Working with an Agency - Bee Digital

Why work with a marketing agency?

Chris Bradford — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 10:42:20 +0000

Large or small, there will come a point in most education and edtech companies’ journeys when they will ask themselves a question: what’s the best way for us to reach more teachers?

But reaching more teachers is just the destination. A destination that’s determined by a need you’ve identified.

Typically, you have a challenge that needs to be solved (such as wanting higher quality leads), or work that needs to be amplified (such as launching a new product to market).

Whatever it is, it’s an itch you can no longer ignore, because ultimately you want to grow.

You want to grow by selling more product – and you know you have a good product.

So that’s not the problem.

The problem is you need to persuade more teachers to trust you and buy from you.

A perfectly reasonable ambition. It almost sounds easy, eh?

You just need to get better at marketing and selling to schools.

The next logical step is figuring out how on earth to do that.

We have a saying at Bee Digital: “It can’t (or won’t) be done without us”.

Let’s break that down

1) The marketing WON’T be done without an agency’s help AKA “If you could do it then you would do it”.

This is often the case with more established brands.

There’s an internal push to be better at marketing your product to teachers but there’s always a million ~~excuses~~ reasons why that isn’t happening as fast or efficiently as you’d like.

Growth may be stagnant but you’re too close to the product to come up with fresh thinking and ideas
You’ve got too much else going on to even think about getting sign off on hiring new staff
Your team’s attention is focused on day-to-day marketing tactics and the thought of creating and publishing national marketing campaigns or re-building the website gives you the shivers

But often the problem boils down to this: you always find yourself chasing, rather than leading, a marketing strategy.

And it’s super unsatisfying.

The truth is you need to pass the problem on to someone else or it won’t ever happen.

A partner who knows what they’re doing, has proven form, and can execute.

That’s the moment you realise it WON’T happen without an agency.

“It is more cost-effective (to hire an agency) than hiring an employee (benefits, vacation, sick days, etc). Basically, you are hiring a pro at a lower rate than hiring an entry-level person.”

Databox, When to hire a marketing agency

2) The thing CAN’T be done without an agency’s help AKA “You’d love to do the marketing but everything’s against you”

This often effects start up and scale up companies.

Younger companies often lack in-house expertise, capacity, experience, and skills to deliver a cost effective growth marketing strategy.

It’s also common to have little or no access to the right marketing stack.

And, ultimately, that ol’ bug bear: no time.

Maybe you have a great product, which is selling pretty well. Possibly you have budget set aside for spending on advertising. Perhaps you have built up a passionate community on social media.

So far so good. But who’s going to manage growing all that? Stitching it all together under a proper marketing strategy?

The obvious answer is to hire a Marketing Manager, right?

But you might wait months to find the right candidate.

And then you’ll be asking them to do creative, build adverts, post to social media, write copy, manage a budget, organise a strategy, track data, support GDPR, and so on. Waaay more than one person can effectively do.

So now you have to hire 2-3 people. And now your budget has to cover 3 salaries + costs. Every month. Even if they don’t perform.

So you delay the hiring decision. You double down on more product features. You punt out more blogs, a post or two on Linkedin, some amusing team photos to your Instagram.

Maybe you look at recruiting a sales person.

And marketing kind of…dribbles along.

You’re at an inflection point, where you can’t justify lots of new marketing hires, but you don’t want to lose momentum.

That’s the moment you realise it CAN’T happen without an agency.

“Hiring an inbound marketing specialist, a content producer, editor, social media manager, PPC specialist, and graphic designer gets expensive fast. Even if that is out of reach for your smaller business, when you hire a marketing agency, you can still get the benefits of all that experience and all those skills - for about the cost of one employee.”

Hubspot, Should I hire a marketing agency?

Is it time to hire an agency?

Hiring an agency is rarely about handing over control. It is about admitting reality.

At some stage, growth demands more than good intentions and half-finished plans.

It needs clear thinking, consistent execution, and people who wake up every day focused on marketing rather than squeezing it in between everything else.

For some organisations, marketing will not happen because they are too close to the product, too stretched, or too cautious to move first.

For others, it simply cannot happen because the skills, time, and structure are not there yet.

Both roads lead to the same place. Inertia and frustration.

An agency does not magically fix everything (we’re only human!). But it removes friction. It brings momentum. It turns ambition into something that actually ships.

And for many education businesses, that is the difference between drifting and growing.

Want to know more about working with our agency?

The post Why work with a marketing agency? appeared first on Bee Digital.

3 BIG warning signs you might want to hire a marketing agency

Bryan Plumb — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 10:17:42 +0000

How do you know you need to hire a marketing agency?

Over the years we’ve found there are some common reasons education and edtech companies turn to our expert team to help them build their marketing muscle.

We’re going to get super honest here so strap in. And if you recognise any of these in your own business then you should probably get in touch

1. All marketing tasks are done by one person

Who’s the Jack or Jill of all marketing trades on your team (whether it’s their actual job or not)?

In any company with more than a handful of staff expecting a single person to manage all the aspects of marketing is asking too much.

And this isn’t confined to start ups where everyone wears lots of hats. We see this in companies of all sizes.

For example, from a non-marketer’s perspective posting a X/Tweet seems like a quick and easy task, right?

But from a marketer’s perspective it likely involves the following skills and jobs:

1. Brain storming creative idea(s)
2. Copywriting and proof reading
3. Hashtag analysis
4. Image design in accordance with platform rules and post type
5. Video filming, editing, branding, and subtitling
6. Scheduling and posting
7. Responding to comments
8. Post-publishing data analysis

And that’s just a single social post, a tiny part of a wider marketing remit.

Widen that remit to strategy to scheduling to content creation to editing to analysis…I’m tired just even thinking about it.

Marketing is so easy, just position your product, write great content, create growth loops, design a great landing page, analyze your data, engage with people, build links, collaborate with creators, post on social every day and optimize your conversion rate, anyone can do it.
— Andrea Bosoni (@theandreboso) February 7, 2023

So your marketer does their best. But they have to think small because they’re spread too thin to think BIG.

And BIG is where your best marketing will come from.

They know they’ll struggle to do everything that needs to be done to make any sort of substantial difference.

So if you wonder why your marketing manager always looks stressed this might be why.

A discussion with a marketing agency is the answer.

An agency can plug a short term gap while you find your feet, work on a project while you concentrate on other important objectives, or completely handle the whole marketing strategy and execution.

So does hiring an agency mean you don’t need a marketing manager anymore?

Absolutely not. We’d 100% advise against this. Your marketing manager is a crucial part of the relationship between your business and your agency.

Your marketing person might feel threatened by the involvement of an agency. But decent agencies are well versed in working tightly and empathetically with marketing teams all day every day.

In fact, we often see the marketing person gain huge experience and leadership skills working in partnership with our agency. We love working with other marketers!

Empower them to work alongside an expert marketing agency and watch them (and your marketing strategies) fly.

2. Your marketing idea bank is empty

This is a tough thing to admit – sometimes it feels like you’ve tried everything and still seeing little result or change.

We speak to many clients who have done things like spending £1000s on an event, bought and blasted a database of teacher emails (which we do NOT generally recommend), and sent out multiple PR pieces.

And yet website traffic, leads, and sales remain flat.

Why? Because without a strong experienced team to manage the marketing you end up working tactically instead of strategically.

You’re throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.

And eventually you run out of things to throw.

A good marketing agency should be able to understand your business and customers, analyse your current marketing strengths and weaknesses, and produce a clear strategy and campaign.

Then they will decide what tactics, channels, and media will deliver the strategy and help you overcome your challenges.

Which means you don’t need to worry anymore about having ideas – that’s what you pay the agency for.

3. You never have enough time to do marketing

“If I had more staff…”

“If there was another 12 hours in the day...”

“If only I could clone myself…”

When you help manage a growing business there’s never enough time to do everything.

You’re tired. Sometimes you just…run out of puff.

You want to focus on all the different areas of your business but having to manage a productive marketing strategy on top just leaves you anxious.

So it gets sidelined.

And that leads to delay.

And you know what delay means?

Delayed marketing activity is a boiling frog problem that will hit your bottom line, draining you and your team.

Eventually the problem will be so large you won’t know how to fix it.

One of the best reasons to hire an external marketing agency is so obvious it hardly bears writing: we’re not you.

We DO have time to take an independent and unbiased look at your company, product, and audience and undo that gordian knot for you.
We DO have the right marketing expertise on hand to make things happen for you.
We ALREADY have all the groovy marketing tools and platforms to do the work
We CAN do the heavy lifting
We ARE full of beans and ready and eager to help.

Your success is our success.

Act before it becomes too late.

The best time to book a call with us is today.

We're here to help you

If your marketing feels overwhelming, under-resourced, or stuck in a rut, you’re not alone.

And you don’t have to fix it alone either.

A good agency can bring clarity, capacity, and fresh ideas to help you move forward. If any of these signs sound familiar, it might be time to start a conversation.

Is it time to hire our agency?

The post 3 BIG warning signs you might want to hire a marketing agency appeared first on Bee Digital.

7 killer edtech marketing recruitment interview questions

Chris Bradford — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 13:54:32 +0000

Hiring a marketing manager for your edtech company requires a similar skill set to any other industry. But (we know from experience!) there are some unique challenges in education marketing that you need to consider.

You might think a deep understanding of the school sector is vital when hiring.

But while super useful, we don’t think it’s essential.

That knowledge can be gained through coaching and training (or attending something like Teachertapp’s ‘Schools 101: A crash course in what you need to know to work with schools’).

Same with marketing tools. Same with CRM platforms. Same with sales and support processes.

The key element is to hire based on attitude.

What is hiring for attitude?

It’s about trying to discover…

Their personal investment in their own potential
Their critical thinking and emotional awareness skills
How they think and feel about things
Who they believe they are

So what questions might you want to ask when hiring a marketing person for your edtech company? To tune in to their “attitude” and hopefully add a wonderful new addition to your team?

The following are edtech marketer interview questions that we’ve used over the years, and often bring us great results (or help us better refine who would be a good fit for the agency).

Edtech recruitment questions to help you find the right marketer for the job

“Tell me about a non-education sector marketing campaign you’ve seen that you loved.”

Any campaign will do! You want to hear insights into marketing tactics + how enthusiastic they are about marketing.

Looking for: Taking inspiration from remarkable campaigns outside the edtech bubble to see if they can bring fresh thinking and innovative ideas to your team.

Red flag: “Don’t really know”
Boring answer: big campaigns everyone knows e.g. Nike Just Do It
Good answer: Tells you in a broad sense about a campaign that they admire
Great answer: Shows a real passion for a campaign that effects real change AND then tries to get you to be involved

“If our leads are down 10% but traffic is up 30%, what initiatives would you put in place to hit our leads goal?”

Maybe they faced a similar problem in their career they can reference? This problem is usually caused by a poor landing page conversion experience. Hopefully, they can dip into their marketing experience and think on their feet.

Looking for: Problem-solving; quick-thinking, real-life examples of pattern spotting > solution; knowledge of marketing strategies.

“How do you deal with scope creep on a marketing project?”

Every marketing project can grow out of control quickly if it’s not carefully planned and managed. Can your candidate demonstrate strong decision-making and risk management?

Looking for: proof of decision-making in marketing; ability to say “no”; flexible thinking/attitude; delegation experience; data experience.

“What unique challenges do you think come with marketing to schools and teachers? ALT: “What is your understanding of the customer journey in a primary school?”

If they already work in education they should smash this, if not, did they do their homework on the school sector?

Looking for: sector knowledge or research; school buying cycles and challenges; reaching decision-makers; social media insights; organisational buying; free trials; school technology and infrastructure, etc.

“What marketing author/book, blog, podcast, or newsletter would you recommend I/we check out?”

You need to get a sense of their personal passion for persuading. Can they sell it to you?

(And if they can’t recommend a single one, that would be a worry).

Looking for: Do they love what they do? Can they promote their own enthusiasm? Are they on top of trends?

“Do you prefer to launch a good or perfect campaign?”

It’s not a trick question but “Good campaign” is usually preferred. One could argue no digital campaign is ever “perfect” and testing and iterating is a vital part of success.

Looking for: they understand and can discuss the importance of data, managing A/B testing, and testing message fit.

“What are you hoping we can accomplish together over the next 3-6 months?”

Their answer will tell you if they are a good cultural fit – will they align to your company goals? Do they understand the role and expectations? Did they research your company beforehand?

Looking for: vision, understanding of the business, some fresh thinking and HUNGER TO KICK ASS.

Edtech marketing interview tasks

Asking candidates to perform a real-world critical thinking task can often identify strengths, weaknesses, and skills better than any interview.

We use tasks to inform a 2nd round interview, where we can discuss their work, thinking, and process.

The key is not to make them onerous, keep it focused on a single deliverable, and make the output easy to be compared to other candidates.

Record a 5-10 min ‘critical friend’ Loom video telling you how they would improve your company homepage design and UX
Look at your product value proposition and come up with 3 fresh new angles
Map out a lead generation funnel to bring 50 new schools to your service before end of the school year

The education sector is continuously evolving, and your new marketing executive must be adaptable to changes in policies, trends, and technology.

Candidates should be willing to embrace new approaches, such as emerging educational technologies or changes in curriculum requirements, to ensure your marketing strategies remain relevant and effective.

But most of all your edtech recruitment process should be about discovering someone who’s a good cultural fit with your company and brand.

And that comes from attitude.

Do you want to chat to us about hiring the agency?

The post 7 killer edtech marketing recruitment interview questions appeared first on Bee Digital.

10 reasons you definitely don’t want to work with Bee Digital

Bryan Plumb — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 15:20:13 +0000

Working with a marketing agency isn't an easy decision. Nor should it be.

Every client has their own reason to seek the services of an expert team.

You might be on a growth trajectory with no time to increase capacity and need immediate help to maximise the opportunity
Your numbers suggest you’re coasting and you want a fresh, independent, and creative campaign to boost sales
You could be launching a new product and need support to build a new audience in a new territory

But whatever your reasons are, we think it’s important to share why you might not want to work with Bee Digital to manage your education marketing campaigns.

We don’t sell email lists
We don’t believe in dropping emails on a mass scale to people who have never heard of you. There are plenty of cold data companies around that will sell you teacher emails for a few hundred quid. We don’t buy or sell data. We build audiences for you to own.
We’re not your marketing team
Whilst we are definitely doers, we are also thinkers. We will only ever pull the levers that we believe need pulling to provide the biggest return on your marketing spend. If you need someone to implement your marketing strategy, we’re probably not the right team for you and you should hire internally.
We start with strategy, not tactics
If you’re keen to hire an agency to “do Facebook more”, or “start a Youtube channel”, or “because you don’t have time to blog” then you’ve come to the wrong place. They’re all tactics and useless in isolation. We’ll look at your goals and challenges and work from there to build a creative campaign strategy. Tactics come later.
We won’t take you out for fancy meals and drinks
I’m all for big, boozy lunches, but I’d rather spend your money to create a killer campaign that generates leads and customers on autopilot, 24/7. We only go for fancy meals to celebrate great campaigns, not in the lead up to them.
We’ll keep telling you how much money you are spending
If you last checked your bank balance in 2020, you won’t like working with us. We monitor spending every single day and provide a data dashboard to show how much money is going in and how much is coming out of a campaign.
We won’t “wow” you with dark arts
We believe in educating our clients around the processes we use, so that when the time comes, they can carry on the marketing strategy in-house.
We will tell you if we think your content sucks
We think having a thick skin is a key attribute to being a great marketer. We don’t get offended if you think our ideas or execution isn’t good enough, and we expect the same in return. We’re here to help companies grow, so egos need to be left at the door.
We will change the way teachers think about your brand
Getting the right messaging and tonality is essential to running a successful brand, and speaking to educators in a way that resonates is vital. We will be creating value propositions and mission statements that will be at the heart of your company, in every communication across all channels. If you are unwilling to consider a new way of thinking about your brand, we’re not going to be the agency for you.
We don’t believe red converts better than green
We love psychology. Our entire business model is based on the psychological and physiological changes humans go through when forming relationships. If you think red converts better than green, that a carousel ad is better than a video ad, or that long form copy is better than short form copy, that’s great. We’re happy to test, but we won’t make wholesale changes based on what someone said on a TED talk.
We are not going to rank you on the first page of google within a week
Wild promises are crazy. We don’t make any. What we will commit to is developing a structured, 8 step solution to take people from having no idea about your brand through to being an active brand promoter.

Still here? Wow. Maybe you *do* want to work with us?!

If you can put up with all the above and want some free strategy advice about getting into more schools, book a free growth strategy call with me today. 30 minutes, no up-sells, just pure education marketing strategy.

Ready to grow your education business?

The post 10 reasons you definitely don’t want to work with Bee Digital appeared first on Bee Digital.