One you have your curriculum to educate your(s) target(s), use the technology to get competitive advantage. How may e-learning help your business?

Doing it cheaper. Can be cheaper for you… and for your customers, you provide greater value.

Doing it broader. You can reach some customers that are difficult by other channels.

Doing it better. You can measure much better, so you can improve it and do it more effecttive.

Do it faster. Allows you to reach more customers in less time.

benefits · customer · e-learning · e-marketing

In the learning arena, we usually split abilities in three types: skills, or how to use tools or techniques (“hands”); capabilities, or concept abilities, like planning, designing, analysing, synthetising (“head”);  and attitudes, willing (“heart”).

In this three fields are the opportunities to use education as a tool to build loyalty with your customers, dealers, franchises, prescriptors, customers or consumers.

The “hands” side is the natural territory for complex products: machinery, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, information technology and communication. If your customer knows how to use your product easily and safely, it is more likely to buy your it. Look at Microsoft: most users prefer it because they don’t want to invest (or waste) time in learning new operating systems or desktop applications.

The “head” side is the field for new products. This could be called “awareness”. Sometimes a new product is also a new category. So you must teach your customer how to locate it in its mind framework.

Finally the “heart” is usually the target for advertising. Obviously advertising is trying to change customers’ minds, and so does education. The main difference may be that advertising is mainly focused in short-term and education is mainly focused in mid-long term. Although big brands spend a lot of money in build a long-term awareness (see for example Coca-Cola).

Trying not to mix advertising and education, I see the following differences:

• Education approach is more a mid-long term activity, it must not be thought as a “campaign”
• Training must be much more “neutral” and credible
• It must be a “service” to the customer, feedback is essential
• Measuring should be more detailed, and improving continous

This post is trying to be education. Your feedback is welcome.

customer · e-learning · learning · measurement

Second stage in our travel to educate the market: designing an effective and appealing curriculum for your customers. This is maybe the most difficult point.

You should know your customers very well to have a clear idea on what must be attractive for them. Do you have enough information? If so, congratulations. If not, maybe you need some research.

Then let’s balance your marketing objectives with the customer needs: you have the most powerful weapon. Put objectives together, prioritize them and then let’s use all the online and offline resources. Each target, its own curriculum. From events, face-to-face, traditional advertising, until video, podcasting, games, interactive education, blogs, forums, … and put them in pills. Your customer, prescriptor, reseller, doesn’t want to spend a lot of time with you. Be pedagogical… and spend in quality, don’t give them garbage.

And last, but not least, define how to m-e-a-s-u-r-e. Education programs use a model to relate students satisfaction, knowledge adquisition with behavior changes and business results. Maybe you cannot measure everything, but try al least to the basics. When you measure you can have feedback and improve. Don’t rely on opinions, get facts.

New? Of course not.

blog · customer · e-learning · e-marketing · measurement · social networks

How can I choose the best actions for my education plan (marketing plan)? Prioritizing. Simple… or not.

Consultants like to use two by two matrixes to represent concepts. In this case, the axis are value vs cost (plus risk). Consider as a business value not only income increase or cost decrease, but also broaden reach or time-to-market. In the x-axis, consider development cost, content availability or target user profile. Score each criteria, give them a weight, sum everything and put them in a graph. And… magic! In your left upper quadrant you can see the first things to do.

Easy? What do you think? Maybe I am too simple.

benefits · e-learning · e-marketing · learning · strategy

In my way to connect different disciplines, I have recently readen the expression “Educating the Market”. Eureka! This is a new application of learning.

Customers are most saturated of receiving a lot of  ads. They would like to receive useful information, not only product promotion. Isn’t it education? Should we rethink communication as education? Does education have method to create “brand education” programs? Is measuring in education developed assess messages effectiveness?

assessment · e-learning · e-marketing · learning · measurement