Educational content or training materials: what’s the best option for your #SaaS product?

The difference between education and training is a tenuous one. Without falling into too much theory, let’s define?user training?by all the materials whose aim is to teach users practical things (like how to use a product or how to do certain tasks).?User education?on the other hand is used to teach users more theoretical things so that they acquire knowledge about broader concepts and topics.

The big question that follows is then,?what do you need for your SaaS product? Do you need more educational content or more practical content?

To find out, let’s answer these seven questions.

1- Are you on a nascent market?

There’s a huge difference between a SaaS serving a well established market and a SaaS serving a nascent market. If you are on the latter, chances are high that you have less competition and that your users are not educated enough about the problem you solve. In that case market education is a crucial aspect. You need to produce educational pieces that explain these broad concepts and ideas. To have to educate a market is a double edge sword: it can be a great opportunity to establish your company as a leader. But it’s also a big risk if your market fails to materialize (you think you create a market, but in fact there’s no need for your product).?

A great example of a company that successfully built a brand on a nascent market is?ChartMogul.They were one of the first companies on the SaaS analytics segment before the subscription model was established. And they managed to capitalize on great educational content they published early, like their?cheat sheets.

If the answer is yes, you need?educational content?such as user guides, benchmarks, playbooks, cheatsheets, videos, podcasts etc.

2- Have you reached Product/Market Fit??

As soon as you reach Product/Market Fit (a.k.a you have people using your product, paying for it and not all churning), training materials become a must-have. Usually at that stage your product is not fully polished and probably still has bugs. This is why it’s important to put in place a help center as well as some product training content such as screencasts or tutorials.

If the answer is yes, you need?training content?such as a help center, documentation, product tutorials, screencast videos etc.

3- Do you need to build brand trust??

When you don’t have a brand yet, publishing educational content is a great way to build trust with your targeted users. It’s not a secret in the SaaS industry and countless startups managed to build a great brand by sharing guides, playbooks or benchmarks. It’s definitely getting harder due to an increasing competition, but outstanding educational content can still make a difference. Buffer, Converkit or HelpScout are good examples of companies which succeeded at that.

If the answer is yes, you need?educational content?such as user guides, benchmarks, playbooks, cheatsheets, videos etc.

4- Do you need to create a community of users?

There are some types of SaaS companies that need to foster a community of users more than others. It’s often the case of open source startups or of products which target personas for whom networking is beneficial (it’s for example the reason why so many SaaS targeting finance or security leaders try to build communities). In that case, educational initiatives such as user groups or academies can be a great way to kickstart the effort.

If the answer is yes, you need?educational initiatives?such as user groups for best practice sharing, a podcast where you interview your personas or a user academy.

5- Do you have low product activation or an increasing churn??

There are usually many reasons behind low product activation and a growing churn rate. And there is no silver bullet to solve such a situation. That being said, in the mix of solutions you need to implement, a good product onboarding and a wide variety of product training content from webinars to video tutorials are “must-haves”.

If the answer is yes, you probably need more?training content?such as an interactive product onboarding, product training webinars as well as video tutorials.

6- Do you have enterprise customers?

SaaS companies which target enterprise customers need to offer a lot of training content and initiatives to their users. I spoke with several heads of customer success working at such companies, and it was clear that training users was a high priority for them. They use a variety of initiatives ranging from webinars to one-to-one online sessions, online classes, user academies, workshops and more, to cover the widest spectrum possible.

If the answer is yes, you need a very strong user?training strategy?that includes the whole package from webinars to online classes, user academies, live sessions, workshops etc.

7- Is your support overwhelmed with low priority tickets??

A sign that shows that you need to step up in terms of user training content is when your support team becomes overwhelmed with “low priority tickets” (“How do I do this or this?”). It usually means that your help center is not comprehensive enough, that your product onboarding is not clear enough or that your users lack basic materials to learn how to get started with your product.If the answer is yes, you probably need more?training content?such as an interactive product onboarding, a better help center and more training content such as video tutorials and screencasts.