Radim Hladis
By Radim Hladis on October 28, 2021

What is customer education?

Customer education is about attitude. It's a decision. How is your company going to treat the customers before you even start selling them your products and how will it work once they become active customers?


Customer Education is a strategy for managing the business. It's a big support especially for marketing, sales and customer support departments.

Yes, of course, customer education means implementing new activities such as training or creating educational content.

How does customer education affect sales and marketing?

Customer education changes the direction and goals of sales and marketing in many ways. It is a long run, but if you educate your customers, you can change their behaviour in a way profitable for your business.

Education-Based Marketing

If you focus on educating your potential customers from the first moment when you try to acquire them, you can count on getting more satisfied and loyal clients. These customers will have a better understanding of the value of what you do and they will make educated decisions. Your brand and everyone you work with will become more trustworthy.

Educated Customers make Educated Decisions

If you sell quality products you're proud of, you'll be happy to explain everything people need to know about them. But you can also do something extra and help these people - your customers in their personal development. For example: if you sell software for internet marketers, you can teach them how to open an online store and succeed.

Here is an example of what you can find in our academy Playou School:

playou school free courses for business

Customer Life-Time Value (CLTV)

CLTV is a concept that indicates how much a customer spends at your company, or in other words, how much profit you generate thanks to him over the entire period of your relationship. You can learn more about CLTV here.
If you educate the customer over a long time period, the CLTV will be high. In addition to understanding the added value of your products, the customer will also be able to use the products better and will be motivated to buy more services and products from you. Does it make sense to you?

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer Acquisition Cost is the price you pay to get a new customer, how much it cost you to persuade them to make their first purchase.
If you build a scalable Customer Education Program - video tutorials, knowledge bases, online courses and other content, you will reduce the effort required from all your employees to explain everything to potential customers over and over again. By educating customer as you acquire them, you'll gain a community of valuable customers who will be less likely to leave for competitors and may become your strategic partners.

Customer Education will turn your clients into advocates or salespeople for your products

If you dedicate yourself to educating your customers throughout your relationship, you will increase the percentage of delighted customers who love your brand. These customers are ideal candidates to become various sales partners or distributors. These are the clients who will have a conversation with you and provide you with references at any time. And who will write reviews of your products.

Change the behaviour of your customers and your salespeople

Customer education changes the culture of working with clients and the culture within your company. Your people are making effort to ensure prospects and that customers have the best knowledge and understand you as well as possible. This itself creates a positive charge and atmosphere for the whole cooperation. An educated client has more trust in your company, its people and of course your products and services. They have to ask fewer questions and doubt you less.

nourish-relationship

Education means loyalty and longevity of the relationship

Customers who invest their time and effort in your educational activities will be less likely to leave for a competitor than customers who don't know how to use your products properly. Education brings a stronger bond between you and the client. The client will have a better understanding of your values, plans, and of course, your weaknesses. But if you make an effort and continue providing quality service, believe me, he will stay with you for a long time.

Streamline the whole customer experience

Thanks to the online environment, education is a scalable activity. Create one course, and ten thousand people can take it. A one-hour webinar can be seen by, let's say, a thousand people. Any content you create works for you as long as it's up-to-date. With educational activities and content you can save a lot of time and money. It has a significant impact on the performance of your entire company.

Build a Customer Academy as a super magnet for potential clients

Create a place where you can have the educational activities under control. For example Customer Education Academy. You can use the academy for potential clients in the acquisition phase as well as for active clients. It'll also simplify your marketing activities - for example, you can use free sign-ups to your academy to get leads. You can add courses, videos, e-books, articles, webinar recordings, workshop registrations into the academy.

Educated customers use products and their features more

According to a TSIA study, educated customers use the products they purchase more by 68%, 56% users use more features of the products, and 87% of them can work with the products independently. Customer education sky rockets the level of customer satisfaction. Customers who know your products will also help you innovate them.

Customer education Academy course

When you educate your customers, you learn from them

Another benefit of customer education is that you surround yourself with people who know a lot. Your customers will be happy to help you innovate your products because they will benefit from it. Who else could be a better partner to you for the development of your business than your clients.

As you may have noticed in this article, I do not put emphasis on training techniques and methods. Customer Education is a strategy. It is a principle that guides marketing, business and, in fact, the entire company.

At Playou we focus on customer education strategy and the creation of educational content and campaigns. If you are interested in Customer Education and want to develop in this area, you can join us and read other articles.

 

You can also take some of our online courses or contact us and we will advise you on your project in a one-on-one meeting.

Published by Radim Hladis October 28, 2021
Radim Hladis