Seven Dimensions of Education Strategy that Smart Companies Prioritize

Does your organization have a fully developed, multi-faceted and cohesive strategy to teach others about your products, solutions, and industry practices? You may not have considered it before, or perhaps you think the idea is above your pay grade. While it’s true that a business-wide strategy should be developed and implemented at an executive level, the influence and inputs of such a strategy often start at the ground floor. So whether you’re an executive in charge of your company’s approach to education or a junior instructional designer working on customer onboarding, this article will give you insight into the full spectrum of mature education programs that drive real business value.

What is ‘education strategy’ in a business context?

You’re likely familiar with the basic components of a business strategy. It generally involves a plan for revenue growth along with high-level initiatives that the business will focus on to generate that growth. The overall business strategy is typically supported by a marketing strategy, sales strategy, product strategy, and service strategy (depending on the specific business) that is aligned with the overall strategy, goals, and vision of the company. For example, a business that chooses to drive additional revenue by penetrating a new market segment will need a marketing strategy that outlines how they’ll reach that segment. It will need a product strategy that demonstrates how the product will appeal to customers in this new segment. And it will need a sales strategy that supports selling to this new market. Education strategy follows the same principle - that is, it’s a holistic approach to educating your market in a way that directly supports the overall business strategy.

Education strategy is a comprehensive plan to develop, deliver, track meaningful outcomes of education across all audiences, which may include programs like customer onboarding, customer education, product training, partner enablement, certifications, education-based marketing, sales enablement, in-app tutorials, and help center content. Without such a plan, these initiatives often operate in disconnected siloes, leading to redundant content, inefficient workflows, confusing learning experiences, and poor demonstration of business impact. 

The Seven Strategic Dimensions

The Seven Dimensions of Education Strategy is a framework developed by Echtus founder, Vicky Kennedy, after more than 10 years of working with organizations of all sizes on implementing, growing, and improving their large-scale education programs. These strategic dimensions are prioritized in organizations that are able to measure their education programs ROI and see demonstrable business results. In other words, these mature companies are using education strategically to realize their long-term business goals. Conversely, one or more of these dimensions are not in focus for organizations with newer or lower performing education offerings.

Any organization can use this framework to ensure they’re thinking about all aspects of the unique discipline of education. We casually refer to this framework as “the programmatic approach,” because it stems from targeted programs that solve real business problems or opportunities.  

(It’s important to note that some businesses may deliver education as a paid service or product rather than leverage it as a strategy. In these cases, education material is monetized and success is measured by education sales. While the following framework is still helpful for these use cases, it is most relevant in the context of education as a strategy, where organizations rely on the outcomes of education to drive long-term results.)

Program Strategy

The dimensions in our framework are presented in a deliberate order, with the first being program strategy. Program strategy refers to the alignment of education initiatives with business goals, specifically targeting known problems or opportunities. Atlassian describes a business program as “long-running…contribut[ing] to multiple goals, and contain[ing] many projects that deliver specific components of the larger strategic initiative.” Indeed describes a program as “a collection of many related projects or specific activities that typically have a defined qualitative goal.” Both of these descriptions highlight the impact of programs as being long-term and supporting the business strategy. 

An education program is no different; it’s a long-term collection of learning experiences that target, or support, a business goal. Examples may include a customer onboarding program, certification, a channel partner training program, or a product adoption program. Some businesses loosely define their education programs around a modality or platform, such as a customer academy, help center, or webinar series. However, it’s important to draw the distinction between programs, platforms, and channels. A customer academy may actually deliver multiple education programs, like onboarding and certification. Thus, an alignment exercise to define or redefine your education programs may be warranted. 

Audience Strategy

Audience strategy is closely connected to program strategy and is a dependency for executing an effective content and delivery strategy. This dimension involves mapping all audience segments to their desired outcomes and needs, and connecting those to the education programs in place. This mapping exercise can surface redundant learning experiences or gaps, and is a pivotal step to using a learning platform efficiently and effectively.

A well defined audience strategy includes the company’s learner segmentation at a high-level (partners, customers or customer segments, employees, prospects, etc) and learner personas. A learner persona is not simply a job title or role, but rather identifies trends in prior experience, learner motivation, learning challenges, and goals. A mature audience strategy is leveraging these personas and employing personalized learning experiences. 

Content Strategy

Content strategy refers to the way that your content is structured across all education programs, and directly supports the targeted programs by connecting learning outcomes to business outcomes. A unified content strategy uses consistent taxonomy, leveling guidelines, and instructional design principles. A mature content strategy also employs scalable curriculum design, i.e., using competency frameworks for modularity, where learning objectives are clear and outcomes are connected to the expected behavior for each learner segment. By having a thoughtful content strategy, organizations can avoid the trap of “quantity over quality,” where too much emphasis is placed on launching new learning material without knowing exactly how that material is contributing to a greater goal. 

Delivery Strategy 

Delivery strategy includes the modalities, methods, and technology used in delivering the right content to the right learner at the right time. Some modalities include (virtual) instructor-led courses, webinars, self-paced e-learning, articles, and hands-on simulations. A solid delivery strategy is considering the program goals and learner needs, and ensuring that content meets the learner in an optimal way. For example, your delivery strategy will outline where and how you deliver help content, proactive learning, and certifications. Mature programs are using both push and pull delivery methods appropriately to help their learners reach their goals. Your delivery strategy should consider accessibility, discoverability, and scalability.

A mature delivery strategy considers the tech stack you’ll use at a company-wide level to develop, deliver and track your learning experiences. It’s at this phase that you’ll align on the most optimal learning platform, if required. Some organizations make the mistake of choosing a learning management system (LMS) prematurely, that is, before they’ve developed their program, audience, and content strategy. This often leads to frustration on both sides of the vendor relationship, as the company is expecting the LMS to solve for a complex strategic implementation that has yet to be developed. These platform implementations run much smoother, leading to higher performance, when a thoughtful strategy has been proactively developed.

Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategy is one of the more commonly overlooked strategic dimensions, primarily because its importance is under-appreciated. This strategy includes the full-funnel marketing plan specifically aimed to support your education programs. Just like any other marketing plan, your education marketing should tailor messaging about the value of the learning to each learner persona and segment. A mature marketing strategy focuses on getting your learners to the right content for them, keeping them engaged throughout the learning, and following up with them after learning. It will also prioritize internal awareness of education programs. Essentially, a mature marketing strategy includes everything from the go-to-market phase through re-engagement post-learning. Organizations that prioritize education marketing see higher engagement, higher performance, and higher ROI than those that overlook this strategy. (Check out Intellum’s Guide to Customer Education Marketing for practical examples.)

Measurement Strategy

Measurement strategy is our sixth strategic dimension and focuses on the leading and lagging metrics that provide insight into the performance, success, and ROI of your education programs. A mature measurement strategy connects engagement metrics to content efficacy metrics to measurable behaviors (such as product use) and finally, business metrics. There is also a feedback loop in place that allows for quick iterations and program improvements. This strategy includes a focus on assessment, ensuring the right objectives are measured for the right outcomes. This sixth dimension ties the first five together to bring visibility into what’s working well, what can be improved, and what can be deprioritized. Without this strategic dimension, organizations lack awareness into how they can further invest in education to use it strategically. 

Organizational Strategy

The seventh strategic dimension, organizational strategy, has become more and more important as the function of education in business has evolved over recent years. Organizational strategy emphasizes two levels of structure: the makeup of the education team(s) and the placement of the education team(s) within the larger organization. As much as a business may prioritize the first six dimensions of education strategy, a disconnected or disjointed org design will inevitably limit the impact education can have on top-level goals. This is because the very nature of education touches on all areas of the business, including all products and all audience segments (internal and external), and requires direct alignment to those top-level goals. When an education team is embedded too deep within one department, they’re relegated to focusing only on the scope of that department, and are often too far removed to connect to business metrics.

A comprehensive organizational strategy also includes a plan to resource the initiatives outlined in the first six dimensions. Specifically, once you know your content and delivery strategy, you’ll have the inputs needed for capacity planning to develop and deliver the learning experiences. You’ll know what resources you’ll need to execute on your marketing and measurement strategy, and you’ll see how many education program managers your team needs to succeed. 

Implementing the 7 Dimensions Framework

The 7 Dimensions framework is not just for businesses launching their first education initiative from the ground up (though that’s an awesome place to start!). It can be implemented at any time, and at any size company. In fact, we’ve recently implemented the framework at a global software company with over 10,000 employees! It’s important to know, though, that the larger your organization is, the more collaboration you’ll need at a leadership level to align on and implement this framework. The organizations that prioritize their education strategy at a business-wide level are the ones that consistently see demonstrable results from education. If you’re struggling to see the same, or just want better alignment, better insights, and higher performance from your education, there’s no better time than now to begin implementing this programmatic approach.

Not sure where to start? Schedule a free consultation call to learn more.