7 Tips to Create a Culture of Learning for Your Digital Marketing Team

Marketing is an ever-evolving profession. Successful professionals and successful companies have an attitude of continuous learning. Those who enter the corporate world with the mindset that they have nothing left to learn are the ones whose tactics don’t bring results.

Companies are quickly learning that it should be among their best practices to offer continued training for their teams. Digital marketing education can include new tools and tactics for, among other things, social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, and search engine marketing, as well as new ways to implement creative consumer engagement solutions. Training that helps your digital marketing team keep abreast of new strategies will help keep their creative juices flowing to produce innovative campaigns to meet company engagement goals.

Many of today’s workforce expects continued learning opportunities once they accept a job with a company. Providing them with those opportunities helps to keep their job satisfaction ratings higher. Here are some tips for creating a learning culture within your company.

1. Take the Lead

How management approaches learning will affect how the rest of the team approaches it. If your leaders pursue digital marketing education for themselves, the team will be more likely to embrace the same opportunities. Additionally, leaders who have attended a particular digital marketing conference can bring what they learned back to the team and hold their own seminars on the subject. Presenting a talk on an interesting new marketing trend they learned about at a conference is one way to show the team they value learning about new solutions and staying relevant in the industry.

2. Some Training Must Be Mandatory

While learning can be a fun part of the job, some training needs to be considered a mandatory part of the job. Otherwise, other things will take precedence over learning opportunities. So, everyone in the company should be required to complete certain learning activities with specified regularity based on company goals.

3. Recognise Employee Learning

Recognition can be a powerful motivator, so when someone learns new skills, acknowledge that. Encourage learning opportunities that lead to applying for certificates that will help further the employee’s career. Also, promote an environment where employees help each other by sharing what they’ve learned in classes or conferences.

4. Make Your Company Learning Goals Clear

The company culture applies to the entire company, but you can’t expect people just to know what you want. You have to communicate your expectations for creating a culture of learning. Make sure that everyone understands that you feel a learning culture will benefit them individually as well as the company as a whole. Enlist the assistance of the HR department in promoting learning opportunities.

5. Normalise Learning

Encourage your employees to seek other learning methods beyond your formalised training sessions. Let employees know that finding their own learning materials is perfectly acceptable. TED talks, podcasts, videos, books, seminars, and conferences all provide valuable learning opportunities.

6. Measure and Adapt and Then Do It Again

Digital marketing is a world of constant change. You and your team must be prepared to adapt quickly as methods change. Staying knowledgeable about new trends and tactics will help you stay at least one step ahead of the game.

7. Learning Can Be Fun and Easy

There are many ideas for making learning a fun prospect. Learning over Lunch with pizza or a coffee can satisfy your team’s mind and belly in one fell swoop. Create simple yet powerful learning opportunities for your team.

Key Takeaway

Continued learning is a powerful tool for employee satisfaction and retention. Facilitate both mandatory and spontaneous learning opportunities while at work. Encourage continued growth through learning by encouraging those learners to share their newfound knowledge with the entire team. If you need other suggestions for facilitating a culture of learning, contact our Academy team to find out what learning opportunities we have available.

Patrick Fox