Why Your Business Needs a Unified Education Strategy
Education strategy is not a term you hear often in the technology industry. In fact, when you read this title, you probably flashed on your days in academia. However, as any successful business creates a cohesive marketing, sales, and product strategy, they should also develop an education strategy, especially when the business creates innovative products and solutions that no other entity would be able to accurately provide education for. So what goes into a well-defined education strategy? Let’s dive in!
Education vs ‘learning and development’
Before we get into the development of an education strategy, we should narrow in on exactly how we’re defining it. There are generally two distinct types of education that are present in a technology business: proprietary industry/product training and talent development training. In the graphic below, we’ve highlighted the proprietary education that a typical company offers in purple. Notice that some of the content spans audiences, so this is not simply employee vs non-employee training. For example, many audiences need to learn the fundamental skills to use and get value from your product, and both partners and certain employees would need to learn how to represent and sell your product. In many companies, there are several teams across multiple departments that may focus on the initiatives in purple.
Now notice the yellow topics, which are learning and development (L&D) initiatives. These are limited to employees and are typically owned by the HR department. These programs are usually part of an overall talent development strategy, so we will not include them in our discussion. Instead, our definition of education strategy focuses only on the purple programs, or proprietary industry and product education.
The importance of a holistic education strategy
As you see in the graphic above, education often covers multiple purposes for many different audiences, and at different points in their journey. Without an overarching education strategy, teams inevitably produce, deliver, and market their programs in siloes. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see some larger businesses delivering redundant content to different audiences on different platforms. Outside of the financial implications, the siloed approach puts your business’ credibility at risk, as delivering a disorganized learning experience with conflicting instruction can actually backfire.
It’s also quite difficult to realize the results of education without a cohesive strategy. When an education program isn’t targeted to address specific goals, audiences, and needs, then it becomes challenging, if not impossible, to see any business impact. With a holistic education strategy, however, there is clarity and alignment on why, who, what, how, and where you’re educating across your business.
The dimensions of education strategy
Education strategy is a broad concept and shouldn’t be conflated with just content strategy. Instead, it encompasses multiple dimensions: content and delivery strategy, audience strategy, measurement strategy, and communications strategy.
Content strategy refers to the way that your content is structured across all learning programs. A unified content strategy uses consistent taxonomy, leveling guidelines, and instructional design principles. For example, the difference between an introductory lesson and a comprehensive course is well defined and apparent throughout all learning experiences. A mature content strategy also employs scaleable curriculum design where learning objectives are clear and outcomes are connected to the expected behavior for each learner segment.
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 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.
Audience strategy is important enough to be its own dimension, yet is also a dependency for executing an effective content and delivery strategy. Your audience strategy should include your learner segmentation at a high-level (partners, customers or customer segments, employees) 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.
Measurement strategy focuses on the leading and lagging metrics that will 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 will also focus on assessments, ensuring the right objectives are measured for the right outcomes.
Communications strategy, also known as a marketing strategy, includes the full-funnel marketing plan specific to 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 communication 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 would also prioritize internal awareness of education programs.
While each education program may vary on how these specific strategies are executed, what’s important is that there’s an overarching strategy that shows how each program fits into a larger picture. For example, a prospect may encounter market education before becoming a customer, where they’ll then complete customer onboarding. Soon they’ll want to get certified, and later they’ll need to upskill in a new version of the product. A holistic education strategy ensures they’ll have a smooth learner journey as they experience these individual programs to achieve their goals.
“That’s a lot! Where do I start?”
If you’re starting from scratch, meaning no formal education programs exist at your company yet, you’re in a good position to develop a targeted program that considers each of the dimensions above. We also recommend you review 3 common mistakes to avoid when launching your first customer education platform.
For those with existing education programs, step one would be conducting analysis of all your current programs, followed by a mapping exercise that aligns current programs to goals and audiences. It’s important to see where you are today in order to prioritize plans for improvement.
A mapping exercise will help you visual all of the audiences and needs within the context of your business goals. Once you have such a map in place, you can connect existing learning programs and easily identify gaps, overlaps, and conflicting efforts.
An example map showing audience segments and typical needs
Don’t go it alone. Echtus experts are here to help you either launch an effective strategy from the ground floor or clarify your strategy amidst the chaos of multiple, siloed teams.