Education Education Education

This post is about the value of education seminars as part of your marketing mix. It’s not a new idea, but one that I was recently on the receiving end of from a company called CMC Markets. They’re basically a spread betting company that provide a service where you bet on movements in share prices, the price of oil, or any of a variety of other indices.

The product is actually straight forward. You open an account and download their Marketmaker software. The software then enables you to very quickly start placing spread bets and then you’re away. The difficulty facing CMC Markets is two fold: people don’t understand how it all works, and there is a perception of its product being extremely risky - which to be fair it can be. You have the opportunity to make a lot of money very quickly, but conversely you can also lose a lot of money quickly as well.

CMC uses education as a way of countering both of these negatives. It’s education seminars help its clients to understand how to use the software and how to manage their exposure to risk. This helps to sign up customers, but also to increase the life time value of each customer. The seminars also help to dispel the perception of risk, as by increasing understanding, people are less likely to lose the shirt off their back.

So could this work for your business. In a word yes, why not? If you have a product that’s very technical or complex, where you need a specific licence or experience, then free education could help. It doesn’t necessarily have to be class room based, you could produce a small booklet, or better still a podcast, or online demonstration. This stuff is all accessible to even the smallest micro business.