Quorim Blog

In my research I came across a very interesting post by Jim Novo on the Marketing and Productivity Blog.  What is a marketing and web-analytics guy doing at a training event - before I could even ask the question, he answered it-

 I’m here on behalf of the Web Analytics Association scouting out vendors to administer the Certification test we are developing for web analysts, and to learn everything I can about best practices in Certification.  One of the challenges is we are looking to certify folks not on “software” related issues like implementation / set-up (the vendors do a fine job here) but on the business side, where the issues are often not as quantifiable as they are in software land. 

I thought that his observations on the event, particularly from the point of view of an outsider were very interesting 

1.  Virtually none of these Training / HR folks have ever heard of web analytics before.  They have no idea what the heck I am talking about, or that web analytics people even exist from an HR perspective.  The typical response is “we could have used somebody like that when we were setting up our Intranet … what is their typical job title and who do they report to?”

 2.  The primary model used in training course development is called ADDIE.  It stands for:

Analyze
Design
Develop
Implement
Evaluate

which is a formal sequence of tasks where “Evaluate” has an arrow looping back up to the top pointing to Analyze, meaning you repeat the sequence and there is a continuous improvement process.  Hmm, that sounds kind of familiar, where have I seen this before?  Perhaps filed under Best Practices for web site development?

3.  Lots of the communication and behavioral models used in Marketing are used in Training - Training is in many ways a specialized kind of Marketing.  I initially thought I was dead wrong about this but when I put forth the idea, nobody threw me out of the room or called me a Newbie.  So I think there is something worth exploring about this parallel, especially since e-Learning delivered through web interfaces is a big deal to these folks.

The most interesting to me was the last one. His assertion that “training is in many ways a specialized kind of Marketing”. Microsoft views training as part of marketing (and unfortunately it shows). but more to the point, how could we as training centers make training part of marketing. Could we “give away” training as ways to demonstrate expertise, capability and professionalism?; or seed the market with tantalizing tidbits of training that lead to the realization that more is needed? or provide training as a public service in key areas that serve to drive demand and awareness?  I have to believe that there are some “professional” ways to do this that do not create the impression that we are just like Microsoft.

His other observations raise some additional questions. To what extent are we using web analytics as part of marketing and sales process?