How to Craft Learning Objectives That Make Content More Memorable…and Actionable
Imagine this: Kai downloads and reads an expert guide published by your team. The next day, Kai says to a colleague, “You know, we ought to consider trying X, because of Y. I’m pretty sure it will result in Z based on something I just read in a guide I downloaded from [insert your brand name here]. I’ll forward it to you.”
This is a clear win — and one that’s easily achievable when you use learning objectives to guide your content creation.
Learning objectives (LOs) define what you want your audience to get out of your content and what you want them to do. They’re your marketing goals, CTAs, and metrics all rolled into one tidy package. And, if you include them in your content briefs, they’ll help your team create content that’s memorable, meaningful, and spurs your audience to act.
After reading this article, you’ll immediately be able to create learning objectives to guide your next content package. (See what we did there? You just got your own learning objective!)
First, craft your goal.
Before you can create learning objectives, you must identify the overarching goal – or the specific purpose – for developing your marketing content or campaign. The learning objectives you create will help you reach this goal.
Goals may:
Inform your customers about a new offering
Persuade them to convert
Teach a new skill to improve competency
Change your employees’ behavior
Assess existing understanding
Here’s a goal template and example:
Template: This marketing content/campaign will lead [X audience] to [X action].
Example: This marketing campaign will lead 10,000 prospects to download the app.
Next, draft your learning objectives.
Once you’ve identified your goal, you can begin to draft learning objectives that support it. The “ABCD” model makes it easy. Here’s how it works.
1. ABCD – Select Your Audience
Whether your goal is to teach, persuade, or change, your audience is learning something from your content. You aren’t targeting passive consumers; you’re targeting active learners. What’s their prior knowledge? What are the learning-related pain points that may hold them back? This information will help you tailor your objectives and effectively reach each segment.
Examples include new employees, long-term clients, prospects. We’ll pick “prospects” for the examples below.
2. ABCD – Identify Their Desired Behaviors
What do you want your audience to learn – or get out of – the content you’re producing? These “behaviors” should tie directly to the overarching goal.
Goal: This marketing campaign will lead 10,000 prospects to download the app.
Now, we imagine you want the behavior to be “understand my useful product.” After all, our customers’ journeys begin with understanding. But how do we know that our audience actually gets it without some sort of demonstration?
For this reason, try to choose clear and actionable verbs that describe what the learner will be able to do after engaging with your content. Some common action verbs include:
identify
describe
apply
analyze
evaluate
discuss
compare
create
Here is an example of an actionable behavior:
"I want prospects to be able to identify ways my app solves their pain points.”
3. ABCD – Provide the Condition
Next, determine the conditions or context in which your learners will demonstrate their knowledge or skills. Learning objectives often begin with the condition of consuming the content; for example, “After watching this YouTube video” or “After reviewing this whitepaper…,” but they may also include the specific conditions through which the audience will perform the behavior.
Here’s how to build in conditions using the previous example:
“Prospects will be able to identify ways my app solves their pain point by answering reflection questions.”
4. ABCD – Identify the Degree
The final letter in the ABCD method is all about defining the performance criteria and success measurements for how well your audience should perform the task set in the learning objective. They provide information such as:
How much
How long
To what extent
How accurately
Here’s how the we might tie it all together:
“After watching the explainer video, prospects will be able to identify three specific ways my app solves their pain points by answering the reflection questions before exiting the platform.”
Finally, communicate and apply!
Now that you’ve created learning objectives like a pro, put them to work! Include them in your content briefs so all team members can refer to them throughout the content creation process – from discovery and research to design or post-production. Because the prospect who is clearly able to identify and articulate how your app solves their pain points? Well, they are downloading that app.
Pro Tip:
Consider reworking your learning objectives to be audience-facing and including them in the content. This helps your audience understand what they are expected to achieve and how the content will benefit them.
Here’s how the learning objective we put together in our Step 4 may be modified for your customer-facing content:
“After watching this explainer video, you should be able to identify three specific ways your work processes could be improved by using our app consistently for a month.”
Related posts:
11 Tenets for Instructional Marketing Content
