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THE BEST 10 MARKETING TRAINING ACTIVITIES

The best 10 marketing training activities. The top 10 activities for a marketing training program, class, session, workshop or course. Fun marketing training games. The best marketing training examples and exercises for your training participants or marketing class students.  The best 10 activities to master marketing training.

By Mau, a Global Head of Marketing Strategy and training facilitator at eDigital.

THE BEST 10 MARKETING TRAINING ACTIVITIES

Before you discover the below best 10 marketing training activities, please allow me to tell you a truth you probably do not want to hear:

Marketing training success = 20% of marketing knowledge plus 80% of training facilitation skills

Yeah, That’s right.

Isn’t that ironic?

You may have studied marketing theory for a few years plus some other working years spent at a marketing department to realise that in order to become one of the best marketing training facilitators, marketing knowledge and experience in the field are not enough.

Some of the best marketing training facilitators are the ones who spark curiosity and creativity while keeping their training participants engaged in the discussion.

Who would have thought it is all about how your personality can engage the training participants far more than the knowledge that will make your training sessions rock?

I mean, you obviously need to know about marketing but once you pass the “acceptable knowledge” threshold, certainly, your audience engagement skills will play a massive role in the success of your marketing training business.

In other words, training facilitation skills are far more important than marketing knowledge in order to make your marketing training a success.

And that’s why you are here, right now, ready to find the best activities for your marketing training.

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THE BEST 10 MARKETING TRAINING ACTIVITIES

I am not a marketing teacher.

I am a marketing training facilitator.

Knowledge is not the only reason I get paid to deliver marketing training.

In fact, there may be thousands of marketing experts and academics around the world who could memorise marketing theory (knowledge) more than I do.

But, they may not be great at facilitating the best marketing training session.

You are about to become the world’s best marketing training facilitator if you understand one single thing:

Your most important goal as a marketing training facilitator is to ensure your session encourages all different levels of skills and abilities to explore and discover new possibilities when doing marketing. 

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When crafting your marketing training activities, take some insights from your client’s top marketing issues and challenges. This way your marketing training activities are relatable.

Your marketing training participants will appreciate and value practical marketing training activities that teach them new skills and knowledge or become aware of new insights they can use in their daily marketing roles, tasks or campaigns.

Find below the best 10 marketing training activities, ideas, examples and exercises and other skills for running a successful marketing training session, workshop or course.

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10. “Break the ice” activity

Congratulations!

You have just rocked up as the new marketing training instructor in a company’s training room.

But no one knows you and/or participants may not know each other.

Some of the most effective “break the ice” activities are:

  • Whodunit. Get each participant to write something cool/fun they have done in the last week or month. Put all the notes into a hat and get participants to guess who has done it.
  • An introductory poll can be a great marketing training activity before the start of your marketing training program, session or workshop. You can ask participants to tell their names and share how excited they are about the marketing training session and what they’re most keen to learn.
  • “Have you ever/Never have you ever” game. Get participants to answer some of the most bizarre questions. Have you ever drunk a beer from a shoe? In a short time, the learning audience will get to know each other in a funny way.
  • Two truths, one lie game. Get participants to write two truths and one lie about themselves on a post note. Put all the notes on a basket or hat and get participants to pick one and guess who the person is.
  • “Would you rather” dilemma game. Get participants to answer questions about big life dilemmas, or even better you could get them to answer marketing dilemma questions. Would you rather have 200 Instagram followers producing 200k in sales or 3000 TikTok followers generating 150k in sales? You and your students may find some interesting answers.
  • Memory game. There are thousands of memory games you can play to break the ice. My favourite one is to pick 20 simple marketing words, show them to participants for a minute and then ask them to write as many as they can remember.

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9. The most “pressing” marketing issues/challenges activity

In groups of 2 to five people, invite your participants to make a list of the top 3 branding challenges and issues and the way they think they should be resolved. If your marketing training participants are students who do not work yet, you can assign a popular brand to them to review.

Steps:

  • Each group has to come up with “The top 3 marketing issues/challenges” to tackle in the next 6 months.
  • The training instructor or facilitator listens to different participants’ ideas, perspectives, stories and initiatives from this activity.
  • Then the whole class should work together to come to a consensus.

This type of marketing training activity will make everyone feel involved in what the most important marketing issues are.

Remember: Students’ stories are the fuel to further develop your marketing training business.

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8. “The new product” Activity

This is a popular training activity to get participants to collaborate and improve their marketing persuasion skills.

Steps:

  • Divide your group into teams of 4-5 people.
  • Each team gets 10 spaghettis, 3 marshmallows and 1 metre of tape. This is a spin off the popular “Spaguetti tower” activity, but in this case, teams can build whatever they wish.
  • Each team has 15 minutes to build a product (whatever they wish)
  • The new creation is presented with a basic marketing plan that includes one single niche audience and up to 3 marketing channels.
  • People will vote for a) the most interesting product idea and b) the best marketing plan
  • Winners will win a prize 🙂

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7. Influencer Marketing Activity

The idea of this influencer marketing activity is to get your participants to find creative ways to collaborate with influencers.

Steps:

  • Divide your group into teams of four to five people.
  • Each team is responsible for the city’s sustainable living initiatives.
  • Each team has been given access to collaborate with one of the top 25 most popular Australians on Instagram to reduce private vehicle ownership and to promote cycling and walking as a way of commuting to work. The influencer has agreed to post 3 times on Instagram for free.
  • Each team has to come up with 3 creative ideas for the influencer to follow. This means the team will decide whether is a photo or a video and what the story is going to be.

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6. Content marketing activity

Divide your group into three or four teams.

This is the scenario:

Each team is responsible for the marketing of the “raw vegan kitchen” a project run by a non-profit teaching poor people how to make healthy raw vegan wraps. Poor people are encouraged to come, help prepare their own wrap and eat it for free while enjoying the time.

Chefs and healthy food lovers volunteer their time making sure the wraps are healthy and yummy while providing fun times to the people participating. Yeah, a healthy vegan sauce has to be awesome too!

The non-profit also uses the same kitchen to run a commercial takeaway of healthy vegan raw wraps and a vegan pizza. The profits are used to pay for the expenses of the non-profit.

This month has been really tough in terms of donations but sales from the restaurant have steadily improved every quarter but still not enough to pay for the costs of the whole operation.

You have been given the task of prioritising the below marketing and content activities. The available monthly marketing budget is $1k.

From 1 to 5 (One being the most important), each team will explain to the group the reasoning behind each chosen option.

  • Expert Q&A. Interview-style article discussing a trendy/hot topic or disrupting topic. You can interview your CEO, Marketing Manager or industry leader or celebrity.
  • Topic 101. An educational content piece that talks about the basics of what the non-profit does. 
  • “Best of List“ article. This could be an article that talks about the top 10 best not-for-profits and why your non-profit should be considered for donations. 
  • Review article. You invite a nutritionist expert, celebrity or influencer to test the healthy vegan wraps and review the service offered by your non-profit.
  • Exclusive eDMs or eDM sequences. You have a couple of thousand past donors and you may want to send them some email sequences to get them to donate again. 
  • Display banner ads and remarketing ads. You may want to run some ads to target people interested in social justice, homelessness and people who have already visited your website. 
  • Educational content. You could publish exclusive content pieces such as a Guide, a Report, a WhitePaper or a “State of the Industry” report that may bring new donors to your non-profit.
  • PR & News Amplification. You may want to find a newsworthy story about the people you help that you believe the media will pick it up and publish it. 
  • Price-driven offers. You may want to decide to run offers in your commercial restaurant in order to increase profits.
  • Event promotion. You may decide to run an event that brings potential donors together and get donations happening. 
  • Successful “Case Study” Amplification. A nice way to promote the work you have achieved for the community you help.
  • “How to become a donor” Guide. You may want to create a guide that explains the process of becoming a donor. 
  • Infographic amplification. An infographic that shows the latest stats about the lack of access to healthy food options, especially for poor people. 
  • “Back of House”/”Behind the scenes” serialised content. You may want to report the ins and outs of the non-profit activities, especially how it has dramatically helped poor people value healthy food. 

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5. WORD SEARCH MARKETING PUZZLES

Divide your class into teams of three participants. Hand them one of the best word search marketing puzzles. Put a time limit of two minutes to find as many words as they can. The winning team gets a prize.

Puzzles are a great way to bring marketing students and teams up to speed with new marketing jargon and definitions.

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4. CHOOSE THE MOST APPROPRIATE THING TO DO

In this training exercise, you can list 5 common marketing issues or challenges and list 5 appropriate things to do. Get your students to match one scenario with one appropriate solution.

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3. BRAINSTORMING MARKETING TRAINING ACTIVITY

Depending on the time allowed, the marketing trainer will divide the group into smaller groups and command a brainstorming activity to solve a real and specific marketing issue or challenge the client is facing.

Each group will have some time to review the issue and then present their plan of action to solve it.

Caution: The more groups you have for this marketing training activity the more time you will need for each group’s presentation.

Example:

You – the marketing trainer – found your client has issues with generating engagement on social media.

You then divide your group into smaller groups and each group will brainstorm ideas for improving social media engagement.

You can put a cap on the number of ideas to be presented. I would suggest a maximum of 3 or five ideas.

The job of the trainer is to jot the ideas and notes on a whiteboard and create a collective mind mapping with all the spoken and written ideas.

If time allows, get people to stand up and vote for the best ideas in the collective mind map on the whiteboard.

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2. ROLE-PLAY MARKETING TRAINING ACTIVITY

Role-play scenarios are one of the best ways to immersive learning environments. Role-play is an active learning technique in which two or more trainees act out predetermined scenes under the guidance of an expert/trainer.

Below are a few examples you can role-play as a marketing training activity:

  •  The trainer is the boss and the trainee has to convince the boss to double the number of marketing dollars to be spent on Marketing.
  • The trainer is a potential partner and the trainee has to convince the potential partner to join a unique marketing campaign they are about to launch.
  • The trainer is a potential customer who could be the most profitable customer for the business and the trainee has to make a successful sales pitch.

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1. FINAL MARKETING RECOMMENDATIONS ACTIVITY

A great marketing training facilitator understands and acknowledges that ultimately their students are the ones who will spend their time building their brand and making their customers happy.

For this reason, a good marketing trainer will take participants’ and students’ interpretations of the findings and involve them in writing the final recommendations.

This final marketing training activity will make participants feel the final recommendations are “theirs” as they are the ones who have written them.

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Marketing training activities – best tips

  1. Respect the time and the agenda. It is important for you – as a marketing trainer – to follow through with what you agree to deliver during your workshop or class. With limited time, you should finish your training at the agreed time so it is important to keep track of your agenda items. Participants have other important things to do once the training session is finished so you should wrap it up in time.
  2. Be clear and concise. Your marketing training participants will follow trainers who can clearly explain what they want course participants to complete. You need to be able to connect with students through clear communication.
  3. Use inspirational marketing stories, case studies and examples. Curating and presenting inspirational marketing stories that training participants will always remember are powerful. An inspirational marketing story will tackle problems head-on. The main characters in the story may not know the outcome but they stood up to their specific marketing challenges. You can include how the characters move forward to face the marketing challenge and tackle the problem ahead. The courageous marketers you present in your stories will be inspirational to your training participants and/or students. If you deeply believe your stories can change things for the better, then go ahead and present them! The only way to create change in the marketing profession is by demonstrating courageous marketing leadership. Your well-crafted marketing stories, examples and activities will influence new marketers and will create the trust necessary to form positive relationships with your marketing training business. Employees and students expect new marketing ideas and insight from their marketing trainers to thrive at work. A creative marketing trainer who can think outside of the box is more likely to reach success quicker than someone who just repeats what everyone already knows about marketing.
  4. Encourage challengers. You are a marketing training facilitator and you are the channel where participants and students can challenge traditional marketing ideas, frameworks and practices. You will love encouraging critical thinking in your marketing workshop or marketing class. Great marketing instructors “Doubt the Default”—thinking past the default marketing best practices and frameworks and looking into students’ collective knowledge to draft better options and new chapters of the marketing profession. A top marketing training facilitator inspires students and participants to change and improve the current marketing status quo. As part of the marketing training you offer, you can also offer a space where marketing training participants can challenge marketing ideas and seek innovative ways to improve through experimenting and taking risks, and then learn from mistakes or failures along the way.I always say to my marketing students:

    “You should refuse to be satisfied with what I am telling you today. Make time for research and experimentation

    Even when my marketing training participants make a mistake or a marketing idea doesn’t end how they hoped, that result is a great lesson and a learning opportunity.

Facilitating the best marketing training session – best tips

  1. Meet participants properly. Start with an introduction. Not everyone may know about you and what you have earn the right to be a training facilitator. Ensure you know how to pronounce participant’s names.
  2. Find things you have in common. Find something in common to create rapport. Sports, weather, music celebrities, etc.
  3. Design optimal training conditions. Make sure participants are not hungry, cold/hot or tired. It is always nice to bring some candies, lollies and ensure air conditioning is at the right level.
  4. Let everyone talk. Don’t finish someone sentences and connect participants ideas to what you are talking. You do not need to talk louder or faster to make your ideas better.
  5. Be descriptive about ideas. Do not label them. when talking about ideas given by participants, try to be descriptive and not label the idea as someone’s idea. This way you are giving more importance to the idea than to the originator of the idea.
  6. Find the silver lining of not-too-great ideas. When participants offer poor or not relevant ideas, try to find something good about it.
  7. Phrase alternatives as questions. Instead of telling participants what they should be doing, you can also propose alternatives as “what ifs” and let people discuss about them.

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Conclusion

To have a lasting impact, you – the marketing trainer – will succeed if your client, participants or students own the marketing training outcomes. You can give awards to the people who participate the most or offer an award/prize to the participant who helps the most other participants. You can even run a poll to sense the feeling about a particular marketing issue or run a quiz to find out how much your participants have learnt.

Be creative and move your audience out of their comfort zone to have them experience a memorable training session with you.

eDigital can help you conceptualise, plan, develop and facilitate marketing training for your employees and team.

Other services we offer include:

  • Strategic planning for social media and other digital marketing channels.
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  • Training: social media marketing training and digital marketing training.
  • SEO strategy, SEO content development and execution.
  • Celebrity and influencer marketing campaign strategy.
  • Branding. Logo creation, brand development and design of marketing materials.
  • Consumer contests/competitions/giveaways.
  • Email marketing. Dip sequence design and deployment.
  • Conversion rate optimisation. Path to purchase analysis and optimisation.

Next: Partner with us and we will help you facilitate your marketing training session. Contact us today! 

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THE BEST 10 MARKETING TRAINING ACTIVITIES

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