To market a product, a maker first needs to understand what is actually on offer: Who is it for? What goal does it pursue, what promise does it make, and which need does it satisfy—or is it meant to awaken in the first place?
Which product category does learning software belong to?
Is learning software an entertainment product, a tool, or a resource like a textbook?
Because learning software is digital, it is intuitively placed alongside online games and media platforms. Users therefore often expect things from it that they would not expect from a classic textbook: entertainment, playful elements, and immediate success. When those are missing, even a first impression of a learning app can feel disappointing. That is also because many learning apps put playful elements so firmly in the foreground that the actual learning process fades behind them.
With a textbook, by contrast, the purpose is clear from the start: it is meant to convey knowledge. Nobody expects it to entertain first and foremost. Functionally, learning software is closer to the textbook than to the game: its purpose is to help the user build knowledge and skills. And that takes effort.
That does not mean learning cannot be enjoyable. Moments of success, the joy of discovery, or the feeling of finally understanding something can certainly motivate. Yet with learning software it is not enough for the experience itself to feel pleasant. Its real value lies in what the user learns through it—and can then do.
The possible disappointment arises, then, when learning software is measured by the wrong standards: people expect entertainment and get a task instead.
But the real problem runs deeper. People do want to learn. More precisely: they want to be able to do or know something. That wish, however, is still a long way from being ready to spend scarce resources such as time, money, and attention on it. So an hour of learning competes not only with everyday duties, but also with the things we would rather spend our free time on—Netflix or social media, for example.
That is where a particular challenge in marketing learning software lies: there are plenty of good reasons to learn. The harder part is getting people to actually take on the effort required. Motivation can certainly be emotional—the wish to speak a language, reach a professional goal, or understand another culture better. Yet the reward often lies in the future, while the work falls due today.
Learning software and gyms
What do learning software and gyms have in common? Gyms usually work through memberships. The subscription grants access and use of the premises. How you spend your time there, how hard or how often you train, and what result you end up with all depend on you. Motivation has to come, at least in part, from within.
Working on your own body takes effort and discipline. That does not rule out enjoyment: training itself can be pleasurable and, in the end, bring a sense of satisfaction. The consumer goods tied to fitness culture—clothing, supplements, gadgets, or social-media content—also offer quick gratification, but they sit more around the gym and are secondary to the training itself. In the gym, ultimately, only one thing counts: no pain, no gain.
In plain terms: in training you do not simply consume a service someone else delivers for you. You have to deliver it yourself.
Here the difference appears between what gyms offer and what they market. On the posters of well-known sports studios we do not see the many hours of hard work and grind on the machines, but the possible outcomes: beauty, health, and physical performance—things people find desirable.
What a gym actually offers is access to a suitable training environment for its members. That includes the premises, the equipment and its availability, and sometimes coaching and the chance to train with others. All of that creates the conditions for reaching personal goals. The actual training work, however, the studio cannot take off its members’ hands. It can only provide the conditions under which they can pursue their goals as effectively as possible.
This is the long-term promise that gyms market. The strong emotions are not necessarily tied to the training itself, but to the image of the person one wants to become. That ideal can drive people to invest a great deal of time and energy, even though the path there is hard.
No pain, no gain
Physical aesthetics currently seem to enjoy more visible social prestige than intellectual abilities. The parallels between learning software and gyms should nevertheless be clear by now, and they ought to feed into how we think about marketing. Learning software follows a similar pattern: it provides a suitable learning environment, while the real effort has to come from the user.
Imagine gyms ran on the principle of many learning apps. Entry would at first be free. Instead of specialised equipment there would be a handful of colourful rooms with televisions on the wall running ads. Instead of a carefully chosen set of training machines there would be countless dumbbells—but only from 100 grams to 2 kilograms, in 50-gram steps. Visitors could keep busy for hours without getting much closer to their training goal.
Such a gym would miss its purpose. People do not go to the gym to spend time as entertainingly as possible. They go because they want to achieve something, and they accept the effort that requires. The studio provides the environment, the equipment, and the conditions for that.
Learning software should work in a similar way: it should not try to spare the user every bit of effort. It should, however, help them reach their learning goals. The challenge is to market a product whose benefit is attractive, but whose use demands work.
How, then, do you convince people to spend time, attention, and money on such an environment? To pursue that question further, we should next look at the audience.