Jim Fong, chief research officer at the University Professional and Continuing Education Association and founding director of UPCEA’s Center for Research and Strategy, has combined his extensive expertise in the areas of marketing, research, and analytics to focus on making an impact in higher education. The self-professed trend watcher also has a particular interest in … [Read more...]
5 Free Resources to Grow Your Learning Business
Over the years we've developed many resources to support learning businesses in growing and improving. Few, if any, of them are intended to be “one and done” - they are meant to be revisited and re-used over time. So, we find it can be helpful occasionally to highlight some of these resources and remind Leading Learning readers that they are available. In this post, you’ll … [Read more...]
5 Big Takeaways from Traffic and Conversion 2019
Marketing is an integral part of any successful learning business—it is after all, one of the five domains in our Learning Business Maturity Model™. But it’s particularly important to understand digital marketing and how to generate and convert Web traffic into sales. If you aren’t familiar with the Traffic and Conversion Summit, it happens to be the largest marketing event … [Read more...]
7 Essential Rules of Successful Internet Marketers
If you’re looking for ways to grow and expand your education business, perhaps you should take a look at what’s going on in the world of Internet marketing. Successful Internet marketers truly understand how communicate value and convert prospective customers (and most of them, by the way, have gotten into the business of selling educational products). In this episode of the … [Read more...]
Learning Business Strategy Q&A
In a recent collaboration on a Webinar with the Wisconsin Society of Association Executives (WSAE), we answered questions from members related to strategy and business models for association online education programs. And while WSAE is an association specifically interested in online education, the questions and answers are applicable to any learning business, across all … [Read more...]
8 Tips for Optimizing Your Value Ramp™
One of our favorite tools for helping learning businesses hone their product strategy is the Value Ramp™. If you aren’t already familiar with it, the Value Ramp is a tool we developed that highlights the relationship between price and value, the importance of momentum, and the impact of brand. Because many organizations haven’t taken the time to really reflect on the … [Read more...]
The 2018 Learning Business Landscape
It's been five years since we last reached out to colleagues at organizations, learning technology companies, and consulting firms across the association sector to gather their perspectives on what challenges and opportunities learning businesses will encounter in the coming year. So, we thought it was past time to find out how much as changed - or stayed the same - in the … [Read more...]
7 Essential Rules of Successful Internet Marketers
If you’re looking for ways to grow and expand your education business, perhaps you should take a look at what’s going on in the world of Internet marketing. Successful Internet marketers truly understand how communicate value and convert prospective customers (and most of them, by the way, have gotten into the business of selling educational products). In this episode of the … [Read more...]
The Maturity Gap: What’s Holding Many Learning Businesses Back
What do you get when you cross a lack of strategy with an absence of process and a failure to use data for decision-making? It’s no joke that what you get is a maturity gap—and the findings reported in Association Learning + Technology 2017 make it clear that just such a maturity gap exists for many membership organizations. … [Read more...]
8 Tips for Optimizing Your Value Ramp
One of the “tools” we have found most useful in helping clients with their education businesses is the Value Ramp. As simple as it is, a meeting or two focused on it can often be one of the more eye-opening things an organization has done in years. We've already provided a general overview of the Value Ramp, so be sure to read that first. Once you have, read on for tips on … [Read more...]
Transactions vs. Relationships
"One and done. That's the approach most of our education directors take." This was the view shared with me by the vice president of a national nonprofit organization recently. Even more recently, a trade association called me in to talk with its network of education managers about moving away from a "transactional" (my contact's words) approach to selling training to more of … [Read more...]