Market Assessment
Truly understanding your market for continuing education and professional development programs is more important than ever before. Competition from other providers and free products has increased dramatically over the past several years, and gaining the attention of prospective learners gets harder daily. We can help you assess, analyze, and achieve real understanding of your market for education and learning by assessing needs, analyzing competition, looking at pricing, and more.
Needs Assessment
You have probably heard before (or said yourself), “They said they needed it. We built, and they didn’t buy.” It happens all the time because most efforts at learner needs assessment are fundamentally flawed and result in data that can’t be relied on for decision-making. We focus on understanding the actual behaviors of prospective learners and the variables driving demand in the market. We then leverage our analysis to help you identify highest potential opportunities.
Competitive Analysis
Most learning businesses have an incomplete understanding of their overall competitive environment, including the substitutes and alternatives that draw prospective learners away, the factors of competition that govern the market (and that can be influenced), and the areas of opportunities that all competitors in the market may be overlooking. We draw on a range of methods to help organizations find approaches that will stand their learning business out from the crowd.
Persona and Profile Development
Every learner is unique, but the ones who are will most benefit from and value your learning offerings will share fundamental characteristics and needs. Understanding and aligning to those characteristics and needs is essential for learning business success. We can help you go deep to better understand the core segments of your audience and the personas and profiles that effectively represent those segments.
Pricing Optimization
Getting pricing right is critical in increasingly competitive education markets. To succeed, learning businesses must strike the right balance between the need for revenue and the willingness and ability of customers to pay. In combination with our broader market assessment, we leverage sophisticated tools like the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter and MaxDiff analysis to help organizations clients better understand how to price across the full spectrum of their offerings to maximize top-line and net revenue.
Product Prototyping and Piloting
Even with solid market data and strong strategic drivers, getting new offerings “right” is challenging – and there is always the risk of investing a great deal of time and money only to reap minimal returns. We work with our clients to develop low cost, low risk product prototypes that can be tested before major investments are made. And we can help guide the development and piloting of minimum viable products that, based on meeting clear, measurable goals, can then be iterated into fuller blown offerings over time.
These are just a few examples of the areas in which we can help your learning business market its continuing education and professional development offerings more effectively. We encourage you to read some of what our customers say about us, then contact us to discuss in detail how we might help you.