Hear from our Head of Marketing, as she shares her key LMS marketing strategies to help you up your learner engagement

Learner engagement continues to be one of the biggest L&D challenges. 

And for good reason. 

Getting your learners on board with an LMS and its content is hard work. 

Especially if that LMS is not embedded as a key tool, and you’re not promoting learning as a core part of your culture. 

Keep reading to learn some key tips that could help you boost your LMS and learning content. 

7 LMS marketing strategies that work 

Before you begin, there are a few things you need to do. 

Firstly, think of your LMS as a product. 

It’s no longer just an LMS. It’s a product that you are trying to sell. 

And when that becomes the case, it means it can be branded and marketed. 

Reframing this allows you to learners at its heart, and refocus your strategy. 

Next, you need to ensure you understand why your learners need an LMS and training courses. 

Related: L&D-related statistics you need to know

A big part of this is also understanding your learners, so it could be worth investing in a learner survey. 

Lastly, you need to create a brand for your LMS. You might want it to reflect your general organisational brand, or you may want it to be an entity of its own. 

Either way, make sure it has a tone of voice guide as well as brand guidelines that specify the colours, fonts and styling to use. 

Remember, BuildEmpire allows you to apply global branding settings. And, you can create separate branding for separate tenants, which gives you more time to focus on learning content and strategy. 

Tip #1 – Understand your target audience

Before you create an effective LMS marketing strategy, you need to first understand who your strategy is trying to appeal to. 

This involves segmenting your potential users based on their industry, job roles, educational needs, and pain points. 

While demographics are important, it’s the pain points you want to focus on. 

Speak to your users and better understand their needs. Surveys and and questionnaires can help you better understand your audience and most importantly: 

• What challenges they face 
• What they want to improve at in their role 
• What are their goals 

This understanding will guide you in tailoring your messaging and positioning to meet their specific needs and solve their problems.

Tip #2 – Find your influencers & champions

Influencers and champions can play a crucial role in promoting your LMS. 

61% of consumers find relatable influencers most appealing.

Look for industry experts, educators, and thought leaders within your workplace who can vouch for the impact of your platform. 

These influencers can help you reach a broader audience and lend credibility to your offering. 

Establish partnerships or collaborations with them to create testimonials, case studies, or even webinars. 

Having internal champions who can advocate for your LMS based on their positive experiences will make a huge impact. These advocates can help you gain trust and demonstrate real-world applications of your LMS.

People tend to listen to other people as opposed to ‘business voices’. Introducing new learning concepts or content can feel pretty abstract, but hearing about someone’s lived experience of it can make it much more enticing. 

Secondly, if you have a sense of ‘community’ in your workplace, which you likely will, then learning can easily become another pillar of that. 

Your influencers can be rallied to spread the word, create intrigue and also collect feedback. 

Tip #3 – Put design ahead of marketing 

User experience, or UX, is everything. 

In fact, 50% of L&D professionals cite poor UX among the biggest barriers to learning technology satisfaction 

Design and content are huge parts of this. 

The user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design of your LMS should be prioritised as it’s a reflection of your product’s quality and functionality. 

A well-designed LMS not only attracts users but also enhances their learning experience, which can be a strong selling point. 

Invest in creating an intuitive, aesthetically pleasing, and user-friendly interface. 

This means easy navigation, responsive design, and a visually appealing layout. 

When your LMS is easy to use and enjoyable, it becomes a powerful marketing tool in itself, as users are more likely to recommend it and share their positive experiences.

Tip #4 – Use all of your marketing channels 

Effective marketing involves utilising a variety of channels to reach your audience. The same can be said for your LMS and learning content. 

Email campaigns

We can’t talk about LMS adoption without talking about email. 

Targeted email campaigns can work, but you need to put more effort into the content to drive traction. 

Social media 

Think about where your learners are being social, and find smart ways to infiltrate those spaces with your content (as long as it is relevant!). 

For example, you could use your champions to share team-specific content in team Slack channels. This puts more onus on people to engage as there’s more relevancy and a more direct implication as opposed to sharing a mass message in a company-wide chat. 

In-app notifications

If you’re getting users onto your LMS for social purposes, then you could then investigate utilising in-app notifications for further engagement. 

In-app notifications and pop-ups can help to guide users through the LMS and prompt actions. You can set up automated notifications based on specific actions and previous learning content. 

Banner and pop-ups 

On your Intranet, or on the LMS itself, you could use web banners and pop-ups to promote LMS content. 

As we’ve said before, be mindful of your CTAs. Use compelling text to drive clicks. 

Remember, while you might send an email notification to users to complete learning, they might click on and then click off because they’re busy, or they might just delete the email.

Repetitive marketing messaging keeps your learning content front of mind. 

Tip #5 – Steal from social media 

Social media is a treasure trove of marketing strategies that can be adapted for your LMS. 

Observe how successful brands use social media to engage their audience, create compelling content, and drive interactions. 

For instance, you can leverage engaging visuals, infographics, and short videos to highlight key features of your LMS. 

While it’s not about sharing content on your external social platforms, you could utilise your internal ones. That’s channels like Slack, or your workplace Intranet. 

Remember, the main thing you need to take away from social is the ability to build a community and find your niche. 

Accounts on social media do well when they own their niche. 

By owning a niche they can create a community that is passionate about that niche. The same applies for an LMS. 

In order to build your own community, you need to establish authority on what your expertise is. Of course, you will probably cover multiple different courses on a range of topics, but think about how you can link these with a common thread. 

Engaging users in this community is simple. 

Just follow what they do on social media. 

First off, break down your learning content into snippets.  

After all we learn better when we receive information in short pieces.

Engage your influencers and advocates and encourage them, and others who have taken part in your learning already, to share their own content. 

That could be blogs, videos, and discussion posts. This not only enriches the LMS but also boosts engagement through peer interaction.

Jump on trending topics. 

This could be linked to the latest Netflix release e.g. campaign collateral to look like a letter from Lady Bridgerton, or friendship bracelets inspired collateral inspired by Taylor Swift. 

Find the relevancy and draw it in to start conversations and be different. 

 Implement microlearning modules and “stories” that deliver bite-sized content, similar to Instagram or Snapchat stories, to maintain user interest and engagement.

And don’t forget about gamification. 

You see plenty of videos and content around games and quizzes online. And gamification has a role to play in learning too. 

After all, research shows interactive learning overcomes learning barriers and improves learners’ motivation.

Other key social media features

You could consider migrating to your L&D strategy include: 

• Likes and comments: Enable features that allow users to like and comment on courses, modules, and discussion posts. This fosters a sense of community and interaction.
  Create a community, and a bit of a safe space, for your learners to ask questions to colleagues. Creating spaces for learners to interact, ask questions, and share knowledge encourages peer-to-peer learning which can lead to better learner retention rates compared to traditional lecturing methods..
• Sharing and tagging: Allow users to share achievements, certifications, and progress with their colleagues. Tagging peers in discussions or content can increase visibility and engagement.
• Hashtags: Use hashtags within your LMS to categorise content, making it easier for users to find relevant materials and join conversations.

Tip #6 – Make your content findable 

When you’ve spent all that time and money on your learning content, you want people to engage with it. In order to do that, you need to make your content as findable as possible. 

You could create a QR code and put it on posters, newsletters etc. These would link directly to specific courses and resources. 

You can get smart with this and put QR codes in physical places that are relevant to your learning content, for example first aid courses by your first aid kit and so on. 

Or, if you’re hosting face to face learning, you could add QR codes to link learners to supplementary materials. 

You can also get creative with marketing your learning. 

Have fun with it (where appropriate of course). 

Tip #7 – Incentivise your learners 

Incentives can be a powerful motivator for potential and current users of your LMS.

Some learning apps do a really good job of engaging learners and keep them coming back. 

One such app is Duolingo. 

The gamification of learning a language all within a mobile app allows users to access learning wherever they are, and have fun while they’re doing it. 

And now you can do the same in your own LMS.

Adding in gamification elements like points and leaderboards with our BuildEmpire Edition allows you to incentivise return users. 

You can add in details such as badges, certificates, or even gamification elements to encourage continued engagement and completion of learning modules. 

Totara already offers badges as part of learning. 

These badges are hosted across the LMS meaning the user will always see what they have earned so far. 

But we took it a step further. 

We’ve customised this so that users can also see what badges they’re eligible for depending on the learning content they’ve started.