How is Customer Education Different From Marketing?

Customer education often starts as a marketing initiative, which comes with surprising challenges.

As someone who moved into instructional design from communications and marketing, I can say there are some very clear parallels between industries.

For example, both require you to deeply understand your audience, create informational and influential messaging, craft behavioural interventions, and come up with ways of measuring impact.

However, there are some significant differences that can get in your way if not carefully planned for.

🕒 Space, time, autonomy:

When crafting marketing messages, we are often constrained to a short amount of text, speech, time or space. Wanting someone to take action, this format can lead us to focus on persuasive messaging.

Confusing persuasion with learning is a common mistake, they are not the same, and if someone takes a course that turns out to be a lengthy persuasion, they will resent you for it.

A learning resource should primarily help the learner and let them make their own decisions about how they use the information or skill learned.

💸 Don’t make it a sales pitch:

There’s a fine line between providing genuine educational content and subtly marketing your product. Customers may become skeptical if they perceive the education program as a thinly veiled sales pitch, leading to disengagement.

You don’t need to push that hard, the fact that your resources are hosted on your site is likely enough. Focus on delivering real value and solving customer pain points.

Only integrate marketing messages in a way that feels natural, like showcasing use cases or success stories rather than direct product promotion.

🧩 Unpack, clarify and provide context:

Again, the format can be challenging because learning experiences often require more depth than we are used to dealing with in other marketing and communication channels.

While you’re used to succinct and clear key messages that must be communicated, think of a learning objective as a key message that you use the space of a lesson to unpack and explore so that the user can make sense of it.

Keep things straightforward, practical and jargon free. What will they be able to do at the end of the learning experience? What skill or knowledge will they have, and how will it help them achieve their goals?