Analysis of advertising strategies in the education franchise industry

In order to cooperate with the investment promotion work of the professional investment promotion team, online and offline publicity and promotion are required. Because some vertical projects in the education franchise industry require large investments, have unclear customer portraits, rely on offline promotions, have slow results, and have high costs for building teams. Therefore, most organizations currently still use online advertising to obtain leads as the main promotion channel.

Promotion conversion path:

Step 1: Place advertisements to obtain business leads (investor phone numbers or WeChat accounts);

Step 2: The investment manager communicates with investors via phone and WeChat;

Step 3: Invite investors to attend investment promotion meetings, or visit the headquarters and model stores to promote conversion;

Step 4: Sign a cooperation agreement.

Source of clues:

1) Search bidding channels mainly include Baidu, 360, Sogou, and Shenma;

2) Information flow channels mainly based on Toutiao, Baidu, Kuaishou and other platforms;

3) Own brand traffic: such as search engine optimization and offline stores.

advantage:

1) The budget, delivery area, delivery time and other dimensions can be adjusted at any time, with high degree of control and convenient management;

2) The investment strategy can be adjusted at any time based on the feedback from the investment promotion department, and the communication efficiency is high.

shortcoming:

1) A complete team of members is required: such as advertising optimizers, designers, customer service, website operation and maintenance, video production, copywriting, etc. The salary and management costs of the personnel are high;

2) The quality of leads depends largely on the ability of the optimizer, and a good advertising optimizer requires a lot of time and investment from recruitment, training to retention costs, as well as a lot of advertising cost investment and trial and error.

Payment method:

Bidding, information flow advertising is usually charged based on clicks, exposure, lead acquisition, etc.

A type of online platform for online promotion in the franchise industry. They integrate promotional resources on the Internet, display all brands on one page, obtain messages from people with entrepreneurial intentions, and provide the messages as clues to advertisers. Obtain traffic through SEO search engine optimization, advertising, offline exhibitions, etc.

Payment method:

1) There are charges based on time, such as month/quarter/half year/year. Some websites will promise a specific amount of leads, while others will only promise a time period but not a specific amount of leads;

2) Charge directly based on a fixed number of leads.

advantage:

The joint exhibition platform mainly relies on advertising + natural optimization resources, and the overall cost of data is relatively low.

shortcoming:

1) Platform resources are mostly natural free traffic, which is greatly affected by search engines. Especially since 2019, due to algorithm adjustments, the traffic of some websites has dropped drastically;

2) Platform leads are usually shared and even pushed to several or even dozens of peer organizations, which greatly affects the final conversion of leads;

3) For platforms with a large number of customers, the quality of service varies greatly depending on the amount of advertising money invested, and the allocation of resources and the timeliness of feedback are different;

4) The platform is nationwide, which is not conducive to accurate data delivery.

Payment method:

1) Operate the account on behalf of others and pay fees according to the consumption ratio;

2) Both parties negotiate the cost of a lead and charge based on the number of leads purchased.

advantage:

1) Have a complete operation team: advertising optimizer, designer, customer service, website operation and maintenance, video production, copywriting, etc.;

2) Reduce enterprise operating costs: Compared with building a team by yourself, the personnel cost and management cost are lower, and a mature team can also ensure better data cost;

3) Direct advertising, with strong data timeliness and relatively high quality.

Selection criteria:

1) Selection of a third-party operation team: There are many third-party operation teams, each with its own advantages. Choose the most suitable team based on your own project situation;

2) Professionalism of the third-party operation team: The third-party team must have a deep understanding of the industry and the project in order to better promote it;

3) Cooperation among the three-party operation teams: The validity of data is closely related to timeliness and investment conversion capabilities, requiring close cooperation between the project party and the three-party team.

1. In the PC Internet era, online advertising mainly took the form of purchasing fixed advertising space and bidding for rankings, and traffic was mainly concentrated on some portals and search engines.

2. In the era of mobile Internet, the usage rate of smart phones has greatly increased, and traffic has shifted to mobile terminals. The main form of mobile advertising is information flow advertising with competitive rankings, pictures and videos as the main carriers. Traffic distribution is fragmented, and the emergence of various APPs has divided the traffic of search engines.

3. Intelligent delivery is the trend: All media are gradually increasing intelligent delivery. User habits have changed. User portrait analysis, media big data analysis and intelligent traffic distribution of media will be the trend in the future.

Impact 1: Increased difficulty in joining

Affected by negative factors such as the outbreak and recurrence of the epidemic, changes in education policies, and the running away of educational institutions, investors' intention to choose education franchise entrepreneurship has declined, and the inspection period has become longer, resulting in the impact on the franchise cycle and signing rate.

Impact 2: Increased traffic costs

Due to factors such as the adjustment of search engine platforms, the epidemic causing a reduction in the share of offline advertising, the explosion in online advertising, and the entry of more educational institutions into the investment and franchising field, the cost of traffic has become increasingly high. Compared with 2019, the cost of placing leads on search engines for many organizations increased by 50%-150% in 2020.

Impact 3: Increased channel instability

1) Franchise exhibition websites are impacted: Due to the adjustment of search engine platforms, traditional franchise exhibition platforms that rely on natural traffic to obtain leads have suffered varying degrees of impact. The number of clues provided has decreased and their quality has declined;

2) The leads obtained through SEM delivery have high intention, but they fluctuate greatly and are costly. For projects with large investment promotion teams, the demand for consulting leads cannot be met;

3) Although the information flow channel has a large amount of leads, the intentions vary and the conversion cycle is long. It is not applicable to some projects with higher investment.

Strategy 1: Optimize the distribution channel combination

Clearly understand the traffic characteristics and sources of each channel, and reasonably configure the distribution channels: self-distribution, joint exhibition websites, and advertising agencies are allocated according to a certain distribution ratio. Increase the proportion of controllable and stable channels, focus on channel selection, and avoid adopting a broad-based distribution approach.

Strategy 2: Long-term cooperation and periodic assessment

On the one hand, sign long-term cooperation agreements with channels that perform well to gain more support and services. On the other hand, due to the great uncertainty of the market and traffic, we can use quarter as a delivery cycle to evaluate the conversion effect of the channel and decide whether to renew the subscription based on the effect.

Strategy 3: Adjusting purchasing standards

The procurement method is based only on the number of items, requiring the channel to provide sufficient valid leads.

Strategy 4: Strengthen data analysis

Pay attention to data analysis. Data analysis statistics in various dimensions (region, time, channel, PC or mobile phone, visit, contract signing, conversion brand) will be more conducive to the optimization of promotion.

Strategy 5: Promotion cost control

Reduce own operating costs, appropriately control the establishment of self-deployment teams, and save labor costs. Rely on a third-party team to complete delivery, material production and other tasks. Taking Beijing as an example, for every reduction in staff, 100,000 to 200,000 manpower costs can be saved, depending on their abilities.

Strategy 6: Rationally allocate promotion budget

Affected by holidays, e-commerce promotions, etc., customer demand and traffic quality vary from month to month. Based on past performance and the quality of leads each month, we can reasonably allocate the monthly budget and improve the lead conversion rate.

07 Optimization and adjustment of investment attraction strategy

If educational institutions want to continue to expand in the franchising field, advertising cannot be ignored. The disappearance of traffic dividends, the impact of the epidemic, and the intensified competition among peers have made franchise expansion extremely difficult. We are required to objectively analyze the external environment and internal operating conditions, re-examine the traffic market, formulate scientific advertising strategies, and effectively carry out refined delivery. Make good use of every budget and take every lead seriously.

Don’t expect that the company can fully meet its advertising needs by forming its own advertising team. Instead, it should rely on external channels to obtain more leads and reduce advertising and operating costs. Due to the factors of decreased traffic and uncontrollable service quality of franchised exhibition websites, companies can also choose a professional third-party agency operation team to undertake the delivery task.