How to design an online traffic-generating activity from scratch?

I was slapped in the face by Double 11. I think the transaction volume on this year’s Double 11 will definitely not be as good as in previous years. First, the rules of the activity are too complicated, and second, because of the epidemic this year, everyone's consumption will be more rational. But unexpectedly, Taobao and Tmall’s performance this year was 498.2 billion, an increase of 103.2 billion compared with the same period last year, with a growth rate of 26%. Moreover, it is understood that this is the highest growth rate in the past three years. Without exploring the secrets behind this, we can see from this data alone that the power of online activities is amazing.

Yes, nowadays there is almost no industry that does not conduct online activities, and the education and training industry is no exception, but is the execution effective? The principal of a third-tier city in Liaoning told me worriedly: "We really don't know how to do online traffic generation activities. There are a lot of tools, solutions, and cases on the Internet. It's like the cooking pot, vegetables, and seasonings are all prepared for us, just waiting for us to cook, but we don't know how to control the heat, and we will eventually burn the vegetables."

Every principal hopes to use the Internet to bring new growth opportunities to the institution, but they suffer from the lack of Internet genes and the ability to operate online activities and control processes. Therefore, many times, they can only follow the trend and use other people's activity templates, but the result is like a beauty imitating a beauty without success.

To be honest, the theoretical system of online traffic generation activities is too large, and it may take 2-3 books to fully explain it. If I go into detail, it may not be suitable for novices. Therefore, today I will use the simplest framework and theory that everyone can understand to explain how to design an online traffic generation activity.

This issue’s content is mainly divided into three parts: the monetary cost of user participation, activity gameplay, and data collection points.

1. User participation monetary cost

In order to expand traffic, some organizations directly set the fee to 1 yuan or even free of charge. I personally do not recommend this approach because there is an anchoring effect in psychology, that is, the user's perception of you will be very dependent on the impression they have when they first come into contact with you. In other words, if you offer it for free or at a super low price at the beginning, he is anchoring that you are a bargain. But we know that the average order value in the education and training industry is not low. The cost of purchasing full-priced courses in the later stage is several thousand yuan, which is in stark contrast to the previous free and 1 yuan courses. Users will feel they are being cheated.

A mother close to me told me her experience. During the epidemic, free online courses flooded in. She had never signed up for an online course before and once thought that online courses were very cheap. But one day, she was attracted by Youdao Ledu’s 9.9-yuan induction course. After giving her child a few lessons, she was quite satisfied. At first she thought the regular course would only cost a few hundred yuan, but she didn’t expect the teacher to tell her it would cost more than 2,000 yuan, so she decisively did not sign up.

Of course, if it is set too high, such as exceeding three digits, it will raise the customer's purchasing decision threshold, reduce traffic, and fail to achieve the purpose of attracting traffic.

How much money should be set? Here’s a reference price for you: between 20 yuan and 30 yuan. This data did not come out of thin air, but the data report of WeChat Pay shows that it is the payment amount with the highest proportion of payment transactions and the lowest threshold for customers to make purchase decisions. In other words, users basically do not regard this amount of money as money.

2. How to Play

Here I would like to show you a negative example. This is an International Women’s Day event held by a certain organization.

To be honest, with so many rules, it takes more than 3 minutes to read and understand them, not to mention implementing them. The result of the activity was terrible.

Therefore, the simpler the actions, the better, preferably no more than 3 actions.

There are now many online tools that can simplify user actions and help organizations quickly launch online activities through template applications such as raffles, group buying, and flash sales.

For example, Fanke and Youzan are commonly used in the entire industry, and Xiaozhutong, the school manager, is specifically targeted at the education and training industry.

Moreover, the beauty of today’s applications is that they can be done with just a mobile phone. For example, if you search for the above keywords in the WeChat mini program, the mini program will pop up, and you can quickly create an event.

There are also various forms of activities: registration, group buying, flash sales, bargaining, lucky draws, distribution...

Group buying and flash sales are very common. Here I want to focus on the distribution methods that are less used in the traditional education and training industry.

The distribution method can be described as an activity that combines brand and effect. What does that mean? It stratifies users into purchasing users and advertising users. Users who are not short of money will buy the course directly after seeing it and they are attracted by it. Users who do not buy the course can share it. After someone buys it, the commission will be credited to their account immediately.

The originator of this kind of application in the education sector should be NetEase. At the beginning of 2018, NetEase held an event called "NetEase Drama Masters Open Classes", with its products NetEase Cloud, Kaola, Youdao and others participating in the event, with relevant marketing and operations managers giving lectures. The original price of this course was 199 yuan, but it was on sale for 39.9 yuan, and it supported three-level distribution, with the proportions of 60% and 30% respectively:

This led to an unprecedented surge in the enthusiasm for sharing among Internet practitioners, which caused a sensation at the time. To be honest, I was also scammed back then, but I am the type of person who is stupid, rich (no wonder), and thin-skinned, so I did not distribute it, but directly purchased the course.

What problem does this gameplay solve? The first batch of seed users in cold start. It can enable your employees, even the cleaning lady, to actively participate and generate fission autonomously. Regarding the detailed design of fission, I will continue to explain in detail in the subsequent content.

Deng Feihong, operations director of Xiaozhutong, a school management platform, revealed: The distribution method on the platform is indeed worth a try, but most principals are still stuck in the idea of ​​using full-priced courses for distribution. The transaction threshold is too high, so it is better to use lead-generating courses for distribution. According to her, an organization with 100 people in Beijing used this distribution method to attract more than 140 targeted users in one day.

Of course, if your organization tends to be conservative, I suggest increasing the added value of the event to reduce the decision-making cost for users. At present, there are two common practices in the education sector, and I have personally experienced them:

• Refund series: Full refund if you are not satisfied within 30 days, full refund or deduction of XX tuition fee if you insist on completing the trial course
• Gift series: gifts of the same value as the purchase amount, such as stationery gift boxes, toys, etc.

I'll also tell you in secret: don't forget that it is the parents who pay. If you can give some items that the parents like with your heart, the effect will be better. As for what specific gifts are given, you can find the answer from my first issue, “12 Tips for Online Traffic Generation for Training Institutions (1): User Portraits are Nuclear Weapons”.

3. Data Buried Points

Regarding online traffic-generating activities, there are two kinds of voices. One is: it has no effect, so we won’t do it anymore; the other is: even if it has no effect, everyone is doing it, and if I don’t do it, I’ll seem like I’m out of place. Both of these states will cause waste. What will be wasted? data.

The path for users to participate in activities is in the shape of a funnel. Taking group buying activities as an example, the traffic will become smaller with each downward path.

What use is this path to us? By looking at the conversion rate of each link, we can deduce the loss of each link. If the loss is too large, for example, more than 50%, it means that this link needs to be adjusted. With this idea in mind, we can unravel the data.

For example, after an institution used the Xiaozhutong group buying tool of the school manager, the data feedback obtained was as follows:

There were 744 visitors, 337 participants and 81 groups opened. Here, the consumption rates of each level are 55% and 76% respectively.

Note: Loss rate calculation: 100% minus (number of participants/number of visitors)

We can draw a conclusion that the two links of this group buying activity, especially the link of attracting users to form groups, need to be optimized urgently. Is it because the prizes are not stimulating enough? Or is it because the number of group members required is too high? You can optimize the details of each step in future activities and see what the data feedback is.

In fact, generally speaking, data review is a section that is only involved after the event is over, but I focus on it in the event design, hoping to attract the attention of the marketing personnel of the training institutions so that they can establish their own professional event planning image in front of colleagues and leaders, and not waste every event, and become more and more in-depth in the market and gain insights into users.

Author: Auntie Cai

Source: Auntie Cai