Practical Sailing Schools “get” NauticEd
Celebrating 10 years of sailing training, tens and tens of thousands of students in over 10 x 10 countries.
This following statement is universally true: “Customers are no longer stuck on an incumbent brand. The 21st-century customer is looking for a 21st-century experience in everything they do. At their fingertips, 24/7, and no matter where they are, they have access to information about what is going to be their best experience when selecting a product or service.”
As you strategically look to the future success and sustainability of your business, consider the above and also consider what NauticEd has created.
NauticEd is the only company providing a REAL 21st-century sailing education experience to its students with online multimedia courses available in mobile and desktop versions, interactive eBooks, hybrid paper ebooks; all along with millions of lines of code backing up the student’s learning and guidance experience.
And now, since the world’s top charter companies accept the NauticEd Sailing Certification, students are no longer bent on a particular brand. Ask any student if they are stuck on a brand; their answer will be “if you can show me somethingng better, I’m in”.
Get to know us a little by watching this video then read in detail the article below.
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Here’s some of the advantages sailing schools are excited about.
Cost: Let’s get this one out of the way first. We thought about how a proper relationship and marketing partnership should work. It seems a bit ludicrous for an international certifying body to charge a fee to the very people who we are partnering with. That would be like if Toyota charged their dealers a fee to sell Toyota cars – that would be pretty strange. So – there is no cost to associate your sailing school with NauticEd. However, like Toyota, there is immense value with the association. Read on.
Documented Increased Conversion: Sailing schools that align with NauticEd are enjoying an increased conversion from a prospect becoming paying student. WHY? Simply because in business, it is not about what you can supply to a customer. It is about what the customer wants. We are now well into the 21st century and your customers are well versed in technology and eLearning systems. Offering a paper test and a shiny sticker is just not what is expected.
Simplicity: To start a new student in your school, you can have multimedia eLearning sailing courses in the hands of your new student within seconds – ie you can do it whilst on the phone with the call-in prospect. You just login to NauticEd, enter the email address of the prospect, click on the courses you want e-delivered to the prospect and hit submit. The prospect (now your student) has instant access to the courses. They take the test online at home or on their iPad. When you complete practical sessions and deem them proficient, you logback in and click one button. This places a Practical Proficiency Verification stamp on their Sailing Certificate. There is no mailing, proctoring, inventorying, or admin associated.
Education Materials: See for yourself, our materials are state of the art mulitmedia courses. Take our two free courses we offer all students. Sign up as a student for free and visit the two free courses put into your curriculum. Additionally, visit our page that shows our course books available on Amazon. But, these aren’t just any books – these are hybrid paper eBooks complete with QR codes that turns any learning experience on paper into a multimedia learning experience.
With our books, comes the Amazon overnight delivery for Amazon prime members. Less expensive, better quality and more comprehensive than any other course book.
Meeting modern day student’s time demands: These days we know most people are busy. This has been one of the biggest reasons for the growth of online learning across many industries including recreational education such as scuba diving. Having the material presented in a student’s own time in a modular format so that the student can come and go under their own time constraints is much more conducive to their desires. The online -time-value-sensitive-education attracts a more affluent crowd to sailing so that we’re not living in the world of who is the “cheapest” supplier. Now we’re talking about delivering proper value oriented quality.
Removing the intimidation factors: Students that complete the NauticEd online sailing courses are more apt to sign up for practical lessons once they find out that this mysterious sailing phenomenon is actually not that difficult to understand after all. This gets more people off the Internet and into the hands of the schools.
Brand loyalty: NauticEd has created a technology whereby students that visit NauticEd through a link from a sailing school are logged to that school and see the logo of that sailing school on all pages through out the NauticEd site. This gives the student a brand recognition with that school and keeps them loyal to that school when selecting a school for practical training.
Lead Generation: When viewing Google analytics on your site, if only 10% of visitors actually pick up the phone and call you, what happens to the other 90%? When students are logged on our site as coming from a sailing school, the sailing school has the ability to see all those student prospects. This creates a new lead generation system for the school.
Off Season training: Seasonal schools still have the ability to be offering sailing training during off season times. Often during the winter, people are thinking about spring – yet they can’t get any training until the ice thaws. With NauticEd, a school can get and keep a student excited until they are ready to get on the water.
Consistency of training: When multiple students are being trained on one boat at the same time, often the instructor has to spend more time with one student because of the lack of theory understanding. This is frustrating to the faster students. When all students show up with the NauticEd skipper certificate then the instructor knows that all students have reached the same understanding level. Giving all students a better experience during the practical exercises.
Increased ranking in search engines: Google, yahoo etc base most of their page ranking on who is linking to you. A school with more high level links coming in is thus ranked better. And better means getting a listing above their competitors. NauticEd creates not only a link back to the school but also provides good tasty searchable keyword text back to the school – further increasing the school’s search engine ranking.
Taking nothing away and only adding: With an alliance to NauticEd, nothing is removed from the school’s ability to teach in a good and professional manner. Students show up more informed and their learning experience is enhanced.
More time spent “behind the wheel”: In a given amount of teaching time, focusing more on the practical exercises rather than having to re-cover the theory, gives students more practical understanding. Thus students showing up with the theory already under their belt improves everyone’s experience.
Instructors would rather be sailing: Face it – we’d all rather be on the water than in the classroom. Students that have taken NauticEd online sailing courses spend less time in the class room – good for them and good for the instructors.
Theory knowledge can still be built upon on the boat: Having a basis in theory knowledge whilst on the boat will undoubtedly lead to newer and higher level questions. These can be answered by the instructor on the boat, again giving everyone a higher level experience.
Taking nothing away from the current certifying bodies: NauticEd is taking nothing away from the current certifying bodies such as ASA, CSA, US Sailing, RYA. In fact NauticEd believes that when more education and practical training is made available, we will see less accidents and loss of life on our water ways. Certifying bodies CAN NOT demand a school to be exclusive to that certifying body. They are in serious trouble of violating fair trade laws of almost every county. Fair trade laws were developed in the early 1900’s to encourage emerging companies to be able to provide competitive and innovative products and services to the market. Stifling fair trade has legal ramifications. Contact us if your sailing school is being forced to limit your business in this way. It’s illegal and unfair to you.
Additional Income for the sailing school: All sales in all commerce is rewarded with a commission. It’s standard and accepted practise for moving products and services to the people who desire the product or service. NauticEd rewards the Sailing School who provided the NauticEd educational sailing service to the student. When a Student links through from that school and for ever more – that school is rewarded on each and every NauticEd online sailing course taken by that student.
Realtime Feedback of Instructor Training Quality: When a sailing instructor trains a student, the NauticEd software automatically asks the student to rate the instructor. This rating is emailed back to the school. This provides a realtime built-in school quality assurance program. Prospects seeing this social quality feedback are more likely to select your school over a brochure type website. Instructors that become highly rated by schools are automatically posted to the top of the list on our sailing schools page, thus promoting your school further.
In summary, and in general, companies that use high tech – high tough systems will be able to engage their customers in a manner demanded by the customer and will be better positioned to compete.
Further Important information about how to market to Millennial Students
Come join NauticEd – sign up on our sailing schools page.
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