Marketing For Learning® – Details, episodes & analysis

Attention is our employee's most equitable asset - but there's fierce competition for it. Marking the first episode of 2026, Ashley joins Giles Hearn, Chief Marketing Officer at The Learning and Performance Institute  and unpicks the challenges L&D are really facing. A meaty conversation for a meaty subject.  Get stuck in!

Do you ever think about how your learners feel? Not what they do, what they think, but what they feel? Emotions are a powerful tool that marketers leverage wherever possible. How can you use emotions in your learning function to get better results? 

When we mutter the phrase "internal comms" to many of our clients, we see them shudder. "Do we have to get them involved? They're always a blocker to our plans!" We've heard it all before...

So in this ep, Ash and Han address why internal comms *must* be involved in your marketing for learning initiatives, and how to make the whole thing smoother. 

Happy listening guys! 

LINKS:

• Internal comms, friend or foe?

Has Han lost the plot? Or should L&D really be eating dog food?

OK. She doesn't mean it literally, but eating your own dog food means using your product or service in the way a user would use it. And that means that L&D need to start learning – using the platforms and services we want our people to use. 

This bitesized episode will help you understand why using your own learning products helps L&D teams:

• Market their offering accurately and authentically 
• Improve empathy with their target audience
• Enhance, tweak and adapt their learning products. 

Happy listening! 

Your favourite duo is back to discuss a contentious topic in L&D: The Technology Trap. Of course, we all know technology is a critical tool in forward thinking L&D teams, but can it solve all of our issues? (Shock horror, Ash and Han don't think so!) 

In this episode we discuss: 

• The importance of understanding the user experience and the need for root cause analysis to understand engagement challenges. 
• Why audience centricity is key for future-proofing your L&D function. 
• The importance of aligning your strategy, to the business goals, then finding the right tech to enable your strategy. 

So whether you're a tech lover, or hater, or somewhere in between... we're sure this ep will give you loads of food for thought! 

L&D knows measurement matters. But when the pressure’s on to “prove impact,” most teams default to what’s easy, not what’s meaningful.

In this episode, we’re joined by Nelson Sivalingam to unpack how learning functions can shift from reporting activity to demonstrating real business value.

We explore:

• Why traditional learning metrics fall short
• How to connect learning with performance and behaviour change
• What it takes to embed measurement into the entire learning process, not just the end

This isn’t about dashboards or data overload. 

It’s about designing for outcomes from the start — and knowing what success actually looks like.

Because if you don’t define impact, you’ll never be able to prove it.

LINKS:

• Connect with Nelson on LinkedIn 
• Check out HowNow
• Fancy reading Nelson’s book, Learning at Speed? Grab your copy here.

It's a question many of us have pondered - could that learning module have just been an email? How much of my learning is actually just information that I could communicate in a different way? In this podcast, Ashley invites two industry experts to talk about the world of learning and whether L&D REALLY could be replaced by marketing and comms. 

SHOW NOTES: 

• Dr Heidi Kirby's LinkedIn
• Heidi's BLOC podcast
• Loren Sanders' LinkedIn 
• Loren's book 
• Ashley's LinkedIn

Coming at you LIVE from LEARNING LIVE 2024... Ash and Han discuss one topic that has come up numerous times during this event: Market Research. No, it's not a sexy topic. But it's critical for your marketing for learning® success. So in this bitesized episode, we tell you how and why research is so important in L&D.

LINKS:

• Our latest ebook
• Han's LinkedIn
• Ash's LinkedIn 

In this ep, Han is joined by Sam Goodman, L&D Manager at ITPEnergised. Sam is a teacher, who has transitioned over to L&D – and for that reason he has a super interesting take on engagement at all stages of the learning experience. 

This episode covers a range of topics, including:

• Contextualising learning for your audience
• The power of humility in learning and marketing 
• How a marketing mindset will help L&Ders

And as Han promised in the ep, here's the link to the Learner Personas guide.

• Han's LinkedIn 
• Sam's LinkedIn 

Competitions are a great tactic to boost engagement, right!? Welllllllll... Han disagrees. And in this podcast episode she explains why. Listen in to learn more about:

• The cobra effect
• The pitfalls of incentivising learning
• When you can use competitions or incentives (but Han is still reluctant!) 

LINKS:

• Han's Linkedin
• The AIDAL episode of the podcast
• And a lil' shout out to Tom McDowall and his podcast, Instructional Design Tips