The strategies behind education industry operations

Based on my country's national conditions and the concept of semesters in the K12 stage, the year can be divided into four parts to determine the four semesters of off-campus institutions. The second semester of the academic year when students intensively study in public schools is called the spring class in off-campus institutions, and the first semester is called the fall class. The winter and summer vacations in public schools correspond to summer classes and winter classes.

At present, the extracurricular training of K12 education in China is mainly to supplement and improve the classroom, so the course schedule and course content are closely related to public schools. In the spring/autumn classes, you can only attend training in your spare time, so the courses from March to June and from September to December are basically held on weekday evenings and weekends. The summer/winter vacation classes are during the school holidays, so you can participate in training full-day in July-August and January-February.

1. What needs to be done at different times?

The profit model of the education industry is relatively simple, and parents are ultimately required to pay for teaching services. In other words, in terms of educational goals, we need to focus on teaching quality, and in terms of commercial goals, we need to focus on recruiting students.

As a parent, it takes guidance at different levels to go from familiarity to trust in an educational institution. These guidances are basically reflected in multiple levels such as teaching strength, brand value, and teaching results. Also in this process, it is necessary to strengthen the "growth of one's own children."

1. Teach students where the source comes from

For non-startup educational institutions, the source of students mainly comes from three aspects: renewal, expansion of subjects, and attracting new students.

Renewal refers to the current users renewing their studies, and subject expansion refers to the users adding additional subjects to the one they are currently studying. I will not go into details about attracting new users.

The proportion of renewal enrollment in the total student source varies depending on the institution's teaching capabilities and effect improvement and externalization. For the industry's leading institution, Xueersi Peiyou, renewal enrollment can reach 90%, and the remaining student sources are completed by expanding courses and attracting new students.

Of course, speaking of this, as "non-bosses", we also have a digression. From the perspective of job career development, we can also see that for different roles, the space for job development is also different. Re-enrollment and expansion of subjects are mainly strongly dependent on the teaching process, so there will be relatively large space for subject teachers and teaching teachers; and when the source of students is not stable enough, or when there is a large-scale growth period, there will be relatively large space for positions such as placement, growth operations, etc. that are at the forefront of enrollment.

Back to the topic, let's talk about the strategies for achieving the goals:

• In the renewal process, it depends on the daily efforts of teachers and the externalization of children's achievements, and at the final step, it depends on some welfare and preferential activities. For example, after paying within a certain time period, you can participate in a lottery and urge parents to complete the payment in turn.
• The expansion of subjects is generally based on the core subjects, with other subjects included and joint registration discounts given, for example, mathematics is 900 yuan/subject, and mathematics and Chinese are 500 yuan/subject for joint registration. The preferential tuition fee can be roughly equal to the cost of attracting new users, and since these joint enrollment users are currently enrolled in at least one course, their quality is higher than that of other users on the market in terms of both accuracy and intention.
• Attracting new users, this mainly focuses on attracting non-paying users.

We divide it into forms that institutions can directly reach , such as attracting new customers through online public accounts and app messages, and attracting new customers through offline advertising, flyers, and teaching point radiation. In the education sector, there is a unique traffic entrance which is to search for questions by taking photos. First, you can attract students by using questions that they don’t understand as an opportunity, and then you can attract new students and convert them. Among them, Zuoyebang, Yuanfudao and Xueersi all have the layout of this process entrance.

There are also indirect forms of contact , which are generally based on secondary dissemination to current users or potential users. Common forms include old users bringing in new users, fission group buying, low-priced courses, etc.

According to different forms, the underlying logic is nothing more than these categories. With the rise of online education, the mainstream businesses are currently focusing on attracting new customers, with diverse strategies and high-speed response. This is also the reason why we have seen more and more educational brands infiltrate into daily life in recent years.

2. How to plan the rhythm of the whole year

(1) Schedule

We have applied the main links of mature operational methodologies such as "attracting new users - being active - converting" to the educational scenario. Combined with the characteristics of the semester, we have roughly summarized the actions of converting long-term classes into paying users 2-3 months before the start of the new semester, and being active during the semester to increase user stickiness.

In the education industry, the big window period for user payment conversion is generally between April and May and October and November. There are two main reasons for this:

1. It is necessary to arrange the teaching staff, classrooms and other course arrangements in advance according to the enrollment volume. Of course, if the enrollment volume is not reached, enrollment will be gradually promoted;
2. The total number of students in the market is basically fixed, and students' demand for courses also has a saturation point. If enrollment starts too late, the students will be taken away by competitors.

Whether to recruit students for both winter and spring, summer and autumn semesters, or for separate semesters is decided based on comprehensive factors such as product characteristics and business highlights.

(2) Attracting new customers

The mainstream ways to attract new customers are through the following channels: fission, group buying, short-term classes, old customers bringing in new customers, photo search, and placement.

The short-term classes start with a "trial class" to experience the teacher (teaching style, ability, etc.), product (course quality, use of practical tools, etc.), service (Q&A, information, etc.) and other aspects. We package short-term classes based on the main knowledge points and match the content of pilot courses according to the period, such as Cambridge exam preparation, to provide a tentacle to reach users.

The channel of "old parents bringing in new ones" is particularly valued. This may be because parents generally gather together, and the cost of trial and error in education is relatively high. Many parents trust products that have been tried and approved by others, so the quality will be better. In the process of inviting new users, it is common to set up layers, including the occurrence of the invitation action and the completion of the invited action.

Excellent core parent leaders can not only gain recognition from surrounding parents, but also receive relatively generous material rewards.

In addition to trial courses and mentoring by senior teachers, a natural entry point is to take photos and search for questions. Normally, children use the search function frequently when searching for questions they don’t know how to answer and secretly searching for answers to homework, and parents are unable to tutor their children to check whether their homework is correct or not. It may be difficult to find the correct channel to answer questions that you don’t know how to answer, and teachers in public schools may not be available to support you at any time. This granularity is too fine in the educational scenario, and this happens to be a major feature of the application of the Internet model in the education industry.

Currently, brands such as Zuoyebang, Xueersi, and Yuanfudao have all made arrangements for searching questions by taking photos. Through this link, you can use your own traffic to continue conversions.

(3) Active

In addition to controlling the big time period and matching the right activities, we can explore the following dimensions in non-enrollment-related actions to enhance stickiness.

In the dimension that users can perceive, there are directions that are directly linked to the characteristics of the subject, and they will be done based on the characteristics of the subject and the key capabilities. For example, calculation ability in mathematics is particularly important for children at a young age. Not only will there be oral arithmetic questions in the business, but there also needs to be a way to test their abilities. A calculation competition can satisfy the needs of parents to test their children's mastery of the knowledge, and good grades are also suitable for externalization.

In areas where there is no clear subject orientation or universality, we will focus on aspects such as learning methods and course effectiveness. From the sale of top students' notes after the college entrance examination every year to teachers guiding children to write down key points of the class, the note-sharing competition is undoubtedly a direct response to children's learning habits.

It can be summarized as follows: if you have academic achievements, you should externalize them; if you don't have academic achievements or are not outstanding, you should externalize the effects of learning methods and self-comparison.

(4) Conversion

In the process of transitioning to long-term classes, the main driving forces are generally the tutors and sales team. Follow up to the granularity of individuals, and follow up conversions in a comprehensive manner by combining preferential strategies, specific bottleneck solutions, and brand potential energy methods.

2. How to grasp the key points in the operation strategy

1. Refinement based on user tags

With the development of online education today, we need traffic but we cannot type blindly. A precise design strategy is needed to allow for the existence of users who take advantage of the product while also considering the cost of acquiring customers. During the process of data construction, it is necessary to divide them into students who are currently studying/not currently studying (generally for long-term classes), potential customers, and pure new users, and set up layered definitions in a more fine-grained manner based on product characteristics.

Based on user tags and portraits, we can reduce costs and improve results as much as possible in project ROI.

2. Combine period characteristics and consider the entire path cycle

Users’ needs vary at different time points, so it is important to accurately understand user needs at the front end of customer acquisition and maintenance. The activity cycle is also a detail. The longer the participation or conversion time, the more users there are, and the time period is not necessarily shorter.

3. Clear and effective contact points with users

In terms of the core of education, teaching content + teacher ability/background + course services are the three key points, which should be considered when starting a class and also in the copywriting of the landing page.

Clarify the benefits and costs that users can obtain to reduce loss during the process.

4. Monitor performance data and reduce loopholes

Comprehensive data can speak for itself. It can tell you whether users have been attracted and which channels have not been effective. It can also tell you at which stage users have been lost and whether they have left voluntarily or passively due to functional inconveniences. Results can be obtained through data. These are not only for the current event, but can also empower the next project.

Author: Xiaojing Luo

Source: Xiaojingluo