A Guide to Public Relations for Education Companies
Getting Started with Public Relations and Earned Media for the EdTech Market
Table of Contents
Getting Started
So you want to reach your target audience in the education market. You want them to see your brand in the media outlets that they already read and trust, whether that audience is superintendents, principals, or (if you really understand your audience) specific roles like “education technology specialists in West Coast districts.”
To get your products into the hands of educators and administrators where they can make a difference, you’ll want to start by:
- Building awareness in the market;
- Building trust with your buyers;
- Becoming more visible than your competitors;
- Telling your story effectively (and in the right places); and
- Managing and protecting your reputation with education buyers.
You need to know what makes the education market unique to begin with. Check out these five key factors.
What’s Different About EdTech PR?
You need to know what makes the education market unique to begin with. Check out these five key factors.
Jargon, Acronyms, and Buzzwords
The education market has its own language that may seem like Greek to the layman. Acronyms like IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funding, and IEP (Individualized Education Program) are commonplace. You’ll also need to know more niche terms for the disciplines you work in. Do you know what “the science of reading” means to an ELA teacher, and why it’s different from “balanced literacy”? What about high-dosage tutoring, scaffolding, and differentiation?
Whether you’re trying to connect with editors of major publications or chat with teachers themselves, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, your audience will see right through it and won’t trust you. Of course, that’s true in every industry. But, it really matters in education. First impressions matter, and education organizations, especially those just getting started with PR, can’t afford to get off on the wrong foot.
If you tell an educator that you have the solution to elementary school literacy, but you think “phonemic awareness” is a Marvel superpower, educators and editors will dismiss you before you get past the “h” in hello. (Yes, that was a phonemic awareness pun.)
Private Skepticism and Public Scrutiny
Unfortunately, decision-makers in the education market can be wary even of the EdTech companies that know what they’re talking about. Teachers may have had bad experiences with software that took hours to set up or didn’t work. Districts may have been burned by companies whose customer support ghosted them the minute the platform was up and running.
At the same time, products being sold in the pre-K–12 are subject to a high level of public scrutiny and sometimes, regulation. This is fair enough: curriculum, educational games, and software platforms have a profound impact on student learning.
During the last few school years disrupted by COVID-19, parents, caregivers, and the general public have taken a more active role in how and what students are being taught. The fierce political debate over topics like race and gender has drawn attention to everything in the classroom. Mainstream news sources have ratcheted up their coverage of EdTech. Some of this scrutiny has led to legislation that emphasizes student privacy and safety. From parents to lawmakers, everyone is paying attention.
Don’t worry! We’ll share a few tricks later to help you navigate and cut through this skepticism.
A Very Long Timeframe
Outside of the education market, news stories often have a very short lifecycle. They’re published, they get attention, and then they’re forgotten. In the education industry, news cycles, as well as sales, marketing, and PR cycles, often play out over months. Schools have a timeline that’s financial, legal, and even emotional.
From PR and marketing to sales outreach, timing every connection point to the right moment in the sales cycle is critical in guiding your buyer through their sales process. There’s a right moment for every press release, cold email, or other touchpoint. And yes, the response time to these communications will almost always be longer than in consumer-facing markets.
Many Stakeholders and Decision-Makers
Your messaging (and your products) need to appeal to different stakeholders for different reasons. Sure, you may be trying to get to a superintendent or to a CTO who will sign a purchase order. But, your product and your messaging have to be useful and engaging for teachers and students, too. Especially today, when parent empowerment is a focal point in education news, it certainly helps to have parents on your side, as well.
Every purchasing decision has to make its way up through many layers of bureaucracy before it reaches someone with purchasing power. A committee may evaluate each purchase. For example, a teacher might find your product and share it with a technology specialist, who might also talk with other teachers, facilities, or IT, before bringing it to a principal, who might bring it to a superintendent, who might have questions about budget… Each of these folks will have different concerns and need to see different messaging in different places at different times.
Role-Specific Communities, Media, Blogs, and Newsletters
When we think about PR, we often think about consumer media and big publications. Yet, education buyers don’t typically look to The New York Times to make decisions about the products they’ll have in their classrooms. Your buyers are members of organizations like New Era Superintendents. Sometimes they’re on micro-platforms like K12-Leaders. They’re using Teachers Pay Teachers or Donors Choose. They’re going to conferences like SXSWEdu, and they’re reading publications like District Administration, eSchool News, EdTechDigest, The Learning Counsel, THE Journal, SmartBrief, EdWeek, and Edutopia…. (For a glimpse into the type of content they’re reading, check out the PRP Press Room).
How to Approach PR for Education Buyers
Education public relations firms face unique challenges you’ll find in no other industry.
In part 1, we talked about how and why education is a unique market. (Make sure you read it first.) You can’t approach PR for education with the same mindset or process that may have been successful in other industries. We work in a wonderful but quirky world.
Education PR is a unique endeavor. There’s a unique lingo, intense public scrutiny (and sometimes private skepticism), a very long buying cycle (years sometimes), and a whole gamut of gatekeepers whose trust you have to earn. Below are some nuggets of knowledge that will help your organization overcome these challenges.
Learn the Lingo
The editors of major education publications can spot messaging from a firm that doesn’t specialize in education a mile away. So can educators. Showing your audience that you understand them and the world they live in is critical. Whether you handle your PR internally or with a partner, make sure they understand our market. To get started, we recommend checking out some of the top education podcasts or listening to The Education Insider Podcast. We also recommend subscribing to education blogs, journals, and newsletters that target the same audience that you do.
Learn the Trade
Keep in mind that you’ll also need to know what types of pitches education editors and journalists are actually looking for and interested in. Structure your pitches and communication so that the editors of top publications can trust you and your organization as a source for stories their readers, listeners, or viewers are looking for. (Pro tip: Structure your pitch like one of the publication’s headlines.)
Seek to understand the process and expectations that editors and journalists with EdTech beats have for press releases and media pitches. Know what to send, what to say, and when to follow up. If you alienate your gatekeepers (for example, by pitching a higher-ed story to a K-12 media outlet) you’re going to lose opportunities to tell your story.
Care Deeply and Do Good
Parents care deeply about their children. Educators do, too. Many feel that they have been burned (and some actually have been) by unscrupulous EdTech companies. It’s our job to help make their lives easier. Ensure your company or organization prioritizes what your audience prioritizes.
Be genuinely concerned about the safety, security, and privacy of the students using your product. Care about student outcomes. Partner with your customers in their journey toward improvement. Respect educators. And of course, don’t forget teachers and parents, too. They should have a simple, positive, and empowering experience. At every level, from the student to the superintendent, everyone should feel supported. Remember, in the education market, you’re building a relationship, not a sale.
One way to show you care deeply: have a brand that your audience associates with doing good. Be known for something, such as moving the needle on student achievement. Do you sell STEM software for girls? Then don’t just sell software. Support organizations like Women Who Code.
Bring the Data!
Yes, educators are passionate about what they do, but the many stakeholders and gatekeepers are also held accountable for how they spend funds. They need to be able to show the data they used to back up their choices.
Research-basis and efficacy data for your products are more important now than ever. If you don’t have data on student outcomes, uptake, and more, start gathering it now. Figure out how to make it presentable and understandable. You need to be able to show that you have delivered measurable outcomes.
After that, be ready to be asked for guarantees. Here’s what New Era Superintendent Quintin Shepherd said when we spoke with him on the Education Insider Podcast:
“If you’re going to quote me a price, what’s your guarantee on that price? Can you guarantee me X percentage of student learning growth and, if not, do I get my money back? Are you actually willing to stand behind your product enough to say you will give me money back if you don’t meet this particular threshold?”
If your product doesn’t do what you say it can, what will you do to make it right? Will you provide a full refund?
Help! Don’t Disrupt
“Here’s how we at Education Technology Company Incorporated LLC are going to disrupt education!!!! ”
Ugh. NO!
Sorry, educators don’t want to be “disrupted.” Their jobs are hard enough, thank you very much. Any editor of an EdTech journal has gotten dozens, if not hundreds, of these pitches. But that’s not what educators need. They need help. They need support. They need positivity. They need useful tools. They’re getting burned out.
Don’t try to disrupt the education market. Instead, get to know your audience, understand their challenges, and dedicate everything you do, from press releases to your product, to helping them succeed.
Be Human
Educators are often skeptical of education vendors because they’ve had too many bad experiences with salespeople who just saw dollar signs. Today’s EdTech buyers expect more than just a free trial. They want to know that you respect teachers, that you care about student safety, privacy, and outcomes, and that you’re going to provide an unprecedented level of support.
Teachers are under a lot of pressure and they’re quitting the industry in droves. Make them laugh. Support their mental health and well-being. Make their jobs easier. Talk to them the way you’d talk to someone you like and care about — not like someone you’re selling a used car to. Remember that they are human and they have human lives and human stresses inside and outside of work.
Let the Timeline Work for You, Not Against You
Budget and buying cycles at schools work differently than in many other industries. It’s a long time frame dictated by the school year, funding sources, and other restrictions. Make sure you’re familiar with how it all works. Your outreach has to come at the right point in your buyer’s buying cycle.
“There’s a beat to the school year.”
Here’s something else to understand: it’s an emotional timeline as well as a budgetary and fiscal one. There’s a beat to the school year, a sense of enthusiasm and optimism during back-to-school, a feeling of freedom in May and June, and often radio silence around Independence Day when suddenly no one is checking their emails because they’re all on vacation.
Send the right communication to the right people at the right time, with the right tone. You can’t do that unless you know the buying cycles, timelines, budgetary, and funding restrictions for your target audience.
Districts Need to Use Their Funds
Speaking of time, let’s close with some good news: now is actually a great time to be in EdTech. Schools have more funding than they’ve had in years, and they want and need to buy. During the school year, there are times, such as near the end of the year when schools need to use up remaining funds, or post-back to school when administrators start looking for what they need next year when you should be timing your outreach around. So get out there and show them you know what you’re talking about, you care about their challenges, and that you are here to help.
How to Find (and Write) Stories for the Education Market
Once upon a time, schools were pretty much local news only. It was rare to see a school board meeting on national news or to hear a state governor weigh in so heavily on what teachers can say in the classroom. But today, education news is big news. With education issues at the center of a divisive culture war, education editors are being bombarded with more pitches and press releases than ever. To learn how to get their attention about the amazing work you’re doing, it helps to put yourself in the shoes of the editors who get hundreds of emails a day. Here are a handful of ways to rise above the fray.
Follow the News
Education technology companies don’t usually make national media headlines for their products. That’s okay because that’s not where your customers get their purchasing recommendations. Your audience is often local, and they rely on education-oriented media such as education newsletters, groups, and platforms like K12leaders.com.
But if you want to catch editors’ attention, don’t ignore trending stories. Read newsletters, media, and relevant hashtags that keep you up-to-date on trending topics in the industry. Editors of education media have a mandate to connect their coverage to the larger news, so pitching them a story about your brand that connects with trending stories or national news will make their job easier, which will make them more likely to read and accept your pitch. Don’t just jump on the coattails of a trending news story, though: try to offer a unique perspective or different solution. If you can do this, editors will start to see you as a resource, not another email to be skimmed and deleted.
Let the Academic Year Work for You
The academic buying cycle creates unique challenges for marketing, sales, and public relations. But you can let the academic year work for you. Time your pitches or press releases to address what educators (and therefore the education media) will be thinking about when the content is finally published. Do you have a great back-to-school story? Pitch it over the summer so it has time to develop and appear just when it has the best chance of capturing educators’ attention.
Choose the Right Publications for Your Buyer
More eyeballs don’t necessarily mean better results. Posting a press release on PRWeb or PRNewswire may earn you millions of impressions, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to connections with the types of district leaders who make purchasing decisions about your product. Our strategy often involves combining this sort of wide exposure with targeted outreach to education-focused (and even topic-specific) media outlets, which are more likely to be sources of trusted information for education leaders.
Tell a Story that Demonstrates Your Identity
So you launched a new product. Congratulations, but that’s not a story. At least, it’s not the story that will grab editors’ attention or capture the hearts and minds of your buyer personas. Start with a clear idea of what you offer that no one else does. What problem does your product solve? Who, specifically, does it help the most? When you’ve answered these questions, tell a story that connects to the common goal of everyone working in education: helping kids learn.
Education PR is All About Building Trust and Relationships
Whether you’re a new company just launching or an established player with a refreshed story, take every opportunity to show that you’re passionate about what you do, who (and how) you help, and that you have clear goals. Innovative product features are a start, and proven efficacy and results are fundamental, but after that, it’s the passion and mission that differentiates you.
Measure Success in the Long Term
When do you want to see your story published? Will your campaign bring more sales leads to your website? How long might that take? The education buying cycle is long. Sometimes, educators, technologists, superintendents, or other decision-makers will read about you and then file you away for the next budget cycle. Sometimes, your story will surface several times over months as it makes its way through various levels of bureaucracy.
When you’re pitching to the education market, success is defined by what publications cover you and how. It’s not just “did the publication run a news blurb about our new feature,” but the total picture of how many of your targeted publications you got coverage in. The more coverage you get, the more awareness you build among the education leaders who matter to you. It’s a process that plays out over months or even years, but it will pay off if you’re patient. So be sure to define what success looks like, and think about it in the short, medium, and long term.
Where to Find Your Readers
To reach an education audience, start with the news sources they trust.
It’s easy to think that one well-placed story will skyrocket your company to fame and fortune. If only the New York Times or Wall Street Journal would run a story about how you’ve doubled reading achievement in an urban school district, your sales team would be overrun with inbound leads.
Right?
This is a common misperception. Sure, at PRP we’ve landed many impactful stories in major publications that dramatically raise the profile of our client family and their customers, but the truth is that, especially if you’re a company that’s relatively new to PR, one article will not change the trajectory of your company. Your buyers most likely aren’t only reading the NYT.
The two critical elements needed to reach the education market:
1: Your “buyer” is really several personas — and they’re all different.
We’ve written before about how anything you’re trying to sell to an education audience usually has to appeal to many audiences. You more than likely need to build relationships with superintendents, CAOs, or a CTO who will eventually sign a purchase order. But your product or service has to be useful for teachers and engaging for students. Targeting publications specific to your buyers is critical, but generating widespread awareness and goodwill toward your brand is as well. Especially today, with the rising tide of parent empowerment, parents often need to feel excited about your product, too.
If any of these gatekeepers don’t like your product or don’t feel comfortable working with you, you may lose the opportunity to partner with that district. To talk to each of them on their own terms, you’ll need to understand each of them deeply. (Shoutout to Hubspot’s Make my Persona tool.) But, they don’t all read the same publications or get their news from the same sources. They have different personalities. Some prefer newsletters. Some trust influencers. Some might rely exclusively on their network.
2: Your buyers often read niche education “trade” publications.
Imagine that you are a welder. Do you read the Wall Street Journal to decide what welding tools to get for your workspace? Probably not. You may read it to stay current on national welding trends, but you look to publications and sources specific to your industry for best practices. The same is true of many other fields — including education. A district administrator might read the Times for news, but when she’s looking for professional recommendations, she might be much more likely to turn to a resource like, well… District Administration.
Your best bet to reach education buyers in the media is to know who your buyers are, what they need, and what their goals are. Then, seek out the blogs, newsletters, influencers, magazines, podcasts, and other media they’re most likely to read and trust. These publications and news sources focus on specific roles, subject areas, or geographical regions.
A publication might only have a few hundred readers, but if one of those readers is the superintendent in a district you have on your shortlist, then that publication might serve you better than a big story in a major media outlet.
Putting it all together:
Tell your story in multiple education trade publications.
So here’s the trick: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Remember the long education buying cycle? Start by knowing your audience, and make sure that you’re pitching stories to the publications they read and trust. Then, keep the stories coming so that you become a trusted source for those publications.
Alternatively? Use a PR Firm…
When and why do education companies and nonprofits use PR firms?
Every company (yep, even yours!) engages in public relations. They don’t all hire firms, but they do PR. Whenever you make a choice about how you want your brand to be perceived by others, that’s PR. That being said, any company looking for sustained, long-term success in education should understand PR’s special role in an ecosystem that includes administrators, teachers, parents, and students.
PR introduces education leaders to new learning resources.
The education and EdTech media is often the first way that your target audience learns about the newest technologies and products available to schools and districts. Busy leaders don’t have time for marketing campaigns and certainly aren’t trolling social media — but they do read publications that help them do their jobs better.
There are many roles in education whose job description includes buying your products: CTOs, superintendents, principals, subject matter specialists, and more. They follow specific publications, blogs and newsletters so that they learn about new educational technologies first. They may even bookmark the announcement of your new product — especially if you’ve managed the press release right.
PR earns educators’ trust.
Much like a single email blast won’t do much to move the needle, a single interview or featured article isn’t enough to generate the level of awareness or brand recognition to drive sustained action on its own. Each time your buyers see your brand or your name in print, though, they become more familiar with you. They begin building a relationship with and perception of your brand, whether they realize it or not. If you’re landing coverage in the right publications, then your buyers will give you the same trust that they have in those publications.
The education buying cycle is long, so this sense of familiarity, along with regular reminders, is especially helpful. Repeated references and touchpoints increase the likelihood that your target audience will stumble across your story, again and again, building trust each time.
PR opens doors at the school and district levels.
A good story in the right publication becomes sales collateral that you’ll use to connect with buyers. You’ll re-share it again and again. Unlike a social post or an advertisement, stories stay relevant, often months or even years after publication.
Effective crisis PR happens long before the crisis.
From political controversy to ransomware attacks, schools and the vendors who serve them face intense public scrutiny. It’s all too easy to find yourself at the center of a media storm of publicity for something as unpredictable as an employee’s poorly worded tweet. PR firms help education companies prepare and protect themselves through crisis planning and management.
PR inspires your internal team, too.
At PRP, we often talk about how PR puts you in control of your reputation and builds awareness. That’s all external, but PR makes an impact internally as well. Understanding your audience and crafting compelling narratives will inspire your team and help them connect with your company’s mission. A good story about how your product changed a student’s life or made an educator’s day will help your salespeople and marketing team understand how your product fits the market. Stories that highlight people who succeed in the face of challenges build motivation and consensus. They create a shared narrative your team will rally around.
Effective PR focuses as much on your buyers as it does on you. In the education industry, it’s especially important to share stories about how customers have benefited from your products. A PR team curates success stories so that you, your sales team, and your target audience know what’s working and why.
PR supports renewals.
So far, we’ve talked about how PR helps build awareness with education buyers who are just learning about your brand. But one more group should be considered: your current (and former) customers.
Renewals are as important to revenue as new sales, and a compelling PR campaign with well-placed articles will remind your current or former customers why they decided to work with you in the first place. It helps customers feel good about their decision to renew your products or services.
PR creates urgency and connects you to trends.
PR connects your brand to trending topics and positions you as the go-to solution for solving a problem. It sets you up as a thought leader. Each time your readers see your brand as a solution to the most pressing problem that they’re facing, they’ll experience a sense of urgency to learn more about your products and to see if you can solve their problems. They’ll feel encouraged to reach out or click that “free trial” button.
Whether you’re handling your public relations in-house or with an agency like us, PR in the education market is much more than broadcasting your message in a variety of formats. It’s an ongoing process of building relationships with the media, with your customers, with your prospects, and with your own team. If you can build those relationships, you can build a successful education brand.
Timing is essential when you’re selling educational products.
Here’s how to use the extra-long EdTech sales cycle to your advantage in public relations and marketing.
Most consumer industries have short, straightforward buying cycles — at least compared to the education market. When you buy new shoes, for example, you don’t typically spend a year evaluating and comparing options. Even a big, considered purchase like buying a car usually doesn’t take that long.
But education is different. In education, the long buying cycle is dictated by the school year, budget schedules, funding availability, and more. To succeed in education sales, marketing, and PR, you need to schedule your communications and media coverage so it appears at a time when the schools, districts, or educators you’re targeting are motivated (and able) to act on it.
5 Tips for Mastering the Education Public Relations Timeline
Extra-Long Buying Cycle
The first and most important thing to understand about the education buying cycle is that it’s long. It starts at the beginning of the year before a purchase is made.
Let me repeat that: You need to start your PR outreach at least a year before you probably think you do. Well, technically, public relations never stops. You should start your PR efforts from day 1. But to be clear, schools are evaluating their needs for the 2023–2024 school year now. They might be evaluated during the entire 2022–2023 school year before making purchases next summer.
My point is, when a school hears about your product, they’re not swiping the credit card right away. They’ll often file it away for later. Educators and district leaders are constantly on the lookout for new educational tools. They gather lists of the best products and save them for later.
Budget Schedules
When a school or district is out of money for the year… they’re out of money for the year. Sorry. No amount of PR or marketing is going to make them buy a product that’s not in the budget — at least until the next year rolls around.
At the same time, some districts will come to the end of a budget cycle with money to spend. Your prospective customers might have “use or lose it” funding, and just be looking for the right place to spend it.
So how do you know which is which? Should you spend resources to reach your buyer at the end of the school year?
To make things more complicated, funding sources often come at different times with different restrictions. Expect a school to spend funding earmarked for summer learning at a different time than the rest of their funding, for example.
That’s why PRP always says that education PR must be focused on building long-term relationships with your prospects and buyers. If you’re building goodwill, asking questions, providing free trials, and continuously learning about your audience, you’ll be able to time your outreach a lot better. You’ll have a better idea of who has funding they’re ready to spend, and who doesn’t.
ESSER Funding
Since we’re talking about budget cycles, here’s a reminder that schools are currently flush with cash they will need to spend. Be sure to listen to our podcast episode with Tucker Capital to learn about how schools are going to be spending that money.
Multiple Stakeholders and Due Diligence
There are few industries with quite so many gatekeepers as education. Your products and communications usually must reach and convert:
- Educators: Often the first adopters of new educational technology and curriculum, they need to use your product, and feel good about your brand.
- Administrators: Increasingly, schools rely on technology and curriculum specialists and other administrators to find, research, and approve curriculum and software.
- IT: Does your product require advanced installation? Don’t forget the folks doing the installs.
- Parents: Parents increasingly play a role in their children’s education and take notice of what they’re learning. “Parent empowerment” has become a catchphrase in the industry.
- Leaders: Whoever signs the purchase order, whether they’re a superintendent, CTO, or someone else, needs to be convinced that your solution is the right fit for their school or district.
- Board Members: Whoever makes the final purchase decision is accountable to their board.
Your communications will often make their way up from the first users or early adopters through to the final decision-maker, which might be a committee. At each step, these gatekeepers will be looking for data and justifications for the decision to purchase (or renew) your product or service. This extends the timeline of your PR and communications work and guarantees that you will need to send out more outreach and increased touchpoints over the course of the sale process and beyond.
An Emotional Cycle
We can’t talk about the school year without talking about the emotional experience educators and students have. The beginning of the year is often full of excitement, hope, and sometimes a little trepidation. The end of the year can be filled with exhaustion, burnout, and a sense of longing for summer. In the middle, there are many ups and downs, from holidays to homecoming or prom. And of course, summer combines moments when teachers just want to get away and moments when they’re readying themselves for the upcoming school year.
So as you plan your public relations and communications calendar to align with education buying cycles, don’t forget that emotional component. Match your audience’s emotions and recognize how they’re feeling.
Get Started Today!
Once you know what to do, it’s never too early to get started. From crafting the stories your audience will remember to developing your crisis management plan, education PR should be at the top of your brand-building agenda.
