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ARTICLE

The New Marketing Institute Employs Action-focused Approach to eLearning

March 8, 2016 — by MediaMath    

It’s not what you know – it’s what you can do.

What do data, knowledge, and a coat of paint have in common? They’re all useless until you apply them.

Since its inception in 2007, MediaMath has recognized the immense potential of data technology to transform marketing. With the rapid growth of big data, marketers have witnessed profound changes in the way advertising is bought and sold and how campaigns are managed. In the pre-big data world, they could see and hear their campaigns’ performance, but it was a vexingly one-sided conversation. Marketers were left to reflect on their wins and losses and hope what they learned had some value in the future.

Data technology, and to a greater extent all technology, was and still is useless without application. Even the most precise and relevant marketing data equates to nothing if it can’t be applied in a meaningful way. However, long passed are the days of marketers identifying targets, analyzing trends, preparing their message, negotiating deals, and ultimately wishing their campaigns the best after they launch. With the TerminalOne Marketing OS™, marketers can make smarter, more informed decisions in the moment on an ongoing basis. In a very real sense, they can now speak back as their campaigns speak to them.

The New Marketing Institute (NMI) believes the same principle should hold true for education. Using an action-focused approach to online training, NMI emphasizes applicable skills rather than knowledge alone as its end goal. From the time instruction is planned to its delivery, trainers work toward what learners should be able to do, not simply what they’ll know. In platform training courses, for example, online learners engage in live, interactive sessions focused on building and managing digital marketing campaigns for fictional advertisers. The courses cover key concepts related to TerminalOne, but knowing about the software is not the primary objective. The purpose of these courses is to build skills needed to use TerminalOne to its fullest potential. For this reason, trainers employ a learner-centric model in which the participants, not the facilitators, drive the sessions by raising points of discussion, making setup and optimization recommendations for various campaign scenarios, and sharing with one another their own background and experiences as they relate to course content. The result is that learners can then apply critical thinking and a thorough understanding of TerminalOne’s capabilities as they manage their own campaigns.

A common pitfall of many eLearning approaches is that they rely on passive instruction with little or no active engagement from the learner. Under this model, learners read documents or watch videos to gain information but rarely do they practice applying that information at the time. How are they to know if what they’re learning will ever translate? NMI’s online learner-driven trainings focus not just on building knowledge of digital marketing, but actively applying that knowledge. After demonstrating their skills through interactive training and online assessments, learners become certified through NMI’s Brandon Hall Excellence Award-winning Certification programs. Also recognized as a Brandon Hall Excellence Award winner, the Marketing Engineer Program offers hands-on industry experience, providing participants with all the tools needed to be successful in the ever-evolving programmatic space. Taking learning and training even a step further, NMI created the TerminalOne “Train the Trainer” program which helps digital marketers build the skills needed to educate others on TerminalOne using the same interactive, action-oriented approach.

In both Ad Tech and EdTech, what’s of ultimate importance are results. MediaMath looks to drive informed, actionable results not only in its clients but in the industry as a whole. After all, it would be nothing short of hypocrisy to stress the importance of applied knowledge while failing to act upon one’s own. MediaMath uses its stance as an industry leader to better understand and meet the needs of the programmatic market. Joe Zawadzki, MediaMath CEO, was recently named chairman of the IAB Data Center of Excellence, which aims to “help advertisers and marketers operationalize their data assets while maintaining quality, transparency, accountability, and consumer protection.” As MediaMath’s educational arm, NMI reflects this commitment to action in its approach to education. It is their mission to educate, engage, and empower the modern marketer, with the third component being perhaps the most essential.