Marketing Strategy Tips for EdTech Companies

Track the Marketing Results of Your Edtech Company

While it often feels like a given, the accurate measurement, interpretation and optimization of your marketing is the most important and powerful opportunity in Edtech growth.

The goal of any marketing is to achieve tangible results - leads, demos, and purchases. It can be very easy to execute marketing activities and skip over goal definition, consistent review and strategic improvement.

Business intelligence that gives you information on the effectiveness of your various marketing funnels will help you understand your target market better. Businesses that employ data-driven personalization delivered 5-8x the ROI on their marketing spend compared to companies that didn't.

Here are some important tips for Edtech companies to follow with tracking:

Segment Your Audience Metrics

Often Edtech companies will sell to a wide range of audiences that may include private schools, public schools, specialized institutions, universities, and potentially even enterprises looking to educate their workforce.

It is important to understand what channels, messages and funnels work for each of these audiences separately. In most cases each of these audiences will respond differently to these aspects of your marketing strategy.

Integrating Analytics & Insights

Edtech marketing should not happen in silos and while it is important to segment data, it is also imperative to connect the dots.  If you have website metrics, ad metrics, social metrics, email metrics, and a wide range of other channels it is important to see how they work together.

A huge mistake often made is looking at a single metric and making assumptions before seeing the full picture.

Education companies are all about learning, and they shouldn’t limit that to just their edtech product. Learning from your edtech marketing campaigns results will allow you to put the necessary tweaks on your outreach to better connect with your target demographic.

Utilize Automation To Scale Edtech Campaigns

Marketing automation software allows companies to open more time for other tasks by effectively mechanizing certain components of outreach.

Many companies utilize automation to scale their outreach and create more free time for marketing and sales teams.

In the edtech sector, marketing automation plays an important role. According to Startup Bonsai, 76% of automation marketers see a positive ROI within a year. One aspect of the sales funnels that edtech marketers could look towards automating is their landing pages. For example, suppose a potential buyer take a particular action on the website such as filling in a form or subscribing to updates. In that case, there should be an automated response that pushes them deeper into the funnel.

Automating your lead capture systems like landing pages will save your business a significant amount of time. The best business models are ones that allow employees to maximize their time and productivity.

Manually responding to potential customers' buyer actions isn't a scalable solution. Marketing automation gives businesses powerful tools that can be customized and set up to improve the buyer journey and free up employees to focus on other tasks.

Educate with Inbound Marketing

Many education companies have realized that inbound marketing is the key to reaching potential customers, regardless of whether your edtech product is an online school or training software.

Inbound marketing in edtech can consist of several components. Blogs, high-quality content on social media platforms, and Search Engine Optimization are critical parts of a cohesive edtech inbound marketing strategy.

Overall, a successful inbound strategy revolves around content marketing in a way that appeals to the interests of your prospective customers. An EdTech business that does an impeccable  job of this is Treehouse, an e-learning coding company. Across their social media platforms they share useful content pertaining to the services they provide. Free content doesn’t mean there’s no value! People will gain trust in your company and will be more willing to make purchases with you if they like the content you’re creating.

Some examples of what an edtech inbound strategy could look like are blog posts detailing interesting lesson plans or social media video marketing showing the importance of quality education. The type of inbound content they will create is up to companies' discretion, but it must be personalized and enjoyable to your target market.

Content marketing generates three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less. This is an essential strategy for edtech because many businesses are oriented towards younger demographics.

Finding a way to natively appeal to them is extremely important, and social media and other forms of inbound marketing go a long way towards connecting with young audiences. Student engagement is the primary goal of most edtech companies’ marketing outreach, and inbound marketing is a top way to engage prospective students and other decision-makers.

Segment Your Email Marketing

When selling to educational institutions you have a lot of very different stakeholders and your message should be personalized to each.

Email campaigns are an important way to reach students, educators, and parents, as email is a globally significant form of communication with over 4 billion daily users. Emails allow companies to reach out very directly to specific customers and are useful across areas of the edtech industry.

One of the best ways to improve the effectiveness of email marketing is through segmentation. Segmentation is dividing an email list into different types of consumers and tailoring the content towards the different groups. Tweak your messaging to specifically target each segmented audience. What information would they benefit the most from? A student would gain value from a different piece of content than a teacher. When you’re more specific and personal, more people will engage with your emails. In fact, 50% of companies say they increase customer engagement through email personalization. 

According to Campaign Monitor, marketers who use segmented campaigns noted a 760% increase in revenue.

For example, if your business is a student success platform that has a basic plan and a premium plan, you can segment your emails into different age groups or by parent type.

As another example, if you are selling a video SaaS platform for teachers, you may segment your list into board members, principals, administrators, and teachers.  Each of these audiences in the educational space have different priorities and interests based on their roles.

While email marketing can be effective, if it is generalized to fit any audience it becomes more diluted and less effective. When promoting an Edtech product, it is key to know each of the different audiences and how best to influence them.

Create great and simple video to explain your Edtech product

Video is one of the most powerful tools in the world today and is only becoming more powerful as our society gets obsessed with content platforms like TikTok, Reels & others.

When it comes to Edtech, the audiences are not always sophisticated and don't have the time for deep research, therefore shorter videos that explain concepts quickly can be compelling.  A primary focus for your content should be about the problem your product/service is solving. Why do students need this and how does it improve their learning experience?

Here are some examples of videos that are recommended:

• High-Level Explainer.  A top level video that explains the problem ( your audience's problem ), fix ( how your product fixes it ), and outcome ( what benefits come from fixing the problem ). This video supports all audiences.
• Feature Videos.  Creating videos for each of the major features of your Edtech product helps your audience with a specific pain or need understand how they can get relief.
• Update Announcements.  Showing snippets of new features not only helps with retention, but also shows potential customers that the product continues to evolve.
• Product How-Tos.  Showing how to use the product is the foundation of your support portal but also can be great for search optimization of your Edtech site.

One EdTech company that has created excellent video content is Quizlet. Check out this high-level explainer video they made all about their digital flashcards:

Utilize Your Company’s Expertise

It’s extremely beneficial for EdTech companies to put their thought leadership to use by providing valuable content relevant to the industry. This not only helps your audience gain valuable information, but it helps you positively build upon your reputation. Figure out creative ways that you can help your company be known an expert in EdTech.

Find events (virtual or in person) where you can become a speaker and share your expertise while also spreading the word about your product. Discover areas where you can share your knowledge and make sure you’re still utilizing your brand voice and messaging. This establishes consistency and people will know what they’re getting when they get involved with your company/products. 

You can also find ways to be a knowledgeable source. For example, HARO is super easy to sign up for where you can find articles/reports that you can give some insights on for your specific industry. 

Key Takeaways

A profitable edtech business will be able to appeal directly to the consumers their products are oriented towards. Whether for a school board, teachers, or students, knowing how to reach the decision-makers your software is intended for is the key to a successful business model. This requires a comprehensive, diverse marketing plan that uses different strategies to reach as many consumers as possible.

By tracking your campaign’s successes and failures, automating your landing pages and other lead capture features, refining your inbound marketing processes, and segmenting your email outreach, you can better reach leads from across the education industry.

If you’re ready to start developing and implementing a successful edtech marketing strategy, Insivia is available to help. Partnering with a consulting and marketing company with decades of intensive industry experience is the best way to find immediate success. Insivia provides businesses with scalable, customized solutions fitted to their unique products, restrictions, and needs.

To learn more about how Insivia can provide your edtech business with an actionable growth and marketing strategy, get in touch with us today.