8 Effective Strategies to Close Deals as an EdTech Company

Since 2020, the use of EdTech in K-12 schools has increased by 99%. 

You may see that much growth and assume that sales would be easy to make. But along with that growth has come a lot of competition in educational technology.

In order to stay ahead of the competition and close deals, you'll need to rely on the most effective EdTech sales strategies available. From cold calling and prospecting to video marketing, you'll have to fight for those sales.

In this post, we'll go over some of these strategies so they can help your sales development team close more deals. 

Keep reading to learn more.

1. Make SEO a Priority

You want leads to be coming to you as much as possible, rather than having to find them. One of the best ways to make that happen is by using search engine optimization or SEO to drive traffic to your website and social media profiles.

The main goal of SEO is to help you rank as high as possible on search engine results pages. It is a long-term strategy that you'll have to work on continuously, but ranking on the first page of Google is well worth it.

There is a lot that goes into a proper SEO strategy, but at the center of it will be keywords related to your business and industry. These keywords will be what you're trying to get ranked on Google or other search engines for. So that when people search for those keywords using a search engine, your business will hopefully be one of the first to appear.

However, it's not enough to get people to your website, you also need them to stay on and navigate around the different pages. Make sure that it's created with solid copywriting principles in mind that will help to make the sale for you. The writing on your website should always focus on the customer and how their lives or businesses will be improved by becoming a customer. 

2. Content Marketing for EdTech

Where SEO focuses on getting Google's attention, content marketing focuses on getting potential customers' attention. Content marketing is when you regularly create and post content that is both relevant and valuable to your ideal customers.

This helps your SEO and also helps you build your reputation within the EdTech industry. When educators and administrators know that they can go to your website to find trustworthy, thorough information about different related topics, it helps build their trust in your company. It also keeps you at the front of their minds when they're finally ready to make a purchase.

The content you post also gives you the perfect opportunity to explain exactly how you can help make their lives easier. While they may not go to your page looking for that information, an article may pique their interest and draw them in.

If there is a problem you know your ideal customer is likely experiencing, put out content about it and about how your product/service can help to solve that issue for them. They may not even be aware that they have this problem yet or they do and they're not aware a solution exists, but this is your chance to educate them on that.

3. Network Network Network

As often as possible, get out and network with people in the education world. Making contacts within a school district is a great way to get your foot in the proverbial door, especially for companies that aren't well-known yet.

And making contacts in one district doesn't only open that district to your business either. The world of education isn't as large as you may think, and a contact in one district can frequently put you in contact with someone from another. Educators will be more apt to trust the opinions and experiences of other educators who have already worked with a company.

To make contacts, do your best to get in front of teachers and administrators whenever possible. Attend education symposiums, conferences, and other networking events to meet people. Always be ready to pitch, but don't overdo it. Be focused more on building relationships and rapport rather than just selling. 

Even without making any sales at these events, contacts like this can be worth their weight in gold. It's also a great place to collect contact information to build your email or cold calling lists.

4. Email Marketing

Building an email list is an important part of lead generation for B2B marketing. As you add emails and contact information that you gather during your networking, you should also be collecting emails on your website. There should be a place on your website where people can put in their contact information. Usually, this is done in exchange for some kind of premium content sent to their email address.

Once you collect the email addresses you should be using them to nurture the leads. This is a great place to include automation in your marketing to help take some of the work off of your marketing team. 

Create a welcome sequence of emails to be automatically initiated when someone gives their email. This helps to keep your company in their minds while also providing some kind of valuable content to the leads.

You can also send out a newsletter at regular intervals to keep your email list updated on the different things going on in the education world. EdTech is a great industry for this because technology is always updating and improving and you can position yourself as an expert by keeping your email list up to date on important changes.

5. Segment Your Marketing

Not all EdTech marketing efforts will be a good match for every different type of education setting. What works to connect with a public high school is likely different than a private elementary school or a four-year university. 

Separate your various leads into different categories depending on their specific characteristics. For example:

• Type of institution
• Size 
• Location
• Where they are in the sales pipeline

The more targeted the marketing is for each lead, the more likely they are to convert.

In addition to segmenting your marketing attempts, do your best to personalize them as much as possible. This again helps to build a relationship and trust with customers, while showing them content that is actually relevant to their business.

6. Create a Cold Calling Campaign

There's a reason that this is a classic marketing strategy. When done right it can get you access to prospects that you otherwise would not have been able to reach. 

An effective cold calling campaign has several pieces, the first being your list of leads with their contact information. Do your best to find the direct line to a decision-maker within the institution. You'll then need a cold calling script for your inside sales team to use when making a cold call. And finally, you'll need to decide on a call cadence or in other words a schedule for your team to follow for how often they should contact a lead.

This is a great strategy because it can lead to making contacts where you otherwise wouldn't have had access. But, it's important to do it right and have a good cold calling technique because it's easy to bother people when making cold calls.

7. Use Video Marketing

EdTech is a great industry for using video marketing because videos allow you to easily explain and demonstrate the different features of your product/service.

Videos are also excellent in general because potential customers can save them for later and come back, rather than a one-time presentation that they can't rewatch later.

Videos also allow you to embed links to other pages on your website, opt-in forms, or anything else you'd like. This means people can click right on the video for more information while you still have their attention.

When making these videos, make sure to optimize them to look good on any screen size. You never know what kind of device your prospects are watching the video on, and you want it to look good and function well no matter what. The videos should also be relatively short so they can hold prospects' attention.

8. Collect Data

As a company and a sales team, it's critical for you to always continue learning from past experiences. In this case, you should be collecting data and learning from past marketing strategies and campaigns you've tried. This is some of the most valuable insight you could have access to.

Consider what's worked well and what hasn't worked at all. Be sure to keep doing the things that worked, and find ways to improve on the ones that didn't. Did a particular campaign have a notably high conversion rate? Is there a piece of content or type of content that is consistently getting a lot of traffic and interaction?

The best thing you can do to make more sales is to pay attention to this data.

Close More Deals Using These EdTech Sales Strategies

There is more competition than ever in the EdTech space. But with these EdTech sales strategies, you'll be on your way to closing more sales than ever.

If you're looking for even more guidance on how to increase your closing rate, we're the team for you! Contact us now, or learn more about our EdTech solutions today.