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The world's only podcast dedicated to marketing for learning®. Short, sharp episodes packed with tactics, strategies and fresh thinking to finally crack your learner engagement problem. Hosted by Ashley Hinchcliffe, founder of MAAS Marketing.
Episodes
Tuesday Feb 03, 2026
Tuesday Feb 03, 2026
Attention is our employee's most equitable asset - but there's fierce competition for it. Marking the first episode of 2026, Ashley joins Giles Hearn, Chief Marketing Officer at The Learning and Performance Institute and unpicks the challenges L&D are really facing. A meaty conversation for a meaty subject.
Get stuck in!
Friday Sep 26, 2025
Friday Sep 26, 2025
Marketing in learning isn’t just about flashy emails or poster campaigns. It’s about trust, visibility, and staying human, especially when the ground is shifting under our feet. In this episode, Ashley Hinchcliffe and Hannah Clark unpack why silence is the enemy of People functions, and how to keep your audiences engaged when uncertainty, redundancies, and AI-fuelled upheaval dominate the workplace. From K-pop obsessions to bluntly honest bank ads, they explore what makes campaigns stick in 2025, why hyper-realism beats sugar-coated spin, and how multi-channel, multi-touch campaigns are the only way to cut through the noise. If your L&D or HR team has ever wondered how to keep marketing alive in messy times, this conversation will show you why the fundamentals matter more than ever.
SHOW NOTES
Friday Sep 05, 2025
Friday Sep 05, 2025
This isn’t your average EdTech chinwag. In this special episode of the Marketing for Learning podcast, Ashley is joined by Lori Niles-Hofmann (author of The 8 Levers of EdTech Transformation) and Dr. Serena Gonsalves-Fersch (Global Head of Talent at SoftwareOne) for a no-fluff, no-slides-needed conversation about what really makes EdTech work — and what makes people quietly nope out of your platform.
Together, the trio unpacks:
- The 8 levers of effective EdTech transformation
- The “leavers” - ie, things we desperately need to bin
- Why being data-informed trumps being data-obsessed
- What marketing, memory, and a badly-behaved agent called Sven have in common
- And why context, not content, is what really matters
If you’ve ever been promised an “AI-powered, Netflix-of-learning” experience and ended up with a glorified folder of SCORM files, this one’s for you.
RESOURCES:
Friday Aug 01, 2025
Friday Aug 01, 2025
L&D doesn’t need more content. Or more dashboards. Or more chaos.
It needs structure. Strategy. And a system that actually works.
In this final episode of Series 2, Han brings it all together — showing how every part of the People Impact Loop® helps you stop reacting and start delivering real, measurable change.
You’ll learn:
- Why understanding your audience is the first, and most important, step
- How alignment and experience design unlock real relevance
- And why marketing and measurement aren’t “nice-to-haves”, they’re how you create and prove value
This isn’t a recap. It’s a blueprint.
Because impact doesn’t come from good intentions.
It comes from good design — built in a loop that never stops working for you.
LINKS:
- Learn more about the People Impact Loop®
- Take the People Impact Loop® diagnostic
Friday Jul 25, 2025
Friday Jul 25, 2025
L&D knows measurement matters.
But when the pressure’s on to “prove impact,” most teams default to what’s easy, not what’s meaningful.
In this episode, we’re joined by Nelson Sivalingam to unpack how learning functions can shift from reporting activity to demonstrating real business value.
We explore:
- Why traditional learning metrics fall short
- How to connect learning with performance and behaviour change
- What it takes to embed measurement into the entire learning process, not just the end
This isn’t about dashboards or data overload.
It’s about designing for outcomes from the start — and knowing what success actually looks like.
Because if you don’t define impact, you’ll never be able to prove it.
LINKS:
- Connect with Nelson on LinkedIn
- Check out HowNow
- Fancy reading Nelson’s book, Learning at Speed? Grab your copy here.
Friday Jul 18, 2025
Friday Jul 18, 2025
Most L&D “campaigns” are a poster, an email, and… silence.
This episode calls time on one-and-done launches — and digs into what it really takes to build marketing for learning® campaigns that cut through the noise and drive action.
You’ll learn:
- Why real campaigns don’t end at launch
- How to apply multi-channel, audience-first thinking to internal comms
- What L&D can steal from politics, brand marketing and behavioural science
If your initiatives start strong and fizzle fast, this episode is for you.
Because attention isn’t guaranteed. You’ve got to earn it — and keep earning it.
LINKS
Friday Jul 11, 2025
Friday Jul 11, 2025
Learning isn’t broken because people are lazy. It’s broken because the experience is.
In this episode, we’re joined by Tom McDowall to talk about why most learning still feels like a chore, and how to change it.
We get into:
- Why more content ≠ more impact
- How to design frictionless, user-led learning journeys
- And what L&D can learn from UX, product, and service design
This one’s for anyone sick of seeing learning dumped on a platform and called a solution. Because if the experience sucks, the outcomes will too.
LINKS:
Friday Jul 04, 2025
Friday Jul 04, 2025
Too many L&D teams are building content for “learners” — not people.
In this episode, Ash and Han dive into the one thing that makes or breaks every learning initiative: knowing your audience. Not their job title. Not their LMS login history. But what actually drives them.
They unpack:
- Why “employees” and “learners” aren’t real personas
- How to ask the right people the right questions (and avoid confirmation bias)
- What to do with audience research once you’ve got it — and how to avoid building blind
So, if you’re still building learning based on job titles, gut feel, or “what we’ve always done” — this one’s for you. Because relevance starts with understanding. And understanding starts here.
LINKS:
Friday Jun 27, 2025
Friday Jun 27, 2025
This week, Han’s joined by the brilliant Heather Burright — and they’re cutting straight to the core of what’s holding L&D back.
Spoiler: it’s not a lack of content. It’s a lack of curiosity.
This episode covers:
- What it really means to identify root problems — and why content alone doesn’t drive change
- How to build trust with stakeholders (so you can disagree and still stay in the room)
- Why asking better questions leads to better learning — and better outcomes
This is a must-listen for anyone stuck in firefighting mode, drowning in requests, or quietly screaming inside every time someone says, “we just need a quick e-learning.”
Because we’re not here to be content vending machines.
We’re here to drive real change.
And that starts with one simple shift:
Stop rushing to build. Start learning to ask.
LINKS:
Friday Jun 20, 2025
Friday Jun 20, 2025
Most L&D teams are stuck in a cycle of activity. Not impact.
In this episode, your fav duo are back to rip into the status quo — and dig deeper into the People Impact Loop®: a no-fluff framework that helps People functions stop shouting into the void and start making measurable change.
We’re talking:
- Why “aligning to business goals” isn’t optional (and how to actually do it)
- Why your learners are subscribers — and should be treated like it
- How long-term thinking beats one-off learning blasts, every time
And the big one: how to prove impact without needing a PhD in data science.
If your learning strategy feels more like guesswork than growth — this one’s for you.
LINKS: