The education marketplace is a crowded one, with new companies offering new solutions at a rapid pace. Traditional channels like email or organic social media are becoming harder to convert on as consumers get pickier and more sophisticated about how they engage with providers. The edtech industry alone is expected to grow by 13% by 2030, meaning that the sophistication needed to capture, nurture, and secure your audience’s attention will only increase in the coming years.

While many start-ups or smaller teams put marketing on the proverbial back burner, effective marketing is crucial for education companies, especially in a competitive industry where brand reputation and trust are paramount. And with many education sales cycles lasting 6-12 months, most young companies don’t have the runway to wait.

Thankfully, all is not lost—there is still significant potential for companies to find and nurture clients in the K-12 space. This typically includes thorough market research, strategic multi-channel marketing, up-to-date campaign analysis, and agile marketing that allows your team to focus on activities that are most impactful and have the greatest return on investment. While some teams do this well, others lack the necessary capacity to execute and be successful in today’s marketing climate.

In this three-part blog series, we’ll break down what effective B2E (Business to Education) marketing looks like and we will offer expert guidance on how to launch your strategy this year. So, whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your approach, read on to learn how the right strategy and the right partner will help elevate your marketing game.

Getting Started: 4 Foundational Elements of Effective Education Marketing

Every successful marketing program starts with several key foundational elements. These include 1) setting clear and accurate goals, 2) conducting thorough market research, 3) developing detailed personas, and 4) crafting well-defined messaging. Without these elements in place, marketing can feel a lot like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks.

1. Set Realistic Marketing Goals: The Foundation of Success

While many organizations focus on sales as the primary goal of a marketing program, the reality is that there are crucial steps between launching a campaign and closing deals that are not to be overlooked. The most successful marketing programs prioritize engaging prospects, increasing audience reach, and building measurable brand awareness. From there, subsequent campaigns can nurture interested prospects further, or a sales team can step in to close the deal.

When direct sales are the only goal, especially for high-ticket items, marketing initiatives can fall flat. While a book or event ticket might sell directly from a campaign, larger purchases—like curriculum packages, edtech tools, or professional development programs—require building and nurturing relationships over time. If goals are too broad, campaigns can feel overly salesy and pushy, resulting in lost opportunities to properly nurture leads and build lasting partnerships.

Ready to Create Your Goals?

Check out this Ed2Market Goal Planner that helps companies develop, track progress toward, and achieve realistic marketing goals. While initial goals often focus on engagement and audience building, our clients’ goals grow over time, allowing for new strategies to nurture and convert warmer leads. This growth happens through a mix of strong content marketing and sales enablement strategies—essential components of a robust, multi-channel marketing program.

2. Understand Your Market: The Power of Competitive Analysis

Many clients come to Ed2Market with a robust competitive analysis of every facet of everyone who is a direct competitor of their products or brand. This is helpful, but can be a unique mix of too much information and not enough of the “right” information.

When it comes to competition, we encourage clients to think about not only the companies in the same space selling the same type of tool or service, but also the competing initiatives that have potential to take those dollars in a different direction.

For example, let’s say you produce a walkthrough tool meant to support teacher observations and instructional feedback. While a few other companies play in this space with similar tools or resources, schools aren’t required to have a tool to do this work. They may be leveraging funds to purchase professional development (PD) books on instructional strategies or may be supporting PD for their recently adopted curricular framework. The point is that competition is really a mix of how a school or district may or may not spend the funds they would be spending on you, and positioning your solution as a must have, not a nice to have.

Ready to Dig in to Your Competition?

Start by creating a list of all known competitors. Expand this list by adding anyone adjacent to your speciality (i.e. you have a math curriculum–add math PD experts, math edtech tools, etc.). Gather as much information as you can, such as pricing, key clients, the problems this solution solves, thought leaders, grade levels, etc. Follow these companies on social media, spend time on their websites, and subscribe to their newsletters. Engage with their content and make note of what you like and what you don’t.

3. Identify Your True Audience: Crafting Personas That Convert

Good marketing means knowing your audience deeply and the various roles they play in the decision-making process. While in many cases teachers may be the end-user of the product or service, they are usually not the decision maker. It’s important to note, however, that teachers often help influence a purchase so be sure your marketing efforts keep this in mind. School and district leaders are typically decision makers, though they have different needs and goals from each other and need to be spoken to uniquely.

In addition to identifying and understanding these key personas, you may want to consider creating content that supports their decision making. For example, a district-wide implementation case study isn’t going to speak directly to a school principal. Likewise, a classroom implementation checklist may make sense for teachers or coaches, but are not useful assets for district-level leaders. Think about content that works for your core personas and identify gaps that exist in your marketing messaging and resources.

Ready to Identify Your Ideal Audience and Accompanying Personas?

Explore our Audience Persona Planning Tool to help you craft a deeper understanding of each potential persona in your audience. To dig deeper, use the tool that Ed2Market uses with clients and utilizes with Ed2Market Academy partners, found here.

4. Master Your Message: Crafting Clear and Compelling Communication

Just-right messaging to support outreach is a critical component of any marketing plan. Not only will clear, concise messaging be a useful tool for all company stakeholders, but it will also ensure that you are addressing problems that potential clients may have and sharing how your offering is the ideal solution.

Messaging should include a few key elements, including a unique selling proposition and top line messaging, and can also include components such as brand personality or tone, brand story, brand identity, and more. The most critical components, especially if this is new to your organization, are to create the positioning statement and top line messaging. The positioning statement is a statement about why your offering is essential and illustrates why it’s better than other solutions. Top line messaging is really a summary of the key points that you need to get across to your audience. Not only will this content support your marketing efforts, but it will also help your team nail key messages when talking with customers about your brand.

Ready to Craft Your Messaging?

Utilize the Ed2Market Messaging Grid Template to craft your messaging. Treat this grid as a living document and add to or update it often. Pull content for website pages or other marketing campaigns from this tool so you don’t “recreate the wheel” every time you create content about your solutions.

Building Your Marketing Foundation

The essential elements listed above are a great start in building your B2E marketing foundation. With clear goals, a deeper understanding of competition and the overall landscape, an identified audience, and core messaging, you are well on your way to launch a strong K-12 marketing plan. Look for our upcoming posts on developing your multi-channel marketing roadmap and marketing with data and agility to round out this three-part series on best practices in K-12 marketing.

Looking to explore bringing in the experts to help your marketing needs? Contact us at info@ed2market.com and we can discuss how agency-driven marketing can support your B2E goals.

The Power of Effective K-12 Marketing: Building the Foundation (Part 1 of 3)