3 Key Aspects of Digital EdTech Marketing

The UK's EdTech market is a beacon of innovation and growth, dotted with startups and established companies alike.. 

Yet, despite this forward-looking approach in product development, many EdTech companies struggle to move beyond traditional marketing methods.

The reliance on events and cold emailing has long been the norm in this industry, yet I think the viability of these channels for startup and SME EdTechs in the UK is over.

BETT Show, appears to be evolving into an event that positioning itself as a gateway to the EMEA market. Good news if you’re a Microsoft or Google fighting for mindshare amongst large swaths of education policy makers, but terrible news if your a small and growing domestic EdTech company.

A spate of online events companies are stepping into the gap, but there’s a worrying trend that many are paying education delegates to attend but not making this clear up front to suppliers.

I think most of us would sit on a Zoom call for 60 minutes and listen to a few pitches if we were getting paid £150+ but for me these can’t be classed as prospective leads. Their motivation is money, not to find a new solution - take a hard pass on these.

And as for cold email agencies… the less said the better I think. Just last week I spoke with a startup founder who told me they’d spent £3,000 for a full service campaign with one of the main EdTech email marketing agencies. 30,000 emails sent over 6 weeks. Number of leads generated: 0.

The response from the agency… “But your open rates were great!”

Sorry, but open rates don’t put money in the bank to pay staff (and yourself!)

“But I Tried Facebook Ads - they didn’t work!”

Marketing is a process which involves moving a prospective school (or user) through multiple stages.

The main problem is that most EdTech’s don’t have a marketing funnel - There’s no customer touch points. No ability to convert very early, initial interest into action. No ‘lead warming.’ It’s a lot of big claims followed by ‘book a demo / claim a free trial.’

Rinse & repeat. Rinse & repeat. Rinse & repeat. It burns through leads like crazy because most schools aren’t in buying mode yet. They’re in research mode.

For these companies, there’s a sense of detachment when trying digital. They put on some Facebook Ads (or Google Ads), gets clicks, but nothing ‘happens’. They don’t know who these people were, they only see the money going out.

To use a familiar example, most people remember the Cadbury’s Milk Tray Ads, yet after the ad finished you didn’t immediately run to the supermarket and buy some Milk Tray. Instead, they kept Milk Tray top of mind and when a birthday or holiday came up, you’d pick up some Milk Tray the next time you were out shopping.

As an EdTech, building that brand recognition for when the time is right will help you win long-term.

For those who don’t understand or invest in it, the traditional approach means companies chase after what they see as direct leads - tangible email addresses or in-person events because they’re getting something for their money.

It’s not that these activities aren’t useful. It’s whether they work for your budget because when you run the numbers, they’re pretty much always more expensive. Here are some typical numbers.

You might say a lead generation rate of 1% is way too low, but this is generally what the Click Through Rate (CTR) is on pure cold emails. If this is your own email list, you’ll be closer to 3%.

Trade shows are next up: Typically more expensive, you’ll get a much better ‘lead gen’ conversion (1%>1.5%), but the rest of the funnel is generally very similar.

Here I’ve imagined a company have exhibited at Bett Show. At £10,000, they’ll be off the main concourse or will have a very small stand. Lead gen would be defined as having a conversation and then scanning their badge. I’ve seen companies try and scan the badge of everyone on the path outside their stand regardless of whether they’ll even paying attention to their stand or not. This isn’t a lead as this person hasn’t even given you any attention.

Finally let’s look at something like Facebook Ads. Hootsuite analysis found that the average spend is 12p per click.

Overtime, you can optimise this further as with digital ads you have a learning loop that you don’t have with email or event marketing. If things aren’t working, you can also pause your ads before you’ve spent big.

Email and event marketing is a fixed upfront cost, and there’s always a large element of luck involved that can mean sometimes they’re a complete washout.

However, Facebook is only the delivery channel. Excelling in digital marketing relies on mastering 3 key aspects:

• Message: Your ability to break through the noise

• Value: Your ability to provide value up-front (and capture an email address)

• Consistency: Your ability to follow up with multiple touch points

Let me talk you through 2 real life examples I’ve worked on:

🚀 Launching LearnMaker: 2014

At a time when mobile devices were the big craze, implementation was largely reduced to looking for silver bullets (what’s the best app) and gimmicky uses of mobile devices rather than any truly transformational benefits.

The Goal: To build credibility at a national level instead of fighting it out to win a half-day inset training session.

• Message: We focused on pedagogy over apps. We built a content plan around a campaign called “These are Not the Apps You’re Looking For”

• Value: We published weekly blogs, made free downloadables, launched a podcast, and ran after-school training sessions

• Consistency: We released at least 1 new piece of content every month for 3 years. Whenever we did an interesting or successful project, we measured the impact, documented it, and released it online for free.

👉 At the time, no EdTechs were really even blogging or tweeting, never mind sharing best practice. We were some years ahead of the trend.

The Outcome: We were appointed to the Apple European Leadership Tour, we worked with Google, we were invited to speak at BETT Show 2 times and the Academies Show 3, and I was appointed as a Specialist Advisor to the DfE (2 year contract). We worked with over 1,000 schools in the process.

🔧 Becoming the MAT Leader at Arbor Education: 2017

When I joined Arbor, they had just 3 MATs, 2 of whom were really struggling to implement the platform. A large part of my role was to figure out how to fix this, then how to scale it.

The Goal: To get ahead of the market, leading the debate on what good data looks like at the MAT level.

• Message: The nascent MAT sector was struggling from a lack of best practice, direction, and vision. Arbor leaned into this creating high quality content and insights specifically for MAT central teams.

• Value: At first Arbor created blogs. This evolved into the ‘free lunch’ campaign at BETT (booking the restaurant on the concourse for an invite only event). This evolved into a full-day MAT leadership event in London. This evolved into a regional, full-day MAT leadership event.

• Consistency: The guiding principle was to consistently spread best practice. As Arbor’s scale and influence grew, the company scaled it’s distribution of best practice. Within 18 months, a fortnightly blog had turned into 2 MAT leader conferences, enabling Arbor to built connections with hundreds of MAT leaders.

👉 At the time, no-one was really focused on Trusts, because Trusts had very little visible decision making or power.

The Outcome: Years in the making, at the point that Trusts grew in decision making power and influence, Arbor was well known and recognised. This marketing excellence was turned into sales excellence. In 2017, Bromcom was larger than Arbor. Today, Arbor is larger, and for every 1 school Bromcom wins, Arbor win 4. #Domination!

👨‍💻 Digital Marketing for Your Company

After banging the drum on this for more than a year, I’m now really pleased to announce that I’m expanding The EdTech Forum team so that we can build and run digital marketing campaigns for you.

The barrier for many EdTechs has been how to even get started or the inability to afford to hire a Digital Marketing Manager.

I’m happy to welcome Robbie Owen onboard, a seasoned digital marketing expert and former EdTech Head of Marketing with FlashAcademy (Category Leader).

I’ve been looking for the right person to partner with for some time and having worked with Robbie at FlashAcademy, I know how good he is, but more importantly, how well he knows the EdTech sector.

I’m excited in how we can add a new level of support for everyone out there. We’ll be working with companies a retainer basis starting from £1,000 per month.

If you’re interested and would like to know more / setup a call together, hit reply or email me on [email protected] 

As always, thanks for reading!

Best

Jay

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