How to break through the conversion bottleneck of online education through operation, you must understand this method

Conversion rate is like a curse on every online education company. For such "virtual" products, operations can make the products more valuable and improve retention and conversion rates without changing the core of the product. How should it be done? The author of this article analyzes and answers through several cases. Let's take a look.

It's the end of the year, and it's the annual peak period for job hopping. Friends who work in operations often see these job titles on Boss recruitment: user operation, community operation, product operation, content operation, and then look at their resumes with worry.

Regardless of what each of these does, people who have done it know that there is a high degree of overlap between them. At least from a business perspective, it is difficult to achieve independent settlement. So why do some operations have high conversion rates and some have low conversion rates? I think the key lies in the degree of connection between these three.

Today we will talk about operations. This article will discuss how to connect different operators from an operational perspective.

For physical products, the payment is made and the goods are delivered. Operation is an accessory and cannot fully play the advantages of operation. But for virtual products, operation is particularly important. Through operation, the product can be made more valuable without changing the core of the product. Here we take the virtual product "online course" as an example to conduct a series of analysis and discussion.

The core question: Is the purpose of operation to convert users or to retain users?

This is not a multiple-choice question, but the same thing, the purpose to be achieved at different stages. The purpose of operation is to retain, and the purpose of retention is to convert. So how do we achieve the whole process?

We use three steps to sort out the entire operation process.

01 Step 1: Attract new customers

The operation of Internet products must be about attracting new users, which is the starting point of the entire system. Attracting new users allows your pool to have a constant flow of water, allowing the entire system to operate normally. Only when the chain of attracting new users is opened up can the operation be effective.

How to open up the link of attracting new customers?

Thinking 1: Who are my target users, why should they choose me, and what can they get after choosing me.

When you are working through this link, the functional attributes of the product are the basis of everything. So you need to determine how to answer this series of questions around the product itself, including user portraits, product functions, and what sense of gain the product brings to users.

Here is an example of a case I have handled.

Thought 2: What is the logic of attracting new customers and how to attract new customers?

The logic of attracting new customers lies in communication, which can be considered in two situations:

One is the way to play with money:

The way to play for those who have money is relatively simple, just invest in traffic directly. By casting a wide net on the Internet to acquire target users, the logic of this play is the funnel model, and the efficiency is relatively high. Based on the idea of ​​thinking 1, we can optimize our delivery materials, such as the advertisements we often see on WeChat Moments and Douyin platforms.

Another way to play without money:

It can be operated in a refined way of acquiring customers, which is the logic of fission. The key to the success of fission lies in the group effect.

The fission mechanism usually requires participants to share the event poster to the corresponding circle of friends and community, and then link to the next individual through the individual. Generally speaking, if everyone is in the same group and has some common needs, they are likely to be attracted by the same thing, which is human nature.

Common fission methods:

1. Express your thoughts
2. Build an image
3. Finding things to talk about
4. Helping Others
5. Social comparison

The author gave some examples of zero-budget cases that he had handled before. The method we often used at that time was "helping others".

Everyone wants to be the most distinctive person in the circle of friends, so they will shape their personal image in some ways, such as I am a person who loves learning, life, and has good taste. However, compared to helping users build vanity, it is more practical to help others. Regardless of whether you really want to help others, at least give people the illusion of helping others, so as to achieve your own goals. This is a win-win situation.

For example, in this activity, users can get a chance to attend a class by sharing posters with relevant teacher groups. For others, what they share is a learning opportunity, while for themselves, they get a chance to attend a class.

No matter which method you use, the most important thing is to match your product and activity budget. Attracting new customers is a job that needs to be done continuously and for a long time. This is the starting point of the operation.

02 Step 2: Conversion

When we have finished attracting new customers, the next important step is how to convert them. The conversion must be thought through clearly before attracting new customers, and the logic of conversion must be followed.

Sometimes you can do both new customer acquisition and conversion at the same time. For example, your new customer acquisition product is a low-priced product, such as a course or gift package priced at 9.9, 19.9, or 39.9. You can use the low-price strategy to achieve both new customer acquisition and conversion at once. The advantage of doing this is that you can directly obtain accurate users with purchasing power. Generally, users who are willing to spend money are usually higher-quality users, and there is no doubt about that.

But there is a question: how much will the conversion rate of new customers be reduced by charging or not, and is this reduction rate worth it? Because many times, when we are attracting new customers, in addition to preparing for secondary conversion, we are also promoting new products.

Which group is suitable for free new customer acquisition, which customer group is suitable for paid new customer acquisition, and if new customer acquisition and conversion are done separately, how to proceed.

When I build a new product, I can use no threshold and give users a chance to contact it. The 7-times rule of marketing may not really work, but at least we have to complete the first time.

In addition, the first payment will inevitably affect the conversion rate, because some users cannot be converted by your low-priced products, which does not mean that they will not be converted by high-priced products. If they are converted to low-priced products, the second conversion will still be to high-priced products. This basic goal still exists.

We can rehearse the process of the first conversion. The logical structure from successful new customer acquisition to a conversion is: I know - I like - I believe - I want to buy.

For the first conversion, we should not expect overly high-priced products. Usually a low-priced or mid-priced product will be enough.

In fact, attracting new customers has already completed the two stages of "I know" and "I like". The next stage of the chain to be completed is "I believe" and "I want to buy".

How to make users believe it?

• Exceeding users’ basic expectations
• The content of the course is greater than the advertising ratio
• Create an immersive learning experience

In the conversion process, the important point is the creation of product experience. In this process, all operational actions are implemented in conjunction with product functions.

For example, our conversion platform can be a live broadcast room, a community, or a private chat with users. The key to different platforms is to create a sense of experience. Here is an example of a live broadcast room course.

At that time, there was a teacher who was selling career courses in a live broadcast room. He would broadcast live for several hours every day. The practical content he explained in the Douyin live broadcast room was only the first few lessons of his regular courses, but during his explanation, he paid great attention to creating a sense of interaction. Every few minutes, he would ask the audience a question, and if it were you, what would you do? Type your answer on the screen.

Douyin is a platform with a large user base but also a high churn rate, so he tries to keep users staying in the live broadcast room by constantly asking questions.

Finally, he will give another big trick. He will share a case in which a student spent 3,000 yuan on consulting, and give this plan to everyone for free in the live broadcast room.

Through the creation of interactive experience and sense of value, users are convinced that he is an awesome teacher, his live broadcast room is full of useful information, and finally pay for it. And the key is that his course is only 365 yuan, which is relatively low-end. With such experience and such product price, I believe that many users will be eager to buy it.

Of course, the product that this teacher ultimately wants to sell is by no means as simple as a 365-yuan course package. He will also provide high-priced one-on-one consulting services and more advanced workplace courses in the future.

But it’s too late, take it slow and let the user buy something first.

03 Step 3: Secondary Conversion

Usually secondary conversion is the ultimate goal of our operation. For many customers and products, it is impossible to achieve it in one step. Especially for high-priced products, unless your product is rare, such as: certification training. If you sign up, you can get the certification, but if you don’t sign up, you can’t get the certification.

However, most products do not have this advantage. Most products on the market are useless and even have many substitutes.

The user's first payment is likely based on interest and a desire to learn more about the product. However, if he does not get what he expected after learning more about the product or due to other reasons, he is likely to leave.

The ultimate goal of all paid products is to get users to pay the highest price.

So what should we do?

The period between the first payment and the second payment is called the product experience period. This period is also a critical period for operation. The premise for determining whether this period can be successful is that the user experience and recognize the product.

What operations need to do is to let users experience the product as much as possible and recognize it.

How to design an experience product is like playing a game. If a product can make users want to play it, it is basically not far from being launched.

Then again, few products can achieve this. We don’t need to make it addictive, but we should at least make users feel suspenseful, just like watching a TV series, and want to watch the next episode after finishing one.

There is a prerequisite here: that is the design of the product itself.

Many people think that it is enough for me to record the course, and users can buy it themselves and watch it after purchase.

But learning is not entertainment after all. When playing games or watching TV series, users do not need supervision from others. They will voluntarily establish a set of behavioral patterns for upgrading and fighting monsters.

Learning is anti-human, and it is something that requires long-term persistence. Therefore, in the process of learning, it is impossible for users to actively build a system of upgrading and fighting monsters.

Learning something naturally requires: determination and time.

Determination may come easily, and anyone can be enthusiastic for three minutes, but the biggest obstacle that crushes enthusiasm for three minutes is often time. Although the product manager has set the course to 15 minutes per lesson or even 5 minutes per lesson. But learning is not about the length of the course, because if you really want to have a skill, it is not determined by the number of lessons you take, but how long you have to listen to it before you understand it.

This means that it is not the length of the course itself that determines how long you will study, but your ability to absorb and digest that determines how long you can study.

So what should we do? At this time, the role of operations is very important.

What we want is for online courses to give users the perception that what I am buying is not a course, but a learning experience.

This is also the reason why offline courses are more expensive than online courses. Because of their experience advantage, online courses pay more attention to operations, because they need to use operations to make up for the lack of learning experience.

So how do we implement a learning experience?

First: space field.

Offline learning comes with its own space field, so for online learning how do we build a virtual space field.

This brings us back to another question: what does the field consist of: space and people.

We don’t have space, but we have people. So in this virtual space online, we just need to do our job as human beings.

Therefore, the importance of community operation and user operation is self-evident.

Second: Shaping a sense of mission.

Back to our original campus learning model, each class is managed by a class monitor, and there are groups in the class. Each group leader takes the lead in leading everyone to complete the learning tasks together. Only when the group completes the task is it considered completed and extra points are obtained. This class teaching system originated from the educator Comenius.

Online learning is not isolated individual learning, but should be done in the form of a community, bringing together a group of people with the same task.

Once one person falls behind, points will be deducted from the group. Once all team members have completed the task, points will be added to the group + PK mechanism in our community operation.

Finally, through community learning, we can establish a sense of interaction, atmosphere, participation, and presence.

When treating each individual, the class teacher conducts emotional communication through observation, listening, questioning and palpation of the individual.

An interesting way of learning, a group of classmates working towards a common goal, thoughtful teaching assistants, and professional and reliable teachers, can help overcome the second hurdle of conversion.

There are many rules of the game, and we can design various ways to play. Here I would like to remind you that the best class is not what the teacher says, but what the students learn. Participation is the most efficient way to learn, and the best way to participate is to participate in practice.

In the end, the so-called user operation and community operation are not isolated links. Every link of the operation needs to work closely with the product. Only when the product is connected will there be a series of subsequent operations.

Product is 1, and operation is the 0 behind it.

Product operation, user operation, and community operation are interdependent and go hand in hand.

Bei Xiaoxiao: 8 years of experience as a copywriter, planner, and operations manager; Official account: Xiaoxiao Operation Station