No Consumer Left Behind

Powered, an Austin-based provider of interactive marketing and consumer education, announced today that it has teamed up with Virginia-based enterprise feedback management (EFM) solutions provider Vovici to teach marketers tips and tricks for stepping up their game in the marketing industry. With free, on-demand, instructor-led courses, Vovici aims to provide marketers with valuable information to help them improve on a wide range of skills. Currently, Vovici is offering four online courses, with new courses to be added each month:

• Surveying 101
• Online Marketing Trends and Your Small Business
• How to Give a Great Presentation
• Advanced Microsoft Excel 2003: Analyzing Data

Powered believes that by investing the time and resources to educate consumers, companies will not only be able to raise brand trust, but also increase conversion rates. "One in five [consumers] who complete a course actually buy a brand's products," says Buck Krawczyk, vice president of marketing for Powered. Typically, companies have focused on "driving customer interest through things like white papers, published research or tutorials," says Emily Riley, senior analyst at JupiterResearch. Now, with more narrowly focused courses, consumers are provided with additional resources for obtaining actionable insight in their specific areas of interest. In turn, Riley says, it "enables companies to have better long term service." For companies like Vovici, she believes that the practicality of educational content helps to drive consumer traffic to the Web site. From there, advertisers can leverage the sought-after information and "increase the stickiness of their Web site and promote brand loyalty," Riley says. Moreover, she adds that by providing customers with the convenience of learning on their own, companies can also cut down on the costs of other resources such as call centers. Powered is responsible for the technological aspects of inputting, updating, and maintaining all of the online content. Riley praised the solution's usability. "The navigation page is standard enough that it's accessible even for small companies," Riley says. Furthermore, because it is on demand, Powered's platform "makes it a lot easier to publish small amounts of content quickly and update it easily," Riley says, to keep consumers up to date with relevant and timely information. Powered provides educational materials on a variety of topics with clients of different industries. Sony, for example, has an online tutorial that teaches customers how to find the right HDTV. "The content is very engaging and consumers actually learn something--it's a little bit like going to a short schooling on HDTVs," Krawczyk says. Education is key to improving customer relationships. Many consumers are often unaware of the resources within their reach, let alone for little to no cost, according to Riley. Marketers, particularly, are often plagued by a lack of education such as the best email marketing practices or the benefits of implementing marketing automation services. To increase awareness as well as interest, Riley advises companies to "make customers become experts in the product [and] provide as much information as possible while [they are] researching," and Powered, she says, "has a great way to do both of those things." Related articles: Making the Grade High Performance E-Learning for the Enterprise It's Not Your Father's e-Learning Recipe for Success