Training Industry Quarterly - Winter 2009 - (Page 29) Of course, these techniques are only effective if they get the right people to take the right courses. If you get the wrong people in the courses, they may not only receive no benefit in their jobs, but also cost the company (or customer) in time spent away from other value-producing activities. This inefficient “waste” can be eliminated if training organizations use their market research data to match learning needs of employees (or customers) with the learning objectives of particular courses and then target their marketing communications accordingly. When courses are specifically designed for particular groups or for new customers of specific products, this targeting is easy; it’s just a matter of getting the people to sign up for the courses. For courses that are not designed for specific groups, marketing efforts can still be targeted to the types of people most likely to benefit. Then, as more of the right people take courses from which they can receive a real benefit, the potential impact of training increases. Targeted Marketing Communications So how does a training organization do targeted marketing? Just as people with different learning needs require different types of courses, different training programs require different types of marketing. The same study on internal marketing found that about half (51%) of training organizations vary their marketing activities for different types of training (e.g., managerial/supervisory, mandatory/compliance, sales, interpersonal skills, or executive development), and about two-thirds (64%) do some form of targeting, including: ■ 55% create marketing specific to particular departments or job roles. ■ 20% use their learning management system (LMS) to determine who needs to take which courses. ■ 15% use integrated talent management systems including LMS course requirement, participation data and HR factors like employee assessments to target courses. Training professionals indicated that they varied their marketing for different training programs based on five types of groups, as shown in Table 5 along with examples of specific marketing Table 5 Marketing Communications Activities for Five Types of Groups ■ Required (e.g., compliance): Automatically registered, given additional service and attention from communications department, and given videos/in-depth information on programs. ■ Leadership/Management: Stakeholder meetings, webinars, manager-specific Web sites and nominations. ■ Functional Groups (e.g., engineering, sales, technical): Intranet site for only that group and nominations. recommended courses. ■ Individual Learning Needs Group: Development plan with ■ All Employees: Company newsletter and internal Web site. communications. E-mails were common to all groups. In addition to changing the type of communication training respondents also indicated that they changed the frequency of communications and how much they enlisted the support of senior management for each group. Instead of merely trying to increase course fill rates, effective training organizations pay attention to how they can best reach the right audience for their training courses and tailor their marketing based on what works for each type of audience. Conclusion When budgets are limited, targeting training to the right people is the name of the game. With market research-like approaches to uncovering and prioritizing critical learning needs, coupled with laser-focused marketing capabilities to inform the right people about the right courses, training organizations can operate more efficiently and with more impact. Tracy Hollister is general manager of research at Training Industry, Inc. You can e-mail Tracy at thollister@trainingindustry.com. About the Study The studies were conducted by Training Industry, Inc. Research, research partner Expertus or by both. All studies were conducted by online surveys with corporate training professionals from companies of varying sizes across a wide range of industries. Training suppliers or providers were not included in the analysis. For more information on the following three studies referenced in this article, go to the TrainingIndustry.com Research page at www.trainingindustry.com/products/Research.aspx: ■ “Measuring Learning as Budgets Tighten” (2008) ■ “Internal Marketing for Corporate Training Departments” (2008) ■ “Training Efficiency: Optimizing Costs” (2008) Training Industry Quarterly, Winter 2009 / A Training Industry, Inc. ezine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ 29 http://www.TrainingIndustry.com http://www.trainingindustry.com/products/Research.aspx http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ
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