Training companies need to follow one piece of marketing advice -'personality counts for more than looks'. To earn true return on marketing spend, trainers need to be showcasing this to their target market. Nick Golding explains...
One of the most boring questions in existence has to be this one: 'Who was your favourite teacher at school?'.
"Mr Jennings, a short but clever man", was the accurate if not slightly disrespectful description that I once gave of my 'favourite' teacher at school, when asked by the headmaster, and though I was only young at the time and my honest approach was, luckily, not taken too seriously, I feel like I did expose a gaping flaw in this often-asked question.
By asking this question in a slightly different way we would actually discover something much more valuable, so how about: ‘What was it about your favourite teacher at school that you admired so much?’
If this was the question, I think we'd actually hear far more about the personality of the teachers that made them so incredibly unique, and why their teaching had such a profound impact on helping us to get to where we are today.
Working with training companies, I think about this a lot, because when we pull together marketing strategies it is so crucial for trainers to understand that they are always more than a name and a business; personality and character are fundamental to the engagement process. For me, this is a universal rule.
Why is this so important for training businesses? Success relies on strong relationships, on people engaging with you as an individual and responding to your delivery and your approach. But, it is something that is easily forgotten.
The digital maze
In a digital marketing world of social media channels, email marketing, video and online content, focus can easily fall onto the tools used, rather than the person steering them. How you convey your personality and engage with your market, however, remains the deciding factor when it comes to earning a return on these platforms, and failure to acknowledge this can result in some pretty severe consequences.
"How you convey your personality and engage with your market remains the deciding factor when it comes to earning a return on these platforms...failure to acknowledge this can result in some pretty severe consequences."
Not least, completely missing out on engaging with your target market for not being 'you' and succumbing to the beautiful charms of Facebook and Twitter.
These channels are designed to spread messages, but unless care is taken with the words put in at the top, and how they add value to the people you want to reach, they could end up doing more harm than good. After all, isn't effective training reliant on strong relationships being built between trainer and delegate?
Often in marketing we talk about the importance of consistency, and I think this is appropriate here: once you know what your unique approach actually is (ask yourself what delegates say about your personal style of training), think about the ways you can convey this in your marketing.
Another great tool is video on websites - they are becoming more and more popular in the training industry, and so they should. It gives trainers the ideal opportunity to showcase their skills and show any visitors to their site just how powerful they are in front of an audience. Sounds great, but not when the final video is of a completely different person and is just about selling the company rather then conveying the unique personality and offer.
What does your homepage say about you?
It's the same deal with website homepages, because when the language and design of the site is formal and devoid of character or personality, there is a good chance visitors will make assumptions about the kind of work the business delivers.
The technology and digital platforms will only take you part of the way when it comes to marketing within the training industry, there needs to be buy-in from you as well, this is when you can effectively market your unique proposition, which more often than not, is you.
If I think about it, the reason I regarded my 'favourite' teacher so highly was because he allowed people to get to know 'him' - he brought personality to the classroom, and gave me something to remember and take away. As trainers, from a marketing point of view, it is vitally important to remember what specifically you liked about your favourite teacher, and use that as a platform to effectively market your own unique style, or that of your company, if you want to build long term relationships with clients that still give you a mention in passing some 20 years down the track.
Nick Golding is a director at digital agency for the training and HR industry, GoldSand Digital
