5700+ words to analyze how the online education industry builds private domain operation processes? Understanding this point can improve performance by 50%

How to build a private domain operation process for online education? The article explains in three aspects, from why to how. The author proposes to focus on studying customer portraits before building private domain operations, and finally concludes that clarifying customer portraits is the most important point in all operation links, and it is also a factor that greatly affects the conversion rate of the link. Interested students can read on.

1. Why does the online education industry conduct private domain operations?

1. Industry shocks lead to accelerated internal circulation

In 2020-2021, the online education industry ushered in a wave of large-scale growth, with a market size of 257.3 billion yuan and an average growth rate of 35.5%, which was partly due to the catalysis of the epidemic.

However, on July 24, 2021, the General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Further Reducing the Homework Burden and Off-campus Training Burden of Students in Compulsory Education", which means that the double reduction policy was officially implemented, which dealt a heavy blow to the big players in the education industry: educational institutions in the K12 segment.

Major K12 education and training institutions have transformed into quality education, adult education and other sub-divisions, which has led to the acceleration of competition in other sub-divisions that have been retained, and the traditional enrollment method has basically become ineffective . As a result, companies must find a more efficient operating model to mitigate the serious impact of internal competition.

2. Customer acquisition costs continue to increase, and it is difficult to balance income and expenditure

It is also because of the accelerated internal circulation of the industry that the customer acquisition cost of the education and training industry has become increasingly high . Of course, it is not just the education and training industry. As mentioned repeatedly in previous articles, the disappearance of the Internet traffic dividend has also led to high customer acquisition costs in the overall market.

Therefore, how to retain precious traffic, activate dormant traffic, and retain existing traffic is more important than ever.

3. The establishment of private domain enables [marketing + service] to kill two birds with one stone

The essence of the education industry is actually selling content and services, and the delivery cycle after payment is relatively long compared to other industries. Therefore, in this case, if you want to build a good reputation, you need to provide good services.

For some fast-moving consumer goods and e-commerce industries, it may be OK to pay for the goods at the same time. Customers buy a real product. The establishment of private domain is to continue to plant grass for users after the transaction node has passed, strengthen the brand impression, and guide the next transaction node. However, in the education industry, especially for high-priced system courses, customers actually buy a series of subsequent services.

After the customer pays, service delivery begins, not ends . Class reminders, Q&A before and after class, homework delivery, after-class materials, learning status inquiries, etc., all require the class teacher to repeatedly reach out to the customer in a long service cycle after the transaction, build trust and satisfaction, and pave the way for the next conversion.

If this series of teaching, training and evaluation actions are not based on the establishment of standardized service processes in the private domain, providing high-quality services will consume a lot of manpower costs and be extremely difficult to implement.

4. High customer price and high decision-making level lead to difficulty in transaction conversion and long conversion cycle

Since the average customer price is high, the results are difficult to predict, and learning itself is energy-consuming, customers are more cautious when choosing a course for the first time, fearing that they will spend money and energy but not get results, and their money will be wasted. This also leads to a long decision cycle for customers, and during the decision-making process, they will collect relevant information through various channels to support their decision-making.

Therefore, in the marketing process of the education and training industry, customers are usually allowed to experience the course service for free or at a low price for a short period of time before the formal conversion to quickly build trust. After trust is established, the formal course conversion can take place. At this time, it is extremely important to actively establish a trusting relationship with customers in the private domain.

2. Customer portrait: Study the customer first, then build a private domain

Some companies may see others start to do private domain business and think that they need to do private domain business and they will definitely make money. However, if they do private domain business blindly, that is, without analyzing customer needs, adding customers on WeChat, and then roughly promoting products, then private domain business will not only fail to make money, but also drive away customers, becoming the annoying "micro-business" in previous years.

We must never forget the essence of building a private domain: to establish a trusting relationship that is comfortable for both parties and to extend the customer life cycle .

Therefore, if you want to establish a truly "private domain", the first thing you need to do is to understand your customers and study the customer profiles that your products target. Only in this way can you know what customers need and what they like, and create products and advertisements precisely based on their needs, and customers will naturally continue to come to you.

What is a customer portrait?

Some people may think that customer portrait is a collection of customer demographic attributes (as shown above), such as name, age, gender, home address, hobbies, role, etc. Some people will focus on the psychological factors of customers, such as personality, values, lifestyle, concepts, etc., and spend a lot of time looking for various research reports to make a user portrait that looks perfect.

But in reality, with this information, do you know how to sell products to customers? Most likely, you still have to guess . Therefore, most of the information is not very useful for understanding how customers make purchasing decisions.

In my opinion, the ultimate goal of customer portrait is to design a more useful and efficient marketing process . The most critical points are: priority motivation, success factors, known obstacles, buyer journey, and decision criteria. It is also called the " Five Rings Model ".

What is the customer portrait of the education industry? Although they are in the same education industry, the customer portraits of different segments are different, such as adult education, K12 education, early childhood quality education, etc. However, there are also commonalities, so I will only briefly talk about the commonalities of the customer portraits here. A more specific portrait requires a survey at the company business level.

1. Priority Motivation: Why do customers buy?

Priority dynamics lets you know when customers are willing to contact you? Which customers are willing to buy?

Customers in the education industry want to buy educational products because they are dissatisfied with the current situation and worried about the future. For example, mothers are dissatisfied with their children's test scores and worry that they will not be able to get into a good university in the future; people in the workplace are dissatisfied with their salaries and worry about being laid off in the future; college students worry about their future prospects, etc.

2. Success Factors: The ideal state that customers expect to achieve after purchasing

Success factors allow you to stop guessing about the customer's intentions and convince them directly through their expectations. Customers in the education industry hope that their current efforts will be rewarded in the future.

For example, a mother who spends 6,000 yuan to enroll her child in math classes hopes that her child will get better grades in the exam one month later and go to a better school; for example, a working person who spends 8,000 yuan to enroll in a vocational training institution hopes that after three months of study, he will be able to find a higher-paying job, and so on.

3. Known barriers: Why don’t customers buy your product/service?

Knowing the obstacles can help you know what to do to get the customer back.

Customers in the education industry have many reasons for not purchasing, the most common of which are:

Distrustful type: Feels it is unreliable, not sure if it will work after spending so much money; or lacks confidence in oneself, not sure if one will put in the effort to learn; No money type: Not enough money right now; Hesitant type: Wants to see if other companies have cheaper prices or more successful cases; Wants to ask friends or family and discuss it; etc.

4. Buyer’s Journey: What research do customers do before buying?

The buyer’s journey will let you know how to design marketing campaigns so that they feel your product is the best fit.

To add, the buyer's journey is more targeted at high-unit-price, high-decision-making products. Not all purchases go through this process. For example, when consumers buy a tube of common toothpaste, they will skip the homework step and go directly to the purchase decision stage.

However, this is why building trust is so important. If consumers can skip this stage when purchasing, then for merchants, the difficulty of sales will be greatly reduced and the efficiency will be greatly improved. Usually, the buyer's journey can be further broken down into the following stages:

Back to the education industry products, since most of the profit-making education products are high-priced and high-decision products, customers will still do some in-depth research before purchasing. So it is more appropriate to use this model.

For customers in the education industry, the more common buyer journey is: ask colleagues and friends, seek recommendations from acquaintances, and see how other friends in your social circle who have the same needs as you make their choices. If this friend recommends that the results are good and worth recommending, then you will most likely not look at other brands and will go directly from the awareness group to the selection group and just follow the trend.

This is the most typical example in the education industry: referrals from acquaintances. More than half of the customers of the K12 education unicorn company vipkid come from referrals, and the conversion rate is extremely high. If you can't get effective information from acquaintances, you will search for recommendations on the website.

For example, if you search "Which institution is reliable for postgraduate entrance examination in politics?" on the content platform Zhihu, if you see a recommendation case written by a student who has already scored high in politics and has done the same thing as you, then it is likely to arouse your interest and be included in the group for consideration;

If I see an advertisement for an organization that provides solutions and success stories, I will most likely add the contact information left below for further verification.

5. Decision Criteria: What factors do customers mainly evaluate when making comparisons?

The client already has some brands to choose from, and ultimately needs to make a comprehensive evaluation. The decision criteria will let you know how to prepare marketing materials.

What are the common evaluation factors for clients in the education industry?

• Teacher qualifications, background, and reputation
• Organization size and reputation
• Are there enough successful cases?
• Is the teaching method suitable?
• Is there anyone familiar with it?
• Is the concept matching?
• price

3. How does the education industry build private domain operation processes?

We have previously analyzed the general customer profile of the education industry, that is, how customers would choose to purchase an educational product.

Only by analyzing this point can we know how to operate private domains more purposefully. Of course, the operation details of each educational institution may be slightly different, but the general ideas and processes are not much different. The following is a business process that I have summarized for most online educational institutions that sell high-priced products.

1. Traffic generation stage

The lead generation phase consists of three main steps: choosing a customer acquisition channel, setting up bait, and adding hooks to WeChat .

① Choose customer acquisition channels : As analyzed above, the buyer journey of education industry customers before purchasing is more about getting recommendations from acquaintances or looking for reviews and recommendations on content or media platforms.

The common and good channels are:

• Zhihu, "If you have any questions, go to Zhihu", with more than 400 million traffic and nearly 50 million questions, Zhihu has obviously cultivated the habit of many people to search Zhihu for recommendations and to search Zhihu when they have questions.
• Douyin, which has over 600 million daily active users, has also cultivated people's habit of killing time and obtaining information through short videos.
• Although public accounts are now impacted by other media platforms to a certain extent, as of 2020, the number of public accounts was 1.62 million, and the number of readings of public account articles was 38.1 billion times, which is still a good plate at present.
• Others: some other websites or platforms that we have cooperation with or target customers who frequently visit, such as Lizhi Micro Class, Tencent Classroom, Qianliao, etc.

② Set up bait: Create bait to attract customers based on the characteristics of the customer portrait.

As we have analyzed above, when education industry customers are collecting information, they are also more concerned about whether it is trustworthy and whether they can succeed after taking the course. In addition to listening to recommendations from acquaintances or people who are similar to themselves, they also try to understand it at a low cost.

Therefore, the common baits in the education industry are: free trial classes and low-priced experience classes, that is, using the 0-99 yuan range of courses as bait, so that customers do not need to spend too much cost to understand and try.

Generally, it is best to choose such drainage courses with high frequency, strong appeal and wide coverage.

③ Add WeChat hook : It is not enough to have a traffic-generating course . What is more important is to let customers add corporate WeChat and guide them to the private domain. Only by guiding them to the private domain can we continue to reach customers in a controllable manner.

Common WeChat hooks in the education industry: receiving learning materials, joining communication groups, Q&A sessions, etc., and attaching channel active codes (it is recommended to use the channel active codes in the SCRM tool, and different labels can be set for different channels) to guide customers to add WeChat.

Of course, for those who have not actively added WeChat, you can actively add WeChat using the mobile phone number you left in your information.

2. Course consultant acceptance stage

In the acceptance stage, on the one hand, you need to be prepared for refined operations, that is, to label different customers; on the other hand, you need to interact and activate new customers in a timely manner. Why? If a stranger adds you but there is no follow-up, you will probably not have a good impression of him.

So when you first add a customer to WeChat, do two things:

① Labeling + setting notes : First, when setting the channel active code, you can set different channel active codes for different subjects, so that when customers are added, they will be automatically labeled with the subject;

Second, in the process of communicating with customers, manually label the customer's age, intention, motivation, etc. Third, note the nickname + course or learning needs;

②Interactive activation : After the customer adds you, introduce yourself in time and convey the value you will provide in the future, so that the customer knows the necessity of having you in his or her friend list.

If it is manual, it may not be possible to reply in a timely manner. You can use the friend welcome message in the SCRM tool and set up the words after the customer is added. The words can be referred to as [self-introduction + questions + fulfillment of promises].

For those who have been added but whose needs are unknown, you can use [Ask a Question], for example, send them a form and set questions based on the dimensions of the above customer portrait, for example, ask the customer what problems they have at this stage and what needs they hope to meet?

For those whose needs you already know, you can use [Fulfill Promise]. For example, if an early customer added you because he wanted to listen to low-priced courses, then you can send him a link to the materials or the course.

In the general education industry, this situation can be divided into two types: 1V1 communication conversion and community short-term training camps.

3. Transaction conversion stage

The transaction stage usually occurs after the training camp is over or the customer has finished watching the trial class. It is to immediately stimulate their desire and urge them to take action to complete the transaction of high-priced products.

Here we can use the classic AIDMA model of consumer behavior to design a transaction process. Of course, in the education industry, at this stage, users are generally guided to complete a trial class or a low-cost training camp. The experience process is actually the process of building trust after using bait to arouse customer interest in the early stage.

After building trust, if your course has attracted his attention and established trust, you can directly send the purchase link of the course. For customers who have not yet placed an order, the next step is to stimulate their desire to buy. That is, find more reasons for customers to buy, such as:

• Price discounts: 20 yuan off for purchases over 199 yuan; original price 100 yuan, current price 50 yuan; deposit 300 yuan and get 100 yuan free; etc.
• Psychological stimulation: "If your child learns this skill, many relatives and friends will be envious", "After taking this course, you will appear to be very knowledgeable when talking to others", etc. Helping customers find some more reasons to buy the course will make their desire to buy even stronger.

4. Regular course service stage

As mentioned before, for the education industry, which is more service-oriented, the period after the customer purchases is far from the end, but the starting point of the service . If the brand wants to last long, this stage may be more important. If the students are satisfied during the regular course service stage, it will be much easier to purchase and repurchase the product later, and through the sharing and recommendation of old students, there will be more and more referrals.

For the education industry, what kind of work can be done in the private domain during the online regular course service stage? Using the private domain tool SCRM to set up SOP can greatly save manpower and energy.

The main process of the regular class stage is: reminders before class, during class, homework assignments after class, reflections, and preview of the next class.

These processes will largely remain unchanged, so we can connect the class data of students within the institution, standardize the processes through private domain tools, set up class reminder scripts in advance, scripts for recalling students who have not attended the class during the class, scripts for assigning homework after class, and scripts for previews. At specific points, there is no need for manpower to do this part of the work, and students can be reached on a regular basis.

When the service of each class becomes timely and complete, from the students' perspective, they will be more satisfied and feel that they have gotten good value for money.

5. Repeat purchase and additional purchase stage

When the course is over, it is time to repurchase and increase the purchase. In fact, with the current high cost of acquiring customers, extending the life cycle of a single customer is far more important and easier than developing a new customer.

For students who have finished their courses, we can further guide them to repurchase courses at a higher level. If the students are satisfied with the course service, then repurchase and additional purchase will become very easy. For example, we can design activities for repurchase: push new courses to the course completion group.

Member registration has discounts and one-on-one suggestions for new courses are given according to students' learning situation.

6. Sharing fission stage

We have also analyzed the buyer's journey of customers in the education industry when purchasing courses. Recommendations from acquaintances and successful cases are more effective than any other form of marketing. Therefore, for the education industry, the design of the referral link is also very important.

If referrals are done well, a large number of high-quality new customers can be brought in, because these new customers have already established some trust through acquaintances before contacting them. For old customers, compared with monetary gains, they may enjoy the personal connections more.

For new customers, in addition to thanking old customers, they will also pay more attention to whether there are more favorable prices. Therefore, some activities can be used to promote referrals: New customer discounts: For new customers recommended by old customers, certain discounts can be given;

Thanking old customers: For old customers who recommend new customers, you can express your gratitude for the recommendation and also give them certain privileges.

Timely feedback: After the new students finish the course, they can give feedback to the old students and thank them again, which will increase the chances of referrals.

IV. Conclusion

Compared with other industries, the education industry is a very "operation-intensive" industry. In addition, since most of its profitable products are medium-to-high-unit-price, high-decision products, clarifying the customer portrait and deeply understanding the customer's existing cognition and needs are the most important points in all operational links, and are also factors that greatly affect the conversion rate of the link.

Therefore, it is not excessive to spend more time researching and improving customer portraits.

Author: Maowen Private Domain Research Society;

Source: WeChat public account "Mao Wen Private Domain Research Society";