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Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro

Strategies to Ignite Learning

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Use Marketing Strategies to Captivate and Persuade Your Audience

At first glance, marketing and L&D may seem like an unlikely combination. But upon closer inspection, both fields share two core goals: getting people’s attention and influencing their behavior. Marketing involves captivating, persuading, and creating value—all of which are key to learning design. When done well, learning design grabs participants’ attention like a great marketing campaign and engages them emotionally and intellectually to make learning stick. In this innovative volume, marketing and L&D experts Bianca Baumann and Mike Taylor ask: How can L&D pros make learning programs more effective by thinking like expert marketers?

To answer that question, Baumann and Taylor explore the potential of marketing-inspired L&D, diving into essential marketing principles, strategies, and techniques and applying them to learning experience design to improve learning transfer. With a learner-centric perspective, the authors explain the science of marketing, how to use personas, and how to craft a successful learner journey. They cover effective writing, the use of powerful graphics, how to plan and execute a winning learning campaign, how to harness technology, and the all-important activities of evaluation and learning analytics.

L&D pros will learn new ways to capture their target audience’s attention and influence their behavior. Each chapter includes engaging stories from Baumann and Taylor’s work in the field, case studies, and definitions of essential marketing concepts and how they apply directly in the L&D environment, plus activities and tools instructional designers can apply immediately to transform their learning programs.

Book Details

  • ISBN: 9781960231192

  • Pages: 240

  • Publication Date: May 2025

  • Formats: Paperback, PDF

  • Product Code: 112507

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About the Authors
Bianca Baumann

Bianca Baumann is a seasoned L&D strategist with more than 15 years of experience. She is passionate about consulting on effective new solutions to serve learners’ needs. She’s developed processes, methodologies, and frameworks to help organizations meet their growth targets with the help of innovative L&D approaches. Bianca has helped dozens of organizations with their workforce transformations, as well as onboarding and reskilling programs. She has also spearheaded multiple projects in the marketing, automotive, financial, and events industries, creating award-winning programs along the way. Bianca speaks at international conferences and is a facilitator at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Mike Taylor

With more than two decades of experience as a learning consultant, Mike Taylor has been a driving force behind transformative instructional design and organizational performance. Known for his captivating speaking style and influential newsletter, Mike is dedicated to making learning more engaging, accessible, and effective.

Praise for this Book

“As an EdTech consultant advising chief learning officers, I can confidently say this book is a game-changer for L&D leaders. It brilliantly bridges the gap between traditional L&D and modern marketing, offering invaluable insights for creating compelling digital learning experiences.”

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“So much value on every page! Bianca and Mike have struck the right balance of instilling high-impact strategies and tactical design advice. Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro is essential reading for any learning and talent leader who is looking to elevate their practice and bring fresh perspectives to their teams. Keep this one beside your desk at all times.”

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“Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro presents a compelling argument for combining marketing ideas and strategies with current L&D techniques to create a powerful combination with the potential to take the L&D function to the next level. Bianca Baumann and Mike Taylor have created a work that will help you envision and achieve a future in which employees eagerly take charge of their learning journeys, acquire new skills, and apply them in real time through this unique intertwining of disciplines. The writing team provides actionable strategies, ideas, and concepts that empower L&D professionals to create training that captivates, motivates, and delivers lasting impact. This book will change the way you think about developing instruction forever.”

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“‘Get attention, influence behavior’—the book recognizes that these are the central concerns of both learning designers AND marketers, and that learning designers have a lot to learn from marketers on these topics. Packed full of useful tools and frameworks, this book has so much material to help create more engaging and impactful learning.”

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“This is the L&D and marketing crossover you are looking for. Discover how to transform dull learning content into engagement gold with skimmable writing, snappy headlines, and calls to action that demand action.”

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“Dang! I love this book. Bianca and Mike have written the go-to resource for what-to and how-to for instructional designers and the leaders who guide them. Insightful, readable, actionable, and chock full of activities, this is a must-read for you and your team.”

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“Mike and Bianca have written a masterpiece on how to capture and keep learners’ attention. This how-to guide is filled with research-backed tips for learning professionals who need to create training programs that get business results. Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro is a handbook with practical advice for communicating and capturing attention in a busy world. It belongs on everyone’s bookshelf.”

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