3 Lessons We Can Learn from Content Marketers
Photo by Art Lasovsky on Unsplash
Let’s say you’re a program owner. You’ve just finished developing a new course for your audience. The launch email is ready to go. You just need to press send but you’re wondering, is this enough for a successful launch?
For the most part, our training and experience is in the design and management of learning — but there’s also the marketing role that tends to be bundled in with our responsibilities. There’s so much opportunity for us to adopt a marketer mentality and use marketing techniques to influence our work and deliver better outcomes for our learners and our organization.
Marketers are masters of creating a conversation about their products and drawing us in to learn more. And content marketing specifically is very relevant to our work as learning professionals.
What is content marketing? We like this definition from Copyblogger:
A content marketer is responsible for the planning, creating, and sharing of valuable content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. The type of content the content marketer shares depends upon what he sells. In other words, he educates people so that they know, like, and trust him enough to do business with him.
Content marketers are essentially educators who are constantly thinking of ways to bring in customers. Let’s explore three things we can learn from them and ways we can apply their best practices to our work.
Prioritize value and helpfulness
Content marketers know their messages have to stand out amidst all the distraction and noise. There is so much competing for people’s attention at every moment. And we know that at work it’s not any better — our learners are drowning in emails and messages. They already have so much on their plates that it’s difficult to make room for learning experiences, even ones they know they want and need.
So how do content marketers cut through the noise? They know that it’s not just about an attention-grabbing headline. It’s about delivering true value and helping their customers improve their lives. A marketing strategy works so much better when the product in question is effective and delivers what it promises. Then you can focus on clearly communicating all of the ways the product will improve someone’s life.
Since we have the advantage of controlling the product quality also, we really need to be honest with ourselves about whether what we’re delivering is worth our learners’ time. If we’re pretty sure we’ve designed a valuable learning experience, and we’ve included learners throughout our design process, we just need to close the loop. Take that extra step to have a conversations after they take the training. Did the training improve their lives? In what ways? This information is critical in continuously improving the learner experience. It also helps us communicate the value our learners can expect from the training. We don’t have to make assumptions — it’s so much more powerful to share actual stories.
2. Do the unexpected
Some content marketers find success in traditional channels, but more and more we’re seeing them break out and reach us in new ways. Think about some of your favorite brands and the ways they get your attention on Instagram or YouTube. Sometimes the campaigns they run may seem tangential to the actual product — and yet, they’re getting you to engage with their brand and building a relationship with you.
This principle can apply to us in different ways. We could deliver the training in the expected format. Or, we could shake things up and consider a new modality. We can design something more visual and artistic. We can do something as simple as breaking from the established look and feel of a curriculum. Who says the course needs to look a certain way!
And when it comes to communicating the availability of the new learning experience, consider something besides just sending an email. What other channels can you take advantage of? Consider where your learners are spending their time and how you can develop new ways to communicate.
3. Say it again but in a new way
Content marketers have the same goal we do: to change customer behavior. And they know it doesn’t always work the first time. Maybe their analysis was incomplete, or they didn’t engage a variety of customers in their process. Or, maybe consumer expectations have changed. What do they do? They regroup and develop a new strategy. They change up their tone. They take advantage of the new season and adjust their messaging accordingly.
So often we wait for the business to initiate a course update. Procedures are changing, so we take that opportunity to completely refresh a curriculum. We audit all of the content, we rethink the design, and we develop everything from scratch and re-launch. But if we can get smarter about the way we design and deliver, if we prioritize flexibility and ease of updating, we don’t have to wait until there’s a sudden change in content. We can be getting constant feedback from our learners and tweaking our approach and optimizing courses to produce the desired outcomes.
This is one of our favorite things to help our clients with — developing a strong marketing strategy and creating flexible ways of working so they have the freedom to be continuously improving. It’s so rewarding to see the change in their approach and the difference it makes to their learners and their organization. Contact us to learn more!