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Insights From
Inside The K-12 Market
Practical ideas, proven strategies, and real-world lessons for education organizations looking to improve marketing performance, strengthen revenue growth, and better understand how schools and districts make purchasing decisions. Explore articles covering K-12 marketing, sales strategy, leadership, revenue growth, demand generation, and market trends.
The K-12 ICP Problem: You Know Who to Target. You Don’t Know How They Buy.
Read more: The K-12 ICP Problem: You Know Who to Target. You Don’t Know How They Buy.Most ideal customer profile frameworks were built for B2B SaaS companies with short sales cycles and single decision-makers. K-12 education companies have imported those frameworks wholesale, and are systematically misreading their own market as a result. The typical K-12 ICP describes a district: enrollment size, grades served, funding type, geography, poverty index. It’s a firmographic…
Why K-12 District Buyers Don’t Trust Vendors — And What Education Companies Should Do Instead
Read more: Why K-12 District Buyers Don’t Trust Vendors — And What Education Companies Should Do InsteadThere is a number that should bother every education company with a sales team. B2B buyer research consistently shows that buyers trust their peers at a rate of 73 percent. They trust vendors at 12 percent. Not 12 percent less than peers — 12 percent, full stop. Your K-12 district buyers trust a stranger on…
The Seniority Trap: Why Senior Leaders Are Always Last to Know What’s Happening in the Market
Read more: The Seniority Trap: Why Senior Leaders Are Always Last to Know What’s Happening in the MarketThere is a specific moment when a senior leader realizes their picture of the market is wrong. Usually, it comes from a conversation they weren’t supposed to be in. A founder joins a sales call as a listener and hears an objection nobody mentioned in the pipeline review. A VP attends a discovery call and…
Why K-12 Sales Teams Ignore Marketing Leads — And What to Do About It
Read more: Why K-12 Sales Teams Ignore Marketing Leads — And What to Do About ItHere’s a conversation that happens in education companies and nonprofits every quarter. The VP of Marketing walks into the pipeline review with a number: “We generated 340 MQLs last quarter.” The VP of Sales nods. Later, in private, the sales leader says, “We looked at those leads. They’re not real.” Both are telling the truth.…
Why the Current Political Environment in K-12 Has Changed Who Makes Decisions, and How
Read more: Why the Current Political Environment in K-12 Has Changed Who Makes Decisions, and HowThe political environment in K-12 education has changed enough in the last three years that vendors still running 2021 playbooks are getting surprised by conversations their products used to sail through. The changes aren’t subtle. Federal funding that districts built programs around is in question. Programs that were funding priorities two years ago are now…
What “Built for the K-12 Market” Actually Means in Practice
Read more: What “Built for the K-12 Market” Actually Means in PracticeEvery education company says they understand K-12. Most of them mean they’ve worked with K-12 clients before. That’s not the same thing. The claim is so common it has stopped meaning anything to the people it’s aimed at. District leaders hear “built for K-12” from nearly every vendor who walks in, which is exactly why…
The Case Against Hiring a Full-Time CMO Before You Have a Strategy
Read more: The Case Against Hiring a Full-Time CMO Before You Have a StrategyHiring a senior marketing leader feels like the right move when marketing isn’t working. It looks decisive. It signals investment. It gives leadership someone to hold accountable. It’s also one of the more reliable ways to make a struggling marketing function worse before it gets better. Not because the hire is unqualified, and not because…
