Online learning has more potential than merely offering knowledge, especially for businesses.
For most companies out there, reducing expenses and increasing product sales sounds like a dream come true, but there is a way–or better yet, ways to make it happen.
With online learning gaining popularity and recognition, businesses around the world are increasingly revising and developing their strategies so they are more cost-efficient and effective.
For companies that aren’t yet doing so, there is still time.
But, first things first, what can online learning do for your business?
The Benefits of Online Learning
Online learning, or e-learning, makes wonders in the business world. This becomes more evident when taking into account the following:
Online learning is cost-effective:
Unlike classroom-based and traditional means of education, elearning is less expensive to create and distribute. According to TechJury, IBM saved up to $200 million after switching to online learning.
Online learning can measure effectiveness and ROI:
With the various online learning platforms out there, the ability to measure the effectiveness of learning is easily measurable and controlled through the tracking of data of the online courses completed.
Online learning increases your customer base:
It raises awareness about your product and offers access to learning content related to your product to a larger network of people around the world.
Considering all of these advantages that online learning offers, it is easy to see how businesses can take advantage of them to grow.
Here are a couple of suggestions:
1. Creating and selling online courses
Creating online courses that can educate employees, customers, partners, other businesses and your target audience has some benefits attached to it.
First, educating your audience establishes you as a thought leader in your industry as it shows people that you have something valuable to give back.
Also, the ability to educate your audience increases your authority and attracts people interested in your product. An excellent way to offer online courses is through the foundation of your own online academy that will cultivate the new wave of potential customers.
On top of that, online courses come as an add-on service to people browsing your product. Delivering top-notch quality of online learning can give your company a competitive advantage in the market as it allows it to stand out from the rest.
2. Providing customer education
According to the Elearning Industry, up to 72 percent of organizations believe that elearning puts them at a competitive advantage. In terms of customer education, this holds true.
To educate your customers, you can build a knowledge base where your existing customer base can always return to. An online Help Center that offers how-to guides, video tutorials or FAQs works well with people who want an answer to their inquiry with little or no hassle.
What’s great about customer education is that it feels right and comes out as natural. Customer education isn’t an overly promotional practice; instead, it builds on customer loyalty while making customers the top priority.
3. Using education as a lead magnet
What’s great about combining online learning and marketing is that it gives you great options to feature your product. Offering an educational product for free is a great way to start building an email list of people interested in your area of expertise.
Giving is better than receiving in the education industry, and it’s much more effective to use it as an incentive for the exchange of their email addresses and other contact information.
Apart from a free course, you can give out a checklist or an ebook through a landing page that is related to your digital product, to entice people to buy while helping them become more knowledgeable in their field.
Whichever method you choose, make sure it works with the goals and objectives you have set for your business. Your marketing strategy should influence your key performance metrics in the most positive way so it helps you gain new leads and profits.
The marketing strategy you adopt has everything to do with it, so make sure that every online learning initiative you follow is working in that direction. Best of luck!
Kyriaki Raouna is a Content Creator for the LearnWorlds team writing about marketing and elearning, helping course creators on their journey to create, market and sell their online courses. Equipped with a Career Guidance degree, she has a strong background in education management and career success. In her free time, she becomes crafty and musical.
Online learning stock photo by fizkes/Shutterstock
