Before we get into that, let\u2019s dig into the different business models in the world of education technology.[\/sg_epic_intro]\n[sg_epic_section_gray title=”Business Models in EdTech”]There are different business models<\/a> in EdTech that can be pursued depending on who your target customer is. Here\u2019s a quick summary of some major ones:<\/p>\n The freemium pricing model is based on offering a version of the main product for free and then charging those who want to upgrade to a more advanced product.<\/p>\n MasteryConnect<\/a> is an example of a product that does exactly this. Their product helps both parents and teachers stay on the same page regarding student progress. The data they collect also helps parents and teachers create targeted intervention programs for students who might be at risk of failure, dropping out, etc.<\/p>\n Some companies, like Quizlet<\/a>, target students specifically instead of teachers. Quizlet starts their users off with a free plan to help them study for exams, which includes a certain number of \u201cflashcards\u201d to help students study. For more flashcards or a more sophisticated plan that includes online groups, enhanced audio, etc., they have a Quizlet Plus Plan for $19.99 \/ year.<\/p>\n Some companies target freemium plans at schools, with the goal of getting students and teachers to influence the decision makers at the top.<\/p>\n TeachBoost<\/a>, a company that helps schools maintain efficient processes, uses this model successfully<\/a>. Selling to schools is notoriously hard, so TeachBoost focuses on getting principals at schools on their system first with the idea that the principals will act as advocates to influence the decision makers at the head of the school.<\/p>\n Some education companies, like Clever<\/a>, use another type of freemium business model that involves selling products to other education companies. For example, they might offer their product for free to one audience, and charge other company a fee for access to distribution. Clever reached 70% of K-12 schools<\/a> in the U.S. by using this strategy, and claimed 89 out of the top 100 school districts<\/a> as Clever users.<\/p>\n Once they get schools as users, Clever gathers and interprets their data<\/a>, and ultimately sells the data to other startups that want to connect with schools.<\/p>\n Some education products that target schools are very comprehensive, containing a variety of features specific to the needs of school systems. In this case, they\u2019d have to target schools directly, without going through students first.<\/p>\n Panorama Education<\/a> is one of these companies. They\u2019re a data analytics company that help schools collect analyze the feedback from students. Of course, this isn\u2019t a product that students could use on their own without collaboration from the school system.<\/p>\n Dreambox Learning<\/a> is another example. They have an \u201cIntelligent Adaptive Learning<\/a>\u201d tool that they sell directly to school districts.<\/p>\n Direct to consumer businesses target parents as their end customers, without the intention of going through them to get to schools. However, a viable strategy for these types of business is going through students to get to parents. For example, a business that sells directly to consumers could have a tool that serves students, and use students as a \u201cgateway\u201d to get parents on board.<\/p>\n Companies like Educator<\/a> sell subscription plans directly to consumers \u2014 users have the option to purchase plans to go through full lessons on K-12 topics such biology, calculus, etc.<\/p>\n Source: Educator<\/a><\/p>\n[\/sg_epic_section_gray]\n[sg_epic_section title=”Understanding Your Audience in Education”]\nIf you\u2019re running an education company, then chances are you have multiple stakeholders that you have to worry about. School district leaders, teachers, parents, and students all have different needs, but they all need to be satisfied for a sale to go through.<\/p>\n How do you market to all of them?<\/p>\n According to the EdTech Handbook<\/a>, the first thing to think about is who your initial customer is. For example, you might start off by targeting teachers, but your ultimate goal is to close a deal with a school district. You might begin by offering free plans to teachers and students, but your objective is to sell a paid version to parents. Or you might go directly to your target market, even if they\u2019re a massive entity.<\/p>\n Whatever the case, first focus on making your initial target users happy. This way, you can ensure that they\u2019ll turn into advocates for your business, and help you get more customers and users through referrals.<\/p>\n In addition to this, there are a few sector-specific things to consider<\/a> when marketing your product in EdTech:<\/p>\n Now, let\u2019s dig into actual examples. University College Dublin<\/a> (UCD) is one of Europe\u2019s largest English speaking universities.<\/p>\n UCD wanted to better utilize their alumni base to help build out some of the university\u2019s new programs, community, etc. But the problem was that they had an outdated website and a fragmented communication process. As a result, alumni support wasn\u2019t as high as it should\u2019ve been.<\/p>\n Emarkable, the agency that worked with UCD, focused on the following factors, according to the case study<\/a>:<\/p>\n Ultimately, Emarkable used a content management system to redevelop the site and as a result UCD has been able to foster a better community among their alumni networks \u2014 and thus increase support for the university.<\/p>\n QA Higher Education<\/a> (QAHE) aims to broaden access to higher education by both partnering with universities and hosting them. They also offer part-time masters programs in partnership with well-known universities in the UK.<\/p>\n QAHE wanted to increase their number of leads for a masters program on cybersecurity through search engine marketing and social media, so they worked with Touchpoint Digital <\/a>and ultimately reduced their cost per acquisition (CPA) by 72%.<\/p>\n The target audience for QAHE was quite small: applicants need to live within a certain distance from the physical location in London and be interested in working in a relevant industry afterwards.<\/p>\n That meant that Touchpoint Digital had to make sure that the right type of people in the geographical region surrounding the university saw the ads. If they just blasted ads across the region, there there would potentially be thousands of wasted impressions.<\/p>\n They ended up developing a marketing campaign to help QAHE build awareness at the top of the funnel using social media \u2014 specifically retargeting and search advertising \u2014 to drive high conversions.[\/sg_epic_section_gray]\n[sg_epic_focus title=”Marketing Funnel”][sg_epic_focus_left]A marketing funnel<\/a> is a sequence of steps a prospect takes from the time they first hear about your business to the time they decide to become customers.<\/p>\n Funnels start off at the \u2018awareness\u2019 stage, where the goal is to make more potential customers aware of your business. Then, move them on to the \u201cinterest\u201d phase by capturing their email address in exchange for valuable content. From there, your goal is to move leads closer to making a purchase through evaluation-stage content until they\u2019re ready to transact with you.[\/sg_epic_focus_left]\n[sg_epic_focus_right] Source: Single Grain<\/a><\/p>\n[\/sg_epic_focus_right][\/sg_epic_focus]\n[sg_epic_section]In the awareness step, your marketing strategy might include content marketing, SEO, paid advertising, SEM, and other tactics to get more eyeballs on your website.<\/p>\n Once you get people looking at your site, the next step is to move them onwards to the \u201cinterest\u201d stage, where you present them with educational material like webinars, eBooks, email campaigns, etc to educate them about the problem around your product \/service.<\/p>\n After potential customers are interested, then they\u2019ll eventually start evaluating you against your competitors. At this stage, you\u2019ll want to present them with persuasive case studies and whitepapers to show them the type of results you can deliver for them over other companies.<\/p>\n After the evaluation stage, it comes time to close the deal. At this stage, you\u2019ll want to send them product demos, free trials, or sales calls.<\/p>\n The nice thing about marketing funnels is that you can evaluate how each \u201cstep\u201d of your marketing process is performing. For example, you\u2019ll know whether customers are dropping off at the \u201cawareness\u201d stage, \u201cinterest\u201d stage, or if you\u2019re just not able to convert them on a sales call, etc.<\/p>\n With a funnel, you can see exactly how many people are dropping off at each step, and you\u2019ll know where you need to increase your conversions so that it translates to the bottom line. Here’s an example of what dropoff at each step might look like in an e-commerce marketing funnel:<\/p>\n Source: Template Toaster<\/a><\/p>\n For example, if you notice that a lot of people are moving from the \u201cevaluation\u201d phase to a sales call, but they\u2019re not converting, you know that your sales pitch needs some work.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re getting lots of people in the \u201cinterest\u201d phase, but they\u2019re dropping off before they can get to a sales call, then chances are your engagement emails need some work.<\/p>\n You can take ideas from this systematic approach to building marketing funnels and apply it to your education company marketing strategy — but the truth is, the world of education has its own nuances.<\/p>\n For one, it can be a really fragmented industry<\/a>, depending on what section of the market you\u2019re targeting.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re selling a product to universities or school districts, your marketing strategy will have to be different from companies that target parents or students. You might also have to deal with other nuances — if you\u2019re selling a product to schools, then chances are your actual users will be teachers or students. So you\u2019ll have to create a product that appeals to decision makers in schools as well as parents and students.<\/p>\n According to Bee-seen<\/a>, the same fundamentals still apply. Here\u2019s the three part sequence to closing a sale as an education company:<\/p>\n According to Pardot<\/a>, 72% of buyers turn to Google once they realize they have a pain point. In this stage, customers are looking for educational material, such as blog posts, e-books, white papers, etc. This is why search advertising can be particularly effective. Central Saint Martins<\/a> is a public art school in London that offers a range of art and design courses. They turned to Touchpoint Digital to boost the number of applications received in 2015.<\/p>\n Similar to other small universities and education companies, CSM was working with a small budget in a highly competitive market.<\/p>\n Touchpoint Digital helped them build awareness at the top of the funnel for their short course offerings in order to help drive more applicants down the funnel.<\/p>\n Central Saint Martin\u2019s short course offerings<\/a><\/p>\n Ultimately, the boost in awareness helped Central Saint Martins drive 120% more traffic through Google search, and they were able to increase applications for their short courses by nearly 150%! ROI for the social media campaign was 190%<\/a>.<\/p>\n When running social media campaigns for the top of the funnel, it\u2019s important to have a reliable way to measure ROI so that you don\u2019t get misled by the number of \u201clikes\u201d you get.<\/p>\n There are a variety of ways to measure social media ROI depending on what\u2019s important to you, but here\u2019s what Buffer<\/a> suggests:<\/p>\n This number shows you how much revenue you generate over the \u201clifetime\u201d of a customer\u2019s interaction with your business.<\/li>\n This shows you how much each visit to your site is worth to you in dollar amounts.<\/li>\n This shows you how much customers actually purchase.<\/li>\n This number represents how much you would have to pay to replicate the same results through paid traffic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n By getting clear on what numbers you want to drive through social media, you have a better chance of tracking how effective it really is. [\/sg_epic_section_gray]\n[sg_epic_section_green title=”Conclusion”]The education industry is different from most others because there are almost always multiple stakeholders involved, and the person who you need to sell to is not always the person who\u2019s buying your actual product.<\/p>\n If you work with an agency, it\u2019s important that they understand different business models in the education world, and how to adapt their marketing tactics to it.<\/p>\n What metrics do you want to drive for your education company? Let us know in the comments below.[\/sg_epic_section_green]\nThe Freemium Model<\/h3>\n
![\"Digital](\"https:\/\/www.singlegrain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Screen-Shot-2016-09-06-at-9.54.10-PM-1024x663.png\")
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<\/p>\nEnterprise sales<\/h3>\n
Direct to consumer<\/h3>\n
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\n[\/sg_epic_section]\n[sg_epic_section_gray title=”Digital Marketing Case Studies”]\nUniversity College Dublin<\/h3>\n
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QA Higher Education<\/h3>\n
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\n[\/sg_epic_section]\n[sg_epic_section_gray title=”Case Studies (contd.)”]\nCentral Saint Martins<\/h3>\n
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Lifetime value<\/h4>\n
Lifetime value x Conversion rate<\/h4>\n
Average order value<\/h4>\n
PPC costs<\/h4>\n