Understanding the product

Elevator Pitch

Based on the statistics, online learning platforms market is expected to grow by 0.9 billion users and $65.7 billion market volume by 2027 (statista).

Udemy, being second most affordable online education platform, they are on a mission to democratize education and help individuals worldwide unlock their full potential. With over 64 million learners and 203,000 courses, we provide access to the skills and knowledge you need to thrive in today's ever-changing world.

🚀 Why Udemy?

• 203000+ courses on diverse topics (2022)
• Expert instructors from top institutions
• 64 million+ learners worldwide (2023)
• 74000+ instructors worldwide
• 14.9K Enterprise customers [https://shorturl.at/uFQRX]
• 77+ different languages
• Learn at your own pace, anytime, anywhere
• Lifetime access to course materials
• 30-day money-back guarantee

Whether you want to learn a new skill, boost your career, or simply explore your passions, Udemy is your gateway to success. Elevate your learning journey with Udemy!

Product Selection & Framework

Value Proposition

The main value proposition for Udemy is Learn at your own pace, anytime, anywhere. Udemy offers lifetime access to the course and it provides 30-day money back guarantee emphasizing on the course quality.

Problem Statement that Udemy is solving for

As students, and working professionals needed skill development to grow in their career,

-> Traditional educational institutes are expensive, has time constraint

-> Traditional educational systems have rigorous acceptance criteria which makes lot of students to miss out from the course and the opportunity

-> Tradition classes are offered once, if student misses the class, it's missed completely

-> Working professionals don't find time to learn during working hours, and it makes them missing out on learning opportunity [Evening Classes, Travel, Missing time with family]

-> Working professionals do need parallel skill development, and universities doesn't offer varieties of courses focusing on specific technologies

-> Businesses focuses on skill development of the workforce, but, it's impossible to spend money to send all their employees to universities in order to upskill [ No courses on specific technologies, budget issues, time restriction issue]

-> People living in other countries as immigrants can't find universities teaching them in their language of preference [ex. An indian living in Canada, can not find a university that offer courses in Hindi]

Udemy's primary mission is to democratize online learning by providing a platform that empowers both professionals and students to upskill, bridge skill gaps, and advance in their careers. It offers an accessible and cost-effective solution for businesses to enhance the skills of their workforce efficiently.

Ideal Customer Profile

ICP Prioritization Framework

Final Selection:

Udemy has significant competition from PluralSight, LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, EDX etc platforms. But Udemy is second most affordable learning platform which makes it very competitive.

ICP 1 has low appetite to pay. ICP 2, ICP 3, ICP 4, and ICP 5 have high needs of skill development as well as willingness to pay for courses.

Hence, our chosen ICP - Recent graduated Job seekers, and early to mid level professionals seeking for growth.

For Udemy Business; we will target medium to large scale organizations.

Understanding the market:

ICP Intent and Analysis

Udemy visitors are mostly interested in Programming and Developer Software, Computers Electronics and Technology - other, and video Games Consoles and accessories.

The big competitors are Coursera, and LinkedIn.

The highest traffic generating keywords for Udemy is the Udemy, which brings around 4M visitors making Udemy a strong brand.

Reference: https://shorturl.at/axyFU

Market Size and Competitors:

With each year, Online Learning Platforms (OLP) popularity is growing compared to online university education, which shows strong consumer demand for online learning platforms.

Pandemic has even fueled it further. By 2027, OLP consumers are expected to rise to 920.8M.

With 64 million learners and 203,000 courses, and growing its customer base. For Udemy Business, it has 13920 enterprise customers, having strong retention rate (115%) and generating 90.6M revenue in 2022, which makes 66.6% of segment revenue.

Udemy Business Annual Recurring Revenue $371.7M, which is 55% YoY increase.

https://shorturl.at/axY47

Udemy represents 3.53 % market share in online learning platforms category.

Some of the customers of Udemy:

https://tinyurl.com/2h7z3sy5

Industries using Udemy as Learning Management Systems (LMS): Mainly tech related companies are using Udemy Business and upskilling their workforce.

Udemy Business clients are mostly companies ranging size of 100-249 employees and 1000 or more employees. Small companies ranging size 20-49 employees also uses Udemy Business.

Udemy has larger customer audience from United States, United Kingdom and Germany.

Udemy primarily completes with coursera, edx, and other LMS tools such as LinkedIn learning.

Calculation of TAM, SAM, and SOM

• By 2022, E-Learning market is valued at 399.3 B
• By 2032, E-Learning market is expected to grow to 1 Trillion [https://shorturl.at/hBF04.]
• Udemy Market Share: 3.53% [https://shorturl.at/bpKN2]
• Current Reality
• • # of Users [Udemy Personal] : 64 M
  • # of Enterprise Customers : 14.9 K
  • Current Valuation : 1 B [as of 03 Nov, 2023]
• Total Addressable Market (TAM) Calculation:
• • Personal User Market:
  • • Total number of workforce: 3.4 B
    • Let's assume 20% of the workforce is in STEM, and other professional work = 680M
    • Personal Users Market = 680 M
  • Businesses Market :
  • • total number of businesses: 16.5M [https://tinyurl.com/4c3mmppr]
    • Assumption: 10% of businesses might use LMS System
    • Total Businesses: 1.65 M
  • There is a huge potential for Udemy. Udemy Business started contributing more towards its revenue and it is likely to increase since they have good retention rate.
• SAM
• • Assumption: We can serve only 40% of personal user market and 20% of business user market
  • Personal Users = 40% of personal users market = 272 M
  • Business Users = 10 % of Total Business market = 165 K
• SOM
• • Assumption: We can only obtain 80% of the serviceable available market
  • Personal Users = 80% of Personal SAM = 217.6 M
  • Business Users = 80 % of Business SAM = 132 K

Acquisition Strategies

Channel Selection Framework

Based on the distribution channel research for Udemy, it is seen that Direct and Organic search contributes to more than 77% of its traffic. However, it's closest competitor Coursera has 16.6% of organic search volume while Udemy has 11.52%.

Referral channel doesn't produce much traffic and there we have scope for improvement. High organic traffic makes Udemy a strong brand in LMS space.

Product Integration:

Udemy does have other product integrations such as AWS, Betterworks, fileterd, Looker, and other LMS systems for different usecases. These product integrations makes Udemy a more suitable LMS for business users.

Integration with other platforms:

LMS: 360Learning, LinkedIn Learning, Cornerstone, Docebo, Skillsoft and many more

Marketplace: AWS

Performance Management: betterworks,

Skills Management: Tilr

Reporting: Power BI, Tableau, Looker

Communication: Microsoft Teams, Slack

Talent Experience: Phenom

Other integrations are with Workday, and Servicenow also available.

https://tinyurl.com/3nz28fnt

Social Media, Paid Search, Mail:

Above mentioned channels cumulatively bring around 18% traffic which makes it performing well.

Referral and Display Ads:

Referrals are sitting at merely 1.82% which makes it most under-utilized channels among all available channels. There is a huge potential to improve. Display ads are bringing around 2.1% traffic to Udemy.

Channel Decision Framework:

Udemy is a growing company and it's in mature scaling phase - we will focus more on what's already working and leave some room for experimentation.

Here, Organic Channel and Product Integration are working well for Udemy and we would focus more on that.

Organic: Udemy can continue leveraging SEO, since it's low effort and the most successful acquisition channel for them.

Referral: The most underused channel even though Udemy is a strong brand name and it is popular in Learning Management System space. Udemy should leverage Referral programs to bring more traffic.

Paid Ads: Paid Ads are bringing around 6% traffic, and Udemy can look at the cost and continue doing what ads are working. They have the leverage to experiment with the paid ads.

Product Integrations: Udemy has 43 integrations by now with softwares of different categories that makes it more integrated in the enterprise ecosystem and can make retention high. Udemy can continue expanding on building more integrations.

Udemy Referral Programs:

"Udemy does offer good courses, and I can learn at my pace, however, I don't get study groups here. Hence, on the enrolment If I could share the same course with my friends and ask them to join the course so we can discuss and learn together, that would be great."

Platform currency - The key factors would be sense of pride and dopamine factor on successful completion of the course. That's when we will ask for referral and offer them benefit. For Udemy, platform currency would be Udemy Credit that can be used towards their next course enrolment. - (a) the user unlocks these credits each time they refer a friend

Happy flows in the Product - There are three key happy flows in the product - (a) When the user enrols the course and successfully post it on linkedIn or share it with friends on social media (b) When a user completes 50% of the course and gives 4-5 star ratings (c) When a user completes the course and gives 4-5 star ratings for the course. We can create a referral nudge in all these three key scenarios.

Discovering the Referral -

Current State: At this point, Udemy doesn't ask for Referral. It does have affiliate program which is a separate tool, Rakuten, which is buried and not easy to find. Also, it has requirements which makes it hard for everyone to join the program. Hence, I would recommend setting up "Refer A Friend" which is different than affiliate program.

Udemy, can be accessed on the web browser, and it also has Android & iOS mobile apps. Hence, in following way user will get to know about referral program

Desktop:

• Provide a pop up for referral after enrolling the course, 50% completion of the course & 4/5 ratings for the course, or course completion with 4/5 ratings
• Send notification/message in the desktop (In-App Message/Notification) for referral
• Also in the profile section, Add a menu "Refer a Friend"

Mobile App:

• Provide a pop up for referral after enrolling the course, 50% completion of the course & 4/5 ratings for the course, or course completion with 4/5 ratings
• Send Push notification after reaching each milestones for referral
• In Profile section, add "Refer a friend"

These are 3 happy flows for Udemy:

Student Enrols for the course;

When a user enrols for the course; Udemy just gives a message " Great Choice, Karansinh Gumansinh". When I enrol for the course, I get sense of satisfaction and excitement.

At this point, Udemy should ask me to share the course with my friends on social media or post it on Linkedin where I can share with the community what I am learning right now. It's dopamine factor, or fame.

Sharing on Social Media or LinkedIn post, validates that student is serious about the learning and career growth. Ask them for referral.

Student completes 50% of the course

50% completion of the course is a milestone. It gives sense of progress and satisfaction; at this point Udemy can ask for course rating; if the user gives 4/5 star rating, we should ask for referral.

Here, I noticed, that Share functionality is buggy. I don't see any options available to share the course with my friends!

• Student completes the course and gets certificate

When user completes the course, Udemy does ask for the ratings.

On successful submission of the ratings, Udemy asks for sharing the review on social media; ironically the channels they mentions are Facebook, Twitter, and email. .

However, I would use Whatsapp, LinkedIn, or email; since these channels are more preferable for professionals/friends when it comes to share with friends

When user, completes the course, and validated by 4/5 star ratings, udemy should ask for referral by offering Udemy credit.

Also, Implement the Referral Dashboard, where user can see status/progress of the referrals so the user can help referred users to make decisions regarding the course.

Encouraging Referee to continue referring - Each referral will reward both the referee and the referred with Udemy credits.

As number of referrals increase, the accumulated credit will also increase. Ex. for the first five referred users sign ups the user receives $5 Udemy credits. For the next five sign ups, they receive $10 Udemy credits and so on. The referred will receive $5 Udemy credits upon joining the platform. This will reflect on their dashboard.

Social risk v/s Effort - Here, the social risk is not that much since, referree shares educational material , gets sense of helping others while the referred user, gets the sense of caring. Since referee is sending something for growth of the referred user. Referee and referred user will have their own dashboards where they can see the claimed credits and status of referrals.

Udemy Product Integration:

Organic Intent - The identified ICPs are Young Professionals, and Job seekers and mostly these are tech people. These people are using tools such as Teams, Slack, LinkedIn, Indeed, development tools, documentation tools, and reporting tools.

These ICPs are using social media channels such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat etc.

I would work to get Udemy integrated with Job Boards; where based on the job title, and description appropriate available trainings complementing the job would be shown. So, we can drive more customer to the Udemy.

Ex: LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, Glassdoor, Angellist

• LinkedIn alone has 930M users and has 61M users searching for jobs each week
• Glassdoor has 47.3M monthly visits
• Indeed has 605.7M monthly visits

Ex. As shown below, on these job boards such as Indeed, Glassdoor, and others, we can display appropriate courses for the opened job title and requirements.

User calculations Monthly and How this can grow

We can use the framework of:

Monthly visits to the particular integration app - X

Assuming 50% users of the integration app uses minimum number of Udemy use cases every month -

Total Number of users to Udemy --> 50% * X

Assuming - We assume that Udemy works best on the Desktop, we will consider only user counts for desktops. Udemy mobile apps are bit buggy and reviews shows that it has been like this since long time. Hence, there is lot of scope for Mobile App channel improvement.

Hence, based on the above analysis, new monthly users can grow from lower range of 235 M to 470 M being higher range. The rate of conversion could be higher since, serious job seekers would definitely want to grow their skills to get their dream job and Udemy can help them the skills they want to learn.

Reference:

1. https://tinyurl.com/22bp2y5h
2. https://tinyurl.com/rj3es7ef
3. https://tinyurl.com/9n86veue

For enterprise clients, integrating with ERP systems such as Oracle HCM, SAP etc. That makes it highly integrated within the Enterprise Ecosystems.