Reasons to brand your L&D
These days, everyone has a brand, from global businesses, celebrities, the local shop and each of us on our social media. What we put out there becomes what people see, and then know, about us.
When you deliver Learning & Development across your business, regardless of size and reach, it simply has to have a brand to live and breathe. If you want a culture of learning, people need to know where they go to get the stuff they want. That is the heart of your L&D brand.
Now although this is a slight tangent, the studies show that branding works. A study done recently by Google and brand agency Ogilvy revealed that ‘word-of-mouth’ (74%) was the top influencer in any purchasing decision (in L&D speak this would be booking onto a course) They also found that content-led marketing via YouTube (64%) and Twitter (61%) grab 3rd and 4th spot respectively to show people choose brands that engage their passion and interests in the same way they consume content.
It’s the job of you and your designer to make sure that the brand you devise and use for L&D has the same impact. We want word of mouth to spur conversations about the learning someone just experienced, we want them to see content and it make them want to get involved and learn, we want them to be social about it using in house tools like Yammer, Teams or Slack.
It’s important to spend some time considering why people are choosing to interact with your L&D brand. Are they doing it because that have to? Is it because it’s important to your company? Is it, perhaps, that there’s something in it for them as individuals?
Guess what – they pull all the answers to those questions out of your brand.
Here are a few reasons to make sure your L&D brand is on point.
Your people already have high expectations.
We see brands everywhere and make decisions in split seconds about whether we like or dislike. Whether it’s an image, a logo, an icon, an illustration or video they must connect with it to be part of it.
Making sure training created for you contains these little elements adds to its embedding and success. If you don’t have a brand, get one, if you are using old slides, change them up. Create icons. Get bespoke illustrations made. We can help you do all of that at Learning & Design.
If you’re using technology, that needs to be the same. We all expect seamless integration and we like to look at things that are appealing to the eye. It’s human nature. Make your L&D look engaging and interesting – you’ll get more engagement and more interest. Simples!
A recent study from Emerald Works states that a massive 51% of learners find plain, generic, irrelevant and low quality learning content a barrier to using in-house learning.
Being positive counts more than ever.
If you want a small child to do something, especially if it’s not really a great task, you make it fun, you make it appealing, you add incentives, you change your tone of voice and body language. This is the same with an L&D brand. If someone must complete mandatory training, as long as you engage them, make it fun, provide support and incentives then the attitude towards it changes. If you can encourage kids to clean their muddy shoes, then you can encourage adults to do a spot of eLearning.
Find out the why and share it
Nowadays people want to know the what, why and how about what they’re asked to do. This is fantastic but means your brand and communication materials must explain to someone why learning with you is important, what it means, how the access it and what it might help them become. Leaders need to talk to the talk and walk the walk and constantly use the L&D brand to talk about learning, success, growth and positive culture changes. Association here is critical.
Push needs to become pull
The L&D brand you create is important in another way. The way we learn is becoming more like the life we live. We want to be able to access and devour content whenever we are hungry to learn.
You need to make the brand so inviting that people are always wanting to pull from it, instead of waiting for you to push something out to them. The more your content catches up with the world, with instant solutions, micro learning, bitesize and blended options, the richer the experience will become for the learner and the more they will use it. Who likes to be told what to do? Not many people! Being engaged with a brand and knowing how to access it will change the perception of L&D in your business.
It’s not all about you
The L&D brand you use is one of many competing for attention each day. If it’s not memorable or doesn’t engage or resonate then its likely to be ignored.
We’ve all worked somewhere where the learning is dull, difficult to use or access and you really don’t want to do it. Well, guess what? You don’t go back looking for more of the same, do you? You stay away and search elsewhere. Making sure your branding is effective and doing the job is critical to help you measure effectiveness and engagement with your people.
Your L&D brand needs to make people think about it, remember it and talk about it. You need to invest in it just like the big brands do. You need a voice. A tone. A style. A view and most importantly a recognised and relatable brand people talk about.
One way to help this is allow your people to join in the creation process and help come up with names, headings, images styles etc so the buy in is already there from day one. We can help you from inception to delivery.