This is the Marketing for Learning Podcast, the only podcast in the world that's guaranteed to help learning and development professionals enhance their skills, capabilities and knowledge when it comes to marketing for learning. I think we can safely say that Marketing for Learning is a thing. Hi guys, welcome back to the Marketing for Learning Podcast. You've got Ash today in a rare sighting on my turns.
As you know, I occasionally pop my head up and come and do a podcast to give out a break but also come and visit with my favourite people. Today is an interesting podcast because it's actually prompted by something that Han posted on LinkedIn. I don't know if any of you guys saw it, but essentially she was discussing the subject of FOMO and why suddenly OASIS tickets became very, very, very, in demand all of a sudden.
So let's talk about one specific aspect of that, which I commented on called the Bandwagon Effect. I have done a previous podcast where I discuss FOMO itself and if you aren't learning with the cool kids, FOMO means fear of missing out and how that can be a really effective psychological technique in terms of influencing persuading people. Another one that works really well is the Bandwagon Effect and it definitely kind of sits in this same category.
And the reason we use the OASIS tickets as an example is it kind of shows exactly how this effect works and how people hop on the bandwagon as it were. So there's only going to be a short and snappy one for you. Obviously, I don't give you all the detail of any of these things ever.
I don't claim to be a behavioral scientist or a psychologist, but it gives you hopefully an introduction into some of the ways that the human brain works and how we can leverage some of that to influence and persuade. So let's take a moment and dive straight into the Bandwagon Effect. So the Bandwagon Effect is essentially the kind of idea of herd mentality.
I don't know if you guys have heard that before, but essentially humans are inclined to get involved with things that they feel that other people are already involved with. The reason this kind of overlaps with FOMO is the same sort of idea in that if people are doing things you don't want to miss out, you don't want to be the one who's left behind.
And so the Bandwagon Effect is a very similar thought process in many people's minds where they get involved with something because somebody else is. And I'm sure you can already see how this could be a really interesting tool for us when it comes to marketing for learning in particular because Hannah and I have talked a lot in the past about how we can use user generated content.
My word Caroline Fitzpatrick who we had on very early in the podcast from L'Oreal talked a lot about how she used learn influences individuals within the business who are highly engaged with learning or SMEs or very trusted individuals that allow us to integrate influence and persuade people and get people excited and involved in learning just by them doing it themselves.
So those of you who live in the UK haven't doubted the heard of Oasis, a really popular band from the 90s, but those of you who haven't heard of Oasis if you're not in the UK, I don't know how well they went over across the Atlantic and into other parts of the world. They were a really popular band here in the 90s, they were headed up by two brothers called Liam and Noel Gallagher, a really popular music in the 90s, kind of led a new wave and a new genre of music around the Indie kind of scene.
And unfortunately the band ended up having a rather acrimonious breakup, Liam and Noel fell out and that was in the publicity all the time in the newspapers, they were constantly rowing, constantly fighting, etc. So ever since the bands broke up there's been obviously constant chatter amongst fans, will they ever get back together? Will, you know, are they ever going to reunite?
And I think they've probably intentionally fed the media a little bit with that, again they're not a daft, they have smart PR and marketing folk behind them, but they recently announced that they are going to be doing another tour.
And it's had a really interesting effect, particularly on the UK, suddenly I heard Oasis everywhere out of car radios, even my husband who's not a massive fan was watching a live gig of theirs on YouTube, everybody suddenly got the Oasis bug and that's because the bandwagon effect.
So what's happening here is essentially it's a once in a lifetime opportunity, they're probably never going to get back together, this is their last and final and only gig, that's going to create massive demand to begin with. And then because people, you know, the fans initially are really excited about them finally getting back together doing this final tour, they start talking about it, that's going to build a buzz.
And then suddenly people like Hannah who never really were that interested in Oasis, never really listen to their music, maybe even a touch too young for some of their music, truthfully, are interested in going to the gig. Again, this is the bandwagon effect at work, essentially what's happening is because other people are doing it.
We start to think, oh, this must be really good actually, I'm going to have to get involved in this, I don't want to miss out, I don't want to not be involved in this. And there we have the bandwagon effect. So let's explore how we might be able to use this a little bit more in learning.
First and foremost, before you do any of this stuff, make sure that your learning experience is as good as it can be, that means it's decoded, that means it's streamlined, it's simple, it's easy for people to find, ideally it's relevant for them. If you cannot create personalization with your learning platform, create the illusion of personalization through portals, through email marketing, whatever it might be, try and segment where you can and create personalizing experiences for people.
This stuff isn't going to work if the product isn't quite a right fit because people have to want it and they have to know that it works for them. So there's probably isn't something necessarily that you could do as a starting point. I've certainly built it into campaigns in the past and I've used it in a annual campaign, maybe in the third or fourth quarter, once we've established some initial baseline marketing activities.
Essentially, what we want to be doing is getting individuals to become our voice boxes. So as I said, like Caroline Fitzpatrick said, learn influencers. People who can amplify our voices for us. But also we want to be getting an encouraging employees to be talking about learning. So we need to make sure first of all that learning experience is really good because otherwise they're just not going to do that.
It doesn't matter if you begs deal borrow or bribe them, they're just not going to have good things to say if they don't have a good experience. So that needs to be, this is what work unless the product is right. Secondly, in order to really make the bandwagon effect work, you've got your good quality learning experience. As I've already said, you can't just do this from a standing start.
So you need to ensure that you've already got marketing activities, meaningful marketing activities going ahead in your organization. You need to be past that initial inertia of going from like zero comms to some comms to kind of active marketing campaigns.
Again, this isn't going to work if you just try and do it off the bat because you need the demand and you need the active learner base there and the engaged learner base there to really make this work because the whole idea of the bandwagon effect is there's a group of people who are already doing it. And so other people who aren't doing it want to get involved because of the fact that there are so many people doing it. And there are loads and loads of ways that you could leverage this effect.
So again, you know, things that we've talked about before, like I said, learn influencers is a great one. Testimonials, people talking about the great experiences that they've had, yeah, that creates a sense of demand. But the, I think the thing for me with the bandwagon effect that is different is it needs to be a volume thing as well. It can't just be one or two videos.
So you need to think, okay, if we're going to get like some people doing testimonials and videos and we also need like email reviews that we can post or things that reviews that we can post on workplace. And we need to be able to, you know, find other ways to capture people's stories and tell them. So again, it needs to be a volume thing. It can't just be to create the bandwagon effect. Essentially, your employees need to be, I'm going to use the word inundated.
That's not, we never want to inundate anyone. But the reason the things like the Oasis tickets went absolutely berserk is because everybody suddenly decided because everybody wanted it, they wanted it too. And so we have to kind of think about how we can create that same sort of effect. And so there has to be a certain amount of volume. It has to be the sort of thing where no matter where I turn, I see it. It's like, do you guys remember the ASL Water Bucket Challenge?
That came with my memories not too long ago, my mum did that. I refused to because I was like, I'm not part of Bucket of Water on my head. But everybody got involved in that. And again, they don't even, most people didn't even know what the charity was. They don't even know what it was for. But it went viral because the bandwagon effect because everybody was doing it. Everybody was doing it. It's such an odd thing.
But you've got to kind of get out of that initial momentum first, that initial inertia. Otherwise, it will never, ever, ever work. So, if you're going to want to use some of these psychological tactics, techniques, influence techniques, whatever you want to call them, I mean, I wouldn't go as far as to say, you try to manipulate your employees.
But you're just, you're targeting some of the key brainwiring that we have as humans, some of the primal stuff that just sits there in terms of wanting to be part of the group, wanting to be part of the herd. And the bandwagon effect has a really powerful ability to draw people in when done effectively.
I'm going to put some links in the show notes that if you're interested in this subject and you want to delve into it a little bit more, that can give you a little bit more reading and a little bit more research. But as I've said, this is something that we have used in campaigns previously, but we haven't used it at the beginning. And that's really important.
So, the two things I want you to take away from this podcast with regard to the bandwagon effect are, if you're interested in starting to try to use things like this, number one is make sure that your learning product is as good as it can be. That's, I mean, truthfully, most of the things that we talk about on this podcast are going to fall short or not work very well.
If you haven't got your product top notch, and, you know, I've put post something about, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs and marketing's hierarchy of needs in terms of what we need in place first before marketing will really work. And perhaps that's worth actually visiting here on this podcast too in case you guys haven't seen that. Marketing's the last thing in a really tall pyramid. So, you know, make sure that your marketing, your learning product is as good as it can be.
And then secondly, don't do it as an opening gambit when you start really dealt doing marketing because it won't work. You need this volume. You need this group of people who are already doing it in order to amplify what you're already doing, if that makes sense. So you need a wagon full of people in order for other people to jump on said bandwagon. And that's pretty much it from me today guys because I have spent this podcast with a crying baby in between clips.
You might hear her in the background. And I am currently bouncing her rocker with my left foot. Welcome to the realities of motherhood and running a business and still trying to be present on a podcast. So I thank you very much for your time. I hope that that has been an interesting tiny little toe dip into the bandwagon effect. It is effective. A lot of this stuff is effective. Same with FOMO. You don't need to create fear and scare people. Like, if you don't do this, like, say my point.
But it's really, really important that you consider how you can use this in a positive manner for your organization and for your people because it does work. Thanks for your time guys. I will be back again soon. Hopefully sounds baby. Bye!