education Archives - Bee Digital

Case studies: A great tool in your marketing armoury

Terry Freedman, Guest Author, ICT in Education — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 09:56:21 +0000

It’s all very well writing about the features and benefits of your product, but how do potential buyers know what it would be like to use in practice?

You may argue that you offer users a free trial so what more do they need?

However, depending on your product or service, that may be of limited use to a school.

After all, if the product involves the whole of year 7, implementing the solution and then un-implementing it are both major undertakings.

That is where a case study comes in.

What’s the point of a case study?

The purpose of a case study is, in effect, to say to potential buyers, “Look, this is what our product is like in practice.”

What we should add here is the phrase, “…in a school like yours.” This is what is technically known as “ecological validity”.

If, for example, your case study involves a school with ten pupils per class, then any teacher with thirty pupils per class will deem it irrelevant to their needs.

For this reason, you should really have a range of case studies pertaining to different scenarios, to make it as easy as possible for someone to identify a school that resembles their own.

What kind of case studies are there?

So what kind of case studies might you have? There are several types such as:

Academic
Observed
Interviews
Data

In practice, many case studies will involve elements of all of these but let’s look at them separately.

Academic

If you would like your product to be evaluated in a manner that looks objective and scientific then you could team up with a university or college department and work with them to have your product put through its paces as a research project.

The main advantage of this is that it will be, or at least appear to be, more objective than if you did it all in-house.

Moreover, you should end up with some useful comparisons such as the benefits to a school using your product compared to one not using it, or a before and after comparison.

Observed

This is where someone visits a school or class where your product is being used and takes notes about what they see going on.

For example, are the kids engaged, does the teacher have more information about each pupil at her fingertips, and so on.

Interviews

A more interesting version of the observed case study is one in which parents, teachers and, of course, pupils are interviewed to find out what they like and dislike about the product (that is, how they think it could be improved).

You won’t want to include the dislikes in the published case study but the information would no doubt prove useful for discussing improvements.

Data

This type of case study involves analysing data and would not necessarily involve setting foot in the school.

The idea is to see how your product affected key performance indicators.

For example, has punctuality improved since the product was put in place? Has absenteeism declined?

Clearly, all or most of these elements could be included in any case study, so it’s really a question of emphasis, and time.

Should case studies be a stand-alone documents or part of a larger whole?

Stand-alone case studies are very useful from the point of view that they could all be available on your website.

Potential buyers should be able to find one that sounds relevant to their needs, such as “Inner City comprehensive, 1500 on roll, 29% FSM etc”.

Alternatively, you might include short case studies, or vignettes, as part of a longer document such as a product brochure or white paper.

This is the sort of thing the Department for Education does.

For example, in a document about assessment, there will be “box-outs” or special pages with text like “Fred Bloggs Academy decided to introduce coloured badges in Year7…”.

The main advantages of this approach are that your product will be placed in a wider context, with several case studies highlighting different aspects of the product and how it is being used.

The disadvantage, of course, is that each case study will have to be quite short, and little more than a snapshot if the document is not to take on War and Peace proportions.

If you feel inclined to develop some case studies, be sure to read these essential tips on how to create case studies to fatten your pipeline.

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What are good communications (and what should your strategy include)?

Terry Freedman, Guest Author, ICT in Education — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 10:02:02 +0000

When I took up a senior management position in a local authority, an irate headteacher phoned me on my second day.

She had had her laptop taken away for repairs two weeks ago, and had heard nothing since.

I told her I’d look into it and had the following conversation with the tech support team:

Me: “Why hasn’t anyone been in touch with X to say what’s happening with her laptop.”

Tech support: “We had to send it away. Now we’re waiting for it to be returned.”

Me: “Have you told her that?”

Tech support: “But the laptop hasn’t been returned yet, so there’s nothing to tell!”

Me: “The fact that nothing appears to have changed is an event in itself. You need to chase up the repair company, and then tell X what you’ve found out and that you’ll call her again tomorrow.”

News travels fast.

The following day I was bombarded with phone calls from headteachers asking me to follow up on things that, from their point of view, had been put on the furthest away back burner in existence.

What was missing, at least in that particular section, was a customer service mentality, and a lack of attention to the importance of keeping people informed.

No reasonable person could get annoyed about waiting a couple of weeks for a repair, especially if parts had be ordered in specially.

What they would find frustrating is not knowing whether their laptop really was being repaired, or whether it was still an item on somebody’s to-do list.

So what are good communications?

I think an organisation’s communications strategy should comprise at least the following:

An easy way of finding contact details

There are some companies that seem to go out of their way to make that impossible.

You can usually find out how to speak to someone by conducting a search in Google, but it doesn’t inspire much confidence: my inner voice always says “Why are trying to hide this information?”

A response within a short period of time

For example, the phone should be answered within, say, five rings; an email should be answered within one working day.

Now, it’s easy to cheat in these respects, by using an automated answering machine and an email autoresponder respectively.

Therefore, the word “answer” should be interpreted as a proper answer – unless, of course, your automated systems can answer most issues themselves.

A respect for people’s time

Especially teachers, who usually don’t have hours to spend battling through long telephone menu systems or listening to music or, even worse, dozens of advertisements while being held in a queue.

Clear, jargon-free, emails and letters

There’s no reason to over complicate things. Speak plainly, and edit with a knife.

Once the appropriate response times have been decided, they should be incorporated into the staff handbook, staff induction pack, or whatever similar documents are used in your organisation.

They need to be honoured and become part of the organisation’s DNA.

Good communications are marketing too

Think about it: if a company is rubbish at responding to people before they’ve bought anything, what will they be like afterwards?

And if existing customers are treated shoddily, will they be likely to recommend your company to others, or to renew their contract or service plan if they can find a more communicative rival?

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Tiny Noticeable Things: The Secret Weapon to Making a Difference in Business

Terry Freedman, Guest Author, ICT in Education — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 15:16:27 +0000

When my room was flooded at three in the morning while staying in a Marriott hotel in Los Angeles, an assistant helped me to relocate to a different – and drier! – room.

As compensation for the inconvenience, she gave me a voucher for a free breakfast in the morning.

Bleary-eyed, I accepted it.

On waking up I realised that the voucher had no value for me. I had already arranged to have breakfast that morning with my cousin, in a café she recommended.

I explained the situation to the desk clerk. This is how the conversation proceeded:

Desk clerk: I see that you are coming back to stay with us for a week next week.

Me: That’s right.

Desk clerk: So how about we reduce the bill for that by 50%?

That was an example of what Adrian Webster calls a “tiny noticeable thing”: something that isn’t especially earth-shattering, but which makes a big impression on the recipient.

In his book “Tiny Noticeable Things”, Webster has collated many such stories, small actions that have made enough of a difference to someone for them to act as unpaid advertisers for the organisation or person.

Indeed, the book, which is subtitled “The secret weapon to making a difference in business” might just as easily have been called “Hundreds of examples of how to generate word of mouth for your business”.

Divided into chapters called Customer, Team, Personal and Covid, these anecdotes provide food for thought.

Clearly, not all of them will be directly relevant for an edtech business, but several could be adapted.

Some of the anecdotes are ridiculously simple, such as including a handwritten “thank you” note in a delivery.

Of particular interest, though, is that many of the “tiny things” described were undertaken by individual employees rather than being part of some kind of top-down initiative.

A company’s reputation and standing hinges on the actions and attitudes of all its employees, not just the public-facing ones.

What sort of small things might an edtech company do that will stick in a client’s mind?

One example cited the inclusion of a UK plug for a piece of kit sourced from overseas.

Another example is even more basic: using the client’s first name.

This is one of those books that you can open anywhere and find an interesting, and often moving, anecdote.

As I said, not all of them are directly pertinent to the world of edtech. However, this sentence is well worth bearing in mind, and applies across the board:

“As a business, you will only be outstanding if you make your customers feel outstanding, and this will only have any hope of happening if the people in your teams feel outstanding.”

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14 ideas for edtech company incentives

Terry Freedman, Guest Author, ICT in Education — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 11:32:50 +0000

How do you attract new customers, and keep existing ones coming back?

What is a customer incentive?

Everyone likes to have an incentive dangled in front of them, but you can’t just use any old “ethical bribe” — it needs to be appropriate.

I was once offered discounts on buying a suite of computers for my school if I persuaded my colleagues to take out an insurance policy!

This was both inappropriate and, let’s be honest, sleazy.

Apart from anything else, what would trying to persuade my colleagues to take out a new insurance policy have done for my reputation?

And where would it put me if they lost money as a result?

But even if the insurance policy was so good it would have sold itself, that incentive was inappropriate for one very simple reason.

The school was buying the computers, and therefore it should have been the school (or an organisation it sponsored) that benefitted from any incentives rather than individual members of staff.

Ready to grow your edtech business?

What kind of "ethical bribes" might you offer potential customers?

Partner incentives

Some companies have a system whereby when someone buys something, they are provided with a discount code to pass on to a friend.

In the context of edtech, this idea could be adapted in several ways.

For example, a school could pass the code on to another school with which they have a relationship.

Or, in a secondary school, a department making a purchase could pass the discount code to another head of department.

Subscriptions

Another idea, especially for companies who produce content like textbooks, manuals, or software is to have a subscription scheme.

If a school customer pays, say, £100 per year, every new item or upgrade is provided free of charge.

If each item costs, for instance, £20, it doesn’t take long for the subscription to pay for itself.

That’s the advantage from the school’s point of view. The advantage for the company is that it has a guaranteed income.

Training

If the product is complex or is upgraded, providing free training once a year to the whole staff can be a powerful incentive for some schools.

Training programme

As we know, companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft run certified teacher training programmes.

The great thing about them is that the credentials achieved have currency. That is to say, their “graduates” can use them to make themselves more attractive in the job market.

You may not be aware that some smaller companies run similar programmes, whereby some trainees achieve a basic skills level, and some go on to achieve a “master” level.

It can be very reassuring for a school to know that one of its teachers is able to train others in the intricacies of a product.

Is that an incentive your company might offer?

Free survey

Before the pandemic, wireless network companies tended to carry out free surveys of a school’s set-up, followed by a report on what they needed.

An alternative version of this idea took the form of free audit software by which a school could find out, for example, what software was installed on its stand-alone computers.

Loyalty programme

We’re all familiar with this concept: spend a certain amount of money and receive coupons giving you discounts on particular products.

User forums

Another kind of incentive is access to closed user forums or private Facebook groups, in which users can share ideas and resources, and find out how other users have solved some problems.

Faster support response times

Mailerlite, the mailing list service provider, operates a system whereby free users can obtain support by email, but paying users can get help immediately via live chat.

Access to beta programme

Access to beta versions of products, and the opportunity to test new ones or upgrades, can be an attractive proposition to some potential buyers.

Early access to new releases/upgrades

An extension of the preceding suggestion is being given the opportunity to buy new products and upgrades before they are on sale to the general public.

Amazon has a scheme for Prime customers whereby subscribers can “buy” some ebooks for free a month before they are officially published.

Discounts

This is a variation of other suggestions here: existing customers are offered discounts on future purchases.

Bonuses

Rather than offer a discount, consider offering a bonus.

Some sellers prefer this because offering a discount could be seen as lowering the perceived value of a product, whereas the term “bonus” tends not to have that sort of negative connotation.

For example, some sellers on the internet will advertise that if you buy this product within the next 3 days, you will also receive one or more free reports as a bonus.

Affiliate/referral program

This is a way of encouraging your customers to do some of your marketing for you.

It may be, for example, that you pay them 20% of the value of a purchase by a referred customer.

This sounds like a lot, but the idea is that you will still retain 80% of the value of a sale you might not otherwise have made.

Free maintenance

Finally, another incentive might be to offer a free maintenance visit or service visit once a year.

Perhaps this could be one of the benefits of being a subscriber if you decide to offer such a scheme.

Mix and match your incentives

As we have seen, some of these ideas overlap and can be mixed and matched.

Perhaps none of them in themselves would be enough to convince a person or school to buy your product.

However, if two companies are offering similar products, it could well be an incentive scheme that tips the balance in favour of one of them.

Want more exclusive education marketing advice?

TAIT, our marketing to schools newsletter, hits the inboxes of our industry’s smartest education marketing professionals every other Wednesday.

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Why you should test your product

Terry Freedman, Guest Author, ICT in Education — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 08:19:46 +0000

Getting your product out to market before the competition does is important, but not at the expense of customer relations and trust, and long-term relationships.

While existing customers may cut you some slack, newcomers to a half-baked product are unlikely to be impressed.

Why test?

The main reasons to test your product, when all said and done, are your reputation, to build and retain customer trust, and to avoid customer annoyance.

Unfortunately, many people won’t tell you directly that your product or upgrade sucks: you’ll discover what they think on a reviews website.

Public shaming is never a great experience, and it’s not surprising that many companies display a slogan to the effect of “If you like what we do, tell your friends; if you don’t, tell us.”

How do you go about testing your product?

The process used in testing software and apps can be applied more generally.

The approach is essentially a two-stage one usually referred to as alpha testing and beta testing.

What is alpha testing?

Alpha testing takes place within the company, when engineers, and others, put the product through its paces and try to identify and iron out any glitches.

They are unlikely to find every possible problem for one simple reason: they are not the end-users.

You absolutely need to find out, for example, if your product is likely to work in a real live classroom.

As a case in point, I looked at a product a few years ago at the Bett show that was designed to be used to teach primary school children the concepts of computer programming.

This product consisted of what seemed to be scores of tiny plastic shapes of various colours. These had to be distributed to the children at the start of the lesson and collected at the end.

Now, bear in mind that primary school IT teachers are not usually blessed with a technician who can set things up and put them away.

I asked the person demonstrating the product what happens when bits are lost.

That is to say, can you buy small replacement packs, or do you have to buy the whole thing again, or can you buy packs of particular shapes?

“That’s irrelevant”, said the salesperson, “because the parts cannot get lost.”
“Really?” I asked. “Why’s that?”
“Because each part fits into the corresponding shape in the box, so you can see immediately if any are missing.”

What are we to surmise from this response?

One could draw the conclusion that merely noticing that a piece is missing is enough to make it magically reappear. Perhaps.

My own conclusion was that this product had never seen the inside of a typical classroom and that neither the people who had designed it nor this salesman, had a clue what giving out and collecting in dozens of small bits of plastic from 30 children would be like.

That company could have done with a proper process of beta testing.

What is beta testing?

This is where a group of users test the product, in situ. In other words, teachers need to try it out with pupils.

To some extent that’s an artificial situation in itself.

Most teachers would be wary of trying out a product that could lead to mayhem and chaos in the lesson and result in very little learning.

Therefore, they are likely to try it with small groups of well-behaved children or run some trial lessons with the product after school, so that if it all goes pear-shaped it won’t matter too much.

Artificiality isn’t ideal, but surely better than nothing?

Where to find beta testers

Now that I’ve convinced you to have beta testers, the next question is: where to find them?

You could appeal to complete strangers, not all of whom will be teachers necessarily.

If that’s your preferred option here’s a list of sites and directories to explore.

Probably a better, as in more appropriate, option, would be to invite applications from your existing users, or by approaching schools and academy trusts.

Existing customers are better, in my opinion, because they have skin in the game.

That is, they want the product to be the best it can be, so they are likely to give you honest feedback.

You need to be clear on what sort of people you want in your beta testing group (Primary teachers? Specialist secondary Computing teachers? Bursars?).

And you need to be clear on what you would like feedback on. Thus you should have a pro forma or online survey rather than a general “tell us what you think”.

Should you pay beta testers, or charge them?

There’s an argument for charging beta testers in the field of software development, on the grounds that people value what they pay for and will therefore take the process more seriously.

My own view is that if a school or a teacher is testing your product, they are already paying for the privilege in terms of potential disruption to kids’ learning, the time required to gather feedback from children and others, such as parents, where appropriate.

This being so, the least you can do is provide the item free of charge!

Testing should be a transparent and formal process

If a product is in alpha or beta, people understand that it may not be perfect yet – that, after all, is the whole point of beta testing.

However, what nobody wants is to be used unwittingly as testers.

So make sure you build alpha and beta testing processes into the product from concept to launch to post-sale experience. And it doesn’t matter if you make playground equipment, SATS revision guides, or educational apps.

Get the testing loop right and you’ll sell more and get better word of mouth marketing.

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What differentiates your product from the competition?

Terry Freedman, Guest Author, ICT in Education — Wed, 12 May 2021 10:27:49 +0000

If you sell a similar product or service to that of another company, what is it that makes yours stand out?

In other words, if the functionality is the same, why should anyone buy yours?

Explain your price value

Price is a big factor in education, for obvious reasons.

But we shouldn’t confuse price with value. Schools will often evaluate the true cost over time, not just the up front £.

Let’s say there are two products, which we will call, imaginatively, Product A and Product B.

Product A is priced at £100, and Product B is priced at £50.

These products are the same as each other in terms of what they do.

Product B is cheaper so seems the obvious choice.

However, the price of Product A includes a training session for the staff.

In my experience, it’s very hard to convince the people who hold the purse strings that Product B is likely to come with hidden costs, in the form of technical support and training.

A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that an hour of an IT technician’s time is around £27 (including on-costs).

Clearly, after two hours’-worth of training or technical support, Product B is more expensive than Product A in real terms.

So Product A is more cost-effective in the long run.

Building a pricing model

Consider how you structure the price of your product or service.

Pricing per user may appear attractive at first, especially if the price is low.

However, a price of, say, £1 per pupil per annum starts to look expensive once the size of the school and the cost of its other products or services are taken into account.

What other models do education companies use to price their products?

By school type (e.g. whether a school is primary or secondary)
In tranches, user bands e.g. 1-100 users, 101-200 users etc.
Freemium by feature set e.g. free, for a limited feature set, and a one-off cost for the works.

A popular option is a basic price with various add-on services that the school can purchase as necessary.

These might be power user features, add on modules, PD, training, etc.

And let’s not forget – data. If you sell something that gathers data you can sell that back in various ways to the school.

This is usually more attractive to a school than a one-price-fits-all approach, but be careful: if there are too many options and variations it can be hard for the potential customer to figure out which one is best for their needs.

As an example of this take a look at the numerous subscription options and deals offered by newspapers and magazines. It can sometimes take an inordinate amount of time to work out, with the aid of a spreadsheet, which “deal” is the least expensive in the long run!

Service

If you’re unable to compete on price, which is often the case in a market where there are lots of similar products, perhaps you can compete on service instead.

For example, some companies will send you continual updates about where your product is, or what’s happening.

On one occasion, I had to take my Macbook laptop to a local shop for repair.

Cue a stream of text messages: “Your laptop has been sent to our workshop”; “Your laptop has been received by our workshop”; “Our engineers have now started testing your laptop, and so on.

In all, the repair took around a week, and I didn’t spend a moment wondering where the laptop was or what, if anything, was being done to repair it.

A variation of the service approach is to link it to price.

For example, the standard price enables a customer to obtain technical support by email, whereas the premium price gets them support via live chat (with a person rather than a bot).

Tech specs

One thing you could do is throw everything except the kitchen sink into the technical features of a product.

For some educational institutions, this will be just the ticket, especially if it is seen as a form of future-proofing, whereby more features can be implemented as the need arises.

A variation of this is to incorporate the idea into your pricing structure.

Most email companies do this sort of thing.

For a particular price you can email up to, say, 5000 users; for a bit more you can still email only 5,000 users, but you also benefit from features like segmentation or more detailed reports.

Community as a value-add

Sometimes the value of your product to the customer is about more than the price or the technical specifications.

I once recommended an interactive whiteboard that wasn’t as fully featured as a rival product but had a very active teachers’ forum where ideas and lesson materials could be exchanged.

That brings us back to the concept of hidden costs.

What teachers miss out on in terms of features in my product, they gain from access to free lesson ideas and resources that other teachers have created.

Thus, if you have a large and active user base that can be a great selling point in itself.

Make it easy to change to your product

To some extent, the education market is “sticky”: once a school buys into a product or service it’s a lot of hassle to change.

If this is the situation you’re facing, that is trying to break into an established market, consider making the transition easy.

For example, transfer of data from the established product to yours, or training centred on the similarities and differences in the way the established product and yours works.

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What should a customer newsletter contain?

Terry Freedman, Guest Author, ICT in Education — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 10:12:55 +0000

Once a school buys your product or service, an email newsletter is a great way of keeping them informed of new developments.

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On the topic of newsletters it would be remiss of us not to suggest you sign up to our super popular TAIT newsletter, sent to people like you who want to get better at marketing to schools

Cool? Back to it, then.

Who should subscribe to your newsletter?

The obvious answer is “customers”, who should be encouraged to subscribe to your newsletter when they make a purchase.

But don’t ignore future customers. If you introduce value into their lives for free then they’ll become more favourable to a sales conversation further down the line.

What’s the best email to get from a teacher?

It’s tempting in our industry to see their school email address as the holy grail, and that personal email addresses are mostly useless.

However, a named email address like fred.bloggs@gasworkslane.sch.uk means that if Fred Bloggs leaves the school your newsletter emails to him will be rejected.

We’d advise that a personal email, which will follow the teacher from job to job, is superior for newsletter sign ups.

Ultimately you can’t force the issue, but don’t worry too much if you end up with lots of Gmail and Outlook addresses – if they get value from your newsletter they’ll stick with you.

What are the attributes of a good newsletter?

Quick read

Never forget: people don’t read, they scan.

If your newsletter is going to be read by teachers, who are particularly time poor, making it “snackable” is probably a good idea.

If you wish to provide in-depth articles, use the newsletter to link to deeper articles on your own website (or others, you can’t be the expert on everything!).

Practical tips

Rather than simply a list of links to guides on your website, include a practical tip or two.

This could be something like a keyboard shortcut that will save people time.

Or it could be in the form of “Did you know that…”, suggesting an alternative way of using a feature, or highlighting a feature that people might not know about.

New developments

If you are bringing out a new version of your product, a sister product or are making some changes, tell people what they need to know, and most importantly if they need to do anything.

The best newsletters are about them, NOT you

By all means, announce new developments, but try to avoid sending out a newsletter that is only one big hard sell.

By and large teachers, like others, need convincing of the benefits of something before spending money, especially given constricted school budgets.

Try gentle persuasion instead.

Customer surveys

One good use for a newsletter is to find out through a survey what people like about your product, and what new features or products they would like to see.

It’s a nice way of helping your customers to feel important and involved.

Relevant research

Is there a way that customers could use your product effectively by applying the results of independent research?

For example, as described in 7 Insights from nudge theory, an experiment found that sending parents a postcard asking them to improve their kids’ attendance and punctuality had a positive effect.

That finding could, presumably, be applied in many different circumstances.

Telling your readers about it could prove useful to them even if it doesn’t directly involve your product.

Insider tips

Obviously, you can’t give away confidential information, or the contents of a new report before it’s been released.

However, if you’ve been involved in the discussions that have led to the report’s publication, you can be among the first to comment on it when it is published, and to suggest what its implications might be for the users of your product.

Good subject line

It’s good to experiment with different subject lines, especially if the software you use enables you to carry out A/B testing.

There is plenty of advice on subject lines on the web. Three of the most effective kinds I’ve discovered are an intriguing question, a summary of the main contents, and a list headline like “10 ways to improve…”.

Industry open rates

Finally, publishing a newsletter won’t do much good if nobody opens it.

A couple of useful measures are the percentage of people on your mailing list who open your newsletter (Open Rate), and the percentage of people who open the newsletter that clicks on a link. This is known as the CTR, or click-through rate.

What constitutes a good Open Rate and a good CTR will depend on the industry you’re in.

For education, according to Mailchimp, the averages in 2020 were just over 23% and just under 3% respectively.

Different email list providers give different figures, but they are all in the same ballpark.

Therefore, if your open and click-through rates are around 23% and 4% or higher, you’re probably doing something right!

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How to run an event… without tears

Terry Freedman, Guest Author, ICT in Education — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 12:05:06 +0000

So you’re considering running a thought leadership style event, with guest speakers, hot ticket debate panels, and energetic social chatter?

It looks easy enough from an audience perspective. But organising such an event…well, let’s just say the journey is not to be taken lightly.

What’s the purpose of the event?

Think through the event purpose. Will the energy expended = good returns for your company/brand?

Is it to provide useful content for the community at large, or only your customers?

Is to generate interest in your product, or to position your company as a thought leader?

Or is it a combination of all of these?

The corollary of these questions is: who do you see as your target audience?

Is it subject leaders? Technical support people? School leaders? Or school finance officers?

Answering these kinds of questions about your audience is the first step in running a successful event.

Who will be the main speaker(s)?

There’s a huge temptation to go for big-name speakers in order to draw in the crowds.

However, apart from the high fees often charged by such people, I think there’s an additional, and possibly even more important, consideration: authority.

Everyone, especially teachers, is time-poor at the moment. Does anyone really want to spend a day, or even an hour, listening to people who clearly have no direct experience of what they’re talking about?

I’ll never forget once at a conference where the organisers, rather unfairly I thought, put on a talk by an unknown teacher at the same time as a keynote speech by a big name speaker.

The latter’s talk was on the challenges faced in running a school, and what to do about them – even though he had never run a school.

The unknown teacher’s talk was about how to teach computing to children with special educational needs.

That’s the one I attended, with no regrets: she was both engaging and well-informed.

Organising a panel event

It is a sad fact of life that no matter how brilliant your speakers, and how relevant their talks, it will all be for nought if the event is badly organised – or if it even looks badly organised.

Scheduling talks

For example, if there are two or more streams going on at the same time, with back-to-back talks, it’s frustrating if the end of one talk in stream A comes slightly after the start of another talk in Stream B.

This is not just a matter of timetabling: I’ve organised very complex conference timetables without any overlap at all (my weapon of choice is a simple spreadsheet).

It’s also a matter of discipline.

The people chairing the sessions need to be willing to end the session if, after several requests to wrap things up, the speaker fails to do so.

Obviously, though, you need to tell speakers and chairs in advance that this might have to happen!

The roles of the Chair

I have assumed that your sessions will have a chair as well as a speaker.

Apart from the fact that it’s polite to introduce the speaker, it’s useful to have an extra “body” in the room who can keep an eye on the chat area or Twitter stream, select people to ask questions and, if necessary, make frantic attempts to contact technical support behind the scenes.

Event times

Another consideration regarding time is whether you can run the event twice, at different times.

This should be possible if the event is an hour-long webinar.

If you have an international clientele, putting a webinar on at different times is, I think, essential – unless you think people in some parts of the world might be prepared to come along in the middle of the night!

In this respect, you will find the world clock useful.

Registration

Registration is important because it means you will be able to contact attendees afterwards, and perhaps persuade them to sign up for your company newsletter or your product catalogue.

Events are a great way to build your list.

Technical support

It’s axiomatic that when you’re using technology, sooner or later something is going to go wrong.

Do not underestimate the need to have one or two people on standby to sort out issues like people not receiving the link to join the event, or a video not playing properly.

Should you charge for your event?

Obviously, there is a business cost to hosting an event.

Virtual events are cost-effective but lose the networking potential. In-person events create a buzz but can cost a lot to run.

Cost is symbolic of value. If you bring an event together that offers value your audience can’t get elsewhere then it’s OK to charge.

You could differentiate your ticket pricing with e.g. early bird prices, exclusive merchandise, post-event ebooks, and invite-only panels.

Publicise it well

There is some low-hanging fruit in the world of edtech, and you’d be silly not to pluck it.

I’m thinking in particular of educational bloggers who are often more than happy to publicise an event that looks potentially useful. Think about what you could offer them to make it easier for them to write about it.

For example, graphics and logos they can put on their website, speaker bios, and perhaps the opportunity to interview some speakers in advance.

If the event is a paid-for one, offer them a free media pass so they can attend and, hopefully, write about it or tweet about it during the event itself.

Social media for panel events

It’s easy enough to spin up a hashtag for the event, but unless you are expecting serious attendee numbers or President Obama is speaking, don’t hold your breath for big numbers.

Some events also have an associated Facebook group. Is that likely to be useful and cost-effective (bearing in mind the ongoing commitment to moderate it)?

Following up

What will you offer attendees after the conference?

A recording of the webinar, or recordings of all of the sessions?

The latter can be quite useful if the conference was organised into two or more streams, as most people can’t be in two places at once.

Finally, don’t forget that your company doesn’t necessarily have to do all the work. Once you know what you hope to achieve from running the event, you could hire an event organiser to get on with it.

But remember not to skimp on the research: caveat emptor – let the buyer beware!

The post How to run an event… without tears appeared first on Bee Digital.

11 Marketing trends in 2021

Terry Freedman, Guest Author, ICT in Education — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 11:10:34 +0000

It’s difficult to predict the future, so please regard this article as a reflection of what may happen and probably should happen in the area of marketing in the coming year.

Do a search on the internet and you will discover that there are many, many articles on this theme, most of which agree with each other only in one or two areas.

The eleven trends suggested here are based partly from that research, but also on the edtech trends identified in Reflections on Technology in Schools in the time of Covid Part 1 and Reflections on Technology in Schools in the time of Covid: Part 2, and the education market.

1. Availability

Now that all of us have been involved in online education, virtual events, and meeting with friends on Zoom, the availability of technology when and where we need it has become more important than ever.

This has been highlighted by revelations that the much-trumpeted laptops for digitally disadvantaged pupils scheme have resulted in fewer devices than promised being delivered, and devices being delivered that were not entirely fit for purpose.

As a general point, then, we have all become more digitally savvy – do you know anybody who has not used Zoom? – and our expectations have been raised.

From a marketing point of view, I think companies would be wise to consider their availability for customers and potential customers. More and more company websites have a live chat option or a chatbot.

They also furnish the visitor with the opportunity to email the company, with a response promised in the next two or three days, but there are those of us for whom that sounds like a lifetime.

In short, we’ve become savvier, more demanding, more used to technology and people being available, and more used to interactivity.

2. Greater use of VR and AR

According to The Times, sales of virtual reality goggles have risen by 350% since the outbreak of the pandemic, in order to escape the reality of staring at four walls day in and day out.

In other words, one beneficial side effect of coronavirus is that the barriers to entry to the world of VR have been lowered. It is no longer the province of geeks and gamers.

How long will it be, then, before we start to see more and more advertisements that cannot be fully appreciated without first donning some VR goggles or a VR headset?

3. Direct appeal to parents

The increased sales in VR headsets and goggles have occurred in the consumer market.

Given that, and given the fact that so many youngsters are now having to be educated while at home, it would make sense for edtech companies to target parents directly.

Arguably, the need for inexpensive but powerful devices has never been greater, nor vast swathes of the population more receptive.

4. More use of AI

I’ve noticed a growing number of services that automate or semi-automate online research, and then either draft an article based on that research and identification of keywords, or provide a list of main points the article ought to cover.

Using AI in this context means, potentially, that more research can be done in less time.

5. More use of AI in both research and crafting content

This is one of the trends suggested in an article on digital marketing in 2021. According to the article:

“67% of marketing leaders already leverage marketing automation tools. Though marketing automation software has existed for years, developers regularly release new digital capabilities. In 2021, this technology will further evolve, allowing marketers to better convert leads, generate personalized content, and track results.”

6. More use of social media

According to search engine watch, the use of social media has “surged” in recent months, so savvy businesses should devote more time and resources into social media marketing.

Large edtech companies do this already of course, but the article is aimed mainly at smaller businesses.

7. Use of ultra-niche keywords

The same article also advises (small) businesses to target ultra-niche keywords in their marketing.

This means acting on the suggestion made in 10 Tips for launching your 2021 strategy, to find out who your typical customers are and the challenges they face.

In other words, general marketing has to give way, to some extent, to much more highly focused marketing.

8. Free content

There is so much free stuff out there that companies will almost certainly need to make more use of high-quality free content, in order to compete.

The quality of some of these freebies is difficult to overstate. For example, some companies (not in mainstream education) have been offering free virtual tours and talks as a lead magnet for their paid-for services.

The free tours are of the same length and high quality as the paid-for ones.

It means that anyone pondering whether or not to buy a tour doesn’t have to go by the reviews and hope for the best. They can literally try before they buy.

9. Reflection of, and accommodation of, the trends of edtech usage in schools

The trends in edtech use in schools covered in the “technology in the time of Covid” articles mentioned earlier suggest that marketing to schools in 2021 should take into account the greater use of flipped learning (which might indicate a demand for short videos, for example), accessibility of technology, and seamless integration with a school’s MIS (because nobody now has the time or inclination to have to re-enter data or export it and import it from one application to another).

10. Flexibility as requirements change

I should think a good selling point for a company itself, regardless of its actual product, is flexibility.

Given that we don’t know from one day to the next whether all, some or none of the kids are going to be in school, or learning from home, or whatever, companies will need to offer a high degree of flexibility in what they offer and how they offer it.

11. Awareness of the changing consumer

Just as we mentioned as a general point at the start of this article, it’s probably the case that even the most technophobic and tech-sceptic teacher has become more confident with technology, more reliant upon it and, crucially, savvier about what it can help teachers and pupils to achieve.

This increased savviness is bound to make potential customers more demanding. Edtech companies who ignore that likelihood in their approach to marketing will do at their peril.

The post 11 Marketing trends in 2021 appeared first on Bee Digital.

10 tips for launching your 2021 strategy

Terry Freedman, Guest Author, ICT in Education — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 12:48:18 +0000

Before considering any ideas, we ought, perhaps, to consider the question: why bother?

After all, the situation is so fluid that any strategy you prepare now could be rendered out of date by next week.

If one thing has proven to be certain about the pandemic, it’s that nothing is certain. It’s almost like trying to build a house on sand.

Nevertheless, I am still firmly of the opinion that to quote that old adage, failure to plan is equivalent to planning to fail. You might have to adjust your strategy, or even rethink it all together, but that’s no reason to not develop one in the first place.

A strategy is useful because it enables you to consider priorities. By having a written strategy, you also make those priorities explicit.

That’s not a bad idea: you might know what they are, but do all the members of your workforce, or your customers?

Aims

A good starting point is to decide what your aims are before you can begin to prioritise them.

Some aims to consider might be:

Keep in business. This is clearly a key issue given the general state of the economy, the state of uncertainty, and the plethora of free edtech and other resources available for free.
Gain more clients.
Gain more “fans”.
Gain more newsletter subscribers/video channel subscribers.

10 Ideas to think about

Here are 10 examples of approaches to consider, once you’ve decided what your aims and priorities are.

1. Reactivate old customers

In their quest to gain new customers, companies sometimes forget about their existing ones.

Apart from the fact that it costs much more to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones, the existing ones are your biggest advocates.

They’re the ones who have been using your products or service, and hopefully will be engaging in word of mouth marketing on your behalf without even having been asked.

Bryan Plumb, CEO of Bee Digital Marketing, has a simple 9-word email he uses to re-engage existing or past clients.

2. Find out who your typical customers are, and what their challenges are through a questionnaire

This is much easier to do if you already have a company newsletter, but even if you don’t have one you could still run a survey from your website.

Many companies offer a freebie in exchange for useful information, such as an exclusive report or a white paper.

A few things to bear in mind here are:

Be mindful of the fact that when you offer a freebie you may get nonsense responses from people who just want the freebie.
Be aware of data privacy (GDPR) issues when contacting people. Basically, you’re not allowed to send emails to people who haven’t signed up top receive emails from you.
It’s a well-established fact from research in the field of economics that some people’s purchasing decisions are different in real life to what they say they will buy when asked in a survey.

3. Identify the influencers and the decision-makers

It can be quite useful to try to find this out when running a survey, but it can be difficult.

This is because in real life, the influencers may not be the budget-holders or hold a position of authority within the school. Nevertheless, it’s worth asking questions like, Who makes the purchasing decisions?

4. Carry out research among students and parents too if possible

This is quite difficult to do these days, but one approach is to ask your customers if they could run a student survey on your behalf, making provision to anonymise the data.

5. Whip up some white papers

Reports and white papers were mentioned earlier.

These don’t have to be very long. What they should be is insightful, or a useful summary or collation of information.

6. Step up that Twitter presence

If the idea of a white paper sounds too demanding or time-consuming, a presence on Twitter could be worth considering.

For example, useful websites, or suggestions on how to translate DfE updates into action, or perhaps just some lighthearted comments or activities to take people’s minds off things.

For example, every Wednesday at 8 pm Gladstone, the Treasury cat, invites cat owners to take photos of their cat in a particular position and then post it to Twitter.

This is pointless but fun! It provides welcome light relief from our current tribulations. See #GladdersYoga.

7. Choose your freemium models wisely

Many companies attract new customers by offering freebies or a cut-down service. At the 2019 Marketing to Schools Summit (M2SS), Jodie Lopez said that the quality of your lead magnet (free giveaway) should be as good as the actual product.

I came across a service recently in which the free version had the same functionality as the paid-for version.

The only difference was that the latter didn’t have the company’s branding on it.

8. Collect those case studies

Case studies of your product in action can be quite useful, especially if they have been written by a third party or by the people using the product.

(In the interests of transparency and credibility, the case study is open about any extra assistance the school was given, such as being given the product or service free of charge.)

The beauty of a case study is that it can go into more depth, and can be more objective than an advertisement. (But note that sponsored blog posts or advertorials must be identified as such.)

9. Get that blog up-to-date

On the subject of blog posts, a blog is a good way for a company to keep its website fresh by adding useful and interesting content at least once a week.

A regularly updated blog has been found to keep people coming back to the website to find out what the latest article is all about.

10. Don’t forget to leave room for flexibility

Whatever you decide to concentrate on, it’s crucial to leave “wiggle room”.

Strategy documents that are so full of so-called SMART objectives that there is no flexibility lend themselves to cheating in some way.

Even without blatant cheating, targets can easily create a perverse incentive to achieve the target rather than the thing the target is meant to represent.

An example I came across was the Head of Computing who told me that he teaches the easier stuff towards the end of the school year because his students will do better on tests as the year goes on, making it look like they’re making progress.

Cynical, perhaps, but understandable too.

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