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Tag: Lead Generation

How to get media coverage for your online tutoring brand

on Posted by Catherine Lane

How to get media coverage for your online tutoring brand

It’s a long old time since we were stuck at home with nothing but a laptop and our families to keep us company, but the pandemic marked a big shift in how we learnt. Suddenly everything from French GCSE revision to guitar lessons went to an online only model.

The net result of this was a ton of investment poured into the online tutoring sector and overnight what felt like a million* new providers entered the market.

 

How to stand out in a competitive marketplace

Fast forward to the present and online tutoring remains one of the most competitive sectors in education. Especially in terms of Google ads and SEO rankings.

It is therefore hard for your brand to stand out in the crowd. Unless you use PR.

A smart PR campaign can help you stand out from the pack, show your personality as a brand and drive traffic to your site.

The only hurdle with this approach is that securing coverage in the media is not straightforward. You can’t just contact the One Show or The Times and say, ‘Hey we are doing interesting stuff, you should feature us.’

Instead, you need to find a way to turn your company’s story into one the media wants to cover and that takes practice.

To help, we’ve come up with a fictional brand and created some feasible news stories for it so you can see how the PR alchemy works.

 

Our online tutoring company

Meet ‘A Class of Your Own’ an ambitious online tutoring company that has been teaching adult learners and teenagers online for 2 years. They are popular with many hundreds of learners but have big ambitions to grow.

They feel growing their adult cohort of learners would be the best way for them to hit the big time and want their PR agency to help out.

Now the brief from the business to the PR agency goes something like this: “We want coverage for the news that we offer the best adult learning courses – anything from maths to singing – from the comfort of learners’ homes.’

The PR team’s job is to then turn this brief into something that the media and social channels want to feature.

If you were part of the fictitious PR team, here’s how you could go about it.

 

Prepare a media campaign

The first thing to do is a little research within the business and in the wider world to find out what news hooks could be used. These are the steps to follow:

  1. Know who you are targeting

Before you get started you need to know everything about the audience you are targeting and what media they are consuming (social, broadcast, podcasts, digital etc). This will enable you to know what sort of stories they would be interested in and which media you should target.

I am going to assume for this example that we are targeting any adult with disposable income.

  1. Research potential news angles

The next job is to find out what is going on both inside and outside of your business that might provide some key hooks for your story.

Here are a few key questions you’d want to ask the people in the know across the business.

a) What data do you have on your courses?

  • Which are the most popular?
  • Which are the most likely to be finished/abandoned?
  • What trends are there – is there a pattern to when people take up courses? Do music courses peak in summer or Christmas, for example?

b) What do you know about your tutors and learners?

  • Are there any interesting or unusual tutors on the platform? For example a former band member, space scientist or Countdown winner that could provide a quirky story angle?
  • Can you uncover any trends in age or location of learners that could be used for a PR angle?

You also want to find out what’s going on beyond the business that could spark a story angle.

c) What is happening in wider society that could relate in some way to the brand?

  • What cultural events are happening: big TV shows, movies, music star tours?
  • What calendar events could you link the story into: Christmas, Halloween, Back to School?
  • What societal changes are relevant, both positive and negative that you may be able to draw on for inspiration: an increased number of people living alone, more mental health issues, rising literacy rates, increased number of adults who speak English as a second language etc?

Once you have completed this task, you will start to see some obvious story ideas appearing. Some may be strong enough to go with as they are. Others may need additional data, an expert or some case study interviews to create a story package, but you are on your way to top notch media hits.

 

I can imagine a few stories emerging from this exercise depending on the information you might glean.

Story Idea 1

Headline:

The Singing Side Effect of The Voice Being Back on our Screens

The Story:

Data from A Class of Your Own online tutoring platform shows that demand for singing lessons jumps 200% each time The Voice airs on our screens. In fact, in the month following the show, popularity for singing lessons surpassed maths and English, traditionally the most popular online courses.

Why this story works

Because it contains a number of elements the media loves:

  • It’s fun – anyone can imagine sitting at home and suddenly getting the urge to be the next Celine Dion or Sabrina Carpenter as a result of watching someone else attempting their classics on screen.
  • It’s got data – there is some factual proof of a trend as you have a 200% uplift in courses being taken.
  • It’s timely – it will hit the press at the same time as The Voice is airing on screen and when the media is covering the series any way. Timeliness is a big factor in whether your story will be covered or not.
  • It has the potential to be visual and aural – if you can provide a few case studies of customers who have taken up singing as a result of The Voice, you have something to film, photograph and hear. This means the print media, radio and TV/online video channels are all covered, giving you more chances of coverage.

Extension ideas:

If you want to then make the most of the media coverage to drive leads (and why would you not?), this can be done too.

  • Show ‘how to’ from your tutors on YouTube/Insta/TikTok in the weeks The Voice is on air. These could be used to show how to master a particular technique that was on the episode that week or what went wrong if any contestant fails to hit a note.
  • Invite a popular YouTuber to learn how to sing with one of your tutors as if they were a contestant on the show and ask them to document their progress.

 

Story Idea 2

Note: This story will require an additional survey of parents to be used alongside the data from the tutor platform, but that can easily be sourced from a survey agency like YouGov for a fee.

Headline:

The Toughest Lesson to Teach Your Kids: Why so many parents are taking up online maths courses

The Story:

Data from A Class of Your Own online tutoring network shows that the homework subject parents struggle the most to help their kids with is maths – 7 in 10 parents stated it was the subject they felt most uncomfortable with. According to the tutoring experts, this is why A Class of Your Own has had a surge in the number of adults signing up to brush up on their maths skills, with rates increasing ten-fold in exam season.

Extension ideas:

  • Offer free taster and parent guides on key maths topics adults struggle with like geometry to drive traffic to your site and sign ups
  • One of the brand’s tutors could film themselves teaching algebra to a parent influencer on TikTok, who would in turn offer a discount code for tutoring to their followers

 

Story Idea 3

Headline:

The hardest three words you will ever say in English and it’s not ‘I love you’

The Story:
According to experts the hardest three words to say for new learners to English are not ‘I love you.’

Instead, ‘Squirrel’, ‘Rural’ and ‘Worcestershire’ rate as the top three in a survey of over 200 English as an additional language learners on A Class of Your Own online tutoring platform.

You can offer one of your tutors to talk to the media about why English pronunciations can be so challenging.

Extension ideas:

  • Offer free videos on how to pronounce difficult English words
  • This can be supported by a vibrant social ad campaign
  • Challenge online influencers who speak English as a first language to say a complicated sentence that includes the 3 most difficult words and ask them to include their outtakes, as well as the successful attempt. This will show that even for native English speakers these words can sometimes be difficult.

 

Hopefully you can see how these stories are much more engaging and likely to secure wider coverage for a brand than a simple ‘company x does great x courses’ which is unlikely to be picked up by any outlet.

If you want advice on how to turn your company news into headline news, please feel free to email us on hello@theinfluencecrowd.co.uk. We will happily help out.

 

*Image by Dreamstime.com

Why PR could be the key to boosting sales of your product

on Posted by Catherine Lane

Why PR could be the key to boosting sales of your product

Schools and universities have to be very careful about who they work with. It’s why sometimes the sales process with an educational organisation can be very slow and cumbersome.

It’s probably why some of your marketing campaigns just don’t generate the number of leads you expect either.

This is why PR is so important in this sector.

 

What’s the difference between PR and Marketing?

Whereas marketing does a fabulous job promoting products and services, PR focuses on your brand. It helps articulate what your brand stands for and why schools and universities can trust it.

Someone brilliant once said that marketing is like asking someone out on a date. The PR and branding is the reason why they say yes.

Great PR speeds up your sales process.

 

So how could PR help my brand?

PR is about using great messaging, creativity and the endorsement of third parties to build trust in your brand. A great PR team knows what makes your audiences tick and therefore can help you articulate what you want to say in a way that makes teachers, school leaders and faculty stop what they are doing and notice/like you.

PR does that in a variety of ways – media coverage, speaker slots at key industry events, podcast interviews, hard hitting content, influencer link ups and made-you-look messaging that gets to the heart of what your target audiences need.

 

Case Study: How PR helped an education brand

We worked for a company which had created a new type of technology that could spot reading issues in young children, often before they became apparent to teachers. They engaged our PR services to build their reputation with schools and sell more products.

Prior to the business engaging us, the messaging they used often focused on the time-saving aspects of the assessments, the business’s academic pedigree (it was developed by university researchers) and AI elements within the technology. All very worthy messages. However, our work with schools had shown us that more human messaging, focussed on the child, was key to success.

 

Getting the messaging right

So we updated some of the messaging to focus on early intervention and preventing children from falling behind their peers.

Following this shift, the product was soon being featured in the education press throughout the year and speaker slots were secured at key conferences.

For the broadcast media, we focused on what the technology could do that had never been possible before – the fact that the tech could spot the signs of dyslexia in a child in minutes, just by following how their eyes moved when they read. This messaging resulted in coverage on both The One Show and regional BBC programming demonstrating how the technology would revolutionise schools.

 

The results

Traffic to the company’s web site and lead generation immediately spiked, with many new leads reporting that they were prompted to call because of the media coverage.

PR gave this business the right messaging to create greater interest from their audience and targeted the right channels to expose that new messaging more widely than before.

If you want more tips on how to improve your sales to schools, download our How to Sell to Schools Guide.

You can also take a look at the case studies section on our web site for more ideas on how PR can kick start your sales.

 

*Image by Kaboompics.com

How to create content that scores top marks with teachers

on Posted by Catherine Lane

It’s no surprise to hear that teachers are time poor. In fact, a recent study by the Department for Education (DfE) found that a quarter of teachers in England are working 12-hour days.

So, if you want to sell to schools, a marketing campaign which includes a bank of resources that helps teachers do their job more effectively or saves them time, will stand you apart from competitors.

The first thing you need to do is find the right topics that appeal to teachers or school leaders, which means you need to do your research.

Job one is to accurately identify your audience’s pain points (you can read our Three ways to understand what teachers want from marketing teams post if you need to know how to do this). Then you can showcase your understanding of how to solve some of them with a great piece of content.

If you plan this bit right, you can create what we call a cornerstone piece of content. Something so good that you can use the content again and again to build trust in your brand and drive teachers and school leaders to your site to find out what you do.

 

What is a cornerstone piece of content?

Cornerstone content is a high-value piece of content and is often in the form of an e-book, a report or a white paper packed with insight.

It should either solve problems or provide valuable insight that the reader cannot get from elsewhere. This way it helps you raise brand awareness by showing people what you know about schools, education and what goes on in the classroom.

How-to guides are particularly well received because they get to the source of the problem, right from the get-go. They are instructive and educational – without all the fluff. Research and data reports work well too.

 

What topic should I choose for my content?

Let’s say your audience research has shown that teachers are struggling to build basic phonics skills in Key Stage 1. By creating a guide entitled 7 proven tactics to build phonics learning in the Key Stage 1 classroom, you would undoubtedly go down well with your target audience.

Or is there an issue that is particularly topical among your target audience right now?

Perhaps you’ve identified that changes in policy and increased workloads have resulted in higher stress levels for teachers.

Commissioning some research into this topic, with expert insight and tangible tips on how to manage stress (and avoid burn-out) might just get teachers to stop scrolling and hand over their email addresses to download a copy.

If you’re an established business, you may already have some unused data on how teachers or students use your products that would create some good source material for your cornerstone content too. If you could show that English teachers rarely use texts from Chaucer anymore, or that students struggle with statistics more than any other topic in maths in Year 10, you would provide some useful bench-marking information that schools can judge themselves against.

Once you’ve created this content, the next step is to make it really work for you, re-purposing it in numerous ways to bring in a steady stream of site visitors who are likely to be interested in your products or services.

 

You’ve created a fabulous piece of cornerstone content, now what?

The first step is to promote the content itself. Put some money behind social ads to drive teachers or school leaders to hand over their email address and get their hands on the content you’ve created.

Then it’s time to flood the market with free content.

The amazing e-book, report or white paper that demonstrates your knowledge of a particular topic, now needs to be chopped up into smaller, bite-sized pieces.

A great piece of cornerstone content lends itself well to being broken down into short social posts, blogs, videos, infographics and podcasts.

You can pitch articles to the press on the subjects you have covered and contact education conference organisers to see if they want you to speak about the topic at their next event too.

Flooding the market with eye-catching, attention-grabbing, bite-size information, in various forms, means you’ll quickly become associated with that topic.

Here are some clever ways to break up your content:

 

Do this for 6 to 12 weeks before moving on to your next topic. The result is you have a steady stream of really helpful information going to schools at all times.

This builds trust with your audience so when you intersperse these campaigns with your normal product sales campaigns, your audience is more likely to respond positively and ask for the demo.

You’ve also solved the dreaded ‘What shall we post next on our social feed/blog’ dilemma many marketers face.

Download our How to Sell to Schools guide for more insight on how to create impactful cornerstone content when marketing to schools, or contact us if you’d like our help to deliver success for your organisation.

 

*Photo by Getty Images at Unsplash

Know your audience: THREE ways to understand what teachers want from marketing teams

on Posted by Catherine Lane

 

Before developing your marketing campaign, have you considered who the individual is that you’re targeting?

Do you know what their role involves and how the demands of the job fluctuate?

 

Be sure to do your homework

 

For instance, if I am a year 6 teacher, then yes, getting my kids through the SATs is important, but what particular elements are most concerning to me? Is it their maths, lack of relevant vocabulary or the fact that 10% of my class might not be getting breakfast before they come into school on the morning of the assessment?

Here are three things to remember when it comes to doing the audience research that will help you develop marketing campaigns that build trust in your brand and earn your product a place in schools.

 

1. Data is King

 

The brilliant Teacher Tapp provides free data on a weekly basis on the mood, wants and needs of the teaching profession, so there is little excuse not to know what is on the minds of teachers.

If your budgets allow you can ask them to survey teachers directly with your own bespoke questions too.

Keyword research and ChatGPT are also useful for initial research. For ChatGPT, the prompts below will give you a good overview that you can add to/sense check – just make sure you use a paid version of ChatGPT for up-to-date information.

 

 

2. Harness the power of social media

 

Social media is a rich source of knowledge in determining which issues are causing the most pain for our schools.

Facebook groups exist for Primary Heads, SENCos, Teachers of A Level History and so much more. A handful of these groups still allow non-teachers to join if you make a good case for it and stick to their policy of never posting promotional content.

Teachers on TikTok give great insight into what a teacher might find entertaining or useful in their classroom too.

The insights from these groups or relevant hashtags help you develop campaigns that speak to your audience’s pain points in their own language.

 

3. Put a face to the name and meet your audience

 

This seems obvious, but in the hubbub of day-to-day deadlines people often forget the importance of face-to-face meetings.

There are few things more useful than joining a sales rep on a visit to a school or interviewing an existing customer on what challenges brought them to buy your product.

Schools are busy so meetings may need to be conducted online if face to face is not possible. The important thing is to make an effort to regularly talk to your customers and not rely solely on second-hand information from the sales team.

 

Securing trust

By understanding your audience’s key concerns or issues, you’ll be able to build trust with schools – and for suppliers to the education sector, trust is the foundation for success.

Download our guide for more insight on how to maximise audience research before marketing to schools, or contact us if you’d like our help.

 

*Photo by Getty Images at Unsplash

How the ‘trust factor’ can boost sales leads by 170%

on Posted by Catherine Lane

 

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.

 

What does ‘building trust’ look like when it comes to schools?

 

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.

 

How trust = sales in education

 

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.

Seven ways to avoid PR mistakes in 2023

on Posted by Rebecca Bremner

2023 has kicked off with a bang and your PR team will be chomping at the bit to create great content and pitch out new story ideas to get your product or service mentioned in the national and education media.

When batteries are recharged and the creative juices are flowing, you can go off with all guns blazing in the first weeks and months of a new year.

But it’s worth looking at these seven steps to avoid PR pitfalls, get campaigns off to a flying start and achieve the results you want.  

 

1. Make sure your PR delivers on your business goals

Your PR team could be doing a great job crafting messaging that resonates with senior leaders and teachers and getting your product or company name mentioned in the publications, podcasts and blogs they go to for information. The digital skills of your marketing people are crucial for generating imaginative product launches that generate sales leads too.

But blending PR’s ability to build an audience’s trust in your brand with the focused and measurable strengths of marketing can be a powerful combination to help you meet your business goals in 2023.

Read our blog  and find out how you can use PR and marketing to build your reputation, shift opinion towards your brand, and achieve your business goals.

2. Plan, plan, plan

Approaching PR in an ad hoc way with little or no firm plan on what you want it to achieve for your business is a high-risk strategy that is unlikely to get you the results you want.

While an element of flexibility is essential for responding to the changing news agenda and shifting education marketplace, a good PR plan is the linchpin for co-ordinating the efforts of your PR and marketing and ensuring the activity they engage in actually delivers for your business.

The grounding for a successful PR plan comes from asking yourself some tough questions. These are outlined in our blog, along with our top tips for planning a great year for your PR campaigns.

3. Don’t leave keywords to chance

Whether your company supplies software to schools, training for MAT leaders or student record systems to universities, there are some common keywords and phrases the people you want to reach type into search engines when they are looking for solutions to the challenges they face.

Including these keywords in your online content will get your company name higher in the search list and make it easier for people to see how your products and services can help.

But how can you find out which keywords your audiences uses to source information online?

Check out our blog on keyword research and find out which words and phrases you should be using in your online articles and news pieces to reach the right people and put the information they need into their hands.

4. Don’t stifle creativity

When your PR or marketing team has a great idea for a campaign, is there a tendency to step back from activities that are considered to be a bit wild or crazy in favour of what’s been done before?

Make 2023 the year that you consider pushing the boundaries a little more. Even if you end up tweaking the original wild idea, injecting some fresh thinking into your PR could help you stand out from the crowd and take a successful campaign to the next level.

Get some inspiration from our short video and avoid overthinking or stifling the true creativity in your organisation this year.

5. Be ready to manage a PR crisis

No organisation is immune to a PR crisis. If the unthinkable happens – a call from a journalist who has uncovered a major fault in your product, or from a customer who says your products have corrupted their data – you need to be ready.

We have created the Complete Guide To Crisis Management For Brands & Startups in the Education Sector to help you act fast and protect your brand.

6. Get ready for Google Analytics 4

Add 1st July 2023 to your PR calendar as this is the date when Google Analytics 4 will replace the Universal Analytics platform.

But don’t get caught out. You will need to start putting the groundwork in place for the change now as you won’t be able to access your historical data after that date.

Read our blog on what to expect and what you should be doing to get the most from GA4 into and beyond 2023.

7. Don’t miss out on a prestigious award

The new year is a great time to consider entering an education award, such as the TES School Awards or the Bett Awards. An award win – or even a place on the shortlist – can bring added recognition for your brand and demonstrates to prospective customers that your product or service is among the best in class.

Writing an award winning entry can take time, but we’ve done some of the hard work for you here by outlining what you can do to give you the best chances of award success.

 

Read more about the fantastic results we have achieved for our clients and contact us if you’d like our help to deliver PR success for your organisation.

 

Photo by Tara Winstead

How do you measure PR campaign success?

on Posted by Rebecca Bremner

So, you’ve had a great idea for a PR campaign to launch a new edtech offering, raise awareness of your brand in schools or get headteachers to watch a product demo.

But now you need to put some KPIs in place to make sure you can measure and report on how the campaign is performing both during its roll out and post campaign too.

What are the best metrics to use in PR?

That all depends on the type of campaign and what you are trying to achieve.

So let’s say you want to raise headteachers’ awareness of your brand. You might think the number of items of positive coverage secured in the press and on the websites your target audience consumes would be a good goal to measure.

You may want to track the number of speaker slots you secure for your spokespeople or customers on podcasts and at events aimed at senior leaders in schools too.

But does this really get to the heart of what you are trying to achieve for your business?

Focus on actions

Ultimately, you want the brand awareness you are generating with PR to lead to an action.

When school leaders hear about you on a podcast or blog, you may want them to:

  • Come to a specific page on your website
  • View a video on your product
  • Sign up for a free trial of your software
  • Download a white paper

So, the KPIs you put in place need to reflect the end goals.

KPIs for PR

Let’s say you’ve created a guide on improving student engagement to raise awareness of your brand.

Some KPIs you might want to set for this scenario could be:

  • Spikes in traffic to your website following the publication of opinion pieces or podcast guest slots secured by your PR team as part of the campaign
  • Direct traffic coming from any links which media outlets or websites have included in published content
  • Engagement on the site – the number of pages people look at, the average time spent on the page and if they are new or returning visitors
  • An increase in new user activity on your web site over a 3 month period, before, during and after the campaign. You can compare this with data from the same time period in previous years to get a good idea of the impact.

You can measure these using a data analytics platform such as Google Analytics.

If your goal is to capture teachers’ email addresses by placing the student engagement report behind a gated page on your web site, your KPIs will be slightly different.

They should also include x number of downloads of the content from your target audience.

It’s worth adding ‘uplift in traffic to the content landing page’ as a KPI too. An increase in traffic to, and engagement on, your website over the course of the campaign can be a good indication that the content and activity has resonated with people and they’ve made the decision to take the next step.

The benefits of the correct measures

One of the most powerful things about having the right measures in place is that it starts to influence the content and management of the campaign as it progresses.

Success can be measured against the specific KPIs you have set and if you’re not seeing an impact, you can tweak the activity over time and check the changes are making a difference.

The ultimate aim is to achieve your business goals, whether that’s more teachers talking about you online, more signups for a free trial of your software or increased sales.

Measure PR and marketing against KPIs

So before you start measuring anything, define the business objectives you are trying to achieve with the planned activity. Set specific KPIs around these to help you choose the right measurement tools and put you on track to get the results you’re after.

Below are 12 measures you can choose from to help you get the results you want from PR.

Type of measure What it isHow to do it
Back links
Links from quality external websites that send visitors directly to your site from coverage secured by your PR team, such as opinion pieces, case studies or product reviewsBacklinks are a powerful tool for increasing SEO ranking on search engines like Google.

You can monitor web traffic coming from your backlinks by looking at referral traffic in Google Analytics to see which coverage from what outlets have encouraged visitors to you site. There are also tools such as the Ahrefs back link checker which can provide a list of all the websites that have a link to your site.
Site traffic
General traffic to your web site, or visits to specific pagesMonitoring visits to your site, where they come from and how the data compares to that of previous years will help you measure the success of a timed PR campaign. Again, you can use a data analytics tool of your choice ie Google Analytics.
Time on site, bounce rate and pages visited
Useful measures to check the right kind of traffic is being driven to the siteUplifts in time on site and page visits can indicate that the prospects being directed to your content are already pre-qualified by what they have read or heard about you.

Aim to keep bounce rates as low as possible by providing content that is of value to your target audience. You can use Google Analytics to measure these metrics or an alternative tool such as Hubspot .
Search
Direct searches of your brand or productYou can monitor the number of searches for your brand using a tool like Google Search Console.

An uplift in the number of searches would suggest PR activity is resulting in more people becoming aware of your brand. Check search data for before and during a specific campaign to help you demonstrate the impact of life with and without the activity.
Reach/impressions
There is a subtle difference between social media reach and impressions, as explained below.

Reach – the total number of people who have received or interacted with your social media content.

Impressions – the number of times the algorithm has served your content onscreen, whether or not it has been clicked on		Large brands often track these metrics as a measure of increasing brand awareness.

While they might be a useful gauge of how social media algorithms are responding to your content, in isolation, they won’t give you any information about what actions people have taken as a result. Generally, unless increasing reach/impressions is your ultimate goal, don’t limit your analysis to these vanity measures alone.
Engagement
The number of likes, retweets/shares and positive comments your content receives on social media platformsThese engagement measures are critical for helping you to see how well your content is being received by your target audience. You can find these kinds of metrics by using a social media management tool such as Hootsuite to view all your social content in one place. Alternatively, get the data directly from the individual platforms.
Connections/followers
These are the people who follow you on platforms including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or connect with you on LinkedInMonitor these if you are trying to grow your audience or reach education influencers with a piece of online content. An increase in followers/connections can indicate the activity you are engaging in is successfully raising your profile. But remember to check the connections you are gaining are relevant and match the audience you are trying to reach.
Downloads/goal conversion/email addresses
These metrics are useful for measuring specific goals you want to achieve with your PR and social media activityWhether your aim is to capture email addresses with a webinar sign up campaign or encourage downloads of a piece of content on your web site, make sure you are clear on the goal so that you can measure success towards it.

It's important to track progress towards goals as a campaign develops and make adjustments to the activity and/or social media audiences and ad spend to ensure you get the best possible outcome.
Cost per click (CPC)
Data relating to the cost per click, click through rate and goal conversion measures on social media platformsKeeping an eye on the CPC rate of your campaign will help you to optimise your budget to get the results you’re after for the best return on investment.

You want to keep the CPC as low as possible, but bear in mind that if the audience you are trying to reach is small or niche multi-academy trust leaders, for example, the CPC may be higher.

If your CPC is high but a lot of the people you are trying to reach are taking the action you want them to, you may make the judgement that the result is a price worth paying.
Click through rate (CTR)

The percentage of people who click on your content when they see itA high CTR, combined with high numbers of people doing whatever it is you want them to, indicates that you are delivering the right content to the right audience and as a result, they are being encouraged to act.
Coverage
Published articles, news items and speaking opportunities secured by your PR team Quality media coverage can boost the credibility of your brand and enables you to build relationships with your target audience by demonstrating that you understand the challenges they face and can help.

Secure the right coverage for spokespeople and customers in the media your target audience reads. We tier all coverage based on a client’s objectives and the readership and quality of editorial.
Sentiment of coverage
The positive or negative tone of coverage Measuring the tone of coverage over time is useful, particularly for brands that want to counter past negative coverage or change market perceptions.

You could score the sentiment of individual coverage using a scale such as positive, negative, neutral, or balanced, or a numbered system to keep track of the overall tone of the coverage received.

Click here to find out more about generating leads for your education product or read more about how measuring PR and marketing can support your wider business strategy in our Guide to Good PR Planning.

Also, read our blog to find out how you can prepare for the changes to Google Analytics coming up in 2023 as they will affect the way you analyse the activity on your website.

 

Photo by Ann H at Pexels

Should my edtech business exhibit at Bett?

on Posted by Catherine Lane

We’re often asked by edtech businesses at this time of year if it’s worth investing in a stand at the Bett education technology show.

So, we thought we’d share a few nuggets of advice to help you decide:

  • If Bett is the best place to showcase your education product or service
  • If it’s the right event to reach your target audience and if so…
  • How you can get the most from the show to ultimately generate leads

 

While you’re here, find out how to effectively target teachers on Facebook too. Get in touch if you need help to give your education PR and communications a boost.

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How to generate leads for my education product

on Posted by Alesha Allen

A steady stream of leads is key to increasing sales of your education product.  And one of the best ways to generate leads is by using your own PR and marketing content.

When teachers and school leaders search online for information, solutions or answers to questions, you want your content to pop up in front of them. You want your content to solve a problem, so they can get to know more about your business, understand you’re an expert and be open to buying from you.

Content can take many forms including research, a report, an infographic or a podcast.

But what are the specific steps to using content to generate more leads from the education sector?

Let’s look at the process and how you can ensure the leads you’re getting are of the very best quality.

Research, research, research

Kick off by researching key areas – start wide and home in as you go.

When it comes to understanding what your target audience are searching for online, Google is a great place to begin.

For example, you can find out what headteachers are searching for in relation to your education product or service by using Google Trends and a range of other keyword research tools.

We’ve written a full blog on how to do this here.

Other research ideas 

Once you’ve carried out keyword research, there are other ways to find out more about your target audience and what they’re looking for:

  • Research the media that teachers read. Whether that’s Teach Primary, Times Higher Education or Independent Schools Magazine, you’ll get a view on what interests the very people you want to attract.
  • Hang out with them online. You may follow headteachers on LinkedIn or hop onto a UKEdChat. During these weekly Twitter discussions about education, you’ll find out about the issues education professionals are facing at the moment and can also ask questions and become a part of the discussion.
  • Interview schools you with to get as full a picture as possible about your target audience. Find out how they like to receive content. Is it via email or do they prefer to listen to podcasts?

Then use all of this information to understand what they need more of or less of. What bothers them or excites them. And most importantly, how your education product can help.

Look at pre-existing content

Once you’ve found the area you’d like to focus on, you can delve deeper to find out more.

This includes:

  • Looking through any pre-existing content you have access to already, like case studies or previous reports.
  • Taking advantage of research that already exists in the public domain, for example Teacher Tapp regularly surveys their database of 8,000 teachers about what’s going on in schools and publishes the results.
  • Interviewing experts in your organisation or externally to ensure you have interesting, relevant and useful information to share with potential customers.

Generating content through leads – an example

Background 

Let’s take the example of an organisation that helps students get into the top universities around the world. We worked with them to generate leads among affluent parents in London. Our research showed that these parents were comfortable supporting their children when they were applying for Oxford and Cambridge. Yet they found it more difficult to help with the application process for the Ivy League universities in the USA as the system is so different.

We decided to develop a Beyond Oxbridge guide for parents, explaining the main differences between the UK and US university system.

Expertise 

Within the business itself, there were a series of experts we were able to interview in order to develop the content, including course work and exam tutors, university admissions professors and previous students.

They gave us all sorts of useful information, such as how the application process works, what life is like on campus and how to get an athletics scholarship. They explained how undergraduate courses in the US allow for a wider range of subjects to be studied and how to finance a degree in the States.

Research 

We carried out our own research as well, using the QS World University rankings for top institutions according to subject. We were also able to tap into existing research, such as information on employment opportunities and average graduate salaries according to university attended.

This process made sure we had all of the relevant information to prepare the best content possible for potential customers.

Create the right content

The next step is to start creating your content. Choose the medium you think will work best for your audience. If you’re not sure, then try out one and test the results.

Your content can be in written form, such as a report teachers can download, a series of top tips emails you plan to send out, or a blog post for your website. It can also be multimedia content, like a video or podcast interview with an expert, an infographic guide or a webinar training session.

An example 

For our university admissions organisation, we opted for a guide format that was hosted on a gated landing page on the client’s website. In order to download the report, parents had to share their email address for further contact by the marketing team.

On the back of this guide, we also developed additional pieces of content, such as articles on the Beyond Oxbridge theme for education publications and infographics for social media. All content had links back to the landing page with the report on it, so we could use Google Analytics to track where leads were coming from and assess which content was producing the best results.

The content generated 428 leads in just a few weeks of promotion, plus additional web site traffic for the company.

Don’t forget the follow up once you generate leads

Be prepared for what you plan to do once the leads start coming in.

Drop them into your lead nurturing programme or follow up with a phone call or an invite to a demo of your education product. Maybe you could offer a free trial or some free consultancy.

You can continue to use relevant content at each stage of your customer journey to help move them along the marketing funnel, such as targeted email marketing or a case study from one of your clients.

Follow these steps and in no time, you’ll be an expert at using content to generate leads for your business and it will support your overall education marketing strategy.

If you want to know how to get your education product noticed by senior leaders in education, you can download our Influence Schools White Paper. You may also be interested in our guide to good PR Planning.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Four reasons why you need PR in 2021

on Posted by Alesha Allen

Well, what a year 2020 was.

As we enter a third national lockdown with hopes of improvement by the spring, here are four reasons why 2021 is the year to invest in PR.

1. Because technology is a part of our lives like never before

Stuck at home during the pandemic, many of us are spending more of our lives online. We are using our devices for work, socialising, shopping, exercise and entertainment.

This may have changed how your business connects with customers.

You can no longer meet in person with teachers or carry out live demos of your products. So, many business leaders find themselves asking how to connect with their audience in an authentic way.

One way is to meet your audience where they are: online.

Using digital PR and communications, you can connect with current and prospective customers via your online channels.

You can find the right way to reach parents and teachers, whether it’s through online campaigns, virtual events, blogs or video testimonials.

2. To take advantage of a rise in social media and influencer culture 

If your business isn’t engaging effectively with customers on social media, then your business isn’t properly communicating with customers.

In the last year, all social media apps reported an increase in usage.

The likes of YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, which allow people to create, upload and share videos, have become increasingly popular. Last year, nine in 10 online adults, and almost all older children aged 8 to 15 years, used at least one of these websites and apps, and many watched videos several times a day.

Running integrated campaigns on social media is key to successful business communications.

Choose a theme that relates to your education product, create a key campaign message and be sure to track engagement. Make sure you use the right platform for your campaign and that it’s timely.

Consider partnering with a social media influencer who fits with your brand values and audience. They can help you reach your target audience, build trust, and increase engagement. This could be a blogger, journalist or podcaster. It could be a well-known teacher, edtech expert or education consultant.

Investing in social media will help you connect with current and prospective clients, boost awareness and increase leads.

3. So you can gain your audience’s trust 

Think about what your customers consider When deciding whether to buy your education product or service. Has this changed since the same time last year?

Recognise changes in your customers and their needs. Whether it’s spending power, ways of working, or challenges in education during the pandemic. And allay any fears or concerns.

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, 88% of us rate ‘trust’ as important or critical when it comes to deciding which brands to buy or use. Out of 8,000 people surveyed in 8 countries in October 2020, ‘trust’ was the third most important purchase criteria, with ‘price’ and ‘quality’ only slightly ahead, regardless of gender, nationality, age or income.

Personal experience matters the most when it comes to building trust. If your business can communicate with clients through friends, family, experts and reviews from trusted sources, then you’ve taken a step in the right direction in helping them to trust you and your business offering.

PR activities like product reviews, case studies, video testimonials and influencer campaigns can all help to strengthen trust among your target audience.

4. To help you manage a PR crisis

Last year was crisis, followed by crisis, followed by crisis.

The coronavirus outbreak, civil unrest and economic downturn.

An impeachment trial, a contested presidential election and a wave of international protests leading to a moment of reckoning on racism.

Not to mention natural disasters like wildfires, earthquakes and floods.

If we’ve learnt anything from 2020, it’s to be as prepared as we can be for a crisis. A well-managed crisis can actually win your brand fans rather than lose them, so the third lockdown may be an opportunity to reflect on how you would manage a crisis.

PR crisis planning means having guidelines in place for an emergency or unexpected situation.

How is your company going to react if the lockdown lasts longer than expected? What will your company do if there was a breach of school data? Or if your education software that teachers rely on for online learning has technological issues?

Don’t get caught off guard.

Identify the risks to your education business, rank them in order of seriousness and put a plan in place for each one.

Your crisis plan should outline your response to stakeholders such as customers, employees and the media. It needs to include key messaging for all of your business platforms, including social media. And make sure your spokesperson is media trained.

Check out our ‘cut out and keep’ guide to crisis management here.

Get started

The best time to start planning your PR is now.

Don’t put it off for another day. Who knows what this year has in store!

If you’re ready to start planning your PR for 2021, get in touch today on hello@theinfluencecrowd.co.uk.

Or have a read of our PR planning guide for some more top tips.

 

Photo by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS from Pexels

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