Your Future Students Need Know That You Understand Their "Two Places"

Using the term “places” broadly, potential students need to know  that you understand two key places:

1. Where they’ve been
2. Where they want to be

The power of this approach is that it connects your with your prospects at their most important level — pain.

Where Prospective Students Have Been:
There are several dimensions that describe where a prospect has been. In the context of looking at a training program, it usually implies a negative work or life angle:

1. difficult situations like being unqualified for a task
2. negative emotions like feeling stupid or lacking knowledge
3. goals (career or other) that are unmet
4. business or personal challenges stemming from a skills deficit

If you study a good sales call or great marketing materials for a training program, they inevitably include the effort to connect  with the “place” that a potential student has been.   Why?  Because to build a training course which solves a problem, a training school needs to understand to a good extent the  nature of that problem.

The “place” where your prospective students want to “be”:
Along the same dimensions, there is “place” where your prospects want to be in the context of looking for training.  As expected, this a positive “place”  which reflects an ideal of some sort with respect to key dimensions like:

1. good situations achieved by greater knowledge
2. positive emotions like recognition or promotion
3. benefit received including financial reward
4. challenges overcome in achieving career progress
5. goals met in career or life

In the effort to convey the “value” of your training programs, your success will substantially be determined by the  prospect connecting your courses to reaching  their desired “place”.  Describing credibly how your curriculum will take them from where they “are” to where  they want to be, will create the perception of value which  allows for more registrations to be completed.

This represents a key part of the fundamental perception shift of what a training school website about.   In another article,  we’ve discussed the new paradigm that successful online marketing efforts are built on: your website is not  about your training school or your courses, its about your prospects and their needs.