How Learning & Educational Strategies fuel Customer Marketing: An On-Going Series (Part 1)

In this on-going series, I share how how Customer Marketing is really Education and Learning disguised for your customers. My goal is to share my secret sauce and help you understand a whole bunch about how educational principles and adult learning theory will help you drive better results with your marketing campaigns for customers.

Please don't confuse learning for training.

Learning is the acquisition of new knowledge through study, experience, or being taught.(Example for Tech: "What more can I do with this piece of software?")

Training is the intentional act of exercising new skills or knowledge in order to perform that skill or use that knowledge. (Example for Tech: Click-by-click training on the software. Or a Certification course.)

Thank you for being here! Be sure to share thoughts, comments, and questions during the series.?

Let’s get our nerd on.?

Step 1 in Learning: Acquire New Information

Remember sitting in class, listening to the teacher go on and on? (I’m picturing that Charlie Brown scene: “Wah-Wah-Wah-Wah”.)

What about starting a new job and sitting in New Employee Orientation?

How about the last webinar you attended??

Or when you took that guided tour while on vacation??

Or when you found your kid watching?a YouTube video that actually sounded useful? (Get off your phone...oh wait, that sounds educational!)

And reading all those LinkedIn posts full of recommendations and insights?

Everyday I'm Learnin' (h/t Rick Ross)

Every single day we are exposed to new information. What we do with that information and how we interact with it determines are learning experience.

Your customers are learners. They are eager to learn more about your product and offerings. They really do. In 20+ years of working, I have yet to meet someone who has said, "no, I don't need to learn more. I'm good." Not even from the teenagers who I taught in high school way back when.

The first stage of learning is merely acquiring new information. In an ideal situation, you’ve prepared yourself mentally to take in new information, comprehend it, and process it.

Think about all those examples above. With each one, there was some sort of preparation step. Whether it was 2 seconds before jumping on LinkedIn, knowing you’re likely to come across new information. Or, starting a new job, where you prepare for days or weeks of new learning. Or voluntarily choosing a guided historical tour of Savannah, Georgia (unless your parents dragged you on it - not so voluntary).?

Acquiring new information is essential. It’s where learning begins.?

And, new information has to be presented by someone or something else: a presenter or teacher; a book; a video; a course. Obviously, if you do not know something, you can’t just conjure up accurate knowledge in your mind.

Stage 1 of learning is pretty simple. It only asks you to take it all in.

Seems easy enough. When new information is presented in ways supported by learning theory and proven educational practices, it’s effective. Content structured for learning, within proven time periods, and different levels of assessment to check the learner's progress.

Thought this was about Customer Marketing?

Why does this relate to us in Customer Marketing? Because your job is two-fold: Prepare your customers for learning opportunities and provide learning opportunities to them. I'm not implying that you become a trainer. Or launch a Learning Management System.

Scroll back-up to the top to review the difference between Learning and Training.

We're here to discuss product adoption from the perspective of Customer Marketing. As a customer marketer, you are lighting the spark to learning. Your customer does not know every aspect of your solution or service or product offering. They are wired to get through their work day going through a series of routines.

Ultimately, you want them to break their routine and add a new routine or skill into their work day.

So, you start messaging them about "Tips of the Week" or "Product Feature" or "Use-Cases" or any number of pieces of content with the goal of driving product adoption. Or, you want them to attend a webinar or an event where learning (or training) is going to occur. Or you're going to implement In-App messaging so you can guide or suggest features while your end-user is logged in.

As the customer marketing, we are informing our customers of opportunities, resources, events, community conversations and much more where they can learn new information and skills.

And, it is essential to partner with your internal collaborators to ensure those learning opportunities are structured to be effective.

The Pitfalls to Stage 1

Too often, Stage 1 is where shit goes sideways. Right off the bat.

Any of these ring a bell?

• Learning by firehose
• Please watch 42 hours of video training.
• We’re so excited you’re here for the next 4 days of intensive training.
• Strap in folks! We’ve got a lot to get through.
• I’m mentally fried from a day of learning.

Think about the worst kind of training or learning experiences you’ve had. I’m willing to bet they significantly out-number the great or most effective learning experiences you can recall.

Passing Time

The first mistake we make is not understanding Attention Spans. Unless you are super human, you can't get around the natural ways your brain operates. Because...science.

The human brain has natural on/off switches. And, it goes off about every 18 minutes.

18 minutes.

Even if we work on something for an hour or two hours or 3 hours, we are taking a natural break every 20 minutes. It might be short and you might not even notice it. Or, it could be obvious, like standing up and walking away.

Either way, it's happening.

Think about your 60 minute webinar. Ever look at the drop-off stats? I’m betting the average time spent on the webinar is about 30 minutes, +/- 3 minutes. During Covid and post-Covid times, this stat has gotten even worse.?

Yes, people have Zoom fatigue. Yes, some folks just don’t know how to make webinars interesting. Yes, sometimes people decide the information is not relevant (hey! That’s learning, too!)

18 minutes is the ideal time to retain an adult’s attention span on a given topic. You can stretch it to 23 or 24 minutes, but after that, most people are done.

Watch yourself the next time you attend a webinar or sit on a long work call. Set a timer for 25 minutes. When it goes off, think about what happened in the last 5 to 7 minutes. Where did your mind go around the 18 minute mark?

Think about TV shows - they are typically 22 or 42 minutes long (one or two 20 minute sections). Streaming shows have broken this traditional model, but filmmakers are master storytellers, constantly moving the story along and changing your focus, ultimately resetting your 18 minute countdown clock.

So Much to Say (h/t Dave Matthews)

Beyond the length of time, we also just cram too much information or “main points” into typical learning sessions. Again, our brains can only absorb and process so much information at a time.?

At a previous job, I remember seeing the customer e-newsletter which was being sent out when I started. There was no audience segmentation. No dynamic or personalized content based on data. Everyone got the same version of the newsletter and it was basically a round-up of all the marketing collateral from the past month. And, most of the material had been written for prospects. Worst of all, when I looked at the previous 6 newsletters emailed out, it averaged 21 links or calls-to-action in one send.

21 links. Holy Batman the distractions.

Best way to NOT drive product adoption? Spew and send your customers every damn piece of marketing material ever written so there's absolutely no theme, no purpose, no focus for them and cross your fingers.

I'm not crying. Wait, yes I am.

These types of practices are so common, we're immune to them.

Here's another example.

In my last job, I wanted to re-create a highly successful type of event that I ran at a previous company. Essentially, get a bunch of customers in a room for a day of learning that was structured to support learning. I wasn’t focused on the quantity of features covered or the number of best practices shared, but rather the quality and depth of what each person could walk away with from the event.

In early conversations, some people were very enthusiastic about this type of event.

And, they got a bit eager.?

“Michael, here’s my proposed agenda for the 4 hour event - we can cover 14 use-cases.”

Say what? 14 use-cases in 4 hours.

?Yikes. I immediately crushed that proposal. I didn't sugar-coat it either.

Depending on the complexity of the information or skill being taught, it's going to be necessary to accommodate the learner with a lot of time to acquire the new information.

There is just no way to cover that much material in a short amount of time IF the goal is actual learning.

And, remember - this is only the 1st stage of learning.

Next, I'll share more specific strategies on how to present information and learning in stage 1 as a customer marketer.

Key Takeaways

• Customer Marketing should connect your audience to learning opportunities to drive adoption.
• The first stage of learning is merely acquiring new information. Learners still have to go through 3 more stages to adopt new behaviors.
• As marketers, we can present learning in numerous ways: email, in-app messaging, Release announcements, events (virtual, in-person), conferences, community, customer meet-ups, etc.
• Partner closely with your Learning and Training peers. Understand their approach to building training events and resources. Continually discuss with them how you can work together to differentiate learning from training across different offerings.
• Format learning for 20 minutes sections, based on the ideal attention span. Learning can and does take longer, but should be broken up into sections.
• Focus learning on 1 topic or objective at a time. Establish breaks between topics.