4 Ways Awarding Certifications Can Drive Revenue for your Business

From Industry Credentials to Product Certifications

For many years the term ‘certification’ was associated with industry credentials, such as PMP Certification for project managers, SHRM Certification for HR Professionals, or OSHA Certification for those in construction. These industry certifications are typically product agnostic and focus on process and industry standards. They’re awarded by either non-profit associations or unbiased third parties.

Over the last decade, more and more certifications for products and services, such AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud Certification, have become expected credentials for those in technical fields. These can be thought of as product certifications since they specifically denote one’s ability to use the product effectively. They are awarded by the creators of the product – for example, Amazon offers AWS Certification.

You don’t need to be Google or Amazon to offer product certifications, though. Any company can create a certification program based on their own product, service, or proprietary process. In fact, awarding product certifications has become quite a popular and effective way of driving revenue and growth from prospects, partners, and customers.

Let’s look at 4 ways that launching a certification program can impact your business:

1    Certifying partners can provide free traffic and increase organic growth

Many businesses rely on partners to represent and leverage their products in the market, and in some cases provide training on the product. It’s almost necessary to offer a certification that formally recognizes these partners as having a high level of knowledge about the product. Certified partners will add this designation to their credentials, likely sharing the certificate among their own network – providing free traffic. And the more value your certification gains, the more results you’ll see from this free traffic alone.

Digital credentials provide candidates with an opportunity to showcase their competence and personal achievements to their networks. This becomes a powerful marketing tool for issuers that get to market their brand and offerings through authentic social shares from their recipients. As the recipient celebrates their award across their social media channels, they effectively become marketing agents of their issuing organizations. ~ Accredible

Of course, there are many other benefits to certifying your partners, such as increased loyalty, consistency in product messaging and use, and improved end-user satisfaction.

2    Certifying prospects can improve lead quality

There are some products that require a customer to have a baseline understanding of industry practices to really appreciate the value the product brings. For example, an advertising product requires basic knowledge and skill in advertising principles, like attribution models and real-time bidding. A project management tool may require an understanding of the scrum framework or agile methodology.  

For these scenarios a company may choose to design and offer a certification that both builds the individual’s understanding of the industry and educates them on how your product can provide value. Amazon Ads certifications are a great example of this.

Informed and educated prospective customers make qualified leads, and if they convert, will find faster time-to-value and become loyal customers. A loyal customer is a customer more likely to renew and more likely to advocate for your product.

For this strategy to work, the certification must be valuable to the candidate, not just your business. You’ll need to conduct a thorough needs analysis to understand what matters most to your potential candidates – i.e., what problems do they need to solve, what specializations are relevant to their work.   

3   Credible, legitimate certifications can increase perceived value

It’s important to keep in mind that just using the term “certification” on any training program will not necessarily yield the results we’re outlining. You’ll need to create a credible, legitimate certification that genuinely indicates the candidate has met a standard of knowledge and skill. That means incorporating reliability and validity and ensuring test security. It means that not everyone who completes training content will automatically get certified.

A credible certification becomes a valuable certification, which increases its appeal to those that want to beef up their resume. In a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, a credible certification also brings credibility back to the business. All in all, it’s an effective long-term strategy to drive the perceived value of both the products and certifications you offer.

Members of your target market are ambitious. They’re driven to grow their careers, to achieve, to expand their horizons. Their desire for professional respect and recognition can be a powerful motivator. Building a certification that the marketplace values and validates can be as significant to your program’s long-term success as it is to the success of its certificants. ~Kryterion

4   Offering certifications incentivizes training completion

It’s a common misperception that certification and training are always linked. A true certification is only an exam process that does not require any completion of training material. However, it’s also common to include suggested training material to help candidates prepare for passing the certification. Therefore, offering a certification is one strategy to incentive your prospects, customers, and partners to complete your training. Of course, like we’ve discussed, this works best if the certification is recognized as credible and brings value to the candidate.

According to one Forrester report, the most successful organizations [at educating customers] see a 40x higher increase in revenue, a 16x higher increase in customer satisfaction, and 36x greater reduction in support costs compared with the least successful organizations. (source)

Offering product certifications can be an effective strategy to drive business impact and improve the efficacy of your customer education programs. You could choose to offer foundational or advanced certification, or any level in between. Be sure to consider who you want to certify and what’s in it for them as well as your business. The most successful product certifications drive value for both those awarding and those achieving!

Are you ready to launch a product certification program?

Echtus can help. We offer a full range of professional services geared to help companies see real revenue and growth from education and certification initiatives. Contact us for a free evaluation of your business needs.