How does education and training build private domain traffic?

March is the enrollment season. Every time I see the enrollment team surrounding the school, I see young sales staff and teachers waiting for parents and students to get out of school, communicating with them in a very short time just to get a contact number and make an appointment for a free trial class. The traditional enrollment model is to invite students to audition and make sales by distributing flyers and advertising. After the class, the teacher will maintain the relationship with old students and encourage them to renew their subscription or make referrals.

Can we generate more value through sales teams and offline customer acquisition at present?

As a mother of a 5-year-old child and an entrepreneur of a training institution, Sister Ting has a certain say;

First: the overall trend of extracurricular tutoring will be that the larger the bigger, the smaller the smaller. Large institutions will have large traffic and cooperation space to support the stability of the teacher team, while the survival space of small institutions will be further reduced. Institutions that are neither too big nor too small are in great crisis.

Second: competing for children’s time and engaging in an educational arms race is a common burden for children and parents. When this situation becomes serious, new institutions will have even smaller chances of survival.

Third: less education, more activities, services and teaching quality, reducing parental anxiety and increasing children's fun. This is the direction that all educational institutions will strive for.

The question is, when our training institutions need more self-transformation and our market competition becomes increasingly fierce, how should we respond to market changes to achieve self-innovation, organizational innovation, sales innovation, as well as operation and service innovation.

What Sister Ting wants to say today is to embrace change and focus on the monetization of private domain traffic .

1. What is private domain?

The so-called private domain traffic is the traffic that you own and control independently, which is difficult to shake, can be repeatedly used, and can be reached. It is deposited in users of self-media channels such as mini-programs, official accounts, WeChat groups, personal WeChat accounts, Toutiao accounts, and Douyin.

Compared with public traffic platforms such as Taobao, JD.com, and Baidu, it belongs to the merchants' "private assets."

The so-called "building private domain traffic" is the process of establishing the closest possible relationship with users and potential users; private domain traffic refers to those users who have a close enough relationship with the merchant or the merchant's products.

2. Why do we need private domain?

The problems faced by educational institutions are: difficulty in acquiring customers and growth, the products of training institutions are becoming increasingly homogenized, services cannot be differentiated, and prices are not transparent.

Private domain tools can better convey the institution’s brand value, course value, educational philosophy, and teaching staff. Especially during the epidemic, when the offline model was replaced by the online model, a wave of low-priced, high-quality training dark horses broke into the original training market.

Through the 19.9 traffic-generating products, they quickly increased their exposure on various lines, just like a huge army of sales staff suddenly came overwhelmingly, guiding parents' attention through videos, pictures and cases.

If educational institutions still hope to compete with online learning courses through traditional and inefficient customer acquisition models, it will be like hitting a rock with an egg.

The characteristics of educational institutions are word of mouth and dissemination. The purchase cost for parents is relatively high. For example, if the teaching objectives and effects are not clear, students not only waste money but also waste the opportunity to get a better education.

At the same time, most teaching models will still rely on offline, and online cannot completely replace offline. Offline delivery and online reach can be better organically combined. Therefore, traditional training institutions do not simply digitize the teaching course content, but rather connect the entire service sales process online and offline.

3. The foundation of private domain should be well digitized

Digitalization is a particularly important link. When institutions turn every touchpoint with parents into numbers, they can better track results and provide better service. This is the basis for many training institutions to break through. The original sales service process that should have been grafted on sales (teachers) is transferred to the online, and a new process is formed through WeChat, official accounts, video accounts, WeChat group interactions, online registration for classes and other methods.

When every student, teacher, course, satisfaction, effect, transaction, and renewal rate can be digitized and retained, the service for each student will be more three-dimensional and sales will be more precise. At the same time, institutions that have obtained the data can make faster and better adjustments to courses and sales service processes based on feedback results.

The essence of marketing is to establish a close, long-term relationship with customers (as defined in Kotler's classic book Marketing). Behind every traffic is a real person and real needs.

4. The essence of private domain is to increase effective interaction with users

The construction of private domain is a technique, which includes how to divert traffic from the public domain to the private domain, and the specific operations and services for users in the private domain. On the premise of understanding the method, we must be clear that the essence of private domain is to increase effective interaction with users.

Establishing close relationships with users (customers) is not just a short-term or sales means. Obviously, once a close connection is successfully established, it is easier to complete the closed loop of products and services in terms of user value; in terms of business value, it is also easier to complete the conversion of sales/renewal.

In the process of building private domain traffic, users and service processes are redefined. For example, a user who did not know you before has an opportunity to be reached through your advertising or WeChat group notifications. You can learn about her feedback and results, and who should perform which specific service processes for her. This will help her establish a general understanding of the brand, understand the product, and even create a desire to get more familiar with it.

Well now, many training institutions that have sprung up have large amounts of traffic coming in and out. Is this approach building a private domain?

First of all, this is indeed the strategy of online training institutions as Internet companies, from traffic – event activation – online transactions – delivery. However, in this process, how to make segmented distinctions based on different products, different scenarios and fields, and different customer groups and provide different values ​​is something that many large training institutions cannot achieve.

Therefore, small and medium-sized training institutions should not only use private domains as a port for attracting traffic, but should set the goal of establishing a sustainable and stable relationship with users.

Then the construction process includes multiple processes such as what content products to build, what linking methods to use, how to present, and whether the goal is to establish low-frequency relationships or high-frequency relationships; in the case of low-frequency relationships, as long as users are aware of the brand, we can use official accounts and video accounts to let users understand through eye-catching and high-quality content. For high frequency, it is necessary to use various methods such as WeChat, Moments, one-on-one private messages, and event participation to allow users to approach the brand and make the brand a specific link for users.

By building private domains, we can provide users with more value and create high-frequency contact scenarios.

a. Design courses based on course content to provide unique value to users

Providing user value is a prerequisite for meeting commercial value. Taking English speaking courses as an example, the value that can be provided to users in the after-class session usually includes but is not limited to: tutoring/Q&A, oral short videos (which can be released in conjunction with TikTok, for example, "How are you supposed to answer to be authentic?"), daily quiz scores (need to be combined with course design), daily study check-ins (by duration or by class), and discussion topics (introducing controversial or topical discussion topics).

After designing all the value points, think about the most convenient form. For example, student communication relies on UGC and timeliness, and is usually completed in a group. If the average order value is relatively high, teachers can be provided with one-on-one private tutoring. If the average order value is relatively low, it is recommended to create a group and conduct Q&A and homework tutoring in the group. The course content is relatively serious, so more interesting and relaxing related videos can be added and posted in the group. Course materials and answers to exercises can be placed in the public account menu in the form of a public account tweet link.

It should be noted that it would be best if you could create "unique value", such as a learning report tailored to the user, or regularly providing small entertainment-oriented knowledge that the user is interested in, etc.

b. Guide users to the WeChat ecosystem and build traffic pool relationships

By using tutoring, communication, supervision of learning and other services as "unique user value points" and using trial classes, experience classes, 9.9 yuan class activities and other content forms, it is possible to attract a large number of potential students to add the teaching assistant/class teacher's WeChat. For old students, you can also attract them to add the teaching assistant’s WeChat through activities and other means. This completes the first step of the traffic pool: acquiring and aggregating traffic.

After directing users to the WeChat ecosystem's "traffic pool", what needs to be considered is how to carry different types of users in different ways. For example, students and parents have different concerns, students at different levels have different needs, and potential students and old students also have different needs. What we need to do is to label each student as accurately as possible to facilitate query and follow-up. Then try to pull similar users into a group.

c. Use private domain traffic to conduct user operations that are directed towards growth

User growth is the core goal, but if we always focus on it in all our operational strategies, it is easy to ignore the medium and long-term value. After users are layered and graded, the core things that need to be done can be summarized into two points: high-frequency, continuous daily maintenance to improve user stickiness and recognition of services; relatively low-frequency, carefully planned periodic fission activities to "monetize" user value, convert users into paying students, and attract more potential students.

Some specific methods and cases for daily maintenance can be referred to the first point above. It should be noted that since different users have different needs, different content and services should be provided to different users as much as possible. This is exactly the idea of ​​"fine-grained operation" that we often mention.

Author: Sister Ting talks about operations

Source: Sister Ting talks about operations