Information and learning memberships and subscriptions aren’t new. But the pandemic expedited the movement towards such product offers much faster than might have been the case.

As people have become happier paying monthly and annual subscriptions in all aspects of their life – anything from gym memberships, to Netflix, Disney and Sky TV access, to Amazon Prime deliveries to food delivery to car service plans – it has become more commonplace in the business world.

Gone are the days of paying for a CD-ROM loaded with software that needs updating regularly. 

Technology brands such as Adobe, Microsoft and Norton have led the way whilst newer software businesses such as Zoom, Calendly, Lead Pages and MailChimp have followed suit.

What do all these brands have in common?

They offer unfettered access to what the consumer wants, immediately, and at an affordable price point.

The same thing is true in the marketing intelligence space. There are a rising number of on-demand libraries offering a wealth of resources to help a professional operate at a higher level are becoming more popular.

Free options such as the Hubspot Academy, exist to help people better understand inbound marketing techniques and hopefully transition to paying customers, whilst Digital Marketer’s Lab, Econsultancy’s annual membership and Smart Insights all offer access to an abundance of content, templates and tools.

As a team leader you want an engaged, motivated team. Providing them with the resources to work efficiently and effectively is a big part of achieving this.

Always-on libraries provide a one-stop-shop marketing resource for marketing teams. The MMC Learning Pivotal Marketer Academy, for example, hosts some 500 videos covering 60 different marketing subjects. Everything from strategy to practical implementation is included. 

When you are benchmarking, evaluate the differing options based not only on what they offer (content and volume), but also quality. How engaging are the video tutorials and support materials? 

What else is available in terms of video transcripts, workbooks and checklists to help understanding and implementation? What other coaching or event support is available either frequently or on a in-frequent basis?

You want your marketing team to be pulling in the same direction. 

Providing your marketing team with a single library of always available material means they should improve together and start to use the same thinking, vocabulary and models to improve their work. This is especially important if you have a remote team – or a team spread across the globe.

It can be very disruptive if you have multiple marketers following different opinion leaders, taking different free or paid courses as it leads to confused team output.

Leaning into one single library of on-demand material creates consistency and confidence as your team works to improve.