I’m a big fan of business skills training of all kinds and I welcome every opportunity to take part in courses, seminars and webinars on all sorts of areas. I’ve done days on social media at E-Consultancy, one-on-one training on SEO, Perry Marshall’s PPC course and all sorts of other training courses and products including an NLP Practitioners course.

You could say I’m a training junkie – my shelves are lined with how to books, my desktop cluttered with PDFs and I’ve still yet to log on to the River Cottage Online Pig In a Day course but it’ll be there when I finally persuade my wife to give up the garden.

Training courses are a quicker, cheaper option to teaching yourself

When I started my copywriting business online I had no option but to handle all the individual elements of online marketing myself. I simply didn’t have the budget to outsource the marketing. On the other hand I didn’t really have the time to become an expert in fields like SEO or PPC. I didn’t even really have time to do the marketing, but that’s another story that my family will forgive me for one day.

A one-day training course from a provider with a good reputation seemed an expensive luxury but after my first course I instantly saw the value of it. I rapidly came to the conclusion that trying to teach myself was not only an inefficient way of learning it was also a false economy.

One day in social media training, for example, gave me more perspective on the skills and industry context for social media marketing than the previous six months had doing research online. I asked questions directly pertinent to my business and then was able to work out a strategy for not only how to apply it to my own business but how to offer it to others. It also helped me realise when I had met the right person to take over my social media marketing.

Training courses allow you to get your burning questions answered by an expert

Obvious really. A training course gives you the opportunity to ask the questions that are directly relevant to your business in a way that a book, DVD or PDF can’t. Sometimes, one answer can make a difference – I remember a specific SEO copywriting technique that has probably earned me at least 10 times the price I paid for the course. That was the result of a Q&A at the end of a one-day training session.

Of course, if you need more answers you can always commission your tutor to answer specific questions for you. I’m always surprised that more people don’t do this, especially when you are looking for specific answers on specific areas. It’s a short cut to getting the knowledge you need and avoiding spending time on learning things you don’t need.

Training courses teach you what you need to manage others

As soon as I had the budget I started to outsource my marketing to specialist providers. We are experts in content and content promotion but there are other areas of online marketing where it’s more cost effective, more efficient and we get better results by using other providers, for example with link building or PPC advertising.

However, to get the best results from your providers you need to have an understanding of what they’re doing and enough knowledge to enter into a productive dialogue with them. A one-day training course is usually enough to give you the information you need to get the best from your contractors. It may even be your opportunity to check out whether the people delivering the course are up to the job of becoming your contractor themselves.

Training courses open doors to new revenue channels

I’m not going to go into the benefits of training courses for networking – I’ve always found it a bit hit and miss. It depends who’s there on the day and where you’re sat in the room. However, a one-day training course can be a cheap way of conducting research and formulating new ideas for business.

For example, you might think you’ve got it in you to set up a copywriting business. A one-day web copywriting course is your chance to find out not only how to be a good web copywriter but to find out from people who know what it’s like to be a web copywriter.

Now where did I get that idea?