7 Marketing Strategies for Learner Engagement

For many employees, the pandemic means working from home, adjusting to a changed business climate, or even pausing projects. The upside is your teams can take advantage of this time to learn new skills. But how can you motivate them to learn in this environment? With millennials now comprising the largest segment of the workforce, organizations need to accommodate their unique work styles and create training programs that are engaging and learner-driven.

Learning design can take inspiration from marketing strategies that directly involve the target audience and hold their interest. Such proven strategies can be integrated into customized solutions to promote and excite staff about continuous learning. Consider the following seven tips for engaging learners during this period of uncertainty.

Pave the learning journey with empathy

Empathy mapping, a much-used marketing strategy, is an innovative approach when creating learning experiences. It considers learner behavior and helps center the experience around the learners’ needs. The map provides useful data on four major areas in which to evaluate a person’s experience, which can be also be useful for developing personas during learning design.

Create anticipation and a desire to learn

Whether it’s a movie release, a fashion designer’s new line, or the latest smartphone, building anticipation around your product is essential. Similarly, it helps to generate enthusiasm for new training programs by catching learners’ attention and making them want to engage. Drip-fed campaigns, including promotions on social media and email, can be used to spark interest with users. 

Personalize the experience

People want choices. They want to choose what they watch, what they wear, what they do. In the same way, learners today need to have a sense of control over what they learn. It’s important to let them learn what they want, when they want, and where they want. Training programs need to be tailored to the learners’ needs and taken at their own pace and in their own space.

Tell a story

Most of our favourite brands have established an emotional connection with us. These brands tell a relatable story. Employing storytelling in training programs likewise creates a perceptible emotional connection with learners. Using a story arc to present training content also helps learners retain information effectively. You can take it even further by letting learners become part of the story using avatars in scenario-based learning.

Use influencers to popularize training

Gamification is an effective learning strategy. Use a reward system to keep learners motivated. Let them earn titles that range from Novice to Influencer as they move up levels and complete their courses. Gamification can be combined with social learning too. In a social learning set-up, influencers can act as mentors. Influencers within an organization can endorse training courses and focus on the What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) aspect to highlight the benefits of the trainings.

Use social media

To engage learners, it’s useful to make some part of the training available on social media platforms in addition to your Learning Management System (LMS). Organizations often create a social media training page for their employees. Many social media platforms even provide reporting and analytics, which can help an organization determine the success of their initiatives.

Reward learners with freebies

Freebies are a definite crowd pleaser. People are more inclined to buy products that have an associated giveaway. Include freebies like games and activities, best practice documents, and quick reference guides in your training programs to add value and draw in learners.

As the world comes to terms with this pandemic and employees continue to work from home, organizations will need to continuously encourage and train their staff remotely with effective, and engaging content. Seek out highly customized and personalized learning journeys for your workforce to meet your ongoing development and performance needs.

To find out more about employee engagement and how KnowledgeWorks Global Learning can provide you with immersive solutions to enhance performance and ROI, please contact: info@kwglobal.com.