A brief discussion on how to attract new customers in K12 education

This time, the author started from the entry point of K12 education customer acquisition, and briefly summarized 9 common growth customer acquisition strategies from three angles: online customer acquisition, offline customer acquisition, and K12 growth core.

1. Customer Acquisition Methods in Internet Scenarios

Growth and customer acquisition in the Internet scenario has quick results, controllable costs, precise users, no spatial restrictions, and can achieve large-scale and long-term continuous dissemination.

Customer acquisition strategy 1: self-media advertising

Once the self-media placement has identified the user portrait, the content will be more concise, contain more information, and be more suitable for people who are interested.

Common ones include soft-text marketing on public accounts, advertising in friend circles (Lbs, interests, age groups, etc.), advertising on Douyin and Kuaishou short video platforms, advertising on mini programs, and advertising on consulting and search websites.

1) Advertising in Moments

In fact, Moments advertising relies more on the optimization of materials and delivery strategies. Once it works, the cost is controllable. However, due to fierce market competition, the cost will continue to rise gradually.

2) Public account soft article marketing

It mainly depends on the IP and content value of the public account owner. With the rise of short videos, the opening rate and reading volume of public account articles are also on a downward trend.

However, as long as the new media soft articles have sufficient professional skills to impress users and find good distribution channels, they can also have relatively low customer acquisition costs.

3) Advertising on short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou

Using video can express the advantages of the product in a more concise and rough way, and it is in line with future mainstream habits. Everyone is aware of the importance of education now. According to current data report analysis, many parents tend to "save money on unimportant aspects and spend money on important aspects."

4) Consulting search SEM, etc.

The users are extremely accurate, but they are passive, so they need professional long-tail keyword optimization, and the overall customer acquisition cost is high;

Customer acquisition strategy 2: channel cooperation

The essence of a channel is to reach potential consumers on a large scale. Generally, the complete process will go through product analysis - user analysis - material preparation - experience channel - online launch.

Currently, the most common ones include channel group business docking leads, distribution platform cooperation discussions, KOL/KOC cooperation discussions, etc. There are also some that are relatively unique or niche at present: cooperation with lottery assistants, Alipay, JD.com and other platforms.

1) Distribution platform cooperation

It has now become a routine operation in online education, by listing products on distribution platforms such as Sunflower Mama, Habit Bear, Parents’ Choice, etc., and using back-end CPS, CPA and other settlement methods to achieve a win-win situation.

Generally speaking, large platforms will always be strong and can ensure the stability of traffic and customer sources, while small platforms may face the situation of small orders;

(Educational institutions are suppliers. They need course users, whether they are large or small companies. Small companies have few means of growth and may lack brands. Cooperation with course distribution platforms is undoubtedly a good choice. Large companies need a large number of users, and users of course distribution platforms are just a supplement. However, some channel users are tricky and specialize in taking advantage of others, so they need to be identified.)

2) Channel group business lead docking

There are usually distribution platform businesses, and there are also some small platforms or institutional resources that can be used, but now the business channels are mixed, so we need to make more detailed identification;

(Looking for KOL/KOC cooperation, as long as the product quality is good, KOL/KOC are generally willing to cooperate, but the search process is more difficult and the number of customers is not easy to control.)

3) Lottery Assistant

It is quite playable and can guide users to follow public accounts and like video accounts. It can also guide users to leave inquiries through prizes as conversion clues.

The previous gameplay was too violent, which led to WeChat banning it. Now it can only be spread in a small range, but the lucky draw is to seize the greed and lucky expectations of human nature, and the customer acquisition cost can be maintained at a low level;

4) Alipay, Pinduoduo and other platforms

You can list the corresponding products through service providers, and use the platform task mechanism or points mechanism to guide users to pay or leave consultations. The cost of acquiring customers is also relatively low, but users need to be further followed up and explored;

Customer acquisition strategy 3: fission

Many companies use fission to grow their business. Some high-quality fission activities can bring high conversions and have good results. Moreover, fission methods mostly appear in the spread between users, which is more likely to generate trust.

At present, the fission of public accounts and communities is very common in the market. The fission of personal accounts and mini-programs is restricted by different factors and has some impact.

1) Public account fission, commonly known as mission treasure

Attract users through prizes, and require users to complete fixed tasks before they can receive prizes. You only need to plan event prizes and set the rules for receiving prizes. By guiding users to share fission posters, users can influence the hierarchical communication model of users and gain the attention of a steady stream of new users.

(Currently, there is a safety threshold for the number of followers of public accounts to increase every day, so it would be more efficient and safer to adopt the form of public account matrix.)

2) Community fission

Use bait posters to attract seed users to promote and enter the community. Through automated reminders within the community, group users are encouraged to complete the task of forwarding posters. By leveraging the social relationships of group members, more new users are brought into the group, thereby expanding the process of circle communication.

There is no risk at present, but there will be many colleagues who will explode and disrupt the market. Overall, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. (Common communities include interest groups, study groups, check-in groups, welfare groups, etc.)

3) Personal account fission

Users see bait posters from various channels, such as official accounts, WeChat groups, or Moments, scan the code to add them to their personal accounts, and automatically reply through their personal accounts to prompt users to share and spread the information through Moments, thereby promoting the process of dissemination among user levels.

There are many benefits to personal accounts. They allow for more efficient interaction and marketing with users and are extremely valuable. However, the current capacity of personal accounts is limited and they are subject to the control of WeChat. If your account is blocked by Tencent, you may lose more than you gain, so you must be cautious.

Currently, the policies for enterprise WeChat are favorable, and there are also tools for enterprise WeChat fission. It is currently very playable and extremely worth trying. Remember to label the users after fission.

4) Distribution fission

The external manifestation is a new customer acquisition cycle of "the upstream customer attracts downstream customers to obtain commissions, and the downstream customer continues to upgrade the upstream customer and then attracts downstream customers." It is mainly through interests that users are driven to share, and in fact it is not restricted by any industry.

5) Referral

That is, word-of-mouth spread among paying users brings in new paying users. Generally, companies with lower service efficiency will have a higher referral rate, such as small classes and one-on-one classes, because these products have better services, and the stickiness between teachers and parents becomes stronger, which results in parents being more likely to refer others.

In fact, the underlying principle of fission still takes advantage of the greed in human nature: if a user wants to get rewards, he must invite more new users to participate in the event, and this cycle continues indefinitely.

Generally speaking, in order to obtain enough accurate users for fission activities, the selection of products for the activity and the number and quality of first-level users are extremely important!

"The fission method is very common now. Knowing the fission method does not necessarily mean you can copy it! But if you understand the underlying logic of fission, you can definitely copy it!"

Customer acquisition strategy 4: Assisting group buying

Helping to group buy is a common way of playing in e-commerce, but education and training courses are also equivalent to commodities and can be packaged as standard products. The initial goal of helping group buying is to attract new customers, increase order volume, use user relationship chains to promote products, and expand influence.

By establishing group buying activities, adding group buying products, users starting groups, sharing invitations, and forming groups with full members, fission propagation can be triggered. Then, you only need to design the user flow path to attract paying users to your own private domain. These mature ways of playing do not require much technical skills to develop, so you can just use them directly to acquire customers.

There are also invitation gifts, 0 yuan check-ins, opening red envelopes, and trying your luck, which are all forms accepted by everyone. Implanting them into the gameplay design, if you want to spend money and exchange for traffic, you can also try it out.

Customer Acquisition Strategy 4.1: 1 Yuan Unlock

An upgraded variation to help group buying—unlock for 1 yuan. By integrating valuable relevant content into exquisite SKUs, and then spreading them through fission at low prices, we can screen paying users while allowing users to enter the private domain more smoothly and acquire customers easily. The author's team can still use this approach to acquire customers at a lower cost.

Tip 1: Extreme cost-effectiveness drives growth

(Deliver products with extremely high cost-effectiveness to attract accurate users and obtain high-quality traffic.)

Tip 2: High-quality content drives growth

(Find content that meets the general needs of the public and obtain relatively high-quality traffic at a low cost.)

Customer acquisition strategy 5: Productized gadgets to attract customers

1) Tools to solve pain points

Provide free, user-friendly, high-frequency tools that can solve user pain points, and then use mechanism design to achieve circle dissemination and customer acquisition. It is the most difficult, but success also brings the greatest rewards. Currently, the most important photo search service has been dominated by large companies, but other vertical mini-program tools still have a market.

2) Mini Program fission

The user participation threshold of mini programs is low. Users do not need to follow official accounts or download apps. By using certain baits or rewards to guide users to click and share, the operation is simple and easy to achieve the purpose of sharing and dissemination.

Moreover, the message templates of the mini program can provide timely feedback, which is convenient for real-time reminders to users during the sharing process and improves the user experience. However, it still takes another step to convert the traffic generated by the mini program fission into the private domain, so it needs careful design, and the overall difficulty increases.

Customer acquisition strategy 6: short video platform traffic diversion

Douyin, Kuaishou, and Video Account have hundreds of millions of traffic users, and the platforms can provide content that gives users the pleasure of acquiring knowledge. Generally, they adopt the operation mode of providing high-quality content and matrix-style traffic diversion to expand the content promotion of their own IP brands and facilitate user recognition and conversion. After you have a certain number of fans, you can still sell goods through live streaming, thereby acquiring customers and increasing revenue through conversion.

The author believes that the private domain path of Douyin and Kuaishou in short videos is longer, and the main brand matrix is ​​more common. After all, brands are free traffic. Although the content ecology of the video account needs further improvement, by connecting all private domains, the value of IP traffic may be greater than that of the brand. It is worth planning in advance and tapping into greater potential value.

Customer acquisition strategy 7: Exotic ecosystem traffic diversion

Directly enter the platform to obtain traffic while complying with platform rules. Generally the amount is not large, but in this era of traffic shortage, water gathers into a trickle.

Generally, the more common ones are Xianyu traffic diversion, information platform articles or answers information diversion, resource cooperation and traffic exchange, etc.

2. Customer acquisition methods based on offline scenarios

Since the education and training industry is characterized by personalization, differentiation, and fragmentation, even giants cannot monopolize the education and training market. With the control of education policies, the advantages of relatively low offline customer acquisition costs are gradually reflected, and offline traffic is still a piece of "fat meat". A silent war has begun.

Customer acquisition strategy 8: offline marketing scenarios

Field promotion is actually marketing personnel going deep into the field to carry out publicity and promotion to users. The author believes that it is a primitive but effective and low-cost promotion method. For example, by setting up stalls around the school and then consulting on the practice of delivering materials;

There can also be more advanced ones, which empowers offline surrounding scenes such as community properties, supermarkets, stationery stores, etc., and each offline contact distributes "love cards" to the children and parents they come into contact with, and provides cash back for each successful registration.

Customer Acquisition Strategy 8.1: Offline Experience Store Activities

Educational and training institutions are also very important in gaining brand awareness. In addition to solving consumer trust issues, brand and reputation can also reduce marketing and sales costs in the company's actual operations.

When opening offline stores, apart from offline store opening discounts and other activities, the natural traffic brought by the store location, plus some simple strategic means to attract user traffic.

Then, public welfare lectures and free trial marketing methods can also gain word-of-mouth and potential user resources through altruism.

Customer acquisition strategy 9: cross-industry equity cooperation

Establish ecological partnerships, pursue overall value maximization, and drive development towards a "strategic level". A bold guess is that it could be possible to cooperate with book publishers, mobile phone stores, other training institutions of the same type whose main businesses do not conflict with each other, etc.

Once multi-party cooperation focuses on increasing brand momentum/voice, there is still a great opportunity to bring in potential users. After all, as long as offline reach can be repeated multiple times, it is actually occupying the minds of users.

In addition, Meituan, Dianping, Local Treasure and other localized service expansions have the opportunity to become online publicity and traffic entrances for offline education and training, which is also worth occupying a position in advance.

3. Thoughts on online education

To borrow the point of view from Professor Yang Fei’s “Traffic Pool”: the core of growth is that the stock brings the incremental, the high frequency brings the high frequency, all products can be fissioned, and all creativity must be shareable.

Elements for successful fission: existing users, welfare incentives, and sharing of fun.

Traffic is in short supply now, and there is not enough high-quality traffic for so many companies to use. We also have to be wary of traffic traps. In terms of traffic conversion, the flatter the traffic funnel conversion is, the better the traffic conversion effect may be.

In fact, with the wave of the epidemic, many companies have accumulated a large number of users, but it is still unknown to what extent the value of private domains can be exerted and utilized. Perhaps there are more points to explore for growth in the current existing private domains. I will continue to explore here.

Regarding the growth of the education and training industry, the core is actually to study and customize corresponding growth plans based on user psychology. To achieve growth, we must remain sensitive, always observe market and policy changes, and step out of the circle in time when necessary. Different strategy combinations may produce an effect of 1+1>2.

IV. Conclusion

Finally, I would like to say that education is a slow process, and this is even more so for the online education industry. I hope that all major leading platforms should return to rationality, seek healthy development of the industry and themselves, and not let the reality that "online education will eventually become a mess."

Currently, online education such as K12 is facing growth difficulties. I have temporarily sorted out the strategic framework. There is still a lot of scalability in the combination of some details and gameplay. You are welcome to discuss with me in depth.

Author: Musanju

Source: Wood Three Bureau