Every certification program has two key audiences: certificants and prospects. They’re your existing customers (certificants) and future customers (prospects). As you launch and grow your certification program, a primary goal of your marketing is to ensure both audiences know about the value your certification offers and the results it delivers. If you want to get in front of your audiences with the right message at the right time, this article will introduce you to six essential certification marketing channels.
Six Essential Certification Marketing Channels to Launch and Grow Your Certification Program
- Social Media: Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are perfect for interacting with your target audience. Additionally, prospects and certificants can share your content, which amounts to both free advertising and an implied endorsement. Experiment with paid advertising on Facebook. You can target your audience by industry, job title and conference names. Heck, you can target your messages right down to prospects’ zip codes.
- Targeted Email: In the digital world, your prospect’s inbox is precious real estate. Email is a personal conversation without the distractions and interruptions of social media. Your prospects’ email behavior can also be tracked via open rates and link clicks. These can identify the subject lines and topics that resonate with your audience. Use this data to craft better, more effective email messages.
- Advertising: Print advertising in a trade publication or professional journal can be targeted and economical. Subscribers demonstrate above-average interest, engagement and commitment to a field. They’re primed to receive messages and offers about professional development like credentialing.
- Live Events: National trade and professional association meetings are high-visibility events, perfect for interacting with your target audience. Organizing or sponsoring a live event or exhibiting at or speaking at industry conferences sends a message of leadership and authority to your audience. Webinars are ideal events—flexible and affordable—for reaching large online audiences―potentially international audiences―interested in your credentialing program.
- Publicity: Advertising costs money. Publicity is free. Publishing the names of your new certificants (with their permission, of course) on social media, in newsletters or on your web site is a great way of recognizing their achievements and highlighting the benefits of your program.
If you’ve done a recent job analysis for your credentialing program, create an article on your findings and submit it to an industry journal. If there are few or no print outlets in your field, simple research on Google will reveal their digital replacements: industry blogs, podcasts and YouTube channels.
Influencers in your industry are starving for content. Finding valuable content to present week after week is their greatest challenge. Your job analysis research, for example, is precisely what they’re looking for. You and your content get free exposure to their audiences. Do a Google search for which digital media outlets are available in your industry.
Any endorsement of your program by a major employer, university or other organization should be publicized. Likewise, historic milestones like certifying your 1,000th certificant or launching a brand new certification program are newsworthy and media-worthy events.
Lastly, digital badging services like Accredible or Credly, automate the announcement of new certificants on social media. This offers immediate recognition of their achievements and allows whole new audiences of potentially like-minded people to discover your credentialing program.
- Surveys: Your certification offers value when it delivers the outcome your target audience is seeking. Surveys allow your audience to tell you in their own words what they want or expect from certification.
Use those very words when crafting the message(s) of your credentialing program. They will resonate because you’ll be speaking to their core desires and emotions in their own language.
