THE REAL L&D CHALLENGE: AWARENESS

No matter which way you look, there is a different blog, article or LinkedIn post telling you about the L&D challenges we face. But the one that comes up time and time again? Is L&D’s engagement problem. And indeed, the data is telling us we have an engagement challenge. But here at MAAS, we think the real challenge is one step before engagement: it’s awareness.

WHY DOES AWARENESS MATTER?

It’s simple really, if people don’t know your learning offering exists, they can’t engage with it. No matter how cutting-edge your experience is, how fancy your tech is, or how beautiful your design is. If they don’t know, they can’t engage.

And this is the harsh reality of many organisations. We’ve sat in many discovery calls where we’ve seen learners gobsmacked at the sheer amount on offer to them. This isn’t a little oversight or misstep. It’s a dealbreaker for L&D. We live in an attention economy. You aren’t just competing with other learning offerings or workplace priorities. Instead you’re competing with Instagram, TikTok and a million other distractions. And this is what makes awareness the biggest L&D challenge of them all.

But the truth is, awareness isn’t the most difficult challenge to overcome, all we need to do is take some inspiration from our friends in the marketing department. Here are three great ways you can do just that:

TIP 1: UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE

Many L&D challenges come down to a lack of audience understanding. (The fact we call them learners highlights this… but that’s a conversation for another day, or the podcast!) To truly raise awareness of your offering, you have to know who your consumers are, and what they care about.

Deep audience understanding enables you to clearly articulate your value and answer the “what’s in it for me?” question.

WHAT IS THE ‘WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME’?

What’s in it for me? (WIIFM) is the single most important question for L&D teams. Not just for raising awareness, but for the entire learner's journey. It’s all about putting yourself in your learners shoes and thinking: what are they going to gain by taking this learning intervention? And no, the WIIFM will never be about the org’s skills gap, or the hours spent creating it, or the money invested. It’s about THEM, not you.

So do some market research and get to know your audience deeply, create some personas and then creating awareness will become much easier.

TIP 2: CONSISTENCY

Sorry folks, it’s time to ditch the ‘one and done’ announcements. It’s not good enough to just ping out an email once you’ve finished designing your learning programme. You need to be consistently and repeatedly engaging with your audience. Piquing their interest in the subject matter and learning as a whole.

Think about the latest iPhone launch. Even if you aren’t an Apple user, you probably knew about it. They didn’t just ping out an email to a few fans. They used billboards, PR, adverts, influencers and much more to repeatedly share the message: the new iphone is coming. And even though you probably don’t have the budget to commission a billboard advert for your new learning initiative, you can adopt marketing efforts to raise awareness for your offering.

TIP 3: THINK DIFFERENT

So, you’ve just launched a new programme. You need to tell people about it. Where’s the first place you go? Email right? We all do! But this alone isn’t enough. It’s time that L&D broke out of the email churning phase. There are so many different marketing channels and tactics that we can leverage as an L&D team. In fact, when we spoke to Caroline Fitzpatrick (Senior People Development and Learning Manager at L’Oréal UK & I) on the podcast, she told us she has eighteen marketing channels to use for L&D. Wowzers.

So instead of jumping straight for email, when marketing your learning offering, also consider: social channels (MS Teams, Slack, Zoom etc.), office TVs, posters, your intranet, managers, HR business partners, leaders, events and much more!

HOW MARKETING HELPS OVERCOME THE L&D CHALLENGE OF AWARENESS

You’re in L&D, so you know the importance of spaced repetition. And this needs to be applied to the marketing of your offering too. Sending one email, one time, is not going to grab your audiences’ attention, nor will it make them want to get involved. So get to know them deeply, then consistently market to them, using a range of channels to truly grab their attention once and for all.

Because the truth is, overcoming the awareness challenge isn’t optional. It’s critical in the ongoing success of L&D functions, and now is the time to change things up and start raising awareness of your learning offering with marketing-led learning. Of course, this is only one step of our journey – we do indeed need to boost engagement and nudge our audience down their decision making journey. But until we change the way we operate, awareness will always be the biggest L&D challenge we face.