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Strategic Planning: Integrating People and Products
June 15, 2008

Sometimes I get a weird reaction when I explain our company and say that we don’t think there is any difference between marketing and training.  People have a hard time grasping the idea at first since historically the two have always operated in silos strictly independent of one another.  One department always handles the “people” while another takes care of the “products.”

But if you think about it, they are more similar than they are different.  Each has an audience and whether you are a marketer or a trainer, you need to motivate, educate and affect a target group of people.  Good marketers sell products, good trainers sell learning and good companies integrate the two.  A good marketer would never put a product "out there" and accept a dissatisfied customer, nor would he/she tolerate a product that didn't work or one that failed to capture the intended audience in full.  Training should be no different.  

So when compared, we see that the components are actually the same.  You have an objective around which you must build a message and then all of your strategies must be aligned and implemented to reinforce both.  

Posted by Donna Flagg on June 15, 2008 | Comments (0)