Marketing, marketing, MARKETING! That’s what we as modern L&D Pros hear daily.
It’s been an industry topic for nearly a decade.
I love marketing. I talk about it a lot. Marketing frameworks have helped me accelerate my L&D career. The thing is marketing is not the cure to all our problems in the vast world of learning.
You don’t need to be a marketer.
Yet, learning a few frameworks from our friends here can help you in the world of L&D. We live in an attention economy. If a piece of content doesn’t pass the instant gratification test, we throw it into a black hole.
So, building awareness of all those learning products into which we pour our soul is a benefit, really.
You don’t want to spend time building an amazing learning experience just for it to get no engagement, right? If you build it, no one will come.
Unless you know how to build awareness.
Let’s focus on how you can build awareness to drive the value of your products.
Marketing Is HUGE
The problem with a lot of the “L&D needs to do marketing” advice I see online can be broken down into 2 areas:
Saying “L&D needs to do marketing” is a captain obvious statement. We all know this. How about providing some direction?
It’s not specific enough. The world of marketing is huge. So, for the modern L&D pro, what are the most useful areas for you?
Some areas of marketing include:
Outbound marketing
Inbound marketing
Email marketing
Brand marketing
Search Engine Optimisation
Stealth marketing (Ok, I might have made that one up)
You get the picture, right?
Not everything under the umbrella of marketing is right for you.
I want to be specific and break down one type of marketing that I believe works for our industry.
Content Marketing.
Content Marketing Explained
Our friends at Hubspot (an all-knowing and cool marketing company) summarise content marketing as:
“Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing content via channels such as social media, blogs, websites, podcasts, apps, press releases, print publications, and more.
The goal is to reach your target audience and increase brand awareness, sales, engagement, and loyalty.”
Now, some of you might be thinking “But. I’m a learning designer. I don’t need to know how to raise awareness of my work”. What are you…crazy? You do!
You might not realise it, but we’re marketing all the time.
We market our skills to potential employers.
We market our careers when building a case for promotion.
We market our compatibility when convincing our crush to go on a date.
Each of these is a piece of marketing.
L&D is no longer about design alone. You need to know how to position a product.
No matter if that product is you or what you’ve created.
Now, content marketing is best placed for L&D because it focuses on maximising awareness of your current assets to deliver value to users.
The important word here is value.
You can use all the marketing tactics you want. But if your experience or product sucks. It will still suck, no matter how many keywords or fancy visuals you used to promote it.
In summary, content marketing does what it says on the tin.
Market your content. Simple.
Content Marketing: How to use it in L&D
Ok, let’s get into the good stuff!
At its core, content marketing focuses on providing people with information that educates, inspires, informs and empowers.
Not much to ask for, right?
We can use this in both digital and physical experiences. Like content from your local learning platform or hyping up your next live workshop.
Content marketing can be both educational and entertaining. The best content marketing is a mix of both.
Types Of Content Marketing
We have a lot at our disposal with CM.
This commonly includes:
Blog posts
Articles
Toolkits
Infographics (are these still a thing?)
Video
Audio
Plenty for you to sink your teeth into.
Don’t be limited by picking one or two. Try them all out and find what works for your context.
Content Marketing Benefits
So many, my friends.
Here are some of my favourites:
Build L&D brand awareness
Surface value-add content that would otherwise be lost
Build trust within your company
Convert more people to accessing useful stuff
Maximise ROI on your learning content and experiences
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I’m sure you’ll discover more in your own journey.
Getting started with content marketing
Right, you’ve had your crash course in content marketing.
Now it’s time to put what you’ve learnt into practice. Lucky for me (and you), I’ve compiled a bunch of resources on bringing CM into the L&D world already.
Like you, I recognise that a lot of the world is run on how well you can sell a product to end users.
This is no different in the L&D world.
Your work doesn’t end with designing a solution. You have to convince people to use it. So, we must learn how to position our fabulous learning products and experiences to succeed.
What’s the number #1 thing you need to do when launching your L&D product?
You need to sell the outcome, not the product.
Not doing this can quickly condemn your product to the graveyard.
I’ve seen several L&D products fail not because they sucked, but because users weren’t aware of the outcome and how it will transform them for the better.
It’s useful to find your best position with your end users. It’s helpful to consider:
Why is this thing useful for them?
How will it improve their life?
These are the questions that we have to answer as L&D pros.
“It is the concept which defines how your product is best in the world at providing some sort of value to a special set or segment of customers who care about that specific value you provide them with.”
Here’s how I learnt from positioning mistakes earlier in my career 👇
1/Sell less, Solve Problems
No one cares about the product you’ve built.
They care about how it will solve their problem and improve their life. It’s wise to get clear on the answers to these early in your design phase.
They’ll pay dividends when you reach the time to market.
I’ve fallen into this black hole earlier in my career. Build stuff and expect people to organically be excited about it because it helps them, right?
❌ Wrong.
We’re driven by a bounty of emotions.
In the workplace, both social standing and money move mountains in people’s minds.
→ Will x product make them smarter? Tell them.
→ Could an outcome be making more money? They should know.
Key to note: Don’t lie or clickbait. That’s just dumb.
Whatever promise you make must be delivered. Be smart with your words and intent.
I hit brick walls because I was trying to sell the L&D solution, not the problems it solved. We too often see this in a lot of the LMS and LXP market. You’ll find a list of features, usually AI-powered these days, yet very little on the impact they’ll deliver.
There’s much to learn about what not to do here.
Consider this next time you’re seeking buy-in from stakeholders and end users.
And always remember: What problem are you solving?
2/ Less Robot, More Human
This can be slightly more problematic in the age of AI and what feels like an ever-increasing number of formulaic writing styles.
The smart move is to break free from these structures.
Or…risk being lost in the crowd.
If we’re really honest with ourselves, most course and resource titles suck.
They’re often so vague that we leave the participant confused as to what’s really being offered to them.
When users don’t behave the way L&D teams expect them to with content and courses, they blame the individual. That’s easy to do, yet rarely the real reason.
Writing well, especially for attention, is a key component of our life and practice.
If you present a fabulous learning solution to your audience with boring and basic words, do you expect fireworks of excitement?
I think not!
Putting this into practice
In the visual example, we get real on how feedback is hard.
We must relate to our audience.
Talking like a robot and saying “Improve your feedback” is boringly flat. It doesn’t spark as an aspirational statement, right?
I find it helpful to meet people as a fellow learner because we all are.
Recognising that giving feedback is hard, and you find that too, helps set a co-partnering context. Not the stereotypical teacher → student paradigm, or the guru and their followers vibe.
3/ Talk Outcomes, Not Features
Share the benefits your audience will get by engaging with a product.
Don’t share a feature list of what it contains. Yes, that means those huge bullet lists that feature on too many course pages.
Tell the story of how it will transform them.
The visual above works because we promise to build the desired outcome. We’re positioning our product to the audience which will get the most value from it.
Just like April Dunford advises.
We’re sharing 3 tips on FB to use immediately.
You’ll learn how to share feedback like a pro (tactical promise)
You’ll understand how to improve and feel better about the process (outcome).
And, all in one sentence.
The BEST framework to nail your product positioning
What I’m about to share with you is a real-world superpower
I use this framework to clarify my thinking across so many creative tasks.
I keep this in my note-taking app. It comes from marketing guru Ann Handley’s book, Everybody Writes.
I always need to be laser-focused on:
Why am I building x thing?
Who is it for?
Why should they care about it?
We don’t need to fill up the world with more generic content/courses.
This framework will help you make sense of everything. You’ll want to keep a note of this somewhere.
Why am I creating this? What’s my objective?
What is my key take on the subject or issue? What’s my thesis? My point of view?
And, finally, the critical So what/Because exercise: Why does it matter to the people you are trying to reach?
Don’t over complicate this.
Write down what comes to mind and cut away the fat later. Your final act is to put all of this into one sentence.
As an example
Let’s say I’m working on an idea around generative AI upskilling for an L&D team.
My answers would look like:
To help L&D pros figure out how to intelligently apply gen AI tools in their work vs using 1000’s of tools for no reason.
My key take is to assess tasks we do to see where/if gen AI tools can enhance what we do.
It matters because you need the right tool for the job and to understand the latest innovations for work. Gen AI isn’t the answer to everything. But you shouldn’t ignore it if it can help.
In one sentence: Help L&D pros make the right choices with AI tools with a solid assessment framework.
If I were building an L&D solution, that sentence would be my mission. This clarity enables me to design, position and promote effectively.
Before you go… 👋
If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.
You can join me every Tuesday morning for more tools, templates and insights for the modern L&D pro in my weekly newsletter.
The promise of rapid success has become almost unavoidable in our dopamine-addicted world.
We’re bombarded with stories of overnight success. Whether it’s people landing dream jobs, businesses scaling in no time, or AI transforming industries quickly.
It makes you feel like you’re behind and doing something wrong.
Even I feel this way at times. I stare at things I see on social media and think “How da f**k are they doing that?” Turns out, most of the time, they aren’t.
While these posts tap into our desire for instant results, they overlook one fundamental truth: real progress doesn’t happen overnight – it takes time (a lot more than you think in some cases).
This applies to your career, building a business, or trying to get the hang of AI.
It’s not lost on me this sounds very Warren Buffet-like, if so, it’s intended. I trust no one else with my financial advice.
Plus, Buffet is sort of an example of slow growth (more on that later).
A lot of content promotes urgency, speed and so much hyperbole about an impending apocalypse if you don’t achieve something in the next x days, you’re left on a heap of mental failure.
(I’m getting nervous just reading that back).
I get it. The “fast wins” get all the attention.
But most real success stories take years of hard work, learning, and figuring things out (or crashing into things).
I think embracing slow growth—whether in your job, your company, or even learning AI—can lead to rewards that last for years, not just months.
Let’s unpack that.
What is Slow Growth?
When I first heard the term Slow Growth, I thought it was crazy.
It crossed my path from a now defunct learning platform aptly called ‘Slow Growth Academy’. I instantly fell in love with the concept, especially with its connection to almost any touchpoint in life.
We both know In a world of instant gratification, people want results in 5 minutes, not 5 years.
That’s not how life works, sadly.
Things take time to build.
You plant seeds, nurture them and harvest the rewards in the future (yes, I am a proud houseplant fanatic).
We spend far too much time on hacks or secrets.
The easier option? Do the work, embrace slow growth and you’ll be better in the next 5 years than you’re now.
That’s the non-obvious ‘secret’.
The power of Slow Growth for careers
I see the results of slow growth everywhere.
If you research some of the most successful businesses and people in traditional careers, you’ll find their growth was slow.
Here’s 3 examples of those who played the slow game:
Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, has spent her entire career at the company, starting as an engineer and working her way up to CEO over 43 years.
Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, has worked at the company for over 25 years, starting as a member of the technical staff and working his way up to CEO.
Ginni Rometty, the former CEO of IBM, worked at the company for over 30 years, starting as a systems engineer and eventually becoming CEO.
These people are products of slow growth.
They did the hard miles, and don’t preach any secret hacks to achieve this.
Patience, I find, is the most underrated thing with growth. We’re playing an infinite game, not a finite one.
I look at slow growth like a board game. There are times when you’re on a roll and accelerate, and others when you’ve hit a blocker and get pushed back 3 places (I’m looking at you Monopoly).
We’ll all get there eventually.
We just have to play our game.
Embracing Slow Growth in business
I’m not against the ‘move fast and break things’ movement at the micro level. As long as we learn from those experiences.
But applying that to the macro level without an overarching strategy is dangerous.
An example of slow growth in action is Apple.
They’re mainstream now, yet were once the outliers of their industry. It’s hard to imagine, but Apple was not the industry’s de-faction leader. Only a hardcore set of consumers purchased their products.
Apple blew up once the iPhone landed.
However, a lot of people only think about them from that time in 2007. In reality, they’ve been around since the 70s – scaling, falling and scaling again.
They grew slowly and now own the market.
Apple’s growth has been a 40-year-plus journey. It’s 30 years if we were to stop at the launch of the first iPhone. Think about it, they’ve been working 3 decades to have their best decade ever!
We just assume it’s always been that way.
Why do we think that we need to get there any quicker?
No one just gets the answers one day or figures it all out. It comes in time and with experience.
So, don’t panic if you don’t know everything, don’t have the skills or your business is not in the exact place you want it to be right now.
Come talk to me in 40 years.
Why Slow Growth is perfect for building AI skills
At the time of writing this (2024), it’s hard not to talk about AI.
There’s a very important lesson here with the current pace of AI adoption.
AI, particularly generative AI, shows a transformational shift in how we work, learn, and interact with the world. Yet, as with any major technological shift, successful ROI doesn’t happen overnight.
The journey from curious “hobbyist” to confident “adopter” is a gradual one, and I cannot overstate how much patience you need.
Social media doom-scrolling makes it easy to feel pressured to learn everything about AI instantly.
Everyone and their dog is an AI expert today, and apparently ‘they’ can make you ‘master AI in 7 days’. Be wary of these people, they will stunt your chance of success long-term.
Building a deep understanding of such a transformative technology requires time and effort.
And to be quite frank, no one has mastered it yet. They probably never will as it’s always evolving.
You know my views on this already.
Meaningful AI adoption is about more than just knowing how the tools work. It’s about cultivating a mindset and building the behaviours that allow us to integrate AI meaningfully and responsibly into what we do.
→ And that takes time.
The 3 Stages of AI Literacy: Hobbyists, Experimenters, and Adopters
There are so many bloody maturity models out there right now.
While mine is not as fancy as a consulting firm, I believe it’s simple to use.
My work these last few years has shown most people are navigating through three broad stages of AI skills maturity: hobbyists, experimenters, and adopters.
Let’s unpack these:
Hobbyists are those who dabble in AI, experimenting with tools like ChatGPT in their personal time but haven’t yet applied it systematically in their work.
They’re curious, but they haven’t reached a level of skill where AI significantly impacts their productivity.
Mostly they create cat pictures and get AI to write crap social media posts stuffed full of emojis.
Experimenters have begun incorporating AI into their daily tasks, testing out its capabilities, and exploring use cases in real-world contexts. They’re still in the learning phase, figuring out what works, what doesn’t, and how AI fits into their broader workflow.
I like this level the most. To experiment, fail and learn is a beautiful thing. The majority of people who play here will do very well.
Adopters have fully embraced AI, using it effectively and strategically in their context to enhance work.
They’ve developed a level of comfort and expertise that allows them to apply AI in ways that generate meaningful, long-term value.
Moving from one stage to the next is a slow process. Often frustratingly slow in a world where we expect immediate results.
That’s totally fine. It’s a necessary progression.
Without taking the time to fully understand the nuances of AI and how it can be harnessed, you risk missing out on the true potential of the technology.
Always get clear on the ‘what, why and how’. Classic advice for a reason.
The value of going slower
This will sound counterintuitive, and yes CEO of x company, I know you want the ‘AI Effect’ today.
But with AI literacy, going slower, or shall we say being more intentional, can reap rewards for years – perhaps even decades.
I’ve seen this in some of my work with clients.
There’s often crazy expectations from senior executives for workers to become ‘AI Experts’. They don’t even know what that means.
If we’re talking about tools like ChatGPT, becoming an expert on that with its almost daily updates is like chasing after your 5-year-old when they see an ice cream truck fly by.
Solid fundamentals will help, no doubt.
But fundamentals don’t = fully capable expert.
AI is not static.
Learning the fundamentals and taking time to put them into practice will allow workers to adapt to future changes more easily.
By encouraging a more deliberate approach, companies can craft the mindsets, new behaviours, and technical, and human skills to navigate AI transformations at large.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here.
(Note: Being more deliberate with crafting AI skills does not mean building bloated 3-month + learning experiences. No one wants or needs this!).
80% of AI projects fail because of this
Another report I’m reading, in what I must say, is an era for ungodly amounts of reporting on one topic, focuses on the root causes of failure for AI projects.
If I’m being fair, the findings of these failures apply to L&D projects too (more on that in the next premium monthly edition).
Anyway, one of the biggest factors for failure was being given the time for a project to succeed. You see executives are drinking the kool-aid. They think that what needs at least a year to succeed can be done in a week.
The writing is on the wall for most projects before they start.
You have no doubt suffered this exact problem with countless L&D projects.
Think of all the projects that have died because:
Expectations were unchecked
A problem was not defined to solve
The resources you need to succeed weren’t provided
You were given 1 week when you need 1 year
One word to define this – misalignment.
AI literacy is about building a long-term capability, not a short-term fix.
For a workforce that is not just technically competent, but equipped with the critical thinking, creativity, and adaptability needed to succeed in an AI-driven future.
You might just need to grow slowly to go far.
The power of compounding (anything)
My final point before we leave.
Smart people (like you) focus on growth in decades not days.
Society points you to look at the end product, not the long journey that paved the way for the current success.
Compounding small changes over time leads to HUGE results.
This is true for many aspects of life.
Most certainly for our skills, business, and careers. I tell people to invest in their career currency as much as they can in the early phase of their careers.
Your career currency is made up of your knowledge and credibility in a subject. And guess what that needs?
Yes, you know it – time.
This applies to so many domains, and my man Warren Buffet knew that when it came to finances too. It’s all a slow growth game. None of us can cheat time.
I wish they taught this in school because compounding really is a ‘cheat code’ for life.
I’m pretty sure James Clear would like slow growth
Before you go… 👋
If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.
You can join me every Tuesday morning for more tools, templates and insights for the modern L&D pro in my weekly newsletter.
We all use a number of platforms to share our stories with the world, some do this as a form of therapy and others in the hope to inspire. The reality is that not everyone will read our work or even like it, but that’s OK because maybe they aren’t the audience you want.
