training camp

3. How to use social media to achieve large-scale order volume

1. Design elements of the lead generation training camp

We all see that the current traffic cost for acquiring customers is getting higher and higher, but using WeChat groups to convert lead-in courses to full-priced courses is still relatively advantageous in a short period of time. It mainly depends on how the training camp designs the lead-in training camp.

1.1 Path design for student registration

Register for the course via the web page/app—> SMS notification of successful registration—> Click on the SMS to save the QR code—> Follow the official account—> Guide to add the teacher’s WeChat—> Send the course schedule notification via the personal account—> Join the group to study

In the article "Private Domain Traffic is the Growth Dividend of Educational and Training Institutions" which is popular among teachers, we have discussed that the design of the user path is not the shorter the better, but to strive to generate value in every link. This path is not only beneficial for merchants and organizations to accumulate and operate traffic, but also a simple and direct way for end-users to participate. After all, to receive high-value courses, there is no need to forward to friends circles, bargain for group purchases, or have other requirements, but they can directly join the group to attend the class. Of course, the simpler the requirements for users, the higher the requirements for operations.

(Registration path for Youdao Premium Course students)

After all, it is for recruiting students, so it is necessary to introduce a large number of potential users in the early stage. In a good training camp lead-in activity, two key points should be mastered:

• Cold start amount
• Training camp transformation planning

Cold start volume: The cold start volume of the "Learn English with Formulas in 5 Days" training camp comes from Youdao's web version of the online school, the app's own application traffic; the corresponding self-media matrix promotion; as well as WeChat public accounts, Moments and other DSP delivery; as well as private domain traffic from WeChat groups, Moments, and private chats, and assisted by SMS.

(SMS notification)

Training camp conversion planning: First, a course poster page was used, using the bait of "0 yuan for 5 days of free learning" to attract students to click to sign up. The path here is the path of students during learning:

Follow the official account—> Add the teaching assistant WeChat—> Guide to group learning—> Private chat with users—> Opening ceremony—> Students experience the course—> WeChat group communication and questions—> Private chat learning feedback—> Closing ceremony—> Discounted purchase of courses—> Conversion of regular-priced courses

Not only did they utilize online supervision techniques such as group supervision, check-ins, group interactions, UGC, and one-to-one feedback, they also utilized the sense of ceremony and gain of opening/closing camps. Finally, they used marketing tricks to quickly force conversions based on the trust and goodwill of basic users that had already been established.

Of course, some tools are needed throughout the process to achieve these effects, such as pop-ups, forced attention (Short Books are already online), live codes, group robots... I will not elaborate on them here. Teachers who use Short Books can achieve the same final effect through the Short Books training camp.

(Group joining guide)

1.2 Ladder-type design of course content

The design of the training camp is centered around the transformation of the courses. The course content must be advanced, and we hope to maximize the commercial value of the participating students. This case is based on the course building system of the training camp, starting from the basic entry-level 0 yuan [Learn English with Formulas in 5 Days] course, to the advanced 3,500 yuan [Logical English System Class] full-priced course.
According to the common model of attracting traffic to courses in the market, the recommended pricing is 0-49 yuan to lower the participation threshold for potential users, help them understand the details of the course, and increase the paid conversion rate of regular-priced courses.

(Top: 0-yuan class, bottom: design of full-price class)

1.3 Design of Submitted Assignments

Before the class starts, students are asked to do a small test practice. This part simulates the entrance examination before enrolling in an offline institution. It allows students to understand their own level and know which parts they can learn and improve, thereby increasing the participation rate of the course. After completing the test, attending classes, submitting assignments, and generating an exclusive learning report, the entire process gave students a good learning experience and feedback.

(Study report after completing the assignment)

2. How to create a learning atmosphere in the training camp

Creating a learning atmosphere is to improve the completion rate of the course. To achieve this goal, in addition to enrollment and registration, and course process design, while ensuring the quality of our courses, we also need to use a learning environment to give users a sense of attentive teaching service.

So how is the learning environment created? Simply put, it mainly relies on three modules: teaching environment, companionship environment, and motivational environment.

2.1 Class environment Before class starts:

By using simple posters and holding an opening ceremony, students will pay attention to the training camp and feel a sense of ritual.
Before the class starts, hold a class meeting to introduce the platform, teachers, and course schedule. Topics will also be created during the course to allow students to participate in the entire interaction with the teacher in the group.
There will be a lot of chat messages in the group, and it is easy to miss important learning content. In order to help students find key learning content, there is a little trick: each time you release learning content, add a "climbing password" to make it easier for students to find content through group chat messages.

(Receive admission letter before class starts)

2.2 Supervisory environment <br />As students all know, if they have friends to study with, they will be more motivated to learn. With teachers to guide and supervise their learning progress, learning will be more goal-oriented.
To simulate offline classes, we generally set up 4 types of characters in the training camp, responsible for creating different parts of the training camp learning experience:

Class teacher: internal staff, mainly responsible for important learning notices

Teachers: Internal staff responsible for teaching

Seniors: Internal staff / excellent students from the past will take on this role, mainly responsible for basic Q&A and word-of-mouth marketing

Class representatives: recruited from this training camp, mainly responsible for activating the learning atmosphere

Generally, before a class starts, the teaching assistant will conduct preliminary research on the students to understand their learning dynamics, then create user tags, identify students who are motivated to pay, and conduct personalized operations for different students.

(Teaching assistant private chat to do user research)

(Interaction during the course)

1.3 Incentive Environment

Learning is inherently anti-human. If you want students to persist in attending classes for several consecutive days, you need to add some learning rewards. For example, in this training camp, students are asked to stay in the group for a few days and send the words they have learned to the group to check in. Those who persist will receive some prizes.

3. How to use social media to achieve large-scale order volume

It is roughly estimated that this training camp case created at least 25+ communities in just 5 days in a single camp period, and the number of students in each group was 300+8000+ students participating in the experience class learning courses. It is difficult for us to know the payment conversion rate. Teachers can simply convert the "one-time conversion rate" according to their own situation to see how the customer acquisition situation is. If optimization is carried out in some areas (such as community management and conversion activities), the customer acquisition effect can be further improved.

As a lead-in course or trial course, the conversion to a full-priced course is the most important step. Youdao Premium Courses has adopted some common course promotion techniques.

3 major skills: preferential strategies, scarcity, and service commitment

1. Preferential Strategy

This is an important link in the final conversion. How can we make students feel that it is worthwhile to participate in this training camp and place an order now?

Special offers, group buying, buy one get one free, discounts on purchases over a certain amount, lotteries, and coupons are more commonly used.

2. Sense of scarcity Scarcity strategies will be used in the final sprint stage of converting into orders, such as quota limits, time limits, flash sales, price increases upon expiration, etc.

3. Service Commitment

Generally, the full-price online courses are more than 500 yuan, or even several thousand to tens of thousands. Therefore, the psychological threshold for students to pay a one-time fee is quite high. The course needs to give students some guaranteed service commitments before they will place an order at the last minute. For example: seven-day unconditional refund, 30-day unconditional refund, etc.

Summarize

1. To design a good fission activity, two key points must be ensured: multi-channel cold start volume and conversion path that combines user experience and operational service quality.

2. To create a positive training camp atmosphere, three environments need to be considered: a classroom environment with a sense of ritual, a companion environment with multi-role interaction, and an incentive environment with prizes.

3. To achieve large-scale order volume through social media, the last three conversion strategies are essential: preferential strategies, scarcity, and service commitment

Of course, no matter what kind of case or routine, it cannot be applied mechanically or simply copied. A good training camp requires teachers to combine the advantages and characteristics of the institution’s courses, and to work out and try them out step by step.
I hope that after reading this super detailed case analysis of the training camp, our teachers will be able to start their first "traffic-generating training camp"!

Author: Short Book Platform

Source: Short Book Platform