As an agency, you want to ensure potential employees have a bigger insight into the world you are in. You want to be able to give insight, but not give out this information to make your agency obsolete. Creating an educational arm can be beneficial not only to students but for your agency as well.
A few years after starting my agency, I noticed a pattern in the candidates applying for jobs. Although they came from a post-secondary background, they lacked basic digital marketing certificates. Because of the ever-changing nature of the digital marketing industry, most universities do not incorporate things like Google AdWords and analytics into their curriculum. With this gap, I saw an opportunity to offer students a course that would not only compliment their university programs but enhance their resumes and give them a competitive edge for hiring.
In addition, I saw interest from some of our clients who were small business owners that couldn’t afford to outsource digital marketing services. I would often get asked if we could provide training to new hires that were going to manage marketing internally. The demand spoke for itself, and thus, Jelly Academy was born.
If you are thinking of starting your own educational arm, here are a few things you should think about.
1. Are You Willing to Give Your Secrets Away?
Through any educational arm, you’re training students. When you’re training students, you’re giving away how you do what you do — your recipes, your secret sauces. However, you’re also empowering and investing in others. If you keep all this information locked, you are only impacting yourself — or so it may seem.
By sharing some secrets and training a new wave of students, you are giving them the knowledge to pursue the career force you are in. Keep in mind, you may be teaching future prospective employees.
2. Who Are You Doing This For?
What type of students are you looking for? Are they fresh out of university, still in university, are they on the brand side or agency side? Just as you would for clients, you need to research your audience.
How are you going to cater your information? What are you wanting your students to take away from this education? What information might they already know? It is important to look at your demographic, as you wouldn’t teach a new grad the same you would a client.
3. How Are You Evaluating Students?
This leads to another question: What is the student’s takeaway? Is it your own certificate? If so, what does that mean in the industry? Or will it be an industry standard certificate such as Google, Facebook, Hootsuite and SEMrush?
If you are sticking with industry standard certificates, you need to ensure your educators are at the proper level. Your educators need to be able to prep the students to be ready to pass the certificate. Most of all, they need to have passed that certificate themselves.
4. How Will You Incorporate Further Reading?
Like the technological industry, public relations and digital marketing are constantly on the move and changing. Which resources are you going to use to ensure they are kept up to date?
If you pick a textbook, you need to go through it every term to ensure the information is still up to date. A great option would be a blog on the industry or your own written text that can be updated if and when it’s needed.
5. How Are You Better Than Online Learning?
When you are creating your own educational arm, you need to think of what is going to make you better than online learning. What is going to make students leave their homes to come and join you to further their education?
For example, accountability is huge. You are able to hold your students accountable to complete things such as certificates or readings. With a tailored educational arm, you are also able to provide students with one-on-one conversations to answer questions, give them advice and provide real-life workshops. Students are able to put their knowledge to use in real-life situations with guidance from your educators.
As an agency, starting your own educational arm may be a daunting task. You need to look at the pros and cons for you, and what benefits you would get by sharing your knowledge. For everyone, it is trial and error to see what works for you. But if you follow and think of the five tips above, you’ll be in a good place.
