As we enter the second half of another school year with COVID-19 and its variants, educators and administrators need help addressing a range of issues that the pandemic has brought on. However, they continue to be under pressure with limited availability to meet with vendors or learn new technology.
To help your company stand out and reach busy potential customers, try these three marketing tips for education companies in 2022:
1. Plan ahead, but with flexibility.
Planning your marketing ahead of time helps you be relevant with your communications. Q2 is a critical time to be in front of buyers at schools and universities before their FY21 budgets close and FY22 budgets begin. So you'll want to create marketing activities that get potential buyers using your products, whether it's through free trials, demos, or webinars.
We know very well that the plans you put together now will need changes. We recommend putting together a marketing plan for the next six months, so you have time to create offers and communications over these crucial next few months—it will go by fast! But don't overcommit to significant investments in your marketing plan in case you need to make adjustments on the fly.
2. Cut through the clutter with personalized emails.
Email is one of the top marketing tactics when it comes to ROI. For every $1 spent on email, $36 is generated. Your email ROI can be even higher than that by sending personalized emails.
Personalized marketing emails are not the same as sending individual 1-on-1 emails (the sales team should do that). And, they should go beyond including the recipient's first name in mass emails (everyone does that).
When your CRM and marketing automation systems are set up well with data about the people you're emailing, you can personalize emails specific to the recipients. You can do this with dynamic content available with most email platforms. Dynamic content serves images, offers, and text specific to the person you're emailing at scale and automatically. When you set up dynamic content, you select parameters for what to show to who based on the data you have about your email recipients.
For example, let's say you're promoting an online assessment software to universities. You can send an email to 1,000 people in your database using dynamic content, and it will automatically adjust what is shown in the email. Deans will see features about the cost and ease of use with a photo of students taking an exam. In contrast, heads of the IT department will see features about security and technology integration with a photo of the software.
Personalized emails using dynamic content are a powerful way to stand out in a crowded inbox and increase your ROI.
3. Organize communities of like-minded buyers.
Trust is ultimately the most essential component of any sale. One way to build trust as a company is to bring people together. People want to connect, especially now that we are all in a continual sense of learning and change.
As an education company, be the organizer of people who are customers and potential buyers with similar interests and needs. You can gather them in various ways, including virtual or in-person events, Slack groups, Facebook groups, Twitter Spaces, or your own online forum. Host conversations, panel discussions, competitions, and ways for people to share, learn and meet.
Your goal as a community organizer is to bring your customers, potential buyers, and influencers together, not to sell. By doing this, you will build awareness for your brand. People who are part of the community will know you are organizing it. And at some point, when they are ready to buy what you sell, your company will be at the top of their consideration set.
Successfully marketing to educators in 2022 entails planning ahead, standing out with dynamic personalized emails, and bringing people together in communities. There's money to be spent on education products and services from federal funding, and your company can benefit from that with the right marketing strategies.
