Analysis of online education marketing promotion methods!

As early as the end of last year, Meituan released the changes in user traffic of Meituan’s education column due to the epidemic. Meituan’s online users’ demand for adult education and training institutions increased by 174.7% year-on-year, and the demand for children’s education and training institutions also increased by 114.2%.

Figure: Meituan Education data trend chart during the epidemic

Such changes do not mean that the epidemic has promoted educational needs. The essence is that the epidemic has restricted offline travel and magnified the scenarios in which users look for educational needs online. Meituan is a top player in the local life field. Such a macro environment has irrigated the growth traffic of Meituan's education section. We also foresee the change in users' habits of choosing education and training after the epidemic.

The first problem that Internet education and training needs to solve is to occupy online store POIs and thus divide the traffic . Putting aside the self-developed traffic pool, occupying a store POI on other platforms is a relatively low-trial-error cost solution, and Meituan’s “online store opening” is one of the channel cases with a relatively good cost-effectiveness.

With the penetration of the Internet, previous education and training institutions have gradually begun to realize that the way they acquire customers is changing. Professionalism will no longer be the only display of an education and training institution to the outside world. The evolution of marketing models has become the focus of education and training companies.

Figure: Changes in the marketing model of Meituan’s offline education and training institutions

Zhang Wenyue of Meituan Education divides education and training marketing into three stages.

The late 1990s to early 2000s was the 1.0 era, which was based on offline marketing, leaflet distribution, and telephone sales. This seemed to be a very effective way of recruiting students at the time, but now with the advent of the Internet, the quality of traffic from this method has declined rapidly.

In the 2.0 era, students are recruited through methods such as search, video advertising, and self-media. This method is relatively fragmented and cannot form a sustainable brand cycle service.

Today, Meituan Education’s empowerment of the B-side is called Marketing 3.0 , and the core of this 3.0 includes solutions for the onlineization of traditional education stores. As shown in the following figure:

Figure: Meituan Education Online Solution

In Meituan’s “online store” design, five online links are supported:

1. Open an online store;
2. Attract customers' attention;
3. Facilitating customer choice;
4. Speed ​​up customer arrival at the store;
5. Amplify store advantages and shape the brand .

These five items correspond exactly to the 5A education customer acquisition model, which runs through the process of consideration - evaluation - trial - payment - advocacy.

A user with weak intent, the initial consideration;

When he starts to choose an institution, he needs to evaluate which institution is the best;

Once you decide on an institution, you must first experience it;

Pay after you have experienced it.

After payment, the service can be used to expand word-of-mouth and reviews, which can influence more peripheral user groups with weak intentions or those who have already shown interest.

——Speech by Huang Leilei of Meituan Education

This cyclic process is called "5A" within Meituan, and is also a necessary step in the consumer consumption process.

Figure: Education Precision Customer Acquisition Model

Among them, Meituan’s merchant environment album and video store visits are essential functions for users to understand offline teaching and training places. The introduction of the merchant course system reflects the professionalism of the teaching and the content summary. All content is designed to allow parents and students to understand the institution’s teaching environment, teaching philosophy, and teaching process when presented at the front desk, facilitating more efficient online selection.

At the same time, Meituan Education focuses on introducing experience class shelves, online reservations, and value-for-money small class functions . These are stepping stones for the effective transformation of teaching and training, and are of great significance for 4 accelerating the arrival of customers in stores 5 amplifying store advantages and shaping the brand.

Figure: Screenshot of Meituan Education merchant page

There are also some data to prove the store visit rate and the LBS distance of online Internet users. On the basis of making full use of LBS location service resources, Meituan's multi-perspective and multi-form digital user selection behavior has made it clear that online users tend to choose to be within 5 kilometers of localized education and training institutions as the most effective influence range.

Figure: Relationship between the rate of in-store education and training and online user LBS

Freely built Internet education and training needs to overcome the problem of traffic acquisition, and the marketing level will also need to highlight store information, professionalism and effective conversion . Using Meituan's low-threshold online reservation and trial class method can effectively bring traffic offline for centralized monetization, which is worth learning and thinking about.

In addition, Meituan can further amplify store advantages and shape its brand through strategies such as user reviews, store star ratings, and authoritative rankings. Meituan’s store star rating system is a top priority for merchants’ online operations.

In the management of traditional education and training institutions, principals all recognize that referrals are a very important channel for enrollment. However, based on big data analysis, there is an upper limit to effective individual referrals because the number of people in a person's private circle is limited. However, if you can get everyone who is satisfied with your teaching quality, faculty, and courses to leave comments and ratings, and then spread them online, this form will be more likely to be exposed and recognized by more people.

——Meituan Education Public Speech (Edited)

Internet education and training can make the product evaluation system shoulder the important task of consolidating word-of-mouth, traffic fission, and brand communication . It can even be integrated into the internal teaching evaluation system of education and training, and then assist the process output of the course to form PGC or UGC. There is relatively large room for imagination in this area.

Finally, I would like to add that whether there are still benefits for educational and training stores to settle in Meituan. I have been researching this recently and welcome to discuss with us!

Author: Zhao Dajun

Source: Zhao Dajun