on in Education PR
Trust has a more critical role in the sales process in education than in other sectors. Why? Because schools are all about children and improving the life chances of those children. Schools and multi-academy trusts (MATs) will simply not take any risks with that overall aim. They need to trust the people they do business with.
If you are a supplier to the education sector, working on building trust and then asking for a sale is critical if you want to see success.
Let’s face it, securing a qualified lead is tough at the moment. Each year the pressure rises for schools, staff have less time and tighter budgets, and sales seem even harder to come by.
It’s crucial that businesses recognise a school’s pain points, but despite these fluctuations, the marketing strategies to schools have remained pretty static.
Of course, measurement in marketing and communications is critical to ensure funds are spent on the most effective channels. But focussing too narrowly on whether every single blog or social ad led to x number of leads stops you from homing in on building trust – the most critical aspect of securing a sale with a school.
To build trust, every supplier needs to demonstrate that they are worthy of their place in school.
This means focusing on creating content that meets the teachers’ or school leaders’ needs first, rather than content that promotes your product or service or focuses too heavily on lead generation.
Here are some interesting campaign results from one brand we worked with, with the audiences split into two distinctive groups.
One where trust had already been built – what we call a ‘warm audience’ – and one where it had not – the ‘cold audience’ where they did not know the brand that provided these products or services.
During the campaign, both audiences were sent similar content about a product. The call-to-action was a straightforward ‘contact us for more information’ button.
The campaigns to the two types of audiences delivered very different results…
On the social ads, marketing to a ‘warm audience’ resulted in a 170% uplift in sales leads. The email/blog campaign generated an impressive 31x more leads, compared to marketing to the ‘cold audience’.
When you have to do less convincing that you are the right people to deliver a good product or service to a school, lead generation is easier, less costly and quicker.
Put simply, you deserve their time, money and confidence.
Those who are relatively fresh to the sector, or pushing a new brand, need to make a shift in their marketing from promoting their products and services to first building trust.
Only when trust is established should suppliers ask for the sale.
Download our ‘How to Sell to Schools’ guide for more guidance on how to build trust before marketing to schools or contact us to find out how we can help you get great results with your target audience.
*Photo by Akil Mazumder at Pexels.
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