How KOLs earn millions by selling courses (Part 2)

How KOLs earn millions by selling courses (Part 1)

In this highly competitive society, if you don’t learn something, you will be left far behind by your peers. Therefore, in recent years, various courses have emerged and you can always find a course that interests you. So, as a KOL , how can you take advantage of this opportunity to operate your courses well?

Selling a course involves three important steps: traffic generation, conversion, service, and repeat purchase.

However, there are too many details involved here, so I will just talk about the key points in these three links.

1. Drainage

After creating a course, the first thing to think about is where to put it on the shelves and how users can buy it?

Should you directly jump to the mini program in the KOL’s official account to purchase (for example, sell through Xiaoetong), or choose other channels for distribution and purchase?

So let’s start with the first question: which channel to choose?

1.1 Channels

1.1.1 Understand the channel overview

Some channels are both tools for delivering courses and battlegrounds for high traffic.

Some channels are more like tools, with overall low traffic and may not be distributed to you.

You can check the channel overview through 360 Index, Baidu Index, etc.

1.1.2 Find the right channel for your target users

For example, Qianliao and Lizhi focus on women's growth.

Tencent Classroom and NetEase Cloud Classroom focus on career growth.

Then there will be obvious differences between the users of these two types of channels.

So how do we know the situation of channel users?

The easiest way is to look at what content is on the homepage of this channel and what the top few categories are.

The top categories on Qianliao are: beauty, workplace, parenting classes, and life, which obviously serve female users.

The top categories of Tencent Classroom are: technology, design, and e-commerce, which serve people in the workplace. Its main slogan is also an online education platform for professional training and exam improvement.

1.1.3 Select channels based on the 80/20 principle

The more channels, the better. The different design logic of the courses you choose will lead to different channel requirements.

If it is content consumption logic, then it is indeed necessary to lay channels.

If you want to learn the delivery logic, you should focus on deep cooperation with a key channel, and other channels are only used as auxiliary.

Now that we have talked about channels, let’s talk about the second question: how to create our own media?

Generally speaking, it is unlikely that KOLs will have money for advertising or business cooperation at the beginning.

Usually, the original number of users is accumulated through public accounts or videos (commonly known as increasing followers), and then considering how to attract traffic.

KOLs can do these two methods themselves, and it is easy to increase the volume. Let’s discuss them in detail.

1.2 We-media

1.2.1 Official Account

There are generally two ways to increase followers of a public account: one is to increase followers through traditional content, and the other is to increase followers through activities.

Increase followers through content: Since I have not done much new media operations before, I will not explain my skills here. If you want to learn more, you can use Xinbang and Xigua Data to find the top-ranked public accounts that target your target users, analyze their content patterns, and then apply them to your own content.

Increasing followers through activities: I don’t have any particularly impressive case experiences.

1.2.2 Video

First of all, let me mention the importance of making videos:

• Whether it is Douyin/Kuaishou for short videos, or Xigua/Bilibili for medium videos, they themselves have a large user base and cover a wide range of user groups, so as long as your content is valuable, you will be able to find a group of users who will pay for your content.
• The number of views of a medium-quality short video can be as high as millions. From a traditional advertising perspective, the price of millions of views can range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, so making short videos is the most cost-effective way for KOLs to advertise.

So how do you make a video? What makes a good traffic-generating video? What is the traffic-generating process like?

I will use a specific case to illustrate the above three issues.

Case analysis: Content analysis of Momself’s TikTok account.

Answer the first question: What makes a good traffic-generating video?

1.2.2.1 View data

Momself has opened two accounts on the Douyin platform, one for companies and one for individuals.

The amount of works published and the number of likes received are basically the same, but in terms of the number of fans, personal accounts are obviously better than company accounts.

First of all, it shows that on the Douyin platform, people still prefer to pay attention to the content expressed by individuals rather than companies.

The second personal account has a yellow label, indicating that it is a workplace self-media, which shows that the target audience is very clear.

I counted the five videos with the highest number of likes on Cui Cui's personal account, and found that three of them were giving advice to people in the workplace, and two were talking about the problems faced by women, both of which are in line with the target audience positioning.

1.2.2.2 Estimating cost-benefit (ROI calculation)

Douyin's product showcase only has two products on sale

• "Cui Cui - 5-day positioning advantage plan, find your irreplaceability", 9.9 yuan, 1143 copies sold
• "Ignite Your Advantages Online Training Camp", 1499 yuan, 32 copies sold

The first one is a lead-in course, and the second one is a full-price course.

After users purchase the traffic-generating course in the Douyin showcase, they will enter the community and be converted by operators.

Estimated revenue:

GMV of the traffic-generating course = Douyin traffic-generating course sales volume ✖ traffic-generating course customer unit price = 9.9 ✖ 1143 ≈ 1w

GMV of regular-priced courses = Douyin showcase GMV + Douyin traffic conversion GMV

=Sales volume of Douyin’s full-priced courses ✖Average price per customer of Douyin’s full-priced courses + Sales volume of Douyin’s traffic-generating courses ✖Community conversion rate ✖Average price per customer of community’s full-priced courses

=32✖1499+1143✖10%✖2000

≈27w

(I purchased their courses and completed the entire lead generation course. The calculated community conversion rate is 10%, and the average community full-price course customer unit price is 2,000 yuan.)

Estimated costs:

The video mainly takes the form of a conversation between two people, without any complicated special effects, so the manpower involved is estimated.

1 script, 1 shooting & editing, 2 actors (limited time, can be converted by working hours), 2 community operators (because it involves subsequent conversion, but some are part-time, the cost can be reduced further)

The Douyin account started shooting in April 2020 and became formalized in July. It has been less than 7 months since then, and the labor cost is calculated based on half a year.

I checked the average salary of the above four positions in Hangzhou, and the total labor cost will not exceed 200,000 yuan.

ROI value: Revenue 28w ➗ Cost 20w = 1.4, ROI＞1, can be sustained.

Secondly, the most important income of Douyin Video Account is not the direct income from Douyin Showcase, but how much traffic it brings to the Monself official account, and the conversion of users deposited in the official account is the highlight.

Answer to the first question: If the ROI value is greater than 1, it is considered a good traffic-generating video and can be continued.

Answer the second question: How to make a video?

Understand the characteristics of the video platform:

No matter what the purpose of making videos is, if you want to make the videos on the platform popular, you must first understand this video platform.

Video platform apps like Tik Tok have creator service centers or creator academies. You can get a general understanding by watching them once.

Understand the characteristics of the target group and find a pain point to keep hitting:

• Momself targets working people and women
• Momself’s pain points for these two groups of people are:
• Workplace people - subvert cognition; female people - empathize with you

Here is the most praised video "5 Tips for Newcomers in the Workplace" for analysis:

Combined with the script content, the following analysis conclusions are obtained:

• 3-4 sentences to tell a little truth - short and fast rhythm, in line with the characteristics of the Douyin platform
• In the car, it unfolds in the form of a conversation between two people - simulating complaints and complaints between colleagues after get off work
• The tone of voice, state, and even the outfit are all in line with the role positioning, A is a female boss starting a business, B is a newcomer in the workplace - giving people a sense of longing, "I also want to be a female boss like this"
• There is a 40-second countdown below the video. It has a strong sense of urging, telling users not to swipe away. I will tell you 5 particularly useful truths in just 40 seconds. Why not stay and listen?
• Dialogue logic: raise a question - the newcomer gives a wrong answer - the boss denies it and gives the correct answer

When you think carefully about the conversation above, even if you are a newcomer to the workplace, how many people really don’t know the 80/20 rule? So this wrong cognition is actually paving the way for the correct cognition. It captures the user's desire to solve workplace problems, and then uses new knowledge to create expectations. If you follow me or learn from me, you can also solve the problems mentioned in the video like me to guide users.

Answer the second question: How to make a video?

Momself's video does it:

• In line with platform characteristics: short, flat and fast
• Meeting the needs of people in the workplace: eager to solve workplace problems
• Targeting user pain points: Subverting perceptions and satisfying user pleasure

Answer the third question: What is the drainage process?

Take Momself as an example to look at the overall drainage process.

From watching the video to entering the community, users took a total of 9 steps.

Let’s look at the factors that influence several key steps:

• Factors affecting step 1 to step 2: video playback volume, video guidance
• Factors influencing step 3 to step 4: course header image, course title, user reviews, course details page
• Factors affecting steps 6 to 7: whether SMS will be intercepted, verification pass rate

My overall feeling:

• The user path is too long and there are too many things to complete. It is recommended to optimize it
• It is strongly recommended to use social media tools when waiting for verification. Momself uses a personal account and has working hours from 10 am to 7 pm, which is a very bad user experience.

2. Conversion

There are two common conversion methods: live broadcast conversion and social network conversion

Live broadcast conversion:

The key point of live broadcast conversion is the user's impulsiveness

How to stimulate users' impulse? You will often hear these 4 sentences in live broadcasts.

1. “This course is very good”
2. “The lecturer of this course is very famous”
3. “This course is not expensive, or worth it”
4. “This course discount will end soon”

And these four sentences are the reason why high conversion rate is very important.

Social Conversion:

The key point of community conversion is community service.

There are 4 key points in the community service for converting small classes to full-price classes:

1. Establish trust with users, including company introduction, course introduction, community rules, and questions related to lectures
2. Encourage users to digest the content of the mini-class, including using the check-in tool to remind users to attend the class, urge them to submit homework, and correct homework
3. Provide additional content to exceed users' expectations, and repeatedly mention the benefits of regular courses in the additional content to promote the first wave of conversions
4. The discount is limited in time and quantity, urging users to buy immediately, and using purchase order screenshots to strongly stimulate conversion

Whether it is social media conversion or live broadcast conversion, a very important weapon is the standard workflow, commonly known as SOP

For example, in community conversion, it is best to prepare in advance what information to send within the community, when to send it, and in which groups to send it, or have a standard template, which will greatly improve the work efficiency of community operations.

3. Service and Repeat Purchase

Serve:

The services of general educational products will fall on community services, and community services will mainly fall on the following three aspects:

1. Help digest and understand the course content
2. Deepen the course delivery process (homework)
3. Docking and exchanging resources

This area mainly involves manpower follow-up, that is, someone is needed to be responsible for the basic maintenance of the community and the establishment of the atmosphere, someone is specifically responsible for helping users digest and understand the courses, and someone is responsible for users writing and correcting homework... Regardless of whether these people are full-time or part-time, they must be implemented and the staff must be regulated by the final user's evaluation or reputation of the course.

Repurchase:

Behind repeat purchases is the user's dependence on the product, and the focus is on tiered operations and user life cycle management.

Extension 1: Personal Brand

If we look at personal branding from the perspective of selling courses, my opinion is: focus on traffic and conversion in the short term, and focus on personal branding in the long term.

Extension 2: Bottom-line strategy

The bottom-line strategy means how many users your current resources and manpower can handle. To put it more bluntly, don't be greedy.

After all, courses are educational products. Unlike commodities, the transaction is not completed once the user buys it. It requires users to digest it and carefully feel and experience the value that the course brings to them.

Individuals do not have as much manpower and resources as institutions, so can’t they do it? Not really.

Most of the KOLs I have come into contact with have 2-3 assistants and can do their jobs very well.

• If you choose the content consumption logic, then low price and high sales, light operation and light community, focus on traffic
• If you choose to learn delivery logic, then you should have high unit price and low sales volume, focus on operation and community, and focus on conversion
• If you choose the skill display logic, then you need to focus on what you sell. If you sell basic principles, then you need to follow the content consumption logic.
• If you sell practical details, then the price is high and the sales volume is low, so follow the learning delivery logic.

For example, if you choose to learn delivery logic, then you will definitely need operations personnel to assist users in conversions, as well as in-depth services from operations personnel. For example, usually the number of converted users that an operation can handle is about 400-600. The specific conversion rate depends on the industry average. Some are 4% and some are as high as 30%. But there is a limit, so don't demand as many users as possible, but make corresponding matches based on the existing situation.

So far, we have finished talking about how individuals or KOLs can earn income by selling courses.

Author: Cloud

Source: Clouds are not perfect