Melscience is a popular edtech brands in the world, and get attraction in China.
The startup has secured a 14M$ funds raise in Dec 2020.
Today, social media are everywhere and the last generation, millennials, are always connected. Those new habits lead people to learn at home. New ways of teaching, which can even be more productive.
Here an example to show you how this can be done:
Let us see the case study of MelScience.
MELSCIENCE: LEARN CHEMISTRY
Melscience is a science education company from the UK born in 2015.
The brand proposes some boxes with all stuff needed to start doing some chemistry.
WHAT’S THE CONCEPT?
Melscience is doing monthly delivery of safe chemistry experiments for kids.
All instructions and ingredients are shipped to buyers.
The company has been created by specialists and professionals: dozens of doctoral students in science are part of the team, as well as parents accustomed to safety gestures which need to be attributed to children.
If you are interested, you cannot buy these boxes in physical stores. Everything is doing online. It enables the brand to expand abroad and to increase its success.
Sales started in 2016 in the UK and in the USA only. But two years later, Melscience and its Melchemistry boxes were victims of success and have been expanded to more than 35 countries.
WHY THIS SUCCESS?
Because Melscience proposes promotions even for the first purchase. You receive a starter kit with a virtual reality headset. It is actually made of cardboard where space is designed to slip your phone inside.
They are at the cutting edge of technology. You use a phone to follow the activities, from the MEL VR mobile application.
They combined innovation and adaptation: you can switch the MEL applicationinto Russian, English, French, German, Spanish, and Chinese.
Create an app and send the stuff to do it is not enough to attract consumers, especially abroad.
WARNING…
MelScience entered China market with the hope to gain more brand awareness through young Chinese parents last year, in 2020.
When an American company tries to sell its services to Chinese consumers, they must remember one thing: with no Mandarin content, presence on Chine platforms, or tailored lead generation strategy firms cannot hope to drive leads without a China-specific approach.
MelScience does its entry in China by adding the Chinese language to its app and website. But it was not enough, and they needed a real strategy.
THINGS TO DO
ADAPT THE OFFER
In China, they decided to launch a special version of Mel Chemistry. They selected four boxes for the Chinese market, including the most interesting chemistry experiments to start big and to win them over from the beginning.
JUSTIFY YOUR STRENGTHS
Chinese schools’ habits are mostly to remember by heart all the lessons. Mel Science kept this in mind.They decide to import their lessons “from West” -which use a lot the practice-by justifying:MelScience helps kids to understand things around chemistry, not just to read and remember them.
In this spirit, they proved their experiences, and the quality of their formations as much as they can.
Actually, Chinese people are very attentive to the reputation of a brand. There is in China something called Mianziwhich is aboutthe image you transmit to others. It is important to send a good and positive image in China.
If you are a good person, with a good Mianzi, you may buy a good product, have a good job and you give good education to your children. Chinese people will avoid as much as possible all negative gossips and a bad reputation.
Before selling a product or a service in China, you must be careful with your branding and the values your brand shares.
MelScience received the EdTech Cool Tool Award as the best VR/AR solution of 2020. And the EdTech Awards is the largest and most competitive recognition program in all of the education technology.
In this idea, MelScience can boast of being safe, secure, and useful.
MAXIMIZE SOCIAL MEDIA TO CREATE PROXIMITY
To reach the Chinese audience, you must adapt to the new generation which is a connected generation. Using social media is the best way to become famous and to boost sales those last years.
BECOME HOT ON DOUYIN CHINA
Mel Science set up accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, and above all: Tik Tok, and its Chinese version Douyin.
TikTok and Douyin are short videos online platform which regroup about 500 million of active accounts per day. If you want to do some e-commerce nowadays in China you must be on Douyin and do some videos online.
LIVE ON WECHAT
In addition to TikTok and Douyin, MelScience understandshow important it is to create an official account on Wechat.
It is social media number one in China. January 2021, there are 1,213 billion users. It is a messaging app that has grown to offer a multitude of services such as booking a taxi, call someone, and pay online from a bank account.
BECOME E-ATTRACTIVE
MelScience usesWeChat for its marketing campaign to break stereotypes saying science is boring, difficult, and needsa lot of mathematical knowledge.
In order to attract young people, the company decides to make people want to learn science.
Chinese content is shared, with informative visuals.Lively and animated designs. The chosen writing is simple because it is mostlydestined for kids.
The content shared varies from interesting knowledgeof chemistry to Mel Scientist product introduction and more
The idea: everyone can enjoy chemistry. Chemistry can be fun. Chemistry is cool, interesting and for young people too.
MelscienceWeChat account does not have much followers, but it is more a way to educate and sensitive parents.
BE PRESENT: GAIN VISIBILITY
Digital marketing is the solution to attract buyers. You can globally share your values.Using social media tolet people talk about you is an interesting way to become famous and approved.
MelScientistappears on the Little Red Book Platformwhich is famous in China. Most of their users are women, and they share a lot of their opinion with others.
A Chinese woman account, @Susu, talked about the brand saying “The product is very good, both in terms of delicacy and professionalism”.
That is free advertising.
MelscienceWeibo is very interactive and get 30k followers with an average of 30 interaction per post. The education brand create event on Weibo and let parents participate to online contest to animate account.
Being visible.
BREAK THE NEW
To make a difference with other companies, you need to innovate. The solution MelScience found to break the news is to add technology to practice.
Children are doing chemistry themselves, but they use their virtual reality headset and the mobile application.
Besides that, they can also follow some lessons online on Tencent videos –V QQ-. This makes learning “boring science” more exciting and fashionable.
THINK LIKE A PARENT
Chinese parents are very concerned about their children’s education. It is also a part of the Mianzi idea. But in front of all, they care about teaching good things to kids to help them the best.
MelScienceproposes to divert children from video games to do instructive and creative activities at the same time.
RESULTS
MelScience stars only 6 years ago, and it already famous in a lot of countries and in China because they used a good marketing strategy of development.
They made learning more exciting and they adapted to their target -young- by using fun communication tools: colors, design, writing…
Plus, the UK company understand the Chinese culture and propose to share videos on their social media to integrate the market.
They are present on the most popular ones.
In China, @MelSciencegot 50 000subscribers on Douyin
Success demonstratesin April 2020when the #scienceiscool and #scienceismagic hashtags have accumulated 1.4 million views on the short video platform.
Success loved by Chinese parents who know that their children are learning while having fun. MelSciencestirs children’s curiosity and teaches them to be manual using safety gestures: gloves and glasses delivered etc.
MelSciencehas managed to find a place in China offering an opportunity for those who want their child to get a touch on real science, but also for homeschoolers who don’t get access to school labs.
The health crisis of Covid-19 helps the tendance because, without access to school and laboratories, people made it comes directly to their home.
