From the perspective of the historical context, the advent of the Internet era and the maturity of live broadcast technology have directly promoted the development of online education.

According to data compiled by Frost & Sullivan and China Business Industry Research Institute, the market size of IT and Internet technology vocational training services increased from 21.3 billion yuan in 2014 to 37.5 billion yuan in 2018, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.6%. As the country vigorously promotes IT-related industries such as artificial intelligence and big data, the demand for IT talents is expected to increase.

The market size is expected to increase from 37.5 billion yuan in 2018 to 68 billion yuan in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 12.6%.

So what kind of sparks can Lagou Education, a subsidiary of Lagou.com, create in this field?

1. Disassembly Object

Lagou Education

2. Background Research

Lagou Education is a brand under Beijing Lagou Network Technology Co., Ltd. It helps Internet professionals communicate and improve their technical capabilities, and is a "practical university" for Internet people.

Based on Lagou's experience in the Internet talent service industry, we have jointly developed a series of courses and services to provide learning opportunities for Internet people. Lagou Education has opened two learning methods: "Column" and "Training Camp". The courses cover R&D, products, design, operations, marketing and other fields.

3. Analysis of the three elements of business (product, traffic, and monetization)

1. Products

1.1 Core Business

1.1.1 Trust in Products: [Column Course]

Suitable for users with light learning plans. Courses in R&D, product, operation, marketing, operation and design have been launched online.

Column features: The total duration is about 300 minutes, and each lecture is 10-15 minutes long. Users can use fragmented time to study. Multiple viewing methods such as video, audio, live broadcast, pictures and text can meet users' needs in different learning scenarios.

1.1.2 Profitable product: [Training Camp]

Lagou Education and other enterprises have jointly launched a series of [training camps], which allow students to acquire practical experience that would take others 3-5 years to accumulate through 4-6 months of online learning. The training camp offers several major subjects, including [High-paying Training Camp for Java Engineers], [High-paying Training Camp for Big Data Development], [High-paying Training Camp for Big Front-end Development], [High-paying Training Camp for Data Analysts], and [Direct Recommendation Camp for Test Development Engineers from Famous Companies]. Once launched, it has won a good reputation among users.

Training camp features: online learning, no need to leave work, no geographical restrictions.

A technical capability framework that meets the needs of enterprises, through 4-6 months of planned training, gradually improve technical capabilities.

Combining "learning + practice", with one learning node per week and rich actual project training in the production environment, knowledge is transformed into ability.

Irregular technical sharing, experience sharing, interview sharing, etc. by big names from large companies allow students to understand how large companies work as early as possible.

Companion learning, weekly homework review and correction, and more efficient answering of questions.

The learning outcomes are endorsed by the Lagou platform, which provides employment guidance in major Internet companies, and graduates enjoy a green channel for job hunting.

1.1.3 Branded products: [In-house training]

Lagou Education provides customized consulting and internal training services to enterprises. Based on the technical capability development needs of enterprise R&D teams, it provides enterprises with customized training and internal training courses for skill improvement in different positions, creating a closed loop of enterprise talent services.

Relying on Lagou's big data on talent supply and demand, Lagou Education has real-time insights into the industry's technological trends and customizes internal training courses in the three major areas of technology, products, and management for enterprises, helping them to rapidly advance development projects, efficiently implement cutting-edge technologies, and complete rapid business iteration and successful transformation.

1.2 User Analysis

1.2.1 User Profile

According to Xu Dandan, founder and CEO of Lagou: "Since courses such as marketing, operations, and product managers are not easy to standardize, the effects are not obvious, and the unit price is lower than that of IT training courses, Lagou Education decided to focus on the programmer market in 2019."

Through searching with tools such as Baidu Index and iResearch, we found that the keywords of Lagou Education have not been included. However, according to the explanation of Xu Dandan, the founder and CEO of Lagou Education, it can be seen that the current strategic direction of Lagou is to focus on the programmer market. So the user portrait can be deduced based on the competitive product data of Lagou Education. Here we take Kaikeba as an example:

From the geographical distribution, we can see that programmers are mainly concentrated in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hangzhou. On the one hand, the overall income level of user groups in these regions is relatively high, and their demand and investment in education is greater. On the other hand, large Internet companies are mainly located in these cities, so these cities have a greater demand for recruiting programmers. Large companies and high salaries attract most programmers, which indirectly produces a crowd gathering effect.

From the age distribution chart on the left, we can see that the user group searching for online training for programmers is mainly concentrated in the 20-29 age group, and the TGI index of users in this age group is as high as 215.32, indicating that users in this age group are the main force participating in online training.

In the gender distribution chart on the right, the number of males is higher than that of females. It can be seen that men account for the majority of programming jobs. On the one hand, men have stronger stress resistance. On the other hand, in the programmer industry, working overtime and staying up late are the norm. Men are more adaptable to this work intensity, which ultimately leads to a greater demand for men in this area.

From the data shown in "2019 China's Online Education Product User Portraits, User Demands and Behavioral Preferences and Industry Organizations' Shift to Refined Operation Analysis", it can be seen that 80.9% of users use online education products at home, and 44.6% of users use online education products on public transportation, and most of these people are commuting. Looking at the time when users use the app most frequently, the high-frequency time distribution is concentrated in 8:00-10:00, 18:00-20:00, and 20:00-22:00. In particular, the time period from 18:00 to 22:00 is continuous and complete, and the distribution of this time period also conforms to the best memory time for talents in the process of education and learning.

1.2.2 User Demand Analysis

According to the data from "2019 China's Online Education Product User Portraits, User Demands and Behavioral Preferences and Industry Organizations' Shift to Refined Operation Analysis", the top three user needs for online education users are: improving self-ability, enriching business management science, and getting promoted and getting a raise.

In terms of the reasons why users use the platform, the platform’s courses are the main reason for half of the users to choose it, among which 51.7% of users choose it because the course content is rich, and 51.4% of users choose it because the course settings meet their own needs. In summary, the main selling point of online education products lies in the courses, and the main demand of users is to improve their own abilities through courses.

1.2.3 Scenario Simulation

Based on the above user portrait and demand analysis, we can roughly simulate the following scenario: a programmer working in a first-tier city, who has just graduated for about two or three years, is currently single and has an unsatisfactory salary situation. He needs to improve his technical capabilities through training. Therefore, after learning about Lagou Education through Baidu search or information flow delivery, he searched for relevant course information online, and then communicated with the teaching assistant to understand the course situation and chose to sign up. Since he is usually busy with work and has to work overtime a lot, his study time is mainly concentrated on the commuting time to and from get off work or the two hours after get off work.

2. Traffic

2.1 Own traffic

2.1.1 Lagou network diversion

2.1.2 Lagou Education Official Website

2.1.3 Lagou Education APP

2.2 Paid Customer Acquisition

2.2.1 KOL placement

The agglomeration effect of technical talents is very obvious, so it is very important to find KOLs and maintain them well. In terms of Lagou’s external advertising, it is estimated that KOLs account for a high proportion of the advertising budget, and are mainly concentrated on Weibo, official accounts and vertical technology communities.

2.2.2 SEM delivery

SEM delivery is mainly based on Baidu bidding ranking. After the user clicks, he will be directly guided to the official website or the landing page of a single course.

2.2.3 Broadcasting and Distribution

Guangdiantong’s delivery strategy is similar to that of official accounts, which is to attract traffic through low-priced column courses and then monetize through full-priced courses.

2.2.4 Information flow delivery

Information flow delivery is mainly through the display of video streams, which recreates the situation to show the problems that programmers may encounter in their work or life, explore user pain points, and provide a feasible solution to guide users to click to buy or leave contact information.

2.3 Free Customer Acquisition (Media Matrix)

Considering that each platform has severely cracked down on advertising traffic, in terms of free customer acquisition, in addition to the accounts that can be seen through search below, it is estimated that there are also private accounts created by some internal employees to divert traffic to various platforms.

2.3.1 WeChat Ecosystem

2.3.2 Toutiao Ecosystem

2.3.3 Video and text websites

2.3.4 Vertical Technology Communities

2. 4 Referral & Fission

In addition to external investment, this link should be the main gameplay promoted by Lagou Education at present. It can be seen from the window bar settings in the official account. Lagou Education has even created a distribution community specifically for guiding users to carry out distribution fission.

3. Monetization

Lagou Education Course Product Composition:

It can be seen from the product composition of Lagou that Lagou's trust products are small classes and column courses, and its profit product is the training camp. The monetization path is: using small classes or 1 yuan unlocking courses as bait, acquiring users through fission, paid delivery, etc., using column courses to cultivate user minds, and then using training camp courses and internal training to monetize users.

According to the revenue formula: GMV = number of users * conversion rate * average order value, it can be seen that when the average order value and conversion rate remain unchanged, more users can bring more performance revenue. This is also one of the reasons why Lagou Education held a 1 yuan flash sale event for courses during the Double 12 period.

Next, I will analyze Lagou Education’s Double 12 course 1 yuan flash sale event for everyone from a first-person perspective based on my actual experience.

4. Analysis of specific cases

As the cost of acquiring users continues to increase, acquiring users at a low cost through fission is a feasible way. During the Double Eleven period, Lagou Education held an event where courses were sold out for 1 yuan. In my opinion, this type of event is relatively easy to spread because users can earn money, friends around users can get discounts, and the platform can obtain real user data. The gameplay is similar to that of Pinduoduo, a win-win-win situation for all parties.

In this event, I think Lagou Education achieved the following three goals:

The first is to awaken old users. After all, there are only a few students who pay for full-price courses, and most of them are still in the user pool of Lagou in an unpaid state. Now we can use the 1 yuan flash sale activity to cultivate users' payment awareness and activate and awaken these users, either converting them into full-price course users or guiding them to share activities to help the platform acquire new users.

The second is to acquire new users by using methods such as bargaining and distribution to acquire a group of new users through the spread of old users, and then monetize them through full-priced training camp courses.

The third is the registration and download of the APP. Although this activity is not profitable for Lagou, from the perspective of user acquisition costs, Lagou still makes money. First of all, the column courses are already recorded, and the marginal cost is very low. Secondly, the cost of guiding users to download and register an APP is far more than a few dozen yuan, not to mention such precise users.

Next, I will share my actual experience and break down the entire process of this event for you from a first-person perspective.

V. Case-related information

Case name: Lagou Education unlocks courses for 1 yuan

Case industry: Online education

Case purpose: fission customer acquisition

Case play: Use 1 yuan to unlock the course as bait, acquire users through fission, paid delivery, etc., use column courses to cultivate user learning habits and payment awareness, and monetize through training camp courses and corporate in-house training.

Case period: 11/11-12/12

User Path:

6. Case Model

This AARRR funnel model vividly summarizes the 1-yuan flash sale event for courses held by Lagou Education. I will analyze this event based on this model.

6.1 User Acquisition

In this 1 yuan bargaining activity, Lagou Education's user acquisition mainly comes from three aspects:

The first is to use our own channels to acquire users through Lagou.com, Lagou Education’s official account, and the Lagou Education APP. With the trust endorsement of Lagou.com, we acquire users through our own channels, and users’ desire to participate is still very high.

The second is external delivery, which uses Weibo or vertical public accounts and WeChat Moments to promote activities using KOLs to increase activity exposure.

The third is distribution and bargaining, which is mainly aimed at old users of Lagou, guiding users to forward and share through cash back and bargaining.

When users see the poster through the above channels, those who are interested will scan the QR code to participate, which will invisibly draw users into the event's traffic pool. I learned about this event through WeChat Moments and found it quite interesting. Then I reverse-reasoned and analyzed the event.

6.2 User Activation

After scanning the QR code to jump to the landing page, two sections will be displayed to the user, one is 1 yuan for 365 days of super VIP, and the other is 1 yuan for grabbing a column course. With the help of the event, the prices of course products that were marked as 688 yuan and 99 yuan were reduced to 1 yuan, making users feel that they can get a bargain by participating at this time. At the same time, they see that the discount is only for one day and they can make money by sharing. Users will naturally participate, thus achieving user activation.

From a user's perspective, I made money by participating in this event, shared it with my friends, and my friends got discounts. The platform earns real users. The course author gained fame through the dissemination effect, which was a win-win situation for all parties.

6.3 User Retention

In the education industry, the retention link needs to solve the problem of "users come quickly and leave quickly". This time, Lagou is working on user retention from both short-term and long-term aspects.

The short-term retention measures are:

The first is strong message reminders, through public account template messages, mobile phone text messages, etc., to recall potential users and remind them to continue to pay attention to the progress of the event.

Second, the income is delayed in arriving. Users can obtain income by improving personal information, distributing courses, etc., but it will take three days to withdraw it. This is also a disguised way of binding users to the platform for 3 days.

Long-term retention measures are:

The first is a fixed fission matrix. The course distribution function has formed a fixed module in the Lagou official account, and is also equipped with a dedicated distribution community. Through interest-driven means, users can continue to stay in the Lagou traffic matrix.

The second is the irregular 1 yuan flash sale courses. Through these low-priced and high-quality column courses, users are attracted to return to the Lagou APP from time to time, thus achieving the goal of long-term retention.

The third is to store users in various traffic pools. After the user successfully bargains, he/she will be prompted to add the teaching assistant’s WeChat account, and then guided to download the APP to watch and learn. Some courses also come with community services. After the user successfully distributes the course, he/she will need to follow the official account to withdraw cash.

Having invested so much time and energy in the early stages, users’ sunk costs have become very high, and most users will perform subsequent operations based on the prompts. This will simultaneously retain users on personal accounts, WeChat groups, APPs, and public accounts.

As long as the quality of the column courses is high, after the above series of processes, the probability of user loss has become very low. What needs to be considered next is how to monetize this group of users.

6.4 User Monetization

It is difficult to meet users' improvement needs by just studying a few column courses. Therefore, it is not difficult to see that the 1 yuan flash sale of courses is just a bait to attract users to pay attention to the learning platform of Lagou Education, and ultimately to divert and monetize products such as full-priced courses, super VIPs, and corporate in-house training.

The general monetization path is: use small classes or 1 yuan unlocking courses as bait, acquire users through fission, paid delivery, etc., use column courses to cultivate user learning habits and payment awareness, and then monetize and profit through training camp courses and corporate in-house training.

6.5 User self-propagation

The quality of a product and service determines the user’s word-of-mouth and dissemination. Therefore, in order for users to share and spread the word, either the product and service must be very good so that users are willing to promote it spontaneously; or they can earn considerable income after sharing so that users have the motivation to spread the word. Otherwise, why would users do this kind of thing to spread the word?

In this event, Lagou has integrated the sharing and fission actions into every aspect.

① After new users scan the QR code to jump to the event page, there will be a clear reminder to share and earn cash, guiding them to forward and share the poster.

② After successfully bargaining for a course, users will be prompted to share and make money. Most users will choose to share. Therefore, after sharing, you can make money and your friends can get discounts, which is a win-win situation.

③ When users download the APP for learning, there will also be a large activity banner on the homepage of the Lagou APP, which will continue to guide users to take part in the course flash sales, and indirectly guide users to spread and share.

7. Highlights and Reusability

7.1 Rhythmic activity push

It can be seen from the official account and Moments that Lagou's event was pushed in a rhythmic and planned manner, basically creating a screen-sweeping effect on the official account and Moments. This also indirectly reflects that Lagou's team communication and collaboration are very good, and the event operators have a very strong control over the overall progress.

Reusable:

① Rhythmic activity push can make users follow the crowd and further expand the effect of the activity.

② A good activity requires not only a good plan, but also strong execution.

7.2 Diverse Activity Options

In this activity, users are shown a 1-yuan study-well activity, but they are given two options: one is to invite multiple people to bargain and get a 365-day super VIP with a value of 688 yuan for 1 yuan; the other is to invite one person to bargain and get a special column course with a value ranging from 49 to 99 yuan for 1 yuan. This design can cultivate users' awareness of payment on the one hand, and make users have a stronger desire to participate and share through diversified choices on the other.

Reusable:

① Reasonable threshold design can make users have a stronger desire to participate. If users are only given one option, then the question they have to face is whether to join or leave. If users are given multiple choices, then the question they have to face is which one to choose. This can avoid user loss to the greatest extent.

② Setting a price anchor point can reduce users’ decision-making costs and help users make choices faster.

7.3 Timeliness of Activities

In this event, the 1 yuan bargaining activity is time-limited. The column course has a 4-hour bargaining time, and the VIP has a 24-hour bargaining time. The help will be invalid after the time is exceeded. Users can either choose to restart the bargaining invitation or choose to purchase with the actual payment remaining amount at that time. This can reduce the user's thinking time and allow users to forward and share to the largest extent in the shortest time.

Reusability: By setting a clear expiration date for the activity, users will have a sense of crisis. Based on their aversion to loss, they will be forced to forward and share on a wider scale.

7.4 Strong Trust Endorsement of Products

From the user's perspective, the event poster carries the endorsement of the Lagou platform, the instructor's personal IP, and the distributor's avatar endorsement, making the event look more real and credible, and solving the user's trust issue to the greatest extent. From an operational perspective, the platform and instructors have gained fame through the spread of users, allowing more people to know about the Lagou education platform and instructors.

Reusable: Products with strong trust endorsement can solve users’ trust issues to the greatest extent and better promote the dissemination of activities.

7.5 Diverse User Retention

After successfully bargaining for a course, we take advantage of users’ sunk costs and loss aversion to guide them step by step to add the corporate WeChat account and download the APP. Some courses also come with social media services.

After users earn profits through distribution, they still need to follow the official account to withdraw cash, which is equivalent to achieving the following goals at the same time:

• Accumulation of registrations for column courses
• APP download and registration
• New followers of the public account
• Adding a personal account
• Adding a community

Moreover, the users' learning needs obviously cannot be met by a few column courses, so the users are invisibly put into the pool of full-priced courses to accumulate users for the full-priced courses.

Reusable:

① Operators can make the activity process smoother by studying user psychology more. At the same time, it can invisibly increase various data indicators of the activity and have a driving effect on the final North Star indicator.

② Keep users in different places as much as possible, which can not only increase the reach of messages, but also minimize user loss.

8. Points to be optimized and solutions

8.1 User retention needs to be improved

After users download the APP, they do not take the next step. I observed that there is a credit mechanism in the APP, but the value of the credits is not prominent enough and can only be exchanged for virtual courses, resulting in users not having a strong intention to accumulate credits.

Solution: Some game mechanisms can be added to the credit acquisition process, such as binding an interview question bank or opening a student interaction section in the APP. Users can earn credits by answering questions or sharing their learning experiences in the interactive section. At the same time, if credits can be linked to the exchange of physical products, the daily active number and retention rate of students may be higher.

8.2 The reward mechanism is not friendly enough

First, user B purchased the product through the poster shared by user A, but user A could not receive the cashback reward immediately, but had to wait for 3 days, which would to some extent dampen the user's desire to share.

Second, since sharing is mainly based on column courses, user benefits are relatively low. If in addition to course benefits, some physical peripherals of Lagou can be added to the reward link, it may encourage users to share and spread the word.

Solution:

1. If conditions permit, you can enable the real-time payment function so that users can receive instant rewards, which can further stimulate users' desire to share.

2. In addition to course revenue, users can get extra rewards if they share with 5, 10, 20, or 30 people respectively, or set up a distribution ranking list, and the top several people on the list can get physical rewards. These measures can stimulate users to spread the knowledge more actively to a certain extent.

8.3 Delivery link needs to be strengthened

Start with the end in mind. Selling a product does not mean the end of sales, but the beginning of sales.

In this event, after users purchase a small course, the system will guide users to add the corporate WeChat account. However, on the corporate WeChat, the staff did not perform further maintenance. They simply added a friend and did not organize a group for unified maintenance or conduct point-to-point user demand exploration. On the one hand, it may be because copywriting is not Lagou’s current main course. On the other hand, it may be because this course is not an official product of Lagou, but a part-time teacher. Or there may be too many users participating in the event in the past two days, resulting in insufficient staffing, resulting in subsequent maintenance that cannot keep up.

Solution:

① Before the event begins, fully estimate the effect of the event to ensure that there are no problems in the connection between each link.

② After users purchase different course products, dedicated personnel will be arranged to follow up. At the same time, each course on a certain theme is equipped with a community to provide targeted maintenance. This can have a positive effect on both user experience and word-of-mouth publicity, and can also accumulate seed users for the subsequent full-priced courses.

9. Extended Thinking

1. There is nothing new under the sun. All new ways of playing are micro-innovations based on the old ways of playing. Therefore, listening more, watching more, and practicing more can help you understand and master a way of playing faster.

2. A sense of rhythm is a skill that operators must learn. Just like cooking, the same ingredients can produce very different tastes in the hands of different people. The control of rhythm and portion is crucial.

3. In the education industry, word of mouth is very important. Start from the end in mind. Selling a product does not mean the end of sales, but the beginning of sales.

Author: Autumn Wind

Source: Autumn Wind