Have you come up with an exciting new idea for a product or service? Have you managed to successfully launch it? Are you sitting back and waiting for an overwhelming response to the cool new solution you have served up? Is this response frustratingly slow?
The reason might be that your potential customers are not completely aware of the life-changing benefits of what you have to offer. There are thousands of new products being launched annually, with a failure rate of nearly 85% to 95%. Most of these products were either marketed using the wrong techniques, not marketed sufficiently or simply created with a skewed understanding of what the market needs.
It is also possible that the market never realized what the product or service actually had to offer. Educating your customers about your product, especially when its benefits are not immediately obvious, is essential in creating demand for it. If, for example, you have come up with the latest, most brilliant weight loss solution, you don’t need to instruct your customer on what to expect by purchasing it. However, if you are on the market for complex software solutions, the benefits might not be so self-explanatory.
The Benefits of educating your client
It is increasingly becoming a trend for businesses to look for ways to educate their audience about their products and services through e-learning programs. Getting to know what your product does is only one outcome of offering your customers a tailored instructional program through an e-learning platform. Other benefits include:
• Saving your customers time and resources in terms of training
• Showing them the optimal ways to derive value from your product
• Facilitating the integration of your product into their internal processes
• Providing accessible reference materials in place of fully-trained experts
• Optimizing the training process through mobile instruction, and much more
Creating maximum value for your customers through e-learning
Creating a useful training program that your customers actually find valuable is a challenge. You don’t want to waste their already scarce time and at the same time you want to communicate as much as possible about the results they can achieve with your new solution. There are a few strategies to make your training program stand out and add real value to your customers’ experience.
Customize it
Adding your logo, brand colors and using the specific voice of your business throughout the e-learning program will not only help you stand out, but will also enrich the brand experience of your client. Trust is not built overnight and if your customers associate the value they are getting from your product training with your brand, you are more likely to solidify the sense of dedication and commitment they can expect from you in general.
Make it exclusive
To make a client feel special and exclusively cared for, limit the access to your training program to a list of existing and potential clients only. By making it available to the public, you will diminish its perceived value and won’t be able to offer it as a bonus or a special feature later on. Other marketing tactics may be more suitable for spreading the word, such as creating social media buzz, presenting case studies or guest posting through related media.
Get feedback
Enable your clients to tell you what they think about their training experience. If you notice that something does not seem to be working as well as you have expected, take immediate measures to update the content, the learning strategies and the instructional approach. Is your training too boring? Is it too long? Is it relevant to the client’s business environment? If not, go ahead and fix it, so you can present them with an improved version and show that you care.
Use a variety of content
Simply throwing together your official product documentation and calling it online training will most probably not do the trick. After all, you want to add something extra to what your clients already have or can easily access. Save them the time for reading through lengthy descriptions by incorporating video, graphics, quizzes, and even games into your training.
Make it intuitive
Don’t make your customers require training for training you have provided them with. Make your instructional materials, as well as your eLearning course design as easy to navigate as possible, so the client can have the freedom of going through it at their own pace and on their own time.
Have you tried creating an e-learning program to educate your existing or potential clients about your new product or service? If so, what has worked for you so far? What challenges have you been faced with in terms of providing clients with educational materials?
