A few years ago, my son came home from school and demanded: Do you know what kind of learner I am, Mom?? 😳Ummm…no? Should I?
The answer? Yes! Because it explained, well…everything.
My son is an auditory learner. That means he needs to say and hear things spoken aloud to learn and retain them. The minute he said that, I was like: Of course! No wonder he’s always speaking to himself and wanting me to share things verbally vs. showing him a visual. And kudos to the teacher for realizing how important it is to know this about her students, and also for the students to know about themselves!
And it’s no different for us in business. This is the secret to better communication – understanding how our clients/customers learn so we can tailor our messages and conversations to that style.
Listen up!
You see, the way we learn doesn’t change simply because we become adults or enter the workforce. It’s inherent in who we are. That’s why understanding how people learn is so important as it pertains to marketing efforts.
There are three types of learners:
And, they’re all quite different. Typically, we can pinpoint our primary learning style, but often fall into two or even all three categories – just to varying degrees.
We all learn differently.
But, the key point is: We all learn differently. And when we’re interacting with our employees, family, clients, customers, business partners, this is potentially the most important aspect of marketing to keep in mind. After all, it doesn’t matter how amazing our story, our business or our philosophy, if the person we’re sharing it with isn’t able to process, understand or retain it, it’s worthless.
It has nothing to do with your generation.
The other thing to keep in mind – and this is always a big a-ha – is that our learning style has nothing to do with our generation. Generational preferences are definitely something to keep in mind regarding marketing, but that’s typically more about type of media (face-to-face, print, email, text, social) and the type of content within it (historical info, experience, teaching/sharing expertise, peer reviews) – not about how we learn.
So, what is your learning style?
It’s often helpful to understand how we learn before applying that knowledge to the other learning styles attributes. There are several assessments to determine this, but here’s a good one: VAK assessment.
The nitty gritty
Visual learners
- Use visual objects such as graphs, charts, pictures, and want to see information.
- Can read body language well and have a good perception of aesthetics.
- Able to memorize and recall various information.
- Tend to remember things that are written down.
- Learn better by watching.
Auditory learners
- Retain information through hearing and speaking.
- Often prefer to be told how to do things.
- Summarize the main points out loud to help with memorization.
- Notice different aspects of speaking.
- Often have talents in music and may concentrate better with soft music playing in the background.
- Enjoy conversations and podcasts.
Kinesthetic/tactile learners
- Like to use the hands-on approach to learn new material.
- Are generally good in math and science.
- Would rather demonstrate how to do something rather than verbally explain it.
- Usually prefer group work more than others.
- Need to physically manipulate something – or be doing something physical while learning (standing, walking, chewing gum).
THINK ABOUT: What are the learning style cues you can pick up on when meeting with your clients/customers to help you understand how best to market and communicate with them?
Each of us learns differently, and to ensure maximum understanding and retention, it’s important to provide our audience with visual, auditory and tactile avenues to ensure one of them resonates with their own learning style.
Ready to learn more? Want to create your own ripple effect? Let’s start today.
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