Increase Employee Awareness – Consulting & Accounting Firms

To increase awareness of PSI’s Inside the Industry® curriculums and wikis, we recommend building a multi-faceted marketing plan directed to your learner audience by:

Obtaining Buy-in
Building Awareness
Creating Incentives
Using Drip Marketing

To measure the success of your initiatives, we recommend tracking the following items (in addition to any specific metrics your team identifies):

• Number of new enrollees during the marketing period
• Number of new completions during the marketing period
• Number of new badges issued during the marketing period
• Length of time spent on landing pages related to the marketing initiatives

Obtaining Buy-In

For the campaign to be successful, buy-in has to happen (and be supported) at all levels of the organization. Below is our strategy for promoting the curriculums and wikis across various stakeholders (e.g., industry leads) and influencers to increase engagement and build an understanding of the offerings.

Leverage Senior Leadership

Engage senior practice leaders to discuss the importance of understanding industry and introduce the curriculums and wikis to build industry IQ. Approaches can include:

• Sending a series of emails to promote the curriculums and wikis to the learner audience:
  • Record a 30-second video discussing the value of understanding the industry, supported by a link to a written summary of the industry curriculums and wikis.
  • Provide a personal quote on the importance of understanding industry, supported by a summary of the curriculums and wikis. Include a learner testimonial and a link to the assets.
• Sending an email to learners’ direct managers informing them of the approach and encouraging them to promote the training with suggested messaging (sample emails) and other best practices to increase engagement.

Engage Managers

Engage managers to reinforce senior leadership messages about the importance of understanding their clients’ industry. Approaches can include:

• Draft a 15-30 second script and ask managers to personalize it and then leave a voice mail for their direct reports suggesting they complete the training
• Sending a series of emails to promote the curriculums and wikis to the learner audience:
  • Create a blog using a success story of a learner who completed the program and improved their performance, and ask managers to email about the curriculums and wikis with a link to the blog.
  • Provide a personal quote about the importance of understanding the industry supported with a written summary of the curriculums and wikis that includes a learner testimonial and a link to the assets.

Influence the Influencers

Engage high performers and influencers to reinforce senior leadership and manager messages about the importance of understanding the industry. Approaches can include:

• Send an email with a personal quote about the importance of understanding industry supported by a summary of the curriculums and wikis, a learner testimonial, and a link to the assets.
• Use a personal success story resulting from their improved industry knowledge after completing the curriculums and wikis in an email with a link. This success story can be the basis for the blog mentioned in the managers’ email.
• Draft a 3-5 minute scripted interview with Industry Leads that discusses the importance of knowing the client and their industry. This interview can be recorded as a video, podcast or written into a blog to be shared with learners.

Building Awareness

In addition to the initiatives above, you can also build awareness of the industry training by employing the following strategies:

• Add curriculum and wiki descriptions and links to the assets on intranet industry practice pages.
• Create web banners and short ads to post on intranet industry practice pages.
• Cross-sell the curriculums and wikis by discussing them at staff meetings, industry meetings, other training events, etc.
• Host a virtual or in-person training “open house.”
• Create spotlight ads for the LMS.
• Hang posters in common spaces or create digital signage for hub TVs to promote the curriculums and wikis.

Creating Incentives

To promote usage of the program, create incentive programs for learners that include:

• Create a competition to boost usage by putting the employees in a lottery if they complete the curriculum(s) by a specific date. Selected employees could earn:
  • Gift cards
  • Firm apparel or accessories
  • Lunch with senior leaders
  • Etc.
• Heighten recognition by having a senior leader pick the names of individuals that have completed the requested learning from the pool of learners
• Leverage and promote badging by highlighting learners that have earned their industry badge, sending recognition emails from senior management, promoting badges on LinkedIn, etc.

Using Drip Marketing

To ensure that the initiatives stay in front of employees, space the marketing initiatives out over time. Think of your marketing like a snack…which is how we like to consume information, and rather than send out one huge email…once a week, send a short email with a fact or other information tied to the industry training.