How can the education and training industry effectively attract new customers? Share 3 tips!

Difficulty in recruiting students and high costs have become insurmountable walls for education and training companies. "In the past, handing out flyers and marketing methods were becoming increasingly difficult. The days when students would come automatically as soon as you opened the door and waved your hand are gone forever!" Today, Zhuge Jun draws on the profit logic of e-commerce companies to provide another way of thinking about new customer acquisition strategies for educational training institutions and shares a case.

1. Education Industry VS E-commerce Industry

In the training fields of TOEFL, IELTS, GRE, etc., there is a common class type called vocabulary class. This class only teaches vocabulary, such as how to memorize and recite words, and provides candidates with some vocabulary preparation before the exam. But why do many institutions basically no longer offer vocabulary classes? Let’s take a look at the test preparation process of the candidates: first memorize the words, then practice the questions, then take the mock test, and finally the test scores are released. Memorizing words is at the top of the traffic flow in the preparation process for exams.

Therefore, vocabulary classes are very suitable as traffic-based SKUs for recruiting students to study abroad, and their core function is to attract large-scale user traffic. First of all, the vocabulary memorization scenario has seized the upstream traffic of overseas examinations; memorizing words is a long-term, continuous learning behavior, which requires supervision, or many people memorizing together to persist. Traditional offline short-term vocabulary classes can only talk about methodology, and long-term classes are not profitable; online community vocabulary camps combined with group check-ins are more suitable for vocabulary memorization scenarios; the operating costs of online vocabulary memorization camps are very low.

In addition, many educational institutions use the form of WeChat communities to transform their original offline vocabulary classes into online WeChat vocabulary camps, gathering a large number of students to memorize words online, and conducting live broadcasts to explain vocabulary methods in order to retain target users , and then convert them into full-priced courses (profitable SKUs) to make profits from the full-priced courses. This idea and logic is actually similar to e-commerce: obtain traffic from traffic-type SKUs and convert it to profit-type SKUs to obtain profits.

Because the online operation cost of the vocabulary class on WeChat is not high (combined with social robots) and it has a sustainable cycle, users will also establish recognition and loyalty to the institution's teachers and services during the vocabulary class. While gaining traffic, the accuracy of the traffic is guaranteed, killing two birds with one stone.

2. How to improve community activity

Since we mentioned above that we can accurately acquire target users through “WeChat Vocabulary Camp”, it is particularly important to improve the activity of the community, ensure the positive atmosphere of the community, and motivate community members to achieve their goals. Based on the “Small Group Effect” I read before, I will share some methods to keep the community active. First, let’s define what a community is? It is definitely not just about creating a group, but about bringing people together based on needs and hobbies ( social relationships).

1. Whether the group meets the needs of users

Suppose I am playing Pesticide and want to know how to make my game character stronger, I will look for a solution to this problem or people who know this method. If there is a corresponding group around them, players will generally seek help from the player group, communicate with other players, and generate interactions and content. This is one of the demands. Through this example, we can conclude that users’ demands for groups generally include the following points:

-a Consultation and help (rational appeal)

-bShare knowledge and information (rational appeal)

-c Manage and reserve potential relationships (rational appeal)

-dShow off (emotional appeal)

-eLooking for resonance (emotional appeal)

-f Shared long-term goals and values ​​(cultural appeal)

Among them, emotional appeals are done for the purpose of obtaining a certain emotional satisfaction, and do not necessarily involve any interest relationship. For example, after obtaining top-quality equipment in the game, taking screenshots and posting them in a WeChat group , and then being praised to gain more sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Regarding the attraction of culture, that is, as the community develops, certain values ​​gradually become an indispensable force to maintain the existence of the community and a cohesive force among its members. This demand is most obvious in gaming guilds or celebrity fan clubs; even if the game/celebrity has gradually faded from the public eye, once the group needs them, they will contribute their strength regardless of cost.

2. Is the community active?

For a community to be active, members must interact frequently and the content of their interactions must have certain value. After observing many WeChat groups/QQ groups, I often find that when the number of people in a community increases, there will always be a part of the people who will gradually leave the community and gradually stop participating in the interaction, but these people will be very active in other groups. Quoting the viewpoint of "Small Group Effect", there are three criteria for judging whether a community is excellent:

– Do you know each other?

– Mutual trust

– Whether there is frequent interaction

But an excellent community only means that the community has the conditions to be active. However, a key point to maintaining long-term activity is that the content produced by the community is of interest to its members . To ensure that the content produced is of interest to all members, first of all, the number of members in the community should be relatively small, generally around 10 people, and the members should all be in a certain category and have common topics: for example: based on geographic location, based on interests, based on peers, WeChat Vocabulary Camp is based on the same goal - memorizing words.

What motivates community members is often the exchanges and discussions about different viewpoints on the same topic. For example, during the Spring Festival, "A Bite of China 3" received polarized reviews, and the collision of the two polar viewpoints produced deeper content.

In addition, the vocabulary camp can also use daily progress reports, check-ins, and even invite past members who have passed the exam to share their experiences, thereby motivating everyone to persist in achieving the desired goals.

3. Can the community continue to expand autonomously?

The roles of community members are roughly like this: ordinary people do not contribute much to the community, they just consume content and are easy to leave. Opinion leaders need ordinary people to support them in becoming KOLs . If there is not a steady stream of ordinary people entering the community, and more and more ordinary people choose to leave, then this "leader" will no longer be a leader to the community. Therefore, people who play the role of connectors are the most important factor in the expansion of the community. Through interactive behaviors such as commenting, liking, and sharing, connectors allow users outside the community to indirectly learn about the community, choose to join the community, and bring a constant stream of fresh blood to the community.

Many social platforms are now trying their best to control comments and extend the meaning of likes, so that users' comments can also be displayed as one of the content, so that these connectors can gain a sense of accomplishment as much as possible, and also encourage the largest base of ordinary people to become connectors and bring new people to the community.

3. Advanced version of community operation : Mint Reading

For an educational product, efficient new user acquisition is certainly a prerequisite for achieving growth. Judging from the various details of Mint Reading, which has been all over the screen recently, it is also necessary to pay attention to the user's completion status in the process of attracting new members to the community. We have seen that Mint Reading ensures that users complete their daily learning tasks through various mechanisms such as checking in on the WeChat public account , daily explanations and Q&A by the class teacher, and supervision by community members.

Daily explanations from the class teacher

For example, under the guidance of the "community teacher", community members complete six parts of learning every day: "Daily Quote", "Today's Vocabulary", "Reading while Listening", "After-class Exercises", "Q&A Lectures", and "Review of Handouts". Members who complete all readings on the last day will obtain permanent reading rights to the course notes. Those who fail to complete the course will no longer be able to view the reading content. The completion rate of group members' goals can be increased through incentive/punishment measures.

Commercial gross profit = (average order value - customer acquisition cost) * number of customers. Regardless of the model, we can only obtain more commercial profits by controlling three variables, and find your traffic-based products, and use the dissemination mechanisms of different platforms to reduce operating costs. For example: Mint Reading, through the refined operation of official accounts + WeChat groups, formulate efficient management mechanisms, obtain more accurate traffic, and thus lay a good foundation for the next step of paid conversion.

The author of this article @朱葛iO compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

Product promotion services: APP promotion services, advertising platform, Longyou Games