Leveraging Marketing Strategies to Elevate Learning and Development Content

In today’s fast-paced world, Learning and Development (L&D) professionals are constantly searching for innovative ways to make training more engaging, relevant, and impactful. One powerful approach that often gets overlooked is the incorporation of marketing strategies into the development of learning content.  

dominKnow was recently joined by Bianca Baumann, VP of Learning Solutions & Innovation at Ardent, to discuss marketing concepts that will help improve learning design. Bianca is the co-author of the soon –to-be-released book Think Like a Marketer, Train Like and L&D Pro. We were thrilled she could join us on a recent episode of Instructional Designers In Offices Drinking Coffee (IDIODC) for a discussion on leveraging marketing strategies in learning program design where she offered valuable insights that can be applied across a wide range of industries. She emphasized three core themes: Personas, Content Strategy, and Learner Journeys.

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1. Creating Learner Personas

Just like marketing campaigns are tailored to specific target audiences, creating learner personas in L&D is essential for understanding the needs, behaviors, and motivations of learners. Bianca highlights that understanding the "think and feel" aspect of learners is key—it's not enough to know what they need to do; we need to know how they feel about the process and how we can influence their mindset to encourage engagement.

By developing learner personas, L&D professionals can customize content to match the learners’ preferences, ensuring that the content resonates emotionally and intellectually. This goes beyond the basics of demographics and roles—consider the motivations, challenges, and goals that learners experience in their day-to-day work. This deeper understanding enables L&D teams to design content that truly speaks to the learner, increasing engagement and overall effectiveness.

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Applying this Concept to your Content

When a body of content applies to multiple personas but adjusts to provide each persona with a unique experience, it follows that the impact and uptake of the content will be maximized. Though this concept of uniquely targeting personas makes clear instructional sense, providing it efficiently is daunting. The challenge becomes, how can content teams do this at scale. One of the most effective approaches to achieving this is single source design.

With a single source approach, the designer approaches the content as a single course where unique adjustments to the base content are “tagged” for the different personas they are targeting. The result is a unique experience for the different learner personas delivered through a single course and a dramatically decreased creation, maintenance and distribution effort. Fortunately for today’s instructional designers these types of capabilities can now be found in some of the common authoring solutions.

In dominKnow | ONE, tagging for publish/audience targets and reusing content across multiple courses are native features that will help your team to deliver on this promise.  

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2. Strategizing Content for Impact

Content strategy is often a primary focus in marketing, and it is just as crucial in learning and development. When L&D teams create content, they need to ask themselves: How will this content resonate with learners? To achieve maximum impact, L&D content should go beyond simply delivering information—it should encourage curiosity, address real-world challenges, and engage the learner emotionally.

Bianca emphasizes that even when certain content needs to adhere to strict compliance requirements, there are ways to make the content more engaging. For example, while legal reviews may limit the flexibility in what’s said, the messaging and tone of delivery can still be adjusted to be more personable and relatable. This is akin to how marketing teams write content that balances the necessary legal language with an engaging, approachable tone.

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Applying this Concept to your Content

Fortunately, there are many approaches an instructional designer can take when seeking to increase your content’s ability to resonate with your audience. One option is using the aforementioned personalization of content to help different groups better understand how the content impacts them in their unique role. Beyond this it often comes down to creating elements and overall design that speaks to the learner’s experience.

Take for example this Race the Clock time management course, where some potentially dry information is instead presented in a form that places the learner in a day-in-the-life perspective. Through this content they experience the impact of various time management decisions throughout their day. With many training experiences, the aspects of a job are summed up in essential various tasks lists, with knowledge checks. Veering away from this approach and putting this same content through an on-the-job experience can make all the difference.

In another example, Be a Headset Hero, learners experience the time pressures, different types of customer reactions and more, all in context of their job. Though these examples provide a complete experience, even targeting a single aspect of your training to evoke an engaging emotional response can make all the difference.  

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3. Mapping Learner Journeys

The concept of a learner journey closely mirrors customer journeys in marketing. Bianca discusses how critical it is to map out the entire learning process, from the initial point of engagement to the final outcome, understanding the emotional state and mindset of learners at each step. By considering how learners feel at each stage—whether they’re just starting out, struggling with certain concepts, or feeling confident—L&D teams can tailor content delivery and interventions to provide the necessary support.

Just as a marketing team ensures that customers are nurtured throughout their journey, L&D professionals can design learning paths that guide learners effectively toward their goals. Mapping out these journeys helps in identifying where learners may encounter obstacles, where they might need motivation, and where they’re most likely to engage with content. By personalizing this journey, learning becomes not only a task but an experience, increasing learner satisfaction and retention.

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Applying this Concept to your Content

With many of today’s Learning Management Solutions (LMSs) you can create prescriptive learning journeys (plans). We are even starting to see solutions that utilize available data about the learner to auto recommend or even assign learning based on their current career path and skills. Incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into these approaches has the potential for an even greater ability to adjust these learner journeys. Of course, using what is available in your LMS isn’t the only path.

Discover Financial wanted to provide this unique journey experience for their learners, but while the LMS had some of the functionality they desired, the visual experience didn’t come close. Instead, they turned to their flexible authoring solution to create these unique learner journeys which linked to the various individual learning experiences that mirrored the learner’s role. They then took this approach a step further by incorporating single source design into many of their learning experiences. It’s no wonder that they’ve had such a positive impact with these learning journeys.

Read more about their success in How Discover Bullet-proofed their Regulatory Practices with dominKnow | ONE.

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Bringing It All Together

The synergy between these three elements—learner personas, content strategy, and learner journeys—creates a comprehensive, personalized learning experience. As Bianca mentioned, it’s about evolving beyond the traditional “checklist” style of content creation to one that’s built on emotional engagement and relevant messaging. When L&D professionals take a marketing-inspired approach, they can shift the perception of learning from a mundane task to an exciting, impactful journey that both motivates and empowers learners.

The key takeaway here? By embracing marketing techniques such as developing personas, strategically designing content, and mapping out learner journeys, L&D professionals can create a dynamic and engaging learning environment that resonates with today’s diverse workforce. After all, learning should never be a one-size-fits-all approach—it should be an experience tailored to your unique audience groups.

We invite you to revisit the recording of this IDIODIC episode.

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Learn More

At the foundation of any great learning organization are systems and tools and teams that empower your learning curriculum. dominKnow | ONE provides an all-in-one LCMS and authoring solution that enables your team to work together better and fully embrace their skills and creativity, thus enabling your entire team to create highly engaging and effective learning experiences for your organization. Interested in learning how dominKnow | ONE can help your organization maximize your learning experience? Contact us now.