How many of you have taken an online course to get better at your job?
Online education has grown at rapid speed, especially in B2B. We've never had so many choices around the courses we can buy to get better at our jobs.
But we wanted to learn more about how do companies behind those courses grow. That's why we caught up with Ewa Wysocka, CEO at Tribe47, to find out more.
We talk about:
- The importance of understanding who consumes your product and who pays for it.
- How the average completion rates for paid courses are between 5% and 15%, and what to do about it.
- The four key metrics Ewa looks at to know if her business is growing or not.
Time Stamped Notes
[2:50] - Ewa gives us some of her background, from working for MindValley, where she was a senior partner, to helping online education companies in the B2B space grow.
[5:00] - The businesses Ewa works on have a large upfront payment for courses, with their customers LTV ranging between $1500 to $4500.
[6:50] - Ewa recommends spending 50% of your time acquiring new customers, and the other 50% trying to increase the LTV of existing customers.
[8:40] - When marketing products in the B2B online education space, an essential factor to keep in mind is the person you're selling to is probably not the person buying the course. That matters when deciding on incentives to try to increase the consumption habits of customers. Things like discounts will probably have little impact, whereas online mastermind groups or the opportunity to network with other people will likely have more impact.
[13:50] - Having a recognized certificate is a critical component of growing a business in the online education space.
[15:00] - Ewa does market to the decision-maker who would sign off on the course. Most of that marketing is producing enablement content that would justify the cost of the course.
[18:00] - Some of the critical metrics Ewa looks at that are critical to growth are:
1. The number of people consuming ungated content
2. The number of marketing leads
3. The number of sales leads. These are more qualified than marketing leads. For example, they could be people who have consumed part of a free lesson but haven't signed up for the paid course.
4. Customer LTV
[22:00] - The average course completion rate for online education in B2B is 5% to 15%. Ewa's target is to get this number above 50%. She goes through common tactics she uses to improve consumption rates drastically.
[25:55] - One of the most common things Ewa sees in the online education space is the business blame technology for their bad course completion rates. She feels it's rarely a technology problem and is usually always a motivation problem. Fixing issues around motivation are a lot different. You need to provide customers with ongoing reasons to come back and consume more of the content.
– Ewa on LinkedIn
– Kieran on Twitter / LinkedIn / Medium
– Scott on Twitter / Linked / Medium
Topics: Podcast, Founder, User Engagement
