Tailored Learning Without the Price Tag: How to Customize Off-the-Shelf Content

Custom learning solutions sound great—until you see the price tag. Designing training from scratch takes time, talent, and serious investment. But there’s another way: take off-the-shelf content and make it your own.

Off-the-shelf eLearning is pre-built and ready to deploy. It’s fast, affordable, and often built by instructional design pros. The downside? It's generic. It doesn't reflect your company’s voice, values, or culture. But that’s not a dealbreaker—it’s a starting point.

With a smart customization strategy, you can bridge the gap between cost-effective and company-specific. Here's how to make off-the-shelf content work like it was made just for you.

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Why Off-the-Shelf Content Gets a Bad Rap

Before we dive into the how, it’s worth understanding the why. Many L&D teams avoid off-the-shelf content because it feels too:

Generic – It’s not tailored to your workflows, industry, or tools.
Impersonal – It lacks your tone, culture, and branding.
Rigid – It doesn’t always allow editing or updating.

But not all content is locked in. Many providers now offer editable formats or modular structures. If you know what to look for and how to adapt it, you can create training that feels personal—without building it all from the ground up.

Step 1: Choose the Right Content to Customize

Not all off-the-shelf content is worth the effort. Focus your customization efforts where they’ll have the biggest impact.

Good candidates:

Universal skills with company-specific applications (e.g., communication, leadership, DEI)
Regulatory or compliance content that needs branding or minor contextual tweaks
Soft skills that benefit from localized scenarios or examples

Poor candidates:

Highly technical or role-specific training unique to your organization
Content with no access to source files or editing permissions
Legacy content with outdated formats or styles

Step 2: Audit the Content

Before you start tweaking anything, review the material with a sharp eye.

Ask:

Does the tone match your culture?
Are the examples relevant to your industry?
Is the branding consistent with your internal materials?
Are there any gaps compared to your company’s needs or values?
Can your learners apply what they’re learning in their day-to-day?

Identify what works as-is, what needs changing, and what should be replaced entirely. This helps you prioritize and avoid wasting time on unnecessary edits.

Step 3: Customize Strategically

Now comes the fun part. You don’t need to rewrite everything—just tailor the content in smart, high-impact ways. Focus on five key areas:

Visual Identity

Make the training look and feel like it’s yours.

Add your company’s logo, colors, and fonts
Replace stock images with real photos of your people or offices
Use custom icons or visuals that match your branding

Even small visual tweaks go a long way in making content feel integrated into your learning ecosystem.

Voice and Tone

Language matters. If the content sounds robotic or too corporate, it won’t land with your learners.

Rewrite intros, transitions, and summaries in your company’s voice
Simplify jargon or overly formal language
Inject some personality (humor, candor, empathy—whatever fits your culture)

The more human the tone, the more relatable the learning.

Scenarios and Examples

This is where off-the-shelf often misses the mark. Replace generic examples with real-life situations your employees face.

Change characters to reflect your team (job titles, departments, diversity)
Rewrite scenarios using your products, services, or customers
Incorporate common internal challenges or success stories

Learners engage more when they see themselves in the content.

Knowledge Checks and Activities

Don’t just test knowledge—test application.

Customize questions to fit your processes or tools
Add reflection prompts that ask, “How would this work in your role?”
Create role-play or branching scenarios based on your environment

Tailored assessments help reinforce relevance and retention.

Calls to Action

Learning should lead to action. Wrap up with clear next steps.

Direct learners to internal tools, documents, or mentors
Suggest real-world tasks or goals to apply new skills
Align learning with career paths or performance metrics

Make the content part of a bigger learning journey—not a one-off experience.

Step 4: Use Tech to Scale Your Customization

Customization doesn’t have to be manual or slow. Use the right tools to make edits faster and more scalable.

Leverage:

Authoring tools (like Articulate Rise, Adobe Captivate, or Storyline) to edit SCORM files
LMS features to repackage, combine, or reorder modules
AI tools to rewrite text in your tone, localize language, or draft new scenarios
Templates to standardize branding and voice across all modules

The more repeatable your process, the more content you can customize with minimal effort.

Step 5: Pilot, Test, and Improve

Don’t just launch and hope. Run a small pilot with a test group first.

Ask for feedback on:

Relevance of the content
Clarity of language and visuals
Engagement and usability
Suggestions for improvement

Use that input to refine before a full rollout. Then track completion rates, learner satisfaction, and on-the-job impact to measure effectiveness. Keep iterating.

Bonus: Mix and Match With Your Own Content

You don’t have to use off-the-shelf content on its own. Blend it with internal resources to create something hybrid and high-impact.

For example:

Start with a company intro video before a third-party module
Add a live Q&A or manager debrief after a digital lesson
Create an internal discussion board tied to off-the-shelf topics
Pair eLearning with a follow-up workshop or coaching session

This layered approach makes the learning more relevant and stickier—without building everything from scratch.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

A few mistakes can undermine your customization efforts. Watch out for these:

1. Over-customizing

Don’t spend hours rewriting content that already works. Focus only on what truly needs adapting.

2. Neglecting permissions

Make sure you’re allowed to edit or reuse the content before diving in. Some licenses restrict modification.

3. Inconsistent branding

If your visual tweaks aren’t standardized, learners will feel the disconnect. Use templates and brand guidelines.

4. Forgetting the learner

Customization should make content more engaging, not just more branded. Always keep the end user in mind.

Final Thoughts

Custom content can be powerful—but expensive. Off-the-shelf content can be fast—but impersonal. By combining the two, you can deliver scalable, tailored learning experiences without draining your budget.

The key is to start with solid content, then customize with purpose: your voice, your visuals, your scenarios, your learners. It doesn’t take a full rebuild. Just smart edits in the right places.

With a clear strategy, the right tools, and a bit of creativity, you can turn “off-the-shelf” into “just right.”

About LMS Portals

At LMS Portals, we provide our clients and partners with a mobile-responsive, SaaS-based, multi-tenant learning management system that allows you to launch a dedicated training environment (a portal) for each of your unique audiences.

The system includes built-in, SCORM-compliant rapid course development software that provides a drag and drop engine to enable most anyone to build engaging courses quickly and easily.

We also offer a complete library of ready-made courses, covering most every aspect of corporate training and employee development.

If you choose to, you can create Learning Paths to deliver courses in a logical progression and add structure to your training program. The system also supports Virtual Instructor-Led Training (VILT) and provides tools for social learning.

Together, these features make LMS Portals the ideal SaaS-based eLearning platform for our clients and our Reseller partners.

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