With 200 million in revenue, how did Himalaya FM Knowledge Carnival operate?

Ximalaya FM, which was launched in 2013, is an online audio sharing platform. The radio content types include emotions, stories, music, film reviews, etc. In June 2016, Himalaya FM launched paid audio for the first time. As of December 2017, it had 450 million users and accounted for 70% of the audio market.

123 Knowledge Carnival is a content consumption festival hosted by Himalaya FM. It was first launched on December 3, 2016, and this year is already the second session.

This year's Knowledge Carnival activities are divided into two stages: warm-up and formal:

Warm-up phase (11.23-11.30): This phase is mainly about collecting coupons and participating in sharing activities. Users can receive 50% off general coupons at the 123 main venue, and can also receive 50% off coupons for the album on the album page.

Official activity stage (12.1-12.4): This stage is the coupon usage stage. Users can use a 50% discount coupon to purchase the audio albums they are interested in at half price. There are also activities such as a 123 yuan voucher package for new users, and a 888 yuan knowledge package for buying a Xiaoya speaker.

There is still some heat left over from the Double 11 Shopping Carnival, and Himalaya FM immediately launched the second "123 Knowledge Carnival" with the theme of "Satisfy your brain, 50% off and full". If the Himalaya Knowledge Carnival that debuted on 12.3 last year could only be regarded as a small-scale self-entertainment, this year Himalaya has obviously brought knowledge e- commerce into the public eye in the form of a festival.

According to the Knowledge Express released by Himalaya's official Weibo account, the 12.1 event achieved sales of 12.6 million yuan in one hour after it was officially launched, and sales of 50 million in 11 hours, comparable to last year's full-day sales of 50.88 million. As of 24:00 on December 3, this year's 123 Knowledge Carnival sales reached 196 million, nearly four times last year's sales.

Himalaya FM123 Knowledge Carnival Main Venue (11.23-12.4)

This is due to the increasing popularity of the content payment industry itself and the gradual development of payment habits among Internet users, and of course, Himalaya’s publicity operations are also indispensable. Compared to Taobao's massive advertising campaign, Himalaya is naturally much more "low-key". In addition to offering a 50% discount on its products, it also uses some low-cost operations to leverage traffic , aggregate and convert content, which can be summed up in three ways: topics + hot items + social networking .

1. Topic creation: Mi Meng ’s salary increase course and refund agreement

Internet celebrities with high traffic have joined the knowledge payment camp. In addition to being content producers, they are also an excellent source of hot topics, especially those Internet celebrities who are controversial in themselves.

On November 18, Mimi Meng’s team announced that they would launch a paid audio course “Mimi Meng Teaches You How to Make a Monthly Salary of 50,000” on Himalaya FM, and promised that “the salary increase will not exceed 50% in three years, and the course fee will be double refunded.”

Course introduction of "Mimeng teaches you how to earn 50,000 yuan a month"

Anyone with a discerning eye can see that it is just a gimmick, but it is indeed a successful " marketing event" because (as far as I know) it is the only paid knowledge course that has quantified its effects and made a guaranteed promise. At a time when knowledge payment is widely criticized for the lack of positive feedback, it has taken a unique approach and come up with a different strategy.

Judging from the media index, the Mimi Meng incident around the 21st triggered a lot of media comments and reports, which flooded my circle of friends and directly converted me into a new user of Himalaya. After all, "no investigation, no right to speak." Although I knew it was a clickbait title , I couldn't help but listen to it out of curiosity.

After listening to the "Introduction" released by Mimi Meng's team on Himalaya on November 22, I became more convinced that it was just common sense and had no unique content . But compared with the quality of the content and the monthly salary of 50,000 yuan, everyone's attention is on the refund issue. The topic has been heated up and it has also been on the hot search list. The goal has been achieved, and sales are icing on the cake.

According to public data, 10,000 copies of the 12.1 course were sold 31 minutes after its official launch, and 50,000 copies were sold one day after its launch (mainly contributed by Mimi Meng’s official account ). Based on the fact that Himalaya had 7,820 subscribers (as of 21:00 on the evening of December 3), and the selling price of 49.5 yuan, it is roughly estimated that only about 380,000 yuan of turnover was received.

Keyword "Ximalaya FM" 12.6 Media Index in the first 30 days (Source: Baidu Index)

The media index is the number of news related to keywords reported by major Internet media and included in Baidu News Channel. It adopts the statistical standard of news titles containing keywords. The data source and calculation method have no direct relationship with the search index.

At 19:00 on the evening of December 3, the Mimi Meng team further "strike while the iron is hot" and did an audio live broadcast on the Himalaya website titled "What trump cards must you hold to get a year-end salary increase?" However, due to the lack of special publicity, there were only about 1,500 people online in the first half hour, and eventually more than 6,000 people listened.

As the queen of traffic, Mimi Meng, by carrying a controversial topic, can gather enough attention for Himalaya in a short period of time. However, the payment for its courses mainly depends on the monetization of Mi Meng's fans, and because Mi Meng's own public account has already absorbed a lot of paying users , Himalaya's sales are not very impressive.

If Mimi Meng's salary increase course realizes traffic value ( attracting traffic and attracting new customers ), then the sales value (conversion) and word-of-mouth stickiness are handed over to the popular courses. The former is responsible for being beautiful, while the latter is responsible for making money to support the family.

2. Hot-selling conversion: Cai, Guo and Ma’s popular IP + 3,000 knowledge experts

In June last year, Himalaya and Ma Dong's team launched the paid program "Speak Well", which was launched at a limited price of 198 yuan per year. 25,731 sets were sold in one day, with sales exceeding 5 million. On the day of the 12.3 Knowledge Carnival, it won the championship with sales of 5.55 million yuan. After tasting the sweetness, Ximalaya further exerted its efforts in the form of co-production ( PGC ) content, and this year it mainly promoted three top subscription audio courses:

Ximalaya FM123 Knowledge Carnival promotes paid albums

During the campaign, Himalaya placed online and offline advertisements in WeChat Moments, subway stations in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, elevators, and cinemas. The "strongly recommended" fancy advertising ideas catered to Internet buzzwords and had a strong visual impact. The site enhances the exposure of the three courses through large and small operational advertising spaces and event traffic-generating copywriting .

Himalaya Shanghai Metro Advertising

Sales volume is not just about monetizing the fans of top users; high-quality content is the best guarantee for conversion rate .

According to the Knowledge Express released by Himalaya's official Weibo account, the three main courses are all on the TOP10 sales list of this year's Knowledge Carnival: "Karren Tsai's 201 Emotional Intelligence Classes" ranked first in sales on the site with 12 million sales and more than 60,000 subscribers. "Guo Lun: Guo Degang's First Audio Talk Show" and "Speak Well·Kang Yong is Here" ranked 3rd and 5th on the list respectively.

In addition to the three main promotions of subscription audio, Himalaya uses various traffic platforms to promote 3,000 vertical knowledge experts including Wu Xiaobo , Gong Linna, Le Jia, etc.; at the same time, starting from the 27th, it will cooperate with 60 experts to carry out more than ten live broadcasts (Himalaya audio live broadcast + Yizhibo video live broadcast ), and promote it through the official Weibo and the anchor's Weibo, continuously attracting traffic and realizing (shopping guide) monetization conversion.

As of press time, the topic #123知识Carnival# on Weibo has accumulated a total of 130 million views and 253,000 discussions.

Himalaya 123 Knowledge Carnival Peak Live Broadcast

Among these 3,000 big names, subscription courses focusing on practical skills such as "Different New Concepts" and "Ye Wubin's 10 Lessons on Time Management - Easy Efficiency", cognitive upgrading courses such as "Zhang Meng: Life Management Course" and "Finance Course by Professor Chen Zhiwu of Yale University", and humanities interests such as "Zhang Qichen Lectures on the Book of Changes" and "Meng Man Appreciates the Most Beautiful Tang Poems" all made it into the top ten bestseller list.

3. Social Sharing: Gifting Promotes Relationship Chain Communication

The Himalaya album page has always had a "buy and give away" function, which is a social way of packaging knowledge as gifts and giving them to friends. However, because the prerequisite for giving away gifts is payment, the participation threshold is relatively high. It may exist in certain B-side demand scenarios, such as bosses buying them for employees to listen to, serving as corporate training to gain employee favor and loyalty. But from the perspective of ordinary users, it can be regarded as an "anti-human" low-frequency ancillary function.

This time, the Himalaya Knowledge Carnival has upgraded the gameplay based on "buy and get one free", and launched the "123 Knowledge Gifts for Free" event. The knowledge gifts include 7 days of free listening to lectures on 100 good books and an album of 30 paid selected lectures on business/humanities . Users share gifts with WeChat friends or Moments , and can get corresponding prizes such as Peak Membership, Xiaoya Speaker, IPhoneX , etc. based on the number of gifts received by friends.

123 Knowledge Gift Free Activity Landing Page

The upgraded activities highlight the attributes of "dry goods" and "free", and add a gameplay method of winning gifts by ranking on the list, which lowers the participation threshold, realizes profits for both parties, and strengthens users' motivation to share. Moreover, compared with the randomness of conventional gameplay such as lotteries, public rankings allow users to have clear expectations for their efforts and rewards, further amplifying users' profit-seeking mentality and adding wings to the sharing effect.

According to the data on the page after the event ended, a total of 117,000 people received the knowledge gift package. Assuming that each old user converted 6 friends, it is estimated that 20,000 users participated in forwarding and sharing.

Of course, here is a little suggestion: if the sharing motivation can be combined with coupons, it may help boost purchase conversions.

Conclusion

Everyone knows that Himalaya is creating a festival, but judging from the popularity on social media (friend circles), the so-called "carnival" name still seems to be self-aggrandizing, and the scope of influence is limited to the 450 million native APP users, big-name fans brought in by traffic operations, and a small number of extended users. However, its hosting of the Knowledge Carnival still has special significance for the industry and users.

As a pioneer in knowledge dissemination, it created the new concept of "content consumption", stirred up some new life in the dazzling world of material desires, and brought knowledge to the forefront (other similar programs include the "Knowledge Release Conference" by Duoduo, and retained a relatively rational consumption category besides the irrational "shopping spree" and "eating dirt" on Double 11. The results it ultimately achieved are also sending valuable signals to the outside world: Is the payment for knowledge a weakness? Hidden vitality? Or something else?

Although the arguments against "knowledge payment" have been growing louder in recent days, according to the "Knowledge Payment Report" released by Huajing Securities : The knowledge payment industry is expected to reach a revenue scale of 32 billion in 2020, and the corresponding platform profit has the potential to be nearly 5 billion. Based on a 30x valuation for this new industry, knowledge payment is expected to support a market value of 150 billion yuan. No matter what, high-quality content is always king. For Himalaya, which is positioned as a platform-based knowledge-based paid product, there is still a lot of room for transformation. User payment is the beginning, the 1 in front. Only by achieving professionalization and systematization of content and supporting in-depth and high-quality services can users remain active and repurchase, and word-of-mouth communication can be achieved, bringing countless zeros behind the 1.

As for what too many people complain about, how to get feedback on knowledge and improve your abilities, you might as well think about a question first: Is paying for knowledge online education ? Current paid knowledge products are striving to evolve towards professional content + strong community (district) services, but their learning effects are still difficult to match with traditional education and teaching, and there may not be any qualitative changes in the short term. Whether the two will merge in the future or seek common ground while reserving differences is worth discussing separately.

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

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