Tips for Marketing ICA-Accredited Classes

Find what makes you unique. Create offerings that are unique to your organization and put that at the forefront of your marketing. Organizations can stand out in various ways such as language, compelling visuals, testimonials, etc. Highlight key differentiators for ICA on your website or marketing materials (no renewal fees, not tied to any particular framework, etc).
Meet your potential customers where they are. The average person spends over two hours on social media every day. That being said, social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are crowded spaces to compete for a customer's attention. To make the most of social media channels, focus your messaging on topics and goals your ideal customer is interested in. Post consistently and make it simple and easy for your customer to understand how your offering will help them achieve their goals. Keep testing and experimenting with what works to continuously improve your posts.
Test the market. Prior to designing and accrediting a new course, we often encourage our Member Organizations to test the appetite of the market to ensure the course meets the needs of their customers. As an example, if you are considering the Agility in HR (ICP-AHR) vs. People Development (ICP-PDV), consider hosting two separate webinars on those topics to gauge interest and demand. Try to speak at a meetup or conference on the topics or offer a short teaser class. These are also great strategies for developing a pipeline of customers who you can then reach back out to when the course is accredited and available.
Leverage your existing customer base. It’s easier to get a repeat customer than to attract new customers. Consider what additional courses your customers might need next in their journey and provide that opportunity for them.

Word of mouth referrals are huge! Create an amazing and unique learning experience. What do you do before, during, and after the class that makes your class the “must take” class? Create connection and engagement throughout the class, level up your training skills and delivery. You may even consider sharing testimonials from students with their permission to highlight the impact your organization is having on people.
Continuously improve your courses. Review your feedback for opportunities to improve. Also keep leveling up your instructor skills.
Take advantage of ICA's Marketing Opportunities. ICA would love to collaborate with you on an individual learner story or organizational case study. If you have a story to tell, please contact our marketing team.

Similarly, ICAgile can share free, value-driven learning resources (e.g. videos, white papers, articles, etc.) on our social media channels. Tag us on LinkedIn or X (@icagile)— we work to engage with as many posts as possible.
Keep your class schedule up to date. Students will frequently visit Ica-certified.com/Find-a-Class to explore class options. We recommend keeping your classes up to date and adding your courses as soon as possible for maximum visibility to potential students.
We also encourage your instructors to publish biographies in their user profile to show students their background/qualifications. This can be done by logging into ica-certified.com and selecting “[Your Name]’s Profile” > “Profile Settings”.
Explore online advertising. Choose a platform that best targets your audience of students. See what courses you hold a unique domain over and would have the best opportunity to capture new traffic. Don’t choose to bid on highly competitive terms but terms you have the best chance to win new customers with.
Optimize your website. Find ways to optimize your website to increase the number of students attending your sessions and visiting your website. There are a few ways to do this:

Make it easy for students to understand the course content, register for classes, and reach out with questions. If they do have questions, make it easy for them to find their answer. This can be in the form of a help desk or a very clear contact person for them to reach out to.
Highlight your full suite of ICA offerings.
Explore analytics for your site and find out where your traffic is coming from and use this insight to further develop your offerings, website and marketing strategies. Helpful tools for this include Screamingfrog and Moz.
Research the top keywords for the certifications you offer and use the most popular terms to describe your courses in the content of the page to rank higher in search results. Helpful tools for this include Google Keyword Planner and Answerthepublic