We’ve all been there… sat around a table (or a Teams call), batting ideas back and forth about why our people aren't engaging with our learning offering. And nine times out of ten, the conclusion always seems to be the same:

It’s the technology’s fault, we need a new learning platform.

It’s the authoring tools fault, let’s procure a new one!

It’s Zoom’s fault, let’s find a new webinar platform.

But have you ever sat back and wondered if poor learner engagement is actually our fault?

As L&Ders we want to come at every problem with a solution, but more often than not, we’re also deflecting blame. It’s not our fault it’s not working, we’ve done our job. And of course we’re not disputing that, you have probably done a fantastic job. We bet your learning experiences are second to none. But does anyone know about them?

YOU CAN’T BLAME TECH FOR A LACK OF AWARENESS

Let’s look away from L&D for a second. Think about Tesla - the electric car company. Imagine if they never marketed their product, instead they opened a showroom in a random city. They had their cars on display, so they just sat back, drank a cuppa and waited for the customers to come flooding through the doors. Do you think they would have sold many cars? Of course not. Because marketing is essential to making your target audience aware of your offering (and if people aren’t aware, they can’t buy it!)

So how does that outrageous image of Tesla doing nothing to sell their cars differ from L&D and their platforms?

It doesn’t.

We invest in phenomenal platforms. We work with talented instructional designers, learning experience designers and facilitators. We build thoughtful, well-structured learning experiences — and then we quietly launch them and hope someone stumbles across them one day.

Hope is not a strategy. And it certainly isn't a return on investment.

GREAT LEARNING STILL NEEDS SELLING

Whenever this topic comes up, people assume we’re anti-tech or hate eLearning. We’re not. We don’t hate learning platforms. We don’t hate eLearning. Over the years, we’ve worked with some brilliant tools over the years, and we genuinely believe that strong learning technology is essential in today’s workplace.

So essential, because in today’s age, people expect to learn online. They expect flexibility. They expect to access learning when they want, on whatever device they’re using. For many employees, especially younger generations, a huge chunk of their education has already happened online. This isn’t a “nice to have” — it’s the baseline.

But here’s the key point: buying the platform is only half the job.

You can have the best tech in the world. The best content. The best facilitators. If nobody knows it’s there, nobody is going to engage with it.

That’s not a tech failure. That’s a marketing failure.

“WE DON’T HAVE BUDGET FOR MARKETING”

This is usually the next objection. “I’ve already spent all this money on the platform — now you want me to spend even more marketing it?”

And our answer is always the same: marketing doesn’t have to be expensive.

When people hear “marketing,” they think of billboards, glossy videos and massive campaigns. That’s not what this is about. Some of the most effective marketing you can do costs nothing but time and intent.

• Clearer emails.

• Better subject lines.

• Stronger messaging that focuses on why someone should care.

• Using emotive language instead of functional descriptions.

• Making better use of the channels you already have.

You don’t need more tools. Heck you don’t even need to go to a fancy agency (but if you do, you know where we are 👀!) You need to use what you have, smarter.

MARKETING SHOULD START AT THE BEGINNING

Another mistake we make in L&D is treating marketing as the final step. Build the learning first, then “tell people about it” at the end. That’s backwards, and it hardly ever works.

Marketing should be embedded throughout the entire learning experience — from the moment you start designing it. You should be thinking:

• How will this be positioned?

• Who is it for and what problem does it solve for them?

• Why should they give up their time?

Learning is a product. And your learners are your audience. If you don’t think about how you’re positioning that product in their minds, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

And this is why so many organisations end up stuck in an endless cycle of replacing platforms. That one didn’t work. Let’s buy another. And another. And another. All while never considering the positioning of the product.

L&D’S PROBLEM ISN’T TECH: IT’S MARKETING

Now, to be clear — marketing isn’t the answer to everything. (I know, shock horror!)

You can’t market your way out of terrible content. If your learning experience is genuinely poor, people won’t come back no matter how good your emails are. And if your platform has a dreadful user experience, great messaging won’t fix that either.

But until you’ve genuinely invested in marketing your learning, you can’t confidently say the tech is the problem. So, before you rip everything out and start again, ask yourself some questions:

• Have we actually told people this exists?

• Have we explained why it matters to them?

• Have we positioned it as something worth their time?

If the answer is no, then stop blaming the tech.

Because it’s not the technology’s fault. It’s ours.