Mike Taylor is a respected voice in the learning and development community, bringing more than twenty years of experience in instructional design, digital learning, and workplace performance. After beginning his career as a programmer, he transitioned into adult education and quickly became known for his innovative approach to learning design. Mike champions the idea that L&D professionals should adopt marketing strategies to better engage learners and drive real behavior change. He is the co-author of the book “Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro,” written with Bianca Baumann, which highlights how marketing techniques can transform the way organizations approach corporate learning and training.
Nolan Hout, Senior Vice President, Growth, Infopro Learning
Nolan Hout is the growth leader and host of this podcast. He has over a decade of experience in the Learning & Development (L&D) industry, helping global organizations unlock the potential of their workforce. Nolan is results-driven, investing most of his time in finding ways to identify and improve the performance of learning programs through the lens of return on investment. He is passionate about networking with people in the learning and training community. He is also an avid outdoorsman and fly fisherman, spending most of his free time on rivers across the Pacific Northwest.
In this episode, Mike and Nolan explore why learning teams should start thinking more like marketers. They discuss attention, engagement, and how marketing strategies, such as campaigns, audience insights, and automation, can dramatically improve how organizations design and promote workplace learning initiatives.
- How Mike Taylor’s career journey led him from programming into learning and development.
- Why L&D teams must capture attention before learning can happen.
- The similarities between marketing campaigns and learning programs.
- Why understanding your audience is essential for effective training design.
- How the brain’s “system one” and “system two” thinking influence learning engagement.
- The six attention triggers that can help learning content stand out.
- Why compliance training often fails and how to redesign it for impact.
- How learning campaigns and marketing automation can boost training participation.
- Why building a strong L&D brand helps organizations increase learning engagement.
If we don’t get people’s attention, nothing else that comes after matters. Step one is capturing attention, and step two is influencing behavior.
Learning Consultant, Nationwide
Introduction
Nolan: Hello everyone and welcome to the podcast. Today’s podcast session is sponsored by Easy Generator, the e-learning authoring tool that lets anyone in your company create company-specific training at scale.
Your sales team knows the product, your legal team knows compliance, and your HR team knows onboarding. With Easy Generator, they can easily share their knowledge by creating engaging e-learning. Empower your experts to share what they know fast. Learn more at EasyGenerator.com.
Now that we’ve paid for the episode, I am looking forward to getting our podcast session started. Again, this is a learning and development podcast. As always, I’m your host, Nolan Hout.
Today joining me, we have Mike Taylor, who has been a thought leader in our space for over two decades. He is known for helping organizations stop treating learning like a checkbox and start approaching it more like marketers.
In May of this year, 2025, Mike authored a book with Bianca Baumann called “Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro.” In this podcast, we will review key concepts from that book and talk about the topic in general.
This is not a replacement for the book. If you were assigned a book report, this is not Cliff Notes. You still need to read it. The purpose of this podcast is to talk with Mike.
Mike Taylor, welcome to the podcast.
Mike’s Origin Story in L&D
Mike: Great to be here, Nolan. I feel like I found a long-lost friend, a like-minded person, so this should be fun.
Nolan: Likewise. Tell me a little about your origin story before we get into the book. I looked at your LinkedIn, and you have been in L&D for a long time. Many people zig and zag into the field, but you have stayed in it. How did you get started and how did marketing become part of your thinking?
Mike: Like most people, I had a random left-hand turn into L&D. It just happened a long time ago. After graduating, my first job was as a programmer—mainframe COBOL. I always enjoyed learning, but after working there for a while I went on vacation and dreaded going back. I loved the logic but disliked the solitude.
Even as a kid in school, learning energized me. I considered becoming a teacher or professor because I didn’t know the L&D world existed. So, I quit my job and took an adult education teaching job. After about a year I noticed the company also had a software training division. I tried that and enjoyed it.
Then I realized someone had to design the training. That led me to instructional design. Later online learning emerged, so I moved into e-learning design. Eventually I returned to school for a second master’s degree in educational technology. At that point I knew this was the field I wanted.
What Mike Loves About L&D
Nolan: What part of the job do you love most? Helping people? Learning yourself? Wearing many hats like marketing?
Mike: All of those. I love learning. My family jokes that if we pass a historical marker on vacation, I have to stop and read it.
I enjoy helping people do their jobs better. One of the coolest things about L&D is that you can apply it anywhere. I’ve worked with power plant operators loading coal piles and also with financial companies. The mindset of learning and instructional design applies everywhere.
Another great part of the field is the people. Almost everyone I meet in L&D is helpful and supportive. That’s rare in many professions.
Nolan: I agree. This podcast actually started during COVID when conferences stopped. It became a way for people to share ideas and help each other.
The Origin of the Book
Nolan: Tell me about writing the book. Was it something you planned for years or something that happened quickly?
Mike: If you told me I would write a book, I would have thought you were crazy. In 2017 the Learning Guild hosted a two-day online conference about marketing and learning. That’s where I met Bianca Baumann.
We each presented sessions and joined a panel discussion. At the time I worked for a digital marketing agency creating learning programs for marketers and sales teams. While working there I noticed marketers used many of the same strategies as L&D, but they often did them better. I thought we should borrow some of those ideas.
After meeting Bianca, we decided to collaborate and submitted a full-day workshop proposal to DevLearn. We assumed it wouldn’t be accepted.
But it was. We had less than a year to build the workshop. The first time we met in person was the night before delivering it. It was exciting and a little scary. Since then, we’ve been discussing these ideas for about seven or eight years. The topic remains relevant and there is still a lot more to explore.
Marketing vs Learning
Nolan: L&D teams try to engage every employee in a company. Marketers often segment audiences, so their job is easier. Both fields focus on engagement, but their goals differ. Marketing wants people to buy something. L&D wants people to learn something.
What does “Think Like a Marketer” mean in practice?
Mike: Both marketing and L&D share two goals:
- Get people’s attention
- Influence behavior
If you fail at the first step, nothing else matters. Marketers are excellent at attention. Compare compliance training with a marketing campaign.
Imagine a training department creating a hamburger advertisement using bullet points: “tastes good,” “inexpensive,” “free toy.”
Now compare that with a McDonald’s billboard showing a giant Big Mac with vivid colors and minimal text. One makes you almost taste the burger. Both aim to influence behavior, but the approach is very different.
The Importance of Promotion
Nolan: Many L&D teams spend about 90% of effort building content and maybe 5% promoting it. Yet they calculate success assuming everyone saw the program. In marketing, promotion is often as important as creation. Companies compete for attention constantly. If you aren’t promoting learning, something else is capturing employees’ attention.
Mike: Exactly. Many teams assume required training will get attention just because it exists in the LMS. Another problem is skipping audience understanding.
At a power company where I worked, some plants had extremely slow internet connections. Corporate compliance teams created large video courses that wouldn’t even run on those networks. They never asked about technical constraints.
Another compliance course lasted 90 minutes. We redesigned it into an 11-minute course that delivered the same content. Training should help people get back to work faster. Understanding your audience is critical.
Marketing Psychology in Learning
Nolan: Your book discusses the primal brain and attention triggers. Can you explain that?
Mike: Most training is designed for how people think we think, not how we actually think. Humans have two thinking systems:
System 1: Fast, intuitive, emotional, automatic.
System 2: Slow, analytical, logical.
About 95–99% of our thinking happens subconsciously. We often make decisions subconsciously and later justify them with logic. Marketers design for System 1 constantly. L&D often ignores it.
Six Attention Triggers
Mike: In the book we discuss six attention triggers that increase the chance people will pay attention.
- Make it personal — People care about themselves first.
- Make it contrastable — Before vs after, old vs new, problem vs solution.
- Make it tangible — Use examples, analogies, sensory language.
- Make it memorable — Break patterns, surprise people.
- Make it visual — Images are processed faster than text.
- Make it emotional — Emotion signals importance to the brain.
These triggers can also be combined.
Learning Campaigns
Mike: Another marketing concept is campaign thinking. No company runs one advertisement and stops. Yet training often happens once per year.
Instead, turn training into a campaign. For example, take an annual compliance course and break it into monthly reinforcement messages.
Marketing automation tools can help deliver these reminders automatically. Zapier’s L&D team used automation and saved thousands of hours managing training logistics.
Marketing Channels for Learning
Nolan: L&D teams often rely on email, but people communicate in many channels. Use multiple approaches:
- Teams or Slack messages
- Videos
- Posters
- Manager communication
- Internal influencers
Mix formats and platforms. You rarely see a single advertisement for a product. Marketing repeats messages until the audience responds.
Building an L&D Brand
Nolan: Another concept is that L&D itself is a brand. Your team represents something inside the organization. Over time people recognize your voice and value.
Mike: Exactly. If you think you don’t have a brand, you probably do—and it might not be positive. Our cybersecurity training team created a newsletter promoted through compliance training. Two years later it has nearly 5,000 subscribers with an 80% open rate.
Brand voice matters too. Many cybersecurity messages sound negative: “Don’t do this.” “You’re doing it wrong.”
We changed the tone to emphasize positive outcomes and competitive advantage.
Nolan: The key takeaway is simple: start somewhere. If you currently do nothing, try one marketing tactic. Even small experiments can improve engagement.
Mike: Exactly. Most of these ideas are free. They only require a new mindset.
Closing Thoughts
Nolan: Mike, thank you for joining us. The book is “Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro.” You can find Mike on LinkedIn and at trainlikeamarketer.com, where there are additional resources beyond the book.
Thanks for spending your Friday afternoon with me.
Mike: No better way to end the week.
Nolan: Thanks, Mike.
Mike: Thanks, Nolan.
