Why Marketing Your Learning Program Is Just as Important as Creating It

Creating a learning program, whether it’s an onboarding course, certification path, or full-scale academy, is a significant investment of time, resources, and strategic effort. Instructional designers and education leaders work diligently to build experiences that are engaging, effective, and aligned to business goals.

But even the most well-designed program can fall short if it’s missing one critical component: visibility.

Too often, education teams operate under the assumption that if the content exists, learners will naturally find and engage with it. In reality, that rarely happens.

Without a strategic approach to marketing and promotion, learning programs risk being overlooked, underutilized, or forgotten altogether.

A Common Challenge for Education Leaders

This challenge is not unique. According to our 2025 State of Education-Led Growth Report, the majority of education teams report having little to no access to dedicated marketing support. Even in companies that prioritize learning and development, education initiatives are frequently launched with limited awareness campaigns and minimal reinforcement.

The result? Great content fails to reach the people it was designed for, and the business outcomes tied to those programs—things like improved productivity, reduced support tickets, faster onboarding, or higher retention—remain out of reach.

Marketing can fill the gap. It ensures that learning content doesn’t just exist, but is seen, understood, and accessed.

Why Marketing Deserves a Seat at the Table

Marketing a learning program isn’t about adding fluff or flashy slogans. At its core, marketing is about communication and connection. It answers three fundamental questions for your learners:

1. What’s available to me?
2. Why should I care?
3. How do I get started?

When learners clearly understand the value of your program and know how to engage with it, you create the conditions for meaningful learning experiences that lead to measurable results.

Marketing helps learning leaders:

• Build sustained awareness around education initiatives
• Align content delivery with learner needs and moments of readiness
• Reinforce the business value of education across internal and external audiences

Put simply, marketing isn’t separate from your education strategy—it’s a key part of making it successful.

A Toolkit Built for Resource-Constrained Teams

Recognizing this gap, we created a practical resource to support learning leaders who want to take their marketing efforts to the next level without needing a full team of copywriters, designers, or campaign managers.

Everything You Need to Successfully Market & Promote Your Education Program is a comprehensive toolkit designed to help education teams plan, execute, and measure their promotional efforts.

It includes both strategic guidance and tactical templates, allowing you to move from idea to implementation with confidence. Here’s a closer look at what’s included, and how to use it.

Start with Strategy: Setting a Strong Foundation

Before you write a single email or schedule a Slack announcement, it’s essential to clarify your foundational elements. The toolkit offers guided exercises and templates to help you define:

• Your Vision and Goals: What business problems are you solving through education? What outcomes are you aiming to achieve—improved adoption, higher retention, faster ramp times?
  
  
• Your Learner Audience: Who are your learners, and what motivates them? What are their needs at each stage of their journey—onboarding, retention, or upskilling?
  
  
• Your Value Proposition: Why should someone engage with your learning program? What sets it apart from other options they’ve encountered?

The included Campaign Brief, Messaging Framework, and Learner Journey Mapping Tools help you clarify these elements and build a strong foundation for messaging and outreach.

Channels and Use Cases: How to Promote Learning Effectively

The toolkit outlines the most effective marketing channels for education teams and explains when and how to use them, based on your program’s lifecycle. These include:

Email

Still one of the most reliable ways to reach learners, email remains essential for announcing new content, sharing updates, and delivering personalized messages. Use the Email Brief Template to plan campaigns that correspond with key milestones like:

• New course or certification launches
• Academy launches or re-launches
• Monthly or quarterly content digests
• Re-engagement emails for inactive users

Each of these email types has a specific purpose, and the toolkit provides practical examples to help you design each one for maximum clarity and impact.

In-App Messaging

For customer education programs, in-app messages meet learners at their point of need: within the product itself. These simple prompts can guide learners to start a course, complete a path, or revisit content tied to a specific feature or update. The In-App Modal Brief offers structure for planning timely and effective messages, with best practices for length, placement, and calls to action.

Internal Team Amplification

Internal teams like Customer Success, Enablement, Sales, HR, and Support often have existing communication channels with your audience. The toolkit outlines how to engage these groups and equip them with the right assets (i.e., a few bullet points, a short blurb, or a quick slide) for promoting new learning opportunities during team meetings, onboarding calls, or internal huddles.

Social Channels

Social media, both internal (Slack, Microsoft Teams) and external (LinkedIn), can reinforce learning culture and build momentum. The toolkit includes examples of how to:

• Celebrate certifications or learner achievements
• Run themed campaigns (e.g., “Skill-Up September”)
• Promote newly launched content or learning milestones

Web and Intranet

Learning content can be surfaced in high-traffic digital spaces like your organization’s intranet, product dashboards, or public website. Adding banners, feature tiles, and direct links to key learning pathways increases visibility and drives adoption.

Templates for Execution and Measurement

What makes this toolkit especially actionable is the plug-and-play resources included. For those who are managing multiple responsibilities, these tools help streamline execution and establish repeatable processes:

• Campaign Calendar Template: Plan and track multi-channel campaigns across time
• Sample Messaging Templates: Save time drafting emails, in-app messages, and social copy
• Performance Trackers: Monitor email engagement, A/B test results, and in-app click rates
• Internal Enablement Kits: Equip cross-functional partners with ready-to-use assets

Whether you’re launching a new academy or running a monthly content spotlight, these tools provide structure and focus to your efforts.

Turning Learning into Business Impact

Marketing is what moves your learning program from hidden to high-impact. It ensures the effort you put into building meaningful content leads to real outcomes—engaged learners, increased adoption, and measurable growth.

While not every education team has access to a dedicated marketing partner, every team can take intentional steps toward better promotion, communication, and visibility.

This toolkit was built to help you do just that.

Get Started

You’ve already done the hard work of building your learning experience. Now it’s time to help your audience discover it—and realize the value it brings. Download the toolkit today!