Practical model of private domain traffic operation in vocational education

This article will explain in more detail what "multi-touchpoints" are, the value and significance of touchpoints based on the original foundation (most of the content will be similar to the previous article, mainly for supplementary explanations, and no such content will be shared after this).

Considering that some of you may be seeing this sharing for the first time, I decided to reintroduce the relevant background so that everyone can better understand the ideas, framework and purpose.

This article contains my own practical sharing and summary. It may not be particularly useful, but I hope it can bring some business inspiration to everyone.

1. Let’s talk about the basic background first

Private domain operation is already one of the core tasks that most companies are gradually improving and exploring for value. I believe that many friends who have been exposed to this business will have a distress, that is, they have studied, disassembled, and seen many successful cases in other industries, and analyzed many underlying principles, but they will get into trouble when it comes to actual application.

As an operator of vocational education, I have also been deeply troubled, but as the business developed from 0 to 1, I gradually realized that the so-called private domain operation is still centered around commercial purposes, and the operation methods are different under different organizational structures and with the cooperation of different personnel.

For example, if you are making a high-priced employment course product for novices, then in the traffic pool, fission referrals may not be the core purpose, because how can people who have not yet entered the industry bring in more accurate customers?

In other words, how can a person who is only responsible for community operation/private domain operation carry out private domain content operation, or provide feedback to help the channel side optimize user quality and cooperate with sales conversion without having an in-depth understanding of product features and user group portraits?

There will be many corresponding problems. Most small and medium-sized companies do not have a fully equipped team to operate systematically, so they need to make good use of existing resources.

At the same time, vocational education courses generally have a high average order value, user decisions, and high costs, making it difficult to pay in a short period of time. Therefore, it is even more necessary to continue to plant grass through private domain operations and ultimately incubate transactions.

This article will no longer elaborate on the corresponding theories, but simply share my own ideas and thoughts on building a private domain. Starting from the perspective of the framework, I hope it can provide some inspiration and help to my colleagues who see this article.

2. Product user positioning and traffic pool diversion

The accuracy of the private domain population directly determines the conversion rate of each link, so the person in charge of the private domain must know how to refine product selling points and be familiar with user portraits. He must not only assist in front-end channel optimization, but also cooperate with sales conversion, while also taking into account back-end delivery. This is a position that involves the entire chain.

Here we take IT courses as an example: a JAVA full-stack development course, whose main selling point is "helping novice programmers achieve high-paying jobs by learning JAVA, and providing job recommendations after graduation." The average order price is 8,000-10,000, so the corresponding goal is to find the target group, so before that we need to analyze the user portrait in more detail.

After market research and user research, we concluded that the current population profiles that match course products are as follows:

• Age: 20-28 years old
• Crowd segmentation: College students, those who have just entered the workplace for 1-5 years
• Target user description: Currently considering changing careers, entering a new industry, or wanting to improve additional personal skills, interested in learning JAVA programming, have a desire to learn, somewhat confused about work, may be hesitant, hope to find a group with common goals to work together, want to learn the basics first and then further clarify their next direction (whether to continue learning, how to learn?)

After completing this step, we will have a clear portrait of the user group, and the growth team can use this portrait and product positioning to attract new users through front-end channels (the specific methods of attracting new users will not be elaborated here, and we will directly enter the private domain link).

3. User Journey and Conversion Path Construction

After building various channels on the front end, you need to start designing the user journey and conversion path. The user journey and conversion path mentioned here are the same thing, but they are not the same concept.

• User journey: The core is to start from the user's perspective and design different touch points around the user's experience, sense of participation, sense of gain, etc. For example, the arrangements within 7 days of entering the traffic pool (open classes, training camps, etc.) and the contact within 30 days, whether it allows users to have a more three-dimensional understanding and perception of the product, company, and industry.
• Conversion path: Based on the user journey, design reasonable grass-planting and conversion nodes, and try to make users convert transactions without being abrupt or forceful.

The core reason for designing so many touch points is to allow users to "flow" according to the set journey. Different sites and contents will have a clearer understanding of product content, industry direction, and career planning, which will be more three-dimensional. The deeper the user reaches the link, the higher the stickiness and conversion probability.

In the pre-sales process, there are the following roles and responsibilities:

• Sales (Course Consultant): Career planning, course introduction, screening intentions, customer closing
• Operation service account: community operation, brand image, content seeding, intention output, continuous diversion to traffic pool
• Service account: private domain official website, user cultivation, layered diversion, fission and new users
• IP number (a lecturer): professional content production, circle of friends operation, and trust enhancement
• Douyin IP number: external IP creation, traffic diversion
• IP video account and subscription account: planting seeds in the traffic pool and strengthening trust

The following is an introduction to the roles of sales and groups.

1. Selling personal accounts ≠ core operations of private domains

Different companies have different sales positioning. Some companies can only sell a single product, while others can sell all the company's products at the same time and are performance-oriented. My company is the latter. Based on this, the following usually happens when sales contacts customers:

• The positioning of the circle of friends is not clear, and there are all kinds of product content, which makes it difficult to carry out refined operations;
• Frequent mass messaging, mostly homogeneous information (promotions, open classes, etc.), can easily lead to user churn. Some users may be active in other scenarios (groups, activities, Moments, etc.), but never reply to private messages;
• Due to performance orientation, most people do not have the patience to continuously explore potential customer needs;
• Sales styles vary from person to person and are difficult to manage in a unified manner.

Therefore, the operational focus is usually not placed on sales, but some basic account operation standards will be given, such as the number of posts to Moments, the number of groups joined (core), and other indicators.

2. Why do we need to do group operation?

The effect of WeChat groups is actually not as good as before, whether in terms of reach or conversion rate. But why do we still need to create communities? The main reasons are as follows:

• As a standard for quantifying traffic pools: the group is more like a reservoir, which can clearly show the actual traffic situation after deduplication, facilitating data statistics.
• Transit station for private domain operations: There are usually many roles in the community, including community administrators and expert lecturers, and one of the core purposes is to distribute a large amount of traffic from the community to these accounts for the next step of operation.
• Grass-planting incubation pool: a sedimentation pool for public accounts, video accounts and other grass-planting content (as long as the content is OK, there is no need to worry about users not paying attention).

After designing the conversion path above, the scenarios in which we can ultimately interact with users at a high frequency, obtain immediate feedback and produce output must still be based on communities and Moments. So we need to start designing a content matrix. What kind of content can allow users to continue to pay attention to community information, while not rejecting it and minimizing loss?

4. Traffic pool operation: content marketing and activity conversion

1. Content marketing and seeding

After designing the conversion path and key links, we will officially enter the content marketing stage. Speaking of this issue, let’s go back to our user portrait.

• Age: 20-28 years old
• Crowd segmentation: College students, those who have just entered the workplace for 1-5 years
• Target user description: Currently considering changing careers, entering a new industry, or wanting to improve additional personal skills, interested in learning JAVA programming, have a desire to learn, somewhat confused about work, may be hesitant, hope to find a group with common goals to work together, want to learn the basics first and then further clarify their next direction (whether to continue learning, how to learn?)

Based on this user portrait, we analyze the pain points and needs of current users as follows:

1. Want to experience JAVA for the first time and master the basics to see if it is suitable for you
2. I want to clarify my study/career direction by learning JAVA and get on the fast track of career
3. Solve some other confusions (such as whether you can learn English if you have no English foundation, whether you have time to learn while working, etc.)

Based on the above content, we will start designing and outputting the seeding content:

1. Industry prospects: industry hot spots, employment prospects, etc.
2. Trust enhancement: successful cases of students changing careers, students’ positive feedback on their studies, and employment reports
3. Desire Mobilization: High-paying internal referral job information, high-paying student experience sharing
4. Practical sharing: live open classes, basic Q&A services, short videos, etc.

As long as the content provided is helpful and valuable to users, they will continue to pay attention. In this era where content is king, everything needs to be carried out with user experience as the core. After confirming the seeding content, start designing the content delivery schedule. A thinking framework is provided at the end of the article.

But in addition to social group scheduling, you also need to design a schedule for the operation of the circle of friends. As mentioned earlier, try not to miss any opportunity to contact users. At the same time, the group operator must reflect a living person, not a robot that posts things.

Therefore, we design the corresponding time for sending circle of friends according to the daily behavior of customers and build an IP for the operator.

As operators are the ones who interact most closely with customers, the above two points are one of the most important links in user cultivation!

Of course, public accounts, subscription accounts, and open courses also require corresponding implementation plans and standards, but due to limited space, they will not be explained here.

The content has been explained, but how do we measure whether customers are retained? How to determine activity? If customers rarely talk in the group, does it mean that the operation effect is not good?

2. Traffic pool activity = activity participation rate

When it comes to activity, many people will definitely think of indicators such as community acquisition, activity, and retention. First of all, I do not deny that a more active group can indeed improve the overall atmosphere, especially community discussions on topics related to product courses can incubate some potential customers. However, the activeness of the drainage group usually has the following problems:

1. The quality of users varies greatly, and they are easily led by group members, resulting in unclear group positioning and user loss.
2. The management cost is high. Usually, there are many traffic groups, and community operation cannot take care of management.

When I first started working on a community, I was obsessed with how to activate community users. I thought that as long as users were active = sales growth, so I designed a lot of column-based operational content. After operating for a while, I discovered that although the daily active users could be maintained at around 10%-15%, the sales output did not increase. On the contrary, group members often left due to ineffective discussions.

Moreover, the group is just one of the touchpoints in the private domain. Users may continue to pay attention to other links such as video accounts, subscription accounts, and Moments, so it is difficult to measure user activity rate using a single touchpoint method.

It was not until I adopted a new operating method later that I changed the standard for measuring private domain activity to "activity participation rate."

How do you measure this?

I organized a marketing open class activity for 4 traffic-generating groups that maintain operations. Group announcements, group messages, Moments and other promotional activities were only carried out for users of these groups.

The total number of people in the group is 1,000, and the actual number of people attending the class is 232, so the activity participation rate is 23.2%. That is to say, in this activity, it can be measured that 23.2% of people in the community are active. The activity rate not only exceeds the original method, but can even directly convert marketing activities.

Most small and medium-sized enterprises require multiple roles in operations, especially project-based operations. Using this approach can not only save manpower, but also provide room for continuous iteration. If there are sufficient staff, each link will need to be operated in a refined manner.

3. Activity conversion

After summarizing the above content, the basic private domain framework, content, and data indicators have been explained. The next step is how to conduct rhythmic payment collection.

Because the average customer order value for programming course products is around 10,000 yuan, it is difficult to complete the transaction directly through activities, and the final stage still requires sales to conduct 1V1 transactions.

Therefore, the core of private domain activities is to incubate and screen high-potential customers and provide them to sales to complete the final payment collection process.

The following methods are usually used in private domains:

• Training camp: The existing low-priced training camp uses 3-5 courses and services to let students experience the course content, feel the value-added service, and feel a sense of progress, achievement, and group atmosphere, so that they can constantly gain learning aha moments and thus achieve conversion
• Marketing course: Continuously use marketing live courses to magnify the value of course products, show successful cases, and finally use course promotion activities to close orders. Follow up on the same night for the best results
• Survey form: Daily surveys in the community can obtain user feedback and understand user needs, thereby screening out potential customers
• Promotional activities: Carry out promotional activities with the help of solar terms, use flash sales, flash groups, group buying and other methods to screen high-intent customers and close deals
• Daily output: Continuously generate potential customers through WeChat Moments operations, community promotion, etc.

Then, you can schedule activities every month based on this table to standardize operations and facilitate later review and iteration.

Finally, I would like to share a community building thinking framework that I have been using. First think clearly about what you want to do so that you can execute it accurately.

The advantage of a thinking framework is that you can continuously improve your own knowledge system, quantify your own knowledge system, adjust and optimize it regularly, and empower others at the same time.

I am a person who likes to organize my thoughts very much. Once I have any systematic ideas, I will start to sort them out, and then continuously optimize and iterate.

5. Final words

The methodology and way of thinking shared this time can be refined and applied to other products, because SOP is dead, but the underlying principles remain unchanged.

This article summarizes the following points:

1. Output products through market research, or locate target groups through products
2. Design user conversion paths to prevent loss, activate, promote, enhance trust, and increase touchpoints
3. Analyze the pain points of the target group, design content matrix in a targeted manner, and instill brand and product concepts
4. Measuring user activity based on product attributes (what counts as true activity)
5. A rhythmic and planned design transaction process

This time I have supplemented some details and thoughts from the previous article. The core purpose is to help myself establish a business framework, and at the same time provide it for more colleagues to study and refer to.

As an operator of vocational education, it is recommended that everyone learn more about the full-chain business model, which will not only be conducive to the development of their own work, but also enable them to look at the business from different perspectives, and at the same time bring more possibilities for their career development.

Author: Qu Haodong

Source public account: Qu Haodong