Your K–12 Education Marketing Strategy: The Foundation of Program Success
Do you have a K–12 education program, concept, product, or service… or a good idea for one? Before you try to launch it in the marketplace, make sure you have a strong education marketing strategy in place first.
Your marketing strategy for the education sector determines how well your program is understood and accepted. It outlines how your program benefits today’s educators, school administrators, and students. Your education marketing strategy also aligns your program to the current (and fast-changing) trends and imperatives of the education market.
Address Key Education-Marketing Strategy Questions
Marketing strategies for the education sector need to cover key elements of your education program — your target market, your competition, and the environment affecting your program. It should address these important questions:
- What are your program’s mission, goals, and objectives?
- To whom are you marketing the program? Educators? Administrators? Students?
- Where does your target audience go to for information? What are their favorite blogs, websites, and publications?
- What age range (or grade levels) of students does your product or program target?
- Who are the decision makers and how they are best influenced?
- What are the education issues and opportunities that your product or program addresses?
- Who is your competition? What do they offer? What is their competitive advantage?
- What are your competitive advantages?
- What is the market potential of your product or program?
- What are the costs and benefits of your program (both for you and your customers)?
- Are there any local, state, or national regulations that may impact your product or program?
Use the Right Tools to Gather Information
Answering these questions requires research, time, and effort but is a necessary step in order to gather the information needed to launch a strong product or program. Some of the tools commonly used when developing an education marketing strategy include:
- Issues reports
- Education market analysis and/or target audience analysis
- Community workshops
- Roundtable meetings and focus groups
- National summits and/or video conferences
- Surveys
- Key informant interviews
- Competitive analysis of how your product or program compares to other similar products or programs in the marketplace
- Online research
Use Your Education Marketing Strategy to Create a Lead Position
The information you gather and incorporate into your education marketing strategy will not only help you build a better product or program, but it will also help you build a better marketing plan, more effective sales tools, better presentations, more sales, and a stronger brand and corporate image. Perhaps most importantly, it will help you position yourself against your competition as the preferred choice in the crowded education landscape.
Unless your K–12 targeted product or program is truly unique, it will not be alone in the marketplace. Your marketing strategy needs to position your product or program as a leader. Where do you excel? Do you have a unique feature or program aspect others lack? Is your option the price leader? Most technologically advanced? Able to address specific needs or concerns of the school districts or students you serve? Your marketing strategy must focus on what makes you stand out.
Partner with an Expert for the Strongest Education Marketing Strategy
How do you ensure you have the strongest education marketing strategy possible? You partner with an expert.
An education marketing expert can help you develop a strategy that incorporates and capitalizes on your unique position in the market. An expert can analyze the competition, research the marketplace, and identify the target audience and where to reach them. That expert then weaves all of the information together to determine how best to develop and position your product or program for success.
Organizations partner with MMS Education because of our deep understanding of the education market, backed by more than four decades of working with schools, school districts, administrators, and agencies. You can see a list of our clients here https://www.mmseducation.com/about-us/clients/ and some profiles of education marketing strategy projects here https://www.mmseducation.com/why-choose-mms/project-profiles/.
MMS Education helps you develop your concept, create your education marketing strategy, and design and implement your program. We can also provide assistance with your strategic communications plan; facilitate special events, roundtables, and focus groups; conduct opportunity research and competitive analysis; and monitor ongoing and final results to demonstrate positive outcomes. For more details, click here: https://www.mmseducation.com/services/program-strategy-management/.
Call us today at 800-523-5948 or fill out this form to see how MMS Education can help you reach, engage, and measure impact in the preK–12 education market.