The podcast discusses the limitations of creating marketing campaigns around specific learning programs. It explores the drawbacks of using job titles for targeting and emphasizes the importance of understanding the audience on an emotional level.
Focusing marketing efforts solely on job titles as a segmentation point is ineffective in reaching learners, as it fails to address their unique needs, desires, and motivators.
To ensure successful marketing in L&D, it is vital to deeply understand the audience cohort being targeted and prioritize their emotional drivers, needs, desires, and pain points.
Deep dives
Problem with events-focused marketing in L&D
Many organizations in L&D tend to focus their marketing efforts on events, such as program or platform launches. However, this approach is inconsistent and fails to yield significant results as it relies on ad hoc promotions rather than a comprehensive marketing strategy. By solely targeting specific programs, learning interventions are not effectively communicated to diverse audience cohorts. Relying on job titles as segmentation points overlooks the unique needs and motivators of individuals. To improve marketing in L&D, a shift towards comprehensive, audience-centric strategies is necessary.
Segmentation based on job titles is inadequate
Focusing marketing efforts solely on job titles as a segmentation point is ineffective in reaching learners. Job titles provide limited understanding of the individual's desires, pain points, and emotional drivers. By segmenting based on job titles, marketing fails to answer the crucial question of 'what's in it for me?' for each unique learner. To create impactful marketing campaigns, L&D professionals should focus on crafting messaging that addresses individual needs, desires, and motivators to drive action and engagement.
Emphasizing understanding the audience for effective marketing
To ensure successful marketing in L&D, it is vital to deeply understand the audience cohort being targeted. Rather than relying solely on demographic or geographical data, marketers should focus on identifying emotional drivers, needs, desires, and pain points within the audience. This understanding enables the creation of tailored messaging and storytelling that will resonate with and engage learners on a deeper level. By prioritizing audience understanding and connection, L&D professionals can drive the desired behavioral change and create a more impactful learning culture within organizations.
Don't fall into this trap! We see so many L&D functions only creating communications and marketing for learning campaigns around specific learning programmes or experiences. In this episode, Ashley explains precisely why this is a short-term view and why it's probably doing more harm than good in the long term.