by Eline Hagene | Jun 15, 2019 | Blog, How to Get More Participants
To get more participants, it is important to stand out, rather than to fit in. If you want to fill your training with participants, you have to differentiate yourself from your competition. You need to make it clear to potential participants that you are the only choice for them. How do you go from being one of many fish in the sea to being the fish that everyone wants? This can be a difficult, but not an impossible, task. In this article we will give you 7 tips on how to stand out amongst your competitors and thus, get more participants.
1. Meet your target market’s challenges with solutions
A good way to get more participants is to address and solve their challenges. By mapping out the challenges your audience faces and truly satisfyingandsolving these challenges, you will be able to stand out in the crowd of providers.
Let’s look at an example.
It is becoming increasingly popular toeat less meat and follow a more plant-based diet. For those who are used to eating a lot of meat, getting a nutritious, tasty and varied diet without meat can be a challenge.
Matkurs.no addresses this challengeby offering vegetarian cooking courses. During the course, the participants do not learn how to make just one, large meal (as is traditionally the case for cooking courses), but instead learn how to make 20 plant-based snacks. They also learn about the body’s need for nutrients and vitamins, how they can create a varied diet without meat, as well as various cooking techniques for vegetables. The participants are thus equipped with what they need to get started with a plant-based diet.
Thus, Matkurs.no does not offer an ordinary cooking course, but a starter kit for those who want to transition from a meat-based diet to a plant-based diet. Hence, they solve the challengefor their target market.
2. Find and use your USP
USP stands for Unique Selling Pointand essentially involves highlighting the unique factorsyou offer to differentiate yourself from competitors. Why should anyone choose to attend yourparticular training instead of someone else offering the same, or similar, training? What strengths do youhave to play on that your competitors do not have? The more difficult your USP is to imitate, the greater your competitive advantage is.
Do you find it difficult to reach your Unique Selling Point? Ask your previous customers! Why did they choose youin particular? What were they mostsatisfied with after completing the training? This can give you a good idea of what is unique about your training.
Your USP is ideally suited for a well-formulated and enticing slogan.Make sure you use your USP consistently in your marketing communications, making it easy for courseseekers to separate you from your competition when they are in the search process.
Need some examples? Surprisingly, it was difficult to find examples of this in the training industry (which means you really have the opportunity to stand out). Therefore, we are highlighting two, more well-known, yetbrilliant, USP’s:
- Avis – We’re number two. We try harder
- M&Ms – The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand
Source: Rohitbhargava.com, Wikipedia.org M&Ms
3. Stand out visually
Us humans constantly capture visual impressions, both consciously and subconsciously. The visual aspect often makes for deeperand/or longer lasting impressionsthan words themselves. By distinguishing yourself from your competitors visually (for example through a creative logo or an intriguing design on your own website), you will stand out in the crowdand make sure your potential participants remember youas they move towards the end of the assessment process and is ready to choose you as a provider.
4. Highlight good customer reviews
Your customer reviews are unique,and no business can steal these from you. Make sure to collect customer reviews from your participants, so that you can highlight the very best ones on your own website and other places you advertise your courses. Nothing is more credible than reviews from previous participants.
An example of a good customer review:
“I have attended a number of different courses in social media, but none that beat this one. Here, I learned not only the basic tools, but the course leader was also generous in sharing his “magic” secrets and helpful tips with us. The leader was available to us after the course ended, so that those who wanted more specific help with their own social profiles got exactly that”.
5. Provide the best customer service
Providing good customer serviceis not only important for customer satisfaction, customer retention and additional sales, but also for attracting new customers. Do not underestimate the effect of Word of Mouth! Satisfied customers often become good ambassadors and recommend your training to others!
Unfortunately, good customer service is in short supply.Fortunately for you, this opens up the opportunity toprovide such good customer service that you can stand outamongst your competitors.
But how do you provide good customer service? TheBalance provides you with ten tips on how to improve your customer service. This site reveals, among other things, how important it is to keep your promises, to follow up on your customers, and to go the extra mile.
Do you find it time-consuming and complicated to achieve and maintain good customer service? With FrontCore’s training administration system, you can easily set up automated routines for boring routine work, communicate effectivelywith your participants, and maintain high quality trainingusing a variety of useful features gathered in one, cloud-based solution. Check out our brilliant training administration system here.
Innovation is all about creating something new.Being innovative can be both unpredictableand risky, yet also one of the smartest ways to differentiateyourself. If you manage to offer something brand new, something that no otherproviders offer, you can really hit the nail on the head (or miss completely if you’re unlucky).
Now you might think, “How innovative can one really be with training?” Well, it is very possible.Bunny yoga is a good example of this.
Bunny Yoga is a yoga course where the participants are joined by adoptable rabbits during the sessions. It was Sunberry Gym in Canada that started with this in 2015 to focus on abandoned pets and raise funds for the charity Bandaids for Bunnies. Participants who fell in love with a rabbit were offered to adopt the rabbit afterwards.
Although rabbits may not be the recipe for success for any type of training, Bunny Yoga became a viral hitthat led to long waiting lineson the courses.
7. Be visible
Distinguishing yourself from your competitors does notmean trying to avoid being compared to them.
To be able to stand out in the crowd you must also be present.It does not help to stand out from your competitors if your potential participants do not find you when they are looking for training. Be sure not only to be present on your own profiles and channels (Website, Facebook, LinkedIn and the like), but also on common platforms for training providers and seekers.
At Norway’s leading training portal, www.kursguiden.no, more than 2500 providers are present and over 1 million seekers look for training annually. Are you interested in visibility on the Kursguiden? Read more about marketing on Kursguiden here.
There are, of course, a number of other ways you can stand out amongst your competitors, but hopefully this list gave you a place to start. Feel free to leave a comment in the comments section below if you want to share how you have chosen to differentiate yourself from your competitors!
