How can offline education and training personal accounts build a WeChat private domain pool?

In the past two years, private domain traffic has become a hot topic whenever the Internet is discussed. As online traffic has been divided up by major platforms, everyone has fallen into the distress of expensive and fake traffic. Even though public accounts, WeChat groups, and Moments are considered to be the closest form to private domain traffic, they are also criticized as "pseudo private domains."

After all, it still relies on the WeChat ecosystem. A rule change by the big boss can deal a heavy blow to your previous operations. An obvious example is the modification of the public account recommendation mechanism some time ago. It is no longer recommended according to the chronological order of the posting of the tweets themselves, but is pushed based on the readers' reading preferences and interaction frequency. This makes it no longer applicable for many public accounts to post tweets during prime time to increase the number of readers; the ban on WetTool and the explicit regulations prohibiting the circle of friends from inducing check-ins have caught some institutions off guard.

Private domain traffic is eternal. Everyone wants to encircle the traffic and establish their own territory, and have the final say in their own territory.

However, for small and medium-sized institutions, when exploring the capture and operation of private domain traffic, it is recommended to leverage WeChat to save time and be more efficient, because WeChat traffic, both existing and incremental, is more extensive and easier to obtain, and WeChat's huge product system is sufficient to support the operational needs of small and medium-sized institutions, and there are no cross-platform barriers to the mutual conduction of traffic among various product systems. Even if the big boss changes the rules, as long as you don’t cross the red line and abide by the rules, you can still obtain the benefits that belong to small individuals brought by the WeChat ecosystem.

In the traditional education and training industry, after offline operations were impacted by the epidemic, everyone realized the integration of online and offline businesses, and combined their own resources to explore and move forward on the road of building an OMO (Online-Merge-Offline) education ecosystem. In fact, OMO is possible in every link of the education and training industry, including enrollment, research, teaching, operation, and service. Customer acquisition and service are relatively low-threshold links for OMO development. Unlike research, teaching, and academic affairs, the two do not require lesson plan revision, tool platform construction, data integration, teacher training, etc. Customer acquisition and service can use WeChat groups and Moments to conduct online sales and operation exploration and complete a light OMO integration. Therefore, using work or teacher IDs to add potential students’ WeChat accounts has become the first step for offline institutions to construct their own private domains.

For offline institutions, adding potential students’ WeChat accounts is not particularly difficult compared to other industries. The core is placing orders and repeat purchases, which is the operation and conversion of private domain traffic.

Through my observations on the operations of WeChat accounts of educational and training institutions, I found that there is still much room for improvement in the operations of personal educational and training accounts. This article will focus on the operation and conversion of traffic in the WeChat field by educational institutions.

01 The content of the WeChat Moments of personal education and training accounts is too simple and random

The circle of friends is naturally endowed with the aura of super traffic, and from this, the once-popular micro-business was born. Therefore, the circle of friends is no longer just a personal space for expressing personal emotions. Everyone realizes that it is an important window for building personal image and promoting business. However, at present, the content in the circle of friends of personal education accounts is generally monotonous and the posts are disorderly. People tend to focus on displaying the results of publishing organizations, regular classroom presentations, and various promotional event posters. You should know that the content operations of WeChat businesses in the circle of friends are planned and proportional. They prefer personal life + selling goods + practical information to form the content of the circle of friends. This proportion of content arrangement is intended to create an approachable, flesh-and-blood, and trustworthy character image.

It may also be a reference for personal education accounts. The role of an education and training institution cannot be just a cold imparter of knowledge, but should be an ally that parents trust and a close friend that students can confide in. Based on this role positioning, we can add practical sharing of this learning project instead of just chicken soup for the soul, evaluation sharing of similar products, evaluation of our own products, recording of open classes, private evaluation by students, interpretation of education policies, analysis of educational psychology, etc.

As for some of the similar chicken soups for parents, I think there is no need for them. For example, the proportion of chicken soups that motivate parents to persevere, urge and encourage their children can be reduced. This kind of chicken soup is the same no matter which family makes it. I will not order your lesson package just because it is made by your family. On the contrary, highlighting the institution’s teaching materials, teaching, services and other features should be the correct way to open the circle of friends. Output a little valuable content every day to make the content in your circle of friends more valuable and make the image of your organization more professional and trustworthy.

Maybe someone will say that our members have class groups, and we will make extended summaries on teaching in the class groups. However, our circle of friends is not just for current students, but also for many more potential students who have added WeChat before. How to convert potential students? Moments is a good way to reach them. Only when your Moments are valuable and interesting, parents will not ignore or even delete you among the many education and training WeChat accounts.

Education is a special rational consumption. Parents will not place an order just because of a single exposure to hard advertising. Hard advertising is more suitable for large institutions with deep pockets to spend money to create momentum, but the ROI of investment and diversion is not high. The customer acquisition costs of online giant institutions remain high, and most of them are in a loss-making operating state. For this kind of gameplay, small and medium-sized institutions are simply out of reach; but small institutions have their own way of playing, and serving parents within a radius of 10 kilometers is the most pragmatic measure. For small institutions, the long-term and silent publicity in the circle of friends can reach the minds of parents, thereby promoting the conversion of potential students. Therefore, the first step to building private domain traffic is to systematically and systematically optimize the content of the circle of friends and continuously output valuable and distinctive content.

02Carry out activities targeting potential students, design plots, and promote conversion

Currently, the conversion opportunities for potential students are limited to one or two auditions, followed by follow-up to facilitate conversion. If they are not converted, they will remain in the list of potential students and will only be reached by content in the circle of friends. However, content marketing alone cannot effectively improve conversions; both content and activities are indispensable .

The organization usually focuses on the activities of existing students, but we can also carry out activities for potential students, which can give potential students more opportunities to get closer to and get to know the organization. Every face-to-face communication is an opportunity for transformation.

Activities can be free or for a fee. Organizing meaningful weekend parent-child activities provides nearby parents with an additional place to engage in parent-child activities, and they are happy to do so even if there is a fee. Of course, the successful organization of an event requires the coordination of human and material resources as well as past experience, but if done well it can not only attract traffic and conversions, it may even become an additional value-added service for the organization.

In addition to non-teaching activities, small course packages can also be packaged for various different groups of people: trial packages for first-time members, small course packages for members who have tried the course but have not ordered the full-priced package, recorded course packages that come with the full-priced package, etc.

Recorded classes are a very suitable product for traffic generation. They can allow parents to have a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the institution's curriculum system and teaching effectiveness, help dispel concerns, and encourage quick orders. This is actually a profitable investment for institutions. It is not only suitable for offline traffic generation, but also for online business traffic generation.

After determining the drainage product, it is necessary to rigorously design the operation strategy , referring to the script design of online institutions from customer acquisition - conversion - trial - formal transaction. Each link such as joining the group, checking in, sharing, flash sales, coupons, etc. is closely linked, supplemented by private chat, distribution of materials, and personalized guidance to achieve the conversion of potential students.

03Create student levels and use level points to encourage cross-subject renewals and other diversified businesses

In fact, online learning platforms pay great attention to the division of levels, one for motivation and the other for a sense of belonging. In contrast, offline, children collect stamps based on their classroom performance and exchange them for small gifts at the front desk. Children are happy for a while, but soon forget about it after playing. Parents are not really interested in this form of points. In terms of offline level points, we still have a lot to do:

First, different discounts can be offered before the next semester's renewal based on the completion rate points : this can both stimulate the consumption of classes and give parents renewal discounts, rather than the one-size-fits-all policy currently adopted by many institutions, where old students can enjoy discounts if they renew within a certain period of time;

Secondly, points can be exchanged for vouchers: small bars serving drinks and snacks can be introduced in educational institutions with sufficient space, pan-entertainment business of the educational complex can be developed, or cross-industry alliance activities can be carried out nearby. Points can be exchanged for consumption vouchers. These are all business of borrowing flowers to pay tribute to Buddha, which will not increase additional expenses for the institution, but the points make parents feel the real benefits.

04Medium -sized chain organizations with sufficient funds try systematic operations

The operation not only focuses on WeChat groups and Moments, but also actively embraces the WeChat ecosystem, deploys mini-programs, tries video accounts, and systematically builds an operation system . In particular, unifying the offline chain school business through mini programs, integrating shopping malls, points, activities, and live broadcasts, is a direction for exploring online operations.

05Focus on building the brand of the organization

In fact, if you think about it carefully, private domain traffic is not a new thing. It just moves the previous customer maintenance online. In the past, customer maintenance meant visiting, phone calls, emails, and mailing some of the latest company news to let customers know. Customer traffic was concentrated in the hands of salesmen, and when the salesmen left, they took a group of customers with them.

The channels are more accessible now, but the essence of the business will not change, especially in the education and training industry that relies on word-of-mouth communication. The institution controls the content output and high service standards for students instead of relying solely on famous teachers to recruit students. This is the foundation for the institution to build its own private domain traffic .

Don’t avoid it as soon as you hear the word “brand” and think that small institutions are not suitable for the branding route. In fact, there are not many leading educational and training institutions, and most of them are regional small and medium-sized institutions. As long as they build their own brand effect in the region where the institution is located and rely on word-of-mouth communication from students, they will be a powerful tool for constructing private domain traffic .

Conclusion

The service scope of offline institutions is mainly within a radius of 10 kilometers. Unless they want to conduct online teaching or sell goods online, it is meaningless to blindly pursue non-precise traffic growth. This is why it is not recommended for small and medium-sized institutions to spend too much manpower and material resources to operate non-regional and non-vertical platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou. For offline institutions, online traffic must be converted into offline consumption to generate benefits. In fact, the current students and potential students of the institutions are almost all concentrated in the institutions’ WeChat accounts. Therefore, it is pragmatic to deepen services and optimize content in the WeChat area that gathers the most traffic.

Author: Nian Shuang

Source: Microstep Perspective