Two great ways your SaaS can use AcademyOcean

In my first Medium post, I didn’t share too much about my new product, AcademyOcean.com, so I’m happy to be publishing a second article, which will include:

1. An exact description of the problem AcademyOcean solves.
2. An answer to the question “What exactly is an academy?”
3. A step-by-step description of two ways an SaaS can use AcademyOcean. These ways depend on the size of your client.

Let’s get started!

What is the problem AcademyOcean solves?

A huge percentage of people don’t understand all the benefits of your SaaS. These people are visitors to your site who don’t understand something and leave without converting into customers. These people are also your existing customers who stay on free or low-paying plans because they don’t understand all the benefits of your top-priced plans.

You can solve these problems by using the AcademyOcean platform to create an academy for your customers. By doing this, you become a teacher for visitors to your site, and you can grow their loyalty to your product.

Here is some information that will help you better understand how to educate your customers.

So, what exactly is an academy?

An academy is a separate page on your website’s subdomain. First-time visitors to this page enter their email address and create a password for future visits (similar to when downloading a white paper).

Try one of our academies: academy.serpstat.com

Next, they will see a page like this:

On the left-hand side is a list of lessons, and on the right they’ll find each lesson’s content. Any lesson can contain text, images, tooltips, videos, etc., so you can deliver your topic or educational content in the most convinient way for your “students.”

As a learner passes through each lesson, check marks appear next to the lessons in the panel on the left. After the entire list is completed, the learner receives a certificate stating that they have completed your course.

At the same time you, as an admin, can check stats about learners’ behaviors: How far each particular learner went in the course, when exactly they stopped using the academy, and how much time they spent on the course. In this way, your users become experts in your product or topic, and you become an expert in your users.

Additionally, you can see statistics by lesson, which will help you understand which lessons users finish quickly and which lessons need modifications.

Two concrete scenarios for using an academy in SaaS

Scenario 1: You have a full self-service SaaS and automated or semi-automated sales. Your product falls in a low to mid-low price range. You most likely have a B2C (business-to-consumer) SaaS.

Steps to take:

1. Evaluate whether or not you are ready to invest your resources in the development and promotion of your academy. To make your academy beneficial, you need to create high-quality content.
2. Create your content. The optimal course has 8–12 lessons. If you already have a knowledge base it is much easier for you to create an academy.
3. Create an academy in AcademyOcean. Combine created content into lessons, using texts, videos, and/or images.
4. Next, think about additional motivation for learners who complete your academy — something besides the knowledge they receive. This could be a discount, coupon, additional badge (if you have already implemented gamification in your product) or a certificate that they can save, print, or share on personal social media accounts.
5. Invite visitors to your academy. Academies should be easy to find in your site menu. It is important to convey to these visitors that this academy you have created for them is very useful and is free of cost to use. An academy helps you show your customers that you care about them.
6. Track your customers’ success as they learn. It will help you understand if they are ready to make a purchase. You will see how they interact with your content and have the ability to identify and improve the weakest parts of this content.

Benefits of AcademyOcean for your SaaS (Scenario 1):

• As time goes by, you will acquire more and more loyal customers who have been trained by your academy. These customers can gain knowledge both about your product and about any related topic. Customer education doesn’t come quickly, but it is a very gratifying process.

Scenario 2: You depend on your sales team to make direct enterprise sales. Your services are mid- to high-cost. You most likely have a B2B (business-to-business) SaaS. You want to close an enterprise-level deal with a company where many employees will use your SaaS. You are missing one final convincing reason for them to buy from you.

Steps to take:

1. Propose to this company that you create a personal academy about your product for their employees. This is an additional reason for them to purchase your product.
2. Create content for this client. In most cases, you will adapt and combine parts of existing content that are particularly necessary for this client, so you’re not actually creating content from scratch.
3. Using your account in AcademyOcean, create a private course for this client based on the content created.
4. Automatically generate individual accounts for clients’ employees and one master-account, where their manager will be able to monitor employees’ progress in the course.

Benefits of AcademyOcean for your clients (Scenario 2):

• They can start using a new product (yours!) with ease.
• They get control over their employees’ knowledge of your product — no more worrying about whether or not employees know how to use a purchased product.
• They can easily train their new employees on your product using the material in your academy.

Benefits of AcademyOcean for your SaaS (Scenario 2):

• You gain one more strong argument for your SaaS on an enterprise level.
• You don’t have to spend resourses organizing offline or online educational events for your clients’ employees.
• You can gain an additional source of income, if you choose to charge your clients for these courses.

Thank you for reading. May your endeavors be successful!