Private Domain Traffic in Vocational Education: Practical Model of Marketing Course Conversion

Before I officially share, I would like to briefly explain how this methodology has helped me. Through practical exploration in the past two years, the conversion rate of marketing open courses has been continuously improving. In IT course products with a customer unit price of nearly 10,000, I can still maintain a conversion rate of 3%-5% for novice users per session.

The conversion rate is actually not very high, but I am relatively satisfied with the overall population and average order value. Considering the time and labor cost of the activity, it is undoubtedly one of the sustainable and benign private domain conversion activities.

I will share from the following aspects, hoping it will be helpful to everyone.

1. What is a marketing open class?
2. New customer acquisition channels and user segmentation;
3. The timing and format of marketing open classes;
4. Marketing courses conduct full process analysis;
5. Division of work between goals and processes.

1. What is a marketing open class?

Open classes are one of the recognized forms of transformation in the vocational education industry. Through experience classes, users’ awareness of products and brands can be enhanced, and registration intention can be directly increased. However, in my opinion, there is an essential difference between ordinary open classes and marketing open classes, especially in a course product for novices, which requires more prominent differentiation.

Open classes: They are more daily-oriented, with diversified topics. They are often used on certain platforms to attract new users (such as external platforms such as Bilibili and Tencent Classroom) or to activate private domain traffic , while taking into account daily conversions.

For example, technical point teaching of programming technology, project management knowledge of PMP products, and other similar vertically focused skill learning.

Marketing course: The focus is on conversion and closing orders, and it focuses on internal private traffic to carry out activities. The forms are diversified and are not limited to PPT, real people, etc. The course content focuses on user pain points, and the content covers multi-dimensional groups of people, focusing on industry dry goods, career planning, etc.

For example, there may be career planning courses for the industry, live classes at special times (such as anniversary celebrations, Double 11, 618, etc.), or courses on related topics based on current hot topics.

Reasonable design of marketing courses into the user journey can improve user conversion more efficiently and quickly. Friends who are not familiar with the user journey can read previous articles: [4700 words sharing] Practical model of private domain traffic operation in vocational education.

2. New Customer Channels and User Segmentation

Before I officially start to explain the development of the marketing course, it is necessary to first explain my research on user portraits of various channels and the superficial user stratification.

The following is a summary of some common channels for attracting new customers in the field of vocational education and a basic survey of user intentions:

I won’t explain the characteristics of each channel in detail here. I will output the content separately when I have the chance…

A brief explanation of user stratification:

• ★Users: can be contacted but not interested in the product, no obvious conversion point;
• ★★Users: can be contacted and are interested in the product, but have no clear intention to sign up in the short term;
• ★★★Users: Those who can be contacted and have a clear intention to enroll in the class, but are not sure whether to buy their own products;
• ★★★★User: has a clear intention to sign up, has received a quote, but is still hesitating about the price;
• ★★★★★User: has registered for the paid formal course.

Of course, there are more detailed aspects such as WeChat/Enterprise WeChat tag reach, which I will not elaborate on here (I will explain the sales system when I have the chance).

Different themes target different user groups. Many organizations usually do not perform segmentation and indiscriminate bombardment. This is indeed effective, but it also causes great loss to users and is not conducive to extending the user life cycle. Therefore, good segmentation and targeted reach can reduce churn and accurately reach out to carry out corresponding conversion activities.

3. Nodes and forms of marketing open courses

I roughly divide marketing classes into two categories: "festivals and non-festivals". The difference between the two is that festival classes are usually at fixed times, and the gameplay is relatively in line with the market atmosphere, such as Double 11 and 618 promotions.

On the contrary, non-holiday activities have relatively flexible gameplay and no fixed time. Sometimes they are designed separately to fill the conversion actions within the time period . Therefore, it is more challenging to understand the user portrait and discover the pain points in order to design activities in a targeted manner.

Here is a brief explanation of the two different types:

1) Festivals: 618, Double 11, 1024, anniversary celebrations, etc.

• Holiday marketing courses usually focus on brand endorsement and course benefits, and are more often conducted in the form of feedback;
• Benchmark users: Samsung and above customers (including old students and repeat purchases);
• Class format: real people appear on camera;
• Live broadcast content: Focus on brand strength, students' successful cases and career prospects planning;
• Features: Strong interactivity, requires lecturers and hosts to have the ability to control the situation, and design the live broadcast script and rhythm in advance.

2) Non-holiday events: product course launches, industry analysis courses, new course launches, brand upgrade meetings, etc.

• The topics of this type of marketing course are varied, and they are more about creating momentum through hot marketing. The content is basically centered around industry planning and career planning, and is mainly based on practical information. The lecturer's IP is directly related to the conversion rate.
• Benchmark users: one to five stars;
• Class format: PPT presentation + real-person explanation;
• Live broadcast content: industry planning, career prospects;
• Features: Practical information driven, solid and convincing content, highly connected courses, and a test of the instructor's expressiveness.

Let me add a misunderstanding here. Although we are teaching marketing classes and explaining industry portraits and career planning, and ultimately guiding students to sign up for our courses, don’t be misunderstood by the word “marketing” . For us, marketing is a general term, but for students, our industry analysis and career planning are real and practical stuff. Only by recognizing this can we be more confident in carrying out activities.

After the above introduction, let’s move on to the core part: how to design high-conversion marketing courses for users from 0-1?

4. Marketing course full process analysis

Now that we are getting to the point, we will divide it into several modules to analyze how to design the implementation of marketing courses. Due to limited space, this sharing will not go into details about the implementation process, but will mainly share the thinking framework for the implementation of non-festival marketing courses.

The details of targeted development in different scenarios are different, so the main focus is on sharing the thinking framework and development process, and the user research phase is directly omitted.

1. Division of labor: Who needs to do what?

The personnel composition of the marketing course is not complicated. Usually, operations are required to take the lead in formulating the entire process (including preliminary research - content planning - event development). Lecturers need to cooperate with operations personnel to output course content. Sales mainly cooperates with early publicity and results-obtaining links. Other members serve as atmosphere groups and collaborators.

The choice of instructor is also particularly important, and whether the instructor has a strong enough IP is also directly related to the conversion rate.

2. Live content: the core point of conversion

The purpose of most courses is still centered around conversion, but the target population may be changeable, and the needs of users in different channels and at different times will also change.

For example, a user from the same channel has been indirectly active in the traffic pool for one month. At this time, if the course you offer only tells them what JAVA is, this obviously does not meet their current cognitive needs and cannot touch their pain points. For different time periods of the same user group, targeted conversion activities should be carried out according to the designed user journey. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach.

Of course, if a user has participated in all the activities he or she should participate in but has not chosen to sign up and pay, then you don’t need to spend too much time on such users and should give priority to the majority group.

Speaking of topics, this can be said to be the top priority of non-festival marketing courses. If the topic is not chosen well, it will directly affect the class rate. Below I will briefly share the topic design skills that I personally think are more suitable for attracting novices.

To put it simply: scarcity, quantification, results, and facts.

For example: Let’s say I want to give a live class to newbies who are taking a marketing class for the first time, I might design the topic like this.

Main title: In-depth analysis of the 2022 IT industry employment dividends!

subtitle:

1. Analysis of the dividends of IT industry segments;
2. Detailed explanation of the 2021 high-paying XX student case;
3. The methodology for a newbie to switch to IT career and earn an annual salary of 200,000+.

Let’s break it down:

1. The main title highlights the employment dividends of the IT industry in 2022, which makes it easier for confused users who want to change careers to identify and get clues to find their direction;
2. Subheading 2 is mainly about seeing how others succeed;
3. Subheading 3 is about the sense of gain, that is, after watching an open class, you can get a direction for a high salary (in fact, the class guides you to the full-price course products).

This small case is just one of my personal design methods for the novice group. In fact, there can be many other topics. If you are interested, you can contact me to discuss.

The purpose of refining selling points is to extend the output in promotional copy and articles and to make the advantages of the course three-dimensional.

I won’t go into detail about the rhythm of live streaming today, because it involves specific scenarios and personnel coordination, and it is flexible and changeable, so I won’t give examples one by one.

3. Live broadcast format: platform*live broadcast style

I won’t go into details about the platform, but will focus on its form:

• Main body PPT presentation + real-life small shot presentation: This format focuses on content and presentation, and tests the quality of content and the persuasiveness of the lecturer;
• Real person appearance + PPT presentation: Focus on scene, atmosphere, and content, which tests the host and lecturer's camera presentation and control ability. PPT needs to highlight the key points and is not suitable for content with too much text. The scene must be consistent with the theme.
• Real person appearance + no PPT presentation/random presentation: Focus on interaction, design user interaction links in advance, arrange water army/design interaction links;
• Full PPT presentation without real people on camera: Not recommended unless conditions are not met.

That’s about it. There are some other ways to play on different platforms, so I won’t go into details.

4. Promotional strategy: The same user will remember the activity and continue to be interested in it only after seeing it seven times in different scenarios

If we only need to reach all users, then we only need to send a group message using a personal account, but this is far from enough for the purpose of our event.

In order to get more participation in marketing courses, multi-dimensional reach is needed, which requires the use of "multi-touchpoint" promotion in private domain traffic, so that users can see the event promotion in multiple scenarios as much as possible, so as to maximize the user's interest in participation and attention.

For example, with Internet marketing being so intensive nowadays, people will often subconsciously swipe away promotional materials such as copywriting and posters. But if you swipe away once and then see it appear somewhere else again, you might pay attention to it. Until you see it more times, you might want to stop and take a closer look.

Therefore, multi-dimensional publicity is very important.

5. Materials: The first door to external display

1) Poster

A promotional poster is like a storefront. If the storefront is not attractive, no matter how good the content is, no one will necessarily see it.

For example, when I first started working, I often went on business trips. Since I had no experience staying in hotels often, I didn’t know how to choose, so I just browsed photos on Ctrip until I saw a hotel called "Vienna". It had four Roman columns at the door, the lobby was magnificently decorated, and the price was also very attractive, just like the Roman columns at the door. It was not until I moved in that I discovered that the room was not only small, but also had poor sound insulation, and the experience plummeted.

Although he appears to be hypocritical, I was indeed attracted by his appearance. Of course, we do not advocate hypocritical behavior. We only emphasize the benefits of having a good appearance.

It would probably take another article to elaborate on the techniques of poster and copywriting design, so I won’t go into detail here and will just give you a few suggestions.

• Look at users internally and look at competitors externally: You need to understand your own users and also refer to competitors.
• Look at the content horizontally and the data vertically: you need to weigh the tone of the content and also look at the data from past periods. Which style of data is good and why?
• Let others give feedback and pay more attention to details.

2) Copywriting

The copywriting is changeable, and the copywriting for different scenes and times can be adjusted. It can be to supplement the content of the poster, or it can be some words to attract user attention.

The copywriting also includes articles on public accounts, etc.

3) PPT

The preparation of PPT is generally divided into two parts.

The first is the marketing section: after confirming the content direction with the instructor, the operations staff needs to start preparing the content of the marketing section, such as the live broadcast framework: what to say in the first few minutes (company introduction, instructor introduction, etc.), how to arrange the rhythm of each subject template (duration, what the water army needs to do, the focus of the instructor's class), and the final marketing link (benefits and special offers, etc.).

The second is the content section: the lecturer starts to collect relevant materials based on the established topic, sort out the course logic, and finally combines it with the marketing section to form the final PPT.

After completing the above, you will rehearse with the host and lecturer.

4) Live broadcast public screen speech

This is actually included in the copy, but I’ve singled it out because the guidance of the teaching assistant during the live broadcast is also quite important, as it is related to the three-star screening and supplementing the answers to questions that the instructor missed, etc.

The above is the content related to materials.

6. Conversion path: both reasonable and effective

The three conversion types in the supplementary instructions can be used as a reference. The core logic is to formulate a reasonable conversion path, which should not only make users feel that the process is smooth and unobtrusive, but also achieve 1-2 star user cultivation and 3 star user screening.

From the above conversion paths, I will explain separately the marketing paths for pulling activity groups in advance and need to pay attention to a few points:

• Planting seeds before class: fully lay the foundation for the core content of the marketing course, the instructor's endorsement, etc., so that users have expectations and increase the class attendance rate.
• Leave an inquiry form: Everyone who joins the group is interested in the topic, and we need to screen out potential customers with high intentions so that sales can keep paying attention and follow up.
• Synchronize pictures and texts within the group during live video broadcast: While increasing the attendance rate, users who do not have time to attend can also know the general content of the course.
• Concentrated marketing within the group after class: create a sense of urgency through group relay or other means, post orders, post cases of high-paying students and cooperate with the Internet water army to maximize high-intention output.
• Sales should follow up in a timely manner. The conversion effect will be best if the sales follow up on the day of the live broadcast. There will be a big discount the next day. Conversion should be carried out when the user's emotions are high. Telephone communication > WeChat.

7. Output and transformation

This module mainly needs to consider how to screen out more Samsung customers from the live classes and how sales can quickly follow up on the conversion. These have been mentioned in the previous content and will not be elaborated here.

8. Review: The most important thing

By reviewing the data of the entire chain, we can find out the actual growth points. This is a very important link after the activity is launched. The significance of SOP is not only to facilitate execution, but also to facilitate iteration.

It is recommended to complete the review on the same day. If there is no time because it is too late, it should be completed on the next morning. At this time, the memory will be deep and more problems can be exposed.

5. Division of Goals and Processes

Sort out existing goals in advance and estimate conversion indicators related to the number of event participants.

When everything in the plan is planned, we need to start assigning responsibilities, specific actions, persons in charge, and executors. Only by assigning responsibilities to individuals and breaking down what content and processes need to be matched to each target link can the plan be clearly implemented.

6. Final words

That’s about all I have to share here. In fact, it takes a lot of content to analyze an activity inside and out. I have explained the analysis related to the cultivation of 1-2 stars and user journey in previous articles.

This time I will share some of my practical frameworks for marketing courses, and I will have the opportunity to continue sharing my thoughts on vocational education and operations later.

Author: Qu Haodong

Source public account: Qu Haodong