Essentials Magazine Essentials Spring 2018 | Page 35

Marketing Your Business
This same principle applies to
building brand awareness in the
education and edtech market. Lim-
ited budgets can make creating and
implementing a PR and marketing
campaign seem daunting, but brand
awareness doesn’t have to break the
bank. Here are four ways that compa-
nies can expand their brand awareness
by investing time rather than money.
1) Leveraging the Media
You certainly can look to hire a PR
expert, either a firm or an internal
team member, but that isn’t always
a necessity if you have a good story
to tell. If one school or district has
a challenge, you can safely assume
that many others do as well. Do some
research on local media outlets in that
school or district’s backyard.
When you’re first starting out, may-
be look for media markets outside the
top 25, as this will increase the chanc-
es of a reporter or editor responding
to your pitch. While you’re at it, be
sure to find the education beat report-
ers, since they’re the most likely to be
interested in your story.
Once you’ve fine-tuned your story
strategy, look for education publica-
tions that target your ideal buyer. And
remember to keep the focus away
from your product and more on the
success of your customers or true
thought leadership.
2) SEO
SEO h as and will continue to play
an important role in your brand aware-
ness, but maybe not in the way you
traditionally think about awareness.
Oftentimes, we think about brand
awareness as articles or press releases
we put out to the world for people to
see, but what about awareness of your
brand for potential customers who are
actively looking for a solution? Google,
Yahoo or Bing may be their most effec-
tive tool. If they can’t find you, they’ll
surely find your competitor. Start with
on-page SEO, because you have full
control over this aspect of optimiz-
ing your website. Build keyword and
linking strategies and ensure that each
page of your site is optimized.
Don’t forget off-page SEO! This
is where PR and social media come
into play; getting backlinks to your
site is critical to increasing your do-
main authority in the eyes of search
engines. If your content is good
enough to be linked back to, search
engines will place a high priority on
your content and your page ranking
will increase. We have also seen a
rise in how search engines prioritize
social interactions with the con-
tent you are sharing. Likes, shares,
comments any type of engagement
on your social posts signals these
search engines that your content is
of high quality and should be treated
as such.
3) Social Media
This can be a black hole if you
aren’t careful! Do your homework and
determine which social channels your
target audience is using and for what
reasons. This will help inform the type
of content you create and share, as
well as where you focus your efforts.
For example, Twitter is widely
used by educators and administrators
alike for professional development,
whether that means informally shar-
ing ideas or taking part in focused
Twitter chats. Facebook or Linke-
dIn, by contrast, are better suited
for starting your own community of
educators that fosters more in-depth
conversations.
Become a trusted partner and
contributor to the conversation rather
than another noisemaker. Research
the correct hashtags and pay attention
to what people are sharing so you
can chime in appropriately. There
are a number of free tools such as
Buzzsumo, Hootsuite and TweetDeck
that you can use to get started. We
recently published this checklist to
help keep your social posts on track
as well.
4) Brand Advocates
This one can be a little tricky,
since many of the influencers in
education and edtech have monetized
their influence, but not all of them!
Some of your best advocates will do
it for free — they’re otherwise known
as your customers. Identifying and
developing a brand champion can
take time, but it’s well worth the ef-
fort. Be sure you help these educators
understand that they need to check
with their school and district leaders
to approve them advocating for your
brand or company if you are looking
to enter any type of formal agreement
with them.
There are also many, many influ-
encers who are still looking to increase
their influence, that haven’t quite
hit the “celebrity” status yet. They’re
often eager to take on content proj-
ects or help share content on social
media without being paid, because it
helps them increase their profile (and
SEO!).
There certainly are other ways to
get your “free” lunch, but these have
proven to be some of the most effec-
tive ways to get your story out there
without spending a fortune.
n
JACOB HANSON is a managing partner
at PR with Pa-
nache!, a leading
PR and inbound
marketing firm
serving the
PK-12 education
market. Follow
him on Twitter:
@PRPanacheJa-
cob or connect
on LinkedIn.
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