The ever-changing technology landscape affects both employees and organizations. According to Deloitte’s Human Capital Trend Report, it is estimated that 90% of organization will redesign jobs, and 54% of the workforce will require reskilling. Employees are concerned that their jobs will be obsolete as skills gaps widen. The fear of being replaced by someone better suited is a harsh reality for many employees. 

Move From Fire And Hire To Reskilling

From an organizational perspective, firing talent and hiring instead comes with increased costs and time to attain organizational goals. Instead, organizations start to focus their efforts on re- and upskilling current talent. This means organizations get to keep their current talent and build on top of existing knowledge. And offering these learning opportunities increases the attractiveness of a job and the organization as a whole, making it less likely for top talent to leave. The first step towards re- and upskilling is to identify skills needed. This can be done through a simple Excel spreadsheet outlining skills available and needed for roles within the organization. Alternatively, there are a multitude of software programs out there to help ease this task. Once gaps are identified, learning professionals can use a multitude of time-tested marketing techniques, such as a marketing funnel. a content strategy, and campaigns to develop training programs for re- and upskilling.

It’s All About The Learner Experience

Marketers work proactively in understanding a prospect’s and buyer’s journey, an element often overlooked in L&D. Instead of looking at training as a one-time event, we have to expand our horizons and think about the learner’s experience before, during and after the training. When working on a learner journey, think about all the different touch points you have with a learner. Leverage data where possible, such as downloads, likes, mobile vs. desktop, time of day and comments, to truly understand where and how your learner is already engaged. 

The Marketing Funnel

You can base your learner journey on the marketing funnel. The marketing funnel is a tool consisting of multiple stages, starting from awareness of a product or service, all the way through to conversion and beyond. A prospect moves from one stage to the next as their interest in a product increases. They exit the funnel if they are no longer considering a product. Marketers understand that prospects and customers have different content needs based on the funnel stage they are in. For example, in the awareness stage, marketers educate prospective customers about their products in order to show value. Prospects won’t be engaged by sales-heavy content at this stage. 

Use A Marketing Funnel To Plan The Learner Journey

In L&D, a funnel for an onboarding program could look like this:

• Awareness stage (get buy-in): send out a short video a couple of days before employees’ first day to promote your onboarding program
• Consideration stage (convince learners that they want to take the training): use testimonials from current staff to tell new hires how the onboarding program helped them in their career
• Conversion stage (learners take part in the actual training offering): personalize content as much as possible to increase engagement, and allow learners to pick and choose content
• Loyalty and advocacy stage (support behaviour change): help learners with performance-support resources such as infographics or chatbots. Role models and mentors play a big role during this stage

Understanding the learner journey not only helps identify skills gaps, but allows learning professionals to fill them with the appropriate experience. Job descriptions and manager observations in addition will help to truly understand where gaps are. With the experience mapped out, it’s time to take a look at content. 

Content Strategy – Not Just For Marketers

Marketers use a content strategy to identify what content is in use, what content is needed, and why. Content includes written content, images and multimedia. Marketers identify content as a business asset, which makes sense given all the time that is spent creating it. Data allows marketers to further identify which content is in high demand, which content has barely been touched, and shed light on how content is being accessed, i.e. mobile vs. desktop. The result is the creation of meaningful, engaging and sustainable content that allows marketers to send the right content at the right time and place to the right audience. 

Getting Started With A Content Strategy

When faced with a new training initiative, many L&D professionals think about it as a one-time event and they look at the initiative itself, but hardly think about the content as a stand-alone element. When it comes to re- and upskilling, and really any other training initiative, it’s crucial that learning professionals think of content as a business asset. Here are six steps towards a successful content strategy:

• Analysis: Identify learning content requirements, including delivery channels. and what content will help fill the gap. Map it to the learner journey.
• Strategy: Develop the actual content strategy. Determine topical ownership areas and processes for content creation. 
• Plan: Develop the content strategy plan including topics, objectives, resources, meta tags, stakeholders, etc. Use any of the free online project management tools to help plan this stage and work collaboratively with your team. 
• Create: Create structured and engaging content that is reusable. For example, if marketing created an eBook for clients on a particular topic, leverage this and create engaging webinars for your staff. 
• Deliver: Deliver the right content at the right time and place, i.e. mobile vs. desktop. Take another look at the learner journey to ensure appropriate timing.
• Measure: Measure training success.The best way to create successful measures is to align them to your business objectives. Use learning platform data to better understand when and how content is being accessed. Measure content usage throughout, not just at the end of a training offering. 
• Maintain: Keep content fresh and up to date.Manage content in your content strategy plan, schedule periodic audits, continuously improve high-value learning content, and set regular intervals for maintenance. Maintenance also means removing content completely if it didn’t hit the mark and wasn’t consumed as expected. 

As learning professionals map content needs to the learner experience, content gaps will show. You can then start to prioritize content creation based on skills needed the most in your organization. 

Other Marketing Tools

The use of marketing tools and techniques doesn’t stop there. To further create outstanding experiences that help address the skills gap, learning professionals should leverage the concept of learner segments and personas, coupled with learner campaigns, to truly understand who their learners are and share relevant content. Learner personas help L&D professionals to focus on what learners see, hear, think and feel, and put learners at the centre of training. This will help personalize content as much as possible. For example, an email campaign that uses dynamic content, content that changes based on the recipient, can truly hit the mark and increase learner engagement. Campaigns are an excellent tool to make learner experiences come to life. Coupled with the overall learner experience, campaigns also help learning professionals to address specific skill gaps, and deliver content at the time of need. 

To sum it up, L&D can learn a lot from marketing, especially when it comes to re- and upskilling. Once you have identified skills gaps, focus on emotions and engagement throughout the learner journey and take a critical look at your content. You want to be able to answer the question “What content fits which needs, when and where”. Update content as needed, and if it hasn’t been utilized in a while, don’t be afraid to retire it. Follow a campaign approach to drip content over time to learners and engage them in the moment of need and make content come to life. 

Like most people in 2019, I do enjoy the occasional podcast here and there. I recently came across “The Chernobyl Podcast”, which explains how the HBO hit show written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck, was made (I have to admit, I haven’t watched the show yet) .To really enjoy the podcast, you gotta watch the show first though. Anyway, I still did listen in a bit and was struck when Craig said (warning: spoilers ahead) “I showed the explosion right in the beginning. I also showed that Valery Legasov, the main investigator, committed suicide in the first couple of minutes. People would have googled this right away anyway.”

I really like this approach. Craig knew, people watching the show would pick up their smartphones and research the events while they are watching. This is what we do nowadays. We are ever connected and can quickly find answers to questions. The brilliant piece for me here is that Craig anticipated what viewers would do. 

Take this and apply it to L&D. When was the last time you anticipated what your learners would do? Instead of creating linear training programs, anticipate what your learners really want, and what they would do even if you spoon-feed them content. Two main options come to mind. 

First, look at data that you can leverage to make educated decisions. What content has been used in the past, what keywords are learners searching for, when do they access content, do they use their mobile phones or a desktop, do they like and share content? This information is extremely helpful. As we all know, actions speak louder than words. 

Second, armed with data, host a hackathon or design thinking session in which you identify learner segments and personas. This way, you can better understand what your learners think and feel, see, hear, and do. You want to identify their pain points and understand what drives them. Going through the exercise of creating personas will help you do exactly that. Ideally, you want to create 3-5 learner personas that represent your typical learner. From there, you can anticipate what content will resonate the most with each persona and start building your content. The best part is, you just increased the chances of content actually being consumed because you identified the learners’ needs and personalized the learner journey as much as possible.

L&D professionals have to start anticipating more with the help of data and design thinking in order to stay afloat. Otherwise, we will drown. 

Want to learn more about learner personas, and other cool tactics you can borrow from marketing? Check out my Little Black Book of Marketing and L&D.

When I came home from a conference the other day, I called my Lyft and hopped in. I wasn’t sure if I would actually make it home in one piece. It was a scary experience. The driver was changing lanes way too quickly, only looking over her shoulder occasionally, and going at a high speed. If you have ever driven in Toronto, or are familiar with the traffic here, you probably understand the fear for my life.

I did make it, and when Lyft asked me to evaluate the ride, I decided to tell the truth: a two star rating based on the driver’s skills. It took less than 15 minutes before I had an email from Lyft’s customer service, apologizing for the bad experience, and telling me that I was “unpaired” from the driver moving forward. Meaning, I won’t have to worry that this driver will ever be matched with me again in the future. For one, that makes me feel so much safer, and of course, I will continue using Lyft because I know I won’t have to worry about this particular person driving me again (knowing I gave her a bad review, she would probably drive into a ditch just because). What a great way of saying, it’s ok, we know we didn’t get it right this time, but please give us another chance. We know, we can do better.

Of course, that got me thinking about our learners and how we just dump content on them that they don’t need or want. Imagine if we would actually leverage data points to understand what content has been consumed and when, and what content has barely been touched. We could engage our learners and let them know that we “unpaired” them from certain content because we realized they already know all there is to know about a particular topic. We would create an environment in which learners wouldn’t worry about the next training or coaching session, the next digital offering or resource we share, because they will know we only share what really makes a difference to them. What a glorious world that would be!

The good news is, we have enough tools at our disposal to actually make this happen. Leverage data from your learning platform or Google Analytics. Start using your marketing automation tool to deliver training through campaigns, and you will get a whole other set of data you only dreamed about before. Creating positive learning experiences isn’t difficult. We just have to out our minds to it, be open to new ideas and really listen to the learner. It’s about what they need, not what we think they need.

If you want to learn more about how to leverage marketing for your L&D strategy, download my eBook “The Little Black Book of Marketing and L&D”.

Marketers are good at writing a short and precise message that resonates with the desired target audience. They don’t use bullets to bring their points across but rather leverage catchy language, images and colors to speak to our emotions. The big question is, why don’t L&D professionals use Marketers’ tools more often to reach their audiences?

Marketing doesn’t have to be difficult; you don’t have to be a graphic designer to create stunning images in your presentations or eLearning modules. I want to share some tools you can leverage to improve your messaging to your learners which will also help you promote your learning to your stakeholders!

Canva

Canva is an excellent free resource offering you hundreds of designs for your presentations, social media posts, infographics and so much more. It is my absolute go-to when it comes to creative assets. They even offer free tutorials “Learn how to design” to help you along the way! Their newest feature allows you to invite up to ten team members and share your creations with each other. You have access to basic backgrounds, layouts, illustrations, shapes, icons and charts. Canva offers you the option to upgrade for unlimited assets or simply purchase images one at a time. Once you created a design, you can download it as a .jpg, .png or PDF. Automatically, Canva saves all of your designs for you to conveniently download them at any time in the future.

Biteable

If you are looking for a simple to use video tool, look no further. Biteable is a great way to create online videos and animations that you can share on YouTube or other social media channels. It offers a multitude of predefined slide layouts to choose from. You can customize text and color on each and even add music to it. Biteable has a free version. The downside however is that you will have a watermark in the bottom right corner of your video and you can’t download it. You can purchase one video at a time or sign-up for a one year subscription for $99. It’s a fun way to engage your learners before a training session and show them what’s in it for them (instead of listing boring bullet points).

ViewedIt

This new tool is a video, screencast and voice recording. Not only can you create and send videos, you can even track them. ViewedIt is a Chrome Extension and sends you weekly notifications about video views. On top of that, it creates thumbnails so you can ensure your audience is clicking the play button to learn more. In my opinion, this tool is used best for screen recordings that you want to share with your learners ahead of a training session to help increase engagement and interest.

Licecap

If you feel that a video is too long for the message you want to convey to your learners or you want to bring some pep in your FAQs, try using GIFs in your learning. Licecap is a very basic tool that allows you to do to exactly that. Once the program is open, record the section of your screen you want to create a GIF from. Try to keep the GIF frame to the area of interest and refrain from too much scrolling. You will achieve best outcomes if your GIF is 7-10 seconds long. So next time you want to show learners how to reset a password or log into a system, create a GIF and share it in an email.

Marketers use an array of tools that make their lives easier and that delight their customers. We should really learn from Marketing and take a peek into their toolboxes on a regular basis. Which tools do you like to use to delight your learners? Share your thoughts below.

The phrase “marketing mix” refers to the tools and tactics a company uses to reach its marketing objectives. In L&D, we usually don’t think about all the tools and tactics we have available to pursue our objectives, learning experiences as products, or how to promote and place them within our organization. There is a lot to be learned from marketing.

What Is a Marketing Mix?

In a nutshell, the marketing mix positions the right product, at the right place and price, at the right time. It is most commonly known as the four Ps: product, price, place and promotion.

Through research, marketers ensure that they have the right product in place. Furthermore, they have to keep an eye on declining sales and the possibility to reinvent the product to stimulate more demand. The main question that they need to answer is, “What can I do to offer a better product?” Marketers often look at what customers want from a product, how and where they will use it, and even what the name of the product should be.

Price determines a company’s profit and has a big impact on the marketing strategy by affecting sales and demand of the product. Place dictates how customers access the product. Marketers need to understand their target markets well in order to develop the right distribution strategy. Questions they ask might include where potential customers look for the product and how different distribution channels are accessed.

Lastly, promotion helps marketers boost brand recognition and sales. Marketers often ask themselves about the best time to promote a product and if social media can help promote the product, and they might look at the promotion strategies of competitors. In the services industry, we can often find a modified version of the 4Ps: the 7Ps. This model adds people, process and physical evidence to the mix.

Create an L&D Mix to Engage Learners

In L&D, we can leverage some of this thinking to deliver more effective training. People are the target audience for whom we build our product. L&D professionals already carefully analyze their audience to ensure a learning solution meets their needs.

The product is a particular learning solution, such as compliance training. It is not enough to look at the content itself; L&D professionals should consider how to make this solution better in order to achieve higher completion rates. A simple “click-the-next-button” module is most likely not enough. Instead, think about how you can use a story to draw the learner’s attention to the course and keep them engaged throughout it. Come up with a more catchy title for the course, instead of just calling it “Sexual Harassment Course.” Continuously watch analytics and data to ensure the product meets your objectives. If not, you might have to reinvent the learning solution.

Price might not seem like a component of the L&D mix, but costs need to be considered as training solutions are developed. As L&D professionals come up with exciting ways of delivering training, often, the price tag goes up. It will be your task to sell the higher price tag to your stakeholders and, at the same time, show the value the learning solution brings to the table.

More often than not, training solutions are still delivered through LMSs, which means the place in the L&D mix is often predetermined. However, L&D professionals should consider other access points, such as intranet sites and YouTube. Think about how learners are accessing the course (i.e., mobile versus desktop). Use LMS data and Google Analytics to better understand how and when learners access content. This analysis will help place the product in the right spot.

Promotion strategies are rarely considered when creating new learning solutions. The success of a course is often measured through completion rates, among other metrics. Adding the course to an LMS and sending an email to all employees isn’t enough. L&D professionals should think about ways to promote the product, create excitement and engage learners from the get-go. Think posters, teaser videos, informal lunch meetings or flyers on employees’ desks. Be creative, and see your completion rates go up. To further investigate, ensure you are using additional data points wherever possible, and take evaluations and test results into account.

Process is the overall project planning, from the first ideation to design and all the way through to the end product. It should include all stakeholders. Project management tools can help L&D professionals stay organized.

Free Tools to Help Create An L&D Mix

It might sound daunting to look at L&D through a marketing lens, but there are many helpful free tools out there to get you started. First, to work collaboratively with the rest of your team, find a project management tool that allows you to capture all elements of your L&D mix in one place.

There are also free resource that offer hundreds of designs for your promotion strategy. On these websites, you have access to basic backgrounds, layouts, illustrations, shapes, icons and charts. Once you created a design, you can download it as a JPG, PNG or PDF. Also look for a simple-to-use video tool. These tools are a great way to create online videos and animations that you can share on your social media channels. Some offer predefined slide layouts to choose from and the ability to customize text and color and even add music.

If you feel that a video is too long for the message you want to convey to your learners, or you want to bring some pep to your promotion strategy, try using GIFs. Online programs offer the ability to record a section of your screen from which to create a GIF. Try to keep the GIF frame to the area of interest, and refrain from too much scrolling. You will achieve the best outcomes if your GIF is seven to 10 seconds long.

Marketing and L&D have more in common than we might think, and L&D professionals should not shy away from taking a peek into the marketer’s toolbox to create learning experiences that stick.