The importance of Lead Generation for EdTech Companies
Every touch point with your brand has the potential to generate a lead for your business, but how can you ensure that these leads are qualified and likely to convert? The answer lies in your sales process, and specifically, your lead generation strategies.
In digital marketing, lead generation is the process of identifying, attracting, and transforming online users into prospects for a business.It involves understanding your target audience, creating compelling content, and utilising marketing tools such as inbound marketing strategies and marketing funnels.
The goal of lead generation is to delight visitors of your platform and encourage them to share contact information with you to enable future communication. Once you’ve built a direct line of communication with them, you can nurture the relationship through a selection of timely and relevant content.
So how do EdTech companies generate marketing qualified leads?
Lead generation is vital in EdTech as your offering is likely to have a clear target audience. To get the most out of your marketing budget, focus on decision-makers and people who are in need of your services. Your goal is to get “qualified” EdTech leads which Hubspot, for example, defines as potential customers whose attributes match those of the company's ideal buyer. Your sales team plays a critical role in this process, too, as they are responsible for engaging with potential customers and guiding them through the marketing funnel.
This blog post will outline what you need to do and the EdTech marketing tools you can utilise to generate qualified leads for your business!
Be Specific
When we look at how to generate leads for EdTech, we first have to make sure that we are attracting the target customer - this is done by specifying content for them.
The goal of all content is to add value to the reader. Whether it is a blog post, a podcast, or an Instagram story - make sure it’s relevant to your ideal customers. By making your content specific and targeted, you achieve higher engagement from audiences that are relevant to your business. People who interact with your content are likely to be familiar with your niche and are therefore more likely to become qualified leads for your EdTech business.
Understand your customer
Identify your target market and utilise market research to detect content that is relevant to your target audience. What does your typical customer look like? What are their preferences? What do they struggle with? All of this valuable information can be used to create great value-add content.
Buyer Persona
Creating a buyer persona is a crucial part of any inbound marketing strategy and one way to develop a deep understanding of your customer's needs. Once the needs of your target segment are clear, you can start creating content that is tailored to your customers specifically. By interacting with this specific content, your potential leads can find your EdTech business and build a firm relationship with your brand.
Optimise blog posts with SEO in mind
A blog post is your opportunity to engage potential customers by writing about a topic they are passionate about, or addressing a problem they face. Blogs give you the opportunity to establish your brand as an industry specialist.
Blogs are particularly useful to EdTech companies as their audience is likely to be keen to build up their knowledge. With that in mind, you have to make sure that your blogs have substance. Show the reader that you are an expert by answering a specific question and backing up your claims with authoritative sources.
What exactly do you need to do here to generate more leads?
Optimise your blog posts for search engines - this way your site will rank higher and more people will find your content. In order to attract more traffic to your website, use specific keywords relevant to your audience and consider working with an SEO specialist to build a quality keyword list. In addition to the above, improving the readability of your content also improves your audience’s experience.
Run Webinars
Webinars are an excellent way to share information in an interactive setting. Running webinars gives your company another opportunity to build a genuine connection with your prospects.
Furthermore, webinars allow potential clients from all over the world to get in touch with the brand through a fun and educational experience. During a webinar, attendees can ask questions or make comments. This is your opportunity to build a connection with the visitor, impress them with your knowledge, and convince them that your solution to their problem is the best one out there.
Guest Speakers
To attract more potential customers, consider working with an influencer or an industry speaker. Use online resources to find expert speakers that are relevant to your EdTech business. For example, if your company offers online coding courses, you could consider inviting a coding/tech YouTuber to speak at your webinar.
Produce social media content
Another key tool for EdTech lead generation is organic social media content. When using social media for lead generation, you have to focus on creating valuable content for your reader. You should extend your efforts beyond your usual company updates and create content that your target audience is interested in.
Research suggests that LinkedIn is the best platform for B2B lead generation whereas Facebook is more suitable for a B2C audience. No matter what audience you would like to reach on social media, here are some tips that will support your social media EdTech lead generation.
- Post consistently - set up a social media calendar and draft your posts in advance. Consistent posting will help you establish yourself as an authoritative and reliable expert. Customer relationship platforms such as HubSpot can help you automate all social media activities.
- Utilise all the tools social media has to offer, be it polls, carousels, videos or stories. Use a mix of all these functions to keep your audience involved.
- Engage with your audience - it’s important to monitor your social media channels and respond to comments and direct messages. Interaction with followers is likely to result in leads for your EdTech business.
Overall, a compelling social media presence can be a powerful tool that will delight your audience, resulting in high lead generation for your EdTech business.
Create lead magnets
A Lead Magnet is a highly compelling piece of content offered to visitors of your site in exchange for their personal information. Examples of common lead magnets include whitepapers, eBooks, templates, automated evaluations, checklists and case studies.
A successful lead magnet has 3 key characteristics:
- Relevance - the piece needs to be highly intriguing to your target audience. Employ market research to identify topics that offer real value to your audience. This will help potential customers find your business naturally.
- Perceived value - you ask the visitors of your website to share their details in exchange for your content, so you have to make sure they think it’s worth it!
- Serving your business purpose - a good lead magnet delivers on the initial promise you made when asking people to give you their email. However, make sure you do not attempt to solve the entire issue. The best lead magnets help the reader understand the true scope of the problem, and then serve your product as the solution to that problem.
A successful lead magnet will delight potential customers, highlight your expertise, as well as create interest in your business.
The bottom line
Identifying and securing qualified leads is one of the most vital jobs of marketing experts in the EdTech sector. This blog post has outlined 6 tips you can use to generate leads for your EdTech business! In summary:
- Be specific - only generate content that is valuable to your target audience.
- Understand your customer - create content tailored to your target audience specifically.
- Optimise blogs - create compelling blogs with SEO in mind.
- Run webinars - offer live sessions with industry professionals to build a personal connection with your audience.
- Produce social media content - use all features of appropriate social media platforms to boost engagement.
- Create lead magnets - offer high-quality content in exchange for personal information.
Need help generating and nurturing leads for your EdTech company? Get in touch with the marketing professionals at Yay!Starter, and we’ll help you to set up a successful lead generation strategy.
