K-12 Marketing and Sales Blog

The Pre-Show Checklist: What Has to Be True Before You Approve a K-12 Conference Trip

A company shouldn’t approve a K-12 conference trip because the show is on the calendar and the budget has room. It should approve the trip because five specific things are already true before anyone books a flight. Skip that gate and the fifteen to twenty thousand dollars a small company spends on a national show…
Read more: The Pre-Show Checklist: What Has to Be True Before You Approve a K-12 Conference Trip

Why District Buyers Distrust Vendors Who Lead With Product

District leaders have been pitched at for a long time. They’ve sat through enough demos, read enough one-pagers, and fielded enough cold emails that they’ve developed a reliable early filter: if the first thing you tell them is what your product does, they stop listening. Not consciously. They’ll stay in the meeting. They’ll nod in…
Read more: Why District Buyers Distrust Vendors Who Lead With Product
The K-12 Budget Cycle and What It Means for Marketing Timing

Most companies selling to K-12 districts treat September like a starting gun. School is back. Leaders are at their desks. Time to launch the campaign. It’s the wrong read of the market. By September, the decisions that determine most of a district’s discretionary spending are already made. The budget was approved by the board in…
Read more: The K-12 Budget Cycle and What It Means for Marketing Timing
When Marketing Isn’t Landing, It’s Not Always the Message. It Could be Market Fit.

When K-12 marketing isn’t landing, the first thing most teams try to fix is the message. Rewrite the copy. Refresh the deck. Rework the email subject lines. Bring in someone to sharpen the positioning. Sometimes that’s the right move. More often, it isn’t. The harder diagnosis, the one nobody wants to make, is that the…
Read more: When Marketing Isn’t Landing, It’s Not Always the Message. It Could be Market Fit.
K-12 Marketing Isn’t Broken. It’s Misaligned. Here’s the Difference.

Most education organizations don’t have a marketing problem. They have a coordination problem that marketing is taking the blame for. The distinction matters because the two problems have completely different solutions, and confusing them is how organizations spend a year fixing the wrong thing. A marketing problem gets solved by improving the marketing. A coordination…
Read more: K-12 Marketing Isn’t Broken. It’s Misaligned. Here’s the Difference.
Your Team Isn’t Too Small. You’re Just Doing the Wrong Work.

When a marketing team is underwater, the diagnosis is almost always the same: not enough people. I’ve seen this in education organizations at every size. The team is behind, sales is frustrated, and leadership is asking why marketing can’t keep up. Someone proposes a hire. Another content person. Another set of hands. It feels like…
Read more: Your Team Isn’t Too Small. You’re Just Doing the Wrong Work.
Why K-12 Marketing Feels Scattered (and How to Fix It)

A full marketing calendar is not the same as a marketing strategy. Most education organizations have one. Not many have the other. The pattern shows up the same way in organization after organization. The team is busy. The newsletter goes out. The webinar runs. The social posts get scheduled. But the pipeline isn’t moving, leadership…
Read more: Why K-12 Marketing Feels Scattered (and How to Fix It)

Explore the Guides: Start With the Challenge in Front of You

Explore our eight Guides. No forms. Pick the one that matches what is stuck.

How K-12 Districts Actually Buy: The calendar, the committee, and the politics behind every deal.
Why K-12 Marketing Stalls: Why good work gets no traction, and what to fix first.
K-12 Sales and Marketing Alignment: One definition of a ready lead. One shared scorecard.
What “Built for the K-12 Market” Means: Built for districts, not adapted to them.
What Is a Fractional CMO: Whether your education organization needs one.
K-12 Sales Coaching: Why inspecting deals is not coaching.
Account-Based Sales and Marketing for K-12: Work the account, not the contact list.
Earned Revenue for Education Nonprofits: Build revenue beyond grants.

Insights FromInside The K-12 Market

The Pre-Show Checklist: What Has to Be True Before You Approve a K-12 Conference Trip

Why District Buyers Distrust Vendors Who Lead With Product

The K-12 Budget Cycle and What It Means for Marketing Timing

When Marketing Isn’t Landing, It’s Not Always the Message. It Could be Market Fit.

K-12 Marketing Isn’t Broken. It’s Misaligned. Here’s the Difference.

Your Team Isn’t Too Small. You’re Just Doing the Wrong Work.

Why K-12 Marketing Feels Scattered (and How to Fix It)

Explore the Guides: Start With the Challenge in Front of You

Insights From
Inside The K-12 Market