Elearning is being used by organizations worldwide as part of their learning and development strategies. It has been met with varying degrees of success and the reasons why it may be less successful are not always clear – bad design, poor navigation and lack of relevant content and are among the common reasons cited for poor performance of eLearning.
But in many cases, the benefits of eLearning are simply not properly communicated to employees and that eLearning courses are not adequately promoted by the L&D teams.
This article highlights a number of key ways to effectively market eLearning to employees in your organization.
1. Outline specific objectives
Setting clear objectives for eLearning is the first step. Establish what it is you are trying to achieve through your training and this should include why you believe eLearning is the right approach and why you feel it will generate a good ROI. Being specific about KPIs and metrics will certainly help to market eLearning to senior management and key stakeholders.
According to a recent report released by IBM, companies who use eLearning have the potential to boost productivity by up to 50%. But all too often, eLearning’s performance is not accurately measured.
Highlighting the expected value eLearning will add in terms of cost savings, increased productivity and other metrics will help to boost the organization’s confidence in eLearning’s potential.
2. Know your audience
Like every great marketing campaign, yours should include a thorough process of research and discovery. Assess the culture that exists within your organization. The age, profile, and interests of your employees are all very important. Employee learning surveys, interviews and general observations of behaviour will help you obtain a lot of the information you need.
In addition to helping you develop eLearning that really engages your employees, knowing what interests them will increase the success of your eLearning marketing campaign as it will help you determine what motivates and excites them.
3. Get the design and content right
In eLearning, the design is everything. Getting the design and content right is one of the most difficult things to do but in itself, is one of the best ways to market a course. Elearning that instigates learner interactivity and makes learning enjoyable through features such as graphics and video, gamification, challenges and assessments and other features is what will ultimately sell the eLearning experience to your employees.
The right design and content will help ensure that eLearning has a positive impact on your learners. This should form a key part of your marketing strategy.
4. Highlight the benefits of eLearning
This might seem like an obvious one but its importance cannot be overlooked.
In 2014, an industry report confirmed that the global eLearning market was valued at $56.2BN. Elearning Industry “confirmed that corporations now report that eLearning is the second most valuable training method they use” and this statement speaks for itself. Why are so many organizations investing so heavily in eLearning. There has to be a good reason!
Making your employees aware of the benefits of eLearning is an activity that every L&D department should be engaged in. For example, if employees know that their training time can be halved through eLearning versus classroom training, this may get them more excited about it. Similarly, for employees who work in the field, taking training on their tablet or mobile could be much more appealing than spending time in the classroom.
Promote the benefits of eLearning in your organization through email, intranet, social media, newsletters, onboarding materials and any other marketing channels to make employees aware of just how valuable it can be.
5. Identify eLearning champions
Often, having the right people on your side is a big help in driving your message across to your target audience. Consider who those people are within your organization – who is it that employees really connect with and trust? Who are those that employees are most likely to listen to and follow?
Identify these people and do whatever you can to convince them of the merits of eLearning and that promoting it is in the best interests of their teams and the organization as a whole. Hearing about the benefits of eLearning through people like this may really improve the success of your marketing campaign.
These are some of the top methods of marketing eLearning to your employees. There are lots of other issues to consider but follow these steps to kick-start your marketing strategy and you won’t go wrong.
Want to learn more about eLearning and how it could help your organization reach new levels of success?
Interactive Services specializes in development of custom eLearning and blended learning solutions that help global organizations improve performance. Contact us to discuss your learning and training needs today.