Answering the Big Questions About Learning Brands

One of the enduring legacies of the dot-com bubble and subsequent bust was a new marketing mantra for the decade that followed: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” And in that span of time — in the growing enterprise technology industries in particular — marketing ROI became synonymous with demand-generation results from activities that could be measured in clicks, opens, and views. Even though brand is a highly measurable thing, branding has become something of a lost art for an entire generation of B2B technology marketers.

Branding has become a lost art for an entire generation of B2B technology marketers.

Marketers in enterprise technology must elevate their ability to manage and measure brand if they want to remain competitive. Buyers are more sophisticated and have a nuanced understanding of brand that is shaped by their experience with consumer technology brands such as Apple.

At The Starr Conspiracy, we’ve been evangelizing the power of brand.

And on behalf of clients that are now recognizable category leaders, we’ve helped bring brand back into the marketing mix, even as a driver of demand generation, and utilized simple but meaningful tools to measure it. But we’re doing it one client at a time and those measures never see light outside that client engagement. We’re on a mission to change B2B marketing forever. And since we’re sort of an impatient bunch, we felt the time was right to bring everyone up to speed on the basics of brand measurement in one segment of our booming HCM marketplace: enterprise learning.

This report presents findings from our recent study of learning management system (LMS) technology buyers in conjunction with Brandon Hall Group and Human Capital Institute (HCI). You will find measures of brand awareness and satisfaction among LMS providers with observations and analysis to help make sense of it all. Our sincere hope is to spark conversations and thinking about the power of brand in the learning and broader HCM marketplace.

If you have any questions as you’re going through this report, please feel free to get in touch with us directly at TSCIU@thestarrconspiracy.com.