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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.

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