According to media statistics, the financial reports of major online education platforms show that the marketing expenses of only three well-known online education institutions from February to June 2020 165438+ 10 exceeded10 billion.
In the summer of 2020, the top four K 12 online schools invested about 4.7 billion in summer, while the investment in the summer of 20 19 was only 1900 million, which more than doubled.
Such "burning money" surprised public opinion: Is online education education or "burning money"?
Corresponding to the crazy "burning money", the overall loss of online education institutions is very serious.
According to statistics, in the whole year of 2020, the investment in online education is nearly 654.38+0.5 billion US dollars, while the income of online education is only tens of billions of RMB.
In this regard, some "intelligent" online education institutions believe that the "burning money" model will eventually make the "no money" institutions quit, so that the ultimate winner will be "the only one".
In my opinion, the current online education marketing war is a vicious competition to promote capital.
Results Training institutions spend too much energy and money on marketing, ignoring the improvement of education quality, which not only affects the healthy development of institutions themselves, but also increases the business risks and many puzzles of online education industry.
In the face of the growing "burning money" war in online education institutions, the regulatory authorities need to strengthen supervision to prevent risks, and the online education industry also needs to say "no" to vicious competition from the perspective of industry health.
There are at least three problems in the marketing war of online education institutions.
First, the proliferation of advertisements has aggravated parents' educational anxiety.
In the past year, parents turned on TV, listened to the radio, surfed the Internet and used smart phones, surrounded by ubiquitous online educational advertisements.
This does not violate the advertising law, but such a powerful advertising campaign makes it difficult for parents to reasonably choose off-campus training institutions.
On the basis of the Advertising Law, whether to further restrict the advertisements of online education and training institutions is also one of the issues discussed by public opinion.
Secondly, the marketing cost is huge, which affects the network education teachers and curriculum construction.
Online education has invested a lot of money in sales and marketing, crowding out the investment in teacher construction and curriculum construction, which is putting the cart before the horse.
This will increase the customer acquisition cost of the whole industry and reduce profitability.
According to industry sources, the cost of online education has accounted for 50% of the total revenue, and some even reached 100%. In other words, almost all of a student's tuition is spent on marketing, teacher construction, curriculum construction and internal management. In sharp contrast to the high quality of advertisements, online education institutions have the problems of packaging "famous teachers" and false propaganda.
Then, why not spend money to build a high-level teacher team and curriculum system?
Third, "burning money" is difficult to build a big platform, and vicious competition will leave a chicken feather.
"Financing, burning money, refinancing, burning money ..." Capital and online education institutions believe that burning money will bring traffic and eventually reshuffle the industry.
Judging from the development of online education industry in 2020, well-known online education institutions closed down because they could not fight the marketing war, which made capital see a huge institutional "prospect".
But this is not suitable for internet thinking that ignores online education and burns money to get traffic for education, nor is it suitable for education.
Online education and training institutions play a free marketing war, which reflects this point.
Turning free traffic into paying customers is not that easy.
Whether parents want to buy a course depends on the quality of the course.
The regulatory authorities regulate off-campus education and training institutions, and clearly require that each charge should not exceed three months. In addition to reducing the disputes over refund of fees, there is another meaning, which is to promote the improvement of training quality of training institutions and acquire customers by quality rather than marketing means.
However, many institutions still ignore the ball and charge tuition fees for more than three months or even one or two years at a time.
Online educational institutions have great platform pursuit, which is understandable.
But in the final analysis, students (parents) choose training institutions because of the need for differentiation.
From this perspective, it is difficult for online education to appear as a super carrier enterprise in other Internet industries.
If the quality and cost of the expanded educational institutions are not well controlled, they will fall into the dilemma of immediate closure.
Investors and operators of online education institutions must be soberly aware of this. Don't blindly pursue size and scale, but create personalized online education products that meet the differentiated choices of educated people, which is also the existence value of off-campus educational institutions.
In the face of the growing marketing war of online education institutions, both the regulatory authorities and the industry itself need to pay attention.
For the regulatory authorities, it is necessary to strictly enforce the advertising law. When advertising in training institutions, they shall not exaggerate or make false propaganda, and seriously investigate and deal with illegal advertising and speculation of training institutions.
At the same time, together with industry organizations, laws and regulations will be issued to further standardize the business behavior and risks of online education institutions in the marketing war, guide operators to invest their energy and funds in providing high-quality and personalized educational products, and create a good educational ecology for basic education.
(The writer is an educational researcher)
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