Gaotu, a benchmark in the private sector, rarely talks about growth: Now we must and can only tilt towards the entire domain!

In the wave of digital transformation, brand growth strategies are undergoing unprecedented changes. With the change of user behavior and the intensification of market competition, omni-channel marketing has become a new battlefield for brand growth. This article reveals how brands must and can only lean on omni-channel to achieve growth in the current market environment.

Now, more and more brands and teams are beginning to intensively discuss and pay attention to global operations.

When discussing topics with more guests at the conference, I found that everyone mentioned the whole domain. It can be said that the industry discussion around "whole domain growth" is entering a new height.

Why are people paying so much attention to the whole domain? Gaotu co-founder Luo Bin and Jianshi mentioned his views, which may be due to several changes in the external environment:

First, users’ online time has almost reached its peak, and brands need to grab users’ attention and time in the stock market; second, the recommendation logic of information flow has broken industry boundaries, and brands from different industries are “fighting” on the same stage for cross-industry competition, which is unprecedentedly fierce. Third, the cost of brand placement is rising irreversibly, and the survival space is further compressed.

At the same time, users are becoming more cautious in their decision-making. These changes actually put higher demands on brand growth:

Today, there are very few brands that can support overall growth with just one or two simple channels, so brands have actively or passively entered the omni-channel marketing stage!

It is worth mentioning that the education industry has always been at the forefront of private and global innovation. Taking Luo Bin’s observation as a starting point, we can draw more new inspiration for global layout.

Next, let’s follow Luo Bin’s perspective to see what new trends are there in the entire domain. By the way, he will also share more observations and thoughts at the Jianshi Annual Private Domain Conference on December 5. Welcome to scan the QR code to sign up and have a face-to-face chat on site.

1. We have entered the era of omni-channel marketing

I think the core logic of the global market is that the market environment and competition behind it have entered a new stage.

First, the total amount of time users spend online on media networks has reached a ceiling.

The population growth of mobile Internet has stopped, and the time people spend online has reached a relatively high level. Therefore, it is difficult for the total amount of time users spend online to increase significantly.

In this case, all online marketing companies need to compete for these limited existing resources.

Second, competition in the information flow era has become cross-industry competition.

In the search era, people may compete more in niche areas. For example, the education industry may compete more with its peers for online media resources, and gamers may compete with other gamers, but the competition is not that fierce.

However, in the information flow era, due to the recommendation logic, the content that users see does not have a clear industry direction, so now it has become a cross-industry competition. For example, the education industry may have to compete with game companies, e-commerce companies, etc. for traffic, which greatly increases the degree of competition.

Third, the cost of brand placement is getting higher and higher. The revenue of all Internet media platforms themselves also needs to continue to grow. In the past, in the incremental stage, the growth of the platform came more from the growth of the number of users and the length of time spent on the platform. Unit user revenue is not necessarily the only or most important driving factor.

But now, the number of users, user time, and DAU of most media platforms are not growing, so how can they increase their revenue? One way is to increase it by selling commercial advertising space; another is to increase it by more precise resource allocation; and another is to actively or passively raise the bidding level to a very high level, resulting in higher and higher prices, which is an almost irreversible trend.

Therefore, it is difficult for many brands. This is actually a process of competition. In the Internet media, people may have thought it was an opportunity in the past, but now they may not be so optimistic. Today, it is difficult for any brand to support its overall growth or continuation through simple one or two channels.

Therefore, our own experience and the trend of the entire industry show that everyone will actively or passively enter the omni-channel marketing stage.

2. Four trends in the era of omni-channel marketing

After entering the omni-channel marketing stage, there are four obvious trends that need attention.

Trend 1: Channels are more diversified.

The logic of omni-channel marketing is that no matter what type of media platform, what type of channel, online or offline channel, top, middle or tail, or even individual, as long as the intermediary can help you reach the overall customer, it should be the direction of your attention.

So for us, we will basically try all the ways we can think of. All kinds of mainstream channels on the market, whether it is search, information flow, live broadcast, or non-standard channel cooperation, recommendations based on the individual level, etc. may be involved, because there is no predetermined and definite model here.

We also have different teams that will constantly try and test based on their own business situations. If the data shows good, we will continue to invest; if the data is not good, we may reduce investment or choose to give up. Whether a channel is good or not is closely related to your products and services and target groups.

Trend 2: Paid and non-paid methods should be used in combination.

Under omni-channel marketing, you cannot just focus on paid channels. Paid channels are equivalent to a kind of purchase. They operate through a business model. The entire communication cost, operation cost, and labor cost are relatively low because the complexity of communication and operation is replaced by the cost of fees. Some of these channels may still have your target audience, which is also a good stage, but their price level has reached a state that you can hardly afford.

Therefore, today, under the framework of global marketing, you need to conduct more natural flow operations or low-cost marketing with "content marketing" attributes. You cannot rely entirely on paid purchases, but need to replace some free or low-cost traffic by providing more effective user value to media platforms and users, and form a combination with your paid traffic.

Therefore, you need to make a good combination of paid and non-paid methods, otherwise it will be difficult to support the entire cost structure if you rely entirely on purchasing. In essence, both can be independently accounted for. As long as your accounts can be calculated, there is no problem whether the paid proportion is 70%, 50% or 30%. Because the paid proportion is mutually influenced by many variables, such as scale, stability, quality, cost, etc. Cost is only one consideration dimension in the whole process, and you also need to consider some other dimensions at the same time, so the non-paid proportion is not the higher the better, it may also bring other derivative problems.

Trend three: Pay more attention to private domain operations and user life cycle value management.

Different people may have different definitions of "private domain". Traditionally, when people mention private domain, they are referring to self-owned platforms such as WeChat or APP. But now we also see that account operations on some third-party platforms can also be strictly considered as private domain. For example, if you operate your own account on Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Douyin, you can have certain control over the user operations and content publishing of these platforms.

This is also a kind of private domain to some extent. This kind of private domain requires you to pay more attention to the long-term relationship with users and the management of the user's life cycle value. In other words, after you acquire a user, in addition to controlling the cost of acquiring the user, you also need to work harder to tap the user's life cycle value. This is a big challenge for many teams.

Trend 4: The sales chain needs to be optimized as a whole.

Omni-channel marketing is not just about market-level operations, but also about achieving commercialization and sales revenue. Therefore, in addition to focusing on front-end marketing, we also need to pay attention to how users ultimately make back-end purchases.

I believe that everyone who is engaged in growth or marketing today needs to position the entire product in the back end, bring the product value forward, and connect and penetrate the entire link from the public domain to the private domain, to the sales link, and then to the repurchase link. This will improve the overall marketing efficiency or operating efficiency, thereby offsetting the problem of rising costs and declining efficiency at the front end.

Based on the external environment, people may have thought more in the public domain. Today, you may need to dig deeper into your internal business chain, that is, how to improve efficiency internally. Because the cost of acquiring customers externally has become higher, if you rely entirely on the public domain, your path will become narrower and narrower.

So, when we talk about omni-channel marketing today, I think it is actually a broad concept that requires joint efforts from the above aspects to achieve better results.

3. Insights into User Habits under Global Changes

What has changed on the user side? I have a few observations:

Change 1: Users have become more cautious in making decisions.

This is related to many factors, such as the current environment, so users are more willing to make comparisons when purchasing and will prolong the decision-making time. This is a relatively big change.

Change 2: Users’ requirements for marketing content creation are increasing.

Since online marketing is very powerful now, there are too many marketing methods available to users. Therefore, in this case, if you use a simple and crude way to contact users, many users may subconsciously reject it, which will have a greater negative impact on the marketing effect.

Therefore, it is also very important for marketing content to be native, interesting, and valuable. In other words, even for advertising materials, users should at least not be disgusted and at least be willing to watch or listen for a few more seconds. Therefore, the requirements for content creation will be higher.

Change three: Users may be more willing to listen to relatively neutral and objective third-party evaluations and opinions.

Nowadays, users may not have high trust in the information sent by brands themselves, because brands are just talking to themselves, and even if you have the endorsement of an authoritative organization, it may not be so credible. So people may be more willing to see real feedback and reviews, but this part is also "mixed", so for users, the cost of the selection and decision-making process will also become higher.

Therefore, what brands need to consider is how to make their own voice, third-party endorsement or the user’s own voice become a comprehensive information to help consumers make more efficient decisions.

4. Competition in the education sector is also global competition

The online education track itself is different from other tracks. It is essentially a service-oriented, delivery-oriented industry with a relatively high delivery cycle and complexity. Therefore, under such characteristics, it is more difficult to effectively achieve product value.

Aside from the competition at the marketing level, the most important competition is the product itself. The same course can be very different between a good one and an average one, and the user's learning experience, effect, and efficiency vary greatly. In this case, you can win by the product itself, because the market is far from being homogenized.

Therefore, the most important competition is still around users. That is, how to make their learning efficiency, experience and results better, and we need to spend more effort in this regard. Other things, such as channel promotion, are amplifiers, and they are all leveraged on the basis of products.

Back to the track, it is actually an all-round competition. You cannot lag behind in products, services, marketing, operations, and the construction of the entire organization.

For us, some of these things may change faster, such as marketing strategies and channel trends. We need to be more agile in capturing such changes, adapting to them, and seizing some opportunities.

But some things have a long change cycle, or the underlying changes are not big, such as how to help students learn better, get the learning results they expect, and have a good experience. This is a relatively stable demand, and we need to continuously innovate and iterate our products, so we need to be more long-term.

It also includes how to build the entire organization, because we are a labor-intensive industry, more service-oriented. So, how do you recruit, train, motivate, and select excellent partners to become managers... This is a complex problem that needs to be solved continuously for any relatively large-scale educational institution. For us, we still need to exert efforts in all dimensions, but the rhythm and methods of exerting efforts in different dimensions should be differentiated.

What is the biggest challenge for our industry now? Users are never satisfied with the current standards. User standards will become higher and higher. At the same time, competition on the supply side is more intense, costs are higher, and the complexity of solving problems is also increasing.

Now it is a double dilemma. Users want better things, but at the same time, the difficulty of achieving these better things is higher. In this case, it is impossible to meet user needs and generate income and profits efficiently through simple products, operations and management.

When you cannot control the external environment, customer expectations, and overall competition, the only thing you can control is actually how to improve the efficiency of each part within your own scope, how to do a good job of internal operations and management, and how to provide high-quality customer satisfaction and product delivery. These are things you can control, and through these, you can hedge against the unfavorable factors mentioned above.

5. Prediction of growth opportunities and dividends in 2025

The opportunities in 2025 are from two perspectives:

First, do what you haven’t done before. For example, if you didn’t do Xiaohongshu before, do you want to do it now? If you didn’t do Bilibili before, do you want to do it now? Second, do what you did before better. Optimize and improve what you have already done, such as live broadcasting, account operation, IP creation, and short video content creation.

Today, we cannot expect to solve all problems with one or two big moves. Different companies have different situations. For a company of our size and stage, it is difficult to support the development of the entire company with one or two opportunities. But for some small and beautiful companies, it may be enough to seize these opportunities. However, these one or two opportunities also need to be identified from a wide range of opportunities, and they must be related to your own business, people and capabilities.

So, in terms of track bonuses, the opportunities you see may not necessarily be your opportunities. Can you do what others do well? Is it suitable for you? Is it really applicable in your track?

In 2025, at least on media platforms, there is no sign of a new media ecosystem, so everyone may still focus on information flow, short videos, search, etc., especially since the time and share of some platform media like Xiaohongshu and Video Account are increasing, so should we consider participating more?

In addition, in addition to standardized channels, you should also spend more time on some non-standard playing methods and spend more time on internal training. This may be more effective than constantly seizing some bonuses that seem to be "opportunities".

The dividends always belong to a minority of people, and the dividends you see may not be your dividends. Only the improvement of your own inner strength can be transformed into your ability.