By: Craig Spooner
We can all agree that marketing and PR are like peas and carrots, two sides of the same coin and so on…but what does that really mean? How can one benefit from the other and vice versa? (And why is this even more important when we are talking about PR in ed tech?)
It’s no secret that most companies in the education industry that engage in internal or external PR use money from their marketing budget to pay for it, but all too often the actual work being done isn’t as connected as we hope.
Below are four powerful ways to leverage PR in your ed tech marketing plans.
- Driving the right traffic to your resources
One of the beautiful things about PR in education is the nature of trade publications. Most, if not all, live within ed tech, providing a pre-segmented and receptive audience to a relevant story.
Whether the article is a product review or an op-ed, make sure that you include links (trackable, if possible) to various locations on your site. Remember, most of readers of these articles will not be ready for a product demo or to speak to sales, so provide links to landing pages that house content to help solve their challenges or educate them about your services.
- Lead generation
Duh, right? All too often, we get caught up in judging an article’s success based on the number of leads—or worse, on how many impressions—it generated. While creating leads is the ultimate goal, the vast majority of those finding you through an article are not ready to become a lead yet, so be sure to act accordingly.
By offering links within an article that lead to content targeted at different levels of the sales funnel, you will capture potential buyers no matter what stage of their journey to purchase they are in.
- More effective content dissemination
Are you more likely to click on a link in a tweet or a Facebook post if you know it’s from someone trying to sell you something or if you know it is useful, educational content written by one of your peers? The latter, right?
By securing an article in a relevant publication, potentially written by a customer of yours, you are able to share content from a reputable source all over social media. If the article is housed on your site, use that link to pull prospects in. That way you have the ability to offer up additional content for that visitor to explore and possibly convert on, thus creating another lead to include in your current campaign.
- Aligning your marketing content creation strategy to your PR efforts
Providing actionable content related to your press coverage not only makes you look good, it positions you as the expert in the minds of all who visit your website. When you tie press releases or articles to “the greater marketing idea” or a set of next steps beyond what’s covered in the press, you encourage your audience to become more knowledgeable about your services.
Linking to planned pages with specific resources on your site gives you the ability to offer up more relevant assets to potential customers, test the validity of the content in the eyes of the user, and provide a knowledge base for visitors to return to if they find your content useful and compelling.
These are just four ways that PR can increase the effectiveness of your ed tech marketing efforts. There are certainly more out there to discover!
Thank you for sharing!
