A lot of training lacks context, more specifically it lacks a framework to pull it all together. It’s just bits, but that’s where the demand is. Whether it’s B2B, or B2C, people seem to want very practical and tactical training. Here’s what I would look for if I was looking for B2B marketing training, and maybe what align.me should be providing.
I’d want the training to be B2B centric first and foremost. Then, I’d want it to give me a solid foundation, so that the tactics I got were within that framework or could operate cohesively within that framework. I’d want something that wasn’t already offered, and that had substantial group reinforcement. I would want there to be something that reinforced the training after it was done. Let me show you what I found, defend my recommendations, and expand on them.
B2B Marketing Training resources we found
We went looking for marketing training. We didn’t check B2B marketing but that was the filter through which I looked at things.
AMI
Now the other one that came up was the Australian Marketing Institute. The second industry body within Australia for marketers. Their courses, there were fewer of them, and their courses were a bit more traditional. Not many of them are available online, which I found interesting, mainly 1 day in length as the ADMA courses were.
Creative Collective
Next one I found was specifically from The Creative Collective, only one course for a $400 half day course. Interestingly enough I haven’t really learned a lot about marketing training generally from this agency.
Marketing Donut
Marketing and Sales training by Marketing Donut. I love that they call it the marketing donut because that’s exactly how much value I got out of this page, donut. It’s a page that’s really heavily optimized for sales and marketing training to make Google happy, but not to make you happy. There’s just about nothing there on marketing training that I can learn from.
I love this next one. I included it not because it came up in the search results but because it got 16,000 Facebook shares, which is impressive. It is based on a lot of self-pace learning, and you pay $400 or $600 for a couple of different bundles. I found that interesting and many other online courses do much the same.
I quite like the pay once and get immersed concept, however it is possible to have gotten a better subscription pricing for a larger organization and a better model. You get the idea, you pay a fee and you get access to all of the training for a reasonable period of time.
Summary
Here’s the essence of what I found. A lot of the training follows a short course structure; one-day seems to be the norm and a fair bit of it from industry groups. Much of it is focused on progressive trends such as the digital and social realm. I didn’t see a large proportion of the fundamentals that we are quite fond of like strategy, campaign design, tactic selection or measurement. Very little content on B2B which was disappointing. Going price seems to be around $600 US for a one day course. Online is usually cheaper and online bundles are very common.
Our view on B2B Marketing Training
My problem with all of that is the lack of content offered. There were lots of great tactics and practical tips, but doing the wrong thing really well is ultimately doing the wrong thing. You need a framework to work out what you should be doing. If I was looking for great B2B marketing training, here’s what I would go look for, and align.me should be getting ready to offer.
Anyhow, here’s what I think we need. It’s got to be B2B centric, and with the greatest of respect, lots of changes within B2B, the complexity changes, the cycles change, the deal sizes change, the tactics change. It needs to be centred on B2B otherwise it’s going to be interesting but irrelevant. I’d want the foundations first so it would give me that framework to think about then I can take the next step and choose the right tactics.
I’d want it in this order:
- B2B centric
- Foundational framework
- Tactics
- Reinforce that framework.
Speaking of reinforcement, this is what I would want in B2B marketing training. Despite what is done during the course, classroom or online the contents I would want help reinforcing that learning. It doesn’t matter if it’s online or classroom it’s not that critical. I think that what’s critical is the reinforcement. You might argue that online lends itself a little better to that.
There’s no pitch in here for our B2B marketing training because for 95% of the audience I can’t offer it to you in your country. We’ve travelled 20 countries, trying to deliver to approximately 5,000 marketers, however we are simply not geared up to deliver in most countries. So I won’t make that pitch. I will make one suggestion though, if you’ve already got Funnel Plan, there’s a lot of our training actually baked inside of it. Every single page has a 10-12 minute video explaining how to think about the question at hand. If you want to listen to practical tips on how to think about each of the questions within each page, there’s about 20 pages in Funnel Plan.
There’s a lot of B2B marketing training actually baked into Funnel Plan including in the free version. So if you haven’t got a funnel plan, go to funnelplan.com. Get yourself a copy of Funnel Plan as it will give you more depth, more analysis, more flexibility, even the free one includes the training that I’m referring to here.
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References:
- Australian Marketing Institute for 2015 Fundamental Workshops Program
- The Creative Collective for Social Media Training Course
- Marketingdonut for Marketing and Sales Training
- Simplilearn for Digital Marketing Certificate Associate Training (DMCA)
