Yin Yan from New Oriental went to Shaoxing. com？

With an annual income of over 100 million, serving 400,000 college students, it has exploded in the four or six levels of training that New Oriental despises, and chicken ribs can also become fat!

New economy 100 people in Li Zhigang.

Release time: 18-03-3008:33, the founder of the new economy with 100 people, and the author of "Nine defeats and one win in JD.COM".

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How can a CET-4 and CET-6 training product pry open the training market of 30 million college students?

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Author: Liu

The spotlight overhead lit up the podium and its vicinity, and the students sat sparsely in the first row of seats. The second half of the classroom is dark. Yin Yan, a famous teacher in New Oriental, felt a little scared.

This is enough for a large classroom with 500 people. It used to be crowded with 800 people. Yin Yan still clearly remembers the scene of the explosion.

However, there are only more than twenty students to fill the seats now. In order to save electricity, the classroom only turned on lights to illuminate the podium and the first row of seats.

Yin Yan, who has been teaching CET-4 and CET-6 in New Oriental for eight years, decided to go outside and have a look: "There must be something wrong, and the demand for CET-4 and CET-6 will not change. 」

0 1

Subverting the world outlook: earning 800 thousand a day

August 28th, 20 15, which is an exciting day for the subjects.

2,000 training places in Level 4 were snapped up within two hours. On the same day, 2000 training places of Band 6 were all sold out within 6 hours. The price of each quota is 199 yuan, and brands that have been online for less than half a month earn 800,000 yuan a day.

In the test bug, I thought it would take a week to sell out.

It sold 4,000 copies a day, subverting the world view of Yin Yan, Minister of Examination and Research. At 0: 30 in the morning/kloc-0: 00, the tickets for Class 6 were sold out, and everyone opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate. When Yin Yan came home in the middle of the night, she lost sleep. Still didn't fall asleep the next day.

After Yin Yan left New Oriental, he opened a studio in partnership with three other teachers, moved the offline courses to online sales, and sold the courses on several platforms, including the course selection network (the predecessor of the test worm, the course shopping guide platform).

These four former New Oriental teachers sold 800 places in one semester, most of which were in Xun. Li Haoyu asked Yin Yan how much she expected to sell next semester. Yin Yan bullet said, sell 2000. Li Haoyu told him that we would sell 20,000 test worms in the second half of the year.

▲ Li Haoyu, founder and CEO of Cobo

From August 28th, 2005 to August 28th, 2065438, in the four months of the second half of the year, Kao Chong sold 23,000 places (including some winter vacation courses).

The energy of the Internet has seriously impacted Yin Yan's worldview. This tall and thin teacher, with fair skin, is 38 years old and is called "a small feat" by Bug (a student user who tests Bug).

Although New Oriental's CET-4 and CET-6 training business is sluggish, Yin believes that CET-4 and CET-6 training itself has a market. "Students in grades four and six are just a group of children who need help most. Yin Yan's tone is full of "spoil".

He explained that the need for CET-4 and CET-6 training shows that these students have poor English foundation, most of them have poor results in college entrance examination, and they go to ordinary universities, so they need CET-4 and CET-6 certificates to prove their abilities to employers. Moreover, they need good teachers to take them to study.

At first, four teachers, including Yin Yan, set up a studio, but they found the burden heavy. In addition to teaching, they have to bite the bullet and use Meitu Xiu Xiu as a poster, and spend all day guarding the computer to brush Weibo and do QQ customer service. They also have to print hundreds of documents and fill in hundreds of express orders.

At one o'clock in the morning, the students in the QQ group booed and said that Teacher Yin was going to sing and I was going to sign up. "I am a bad singer, but let me sing, I will sing. I sang three songs. Seeing that a few orders were added immediately, Yin Yan burst into tears. " I either feel wronged or feel that starting a business is too hard. I have never encountered such a situation when I was a teacher myself. 」

Yin Yan, who realized his shortcomings, hit it off with Li Haoyu, who was looking for a teacher and creating his own course. Yin Yan and they joined the experimental worm.

Exam bugs focus on college students' exam-oriented education and enter the market through CET-4 and CET-6 training in the early stage. At present, there are many training products, such as CET-4, IELTS, TOEFL, Postgraduate Entrance Examination, Practical English, TEM4, TEM8 and so on. Last year, 400,000 college students bought courses, and the income from 20 17 was1200,000 yuan.

The helmsman behind is Li Haoyu, born in 1985.

02

How to create a single product explosion?

Zhang Yu (pseudonym) has been an intern for three months. She is responsible for writing some WeChat content, and she is also a worm who is about to graduate.

She showed the photos collected in her mobile phone to 100 people in the new economy-that was a photo taken with Yin Yan when she received the test bug package. In the photo, she is wearing a long hair shawl, a sky blue dress and a yellow gift bag, smiling and standing with Yin Yan.

Gift package is a learning material prepared for every user, including word book, analysis of real questions over the years and so on. Weighing 3 kg, the package is conspicuous and bright yellow.

▲ Test worm packets at university express delivery points.

As a bug who won the first place in the examination class, Zhang Yu can appoint a teacher to provide special delivery service. On the delivery day, Zhang Yu was shopping. When Yin Yan appeared at the gate of the shopping center with a big gift bag, the young student was deeply moved.

From the training of the first product, Band 4 and Band 6, the test worm has prepared a big gift package. The training of CET-4 and CET-6 is the explosion of test insects tearing apart the market.

The test worm sold records of 4,000 courses in eight hours, which even made Yin Yan's former colleagues feel unbelievable-fraud should make the data more real.

The reasons behind the explosion in the same year after the recovery of the pest management team:

First, before the exam -worm course selection network has its own traffic, and there is a certain accumulation of accurate users;

Second, the operation of Weibo continued to warm up for one month, carefully designed topics, and constantly threw out teaching materials and news, leaving suspense;

Third, the price has an impact. 199 yuan course includes 120 hours of immersive teaching content, and presents a gift package of physical books. At that time, the same class in New Oriental 1 1,000 yuan; Netease's products such as 880 yuan and Hujiang are also at the price of 1,000 yuan.

Fourth, and most importantly, the quality of teaching content is hard enough.

In order to polish the teaching content and design course products that are more suitable for students to use online, even though the teaching team led by Yin Yan has nearly ten years of experience in offline CET-4 and CET-6 training, the candidates have been preparing for more than two months. Wu Yi, vice president of card worm operation, mentioned that it was originally scheduled to be listed on August 20. "The product details were not ready and it was delayed for several days."

Yin Yan and four other teachers are in charge of this course. At the product meeting, Li Haoyu emphasized to these teachers, "Be big-minded and don't set limits for yourself".

Therefore, the final product is different from the offline CET-4 and CET-6 training. In addition to the two-hour "regular class" from 3 pm to 5 pm and 7 pm to 9 pm respectively, there will be 20 minutes of morning reading at 7 am, 65,438+05 minutes of English movies and masterpieces at night, and a bowl of chicken soup for the soul will be delivered by the way. In addition, the test worm will send a gift package to the user.

Technically, all live online content can be played back on mobile phones. Through technical means, fumigation for two hours only consumes 50 megabytes of traffic.

The fat found by the test bug quickly attracted competitors.

At the end of August, 2065438+2005, the fourth and sixth kinds of trial insects were started; From September to 10, there will be at least twenty or thirty identical products on the market. There are both startups and big companies like New Oriental Online and Netease Youdao.

Netease 199 yuan's whole class once worried candidates. This is because Netease has fast follow-up, large traffic, strong brand advantage and stronger technical and design team.

Competing products are getting closer and closer, and there are more internal tests of test bugs. Candidates who have just sold 4000 courses have encountered bugs. Only the user's mobile phone number is reserved for the receipt of 4000 orders, and some receiving addresses are empty. Yuan Zhe, the person in charge of worm testing technology, remembers that there were only thirty or forty people in the company at that time, and all of them mobilized to make phone calls one by one. It took three days, made more than 2000 phone calls, and finally filled in the delivery address.

2065438+February 2006, the first batch of users passed CET-4 and CET-6, and the number of applicants has increased several times. When the course was on sale, 8,000 people were waiting to buy it online at the same time, which caused the candidates to stop. Yuan Zhe took people staring at the machine, human flesh operation and maintenance, and barely survived the peak registration period. After that, it took a month to complete the reconfiguration of the system, which solved the downtime problem from the bottom.

When Kao Chong stumbled forward, most of the competing products failed in those two years.

The course of CET-4 and CET-6 is a class of ten thousand people. Li Haoyu told the 65,438+000 people in the new economy that the large class is an economy of scale with a gross profit of 55%. If a class can't recruit 5000 people, it must be a loss. At this time, either increase the price or reduce the cost of teaching materials at the same price. The end result is that the user experience is not good and their competitiveness is damaged.

As a training course with a particularly strong test-oriented purpose, the standard for measuring the effect is whether it has passed the test. Some users who signed up for CET-4 and CET-6 training used the admission ticket hosting service provided by Exam-4-4. Tracing back to these admission tickets, about 70% of these users passed the exam.

From 2065438 to 2005, the fall class of the fourth and sixth grade course of Worm Test sold 1.7 million copies, with a revenue of 3.4 million yuan.

20 16 sold130,000 copies in the fourth and sixth grades and earned 26 million.

In 20 17, 230,000 copies were sold and the income was 46 million yuan.

20 18 65438+ From 10 to March, we have sold15,000 copies of "The Course of Test Insect Levels 4 and 6", and Li Haoyu is expected to sell 400,000 copies by the end of the year.

The CET-4 and CET-6 courses have become the "explosion" of test worms. "It took us three months to become the first in the industry. Postgraduate entrance examination training took about a year because of its long cycle. Li Haoyu said.

A large number of new users are recommended by word of mouth from old users.

03

The power of word of mouth

In Kao Chong's office, several walls are covered with letters written by bugs to teachers, and there are some small colored boxes and handbags, which used to contain chocolates and biscuits made by bugs themselves.

▲ Test insect shooting user thank-you letter wall (part) Author: Liu

Letters to Yin Yan, Daniel Wu, Shima and "Little Gong Ju" Longge contain gratitude, admiration and warmth between the lines. Some letters are accompanied by pictures of bugs.

Next to these photos, it is Cobo's corporate culture-"making friends with users".

When communicating with the new economy 100 people, many employees who tested the bug mentioned this sentence.

Yuan Zhe gave an example, testing worm App can download teaching materials. A Tianjin user reported that the school intranet could not be downloaded. At that time, an examination engineer was on vacation in Tianjin. When he saw the news, he rushed to the school directly, found the users, found out the reasons, and solved the problem when he returned to the company.

Wu Yi mentioned that students who took the postgraduate entrance examination consulted the enrollment of a school in Weibo. In fact, the operator of the test worm doesn't know the specific situation. He just collects information by querying official website and calling the Admissions Office and passes it on to the students.

"What would you do if your good friend met this problem? This is the basis of our thinking. Li Haoyu said.

He believes that the word-of-mouth of test bugs lies in:

First, with sufficient first-Mover advantage, Kao Chong took the lead in promoting the equalization of large class sizes, and brought better educational resources to college students, including fourth-and fifth-tier cities.

Second, the product experience exceeds users' expectations. This is reflected in many details. For example, although many students go to work early, they study hard one month before the exam, so the examiner will also give all users a big gift package and a set of surprise classes before the exam.

Kaoru found that there are many factors affecting young users' consumption decisions, besides products, there are also emotional factors. Therefore, in the classroom, the test insects will design interesting interactive links such as letting teachers sing and drying photos. Users feel that test bugs not only learn, but also meet a large number of interesting people.

Every winter and summer vacation, Kao Chong will hold an open day for insects to visit the company, and teachers will accompany them to chat and play games.

Wang Meng used to be a bug, and now he is responsible for the operation of the postgraduate content of the official WeChat account. She has long curly hair and big earrings. She likes playing bands in college.

In the second half of 20 15, when preparing for the CET-6, she became the first user of the exam bug. Wang Meng was going to give up CET-6, but she thought that the course of 199 yuan was not expensive, so she placed an order. She didn't expect to be the first person in her class to pass CET-6.

She once applied for the CET-4 training in New Oriental, because she had to run back and forth between the school and the New Oriental classroom, and each class was a whole day, but she didn't stick to it. What attracted her was that the teacher was humorous and could tell jokes, and the course didn't sound painful.

Teaching content is the key to attract students. In order to do a good job in teaching content, the experimental insects are divided into three parts for quality control:

First, prepare lessons. Teachers must prepare all the courses, grasp the whole teaching process completely and avoid the problem of inconsistent content.

Second, teachers meet collectively to discuss the teaching content and polish the handouts. At present, there are more than 30 teachers with an average teaching experience of five years. Teachers in the exam, reading and listening classes should teach and study together, so as to know how the other party talks about the same knowledge point and repeat it according to different situations to deepen students' impression.

Third, after each class, the user gives the course evaluation. The specific content cannot be a compliment to the teacher, but a clear understanding of the course harvest. The purpose is to see whether the students' understanding of the course is consistent with the teacher's imagination. The teacher reads the comments one by one, and then makes targeted fine-tuning.

New Economy 100 People asked Yin Yan, what should I do if the teacher perfunctory me? Yin Yan replied that the teacher of the test worm is in a competitive relationship, and everyone is competing for who has more fans and who has a good reputation. And there are more excellent teachers in the market to replace.

04

Break through the ceiling

From the commercial point of view, the training of CET-4 and CET-6 is not a big market.

In 20 17, about180,000 people signed up for the CET-4 and CET-6. Li Haoyu analysis, about 9 million people are low-value users, naked or abandoned the exam, and no products and services of CET-4 and CET-6 can reach him. Much of the rest will be solved by buying a word book. Even through systematic classes, the price is reduced to a quarter of the original, the participation rate is increased, and there are about 3 million users who really need CET-4 and CET-6 training every year.

Li Haoyu must consider how to break through the ceiling.

His first choice is to expand the category. Use the existing user base, tap their other potential training needs, and constantly improve the ARPU value (average income per user).

In the first half of 20 16, Kao Chong launched an English training course for postgraduate entrance examination at a unit price of 399 yuan. Later, TOEFL and IELTS training courses with a unit price of 999 yuan were launched. Then, the categories of postgraduate politics and postgraduate mathematics were opened.

According to statistics, in 20 16 years, more than 17000 copies of English for postgraduate entrance examination were sold; 20 17 years, the number reached 60000; Postgraduate Politics 20 17 was launched, and 24,000 copies were sold that year; IELTS and other categories have also maintained an annual growth rate of about 3 times.

Before the introduction of postgraduate entrance examination politics, Kao Chong also struggled for a long time, worried about the impact on the brand, because everyone thought Kao Chong was doing English.

Finally, Kao Chong launched non-English training. As the entrance of traffic, CET-4 and CET-6 training will inevitably expand other categories.

In addition to the cheap version of the system course, 20 17, 10 At the end of June, Kao Chong launched the VIP postgraduate course. The training adopts a combination of online live broadcast and 35-day closed offline training in summer vacation, and the price is above 1 10,000 yuan. Closed training adopts 160 class mode, from morning reading to evening self-study, and the study plan is arranged for 9 hours every day.

VIP postgraduate classes have special teaching assistants and educational administrators to study with supervised users. If the user attends class 48 hours later, the SMS will remind him; If you don't come for a week, people will intervene. If the user really does not come, give the user a refund.

Nearly 2000 people have signed up for the VIP business line.

Li Haoyu is also worried about the future. Although under the current product structure, neither New Oriental nor Youdao can have an impact on trying to eat insects, he still wants to be faster.

At present, the main traffic for testing worms comes from Weibo and WeChat, and it has also started to operate in Zhihu, Today Headline and Tik Tok.

2065438+On March 5, 2008, Kaoru announced that it had won the $20 million Series C financing led by Tencent.

"The cooperation with Tencent's education business is an important attempt for us. There may be unexpected surprises under Tencent's traffic. Li Haoyu said.

Extended reading

With a valuation of over 5 billion, 300 companies have landed in 1500 colleges and universities. He believes that education+talent market can give birth to hundreds of billions of dollars of companies.