With today’s focus on upskilling and growth mindset, both within companies and on an individual level, the commercial training and learning and development markets are thriving. This means there is potential to tap into but standing out from the competition is not easy. How do you establish yourself as the best and grow a training company?
Here at accessplanit, we have worked with thousands of training providers in a variety of sectors. In fact, we started out as a training company ourselves! So, we understand the struggles, opportunities and essential components for getting more course bookings.
From finding your niche and creating a marketing strategy for training and development, to business analysis and keeping up with training industry trends, we’ve created this comprehensive guide on how to grow a training company.
Whether you are wondering how to set up a training company or are an established training provider, you need to find your niche before you expand.
It’s a common misconception that you have to offer everything to be the best. Online training, in-person training, eLearning and blended learning. Seminars, workshops AND 1-to-1 coaching. First aid training alongside digital marketing courses…
You cannot do everything. If you try to, you’ll probably end up doing nothing. There’s nothing wrong with offering variety – but don’t spread yourself too thin. It’s more important to find your niche and focus on something that you do really well.
When you have nailed down what to offer learners, you need a unique selling point (USP). Why should people choose your courses over others? Are your trainers the best? Is your course material created by experts? Maybe you can offer competitive pricing or perhaps your course topics are completely unique.
Conduct market research to discover what your customers are looking for and how you stand against similar training companies.
A great source of this information is your current customers. Conduct surveys, NPS questionnaires and interviews and find out why they chose your training courses over others. This will highlight what makes a good training centre in the exact language that your audience uses. Replicate this in your messaging to connect with your customers.
Training Industry Benchmark Report insight: In-house courses are the most popular types of courses offered by training providers in 2024.
So, you’re confident in your business direction and that your training courses will provide value to your target audience. The next step is figuring out how to effectively market training courses and boost your course bookings.
Before you begin, you’ll need to firm up your brand name, logo, colours, tone of voice and many other brand elements.
Then, choose where and how to promote and market training courses. There are many mediums to choose from and which is best will depend on your target audience. For example, print marketing can be an effective method to promote training courses if your audience can be easily targeted in certain locations. There might be relevant events that you can attend, offering a valuable opportunity to talk to leads and maybe offer taster sessions.
However, to reach the widest audience for the lowest budget, digital marketing for course promotion is your best bet.
Online marketing is a key method to promote your training courses, so however you choose to go about it, don’t allow it to be an afterthought. You might have an in-house marketing team that can spearhead a campaign, or you might choose to outsource your online course promotion to a digital marketing agency.
But where do you start? The logical first step is to ensure you have an up-to-date, functional website. It needs to be branded, with all the information someone would need to book one of your training courses. Ideally, it should have an online course booking system so that they can secure their place instantly.
How do you drive traffic to your website? Let’s explore some key methods.
SEO stands for search engine optimisation and it is key to market a training course. This means improving your training company website so it appears on Google when people search for terms related to your business.
This includes writing blog content that answers your customers’ questions. For example, if you are a health and safety training provider, you might provide basic first aid tips or free downloadable risk assessment templates.
This is known as inbound marketing – encouraging people to come to you, instead of approaching people with cold calling and emailing. People become aware of your brand and are more likely to see you as a topic expert, hopefully becoming a customer when they need training. Also, quality content with lots of clicks tells search engines that your website is authoritative, meaning you are more likely to rank on the results page when people are searching for courses that you offer.
Without investing time into improving your SEO, your training company website will never appear on search engines and you will miss out on lots of business.
Training Industry Benchmark Report insight: 48% of learners say they would find a training course via search engines.
Pay-per-click (PPC) is closely related to SEO as it also involves leveraging search engines for training course marketing. As the name suggests, PPC is where you pay for your website to appear at the top of search results for your keywords. It will be clear to the user that it’s a sponsored message, but it immediately draws the eye and attracts clicks.
However, it’s not as simple as pumping money in and getting more bookings. Many training companies could be bidding to appear for the keyword ‘project management training’, for instance, and there are only two sponsored link slots.
Google picks who appears at the top of the page based on the quality of the ad and the landing page (where the link leads to) and how much money you’ve bid per click. So, it’s vital that your training course ad has good quality copy and the webpage meets search intent.
Social media marketing for training providers
If your audience is likely to frequent social media, you need to have a social media marketing strategy. This might be on…
Training Industry Benchmark Report insight: 78% of training providers use LinkedIn for promoting training courses.
Growing your social media following is a great way to build an engaged audience organically. However, there is much debate over whether social media marketing provides good ROI or if it is just a vanity exercise. Let’s explore the pros and cons.
Email marketing is not a dead medium. If you have the email addresses of your current customers or potential leads, this is a great way to market your training courses by getting your message straight into their inbox.
The main struggle is writing an effective subject line that encourages people to open the email. It needs to be enticing but avoid (actual and mental) spam filters.
Why not encourage people to sign up to your mailing list? For example, you could write an industry newsletter that provides interesting insight into your area of speciality. This gives you contact details so you can further nurture leads with exclusive offers on your upcoming courses.
Email marketing works very well for retargeting and encouraging previous customers to rebook, as you have their details and can personalise the message with things such as their name, company and previous courses they have completed. You could include a discount for repeat bookings.
So how do training providers make money? For consistent growth, you need to have strong visibility over business insight. Analysing performance will allow you to spot areas of strength and capitalise on them, but also inefficiencies and room for improvement. You should have a regular reporting process within your training company – depending on your size, this might be weekly, monthly or quarterly.
There are so many metrics that you could measure, but too much data is overwhelming and not helpful at all. Choose metrics that matter to your training business. These are your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
From a business standpoint, you will probably want to measure profitability or ROI – but how you go about this will depend on your business model. For example, will you measure profit, revenue or turnover? For training providers who run free training courses, this might not be relevant at all.
Fill rates for your courses are likely to be important. It’s helpful to know when attendance is down and delve into the data to work out why. Is it a seasonal pattern, or is it a marketing issue or problem in the sales process? Perhaps you could downsize the course (or get rid of it completely) and strategically invest the money into a high-performing course.
However, it’s not enough to fill courses if the course content is no good. Another key metric is delegate satisfaction and learner progress. Measure this by conducting pre- and post-training surveys. As well as telling you if delegates’ expectations have been met, it will give important feedback on things like the training format which should inform your strategy.
Training Industry Benchmark Report insight: 76% of training providers see customer and delegate satisfaction as a key metric for success.
You can’t get business insights without the right tools. Explore the reporting capabilities of your existing infrastructure – such as CRM, finance or email marketing platforms. To measure how people find your website and the way they use it, Google Analytics is very helpful.
For all of your training company reporting needs in one place, including in-depth data and at-a-glance information, consider investing in training management software.
As well as understanding your own business performance, it’s important to keep your ear to the ground and follow training industry trends. Keeping your finger on the pulse means that you can get ahead of the curve and understand learner wants and market trends before you get left behind. You also need to understand what training industry challenges might lie ahead for improved future-proofing.
Here are some of the best resources for keeping up with training and development industry trends:
1. Subscribe to the accessplanit blog on your right! We regularly post interesting content to help training companies grow. You’ll get a monthly round-up straight to your inbox so you never miss a thing.
2. Download the 2024 State of the Training Industry Benchmark Report for the latest research into training trends, challenges and learner insight.
3. Join the Training Provider Network on LinkedIn to connect with over 13,000 training professionals and have your voice heard in the conversation.
4. Attend training industry events such as Learning Technologies and The Business of Training Conference to hear from thought leaders and network with like-minded professionals.
5. Read articles on websites such as TrainingJournal.com or TrainingZone.co.uk to find out what the experts are saying about current training industry trends.
To grow your training company, it’s vital to invest in the right software for managing training. Intuitive software should make your job easier by providing easy-to-use tools and functionality. Many training companies (21% to be exact) are still working with hundreds of spreadsheets, making admin tasks time-consuming and inefficient.
Or, they have software, but many different types (such as a CRM, finance, sales, event booking software, surveys, marketing…) that aren’t designed for training companies. Disparate systems cause bottlenecks and slow down your staff, often because they are constantly rekeying information, correcting human errors and manually completing tasks.
Bogged down with admin, your company will struggle to grow because there’s no time to optimise and business visibility is stifled.
This is where training management software comes in. This is specifically designed for training companies, with functionality such as:
And much more.
A TMS saves you time and money because of a reduced admin workload, centralised operations and increased efficiency. This is essential if you want to sell more training courses and scale to new heights.
Training Industry Benchmark Report insight: 64% of training providers use training management software.
There are a few training management systems on the market, so research which best suits your needs to secure ROI. Look at review sites like Capterra and G2 to gauge customer experiences with them, as well as case studies on their website.
We believe that accessplanit stands out from the rest due to our powerful platform that is configured to get the results you want. We understand that every training provider is different which is why we don’t provide a one-size-fits-all solution – we work closely with you to understand your goals and optimise the platform for your needs. Our exceptional customer service includes phone and online support, detailed helpguides and webinars, and staff that truly care about your business.
Want to find out more? Come along to our free, no-obligation weekly drop in webinar for a first-hand look at the platform – we run one every Wednesday at 1PM (UK time)!
Growing a training company is not a linear journey – the industry is ever-changing with new technology, trends and increased competition. Following our steps will help you to stay ahead of the curve, attract more course bookings, satisfy your delegates and scale up.
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