How to Build a Digital Marketing Learning Plan for Your Organization
Krista Neher
Jun 21 2016
Many agencies and marketing teams know that they need to improve the digital marketing skills and knowledge levels of their organization. To continue to be effective they must have a stronger understanding of exactly how digital marketing tools work, how and when to use them (strategy), how to measure success and sometimes how to implement.
When it comes to growing the digital marketing capabilities of your organization it can be difficult to know where to start. Here are 7 steps to get you started increasing the digital capabilities of your marketing team or agency.
1) Survey the Organization
Start by discovering where the organization is currently at. What are the current knowledge levels? What are the perceived risks and opportunities? What topics/competencies do people need to do their jobs more effectively?
2) Determine Your Desired State
Where do you want the organization to be? When do you want to get there? Identify the goals for your organization at a high level (more digitally savvy) and at a lower level (sales reps can adequately explain SEO to a client). Identifying where you want to be across roles, topics and skills in an organization will help you to see where you need to go.
3) Determine Your Resources
Determine the resources that you have available to you. This includes time, budget, people, tools, etc. While you may not know what type of budget is reasonable, start with a ball-park of what the organization may be willing to invest. It is easier to build a house when you know if you are looking to spend $100,000 vs. $1,000,000. Start with some knowledge about resources.
4) Build a Road Map
Create a road-map or a plan to increase capabilities. This should match up your desired state with your budget, resources and time. What will you do when? Who will do it? Too many companies start out with “we want a workshop” and do one-off executions vs. comprehensively addressing the issue. The plan probably involves a combination of live training, online training, internal experts, learning communities and more.
5) Implement
Implement your plan. Start rolling out – possibly with a test group or pilot and working into something bigger.
7) Measure
Measure your results. You won’t know what is and isn’t working if you don’t measure. Every organization is different – what worked for one may not work for you measure, measure, measure.
8) Repeat
Growing a skill-base isn’t a one-time thing. Continue steps 1 – 6 periodically to determine if the needs of the organization have changed, and how your training plan level-sets new people in the organization.
Too many organizations start with the solution “We need a workshop or we need online training” and fail to really address the problem that they want to solve.
If you are serious about growing skills in your organization a comprehensive plan will get you better results faster. If you don’t have the budget/time for a large organizational initiative consider creating a pilot to test your ideas, or choose to tackle one specific area first and then show results.
2 Replies to “How to Build a Digital Marketing Learning Plan for Your Organization”
Nice article..Now I started to planning digital marketing
Great blog! I own a consulting company, and the road map is great. Goal setting is a huge part about what needs to happen when determining or at least trying to determine ROMI. Great blog.
Nice article..Now I started to planning digital marketing
Great blog! I own a consulting company, and the road map is great. Goal setting is a huge part about what needs to happen when determining or at least trying to determine ROMI. Great blog.