How to Use Customer Education As a Marketing Tool [Tips & Checklist]

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How to Use Customer Education As a Marketing
Tool Tips Checklist
Customer education, in the simplest term, is a
marketing strategy. This doesnt mean other
strategies are an unreliable fit to upscale your
ROI. But with global disruption and customer
thought-process shift actively pulling
information to support their purchasing
decisions, you need a more inclusive marketing
strategy. Customer education solely depends on
your objectives. Whether you want to increase
product adoption, generate demand for your
product, increase conversion rate (free to paid
users), or even prioritize having a talent pool
of qualified people that uses your product. If
your priorities are amongst any of above
mentioned, your education must report to
marketing sales reps. So, shall we start to
know about how to use customer education as a
marketing tool tips checklist. Importance of
Customer Education
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In the digital-savvy and information-driven
culture, customer education is a valuable asset
for any marketing team. Gone are the days when
worn- out sales pitches fueled the ROI of any
organization. Because, nowadays, customers are
putting their necks out to educate their buying
decisions. So, it all drips down to how aware
are the customers of your product and
services. Recent research by New Century Media
suggests that companies who invest in customer
educational assets foster consumers 29 times, who
are likely to buy. The best example of this is
Hubspot Academy, the people who take their
courses or even read their blogs are more likely
to buy their offerings. So, it is not rocket
science. It is a question of consumer
thought-process shift actively pulling
information to support their purchasing
decisions. This shift in the digital culture has
created a context in which consumers feel the
need to engage with your products, and your
services, through a deeper meaningful,
bite-size education. Furthermore, Forbes former
contributor, Steve Olenski, articulated in his
Education-based Marketing blog that Todays
consumers wont do business with people they
dont trust. As consumers expect immediate
gratification, it gets harder for them to buy
unless it's on their terms and timetable. Hard
fact, but true! So, for them to trust you, they
need to feel assured that they are dealing with
the right company that has their best interest
in mind.
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How to Implement Customer Education as a
Marketing Tool?
1. Align Your Goals To launch any successful
customer education program, you need to
understand the dynamics of the business impact it
has. And to figure that out, you need to align
your goals on every level of your company
functions. So, what are your priorities? To
generate demand for your product? Increase your
product use? Increase conversion rate (Free to
paid users)? Or do you want to create a talent
pool of qualified people to use your
product? After establishing above mentioned
priorities for your organization align your
set goals within every hierarchy level of your
organization.
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• Business Goals Conduct a whiteboard session with
  top leaders decision-makers of your company to
  discuss traction metrics such as customer
  acquisition, lifetime value (LTV), and other
  metrics. Without the top-bottom sync, the
  customer education program wont get very far.
• Departmental Goals The impact of customer
  education is felt across different degrees in
  different departments of your company, be it,
  sales, marketing, and customer success team. To
  acquire proven results, you need re-assure what
  they are using as proxies for customer success,
  currently. Therefore, customer education will
  become a helpful user-level metric for them as
  well.
• Team Goals Team goals are all about your sync
  impact. To create a win-win situation while
  implementing customer education, you need to
  convey synchronous efforts think user-level
  metrics. Aligning a singular set focus
  consistency will bring a great impact on your
  engagement rates course completion.
• 2. Allocate Resources
• The bluntness about customer education is youre
  not going to reach your dream state, right away.
  Optimizing your customer education program for
  your unique set goals message will take time.
  But that doesnt mean you shouldnt take the
  first step. To create a solid foundation and
  reach an educational state like the academy, you
  might face hurdles like lack of resources
  unsatisfied response gaps.
• But focus on gains, not gaps. Avoid fixing your
  eye on global-class academies like Hubspot when
  you are just starting. Focus on your gains. Be
  it the smallest effort today, your needle should
  be moving in the right direction. Because, if
  youre constantly peeking out on others
  examples, youll struggle on your grounds. That
  being said, its cool to have an idea of whats
  going around about features and resources, itll
  help you to keep the tap on current trends.
• Creating your academy doesnt necessarily mean
  that the resources and tools required must come
  from your repository and budget. Allocate
  resources by borrowing useful material from other
  departments, that might have expandable
  resources, you can use. For example, for any
  subject matter topic, you can use your
  specialists to shoot a quick 5-min explanatory
  video session.

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• Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. Never
  underestimate the power of words. Have
  round-table sessions (virtual works too) with
  your teams weekly or monthly to discuss the
  progress. Host theme-based events to bring
  connect different departments on the same page.
  Yeah, you can use event fliers memes, and
  paste them around the wall to let the message
  roll. Eventually, the intent is to bring
  visibility to create momentum.
• Create Deliver
• Now you already know what kind of goals sets and
  business outcomes youre aiming to drive, so the
  question comes, what sort of objectives will
  help your customer achieve through your
  educational assets thatll eventually lead to
  your business outcome that you've identified?
• In technical terms, this is called Learning
  Objectives. After you have nailed down your
  learning objectives, you can start laying out the
  entire journey that your customer will have to
  accomplish their objectives. Most importantly,
  when you are in this stage, consider the
  following
• Subject Matter Subject Matter is perhaps the
  most significant decision in your customer
  education program, it means what you are going
  to educate your consumers about. As the simplest
  example, lets say you wish to educate your
  customers about your products. But, dont you
  think thats a broad topic.
• So, work with your subject matter experts to
  narrow down your content scope, at the start,
  and find priorities. Them be it in a specific
  feature or even a function you feel helpful.
• Content Mix In this process, you need to conduct
  white sessions with your instructional designer
  to decide the type of content (or platform) you
  are going to produce. Most learners dont respond
  to a heap of words, including videos,
  infographics, and slideshows to foster the
  fast-learning cognitive capacity of your
  consumers. The purpose is to create a dynamic
  learning environment, so the more creatively
  exciting mix it gets, the more easily it is
  absorbed.
• Content-Length The concept of your perfect
  content mix works this far. The reality of
  consumers nowadays is that most of them dont
  have time to sit back and invest hours at end to
  learn. This is

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• why you need to find a short snappy way to get
  into a 5-10mins window. Creating 7 short video
  sessions is way better than 1 long webinar
  session.
• Delivery Process Once you align your goals, find
  ways to get the resources, and create the right
  mix length of your content, and its delivery
  time. Delivery is about enabling a system that
  supports scaling your mapped-out customer
  education program. To make use of this, you need
  a tech stack integration to operate your
  education program while deploying the resources
  that you've developed earlier. Dont forget to
  engage with your customer in their learning
  stages while you reach the last step to measure
  their progress.
• 4. Measure
• Feedback time. Gather both qualitative and
  quantitative feedback to improve your customer
  education program. Your efforts here are to know
  what your customers think about your program, so
  keep your doors open for any kind of suggestions
  or feedback. You can embed survey forms at the
  end of each course completion section or even
  mail them up.
• Keep on assessing your customer education
  progress at deeper levels, by looking into
  learning proficiency, operational impact,
  relationship growth, and even ticket cost.

5 Tips to Strategize Your Education-Based
Marketing
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• Use Omnichannel Strategy to Spread Your Brand
  Message
• To drive diverse audience interest, you need to
  have an omnichannel marketing strategy in place,
  to provide a myriad of multiple mediums (social
  media, website, direct mail, review websites,
  publicity, and even phone calls). Establish a
  meaningful and close connection with your
  consumers by reaching them where they are,
  mostly. An easy way is to fetch a Social Media
  Marketing (SMM) buyers persona in place, that
  will help you to segment your audience (gender,
  educational background, age, industry, goals,
  challenges, etc)
• Ask for Reviews Feedback from Your Learners
• You got to encourage your consumers to leave
  feedback or review that will help to revamp your
  education program strategies progress

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• effectively. Remember to make it a fun activity
  by employing gamification instead of forcing
  their experience with your program.
• 3. Create an Engaging Content Mix (Blogs, Videos,
  Infographics, etc)
• Your customer education program is simply to
  transform/create a perceptive about how you do
  business. So, dont rely on heaps of information
  instead make it an exciting engaging mix of
  content. (Employ Social Media Strategies
  aligning your content mix)
• Have a mobile-friendly website interface (Optimize
  accordingly)
• For any website interface to be mobile-friendly,
  you need to have a session with your UI/UX
  experts or try with your developers to fill out
  the gaps. Your consumer is expecting an
  easy-to-access guided navigational journey, so
  remember to optimize your page loading time
  navigable elements to be mobile-friendly.
• Invest in building Education Applications
• Applications are the safest way to produce
  proficient learners. It offers a sense of
  convenience in the learners journey. Creating an
  education- based app can help you maximize your
  ROI while building a community of talent - ready
  to use your product.
• Customer Education Process
• The customer Education program can take up many
  forms. As it's evolving with time your
  approach should be unique like your product and
  services. As different companies have different
  objectives, customer education varies timely.
  Lets say as we discussed your objective is to
  create a talent pool of proficient people that
  uses your product. So, options like
  instructional content, infographics, guidebooks,
  interactive weekly sessions, case studies, and
  product tours are super scalable educational
  resources to accomplish the above-mentioned
  objective.
• Fundamentally, the question about the customer
  education process lies in both the educational
  learning objectives. So, there is no such thing
  as the right format or process. Once you think
  about the user's journey, your customer
  education must shape that perceptive of
  understanding the stages that consumer goes
  through when they are using your product.

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After you have decided why you want to educate
your customers, it's time to understand how
youll educate them. In this segment, youll need
to consider different consumer journeys. If your
ultimate goal is brand loyalty, there are likely
various ways to get there. All you need to
create digitally-savvy and engaging educational
resources and deploy them using the right
technology. Customer Education Process Checklist
to Get Started

• Set SMART goals
• Create relevant content (Mix to engage)
• Strategize before launch
• Keep on Measuring
• Employ the right technology

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• Evolve Progress
• Why to Use Customer Education Software in SaaS
  Companies?
• When you streamline your educational resources,
  you need a suitable technology that supports
  your academic foundation. Getting the right
  technology doesnt mean the absolute right but
  it boils down to your right or suitable tech
  needs.
• Artificial Intelligence Every consumer has a
  broad sense of understanding of different
  products services they want to use/buy. So, to
  narrow down such a broad sense, you need an
  intuitive system to analyze your audience
  (wherever they are) simulate your message
  without human error.
• LMS (Learning Management System) Customer
  education is not any lesser than conducting
  training sessions. Without a proper dynamic
  system in place, information is just like words
  with no purpose. So, from streamlining your
  content and segmenting your audience (learning
  goals, progress meter, gamification, and
  objectives) to deploying your educational program
  (insights, content authoring tools, simulations,
  and big data repository) Learning Management
  System becomes a necessity for any success to
  happen.
• Depending on the objectives you want to
  accomplish with your customer educational
  program, you can employ the right technology that
  suits your needs.
• How Does Customer Education Impact on ROI?
• Customer education has the potential to impact
  any organization's ROI with consistent efforts
  strategies in place. In the recent studies, it
  was found that on average companies reported a
  6.2 increase in revenue whereas a 7.4 increase
  in customer retention led to a 6.1 decrease in
  customer support costs.
• While customer education is observed to boost
  marketing sales results, it's just a matter of
  strategic effort that high-success companies
  leverage such educational strategies to
  outperform the average and low-scale companies
  in every category, by the whopping rate of 30,
  in over a year or so.
• Customer Education can have an impact in
  different degrees, not limited to sales, but
  resulting in brand advocacy and an increase in
  LTV.

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So, after such compelling evidence, a
customer-first approach is needed to boost to a
16X higher increase in customer
retention/satisfaction rate. Conclusion Regardles
s of the nature of your business, or your
industry, customer education is the competitive
edge need of the hour for every company to
adapt to the global disruption. In this blog, if
you have any queries regarding the right
technology to get you started with your customer
education program, do let us know, wed love to
give you a free demo. About CXcherry CXcherry is
a modern, AI-enabled, purpose-built Best LMS for
Customer Training. CXcherry Customer Courses
Platform is on a mission to redefine the way you
onboard, engage and retain your customers.
CXcherry Customer Learning Software help you to
accelerate your product adoption and increase
customer retention through continuous customer
education. Leading organizations around the
world trust CXcherry customer learning platform
to manage deliver their customer training and
measure the business impact of their customer
experience. CXcherry Customer Training Learning
Management System is proud to be one of the
important partners in your customer's success
journey. CXcherry Customer Training LMS Software
Online is used by many leading Small Medium
Enterprises, Start-up companies, Training
Companies, SaaS, PaaS, and Software Product
companies to train educate their customers.

• It acts as the single suite for all your training
  needs. Some of the key benefits are-
• Easy Administration
• Intuitive User Engagement
• Easy Content Upload
• Built-In Certification and Assessment Engine
• Multi-Domain Functionality
• API Driven Third-Party Integrations

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