A business-focused Academy can unite a community around a common subject. For SaaS publishers, it's an excellent way of fleshing out their Inbound Marketing strategy. For Customer Success teams, it's a way of increasing user skills. Brice pragmatically explains how they launched their academy at Smappen in just 1 month!
Can you tell us a little about Smappen?
Smappen is a self-financed Toulouse-based startup in full acceleration: 12 employees, €1M in ARR with over 500 customers and 3-digit growth.We've created a mapping app for simple local market research (geomarketing).
You recently launched the Smappen Academy. Why did you do this?
As a self-funded Product Led Growth startup, we have one obsession: THE CUSTOMER. We absolutely must deliver maximum value in minimum time to boost long-term MRR. However, we quickly realized that there was a flagrant lack of knowledge about catchment areas, and how to make a relevant local analysis.
We were able to pass on some of this knowledge during the personalized Onboarding phase. However, it was impossible to reach two profiles:
- The "fiercely independent" customers who like to train on their own and don't want support.
- Free subscribers: with up to 4,000 subscribers per week, it's not possible to offer support.
Plus, it's a great way to attract inbound traffic.
Can you tell us what it's all about?
An academy is a set of modules that enable the user to progress from a business point of view. In my vision, it will be a suite of online courses combining video, testing, gaming and practical exercises.
In our case, it's not about the Smappen solution and how to use this or that functionality. This is the role of upstream UX/UI (95%) and downstream online help (5%).
It's a pragmatic, business-oriented course.
As we're self-financed, we need to be super efficient and agile. So we started with the main topic: "catchment areas" and a series of 5 emails sent every 2 days presenting each step. In this case: zone creation, population analysis, analysis of competitors/targets/partners/good neighbors.
We'll look at the results and grow the baby: I can't wait!
With whom do you promote your academy?
We do a bit of Linkedin and Adwords com to attract new prospects.
We also have many registrations with our customers for new users / work-study students / trainees discovering the profession.
Last but not least, it's a great tool for training newcomers to Smappen in the fundamentals of the business.
Is this type of Medium relevant to all software publishers?
Good question! Based on my experience, I think it's particularly interesting in Mid-Touch, which corresponds to typical VSE/SME customers, whatever the sector.
For large groups, there is a level of expertise and complexity that is difficult to resolve and simplify with a business academy, so a product academy is created on how to use the tool (e.g. Salesforce's Trailhead). Trailhead from Salesforce).
For VSE/SME targets, users are more interested in progressing within their perimeter, and this comes at just the right time.
What do you need to get started?
First of all, you need a Product Market Fit. If the main persona or use case isn't known, or the product doesn't live up to its promise, there's no point in setting up an academy. It'll just stir the air, but it won't generate MRR.
In my opinion, in Mid-Touch, you need to know your customer's problems and have done at least 50 onboardings: the first 20 to really understand the issues. The next 20 to provide advice and see how it's received. The next 10 to validate the steps.
How did you go about prioritizing the topics you wanted to cover?
I wanted to set up this academy with Laura, our Marketing Manager.
Laura started to make a program with different modules and progressions.
Then we applied the growth fundamentals: PRIORITIZE. We re-validated our main Persona and its use case number 1: "the catchment area". And... we've stopped there for now. We're only answering this question for our Persona.
How long did it take you to launch the first version?
It took us 1 calendar month and about 4 man-days. Laura wrote an initial outline for a series of 5 emails on the main stages. I added a healthy dose of practice and real-life cases. A proofreading by Mélissa on the CSM side, a Hubspot landing page for registration and the Smappen Academy was launched. It's been running on its own for 6 months now.
I imagine that one of the challenges is to multiply the points of entry to your content. Are there any plans to link your product to the Academy?
Our priority is to set up a Playbook, so that we know what to prioritize, to whom and when. There will undoubtedly be links with the Academy, online help, in-App help, email and telephone contacts, and the content will be reused in different places. And, of course, the illustrations will be done via Smappen every time!
In fact, the Academy has made it possible to produce onboarding videos, which are business-oriented and extremely effective for taking your first steps. We're moving away from functionality and towards business solutions: I love it!
Ultimately, we're talking about training, which isn't necessarily a glamorous subject. How can we make the experience fun for those who sign up?
I don't know: I love training and learning, and I think I could study for the rest of my life. In any case, those who sign up are motivated. After that, the two keys are: pragmatism & cool. Go fast to the wow effect, not too much theory and relaxed.
What plans do you have to continue developing your Academy?
As I said, we're just getting started. The priority now is to bring it to life via a Playbook. After that, the idea is to build the following modules with even more expertise, and move upmarket in terms of content: Videos, Quizzes, Gaming / Badge, Link in-App. So, just like the Roadmap, we've got a full backlog, with some great challenges ahead! To infinity and beyond 🚀
