Effective marketing strategies for L&D leaders with co-authors Bianca Baumann and Mike Taylor

Julia: Welcome to L&DD in 20, your go-to resource for all things workplace learning. Brought to you by Go1. I'm your host, Julian Nieradka, manager of Customer Success here at Go1. Today we're thrilled to be joined by two powerhouse voices in the world of learning and development. Bianca Baumann brings over 15 years of strategic L&D expertise known for her innovative frameworks and award-winning programs that have transformed workplace learning across multiple industries.

Alongside her is Mike Taylor, a dynamic learning consultant with more than 20 years of experience. Mike is a sought-after speaker, educator at Franklin University, renowned for his fresh, engaging approach to instructional design and his influential voice in the L&D space. Mike is also the co-author of Think Like a Marketer’, train Like an L&D Pro.

Together, they bring deep insights, creative energy, and a shared passion for making learning truly impactful. Bianca and Mike, welcome to the show. ‘

Bianca: Thanks for having us.

Mike: Yeah, thank you so much.

Julia: Our pleasure. In today's deep dive segment, we're going to discuss effective marketing strategies for L&D leaders.

So Mike, first question goes to you. You know, marketing and L&D both aim to influence behavior, but L&D often struggles to grab attention. What can L&D professionals learn from marketing's approach to capturing attention in a crowded and distracted world?

Mike: Yeah, that's such a great question.

And I think oftentimes we assume that we have people's attention by default, and it kind of leads to titles like leadership training, which not only is that boring, but it's literally invisible to people. So, you know, we're asking people to pay attention in the context of YouTube and TikTok and, you know, thousands of impressions from ads everywhere you turn.

And marketers understand what they're competing with, and they've sort of cracked this code a long time ago. So, for example, Apple doesn't roll out a product features webinar. They give us something like the iPhone that revolutionize your life and it's the same content, but it's a very different emotional response.

Which, which leads to engagement, memory and all those sort of things. And so, you know, what marketers do is they, they know they've got to break the pattern. They've got to stand out from what people expect. They use things like curiosity to hook people's attention. And you know, I think one of the really most important things that marketers are really great at is they understand their audiences really well, so that they can make their content personally relevant and you know, without that our brains are wired to pay attention to things that, that relate directly to us. And without that, right? Like we all have emails that we never read 'cause why am I getting this? And so it's really important for us to intentionally design for attention. I think that's something I've never seen in any instructional design programs that maybe we should try to get that added.

Julia: Yeah. That's such a powerful reframe and it's a, it's a tough pill to swallow that that's where we're at, but it really reflects the reality of today's learning environment, I think.

Mike: Absolutely.

Julia: What are some ways, to your point, that Ed L&D team could test whether their content was actually grabbing the attention of people?

Mike: Yeah, so this is something else that marketers are really great at. They, they test almost everything. So simple example, you know, we talked about titles. It could be email, subject, subject lines, and marketers do AB testing. So they'll put out two versions and they'll see which one gets the most engagements, which ones gets the most, of course registrations, whatever it is. And it's a super simple thing, but it's really powerful because now you've got data to say, you know, here's the approach we chose, here's why we've got data to back that up. And then, you know, it informs what you're doing as opposed to you just put it in a black box and you have no idea.

Julia: And Mike emotions play such a huge role in decision making and memory. How can L&D teams use emotional design to make learning more memorable and meaningful to learners?

Mike: Yeah, I, I think sometimes we, we get caught of, of feeling like emotion is like this taboo thing that we're not allowed to do, but, but really the way our brains work, it's emotion is not extra.

It's really crucial and central to making things stick and, and helping people understand. So, you know, take for example, a, you know, everybody's got compliance training instead of starting off with your compliance policy. Which is gonna put everybody to sleep, start with a, a real person, a manager who lost their job because they missed the signs and didn't follow the policy and, and evoke that sort of emotional reaction in people.

And, you know, emotions are really our, our brain's way of flagging things to say like, hey, this matters, pay attention to this, this is important. You know, put people in realistic situations. So a lot of times we throw abstract things that, that nobody can relate to and again, it will tie back to what Bianca will probably talk about in a little bit, is really understanding your audience.

What's their environment? What are their challenges? What are they dealing with, you know, and then put them in realistic situations. Sometimes it's messy and it's kind of, you know, one of the reasons that along with stories, stories are so powerful, you know, you give them attention get, put them in a situation of some tension.

Let them be uncomfortable. Navigate that, give them a little hope. Then let them sort of solve it at the end. And, you know, we're really not just giving people information, but we, we want to infuse that emotional arc and, and the story. And when we get that right, that's, that's what people will remember. And you know, like I said at the beginning, you know, e emotion isn't this taboo or this extra thing.

It's really central to getting people to, to remember and then ultimately getting to the, to the ultimate goal, which is, you know, behavior change.

Julia: Yeah, I mean, you're completely reframing the role of emotional learning for me, and I think that's a shift that a lot of people need to hear. Can you give us a bit of your hot take and let's say you were designing a learning experience.

Would you start with identifying that emotion that you wanted to evoke from the learner ahead of starting your instructional design?

Mike: Yeah, absolutely, a hundred percent. And you know, I don't wanna kind of keep being repetitive, but, but it really requires understanding your audience and what emotions will resonate with them.

You know, without, without having that, it makes it very much more difficult. One of the things that you can always do, I think is, is sort of put some humanness into it. Like, it's okay, you can be personable and have a personality. And you can do serious things and have fun at the same time. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive, and I think that sometimes unfortunately gets lost.

Julia: That's a great point.

Bianca, in your recently published book, think Like A Marketer Train like an L&D Pro Strategies to Ignite Learning, you talked about building magnetic learner personas, which we're excited to dig into. What does that process look like and how can L&D teams use personas to create more personalized and compelling learning journeys?

Bianca: Yeah, and Mike set us up perfectly with the emotions, right? Because listeners might have thought, I was like, okay, this is great. Like how do I actually understand motivations and emotions? And that is actually where learner personas come in. So they are a representation of your typical learner, and they certainly go above your regular target audience analysis, where usually we just focus on demographic information and learner personas, you know, again, come from marketing the buyer persona idea, and it's really about what do they see, what do they hear, what do they do? Do they think and feel right, not taboo. Really, really important.

And then out of that you can kind of synthesize the pain points and the needs, and then that allows you to design for the, you know, for your audience. And as Mike was saying, right, especially that think and feel bucket gets us into that emotional piece. If I understand what motivates STEM motivation and, and emotions overlap, that's where that behavior change is happening, right?

And and that's why I'm such a big fan of these learner personas. And you do add demographic information. You make them come to life, you give them a name and you know, add in a picture and whatnot. And you really start with deep research. So go out, leverage interviews if you can. Ideally one-on-one, 30 minute interviews.

Observations, focus groups. If you can't do that, next best thing is surveys and any data you can get your hand on from the LMS, LXP, the HRIS, employee engagement surveys, engagement data in general, just to get this fuller picture, job descriptions, you know. And then you take all of that beautiful information, which before AI was a bit of a, you know, a struggle. But now with AI tools, we can actually relatively quickly analyze those outcomes and look for similarities and trends and yeah, create those learner personas according to the buckets that I was I was mentioning there. And ideally, you know, do run them by your learners in the end. Like, hey, do you see yourself in this persona? Can I use that as a starting point for my design?

And I usually like to create three to five personas for, you know, a project or a business line as a starting point. If you have more, you know, you'll never see the end of it. If you have less, then you might as well just do a target audience analysis.

Julia: That's great. So three to five personas, even for like maybe a large organization as a good place to start. And I love that it really sounds like it brings human-centered design to L&D, which is mm-hmm something that doesn't always happen. True. And I would say if, uh, my question for you, I guess is, how often should L&D teams revisit or evolve these learner personas? Is it based on a maturity model that you follow, or what's your theory there?

Bianca: Yeah, great question. So first off, you know, you wouldn't create learner personas if you have a request for a 30 minute e-learning module, right? It like, it's bigger projects, like you have to revamp your onboarding program, or you're in the middle of a big digital transformation rollout of a new system, whatever it might be. And then you create those personas and then they're, I don't wanna say they're evergreen, but they're kind of evergreen. And what I mean by that is once you have them, you simply, next time you start a bigger project, you revisit them. So that would be the answer to your question. Next time I have a big project, right? I just kind of check in as like, Hey, is this still accurate? You know, has my workforce changed? And then based on that, I would make some small tweaks, but you don't have to go out again and start the entire process, which is very helpful.

Julia: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And do you have any recommendations for a smaller team? Would it be best to maybe lean on AI or what's a good place to start if you're, let's say for our one person teams out there that are listening, where could they start?

Bianca: Yeah, I mean, if you can do the research, I would definitely leverage AI's input, depending on the model or the, the, yeah, the model you're using.

You know, open AI has deep research, for example, so it's just a great way to do some benchmarking, get some benchmarking data. Go out on Glassdoor or Reddit to, you know, see what people are saying about your company. You know, you can get some good insights that way. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.

Right. And yeah, you will have to make assumptions. However, in the long run, you know, I always say the reason I create learner personas is that I want us to think about the learner before the content. So yes, ideally they're research based and as accurate as possible. But if I have to make some assumptions, as long as I can think about the learner first and then the content I already want right.

Julia: And I am very excited to ask you this question 'cause I know that this is going to resonate with many of our listeners. What is one small marketing inspired change that an L&D professional could make tomorrow that would immediately give them a little bit of a boost in learner engagement, which is something I know we all struggle with.

Bianca: Oh yeah, absolutely. And Mike mentioned a couple of these already, but they are just so simple. So focus on your writing. Right? And it always seems like, you know, on one hand such a no brainer, but I've come across a lot of instructional designers and LXDs, who, you know, write think, is not their strength.

Think about more ways of more engaging writing like your headlines and your course titles, things like that. Short, easy to skim. Also think about repurposing content. You don't have to go out there and create everything from scratch, right? Where can you take a webinar, for example, and then create 60 different smaller assets out of it, right?

Like infographics or audiograms, and also crowdsourcing, right? Like the institutional knowledge that you have in your organizations and help them help you, you know, create, create content. So yeah, those are a couple of things. I know you asked about one, but there's just too many to just pick one.

Julia: Look, that's such a valuable shift in mindset.

We often think that new content means starting from scratch completely, and I love this approach. It's sustainable, it's workable. It's doable even if you're a one person team heading up an L&D function. So, thank you for that.

Now let's get into our next segment, AI at Work, where we dive into how you're using AI at work to work smarter. And how it's helping yourself and your teams to do the same. So, Mike, from your experience today, how are you facilitating yourself and others to maximize the use of ai?

Mike: I talk about this a lot.

I can't avoid it. And I think in my conversation, it seems like a lot of people kind of fall into one of two camps. Either they're scared of it, or they think it's gonna magically solve all their problems. And I think neither one of those are, are exactly right. We're kind of somewhere in the middle. And you know, I like to say like working with AI is, is like having a really talented intern. It can do a lot of the busy work and can generate drafts, it can research and can do all of this really valuable work, but at the same time, you wouldn't just turn everything over to them and say, okay, go design the entire leadership program or whatever program it is. Right. Like you wouldn't trust them to do that.

And so I, I see using AI as, as more of like a, a partnership and you're kind of the director and you're directing the AI, what you want it to do, you're still central. Let it get rid of a lot of the busy work so that we can focus on, on more valuable, more human things. So, you know, the things we've talked about here, you know, tap into emotions and all those things.

AI is not very good at. Because they're a machine and they don't understand our audience. So that's where we can sort of shift to more high value things and let AI take a lot of the busy work to get us, you know, 75, 80% of the way there. And then we become, I think it's, it's an opportunity for us to actually become more valuable and, and not less and, and be out of a job, which some people fear.

Julia: Right. It's an agent to help us free up time and create more time for ourselves. Use that intern, as you've mentioned, and work smarter, not harder.

All right, now moving into our Future Ready segment where we talk about the future of work and how L&D leaders can prepare themselves and their teams.

Bianca, can you tell us about your take on the future of work? What should L&D leaders be preparing for here, and what trends are you currently noticing?

Bianca: Yeah. It's almost like I'm going to repeat what Mike just said, but you know, AI is definitely at the forefront here as you think about how we're going to do work. A lot of the, the, you know, operational administrative work will definitely be automated. It already is partially right. So I think as L&D leaders, we really have to think about what does that mean for my training programs?

Right. Because now people automate certain tasks, so we don't have to teach them anymore how to do data entry. I don't know. Right. But now we have to teach them, you know, how to use the AI, right? It's about this human machine relationship. So in my mind it's less about the technical skills though. It's really more about those soft skills, power skills, whatever people wanna call them.

Like the analytical skills, for example. You know, we still need really, really good instructional design and, and adults learning principle knowledge and skills and experience to evaluate the output of the AI. Right. So I think that's something that's really important. And yeah, with Gen AI, you know, there, there's just, yeah, our work will change completely because of that, but that also means.

Our learning will change. And we've been talking about learning in the flow of work for years, and now we're finally so much closer to making it happen. So people won't log into a system anymore to access their content, but you know, it will just pop up in the moment of need based on, you know, what they're doing in certain programs and certain softwares whatnot. Right. Sounds very futuristic, but you know, we're, we're very close to it, which, which is actually exciting.

And then to Mike's point. The question becomes what are we doing with the time we're saving and not creating data entry training and you know, not focusing on that kind of work and where can we be much more innovative and creative and bring so much more value to work?

So yeah. And I think that really tied us, my last thought here. To, you know, skills-based organizations who've, you know, there's a lot of conversations around really moving towards that and away from job roles, I think will also become much, much more realistic with, with the health of AI and, you know, us being really working more project-based on, you know, depending on what an organization and a client needs versus here's your job role and just stick to it for the next 25 years.

Julia: I love your point about, it's not kind of just about efficiency there, it's about impact. What greater impact can you make with the use of this tool to help us get better. That's, that's really what it's about. Do you think that the industry and from what you've seen, people are doing enough to prepare for this shift and, and second part to that is what more could they be doing in your opinion?

Bianca: Yeah, I don't think we're doing enough. It goes back to what, you know, Mike was saying there's a lot of L&D professionals that are on their soapbox, and I hate to say it, you gotta come off your soapbox. It's time to, you know, upskill yourselves and become so much more than an instructional designer.

You become a system thinker. You become a learning architect. I know there's different terms out there, but it's exciting for me, it's really exciting to, you know, really combine more, more of that consultative approach that we should be bringing and, and yeah, we need to prepare our own people for that much, much more.

Danny Johnson from Red Spread Research. She, you know, in one of her reports, she said, you know, when you're on your plane, they always ask you to put your mask on first before you help others. Right? And so I kind of think about this as for the L&D function, right? So that's the analogy, analogy she's using.

It's like, yeah, we have to help ourselves first so we can help our workforce. All right.

Julia: Thank you so much.

Now moving into our final segment, which is the Learning List, I’ll pose this question to both of you now. What are your favorite L&D related content pieces or resources at the moment?

Bianca: I'm a huge, uh, believer in of a good and solid content strategy, right? Really making sure we understand what we have and what we don't have and, you know, keeping track of it and repurposing content and whatnot.

Anyway, there is the, uh, content Marketing Institute or CMI, so they have some great resources around content in general, writing tips, all of that good stuff. So for me, that's a great learning and development resource.

Mike: And I'm gonna also cheat. So I have a few. So, and they're, they're marketing too. So there's one website that I, I look at pretty regularly that I get a lot of ideas. It's a site by Harry Dry, it's marketing examples.com. So it's just this big catalog of marketing content and there's always some sort of idea or creative way that they do something that, that's really helpful for me.

The second thing is anything by Rory Sutherland, who is the vice chairman of, of Ogilvy UK.

He talks a lot of behavioral science type stuff and he has a couple of books. Uh, his most recent one is called Alchemy and it, it is just fantastic about breaking the pattern of what people expect and people aren't really logical and you can't just give them facts and expect them to do the quote “logical thing” because we're not logical creatures.We're emotional creatures. If you're looking for something to read. That's a great one.

Julia: Bianca and Mike, it's been such a brilliant conversation with you both. Thank you for joining us. We've really enjoyed having you on the program today.

Mike: Thanks for having us. It was great. Thank you.

Julia: Thanks for tuning into the show.

I'm your host, Julian Nieradka, and that wraps up another episode of L&D in 20. To continue the conversation, send me a message on LinkedIn through the link in the show notes. Your comments will help inform future episodes and who knows, maybe we'll even answer some of them in the next show. We'll catch you on the next episode, and until then, keep learning.

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