Customer lifecycle training is a useful strategy that you can employ to raise initial awareness with prospects, onboard converted customers, and increase ongoing customer renewals.

In this article, we discuss the first phase of the customer lifecycle – marketing (or “lead generation”). By offering training as marketing, you can inform potential customers about what your company has to offer, and how they can benefit from your products and services.

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Online training is one of the newest forms of content marketing. This type of content marketing enables you to generate awareness about your company and its products. Strategies include:

  • Creating interactive courses about your industry
  • Offering industry certifications or professional development credits, which are valuable credentials
  • Integrating training with third party distribution networks, such as LinkedIn’s certifications program

Training as marketing is especially relevant for cutting edge products that require learning new skills or making a large investment. For example, a 3D printer manufacturer might offer free training on how to design in 3D. Since 3D printing is a new technology, there are few educational resources readily available. These classes could demonstrate different 3D printing applications to potential customers, as well as introduce the special software needed to successfully use the product.

To get started with training as marketing, you’ll likely be collaborating with the sales and marketing managers in your organization. Since the main goal is to provide valuable content in exchange for an email address, we recommend that you keep courses short and free to encourage customer engagement. Look for a learning management system like Skilljar that automatically integrates registration data with your sales and marketing systems, such as Salesforce and Marketo, to ensure the smoothest handoff to your internal partners.

Attracting new customers is a key part of the customer lifecycle. By offering training to expand your lead generation program, you can effectively and efficiently educate potential customers about your products and services. In next week’s article, we’ll be focusing on the onboarding phase of the customer lifecycle.