During the epidemic this year, the paid-for-knowledge industry broke out, and many people bought classes at home to unlock various skills. After the epidemic, people who were unemployed due to the epidemic will also become potential users of the paid-knowledge industry. IiMedia expects that the scale of the payment for knowledge industry will exceed 39.2 billion in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 41%.
Under the good momentum of development, various criticized industry chaos has also caused heated discussions. Negative discussions such as "trafficking anxiety", "knowledge crooks", IQ tax, harvesting leeks and other negative discussions have added to the industry's further development. Layer of haze. To break through these hazes, industry participants still need to make a lot of effort.
Two "nobles" in the paid knowledge industry
From the origin, the mode of paying for knowledge has existed since ancient times, and the reason why payment for knowledge has become a popular business model today is mainly because of the Internet.
First of all, the emergence of the Internet has innovated the channels of knowledge dissemination. The emergence of the Internet has led to the rapid development of the audio-visual industry, and has also spawned various social tools, making the expression of "knowledge" more diverse, and allowing the production organizers and users of knowledge to directly establish a dialogue relationship, all of which are paid for knowledge The popularization of this kind of business practice laid the foundation.
Secondly, the complicated information brought by the Internet has given birth to people's requirements for high efficiency. Due to the emergence of the Internet, all information is accessible with one key. The complicated content requires people to spend a lot of time and energy to identify. The rise of payment for knowledge is aimed at consumers who have learning needs but want to save this time cost.
Finally, the popularization of mobile payment has added the last fire to the boom in payment for knowledge. In 2013, the transaction scale of third-party mobile payment in my country was only 1.2 trillion yuan. By 2018, the transaction scale of third-party mobile payment in my country has reached 190.5 trillion yuan, which has increased by more than a hundredfold in 6 years, and the popularity of mobile payment It provides convenience for paying for knowledge.
In addition to the main factor of the Internet, consumption upgrades and consumer self-awareness have all contributed to the rapid growth of the industry.
According to a survey by iiMedia Consulting, from 2011 to 2019, the number of related companies in the payment for knowledge industry in China continued to increase. In 2015 alone, there were 702 new companies in the payment for knowledge industry in China, and the market size increased from 1.59 billion yuan to 67.5 billion yuan. .
However, with the increase in the number of entrants in the industry, content homogeneity, lack of depth, sales anxiety and many other problems, the pace of industry growth has slowed down. According to iiMedia's data, the year-on-year growth rate of the payment for knowledge market in 2019 was 87.5%, a sharp decline compared to 202.0% in 2018.
The outbreak of the epidemic has brought new development opportunities for the knowledge payment industry. Affected by the prevention and control of the epidemic, people's travel is restricted, and they have a lot of free time, so the enthusiasm for learning is unprecedentedly high. According to iiMedia Consulting's data, 63.1% of people have bought knowledge-paid products during the epidemic prevention and control period during the Spring Festival this year.
It is not difficult to see that the Internet and the epidemic have respectively brought huge development opportunities to the paid-for-knowledge industry. However, after the opportunity period has passed, if the paid-for-knowledge industry wants to continue to grow, it still has to return to the most essential problems.
Content: the basis for determining product value
The content basically determines the value of a paid-for-knowledge product and also determines the willingness of consumers to pay. In terms of types, the content of existing paid knowledge products is mainly divided into two types.
One is knowledge in the traditional sense, such as "Xue Zhaofeng’s Economics Course at Peking University" and K12 online teaching on "Get"; the other is general knowledge in the fields of speech, emotion, workplace, health and wellness, such as Weiwei "WeChat public account high-value typesetting", "12 compulsory speaking lessons for life winners", etc. on the library.
Different types of knowledge-paid products will show different characteristics in terms of content value and audience.
On the one hand, the value of a paid-for-knowledge product will be directly proportional to its content professionalism and practicality. The first type of paid knowledge products are more professional and practical, and their prices are often higher.
For example, the basic knowledge paid products for training and examinations on the market will be more than 10,000 yuan; and skills training courses will increase with the depth of the content, such as entry, intermediate, and high-level, and the price will rise linearly. However, the price of general knowledge paid products is often not high. For example, the price of the above-mentioned Weiku course is only less than 100 yuan.
On the other hand, the audience also determines which products can obtain greater benefits, and the audience of the second product is significantly larger than the first product.
For the user, which product will be paid for depends on which type of product will bring greater value to him/her. In actual situations, there are a small number of consumers who need professional knowledge, and more people need knowledge that is easy to absorb and can be applied to real life. Therefore, in recent years, the second type of knowledge payment products have emerged in endlessly.
However, due to the uneven quality of content creators in this area, the product quality is also uneven, and occasionally courses that violate social ethics, such as PUA courses, appear. The emergence of these "bad" courses has lowered the overall level of the industry and reduced the number of consumers willing to pay for knowledge.
To avoid this phenomenon and make consumers willing to pay for it, content providers need to start from the basic content, eliminate inferior products, raise the threshold of content creators, and thus improve the bottom line of product content quality and regain users’ interest. Trust and respect.
Operation: refrain from "routine" marketing
In order for a paid- for- knowledge product to make consumers pay, in addition to making sure that the content of the product has value, it must also do a good job in marketing. However, marketing should only play a supporting role, but many knowledge-paid products are turning the cart before the horse. Marketing is regarded as the focus of product operation, so that many marketing routines have been formed.
The excessive use of marketing routines has brought many negative effects to the industry.
First of all, the endless marketing routines make the behavior of learning knowledge no longer pure and full of utilitarianism. Consumers no longer learn to learn, but to achieve a certain project.
For example, some content creators overemphasize the instructor’s counterattack experience in marketing, tempting consumers to imagine that they can achieve this effect through learning; or adopting the method of "trafficking anxiety", starting from the social environment, by emphasizing other people The advantage of this, forcing consumers to buy lessons.
Secondly, over-marketing leads to the breeding of bad money in the industry driving out good money. When inferior courses gain user traffic through marketing, no one cares about products that do not focus on marketing but are of high quality.
For example, some paid-for-knowledge products will emphasize various titles of lecturers during marketing, such as "professor of xx university" and "famous ×××". After attracting consumers by name, some course content does not have corresponding gold content. , Even serious water injection, but they have successfully made consumers pay time and money.
Finally, impetuous marketing routines eroded the minds of users, and also laid hidden dangers for the collapse of reputation in the following industries. An overly exaggerated marketing plan will give users the illusion that they can bring huge changes to their lives through short-term learning, but the actual situation is not the case.
For example, there are endless wealth management courses, all claiming that lecturers realize wealth freedom by "knowledge", but most consumers who have bought wealth management courses do not have great practical results after learning, which makes it difficult for consumers to deal with the industry. There are good reviews.
The strategy of "repertoire" will work at first, but it will not have a long-term effect. The slowdown in industry growth before the epidemic is proof. To return the industry to the track of healthy development, it is necessary to exercise restraint in routine marketing, seek truth from facts, and be more sincere.
Service: After-sales shortcomings need to be made up
Paid-for-knowledge products have the particularity that they cannot be refunded once purchased, so content providers need to pay special attention to after-sales service, and a sound after-sales service mechanism will also bring a lot of positive blessings to the paid-for knowledge products themselves.
First, improving the after-sales communication mechanism and responding to user feedback in a timely manner can not only ensure that consumers have a good consumption experience, but also find effective references for improving product quality. Second, perfecting the links of teacher-student post-class communication and knowledge application can increase students' self-conversion rate, thereby increasing the influence of products.
However, the existing paid knowledge products are seriously failing in terms of after-sales service.
For example, in order to avoid bad reviews, many sellers of paid knowledge products screen users' messages or even close the message channel. Most of the courses on the knowledge payment platform Weiku lacked comments after the courses, and they were all praises to the lecturers, lacking doubts and feedback on the knowledge itself. The content side's ignorance of users' bad feedback also makes it difficult to improve the quality of the content.
Moreover, the knowledge payment platform and the regulatory authorities also lack a corresponding reporting mechanism, so that some low-quality courses have always existed on the market. Consumers who question and dissatisfied with no complaints will naturally bring a lot of negative public opinions to the industry.
In addition, knowledge itself is subject to change, so follow-up updates and Q&A of paid knowledge products are also extremely important. However, current paid knowledge products or platforms generally lack this link. The various problems and deficiencies in the after-sales service mechanism make it not only fail to exert its due effect, but also lower the overall quality of the product.
Learning is a long-term process, and users' demand for improving self-worth has always existed. Therefore, the knowledge payment industry will always have room for development. However, the business model of payment for knowledge is essentially no different from other business models. Merchants still rely on the information gap with consumers to make money.
Therefore, if the participants in it want to achieve long-term development, only by creating value for users can they win the respect and recognition of users. To create value for users, we must be down-to-earth and improve our content and service quality, rather than relying on marketing to harvest users.