Want to Earn the Attention of the Widest Audience? Think Like a Professor

If you can remember a particular class or course from college, there’s a secret reason. Your professor probably appealed to your learning preference. It’s an instructional design trick that the best instructors use to help adult students learn more effectively. And it works just as well in marketing.

Here’s the science: We’re more focused, interested, and likely to remember content – and a brand – if it’s presented in a way that appeals to us. And what makes content appealing to Elisa may not work for Alyssa.

Our preferences aren’t fixed, nor are they exclusive. In fact, our preferences can change based on the topic or channel, and we can have more than one preference. With all these unknowns, what’s a marketing professional to do? It’s actually quite simple: Make sure your content addresses as many learning preferences as possible so you can appeal to the widest audience.

As Instructional Marketers™, we take these preferences into account as we design customer personas, and ask three specific questions to unveil them when performing audience research.

Here’s a list of common learning preferences and the content tactics you can use to reach them!