The EdTech CEO's Guide to Aligning Marketing with Business Growth

Key Takeaways:

• Edtech marketing isn’t just about generating leads. Marketing should actively support every stage of the customer journey, from awareness to renewal.

• Align marketing messaging, sales, product, and customer success so your whole education company speaks the same language and provides potential buyers with a consistent experience.

• Even small education marketing teams can drive strategic impact by prioritizing high-value activities and integrating marketing across the customer journey.

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Marketing, at its core, is about connecting companies and products with customers. Most commonly, marketing's role is to bring in new customers through lead generation activities. However, marketing can contribute even more when it supports the business throughout the entire customer journey.

If your edtech marketing team is only creating and executing campaigns to generate new leads, your business may be missing out on the full potential marketing can bring. Let's explore what this can mean for your edtech company.

What is the "Customer Journey"?

Anyone who has sold an educational product or service knows the sales process is long..very long. Budget cycles, the number of stakeholders involved in a new purchase, and the fact that most users of the product are not the ones making the buying decision contribute to this.

The steps a buyer goes through during this process is the customer journey. And it begins before the sales process even starts. The customer journey includes the entire experience from identifying a need to renewing the edtech product.

Steps a Buyer Takes in the Edtech Consumer Journey

• Realizes they have a need or a problem

• Researches solutions

• Requests information from the education company

• Meets with the sales team

• Evaluates solutions

• Makes the purchase

• Uses the educational product

• Renews the edtech product and/or refers others

Marketing plays a crucial role in the entire customer journey, ensuring a consistent experience throughout all interactions prospective buyers and customers have with the education company at every stage.

How Marketing Helps Throughout the Customer Journey

Marketing is not just for lead generation. It can contribute to your edtech company in many ways by aligning prospective buyers and existing customers with your business throughout the customer journey. For example:

Consistent Messaging

Since the sales cycle is so long, potential buyers will interact with your company in multiple ways, and if what they read and hear is inconsistent, it can impact the sale. If your marketing team has developed a compelling value proposition that is consistently highlighted throughout the website and your marketing materials, but the sales team discusses something else, a buyer can become confused.

When your marketing team develops messaging points, ensure that other teams within the company contribute to their development, including sales, product, and customer success, so that everyone is aligned and communicating the same points throughout the customer journey.

Sales Support

The most successful edtech companies have marketing and sales teams that work collaboratively. Your marketing team should seek ways to support the sales team by:

• Bringing in quality leads, not just a high quantity of leads.

• Arming the sales team with competitive intelligence to make them more informed in their prospecting and meetings.

• Developing materials that will help them nurture prospects along the long sales cycle.

Product Adoption

An edtech company's success depends on whether users regularly engage with the product. Marketing can help by consistently communicating with customers and providing resources to ensure that end-users of the product have what they need. For example, sharing training materials, tips or ideas for using the product, or convening customers to collaborate as peers on how they're using your edtech product.

When marketing extends across the consumer journey, it not only brings in new leads but also helps the sales team close deals and retain customers through renewals, ensuring that your marketing efforts have a lasting impact on your education company.

How Small Education Marketing Teams Can Support the Customer Journey

If you have a small marketing team to oversee, you may wonder how your lean marketing resources can handle projects beyond lead generation activities. Even if you have a marketing director, they are often so focused on getting the day-to-day marketing tasks done that it can be challenging for them to find time to think more holistically.

A senior-level marketing strategy partner can help—someone who can work with you at a leadership level to translate what the business needs into how marketing can support the customer journey and grow your business. In most cases, this means prioritizing marketing activities and not just settling for what's always been done. Plus, looking at the bigger picture and spending time building relationships with teams across the company.

Most education companies are small and can't afford or necessarily need someone full-time to lead marketing, which is where Wise Marketing Strategy helps. We manage your marketing team on a part-time basis, ensuring they contribute to what will have the biggest impact on your business. Contact us to learn about how Wise Marketing Strategy can help your edtech company.