Practical review: How to build a complete operation system?

This article is a review of my recent practice.

Through this article, I would like to tell you how to build a complete operating system to support millions of users and tens of millions of revenue for educational products ( knowledge-based paid products).

Now, paid knowledge or educational products are in a bonus period, with a large number of startups pouring into the market, and of course giants have also emerged in many sub-sectors. Many startups enter this field because they see this big cake. But how do you eat this big cake?

I believe this article can help you.

1. Background

This company has been deeply engaged in offline business for many years, mainly providing education and training camps in a certain offline field. The courses in the offline system cost 3,000 yuan. However, this type of offline model is difficult to expand on a large scale, because if you want to expand the market in Beijing, you need to have classrooms, teachers, and promotion channels in Beijing.

Therefore, this company is now in urgent need of online transformation. The original offline course that cost 3,000 yuan was moved online. Due to the reduction in costs, the average customer price of the course is now 1,500 yuan, and the entire course cycle is 20 days.

The company wants to complete the online training camp system course services for a total of 20,000 users within one and a half years. (It is not convenient to disclose the specific marketing budget invested by the enterprise here)

II. Objectives

Because the average order value is high, we use 20,000 paying users to do a backward calculation and find that at least 800,000 users are needed.

Therefore, by breaking down this goal, we can get two operational indicators:

1. Build a growth system to achieve sustainable growth of online traffic ;
2. Build a payment system to achieve high conversion rate .

3. Construction of operation system

Achieve the goal by building a growth system, content operation , and paid conversion system.

1. Growth System

The growth system is traffic. I will analyze three methods of generating traffic:

1. The first one is an approach that is not suitable for the education industry. Please read this and take it as a warning.
2. The second method is to try if the advertising cost can be recovered through paid conversions;
3. The third one is the plan I made for the educational enterprise mentioned in the background, and I personally recommend this one more.

The specific analysis is as follows:

1.1 Traditional traffic:

The traditional traffic method is advertising, and the general process is as follows:

1. When placing advertisements through Guangdiantong , Toutiao , etc., you can use the DMP provided by the advertising platform to accurately control the target audience during the placement process;
2. The user sees the ad and if the user is interested, a click will occur;
3. The user is interested in clicking on the ad. If the ad is based on pay-per-click , each user click will incur a fee.
4. After the user clicks, if he is interested, he can directly purchase the course product.

The advertising delivery process is actually a funnel: users see ads - users click on ads - users buy. However, this funnel will fail unless the cost of user clicks on ads can be recovered through user purchases. Otherwise, this approach won’t work.

But knowledge-based paid products are different from other products. You may see information flow ads selling clothes and buying electronic products on Toutiao, but you rarely see ads for virtual products, such as paid knowledge.

Because for virtual products such as physical objects and knowledge, the points at which users pay are different. Knowledge especially requires the teacher's trustworthy endorsement, or users must have listened to public classes and feel that the knowledge is truly valuable before they will pay.

Therefore, the method of generating course payment through advertising is not feasible for the education industry.

1.2 Traffic of advertisements delivered to the public account :

The cost of online education products is very low, so sometimes we often see education-related public accounts placing advertisements in the WeChat environment.

I studied several educational public accounts, and their traffic acquisition methods are roughly as follows:

1. WeChat ads can be placed through Guangdiantong, and can usually be seen at the bottom of the public account tweets;
2. The user sees the ad and clicks on it if he is interested;
3. When a user clicks on an ad, advertising costs are incurred;
4. After the user clicks, he/she will follow the official account if he/she is interested;

I studied several accounts. After users followed these accounts, they directly guided users to pay for courses through the welcome language, but they did not directly convert users to high average order value.

This approach has been proven to be feasible for educational products, as the course fees can recover the costs of Guangdiantong.

I would like to share a product that I have researched before, called "Primary School Chinese Language Station".

From the screenshots, we can see that by placing advertisements through Guangdiantong, traffic is directed to the official account, and the welcome message of the official account is to guide users to learn free poetry. Although free poetry is free, it is actually the top level of the paid conversion funnel. Detailed analysis will be given later.

1.3 Fission flow :

We have shared 8 issues of fission methodology. When it comes to fission, it is no longer unfamiliar, but fission requires basic traffic. If you say that you currently have 30 fans and you plan to fission, then the final result of your fission, the total number of fans will not exceed 50.

This time, the solution I designed for this company used this traffic growth method. Let’s take a look at the flow chart first:

1. Obtaining traffic through multiple channels is what I target in the complete operation system, the part from basic traffic to growth system. Generally, multi-channel traffic acquisition can be divided into two categories: free channels and paid channels.

• Free channels: If it is an educational product, I think Zhihu is a suitable channel. Of course, although the free channel is free, the speed will be slower. For free channels, you need to deploy as many as possible. You cannot bet everything on just one free channel.
• Paid channels: Paid channels include advertising channels , as well as the purchase of some ready-made social media traffic, etc.

1. Traffic from multiple channels needs to be directed to content platforms for sedimentation. Generally, WeChat public accounts are chosen as the carrier.

2. When users enter the official account, they are directly guided to participate in the free course through the official account welcome message, but if they want to participate in the free course, they need to share the poster;

3. Once users share the completed poster, they can start taking free courses, which are actually the top of the paid funnel for educational products.

4. If the end user listens to the free course and is interested in it, he or she will directly pay for it.

Compared with the previous two methods, this growth method can be summarized in one sentence: it reduces traffic costs. because:

• First, in the front-end basic traffic part, this method chooses a combination of free channels and paid channels;
• Secondly, traffic is directly fissioned when it enters the platform, thereby reducing traffic costs through fission. Moreover, there is no additional budget for the rewards for fission, but the free courses at the top of the payment funnel are directly used.

1. Content operation system

This company's plan calls for the introduction of a content matrix in the middle and late stages, including a matrix of multiple public accounts and a matrix of multiple content platforms outside the WeChat system. However, due to initial cost considerations, you only need to operate the WeChat public account (service account) in the early stage.

For your reading experience, I have taken a screenshot of the content operation part of the overall operation system, as shown below:

You can see three connecting arrows 4, 5, and 6. Let me explain them.

Users enter WeChat official accounts from the growth system, and WeChat official accounts have two functions from the perspective of the entire operation system:

1. Direct traffic to the top of the 4-way paid funnel;
2. Direct traffic through 6 low-priced courses. I will conduct an analysis around these two types of effects.

2.1 Top funnel diversion (4)

First of all, it needs to be made clear that the user's monetization path is completed step by step, and it is often difficult to successfully sell high-priced courses to new users. The reason is simple: you don’t know me and don’t understand me. If I sell you a course for 9.9 and a course for 1999, which course do you think you would pay for?

Therefore, through arrow 4, there are several ways to direct the public account traffic to the top of the funnel:

1. Guide users to free courses through the welcome message for new users;
2. In the official account tweets, guide users to join the free course at the end of the article;
3. In the official account menu, users are guided to free courses through buttons such as "Learn for Free" and "Get Benefits";
4. Users are guided to free courses through personal accounts, communities, external channels, etc. outside the official account.

It should also be explained here why there is an arrow 5, that is, the top level of the funnel directs traffic to the official account? Because, as the above line of text says, free courses may be accessed through personal accounts, communities, external channels, etc. Therefore, this type of traffic cannot be wasted and needs to be directed to the official account for sedimentation.

2.2 Low customer price diversion (6):

Why should we divert traffic to both free courses and courses with low average order value? Because once the number of users in your content system grows to a certain level, users of different levels, or users with different levels of loyalty, will appear.

Generally, new users, that is, users who have just entered the platform, need to be directed to free courses. Users who have been on the platform for a period of time need to be directed to courses with low average order value. Because what can ultimately bring revenue to the company is the bottom of the funnel, that is, high-priced products.

2.3 Specific approach:

There is an entrance to free courses in tweets and menus. On the menu, you also need to set up an entrance for low-priced courses. Users can directly enter and purchase.

1. Paid conversion system

In fact, most of the time people are talking about fission, that is, traffic. Paid conversions are rarely talked about. There is a standard and mature model for paid conversion in the education industry, namely the paid conversion funnel.

You can see the following figure: On the left is the payment funnel of the education company in the background, and on the right is the payment funnel I made for them in the plan. Next, I will give a detailed explanation:

For the general industry, there is a formula for paid conversion:

Payment = trust endorsement + emotional consumption .

Let me explain this formula:

• For the same two pieces of clothing, why do you prefer to buy a brand name one? Apart from vanity, it’s actually an endorsement of trust.
• Why do some big guys’ knowledge planets sell for very high prices, but you can join without even thinking about it? Because of trust endorsement, the essence of big boss IP is trust endorsement.
• Why do you shop frequently on Double 11? Because of emotional consumption, there are a lot of ways in marketing to stimulate people's emotional consumption.

For the education industry, this formula requires more trust endorsement. Because educational products cannot be seen or touched. Paying really requires trust. This is also why some English education products, with a per-customer price of tens of thousands, have a policy that states that if you are not satisfied with the lessons after a few sessions, you can get a full refund without any questions asked. Because this is building trust endorsement. To dispel concerns about distrust in payment.

Why is there such a payment funnel? In fact, it is to build trust endorsement in the minds of users step by step. Through free classes and lectures, we build trust and endorsement with users, and then guide them to courses with low average order value. Then, we continue to build more trust and endorsement and guide them to courses with high average order value.

For large education brands , the funnel on the left works because the brand itself establishes credit endorsement for users. However, for start-ups, it is necessary to build trust endorsement through 3 or even 4 layers of funnels. Each level of courses is designed to build trust and endorsement for users.

1. Curriculum

Finally, regarding the curriculum system, I also helped this company do some things that I can share with you. Now educational courses are divided into two categories: general courses and training camp courses.

• Ordinary courses: teachers give lectures and users listen and learn. This type of course does not require centralized teaching, everyone can learn at any time. Some users who signed up early may have learned up to the 8th lesson, while some users came late and may have just learned the 1st lesson today.
• Training camp courses: This type of course is a closed loop. That is, users attend classes, check in, and answer questions. This type of course needs to be conducted centrally, that is, everyone signs up at the same time and the camp starts at the same time. Various training camp courses on the market are designed in this way.

Combined with the classification of courses, let's take a look at the payment funnel again:

For free open classes, the teaching scenarios need to be divided according to the number of people: community teaching and platform teaching.

4.1 Community teaching:

In the early stage when there are not many people, it is particularly suitable to do it in the community, because the community itself is a scenario with a higher payment conversion rate. We just mentioned a payment formula: payment = trust endorsement + emotional consumption.

The community fits this formula perfectly:

1. Teaching in the community is a process of building trust and endorsement;
2. The open courses in the community are aimed at converting low-priced customers to paid ones, so the conversion is not difficult.
3. Community scenarios can stimulate users' emotional consumption based on herd mentality. (This is actually an important method for social e-commerce to achieve paid conversion. In some of the previous social e-commerce cases, the core method was actually herd mentality)

There are a few points to note about the top layer of the community funnel:

1. It is necessary to direct traffic to the community from the content matrix or other external channels;
2. The open classes in the community need to be conducted in a centralized manner. For example, if you use various channels to attract traffic to the community on Monday, you need to conduct open class conversions as early as possible on Wednesday night.
3. It is best to only give the open class at the top of the funnel once. The longer the lecture time, the lower the conversion rate. The underlying logic behind this is still the payment formula. Over time, although the trust endorsement may be stronger, emotional consumption will decrease, because it is easy to gather people together for one class, but it is not easy to do so for multiple classes. Once it is difficult to gather people together, the herd mentality will be difficult to play a role, resulting in lower emotional consumption and lower paid conversion;
4. Because the community has external channel traffic, it can divert traffic to the official account by downloading courseware before the course;
5. Once a community completes a course, it will stop operating the community and can be disbanded or ignored. Because the users who have already converted have converted, it is actually difficult to convert the users who have not converted. The cost of community operation itself is high.

4.2 Platform teaching:

When the number of people taking an open course increases, the community is no longer a suitable scenario. For example, if there are 10,000 people participating in an open course, and the community is full with 500 people, then 20 groups will be needed, and the management cost of 20 groups itself is relatively high.

Therefore, you can choose course platforms such as Lizhi Micro Course to recruit users for a one-time lesson. Just like community teaching, you can give a lesson once and then directly convert them.

4.3 Ordinary Courses:

As mentioned in the general courses, there is no need for concentrated teaching. Therefore, you can make the courses paid through tools such as Xiaoetong . It is recommended that the entrance to the course be placed in the public account menu rather than at the end of the tweet.

The reason is: users of tweets are a large traffic entrance, and tweets themselves are the uppermost layer of the payment funnel. For paying users, the knowledge they obtain is far better and more comprehensive than the content of tweets, so the opening rate of tweets by paying users may be lower. Then, converting tweets into free open courses is the best path.

4.4 Training Camp Courses:

The training camp course needs to be conducted in a closed loop as we just mentioned, namely, attending classes, checking in, and answering questions (comments). In this process, users not only listen to the lectures, but also participate.

It is because of the behavior of "participation" that the average customer spending for this type of course can be higher. Its underlying logic is: once a person is involved in a product, he will think that the product is more valuable.

The training camp courses do not need to appear in the free content matrix at all, but are converted into training camp courses through ordinary courses.

The logic of conversion is the same as that of converting free open courses into ordinary courses, namely: trust endorsement + emotional consumption.

In ordinary courses, users can already gain certain benefits, which further strengthens their trust, and the course itself will have some content like "To know what will happen next, please join the training camp course." This can achieve the conversion from low average order value to high average order value.

IV. Conclusion

Sometimes operators often do things with a traffic mindset, but this is wrong, because operation is an overall project, and a single traffic mindset will cause problems with subsequent paid conversions.

In fact, operations should be done through a systematic way of thinking.

The article uses a recent trading case as an example to illustrate:

• Based on the pyramid structure, how to generate an operating system from a goal;
• And through one operating system, multiple subsystems are refined: growth system, content system, payment conversion system, and course system. This will help the company support its long-term goal of millions of users and tens of millions of revenue.

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p class=”ql-align-justify”>The core business content and details involved in the article have not been disclosed. However, these systems and models are expected to provide some ideas and references for operators of educational products .

Source: Activity Box (huodonghezi.com)