Marketing meets L&D: Ashley Hinchcliffe on how marketing can drive learner engagement

In today’s fast-paced workplace, employee engagement has become one of the most significant challenges for L&D teams. With distractions at every turn and competing priorities, it’s no longer enough for learning programs to simply exist- they need to actively capture attention and sustain engagement. 

L&D teams are no longer just competing with other business priorities; they are competing for the focus and time of their employees. By adopting a marketing mindset, L&D professionals can transform learning into an ongoing experience that captures attention, enhances participation, and drives measurable business impact.

In this conversation with Ashley Hinchcliffe, Managing Director at MAAS Marketing, we dive into how L&D teams can break away from traditional, content-centric approaches and embrace strategic, marketing-inspired thinking to transform learner engagement. 

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What’s the biggest misconception about learner engagement, and how does marketing help shift that perspective?

The biggest misconception is that learner engagement happens after the learning is launched – as if people will just magically show up because it exists. Spoiler alert: they won’t. Engagement starts before the learning product is even built. This is where marketing flips the script. It teaches L&D teams to stop thinking like content creators and start thinking like product marketers. If you can’t answer who it’s for, what problem it solves, and why someone would choose it over scrolling LinkedIn during their lunch break...you’ve already lost the engagement battle.

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L&D isn’t just competing with other priorities- it’s competing for attention. What marketing-inspired strategies have you seen work to break through the noise?

One word: relevance. Marketing works because it gets the right message in front of the right people at the right time. L&D can borrow from this with tactics like segmentation, learner personas, and campaign-style comms that treat attention like currency – because it is. A well-timed nudge, a bit of social proof, or a killer subject line can cut through a sea of corporate noise. People are human. And humans engage with curiosity, not compliance.

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Can L&D teams adopt marketing techniques to enhance learner engagement?

Absolutely – in fact, they must. Marketing principles give L&D the tools to become more audience-led, more strategic, and ultimately more impactful.

Some of the most effective strategies we use include:

• Developing detailed learner personas to guide messaging
• Creating multi-touchpoint campaigns, not one-off emails
• Using strong internal branding to boost recognition and recall
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One example: we worked with a client whose learning platform had just 8% active users. By applying a targeted, visual, email-only campaign grounded in newly developed personas, we tripled that engagement in just four weeks – hitting 24% active usage. No new tech. No budget increase. Just marketing thinking applied with laser focus.‍

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Could you share a specific example where you’ve used branding, storytelling, or other marketing concepts to increase engagement with learning?‍

Yes – and one standout example is from our work with Capgemini. We developed a multi-channel internal learning campaign that reached 82,000 employees in just 12 weeks. How? We treated it like a full-scale marketing launch. We started with deep audience and business insight, then designed an entire campaign experience – visual identity, targeted messaging, staggered rollout – all rooted in consistency and presence.
It wasn’t a ‘launch and leave’ approach. We showed up regularly, and it worked. It even won an award for “Awareness Campaign of the Year” at the British Training Awards. This kind of marketing-grade experience isn’t common in L&D – but it should be.

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Does creating a “brand identity” for learning programs help build emotional connections and foster a continuous learning culture? Have you seen this work?

‍Absolutely – and not just for aesthetics. A strong brand identity signals meaning and value. It tells people: “This is worth your time.” We’ve seen teams develop branded “learning movements” with rally cries, logos, and consistent messaging. The result? Recognition, recall, and (most importantly) repeat engagement. When learning starts to feel like part of the culture – not an interruption to it – you’re on your way to that elusive continuous learning loop. And branding plays a huge role in that transition.

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How can L&D teams leverage technology, social platforms, or other channels to effectively market learning opportunities within their organization?

Think multi-channel, not mono-email. Borrow from how consumer brands operate: they’re where their audience already is. That could be your internal Slack, Teams, Yammer, WhatsApp, or the company intranet. Use snackable content – gifs, polls, short-form video, testimonials – and schedule it like a campaign, not a one-off announcement. We’ve helped clients build “internal social influence” by partnering with respected employees to share peer-driven content. When learning spreads peer-to-peer instead of top-down? That’s when the magic happens.

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If you could make one bold prediction about the future of L&D, what would it be?

L&D’s future lies in behaving less like a service function, and more like a strategic growth engine. My bold prediction? The most impactful L&D teams will stop operating in silos and start thinking like marketers, product designers, and business partners – all at once. We’ve developed a model called the People Impact LoopTM that brings this thinking to life. It helps L&D teams close the gap between business need and human behaviour change by embedding marketing strategy, product design principles, and insight-led decision making across the entire learning lifecycle. Not just at the launch stage, but from the moment a learning problem is identified. This isn’t about surface-level engagement. It’s about building a self-fuelling system where audience understanding drives product design, which is supported by internal branding and campaigns, which in turn generates evidence of impact that keeps the loop turning. The future belongs to the teams who design with intent, communicate with clarity, and measure what matters. And those who don’t? They’ll keep flirting with failure.

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Key takeaways for L&D leaders: 

• Drive engagement before the launch: Don’t wait for learners to find your content. Begin with a deep understanding of your audience and their needs. Craft messaging that speaks directly to them, solving real problems and addressing specific pain points from the outset.
  
• Segment and personalize to boost relevance: Like marketers, L&D teams must create detailed learner personas and segment their audience. This allows for more precise targeting and enables you to design campaigns that feel personal and tailored, not generic or forced.
• ‍Leverage branding for emotional connection:  Build a strong brand identity for your learning programs. Use logos, slogans, and consistent messaging to signal value and make learning feel like a core part of the company culture. This approach fosters emotional connections with learners and leads to sustained engagement.
• ‍Embrace multi-touchpoint campaigns : Use a multi-touchpoint strategy to keep learners engaged. Instead of a single email or announcement, create ongoing campaigns that interact with learners across different channels. A consistent, multi-channel approach increases the chances of cutting through corporate noise and keeping learners engaged.

In a world where attention is the ultimate currency, L&D teams must rethink how they engage learners. The future of L&D lies in building continuous, strategic engagement- treating learning as an ongoing experience, not just an isolated event. By applying marketing principles, L&D teams can create impactful, memorable campaigns that keep learners engaged, drive business impact, and foster a culture of continuous development. By embracing marketing strategies, L&D professionals can break through the noise and transform learning from a task into a movement, leading to lasting change and measurable success.