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I worked at Hootsuite, the leader in social media management, when they launched their first paid certification program, and was fortunate to witness this industry-leading customer education development first-hand. But I know revenue wasn’t their primary goal in the beginning.
At the time, the courses were aimed at supporting lead generation and customer success efforts, but as more and more people took the courses, the company realized the true potential of the courseware. Today, Hootsuite Academy It is a true revenue generating center.
But for many businesses, customer education isn’t enough to drive revenue. The success statistics are undeniable — 90% of businesses see a positive return on their investment in customer education — The reality is that businesses today need tangible ROI beyond correlated metrics like increased customer satisfaction and lifetime value. They need alternative revenue streams.
Hootsuite and others HubSpot and LinkedIn You’ve paved the way for a customer education program that has full-funnel impact. If your company hasn’t yet leveraged customer education as a revenue driver, now is the time. Here’s why and how to get there.
Related: Want to gain loyal customers? Teach them something new – How customer education programs can improve your business
Full-funnel impact is the way forward
Since the pandemic, Customer churn reaches record levelsMarketing and customer success teams are under pressure to double down on their efforts to attract, engage and retain customers. Many businesses are feeling the financial strain of the economic downturn. New revenue streams In addition to reducing costs.
Marketing and customer service teams are a gold mine here, as they have a wealth of knowledge and data about your customers (from understanding the buying process to the challenges they experience post-onboarding). Customer success and marketing teams can leverage the knowledge base and support assets they’ve already built and work together to package the assets into a tangible service that customers will pay for. Transforming the customer experience Enable self-service learning, generate revenue, reduce demands on your time, and reposition yourself to help your customers achieve their goals more independently.
At my current workplace, we’ve seen great value in using self-service courseware to onboard and activate customers as quickly as possible, but this strategy isn’t exclusive to SaaS companies: we’ve seen this with clients across a wide range of industries. Public Education Programs To Highly Specialized TrainingOne thing we’ve noticed across the board is that to have an impact across the funnel, it takes alignment across different business units and a unified business plan.
Related: 4 Ways Brands Can Educate and Engage Customers
Start with a strategy
Unless you’re an educational institution, you’ll quickly realize that offering courses and certifications is different from writing software or selling widgets. Treating it as its own business will make it easier to get the resources you need to succeed, including marketing support and integration into your overall product strategy.
While it may be tempting to just throw together a patchwork of existing content and slap a price tag on it, you need a plan that actually forecasts and fosters growth. Think carefully about what your customers will pay for and what you need to offer everyone. That might involve creating tiers of paid access that match engagement levels, such as paid certification for standard customers and one-on-one mentoring for top performers.
We recommend thinking about your potential growth at least a year or two out, and what you’ll need to support it. For example, once your course is up and running and established, you may want the ability to develop a private community where students can collaborate and share what they’ve learned.
One of the keys to Hootsuite’s success is choosing a platform that lets them harness the power of their growing subscriber base. Choosing a tool that can scale with them allows them to add new features when they’re ready and saves them the trouble of having to migrate their content to a more robust platform when it starts to take off.
Related: The most important investment any startup can make is customer education
Leveraging technology to enhance creativity
If you find it hard to create value that people will pay for, technology can help here, too. Generative AI tools can ease the task of transforming existing assets into courseware, and your delivery platform of choice may have built-in prompts and features to help you turn your vision into reality with minimal effort. To give one example, we’ve used AI to successfully reduce video editing from six hours to one hour, a huge efficiency boost.
Also, remember that you don’t necessarily need to produce dozens of high-quality videos. Think about how you can leverage the videos you already have and fill the gaps with new content that clearly solves your customer’s pain points. And don’t be afraid to get creative. How we develop coursewareBut you can always go your own way.
If you need inspiration, look at what other people are doing, especially what great competitors in other fields are doing. One of my favorites is Cricut Accessis a paid account for Cricut crafters that provides resources, support, and project ideas. This company targets consumers, and while they’re not the target audience for my company, they’re always a good source of food for thought.
Finally, don’t be afraid to try something, even if it doesn’t work. After all, the best way to learn is to experiment. And learning alongside your customers may be the surest way to accelerate both their productivity and revenue, and your own.
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