Confused over buying A product? Why not take THEIR MOOC!

Confused over buying A product? Why not take THEIR MOOC!
Summary: As more companies spend meaninglessly huge amounts of money on corporate training and advertisements, a fictional company attempts to change the whole scene of consumer interaction and training with education and technology. Can a MOOC-for-training be the answer to the financial woes of the corporate sector?

Imagine a promising new venture, “Burgers Ahoy!”, that makes really healthy and tasty burgers. Since it is not as big or famous as McDonald’s or Burger King, it is struggling to make a niche in the QSR market. They are doing everything in the books to make sure their brand gets noticed. But somehow things aren’t quite as bright as expected!After a few months though, everyone is all of a sudden fans of Burgers Ahoy!. The people are tweeting about “the Pirate Burger”, checking into their restaurants on FB, recommending them to friends. So, what happened over this brief period that turned the tables for “Burgers Ahoy!”Education!The team at Burgers Ahoy! listed out the qualities that made their burgers better than what was already selling in the market. There were many. The first challenge was: How to get this information out in the world?Someone must have casually mentioned: “Why not start a MOOC? My daughter’s taking one from MIT!”Not a bad idea! In fact, starting a MOOC is exactly the thing to do!Over a period of time, MOOCs have successfully been able to make an obvious transition, from the world of Education into the world of Corporate! Why obvious, you ask? (Besides the “If Sebastian Thrun can, why can’t the MOOCs?” argument!). Lets throw some light on the relationship between corporate and education.

How are Corporate and Education related?

Companies, large and small, hold abysmally huge databases of knowledge and experience. This knowledge, (which gives rise to that winning idea), is the key ingredient behind their recipes of success. If every company in the world was to share just one dimension of its business or one theory involved in its otherwise giant process, there would be so much to learn and know. Schools and colleges all around the world would have enough data to revise their outdated curricula. Graduate students wouldn’t be asked to leave their schooling behind before entering the corporate. Parents would be satisfied knowing their child chose the right company to work in. Customers to these companies would marvel at the level of transparencies achieved. This piece of knowledge would be available for the world to access at the same time; on a massive scale, through technology, and absolutely and completely free of cost. For once, the world would be far away from lies and slowly treading towards the light, that’s achieved when knowledge is shared!But on a non-spiritual note, MOOCs are should be the next big thing for companies to put on their agendas for 2014-15. Moocs have the potential to be a company’s biggest educational-cum-technological tool that can empower training and marketing departments with cost-effective solutions and widen the horizons of their innovative use of technology.The exercise of building a business is inseparable to building a brand! In order to sell something, you must tell the people what you are selling. In order to retain your customers, you must keep them informed about your mission, vision and planned advancements. Branding, typically follows a sequence of stages, and WizIQ can be a powerful tool at each stage-

  1. Lack of awareness
    MOOCs are the easiest and most cost-effective to reach vast number of audience. Tell the world what you are offering. Use innovative presentations, animations, interactive sessions, highlight your USP!
  2. Initial purchase of a product
    Walk through your potential customers with the details of what they are getting. Pricing, support, maintenance, all the goodies that they are getting.  Inform them how they are becoming a part of a select club.
  3. Brand loyalty
    Keep your existing consumers in loop of any policy changes, enhancements, upgrades, updates, etc. Both public and private organizations end up spending large amounts on floating information in public domain that is only relevant to their existing customers.

But Burgers Ahoy! is a company, not an educational institute. They don’t have a platform like eDX or Coursera, nor do they have a bandwidth to start one.

Thats where a MOOC provider such as WizIQ comes into scene. With WizIQ virtual classroom, starting a MOOC is as easy as ABC.WizIQ's online training platform can help small and large organizations to tap wider markets and reach their customers beyond geographical limitations. The concept of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is akin holding customer relationship conferences in the virtual world. No need of booking large conference halls or working out logistics or even expecting your potential customers (existing customers) to be present physically.

mooc marketing

MOOCs might just be the right answer to the whole ‘where do we get the money for marketing’ debate. After Social Media, MOOCs could be the next big thing in internet marketing. All those bucks saved and perhaps a tiny part per million invested in the MOOC platform. Corporate life couldn’t get better than this!