Loyalty Learnings #12: Key Questions to Assess Competitive Intensity In The Education Space

When you’re assessing the competitive intensity for your educational resources, there are a number of questions you should be asking yourself.  How many other organizations out there in your space, or maybe tangentially related to your space, could your members be using for continuing education?  Who are those other players?  Are they other associations?  Are they for-profit organizations?  How many of them are using your industry partners who are in and of themselves trying to secure customer loyalty?  How many of them are using colleges, universities, online educational platforms — or even your local chapters?  It’s very helpful to know where that competition is coming from.

Then, what percentage of their continuing education credits, contact hours, and/or dollars are you getting relative to those other organizations?  Are you getting the lion’s share or are you just getting a small piece of the pie?

The answer to that question then leads into another question:  how well are you positioned relative to those other organizations?  How are you positioned on price?  On formats?  The variety and the quality of the formats that you’re offering?  As well as your content.  The relevance of the content, the quality of the content.

The answers to those questions then drive one last question:  how do you want to differentiate yourself in the market?  One of the keys to establishing a greater share of classroom is identifying ways in which you can position yourself as unique relative to those other organizations and how you can speak to the relevance of your formats and of your content to your target group of members.