Who will be the final winner online or offline?
Production | Bullet Finance
Author Xie Yuanyuan
Responsible editor | 杨博丞
The already fierce offline education market came to an abrupt halt.
The outbreak of the epidemic left many students and parents too late to respond. They were instructed by training institutions to teach online, while offline stores were shut down overnight.
“The teacher requested to take a lecture online. The epidemic was so severe that the training school was basically closed.” Parent Chen Yu told “Bullet Finance” that he originally enrolled his child in an English training class during the holidays, but now it seems that It is no longer possible to do the opposite online, only online education can only be carried out in the form of videos.
In order to prevent the spread of the epidemic, some companies had to delay the start date and opened the online office mode, and students were also required to study online.
This has caused some industries to face operational difficulties, but at the same time, some industries have been pushed to the wind. Industries such as online office, online education, and live broadcast ushered in a period of rapid development overnight.
After the implementation of the postponement policy, the online education industry has attracted a lot of attention from students and parents.
But the industry benefits brought by the outbreak of the epidemic cannot solve all problems. After the epidemic, how to continue to maintain user stickiness is an important issue that the online education industry needs to explore.
1. Online education with epidemic situation
Domestic online education started in the mid-1990s. The initial form of a distance education website represented by 101 Online Schools has now rapidly developed to the “Internet +” education stage, which mainly includes preschool education, K12 education, quality education, language education And vocational education.
Among them, K12, as an education system covering the first grade of primary school to the third grade of high school, has the widest potential audience in the industry and the most intense competition. In order to gain more customers, the major platforms continue to increase advertising.
According to the information of Yiou.com, in the summer of 2019 alone, the total marketing investment cost of nearly ten online education companies has reached 4-5 billion yuan, and its advertising coverage has covered airports, train stations, bus stations, TV series, and WeChat. Circle of friends and self-media short videos.
Chen Yu told Bullet Finance that the earliest he had enrolled in an English training class for his children through a friend’s introduction. At that time, he caught up with activities. Class hours were cheaper than usual and he also gave a few extra classes. .
In addition to friend introductions,Some parents know about online education and training institutions through Internet advertising and offline advertising, but most of them are learned by word of mouth.
As a result, this high visibility has led the industry to reach a wide audience in first-tier cities, but today, first-tier cities have become saturated. In order to further expand the market scale, the entire industry will focus on sinking markets such as the second and third tiers. The outbreak also provided these sinking markets with an opportunity to access online education platforms. “Under the epidemic, the awareness and acceptance of online education in non-first-tier cities will be greatly improved.” A 51Talk official told “Bullet Finance”.
In the case of self-isolation by the general public and extended opening hours of major schools, the online education platform specializing in K12 business has attracted widespread attention from student users and parents, especially when various platforms have launched free courses, and the entire industry Traffic suddenly surged.
According to “Bullet Finance”, Xueersi.com has mobilized hundreds of teachers from all over the country to launch free live lessons and self-study courses for all subjects in the whole year that are synchronized with the school time from Monday to Friday. All subjects in the third grade of high school. 51Talk also provides a full range of excellent online courses in teaching English to Chinese kindergartens and elementary and middle school students nationwide, saying it wants to help students “suspend classes without stopping” during the epidemic. In addition, Spark Thinking has launched 100 free online courses.
According to the information provided by 51Talk, according to the statistics of the three days of the sixth, seventh, and eighth days of the platform, the number of registered, reserved, and paid users has increased significantly compared with the same period, and the class consumption has also increased significantly.
Liu Baoshu, founder of Aoyi Education, said, “The growth rate of DAU on large platforms has reached 100 times or even 1000 times. Even a small platform I am familiar with has not achieved any advertising, and DAU has also reached 10 times. The rate of increase. A large influx of traffic in the short term has caused their servers to be paralyzed across the country. “
The advantage of online education to break down the limitations of space has allowed it to play a role in the epidemic and gain a large number of new users. But the epidemic is not a panacea, and the shortcomings in the entire online education industry will not disappear as a result. How to operate the current new traffic is the key to whether the industry can retain users after the epidemic.
2. How to keep students after the epidemic?
Before that, the potential audience ’s awareness of online education has been difficult to improve, and students and parents have more recognized the traditional face-to-face model of educational institutions.
SoIn order to penetrate the market, major platforms have placed a large number of advertisements one after another, resulting in increasing marketing costs, but for urban users below the third tier, online education is not very attractive to them. According to the “Blackboard Insights” report, compared with first-tier cities, non-first-tier cities are more cost-effective and the market is huge. More than 70% of the country’s population is in a sinking market.
This has led the industry to make ends meet, and marketing costs have made platform profitability a difficult problem.
According to the “2018 Online Education Trend Report”, most online education companies are losing money from 2015 to 2018, and only 3% of them have made a profit. From the perspective of the secondary market, among the several important listed companies such as Fluent, New Oriental Online, Who Learned From, and NetEase Youdao, only who learned from one company made a profit, and all others suffered substantial losses.
Today, as the epidemic prevention and control work is further tightened, it has also played a catalytic role in expanding the market for online education. Choosing online courses has become a must for students.
According to 51Talk, this epidemic has increased users’ awareness and acceptance of online education, and the cost of online customer acquisition will inevitably decrease. A person in charge of Miyoshi.com believes that “the epidemic has allowed more and more parents and students to choose online education, and to a certain extent it will make traffic cheaper.”
Under the favorable situation that the outbreak caused the surge in online education traffic, on February 6, there were 14 online education A-share stops rising and falling, but doubts followed. Compared with the public’s “preference” for offline education, after the epidemic, whether the favorable situation presented by online education will be a flash in the pan, has become an important topic for discussion in the industry.
“As long as the quality and service of the course is guaranteed, I think it should be okay to retain users. Before the epidemic broke out, the promotion news of 45-49 yuan can only be clicked by 0.8% of the accepted users. The click ratio is only 0.1%. “Liu Baoshu told” Bullet Finance “whether the large platform or the small platform has sufficient teachers and whether it can guarantee its service level is the key to user retention. “But there are many potential audiences who are unwilling to actively engage in online education, so it is impossible to experience it for themselves.” Liu Baoshu added.
But in fact, many online education platforms have been working hard to improve the user experience.
Zhou Xinxin, an offline training teacher at an education and training institution in Beijing, told “Bullet Finance”, “The online form of online education is not perfect, because the emotional viscosity of teachers and students established by online education can never be compared with offline teaching. . Therefore, it is more scientific to combine online and face-to-face teaching, which is similar to flipping the classroom or the currently popular double teacher classroom.
Zhou Xinxin said that this model is the focus of head online education platform layout in recent years.
Before, educational giants such as New Oriental and Good Future have launched dual teacher classrooms. An online teacher teaches students, and an offline teaching teacher interacts with students to help students grasp the pace of learning.
Liu Baoshu believes that after parents and students have experienced teaching by a well-known teacher team and a very suitable price-performance ratio, they will change the online education platform.
“This online + offline teaching mode makes the learning scene more diversified and adds a lot of animation elements. In addition, the tutor will also send homework, comments and keep sticky with parents. In addition, in In one-to-one, one-to-many, and other live classes, each platform also requires teachers to provide a more personalized and interactive learning process. “Liu Baoshu said.
3, market competition has intensified again
The market data for online education is now on the rise.
According to the Trustdata report, 2018 is the first year of fissionable growth of users in the online education market, and the online penetration rate has increased by 11 times in four years, increasing from 0.8% in 2015 to 9.1% in 2018. It will exceed 12% in 2019.
This has allowed many Internet platforms to enter in recent years. Under the impact of this epidemic, several giants have further increased their layout in this field.
Among them, Douyin, Watermelon Video, and Today ’s Headline announced in February that they will unite 50 educational institutions and invite famous school teachers to provide free class services for elementary and middle school students across the country. It is reported that the first batch of access lists includes 16 educational institutions including Qingbei Online School, Xueersi, Lele Class, Youdao Class, Who to Learn and Homework.
In addition, platforms such as Tencent Education and Alibaba’s Ding Nao have also seized the opportunity and launched different measures in this field to facilitate the needs of all the people. At the same time, many offline institutions have begun to transform into online business, which may become a future trend.
On the battlefield, not only does online education have a lot of room for development, but also because it has the advantage of breaking the limitations of space, it can help the platform to avoid risks in many cases.
During the SARS period in 2003, New Oriental’s branches in various parts of the country suspended classes and suffered huge economic losses. At the same time, users’ large-scale refunds caused New Oriental’s cash outflow.The crisis was severe, and finally had to rely on borrowing to reluctantly survive the crisis.
As a result, the epidemic will make it more difficult for a large number of small and medium-sized educational institutions to survive, not only losing their source of income, but also continuously paying the costs of teachers’ salaries, rent, and water and electricity. Therefore, in the future, some small and medium-sized training institutions may be forced to close due to financial problems.
At present, many external training institutions such as Good Future, New Oriental and Xueersi have announced the suspension of offline training services and the transfer of courses to online, while the untransformed platforms are suffering. As Zhou Xinxin said, if its educational institution did not launch an online business, the company would “hang up” during this period. After all, venue rental fees and student refunds can cause small education platforms to quickly fall into trouble.
For small platforms, even moving to online is not suitable for mass advertising, because this will result in the inability to effectively convert new traffic and waste limited funds. “If the traffic surges, and if the online teaching effect and services provided by the institution cannot keep up, the new traffic attracted by the advertisement cannot be effectively converted, and even the word of mouth declines, which will accelerate its elimination from the market.” Liu Baoshu said.
Miyoshi.com said, “In addition to online education institutions increasing their traffic, e-commerce, gaming, online office and other industries are also increasing their online business.” There is no doubt that online business is in this cold winter. China has ushered in a new upsurge of development.
However, for online education platforms, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The market impact and competition brought about by the epidemic is much more than that.
In the future, the entry of all parties will lead to a wave of competition in the online education industry, but in the face of a market that includes services, teaching and research, education, and even sales, a platform that requires long-term and stable development requires more than just funds .
For laymen, this is undoubtedly a huge test. For laymen, they still need to practice their “internal skills” vigorously.
The pictures in the text are from: Photograph Network, based on VRF authorization.