I know, I know. You just started to implement mlearning (or maybe you haven't). So why do you have to bother with m-selling and m-marketing? Do you even need to know what they are?
The answer is a resounding yes, because smartphones and tablets have revolutionized more than just learning! Keep reading to learn why you need to do more--and more--than you may be doing now.
You can see from this video how we've helped Sony dive into mobile learning. And maybe you haven't thought about it much, but here's the next steps--and why you should take them.
First, mobile learning has lots of applications, but here I'm assuming you're doing elearning and/or mlearning as part of sales training. If that's the case, the next thing you have to do is stop and think about the business case. Within this context of elearning/mlearning, the business case is to build brand and increase sales.
So why only concentrate on half of the job you could be doing?
Salespeople report developing a brand preference from our courses. They become brand advocates who prefer to sell the products we train them on, over other products. That's impact with both top- and bottom-line results.
- But it happens before the sale...why not use some of the same, powerful tools during the sale?
- And if elearning both informs and creates brand preference...why not use the same, powerful tools to educate customers?
Someday soon (and you can quote me on this) elearning departments will be expected to contribute to sales and marketing efforts. It will become the norm, because it takes so little extra thought, effort and budget to extend what you're doing now. But the return on these efforts is huge!
If you're doing sales elearning, you should go to the sales and marketing people right now, and show them more of what you've got. Here are some ideas for taking what you have and making yourself indispensable.
- Take some of your great, interactive, immersive content and put it in front of consumers on your company website. Create a "no sales" zone with it where customers can educate and sell themselves. The more technical your products and services are, the more this makes sense. The more you're premium priced, the more sense this makes, too. Let customers educate themselves and they'll become your brand advocates.
- Another way to reuse content for customer education is to use QR codes at the point of sale. One click of the smartphone and you're delivering the best, non-sales sales message imaginable. They want to know this stuff, so why aren't you helping them?
- Make a note, however. If your content isn't interactive and immersive--think twice before you make the move to your website. What does it do for your brand image? Probably not much. We use the same lively avatars for customers that we use for employees and channel partners. They make the encounter social, human and memorable.
- After a while, learners become fuzzy on even the best content. That's why you hope to put them to work, applying it right away. In any case, there's always too much to remember, so consider using smartphones, after your primary training, as mobile expert systems. Here, learners can quickly brush up on almost any content--with just a couple of clicks. It may cost you only 30% of the original course, but you'll be putting the information right where it needs to be--where learners will use it.
- The larger screen size of a tablet (iPad or any Android tablet) allows you to put complete courses on a mobile device. That creates enough of an advantage that many companies are providing each salesperson with their own iPad (haven't heard or read about that for Androids yet, so...). Again, learning goes wherever the learner goes.
- And, if salespeople are using iPads to train, they can also use them for making presentations to customers. Go ahead and use branching scenarios, so that the information a customer sees is tailored to their specific needs. That makes it personal and memorable! Make sure to include any relevant graphics and animations to drive home important concepts, too.
All of these tactics fit wonderfully well under the strategies for increasing sales and bringing value to your brand. Working to put them into action will no doubt increase your own value, too. Moreover, your company will enjoy the benefit of differentiating itself from the competition. It's a no-lose proposition, and there's a high value to beating your competition to the punch. What are you waiting for?