How can education and training companies achieve traffic and increase followers without spending money?

After the impact of the epidemic in 2020, the education and training industry began to accelerate its integration with the Internet and quickly became popular with the online education model.

Online education can break through the limitations of time and space, and bring high-quality educational resources to a wider range of users in more regions through the Internet and online tools. The teaching methods are rich and diverse. For example, educational institutions use the technology service provider Maker Artisan to build official accounts, mini-programs, APPs, PC online schools and other online education platforms to provide students with live broadcasts, videos, audio, graphics, columns, training camps and other teaching services to help students make full use of fragmented time and learn efficiently. At the same time, you can also use online marketing tools to attract fans to your own platform.

Of course, the core of the online education industry is still education. Therefore, traffic-generating activities based on courses and learning materials as rewards have natural advantages and can achieve “driving traffic and increasing fans without spending money.”

At present, the most common online education growth activities are: benefit rewards mainly in the form of cash/gifts, and learning needs rewards mainly in the form of courses/learning materials. The former is more of an external motivation, while the latter is an internal motivation to meet users' learning needs.

Taking the most common "recommendation rewards" as an example, the basic process rules are: old users can get cash/gift rewards or course/material rewards by inviting new users to visit/purchase courses. The rules of this type of activity are simple and clear, and rewards are used to guide users to actively invite others to share. However, there is a big difference between the prizes set as cash/gifts and courses/materials.

Below, let’s take a look at the difference between the two.

01Cash/Gift Rewards

Although cash/gifts as rewards may be effective in the early stages, they also have obvious problems and limitations:

1. High customer acquisition cost: In order to make gift-for-recommendation activities more attractive, the leading online education companies have high customer acquisition costs. The cost of maximizing customer acquisition effects is to control the customer acquisition cost of the activities to a certain extent lower than the customer acquisition cost of advertising. As a result, the customer acquisition cost of such growth activities is still high, and the same is true for small and medium-sized institutions.

2. Higher risk of cheating and lower quality of customer acquisition: Since such activities directly reward cash/gifts, some institutions have even launched activities such as "recommend a 3 yuan course and get a reward of 9.9 yuan". The reward money has exceeded the course purchase money, resulting in an increase in user cheating. In this case, many of the users attracted are not real potential users, resulting in a low conversion rate for subsequent full-priced courses.

3. Weak altruism: For old users, they must invite friends to purchase courses in order to receive rewards. This creates great social pressure, which causes some users to be unwilling to share, creating resistance and even damaging the brand image.

02Course/material rewards

Using courses/materials as rewards can complement some of the issues with cash/gift rewards, satisfying users’ internal motivation for learning progress and driving them to share, with significantly better results.

Taking the Maker Artisan’s “Recommendation Gift” tool as an example, recommenders are encouraged to recommend exclusive sharing pages to their friends. After successfully completing the task (recommending user visits, recommending binding of mobile phone numbers, and recommending user payments), both parties can obtain rewards set by the merchant (points, coupons, rights and interests). This is a precise and high-quality social circle marketing model.

Educational and training institutions can create gift-for-referral activities for the purpose of attracting traffic. They can set it up so that new users can bind their mobile phone numbers before viewing courses. After binding, the referee can get a 7-day platform VIP experience card or a designated course redemption voucher. If the referrer completes 10 recommendations, he or she will get a no-threshold coupon and a 30-day membership experience card.

Alternatively, in order to increase user conversion rate, an educational institution launched an activity whereby recommending 3 people to pay will give points, and recommending 10 people to pay will give discount packages, thereby incentivizing recommenders to attract new conversions through different levels.

Points, coupons, membership/family card benefits, etc. are all based on the teacher's online education platform and courses for rewards, and ultimately they all attract traffic to their own platforms. The benefits of doing so are:

1. Low customer acquisition cost: Points, coupons, membership benefits, etc. are ultimately used to guide users to learn courses on the platform. The courses have been prepared in the early stage, and the marginal cost of subsequent use is basically zero. Distributing them to one more user does not incur new costs. It is a reward content that can be used continuously, which is what is called a "free growth activity."

2. Low risk of cheating and high quality of customers: There is basically no cheating for the sake of courses. At the same time, since the rewards are mainly online courses, it can more accurately attract users with real learning needs to participate, and the quality of users is relatively high.

3. Less social pressure and stronger willingness of users to participate: After sharing, the referee can also get corresponding rewards. At the same time, the rewards are courses, membership cards, etc., which directly lead to courses that old users recognize and think are valuable. Old users are more motivated by altruism and reciprocity, providing useful resources to friends, hoping that their friends will gain something after learning. Therefore, users have less social pressure to share and are more willing to participate in activities.

4. Increase conversion rate by using sunk costs: After being recommended, new users will receive rewards such as course redemption coupons or platform VIP weekly cards, and will most likely start to learn the course. After a period of study, they will not only feel the value of the course and increase their recognition of the platform, but also form sunk costs, which will make users more willing to continue learning the course and increase the conversion rate of subsequent full-priced courses.

For example, an education and training institution sets up an activity in which "old users recommend 3 friends, the recommender gets 30 days of VIP benefits, and the recommended friends get 7 days of membership benefits." Generally speaking, it is difficult to complete all courses in 7 days. Recommended users can participate in the activities themselves, recommend them to their friends, and then obtain rewards such as 30-day membership rights to continue studying courses, thereby increasing the stickiness between users and the platform, and further improving subsequent course renewal and conversion rates.

In general, how can educational institutions achieve traffic and increase followers without spending money?

First, build your own online education platform, upload high-quality courses to the platform, and then conduct activities based on the courses to attract traffic and increase fans, such as "gifts for recommendations", etc., and set the prizes as points, coupons, membership rights and other virtual prizes closely related to the platform. This will reduce the cost of the activity and accurately guide traffic, attract traffic with courses, and guide users to experience the courses through rewards such as VIP weekly cards and monthly cards, thereby forming sunk costs and increasing subsequent conversion rates.

The entire activity rules and procedures are direct and simple, and user participation is smooth. It can well guide users to follow the official account, actively invite new users, etc., through four key steps: building a store, uploading courses - setting up activities (in addition to gift-giving for recommendations, you can also choose group buying, bargaining, and fan-increasing tools, etc.) - user active sharing - new user experience teaching services, to achieve efficient and accurate traffic and fan growth.

Have you learned the “free-cost” growth activities?