How does private domain operation conduct private domain operation?

Burning money, building up scale, raising funds, and then burning money again seems to have become the norm in the domestic online education industry in the past few years. However, when the entire industry was burning money to expand its scale, one institution achieved profitability against the trend. It was "Geshuixue", which was officially renamed "Gaotu Group" in April this year.

Not only that, Gaotu, which was founded in 2014, took only five years to be listed in the United States. It is also the first and even the only profitable K12 online education company in China.

In 2020, Gaotu's operating income reached 7.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 236%. Its operating net cash flow continued to be positive throughout the year. The reason why it was able to achieve such a growth rate and scale is closely related to Gaotu's highly efficient operational transformation.

As early as 2015, not long after the company was founded, Gaotu realized that the traffic dividend would eventually peak. At the same time, it also saw the potential advantages of the entire WeChat ecosystem and began to build its own WeChat ecosystem traffic matrix.

Relevant institutions have made a special statistics, and found that the six corporate entities under Gaotu have as many as 157 WeChat public accounts, not including the public accounts of branch companies across the country.

Coupled with the later rise of WeChat mini-programs, as well as thousands of personal WeChat accounts and WeChat communities, while other educational training institutions were still scouting for gains in the public domain, Gaotu almost built its own traffic kingdom around the WeChat ecosystem, with an estimated total of over 10 million active users.

Then, relying on a series of operational actions such as various investment and diversion, group fission, group conversion, 1-on-1 WeChat private chat conversion, etc., Gaotu's customer acquisition cost is not only much lower than that of other peers, but its paid conversion rate is also higher than most competitors.

Gaotu's traffic strategy is actually the private domain traffic operation that everyone is pursuing now, but this term had not yet appeared at the time.

However, as the trend changes, the disadvantages of personal WeChat are becoming more and more obvious, such as blocking third-party tools, cracking down on marketing activities, checking and suspending accounts, inefficient operations, etc., and WeChat communities that rely on personal WeChat are naturally also greatly affected.

At this time, Tencent promptly pushed WeChat for Business to the forefront. Due to its rich customer management functions and official endorsement, WeChat for Business began to be favored by more and more companies in terms of private domain traffic operations, and Gaotu was no exception.

Whether for the purpose of refined customer management or reducing customer acquisition costs and account security, WeChat for Business is clearly beneficial to Gaotu in building its own private traffic pool on the original basis.

Next, let’s analyze in detail how Gaotu conducts private domain operations based on the existing WeChat ecosystem.

Detailed explanation of the activity process

Activity Flowchart

The first step is channel diversion

Before using WeChat for Business, Gaotu’s traffic path basically first settled on the WeChat public account, and then was directed to personal WeChat accounts or WeChat communities.

Because the carrying capacity of personal WeChat accounts is limited, if the traffic is too large, the user will first be pulled into the WeChat community, and then added to the personal WeChat.

However, the carrying capacity of corporate WeChat far exceeds that of personal WeChat, as mentioned many times before, so most of Gaotu’s current traffic generation activities are to add users directly to corporate WeChat and then invite them to join the group.

The biggest advantage of doing this is that even if the user leaves the group, he is still in your private traffic pool. However, personal WeChat lacks the conditions for such operation because it cannot add too many users.

So what are the traffic channels for Gaotu’s private domain operations?

WeChat service account push

Gaotu’s huge matrix of at least 157 WeChat public accounts is naturally one of the top priority channels for directing traffic to the company’s private WeChat domain. It is also an important way for users to learn about various course activity information.

If users follow one of the official accounts in any way, they will receive various push notifications almost every day, either asking them to sign up for a trial class or to participate in fission activities to get rewards.

Moreover, from elementary school to junior high school, to high school, to adults, and all kinds of subjects, Gaotu covers almost everything, covering the users' learning needs without any blind spots.

If the user remains unmoved, the official account will increase the probability of the user joining the private domain by pushing messages such as "Expiration reminder!" and "Teacher xx has been waiting for you for a long time~"

Official APP

Gaotu's APP is mainly a tool that users download to take classes. Since most of the users are old users who have registered, there are relatively few activity push notifications, which are generally fission activities with physical book rewards as the main focus.

First, old users are guided to share their exclusive fission posters with their friends, and then new users follow Gaotu’s official account by scanning the code, and finally users are settled in the private domain in the same way.

Official Mini Program Mall

Gaotu's mini program mall is more comprehensive than many of its peers. It not only offers various low-priced trial courses, but also a large number of its own IP stationery and daily necessities, as well as some discounted course books, matching users' other related needs besides enrolling in courses, killing two birds with one stone.

Of course, the most important thing is the banner in the middle of the mall homepage that guides users to add corporate WeChat. It is very eye-catching and a very direct and effective way to divert private domain traffic.

Invite friends to increase traffic

Another traffic channel is to guide users to share exclusive posters to their own communities, friends circles, and personal friends through gift invitations. This is also Gaotu's tried and tested fission traffic path.

Gaotu's customer acquisition costs have always been envied by its peers, largely because Gaotu has mastered fission.

Of course, in terms of traffic generation, Gaotu has also made many external investments, including pushing activity articles on some influential public accounts.

The second step is to accept traffic

As for traffic acquisition, because Gaotu wants to build its own private traffic pool based on corporate WeChat, potential users who want to sign up for a trial class will be asked to add corporate WeChat first.

However, based on the different learning needs of users, Gaotu uses different corporate WeChat accounts to take over.

For example, users who want to learn English will add the English tutor’s corporate WeChat account, and when they send private messages in one-on-one chats, the information they receive will also be English-related.

What’s interesting is that users sometimes add corporate WeChat because of benefits such as “BBC documentary resources”, which shows that there are indeed many ways to attract traffic.

Users who want to enroll their children in junior high school courses will be added to the corporate WeChat of another tutor who is specifically responsible for this area. After adding, the first thing the user will do is to receive the free course and then enter the class group, which is the corporate WeChat community.

Gaotu's most common operation method is to use community operations to convert users into paying for high-priced courses. Therefore, users can always see various links inviting them to join the group: "It's okay if you don't want to buy the course, just join the group first!"

Users who join the group will be warmly greeted by the tutor immediately, and the course schedule will be explained to everyone. They can also chat privately at any time if they have any related questions. This is also the advantage of allowing users to add corporate WeChat first.

After the free trial class is over, while sending blessings, users will also be promptly reminded to make paid conversions and receive massive benefits.

The third step is operational transformation

Then, let’s take a look at what Gaotu has done in the process of operational conversion.

Moments activity push

First of all, after adding each other as friends, the user’s circle of friends is definitely a place that should be used well, especially since the corporate WeChat nickname has a corporate logo at the end, the effect of posting to the circle of friends will be better.

If it is an advertisement posted in the Moments by a personal WeChat account, most people will first question its authenticity, but corporate WeChat will obviously give users a sense of trust with official endorsement.

The two Moments posted by Gaotu are both to attract traffic to teachers’ video accounts. One is combined with an Internet festival, and the other is to expose its own famous teacher’s experience class.

1 on 1 intimate private chat

In many previous private domain operation cases, it was rare to see companies take the time to send one-on-one messages to users. Most of them pushed various messages on social networks.

But Gaotu has done a very good job in this regard. The tutors will not only push detailed information of various courses to users, but also send the course replay link directly to users if the users do not take the trial class, even if the users do not respond.

This is very thoughtful for users. If they have any intention, they may be impressed because the service is so thorough and responsible.

Use festival activities to attract traffic and promote conversion

In the community, Gaotu has also done a good job of combining learning with the relevant public welfare festival "World Book Day".

On the one hand, live streaming can increase interaction with users, and on the other hand, it can also improve the sales conversion rate of professional books, killing two birds with one stone.

Physical book fan price

Some learning books sold in Gaotu’s official flagship store will also be pushed to the community at a “fan event price”, which can not only increase the sales of physical books but also drive the conversion of courses.

Knowledge sharing

One of the biggest highlights in Gaotu's English learning community is that the tutors will push various practical learning skills and knowledge from time to time.

Even if users do not sign up for the regular course, they can still obtain a lot of valuable information in this group, which greatly increases user stickiness.

Limited time course promotion

Of course, the main purpose of the entire community operation is to achieve user conversion to paid courses, so the tutor will combine some learning pain points, push some course activity information in a timely manner, and guide users to sign up.

It is also necessary to occasionally create a sense of shortage for course sales, giving users a feeling that "if they don't sign up for the course, they will lose a lot", thereby increasing the course conversion rate.

Step 4: Fission Growth

When it comes to user growth, Gaotu keeps things relatively simple and direct. There are no lucky draws or group buying classes, just simple activities like inviting friends to get gifts.

The first one is to invite 9 friends to scan the QR code to help, and you can get a physical book.

The second type is only available to users who have signed up for full-priced courses. After inviting one friend to sign up for the course, they will receive 30 yuan in cash.

In this way, we can take care of new users who have not signed up for full-priced courses and let them help to attract traffic; at the same time, we can make old users who have signed up for full-priced courses willing to share, thereby improving the payment conversion rate of the course.

The two-level growth methods achieved two different effects, both of which promoted the transformation.

Event Highlights

After analyzing Gaotu's entire enterprise micro-private domain operation process, the biggest feeling is that the operation actions are very comprehensive and in place.

Whether it is one-on-one private chat or community operation, almost every user's needs are taken care of. Perhaps this is an important reason why Gaotu has achieved such success.

Next, we make a brief analysis of the highlights of the event:

First, the one-on-one caring service makes users feel very warm.

I have joined many corporate WeChat accounts set up by companies for traffic generation. Most of them just add users to the group and then ignore them. There are rarely any one-on-one private chats, even though a simple group message may be enough.

Even if it has been done before, none of them is as meticulous and considerate as Gaotu. Even the simplest free trial class can allow users to experience the ultimate service experience.

If you want to convert users from trial classes to full-priced classes, service is precisely the most important thing. In this regard, Gaotu has well interpreted the key points of refined operations in the private domain.

Second, there is one WeChat QR code for each type of course, which allows for ultimate user stratification.

For institutions that provide K12 full-subject education, operations are indeed complicated because there are too many grades and subjects, so it is necessary to do a good job of user segmentation, which is also very important for the subsequent refined operations in the private domain.

Gaotu is also quite good at this. Basically, each type of course has a QR code. After users add the corresponding corporate WeChat according to their own needs, they will be pulled into the corresponding corporate WeChat community.

If user segmentation is done well, subsequent operations will be easier and more effective.

Of course, there are other advantages in the entire private domain operation process, such as warmer language, better integration of festivals and event conversions, etc. I will not go into details here.

Conclusion

As competition in the online education industry intensifies, educational institutions will continue to spend huge sums of money in a fierce "war for talent" to gain market share.

Gaotu has been deeply involved in the WeChat ecosystem for many years and deeply understands its importance. After all, WeChat is currently the app with the largest number of daily active users, reaching more than 1.2 billion. Taking the WeChat ecosystem as the core of traffic operation is undoubtedly the best choice.

But this does not mean that the traffic gameplay based on the WeChat ecosystem will never change. On the contrary, as the limitations of personal WeChat and WeChat public accounts become more and more obvious, Gaotu has found the track of corporate WeChat. The private domain of corporate WeChat is destined to become a new battleground for various companies for quite a long time.

Author: Seeding sales

Source: Seeding sales