‘Building meaningful customer relationships’ is important focus for digital marketing, internal communications and HR teams. But often the approach taken is too product focused, lacks relevance or one sided and this results in the target audience not getting the perceived value they were hoping for or something that lacks the depth to maintain the engagement and the initiative will fail.
One area that brands can benefit from is focusing on is building digital educational hubs, focusing on what is relative to their target audience and based on their needs for knowledge and insight – and reward those that take part.
By putting the foundations of online learning or peer to peer collaboration at the heart of building customer relationships brands can reach a larger and more distributed audience with digital. With the right digital tools brands can provide an autonomous environment to nurture online communities and be part of the conversation or education curriculum.
A good example is a recently launched online learning community called Adviser Edge was launched by BMO Global Asset Management, it provides online learning and accreditation for financial advisers in the UK to gain points for industry accreditation scheme (CPD). The portal provides a mutual relationship, the adviser maintaining their industry certification and brand is able to provide insight into thought leadership topics and product focused market case studies it wants the adviser to read.
The right MarTech stack facilities better digital experiences
What sets the foundations for a successful educational hub;
- What makes you hub different – Understand the audience you want to engage with and what will drive them to sign-up to your community.
- What will they learn – Establish the type of ‘learning’ you are looking to provide – online courses, one-to-one mentoring, content sharing hub etc
- Communication and content strategies – engaging with your community beyond the logged in environment via email and social media will see organic growth. A well-defined communication and content strategy will ensure the right investment goes into promotion, education and engagement.
- Reward participation – this could take the form of accreditations, badges or entries to specific awards.
- Consistent engagement – nurturing your audience with new content, courses or functionality will ensure the participant numbers with grow and be maintained.
- Learning from the customer data – review the web analytics to see what parts of your user experience, functionality and content strategy could be improved.
- Revenue and partnerships – can your community drive revenue or partnership opportunities for exposure of other brands interested in your audiences you have captured
Digital educational hubs can be applied to many industries, audience types and internal or external communication needs. To find out more reach out to [email protected] and we can demonstrate how we have developed communities for financial services, professional services and healthcare.
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