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Let the parents set the price, and the course charge is “you decide”. Is this reliable?

Recently, a well-known educational brand has released a large class live-streaming course for rice students, “Rice Online School”, and announced a round A investment of up to 80 million US dollars for the project. However, what attracted the most attention was the parent pricing mechanism introduced by the project, which became the focus of heated discussion for a while.

At the same time, public opinion has also begun to pay attention to the trend of the online education market in 2020. After all, the industry’s prosperity is still declining. The news of “replacement of cash with virtual currency” … If the situation of the industry leader is the same, what will happen to the entire market?

Advertising becomes a “big head”

If you only look at the data level, the market trend seems to be all right. According to Ai Media Consulting data, the number of online education users in China has gradually increased in recent years. It is estimated that the number of online education users will reach 305 million in 2020, and the market size will reach 453.8 billion yuan.

Although the size of users and the market has increased, there are some opinions that, in fact, domestic online education institutions are currently in a quagmire.

The reasons are not complicated. With the problems of high customer acquisition costs, poor results conversion, and low renewal rates, the revenue of online education institutions has been declining in the fierce competition.

In a recent industry conference, the founder of a well-known educational institution once said that the actual average customer acquisition cost of the institution has reached 4,000 yuan. From the analysis of the organization’s first cost structure, it can be found that the proportion of teachers’ salaries and customer acquisition costs is as high as 50% and 45%, respectively.

The cost is high and the price war is still fierce. This is the crux of the problem.

As a result, players in the arena have now started the marketing model of “acquisition of tricks”, grabbing potential customers, especially the more demanding K12 curriculum auxiliary field, which has become the focus of it.

“In fact, the first order cost in the online education industry can control the customer acquisition cost to 45%, which is already a relatively good job.” Huang Yan is the head of operation of a K12 online education institution in Shenzhen, she told me to understand the notes At present, the average customer acquisition cost of its company has reached 3650 yuan. Because it is not a national educational institution, the cost is not as high as that of industry-leading companies. But its customer acquisition cost also accounts for 60% of the first order cost, and publicity investment is the biggest one. “This is also the status quo. In the past, the word of mouth effect has been advocated in the industry, and this can reduce customer acquisition costs and marketing Invest, but it ’s too difficult to do. “

In Huang Yi ’s view, in order to form a good reputation effect in the market, the time cost and capital investment required are even greater.

If an online institution’s courses can quickly help students improve their corresponding subjects, of course, they will be recognized by the parents of the students, and will be happy to renew their classes. “But this effect is difficult to form a word-of-mouth effect in parents’ circles, because in the eyes of parents, there is a competitive relationship between students.” In her view, to improve the performance of other students, family members will feel their own family. Children are not good, “Even if you find that the course scores are obvious, many parents will not introduce other parents to report to their children.”

So, for small and medium-sized organizations, the spread of word-of-mouth is difficult to form within a certain period of time. To let more users know their teachers and strengths, they can only increase their investment in advertising and display the results.

“Last year many educational institutions, whether national or provincialGrab building elevator ads. “Huang Huang pointed out that this is because the elevators in high-rise districts are the areas where parents pay the most attention to daily pick-up and drop-off of children. In addition, there are bus advertising, online car advertising, parking lot advertising and other forms of delivery. Obviously, “In order to cover as many scenes as possible, a large number of advertisements need to be spread, which also greatly increases the marketing cost of the organization. “

According to Huang Yan, the online education institution she works in has only 300 employees, but the amount of marketing expenses invested in 2019 has reached more than 17 million yuan. As for the national educational institutions with more than 10,000 employees, the marketing costs invested are even more astounding.

The high marketing costs make the organization miserable, so we have to open more “brain holes” in low-cost marketing. In November last year, she and the team tried to join parents of school-age students by cooperating with school teachers, and used soft texts, discounts and other forms of publicity and promotion to attract parents to understand their online courses. “This kind of private domain traffic The method of play has some effect, but now many institutions have done so, which has also aroused the criticism of many parents. “As for the free trial course, it is already a” stupid method “used by all institutions in the industry.

While advertising, multi-exposure, and increased drainage, exhausting the organization, in fact, the greater problem of online education institutions is the conversion rate. This is a headache for many educational institutions.

Free trial conversion does not result in conversion rate

“You know, it ’s not the students who pay for classes, but the parents of the students.”

Zhang Yan, a teaching and research specialist at an online education institution in Foshan, (pseudonym) said that their online math supplementary courses are not charged High, large class (one to six) Each semester course fee is 9600 yuan (A total of 96 class hours) , “The average fee per class is 100 yuan, which is considered to be a low to medium level in the industry.”

Compared to the cost of 150 ~ 180 yuan / hour for the supplementary classes of offline courses, the online course fees do not seem to be high, but it is more difficult for parents to recognize this “online learning” mode.

“Put a lot of advertisements, did a lot of activities, and the final results are in the registration conversion.” In order to convert traffic to customers who apply for classes, many institutions have opened low-cost, free public courses for Students and parents audition, of course, the main purpose is for parents to “early taste.”

Zhang Yan said that whether it is free or paid, open classes are the key to the conversion rate of the organization. Only if the trial lesson is enough to attract parents (students) , so that teachers can be recognized by the parents, and finally it is possible to make an order.

In order to gain the trust of parents, her institution has invested a lot of energy and time in auditing public classes, and usually arranges senior teachers to give lectures on “transformation classes”, so as to get a hit. “After all, compared to offline class support, online education is visible but not accessible, so it is reasonable for parents to have concerns.”

Today, many online education institutions can use public lectures to describe public lectures. The cost of a trial lesson can sometimes be more than ten times that of a regular course. Zhang Yan said, “But the effect of this method is also very obvious. Many parents will immediately contact the customer service for consultation and registration after the trial lesson. . “

These free and low-cost trial courses are actually designed with precision in mind, mainly to show parents the educational philosophy, faculty and teaching advantages of educational institutions. “In the course of the trial lecture, we will add some hot words that parents are very concerned about, such as grading, planning, and advanced studies, etc., and the results are very good.

Zhang Yan revealed that as long as the careful preparation of the audition course is done, the conversion rate will often exceed 30%. “If you listen to some ordinary courses, even if it is helpful for students to solve the problem, it will not be seen by parents. Attractive. “

It can be said that since the institutions understand that parents are the decision makers of education spending, the public audition courses launched are of course “tailored” for parents. For example, the results of parents ’“ love to see ”and targeted planning content are all aimed at