Spearhead Compliance Training

Market

Target market

Our market consists of both individuals seeking to gain employment or a promotion in their current role by upskilling, and corporate organisations looking to qualify their staff in order to remain compliant.

The main sectors that we are targeting are those that are heavily regulated by various authorities such as Financial Services, Hospitality, Food and Drink, Health and Social Care, and Retail. These sectors often need, and must have, training to remain legally compliant.
Research has shown that the eLearning industry isn't showing any signs of slowing down. In fact, an increasing number of individuals, corporations, and institutions are turning to eLearning, as they recognise its effectiveness and convenience. Below are some important eLearning statistics and facts for 2015, some of which may even surprise you!

The Global eLearning Industry Market:

- The global eLearning Market was estimated to reach $107 billion in 2015.
- The global self-paced eLearning market reached $32.1 billion in revenue in 2010, with a five year compound annual growth rate of approximately 9.2%.

This means that the self-paced eLearning market should see estimated revenues of $54.4 billion in 2016.

The Mobile Learning Market:

- The worldwide market for Mobile Learning products and services reached $5.3 billion in 2012. With a compound annual growth rate of 18.2% for the following five years, it is estimated that the worldwide mobile learning market will reach $12.2 billion by 2017.
It is for this reason that we need a prominent online presence, and this will be achieved using the investment raised. We expect that this will enable us to open up to the global market via online sales.

Characteristics of target market

Online Corporate Training:

The online corporate market is expected to grow by 13% per year up to 2017. Today, 77% of USA companies offer online corporate training to improve the professional development of their employees. Large companies are the main purchasers of eLearning products and services. In fact, these companies make up roughly 30% of all eLearning buyers.

The MOOC market (Massive Open Online Courses) has exploded. Not only is there a proliferation of courses, there is now an expansion of MOOC platform providers and tools.

lynda.com is one of the best known online education companies, offering thousands of video courses in software, creative, and business skills. On April 9, 2015, LinkedIn announced its purchase of lynda.com for $1.5 billion.

The MOOC and online training model is well established now in the USA, with brand leaders such as Lynda, Udemy, and Alison leading the way.

Notably, a number of the most successful businesses are offering their own certificated courses, something which Spearhead offers alongside fully accredited qualifications. We believe that this shows that the MOOC and online training model is something that the market is already very familiar with and has adopted widely in the USA. However, we believe that it is relatively untapped here in the UK, and there doesn’t seem to be a stand-out company known for such training as our US competitors.

Therefore, we aim to execute on this and become the go-to provider in the UK.

Marketing strategy

We intend to use Digital Marketing Campaigns focusing on social media, direct mail campaigns, advertisement, SEO, PPC, and also social media influencers. Spearhead has a good social media presence (over 16,000 organic social media followers across 4 active channels – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn) and has already been featured in a number of mummy blogs, YouTube channels, business magazines, SKY TV, and National Newspapers. With the investment we plan to drive sales by:
● Creating awareness through PR and sponsored social media activity, such as paid adverts on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram to a carefully selected audience.
● Our PR focus will be on trade magazines and websites, as well as business profiling with national news and digital publications.
● We intend to spend 84% of the investment on SEO, PPC, and mail campaigns. We believe that this is key to our growth and our SEO and Marketing team are confident we can reach our estimated targets by the end of year 2.
● We aim to utilise social media influencers to promote and review our courses. In addition, we intend to offer a uniquely designed digital card that can be posted and shared on social media saying “Just completed a course with Spearhead”. We intend to give the user that posts it £10.00 credit on the site to use on any course.

Competition strategy

Spearhead aims to differentiate itself in both the quality of the courses and the user experience, both on our website and during the learning period itself.

We offer qualifications that are recognised internationally and that are a legal requirement for businesses to ensure that their staff are trained and up-to-date. We also aim to deliver practical training and apprenticeship-funded training via our partners and consultancy services, which adds 3 additional revenue streams that our main online training competitors don't offer. We are one of the only providers to our knowledge that can offer a full training solution that includes online elearning, practical training, apprenticeship/funded training, and compliance consultancy.