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Marketing and L&D have more in common than many people realise. Both departments are customer centric, deliver organisational growth and strive to provide an engaging experience. The only real difference is L&D teams call their customers ‘learners’. I’ve worked in the L&D space for longer than I'd like to admit. And in that time I’ve learnt as much from my colleagues in L&D as I have from marketing mentors. But those L&D professionals that taught me something all have one thing in common: They all think like marketers.
WHAT IS A MARKETING MINDSET?
Having a marketing mindset is primarily about combining creativity with audience centricity. It’s about looking at the world through the eyes of your customer to find out what they want. And once you’ve done that, it’s presenting your product in such a way that makes them want it. So for L&D that means looking at the world through the eyes of your audience, and work out exactly what it is that makes them get out of bed in the morning. And then presenting your learning offering in such a way that they want to get involved.
WHY DOES L&D NEED TO THINK LIKE MARKETERS?
Well, it comes down to our biggest challenge in learning: engagement. Adopting a creative, audience-centric approach to learning will transform learner engagement. No more putting square pegs in round holes. With a marketing mindset L&D will begin to:
Tailor learning solutions and experiences to learners’ needs and motivations.
Market their learning offering in such a way that taps into their audience’s intrinsic desires.
Leverage data and analytics to prove their impact and value.
And so, so much more. But what does this look like in reality?
THE 10 C’S OF AN L&D MARKETING MINDSET
Here at MAAS we’re huge fans of Econsultancy’s 10 C’s Of A Modern Marketing Mindset. And that’s because it is just as applicable to L&D as it is to marketing professionals.
Econsultancy groups the 10 C’s model into three sections: self, team and company. So let’s explore each group, and how they apply in an L&D context:
PERSONAL SKILLS
Under the ‘self’ category, we have three C’s: customer centric, commercially focused and capable. What do these three C’s mean for L&D?
CUSTOMER CENTRICITY IN L&D
We get it, you have managers, leaders and stakeholders all putting demands on your time. But this means that we aren’t prioritising the most important stakeholder: our target audience. You probably call these people your ‘learners’, but that is also part of the mindset shift needed. Instead of thinking of these people as learners, think of them as human beings. You should be their biggest champion, putting their needs first. This means always going the extra mile – and interrogating the ‘why’ of learning interventions, in order to better answer the ‘what’s in it for me?’ question.
WHY L&D NEEDS TO BE COMMERCIALLY FOCUSED
L&D are rarely commercially-focused. Why? Because we aren’t asked to be. And that’s another mindset that must change if you want real success. And although your whole team should indeed be commercially savvy, you can kick-start this approach in your team by focusing on it yourself. No matter your role in your L&D function, you should know:
The Business Goals
The Business Strategy
The part learning plays in achieving both of them
It’s only with this insight that we can truly evaluate ROI and demonstrate our impact to the business.
BEING A CAPABLE L&D PROFESSIONAL
To be able to balance customer centricity and commercial focus – you need to be a capable professional. You need to have the L&D knowledge and insights to make a sound, strategic decision about the offer you are presenting to your audience. And do you know what that means? It means L&D need to start focusing on their own development too. It’s a running joke in our industry that we’re terrible at our own development, isn’t it? Let’s stop joking about it, and start changing it.
TEAM SKILLS
Under the ‘team’ section of the 10 C’s framework we have Creativity, Committed, Confident and Curious. And these are some of the most important characteristics your L&D team needs to possess if they want to get marketing for learning right.
THE ROLE OF CREATIVITY IN L&D SUCCESS
L&D professionals are more than competent at creativity. We’re creative when designing learning. We think outside of the box when devising activities that hold attention during our training. We use tech in new, innovative ways to keep things fresh. But when it comes to promoting our content…? Well then the creativity drops off a cliff.
All too often L&D teams send one email to promote their learning content. And it typically goes along the lines of “Hi All, We have a new programme, and your boss wants you to take it, see you there on the 29th June, Best wishes, L&D team” 🥱
Do you really think that’s going to work?!
If you answered ‘yes’ to that question (even though it was meant to be rhetorical!) I want you to picture this:
There is a new series coming out on Netflix. So the team at Netflix wants to tell people about it, right? They power up their computers, open Outlook and click ‘compose’. They send a plain-text email to everybody: “Hi All, We have a new series coming out next month. You should watch it. Best wishes, Netflix Team”.
Would you click on it? Would you want to watch the nondescript series?
No. In fact, you’d probably think it’s a spam email.
Doesn’t it seem so ridiculous for Netflix to send an email like that? So why is it not ridiculous for your L&D team to? It’s time to bring the creativity and make our people excited about learning – and that requires a team effort!
WHY L&D PROFESSIONALS NEED TO BE COMMITTED AND CONFIDENT WHEN MARKETING THEIR LEARNING
To be impactful in L&D we must all be committed to the learning strategy and confident that we can deliver on it. If we’re doubting ourselves, hesitating and not leading with our best-foot-forward; we’re going to struggle to get our audience onboard and believe in our offering.
Bring your team together, identify your L&D brand promise and positioning statement and make sure you’re all working towards the same goal.
THE ROLE OF CURIOSITY IN AN L&D MARKETING MINDSET
The best marketers are some of the most annoying people in the room. I can say that, I’m a marketer. We’re always asking why. We always push back. We clarify if we’re unsure. We learn our products or services deeply, we know the ins and outs. And L&D needs to adopt this approach. For example, if a training request comes, we need to stop saying “yeah sure!” Instead we need to ask more questions. We’re the learning experts, we need to determine what is the right solution (and indeed, if it’s a training request at all!) This is the power of curiosity – so it’s time to adopt it!
COMPANY CHARACTERISTICS:
In the ‘company’ section, we have our final three C’s: challenging, collaborative and connected. So, what do they mean?
WHY L&D TEAMS NEED TO BE MORE CHALLENGING
Working in an organisation that always challenges themselves to do better is key to getting the most from L&D. The status quo holds us back. We must, as forward-thinking, trailblazing L&D professionals, challenge ourselves to do better every day. We need to challenge ourselves, our beliefs, our assumptions, and work to uncover new, innovative ways of working.
COLLABORATING IN L&D
Being collaborative in L&D isn’t just about working well with your learning colleagues. It’s about relationship building with all stakeholders. Think of any great marketer you know, they have friends in all business units, don’t they? It’s for a reason! And this key skill of great marketers is one that L&D needs to quickly adopt.
Picture this: We know there’s often a strong correlation between completion rates and manager sentiment. So how can L&D overcome this barrier? Well, by befriending team leaders, managers and senior employees. It may not be feasible to make a personal relationship with each of these stakeholders, but you can make them feel included in the L&D process. At the bare minimum, give them a heads up of new courses being released to their teams before the mass-announcement goes out. Or, if time and capacity permits, give them a chance to feedback and contribute to courses that they may consider themselves an SME on. Building networks across your business in this way is key to ensuring buy-in en masse.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PURPOSE & CONNECTION IN L&D
The last C, but by no means least, is connection. Unlike collaboration, this isn’t about connecting with others, or the business. It’s about the business purpose, learning purpose and personal purpose all linking together. Much like our audiences, we are human beings (I hope 😉) and we have intrinsic goals and desires. These must match up to the work we are doing – we must feel connected to the cause of both our function and our business, if we truly want to embrace the other 9 C’s.
In fact, none of the 10 C’s can work in isolation. All 10 work together to give you a rounded L&D marketing mindset. Each makes it more feasible than we can leverage and apply marketing into our functions to overcome the age-old engagement problem. It’s not enough to just be creative. Or to just be customer centric. You have to bring all 10 together for true marketing for learning success.
HOW DOES THINKING LIKE A MARKETER CHANGE L&D’S ROLE?
If you’ve already got a marketing mindset, the chances are you have itchy feet about the existing processes in your L&D function (unless you’ve already transformed it!) Because we typically see the L&D process looking a little like this:
The business need comes first, with the tech, design and delivery method all coming before our end-users needs. And that doesn’t sound very customer-centric to me! When you compare this to a marketers practice, you can see the stark difference:
A marketer’s first thought is always their audience, but this isn’t the case for L&D. Learning teams think about the learning too late in the game. And don’t get us started on how analytics and refinement are overlooked. That has to change. Start with your audience. Understand what they want. What motivates them? What’s troubling them? Heck, you could even create personas if you really fancy 😉
But this customer centricity, alongside the other 9 C's, is a clear reason why L&D must adopt a marketing mindset, if we really want to make a change.
A MARKETING MINDSET FOR CONTINUOUS L&D GROWTH
Thinking like a marketer isn’t just a one-off effort for an L&D team. It’s a shift that prioritises creativity, strategy, and audience centricity. It’s about building relationships, using data to inform decisions, and creating experiences that your audience don’t just tolerate but actively seek out. (Isn’t that the dream!?)
By adopting this mindset, L&D professionals can position themselves not just as training providers or a tick-box exercise, but as essential contributors to organisational growth. Now’s the time to think like a marketer and transform your L&D initiatives into a force that drives engagement, satisfaction, and lasting results. After all, if Netflix can do it, so can you. 😉
