Marketing and communications have evolved with the emergence of the Internet and social media. It is now possible to conduct impactful campaigns targeting potential clients for a lot less money.
Basically, it is much easier now to listen to your clients.
In large companies, for example, the arrival of ‘social listening’ or ‘social rooms’ enable them to monitor what is being said about them on social media in real time.
Even smaller companies are now choosing to recruit a community manager (CM) to interact with clients online and perform a variety of tasks: posting on social networks, customer support, creating engaging content, etc.
For training companies also, marketing is becoming increasingly accessible!
More than simply positioning an offer, the aim now is to think in terms of ‘engagement’, i.e. everything that encourages interaction with clients and makes it possible to forge a lasting relationship.
This article is the 6th in our series dedicated to the Digital Transformation Guide (Guide de la Transformation Digitale), a work by Vincent Ducrey and Emmanuel Vivier. The aim is adapt the content of the guide to the means and needs of training companies!
With digital technology, devising a marketing strategy has never been easier
Whereas before, marketing seemed to be limited to costly market research studies and mass advertising campaigns, the arrival of digital technology has made it possible to reduce marketing budgets while increasing the precision and scope of advertising.
Any training company, however small, can now have a significant online presence. The Digital Transformation Guide thus lists 3 major marketing revolutions from which training companies can benefit!
Web content has evolved
Content production has evolved with the emergence of social media. We are no longer limited to running an advert once a year: now we publish regular posts. The aim is to produce more regular content to secure audience loyalty and encourage them to share it!
For your training company this can mean posting once or twice a week on Facebook or LinkedIn.
You can, for example, share articles linked to your sector, news about your training company, a presentation of your team or use it to promote your expertise in a particular area.
More than just the offer, think about the experience
Thanks to the Internet, it is now possible to establish a more fun and engaging relationship with your clients.
Rather than selling them a product (or a service) one time only, you can use digital technology to enhance your added value and secure client loyalty so that they come back and purchase your offer or service again and again.
Sports clothing brands, for example, all possess an application that enables their clients to track their performance and maintain a link with the brand.
It is perfectly possible for a training company to forge a special relationship with its trainees.
During the training, use new training materials (for example: virtual reality, quizzes or serious games) to encourage interaction and engagement.
After a face-to-face course, offer your trainees access to materials to test their knowledge and skills over time or to deepen their understanding thanks to an extranet or e-learning platform.
Targeting is becoming increasingly precise
As I mentioned in a previous article on data: data has become a real gold mine for companies, including for marketing!
Social media enables you to sponsor posts in order to reach your particular target, either in a particular region or city or according to their interests, job or level of education: anything is possible!
Data can also be useful for identifying your target and testing new offers.
A/B testing campaigns, for example, enable you to test two different offers on a population with similar characteristics.
For the same target, you can therefore analyse how different rhetoric, page layouts and user pathways impact the act of purchase.
For a training company, often very anchored in a specific geographical area, this enables you to reach your target more effectively and quickly get yourself well known at the local level.
New formats are revolutionizing the web
Communicating on the Internet is very different from traditional communications and new formats have therefore emerged. Here we focus on two formats that are revolutionizing Internet communications.
Mobile technology is now a key medium
Still discreet a few years ago, the smartphone is becoming a privileged connection medium for the French.
In the online retail sector, for example, one in five purchases is made on the phone. For the site Private Sales (now Veepee), nearly half of purchases are made on smartphones.
What does this mean in practice? As a training company, you therefore need to take mobile technology into account in your sales strategy and the way in which you manage your client relations. Make sure, therefore, that your website is adapted to the mobile format.
Your clients must be able to browse your website and pay using their smartphone with no problems. Once the training course is launched, bear mobile devices in mind when you share e-leaning materials.
E-learning courses must, for example, be usable in telephone format.
Check, therefore, that your quizzes, evaluations and interactive videos can be completed using a mobile phone.
Video: the new flagship communications format
The arrival of 4G has allowed the general public to access a qualitative internet speed almost everywhere in France. Indeed, video is increasingly popular with Internet users.
The video comes in hundreds of different ways depending on the target and the topics discussed.
Videos are popular because they can be produced at little cost and can generate more shares.
Whatever the size of your training company, you can now create professional-looking videos with very little equipment: a smartphone suffices to create high-quality content!
To build your communications strategy, for example, you can create video interviews to present the members of your team or experts in your field.
In addition, you can also publish testimonial videos in which your trainees share their impressions. Finally, this format is also suitable for presenting your activity.
Don’t hesitate to include videos to enrich your training content.
Digital technology makes marketing much more accessible and easier to use for small companies.
A training company can therefore benefit from the same tools as large enterprises in order to develop its business.
It is, however, important not to forget who your target is and what your goals are!
👉 Find the other articles of the digital transformation guide for training organizations:
