When running a business, big or small, the conversation often comes back to the same question: how do you build a reputable brand? A strong brand comes about because of consistency, quality, accessibility, innovation, and expertise in the field. Essentially, the strength of a brand depends on how much consumers can trust it. To generate that trust, you have to engage them, establish your expertise, and provide them with not only the best products, but the best service and information. Enter customer learning. This segment of the eLearning industry is experiencing off-the-charts growth and offers a new profit center option that consumer brands and publishers are embracing because of its impact on brand validity, customer retention, and customer value. Providing online courses, how-tos, and basic lessons for consumers is an innovative and effective way to generate revenue, attract advertisers, and engage your consumer audience. Here are five ways in which consumer learning solutions can benefit your business.
1. Educating your Customers
By creating a curated experience for your audience, from your newest prospects to your most loyal recurring customers, not only do you provide the opportunity for your customers to learn about your products, but you can learn about your customers through a windfall of data on how they use your products, where they have knowledge gaps, and what improvements they need for a better overall experience. While consumers can find how-to YouTube videos and online blogs that teach with varying degrees of effectivity, there’s no substitute for offering an online course and educational experience specifically designed with your customers in mind.
2. Defining your Brand
Each and every interaction a customer has with your company plays a role in his or her opinion of your brand. Whether it’s the effectiveness of your customer support or the quality of your product, consumers constantly take stock of what your brand means to them. By offering curated online instructional experiences on your web site or though your apps, you are providing an elevated brand experience and building a trusted and lasting relationship with your customers. Product knowledge makes for more engaged users, contributes to higher life-time-values, and organically develops brand and product evangelists.
3. Improving Product Adoption and Creating Customer Loyalty
As consumers, we often get excited about new products, but once we take them home or download them online, we find ourselves struggling to understand just where to start. Products that are inherently complex, like software, hardware, and consumer goods can make customers feel both challenged and discouraged. A new study recently showed that one in five apps is used only once, and that 20% app-abandonment rate is an improvement from years past. Many apps continue to be abandoned because customers simply don’t know how to use them. The adoption curve is too steep. That’s why app developers take such huge stock in “Day -One Retention,” a metric that is triggered when a customer returns to an app the day after purchasing to continue use. Building something more than just an FAQ section or a video will help your customers along and provide the confidence to get them up to speed. Customers who actively use and understand your product will provide you with much higher and more frequent dividends than customers who have interest in your product but just can’t figure out how to take full advantage of it.
4. Increasing Ad Revenue
Our data continues to show that consumer learning courses lead to significantly higher time on site sessions than typical web user behavior. Learning is a process that requires attention. In most cases, online learners (especially those in the the world of consumer learning) are highly motivated and highly engaged. For years, advertising and commercial sponsorship have not been widely associated with learning, but our consumer learning solutions provide a model wherein the two can live effectively together. Users are highly engaged and if the advertising is relevant and tastefully delivered, it can be exceptionally powerful. Think Cabot sponsoring a course on deck staining on the Home Depot web site. Having the right sponsors in the right places can provide a win-win opportunity for everyone involved.
5. Generating Direct Revenue from Online Courses
While consumer learning can reinforce your brand, complement your online store, and serve as a marketing platform, it also can generate revenue streams of its own. How-to courses and online lessons can be sold online to create brand new revenue streams. Consumer audiences are much more comfortable learning online these days, and with multi-million dollar businesses being launched all over the world, the demand for online learning is higher than ever before. Consumer learning solutions allow you to engage your customers and improve your brand while simultaneously providing you with an entirely new profit center that ties directly into your website.
