Customer education is a powerful tool. It can increase clients’ engagement with your company and its products, build relationships, and provide an added value component to your service.
It can also increase customers’ trust in your firm. But how can you offer education to your customers most effectively without coming across as pushy or making it seem as if they don’t know how to engage with your products?
Presenting valuable knowledge isn’t necessarily an easy task. Within the larger framework of customer education, however, there are a few strategies that seem to do well consistently, including on-site reference content, social media posts that directly engage customers, and podcasts.
Ultimately, it’s about finding ways to be friendly and helpful to onboard customers and track their training in a way they’ll hardly notice. Here are some ways to do that.
Blog About It
Company blogs are one of the simplest ways to build your customer education program because they allow you to highlight aspects you think are important and associate them with your brand. A blog also enables you to collect such information as a sort of reference compendium: customers can come to your site to find out more about topics of interest or concern.
You can approach educational blogs in a range of ways. List-style posts, for example, are a great way to simplify otherwise complex content. Don’t know much about the difference between a cabinet glaze and a varnish, or why you would choose a water-based UV finish? This post on cabinet finishes is simple to understand and can help customers make smarter purchasing decisions.
Others prefer to present their blog posts as listicles or infographics. It’s also worthwhile to vary your content style, of course, so readers don’t get bored.
Be Social
Social media is a great way to share fun, educational facts about your products and services, but this isn’t the only way to use these sites to your advantage. Another strategy to try is to take a big-picture approach: engage with topics and events not only beyond your official field but that fit with your larger company message.
What does this look like in practice? When blogger Jess Ostroff visited a Maker Faire in Queens and posted about some of the technology she was seeing, GE sent her a tweet about the event to encourage her exploration.
Sure, the energy giant was also one of the event sponsors, but its message aligned with GE’s overall branding: staying on the cutting edge of technology. The overall messaging aimed to be timely, fun, and tech-focused, even if it wasn’t about its own technology, specifically.
Say It Loud
Podcasts are a popular information and entertainment medium today. They allow people to tune in to the equivalent of a highly targeted radio show that’s focused on their interests, and they’re perfect for a customer education program, especially if you keep the content highly varied.
Interview people in your field, provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse at product development, and talk about innovative uses for your product or common troubleshooting situations. You’ll have a more reliable audience if you don’t release a string of product lectures.
Another advantage of podcasts is that you can release notes and links with your audio files, which allows customers to follow up on intriguing information. Since they might be listening to your podcast on the go, it’s useful to set them up for further contact and potential success with these added tools.
Customer education is the next frontier for many businesses, so you should spend some time developing strategies that are specially tailored to your customer base. If your company can develop a comprehensive education program, you’ll find that customers feel more confident using your products, seek further engagement with your brand, and participate in improved service interactions.
It’s a winning strategy for all sides.
