Learner Personas- How thinking like a marketer can transform learning with Bianca Baumann

Welcome to TFR This Feels Right podcast. Every episode, we're sharing impactful communication skills you need, or you didn't even know that you needed them until you've listened to this episode. I'm Joel Silverstone, your host, and I'm excited to have you on this journey with us. I'm also the founder of TFR This Feels Right, where for over 25 years, we've been helping leaders, and teams from top organizations build and elevate their communication skills in presentations, team building, and difficult conversations. And if you want to learn more, head on over to thisfeelsright.ca. All right, before we get to our episode, we kindly ask you to do us a favor. If you could leave a review, a rating, and subscribe so you don't miss an episode of impactful communication skills that feel right. Let's get to our show. Today's episode, learner personas, why thinking like a marketer can transform learning. Our guest is Bianca Bowman, who I saw speaking at Disrupt HR where we were both presenting. But Bianca, well, she had the room leaning in talking about learner personas. And Bianca knows all about this as the VP of Learning Solutions and Innovation. And Bianca has led award-winning programs across many industries and is a featured speaker at global conferences. So in this episode, we're gonna be diving into how learner personas can help us design training that actually connects. Also, Bianca's exploring insights from the book that she co-authored, and I love this title, Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro, coming out in May 2025. Let's meet Bianca. Bianca, have you done a vocal warm-up before before we started?

I actually have not, but maybe a little song would have not been a bad idea.

Oh, do you do you have a song?

I no, I don't have a song unfortunately, but I'm going to put it on my list and so I'll have one for future podcasts. It's a really good idea. I like perfect jingle.

Yes, a little jingle. Yeah, it's Bianca. Da da da da da da da da. Bianca. So, Bianca, we're talking about learner personas.

That's right.

We'll talk a little bit later about the book that you've got coming up about learner personas. But as soon as I heard learner personas and then I saw your amazing talk at Disrupt HR, and then of course, you've got the book that's coming up with it. And even though I saw the talk, I'm still fascinated by this idea of learner personas. Maybe you could share with us like, where did this come from, this idea to make this a talk and to write a book about Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, first off, the book is so much more than just learner personas, but it's a big part of it. So when I started my career back in the days, and no worries, I won't take you all the way back, but I worked for a marketing organization and I was actually teaching marketers on how to be better marketers. And while I was doing that, I realized there's a big overlap actually between learning and development professionals and marketers in terms of what we're trying to do, which is really changing behavior. ears, right? And getting attention. And so what marketers do really well is they have that concept of buyer or customer personas, and that is really where the idea of learner personas is, is coming from. Others say it comes from design thinking, right? In the empathize phase, there's learner personas in there as well. So more on that user interface and systems training. But, uh, you know, given that I am or that I'm in that niche of marketing. So for me, that's really where it was born. And, and what it really means is you want to truly understand who your audience is. Now you might say, well, don't we do that when we do a target audience analysis? Yeah, we kind of get into that, but it's really usually much more high level. And we look at demographic information like how long have they been with the organization, what's their job role, where do they live, do they work remotely, hybrid, in the office, right? But with learner personas, you really take this a step further because now we're not just asking, you know, what they do in their jobs every day. We ask what they see, what they hear, what they think and feel. And that is like the, the missing piece from the target audience analysis is that thinking and feeling. And once I have an understanding of that, I can synthesize the pain points and the needs of my persona, and I can just design training with the, the learner at the center and make it meaningful to them.

I think every— on behalf of every person who has been on the other side of a learning, they're going, thank you.

You are welcome. And, you know, I, I've been in the shoes of like, I, I apologize to all the learners out there that had to go through my initial e-learnings that I put together. I think we, we all have those in our closet, and that's okay.

What, what I like about this also is You know what I'm hearing? Because the thinking and the feeling is— and it's not just on their job because we're more than just our job title. And so this is going a little bit deeper that might make it more motivating for someone to want to show up, to be engaged at the learning. They could see what's in it for them. Is that correct?

You got it 100%. So one of the things I like about it is to your point, we're looking at this person as a person, not just as a learner that, you know, who shows up to hopefully be at their very best every day at work. But we really try to— we're really trying to understand who they are outside of work, because I don't know about you, but when I come to work, I'm still the same person than I am with my friends and my family outside of work. I have dreams, I have aspirations, I have goals, and all of that I bring. And so what, what learner personas help us do is we, you know, we sit down ideally and interview these learners to really understand who they are and what drives them. And that actually allows us to create meaning at work for them. And it helps us answer that one really, really crucial question: am I making a difference? Hmm.

Yeah, which that caught me off guard because that is such a that is such a big question. Am I making a difference? And then that's the kind of question where you kind of go. It's it's such a good question because it stops you to and forces you to think. Am am I making a difference? So tell me a bit more about maybe some examples of what you discovered when you were when you started this process of finding out what people are thinking and feeling, and and maybe what. What were some of the answers to, am I making a difference, or some of the thoughts? Maybe, maybe not an answer, maybe some of the thoughts to it around, am I making a difference?

I mean, it really depends on each project. Each project is different, right? So you would start learner personas not for something small. So let's say someone comes up to you and say, hey, I have this need, and there really is a need for a 2-hour workshop on something. It's, it's rather short, a small deliverable. So you probably wouldn't go through the process of developing these learner personas, but think bigger. Think transformational projects, onboarding programs, or health and safety programs, something that's, you know, happening every year, like an annual program. Because now you can really— the time you spend on designing and developing these personas will be well worth it because, you know, you have something recurring, or like I said, like a transformational project. But What I like to do is I like to ask questions that are not necessarily related to training, because then you really get to that, am I making a difference? Because you need to understand who these people are. So I usually start with, tell me about yourself.

Yeah.

People love talking about themselves, right? And you get different answers. Some people really start on, well, I get up at, you know, 6 o'clock in the morning and I go for a run. They kind of walk you through their day. Um, and others start telling you about their work specifically. So right away in that question, I can get a feel for, okay, you know, what kind of person am I dealing with? Are they very focused just right now on work because this is a work-related interview, or they're more open to actually sharing a little bit more? And then I like questions such as, well, tell me about your typical day, just if they haven't answered it with the first question yet. You know, what makes you get up out of bed every morning? What delights you? Why do you like coming to work? And then also, obviously, what are some of the challenges? And you usually don't even have to ask questions specifically about training because it will come up, right? It will come up because everyone does not like their LMS. It's just one of those things. It always comes up, right?

Yeah.

But yeah, in terms of am I making a difference, what it really comes down to often is You know, do I get direct feedback or even indirect feedback that what I put in actually has an impact on someone? I like— that is what it often comes down to. People want to see how their work impacts people around them, and that could be internally, that could be externally.

Yeah.

But in my experience, that's usually where the rubber hits the road about that question of like, am I making a difference? What kind of impact do I have? And how can I change what I'm doing right now to have an even That's, that's amazing.

That's amazing insight. Yeah.

Right. And that's where the training program needs to dock on, so to say, right? Like, we really got to figure out, OK, so what is it? What is it that they see? How can they get feedback right away? How can they see the impact? How can I tie that into my, my learning design, right?

Because it's— this is more than just a skill-based learning, learning how to open the door, so to speak. It's learning how to open the door because what is the impact that that has on the people going through that? that door. And it's that sense of purpose. So it shifts really how we're thinking. I love this.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I like that it's, you know, you were talking a little bit about, you know, off the shelf earlier when we were off camera. And you had gone to a conference and you were just amazed about how much money was being spent on sort of on content libraries. So maybe talk about that and how this fits in with learning personas as well. Yeah.

So I I was doing a session with Mike Taylor and we talked about 5 things you should steal from marketing. And it was really all about, well, learner personas were in there, but also how to write good content, visuals. And anyway, you know, one of the attendees came up to me after and he says, well, you know, I could really use your help because our HR department just purchased an off-the-shelf library for soft skills courses and they spent 6 figures on this. And he wasn't part as the L&D person. He wasn't part of that decision for one. But, you know, he came to me, he's like, I know this is a problem because how are these learners, A, supposed to pick what's right for them? How am I going to let them know what's available to them? How can I make sure it has an impact? Right? And so, um, this is my message to everyone who thinks about buying off-the-shelf content. It, it, it's nothing wrong with that in general. But you've got to really think about your target audience. You've got to think about your learner personas and understand what needs they actually have. Soft skills is, I mean, it's a very vague term, right? So now this poor guy is sitting there with 1,000+ courses. I mean, how are you supposed to, you know, as the employee, how do you know where to go and what to pick, right?

Yeah.

So now he has his work cut out for him. But if you actually work with learner personas, you can be much more focused and streamlined on what out of these 1,000 courses is actually relevant to your learners and really help them see what is relevant. So instead of giving them access to the 1,000+ courses, guide them, hold their hand a little bit and show them. And how do you know what's important to them? Well, that's, you know, again, where you come back to the learner personas. What drives them? What's important to them? How can they make a difference at work, right?

This ties in so much with, you know, as you said, the course was about soft skills. And this ties in so much about what we try to do when we're communicating, which is create a connection.

Yes.

Not just, not just talk about our work or our family, but actually go a little bit deeper to what motivates us. But more importantly, you know, what motivates you, Bianca? And what motivates me, Joel? And then, so then we find some, maybe some commonalities, or we find more interest, but we go a little bit deeper. Which is not gonna happen, as you say, with a con— it's the opposite of everything you're talking about.

Absolutely. And I, I love what you just said around, you know, that connection. And I think soft skills specifically, sure, I can use them at work. I, but I can use them everywhere in my personal life. Yeah. So right there you have another connection point. So if you really understand who your employees are outside of work, use that to your advantage to, you know, get them excited about a course. It's like, hey, it's not just for work. You can also use it when you Coach your kid's soccer team, you know, whatever it might be. So, yeah.

Because it's true. I do hear that a lot, which is even though we're doing, you know, communication skills course, I'll often hear many people in the room say, oh, this is, this is good. I, I need to figure out how to talk to my kid like this, or I need to figure out how to talk to my partner like this, or I need to figure out how to talk to my friend like this. And so it is, it is across Crosscut collaboration with that. So, let's talk about the book. The book is coming out in May and it is called Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro. And this is what gave you the idea to write this book? What was important to you about this book?

Yeah. So, Mike Taylor and I were actually co-writing or co-wrote this book together. And both of us, we have that background in marketing. Mike, used to work for a marketing agency, and as I briefly mentioned earlier, I used to work for a marketing organization. And so we, we kind of identified that, that overlap between marketing and L&D, and we started our journey, I want to say, 2000 and—

Cover your mouth as you say that.

Exactly. And we actually were both panel speakers on an online conference about marketing and learning. And so we're like, oh yeah, we should connect and do something together. And yeah, the rest is history. And then 2 years ago, we actually decided to write this book. And yeah, it's really the, the motivation behind it for us was that we see too much training that doesn't hit the spot.

Mm-hmm.

We see too much learning experiences that are not really learning experiences. We see too many courses that don't take the learner into, into account. And Yeah, that's why we're like, okay, we have an approach here that can allow L&D professionals to actually think differently about their learning programs. And so the intersection of marketing and learning for us is less about how can I promote my product, meaning my, my training and my learning offerings, but it's really how can I bring marketing techniques into my learning experience design to create better experiences? Right.

Well, it's basically buy-in.

Yeah.

Learning is a buy-in process, you know. So how do I get people to buy into this? And I love the idea of thinking like a marketer because you really— it's not focused on you. You're really focused on who's my audience, what did— and I keep using the word relevant. And I think that's— the world is changing so fast that learning has to be relevant. And that's why the off-the-shelf is, is gonna run into some problems. But this, this think like a marketer, I love this because skill is skills that people in learning don't, I mean, don't really, haven't really looked at or, or tried really, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. And we cover, you know, we talk a little bit, the first chapter talks about how we grab attention, right? So kind of what's happening in our brains, like what marketers do really well. And then of course we go into learner personas, we talk about learner journeys, we talk about a content strategy, like how does all your content fit into all of this, and then talk about how to write good copy, visuals that help us, you know, learn better, remember more, going into learning campaigns to, to how really create this, this ongoing experience, spaced-out learning, repetition, right? All of that good stuff. And then marketing tools, technologies that you can use to help you automate some of this, like email marketing, create email marketing courses. And then the last chapter is about measuring your impact, right? And taking a page out of the marketing playbook as well, kind of see, you know, what they do. So yeah, it's kind of an end-to-end approach.

So timely, so important, this book. And it's fascinating because it's about human behaviors and why do people do things and why we do that and how to tap into that versus the old style of learning, which is learning styles.

Oh my goodness, yes.

Oh, I'm a visual learner. Yeah, but you're more than that.

Exactly, exactly. I couldn't agree more. And, you know, the example that we like to use also is, you know, when, when I asked you, what is a commercial that you remember, um, you know, years later because it was such a good commercial, right? Everyone always can come up with like a really, really good commercial, or even going back to the Super Bowl, like, you know, I mean, think about how, how amazing marketers are around the Super Bowl time because they know exactly it's coming up. So even weeks before, they start social media campaigns to get us excited. Like, I mean, people are excited about the game, but they're sometimes even more excited about the commercials, right?

Sure.

What's happening this year? And so wouldn't that be amazing if we could do something similar in learning and have people remember a great experience because It was different.

You know what I respect about those when I see a really good commercial or those Super Bowl commercials is the creativity that went into that. Like, wow, I'm amazed that they, they, they must have really, really challenged themselves to think at something differently. Look at a product that's been done over and over again and look at it. How can we deliver this differently? And I think applying that same mindset to learning, which is look, how can I, you know, wake, wake everyone up by coming at this from a different point of view, a different perspective? And people like to be challenged, but they like to, to feel that this is something new and exciting. And especially, like I said, they're at the center of it. So I love that.

Yeah.

All right, I've got— we're gonna find out where to find out a little bit more about you, Bianca, and, and where can we learn more about the book? But first, I just have what we call our sort of our, our out of left field or our deeper question. And it's not, it's not that deep. But let's, let's learn a little bit more about you here. You know, in the, in the model of, of your idea of you're at the center of it. So what I'm always curious about is, if you weren't a marketer, author, speaker, what, you know, if I could wave a magic wand, what would you, what would, what would that be? What would you want to be? Or doing?

Yeah, I would probably want to be like a travel photographer or something like that. You know, I love to travel. I love to experience new cultures, try the food. And I'm also an avid road cyclist. So I would probably— my bike would be there in the mix somewhere too, and just cycle across the continent and take pictures and get paid for it. I mean, that sounds good to me. So if anyone has that job for me, just let me know.

Well, you could— I mean, nowadays, of course, you can create that job for you. You could be a social media influencer using all your marketing capabilities, you could, you could easily do that. It sounds like you've already figured it out.

Yeah, right. Maybe I'm actually closer than I thought. So yeah, yeah, maybe that's the retirement, retirement plan.

Could be, could be. So do you love, do you love photography? Are you a photographer as well?

Well, you know, I mean, I used to, I'm not doing it as much anymore, but I still appreciate good photography, if that makes sense. Right. So I'd love to have more time for it. But with all the writing and the speaking, you know, it's a little hard to get to that. But yeah, I appreciate good And is it the photography?

Is it like when you say travel, is it— do you want to be— is it about people? Is it architecture? Is it nature? Is it all of that? What would be the pictures?

All of the above. All of the above. Yeah, I'm definitely an outdoorsy person, but I also do enjoy, you know, like a little city adventure, right? And looking at architecture and whatnot. But yeah, it would definitely be a mix for sure.

So I think this is the second book, which will be the— I like your thinking. Rolling Pictures or something like that with the bicycle and the travel.

That would be so cool. But yeah, that's, you know, sounds fantastic to me. If this whole learning thing doesn't work out, something to fall back on.

Well, I think you're going to be busy for a while, especially with this book. I think this is really going to catch fire. All right. So tell us, Bianca, where can we find out more? If somebody wants to find out more information about you or talk to you more about this, where can they contact you? And give us the title of the book and maybe where where should we be looking for it?

Yeah, so personally, LinkedIn is a good place to find me. So I definitely, I'm on there. And we do have a website for the book. It's called Train Like a Marketer. And that's also part of the title of the book. So it's actually Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro. But yeah, the URL is Train Like a Marketer. So you can definitely get some up-to-date information there. And the website will also, you know, support the book in a way, because a book is a book. Once it's written, it's a little hard to update. So we want to have that website in addition where, you know, we want to share on a regular basis what new tools and techniques we actually came across. And then, yeah, the usual suspects such as Amazon and Barnes Noble. And I don't know if it'll actually be at Indigo here in Canada. I hope it will be. But yeah, Amazon for sure.

Terrific. Bianca, this has been fascinating. We'll look forward to this book, but we're also looking forward to your rolling travels book as well. Thank you for being— thank you for being a guest on TFR, This Feels Right podcast.

Thank you so much, Joel, for having me. Really appreciate it.

Thank you for listening to this episode of TFR, This Feels Right. And if this felt right, then please leave a review, comment, or ask us a question. And of course, we ask if you could kindly follow us so you don't miss an episode of Impactful Communication Skills. And speaking of impactful communication skills, you can learn more at our website, thisfeelsright.ca. I'm your host, Joel Silverstone, and happy to connect with you on LinkedIn. And we'll see you on the next episode of TFR, This Feels Right.