How to Build Smarter EdTech Marketing Plans in a Changing Landscape

Elana Leoni (: 00:01

Welcome everyone to our podcast, all things Marketing and education. I'm Elana Leone and I've devoted my entire career to helping education brands build their brand awareness, engagement and ultimately grow their lead. Every week. My guests who range from educators to EdTech entrepreneurs to experts in the field, we'll all share tips, strategies and insight in either social media, content marketing and community building. I'm so excited to be your guide to help transform your marketing efforts into something that's truly authentic and consistently provides value for your audience. Enjoy. Hi there everyone. Welcome back to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. I'm your host, Ilana Leone, and today I'm really excited to welcome a new friend and someone who has a similar vantage point is me, Hallie Smith. Hallie, like me, runs a marketing agency. Her marketing agency is called Hey There marketing. And just like me, it's education focus.

So she gets to work and partner with EdTech organizations and education brands and K 12 education. She provides strategy design, fractional services and more. And since she has this unique opportunity to run marketing for many education brands, I wanted to selfishly pick her brain about all things marketing. She is like the doppelganger of me out in education and vice versa. And when we combine and get to learn from each other, magic happens and we wanted to share it out with all of you so you can learn alongside. So a bit more about Halle before we get into the conversation. Halle brings this unique blend of experiences. She started her career in ed tech and then she moved into the classroom as a speech pathologist and now she's advising ed tech organizations, startups, education brands. As a fractional marketing leader, what I love about Halle is how deeply she understands both sides of the education world.

She gets what it's like to be in the classroom and what it takes to build an effective product or message from that ed tech or business side as well. Her journey is full of helpful insights for really anyone wondering whether they should stay in the classroom, move into ed tech or navigate that beautiful space in between. And right now many of us feel overwhelmed in the shifts in education industry as a whole. We talk all about that in this episode. We talk about how you can authentically connect to educators and why it's more important than ever right now. And I get to pick her brain about, gosh, how do you even begin when you're working with education organizations as a fractional marketing leader? How do you prioritize different marketing channels? What marketing channels are working and not where do we want to put our bets?

How do we make plans? How do we make inroads? How do we work in partnership with sales? All of that good stuff. So many good tips, tricks, advice. I just don't want to make you wait any longer. Let's dive in. Alright, I'm so excited to welcome Halle Smith to the show. Halle is a newfound friend In all of our conversations, I just walk away smiling knowing that there's someone in the thick of it with me. So thank you so much for saying yes to being on the podcast and I'm looking forward to learning from you.

Hallie Smith (: 03:38

Yeah, thanks for asking me.

Elana Leoni (: 03:41

Yeah, well let's get into it. I love your background. I think a lot of others can learn from your journey as well. You have a little bit in the actual classroom, you have a lot of bit in ed tech and you've got everything in between. Tell me about how your journey started began and it not ended because in the thick of it together now, but why don't you walk me through that because there's a lot of people on our show that are always wondering, gosh, should I go back into ed tech? Should I go back in the classroom? If I'm in the classroom, what are the signals that get me in back into ed tech? All the things. So why don't we start there?

Hallie Smith (: 04:17

That sounds good. So I have a little bit of an unusual trajectory. I actually started in ed tech. So out of college I got my first job. It was in advertising, didn't love it, and I basically was looking for a new role back in the days when you looked in the newspaper. And I found this job at an EdTech company, early days of EdTech, one of the first companies that was using technology to help kids with language and reading development. And I didn't know that this sort of thing even existed. So when I went to have the first interview and I remember the elevator doors opening and it was a legit business, I was like, oh my gosh, there's this world where you can impact kids in education but also work on the business side. This is amazing. So when I was working there, I was talking with a lot of speech pathologists and that really interested me as an area of study and practice.

So even though things were going really well at the company, I ended up deciding to become a speech pathologist. So instead of starting in education, then going to ed tech, I started in ed tech and ended up deciding to become a speech pathologist, which a lot of people I think focuses on just like how you say your S'S or your Rs, but it's actually much broader than that. It's all the underlying language skills you need to develop reading skills, social skills. It's a very broad area of study and super interesting. So I started in EdTech, decided to get a master's in speech pathology just because I was interested in it. Nothing was happening in the EdTech world that sent me in that direction. I just was passionate about it and the company I was working for was flexible enough to allow me to do that and continue working.

Eventually I got the master's, I started working at San Diego Unified. My undergrad degree is actually in Spanish, so I was on this bilingual support network where I got exposed to a bunch of different elementary schools in San Diego County is and San Diego Unified is very large. It serves over a hundred thousand students, lots of different populations. So that's really where I got on the ground practical experience of what it's like at schools. And even though most of my time, all of my time was on the special ed side, you're still in classrooms all the time and talking with teachers and administrators. Eventually I was convinced to go back to ed tech by my boss at the time. This is going to sound really old, this is really going to date me, but this is when technology was moving from CDs to online to the cloud and there was a lot of work involved in doing that and I was actually having some health problems.

I had been working the two jobs, I was just kind of getting a little burned out and the opportunity back in EdTech was kind of too good to pass up. I could work from home. So my trajectory is not, I don't think that indicative of what a lot of other educators are going through. But I have hired and interviewed a fair amount of educators trying to transition into EdTech. And I think the advice that I would give is that companies are interested, this is not really shattering, but companies are interested in outcomes and sometimes when I would see educator resumes or in interviews, they wouldn't be able to quantify and articulate the impact they had on their kids. And the ones that the people that stood apart were the ones who said increased reading levels by X amount. This is the percentage of kids I had struggling in the beginning of the year. This is how many I got into the average range by the end of the year. Things like that. So it was really the outcome orientation that set people apart in terms of their ability to move from the classroom into an SDR role specifically.

Another thought about advice that I have, I think there's a misconception that ed tech is going to be easier somehow than working in education and I just don't know that it is. I think both sides, both jobs, both careers have pros and cons and neither one of them is an easy out is what I would say. So it's not like I think, oh, I should go back to being a speech pathologist because that's easier. It's not easier by any stretch, it's just different. So I do think about it a lot. I always wonder, should go back to I've kept my license, one piece of advice I would say to every teacher is do not give up your license. Keep it going. If there's any chance that you need a job, there's a shortage and you need ultimate job security, you keep that license and you go back into the classroom if you need to, which is exactly what I did at the beginning of last year. I actually went back to cover a maternity leave at a charter school as an SLP for the first time in 12 years, which was quite an experience, but I really felt like I could go into the belly of the beast and experience firsthand how schools were being run again and I couldn't pass up the opportunity. So that was interesting. I lasted eight weeks. I was exhausted. Exhausted mostly that was the commute though in the early mornings. Anyway,

Elana Leoni (: 09:41

Yeah, so I think that what you're giving this advice is really helpful. And I also want to let the audience know that what I love about your mix of career is that you've been in-house in EdTech for very long stints. You've now made that transition over to your own agency. And so now you're fractional and advising lots of different EdTech startups from the marketing lens. So you can be a thought partner with me of like, Hey, what are you saying? Because we now work with a portfolio of clients in the industry and that's exciting and that's what we're going to tap into. And I love that your background had this, Hey, I was actually in a tech, I went in the classroom, I still have my license. So it gives you that foundation that I think we're going to tap into all of that right now.

So the number one question, I feel like everybody is scrambling, everybody's in reactive mode. There's a lot of moving and shaking in the industry right now. At the time that this podcast was recorded, we just got news that the DOE is going to be decimated even more. So there's a lot of other things moving and shaking in the industry, but I'm wondering from your perspective, from the marketing lens and whatever else you want to provide, what are the noticeable changes that you've seen and how has it affected you as a marketer specifically in the industry of EdTech?

Hallie Smith (: 11:07

Yeah, it is a very odd time. I was talking with another agency owner and she said things are really weird right now. Things are getting really weird. I think I posted that on LinkedIn. So uncertainty and delay are the two terms that I keep hearing over and over. I mean the long and short of it is things are changing so rapidly that I think it's difficult to stay up on what the industry on the whole is doing. But I can just share the anecdotes that I've heard. I've heard that people are really adjusting their messaging and positioning away from terms like equity, inclusion, social emotional learning. They're trying to downplay and reposition anything related to DEI because of the threat on federal funding related to those terms. But they're not really changing their offering, they're just changing the words they're using. I think in terms of when I'm speaking with organizations, and this is before the last six weeks or so, I think the tactics, the traditional tactics in marketing are getting harder and harder.

So things just do not deliver the results they used to. Whether that's because there's too much saturation in the market or technology that districts are blocking emails or that they're not going to the same conferences they used to or whatever the reasons are, or chat GBT for SEO, I just think companies more and more cannot rely on the traditional ways that they've done things. And so I'm encouraging organizations to take a broader view of their whole business and maybe consider looking at growth from a different angle. So maybe that looks like focusing on existing customers and growing an existing customer base versus going out trying to get new customers. Maybe that looks like looking at different funding sources and going through philanthropy instead of through federal funds. You know how it is, you speak to a bunch of different organizations and everybody's a little bit different. I would say also some organizations are not changing at all. They're just kind of continuing along business as usual. So there is a lot going on obviously on the AI side, and I think that's where I'm seeing the most activity. People will say, oh, we're adding in this new AI featured support that plugs into our software, can you help us launch it, message it, things like that. Does that answer your question?

Elana Leoni (: 13:45

Yeah, I mean that is the hardest question to throw to you because we're all trying to digest it right now. And I also think that there's no one size fits all answer as you alluded to as well. But what I did hear is uncertainty delay, and that affects our industry. So if we have uncertainty or delay, they start increasing the length of the buying cycle potentially, which then affects revenue, which then decreases your runway. So these are all kind of trickle down effects and we're seeing signals of them now. So it's important for us to talk a little bit about them. And then you also mentioned the DEI stuff. Yes, I'm seeing it across the board doing website audits

And the AI is infused everywhere. I'm really excited to go to the air show or now that's called the AI show, to really start learning about has it moved the needle in terms of student outcomes and student usage. We've seen a lot as it relates to productivity and things like that within the educator side, but I think there's of these things and then it's getting harder and harder to do everything as a key takeaway. And then you really need to think about what you've done in the past will not serve you in the future. Things are moving too quickly. So I think you answered the question swimmingly, even though it's such a freaking hard question.

Hallie Smith (: 15:10

gh a big funding downturn. So: 2012

Elana Leoni (: 16:21

And when you don't listen or adjust or innovate to educate our needs, you potentially are also not telling the story of the impact as well. And you may have lesser impact. And what we're seeing with the education funding for all the research just being slaughtered, even research that was almost done right, we're going to see ramifications of that in the future. But with budgets being cut, school boards, school districts are really looking at what's really moving the needle and

Hallie Smith (: 16:51

Yes

Elana Leoni (: 16:51

Now there's this gap of federal funding is not covering the research, which could potentially help with some of those things. How do you as an ed tech organization or an education brand show up and show even qualitative things? So you should be thinking about even if you're not able to evolve the product quite quickly, what are the things you can do on the efficacy side that can help show this works? And that's going to be a little hard, but the innovation is twofold, I feel.

Hallie Smith (: 17:17

Yeah, definitely.

Elana Leoni (: 17:19

Alright, so we could talk about that question forever. I really hope that was helpful. This will continue to evolve. Hallie's really great on LinkedIn. Please follow her. She talks about all of her findings of when she's talking to people. Let's back up a bit. I feel like we jumped in and that's great. But for people that maybe are just kind of getting their feet wet into the world that we serve in terms of education and ed tech, what are the biggest differences? When people talk to you, they say, oh, you're a marketer. It must be easy. You can go sell shoes if you want to somewhere else, or vice versa. We see people making the leap into our pond and they make assumptions about our industry of how to sell. What are the biggest differences that you tease out and say, no, this is a different game here.

Hallie Smith (: 18:07

So I think there's two main ones. One of them is that our market is very easy to package. So there's a lot of publicly available information about the number of schools, everything about them, the number of principals, the number of district administrations, district administrators, we all know we can buy their data, we can buy anything we want about the districts. We know their board meeting notes. So there's a very finite addressable market in public schools and there's a lot of access to information about their funding. So for a general SaaS organization, I just find that not to be the case. I will also make the caveat that I've only worked in EdTech, so I've only worked in education, so I follow a lot of general B2B marketers on LinkedIn. So it's a little bit hard for me to say exactly how it's different, but that's one thing that comes to mind where I think like, oh yeah, if you're starting from scratch, how do they determine their ideal customer profile versus in education?

It's sort of the factors and the ways you can slice and dice your market. And maybe that's the case in other B2B, but that's kind of one thing that comes to mind for me. The other thing is there's just certain ways you can talk to educators. I feel like, and sometimes rarely I would say somebody can come in from outside the industry and learn that really quickly, but I have seen that people will try to come into education and use the sort of, students are failing, teachers aren't doing a good enough job and we can fix it. And just that doesn't, first of all, you can't blame teachers. It's a story that every organization is told since the beginning of time. If they're trying to sell into schools, they're trying to focus on achievement. I mean, these are the ones that are actually focused on the student side.

But there's an art, I think, to speaking into education into educators. And it's like if you've been in education, you kind of know it when you see it or if you've been in the industry for a long time, you're like, you can't really say it that that has a little bit of a pejorative tone or that sounds a little judgmental. That sounds a little bit like you're going to replace a teacher. That sounds a little bit like you're blaming kids. You have to walk a fine balance and when you're in it, you can identify it If you're coming in new, I think it's hard to know when you're on the mark and when you're not. So not that it's not learnable, it's definitely learnable, but it's hard. I think

Elana Leoni (: 20:48

Those nuances, people underestimate for a lack of a better term. I've seen people just butcher communications out to educators and you're like, oh no, you can't say that term. It's triggering, or you can't really say it that way. So yes, you really, if you're coming into the industry and you don't have that background, please bring in educators to surround you. Or even sometimes when I jump into deep scientific brands that maybe I'm not familiar with, I'll bring in a subject matter expert, a s me and say, Hey, is that the way you think about science? So there are tools at your fingertips to get up to speed, but making the assumption that you can just jump in and use the call to actions and those types of things that potentially worked in your other industry is something I see people fail at quite badly.

Hallie Smith (: 21:40

And the other thing I would add is that I've been in the industry now for more than 25 years and I still don't know sometimes. So I just posted about this on LinkedIn also. I spoke with the teacher last week and I had her look at some of my messaging. This was an AI support that a company was adding on, and she just totally called me out, you're going too far with this value prop. That's not how you're going to retain teachers. Okay, yeah, you're going to help them with grading. That's not the main reason why they're upset and why they want to quit. And I was like, okay, good point. Thank you. Thank you for raising that because it's just we're never going to know everything, even if we've been in the industry for a long time. So every time I talk to an educator, I am reminded why it's so important. And I think that is one thing that just, it's so easy to let it go and so hard to set up the time and getting contact with customers. And I know companies struggle to do that, but it's like the one thing that you can always trust will keep you on track, I feel like.

Elana Leoni (: 22:46

Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good point. And there's so many different ways you can do focus groups. You can do one-on-ones, you can, you can have it embedded in your processes. So that really helps. And even if we have teams like my team, our former educators, we never assume because they were an educator, they know what educator, what it's like to be in the classroom now. It's so fundamentally different. So it's important to surround yourself with those things. I think the other thing we probably should mention around our industry is just how long it moves. My friend Ian talked in a prior episode and we'll put it in the show notes, but it's almost like an aircraft carrier moving really slow. We think about these buying cycles where they're buying for the next year, right before the school year's not even done, sometimes blows people mind. You're like, whoa. It moves that slow. And with the turnovers of superintendents and the people that are actually in decision making seats, you can just tear your head out and say, oh gosh, that relationship is blown. But they typically will move somewhere else. But

Hallie Smith (: 23:49

Right.

Elana Leoni (: 23:49

Just a lot of nuances in moving and shaking in our industry of like, no, there's never a quick sale is those types

Hallie Smith (: 23:56

Unless it's real cheap.

Elana Leoni (: 23:57

And that's the from unused budget, but you never want to plan for the exceptions around the market. Any other things you want to do? If you want to think about as it relates to the differences in EdTech?

Hallie Smith (: 24:15

Everything in EdTech comes down to funding. And I sometimes newer players to the industry, it's like they know or they think they have a product that is going to help. This is pre-product market fit type organizations, and they I think are focused on the usefulness of their product but not how it's going to get paid for. And I think it's very challenging to stay up on all the different funding sources in all the different states, but that is just something very different. I'm sure that's similar to other business to government sort of motions, but access to the funding information, I think it's different. I would also say the more, especially in the last year, I mean I've been in the industry for a long time, but this last year working on my own, it's like I'm seeing the ecosystem in a new way.

I keep thinking about, I don't even know what the diagram is called, but where you have the bubbles that connect to the bubbles. There's certain kind of graphic organizer, but I keep thinking about how there's something there for the EdTech industry about how the different pieces and players come together and intersect and all the considerations that a company needs to take into account in terms of their growth model. And I think the bubbles would be different in EdTech and knowing what the bubbles are. So maybe that's even in the funding realm, you would be like, there's science of reading states and what are the initiatives for science of reading? Or I know that there are states that have passed funding for anti vaping or anti fentanyl stuff. I think Kentucky has something where they have to start talking to kids in kindergarten about it. So just like the world of funding and staying up on funding intelligence I think is unique to education in EdTech.

Elana Leoni (: 26:27

Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think that even though there, like you said, there's some transparency in there and we're getting access to more sources that are a little bit more up to date. It's a lot how many states we have. And so

A lot of the times us as marketers, people say, well, and we work closely with head of sales of what are the states you want to target exactly. Because you're going to have to pick and choose where are you most suited in your product? Are you able to deliver on the largest scale or do you look at the mid-level? Do you focus on rural schools? All of those considerations and then layer on the funding. Yes, we're making our industry sound very sexy right now, but we love it. That's why you've been in it for decades. Myself too, is there's so many reasons why we stay. It puts smiles on our face. We didn't want, if you want a challenging and rewarding industry, you have found it. Alright, so we've talked a little bit organically about some of the mistakes. We talked about the tone of voice and the nuance and then making assumptions around you come from a different industry and coming into ed tech, but do you see other mistakes being made with EdTech, EdTech marketers and EdTech companies? And why do you think they do this in terms of assumptions? Because you and I can get behind the hood and be like, oh, why'd you make that decision? But are there any other mistakes you want to surface up that you've seen? And hopefully for those of y'all listening, you can put your little checkbox in and say, okay, Halle said don't do this and it'll save you some time. It'll save you a lot of money.

Hallie Smith (: 28:05

The main thing I would say separates a really good marketer from maybe a mediocre or maybe ineffective marketer is their ability to step outside their own fishbowl and take another person's point of view. And I have found this very difficult to try to train in someone. I feel like you kind of either have it or you don't have it, and then you can layer on the other marketing skills on top of that. But if you don't have that, that's kind of the foundation of everything. So what I notice is I go to websites and I cannot tell either what the product actually is or what it does, let alone what it means to the person who's visiting the site. So it could be like boost student achievement and then nowhere on the page can I tell if it's PD, worksheets, an online platform, anything else under the cards, a card.

I mean, I dunno the different formats they could come in, but I just find myself wondering a lot, is it paper? What is this thing? So what is it? And then how it works. So maybe they'll show boosting achievement and it'll be like a interface, like a computer interface. So you can tell it's a digital platform and then maybe it'll even say the results, but you're kind of like, well, how is this reading approach different from the other thousand reading approaches? So what is your special sauce? What is your magical way that you do it and saying it succinctly. So it's kind of a mix. When I message products, I want to create a sentence that's like blank is this, it does this, which means you get this result. And I just see a lot of sites that kind of include maybe one of those, but not all of them. And it just leaves you confused. And I would say the reason why that happens is because they're not either getting feedback from their audience or taking the perspective of an outside person. And it's very hard sometimes to take the perspective of an TED person because you'd get blinded by the organization that you're in and it's all you're ever thinking about all the time. But that just reinforces our earlier point about giving the outside feedback, right?

Elana Leoni (: 30:29

And this isn't like what Hallie's saying is not just for ed tech startups that are in C round. This is across the board in terms of maturity of clients I've seen in terms of EdTech, and it bugs me so bad of what is it, what does it do? How is it uniquely different? But more no one cares about your product first, right? What is it solving? And then how? And then can I contact you easily and is it not just this really ambiguous demo, right?

Hallie Smith (: 31:01

Yes. Connect me right away with a person. I love that. And give me their calendar. Just let's just pave this way, reduce friction.

Elana Leoni (: 31:11

And for those of you saying, gosh, I need a whole website redesigned now that we've listened to this podcast. No, you don't. You really need to look at it from a lens of does my website convert? And we're like, is it doing what you want it to do? And there's lots of easy tweaks you can do. But then do the little things that Hallie's saying, bring in some educators, bring in some people and say, Hey, can you understand what we do? And be open to that feedback.

Hallie Smith (: 31:36

A real quick and easy way, I think to even self-assess for this is when if you have quotes from customers, the quotes will use the verbiage that you should be using with other educators. So there's this one company I've been working with, and when I first looked at their site, I was like, I don't really understand what this is. And I was scrolling down the site and at the bottom they had testimonials and the first testimonial says, is the best LMS I've ever used. I'm like, oh, it's an LMS, could we bring that up to the top? Then there was a whole conversation about, well, but it's more than an LMS. And so it wasn't quite as simple as I thought it was out the gate, but you need to anchor people in some tie to something that they have some familiarity with. Also,

Elana Leoni (: 32:20

That also aligns to funding sources, right? If you're trying to reinvent a category and use terms that people don't even search for and talk about, yes, from a branding perspective you have that, right? But you have to balance it carefully. The funding brings a whole nother level. You're like, well, I don't have budget for that, I don't even know where it goes. What budget lines can I? And you end up trying to have somebody on your team try to say, okay, you can use this line and this line and this line. It was like it's too

Hallie Smith (: 32:45

Much

Elana Leoni (: 32:46

Simple.

Hallie Smith (: 32:47

Yeah, simple,

Elana Leoni (: 32:48

Simple. Alright, so the exciting stuff that you get to do is around crafting marketing plans. And you've already said that in this time think outside of the box and do some things, but if I am maybe a ed tech leader and I don't have a marketing person yet, or maybe I have a junior person or maybe I am a leader, marketing leader in my organization, how do I begin to craft a marketing plan? Can you maybe walk through what are the steps in the beginning, this is again a podcast in itself, but what are some tips you can bring or process oriented things of, alright, I know I've got to tackle this year. I know I've got to show up, I know I've got goals. How do I begin to figure out my blueprint for a marketing plan?

Hallie Smith (: 33:34

So I always encourage, we talked about this on one of our calls recently about backwards mapping to the goal. So sometimes people call me and they say, I want to do PR in Miami. And in my head I'm thinking why? They go straight to the tactic. And so at every organization that I am speaking with, I want to align with the founder, the CEO on the goals. So that alone, there's a lot of variation in there. Some companies want one company, you want to just spin up an admin facing landing page. So they just felt like they were not communicating to administrators as effectively as they could. So that was a tactic, but that's not a marketing plan, but that's something that I was asked to do as an area of focus. So sometimes, and it's a little bit different from the question you're asking, but it is answering when people come to me, what are they asking for and where do I start?

I'm just sort of like, what's your top priority? What's your organization's goal? Sometimes it's small and sometimes it's big. I like to have the conversations about the bigger areas. That's more fun I think. Are you looking to grow by, how have you backwards mapped to the growth plan, right? So I think I shared this example with you. Somebody said, we want 230 new deals. I think the questions from there are like, how many do you have in the pipeline now? Where did you get them? Where do you think you're going to get them? Who's your ideal customer profile? What's your average deal value? How much money does that translate into? So basically starting from the revenue goal, breaking that down into the ideal customer profile and audience. Then further breaking that down into where those people are, who's your lowest hanging fruit like we talked about before, states funding sources, areas of need could be achievement related stuff.

And then from there it's like tactics. I always say you place your bets, nobody knows we have some idea what's going to work, but let's say you're a small team and you're like, we're going to go after events, but only these three. We're going to do prospecting on the way there and on the way back through email, we're going to do geotargeting, we're going to do case studies. I think I just said four things like okay, you're going to place your bets in those four areas. You execute against them, you set up some dashboards, you look to see if you're getting anywhere and then you adjust accordingly. That's how I think about it from a real simple perspective, but I think the backwards mapping is not intuitive to some people that are just getting started.

Elana Leoni (: 36:34

But it's so critical, especially because if you don't align yourself with what the organization is set in stone of here are our goals, you're never going to get buy-in for what you're doing in marketing and you're never going to be able to connect the dots to your plan, to the goal.

Hallie Smith (: 36:49

Right.

Elana Leoni (: 36:50

Sometimes, like you said, you've got to make concessions. That's the number one thing too is like, Hey, I know there's lots of things we can do in marketing, but what do you personally feel strongly about? What medium? And you give them the wins, even though you might feel like you don't know, you don't have enough data to see if it'll convert or you've seen in your best practice. It may not convert, still do it. But then backwards map with the other things is your number one friend. And that's what I love that you said is backward map, but get in sync with the goals and get in sync with what sales needs

Hallie Smith (: 37:24

Yes.

Elana Leoni (: 37:24

All of the things. And there's so much nuance in between it all. But I also love that you are humble enough to say that we don't know it all the industry is changing, but even you and me, we work with a portfolio of brands and that gives us an upright so we can say we're not siloed as this is only thing that happening to my brand. But at the same time, all brands are uniquely different, even in ed tech too. They are. So knowing that you're listening from two leaders here in marketing that are saying, Hey, sometimes we have to place some bets. You do it as data informed as possible, but the industry is moving quite quickly too. So I think that that's a beautiful approach. And then really look at what is pivotal to your organization in terms of timing and being there and where your audience is. And you've mentioned ICPs, all the things, and this could probably be a masterclass in itself, but I think you good job of trying to figure out, okay, how do you begin? And then really it's iteration after that. I've got some data, let's go, let's keep going.

Hallie Smith (: 38:24

I think also I always want to start where things are already working. So it's like who's already buying from you and what are they saying and what would they say? What would they advise you in terms of how you should reach out to other people? Most companies are getting some success somewhere, and it's like that idea that educators don't listen to brands, they listen to each other. That's something we all know and I really wish, if this exists and somebody is listening to this podcast, please share it with me. But I just wish there was an easier tool for geotargeting outreach. I just feel like it's really complicated and very manual still and that there's got to be somebody or that somebody could do it easily, you know?

Elana Leoni (: 39:17

in terms of effective email outreach?

Hallie Smith (: 39:24

Yeah, so let's say you're in one district and you want to go to the districts that are similar. Let's say you want to filter on particular size demographics in a 200 mile radius or a hundred mile radius would depend on where you are, who are the people in that radius, who are the districts, who are the people? And then to be able to target them easily through by email, either through a marketing automation system or even a sales outreach. But I've just found that to be a very manual process.

Elana Leoni (: 39:56

And it's funny, even on the social side and the paid side, the more options you have, the harder and more complicated it actually gets and the more you have to test. And in general, we're seeing, like you said, all mediums decrease in terms of effectiveness overall for lots of different reasons. So game on, roll up our sleeves, we're marketers, we're used to that. Let's get as data informed as possible. And the other thing you do, it's really like, yes, what's working, but what are you missing? And don't double down and just put your eggs in this basket. I see organizations that a hundred percent just rely on referrals, and that's worked with them in the past. Great. But how do you get out of just a one-stop show of how do I get business? Because guess what your referral sources might drain out. Or I've worked with companies that SEO was their number one driver and guess what? The algorithm shifts. So having a diversification, and I love that you said pick two or three, go slow, then we can do other bigger stuff. All right. I know we can talk about this one forever and we might have you on again and we can talk a lot deeper into go-to market planning and what's involved in that. But I hope it gives you all a little bit of a taste of what it's like and if you follow these best practices, you really can't go wrong, start small, align with the bigger goals.

Hallie Smith (: 41:19

Yes.

Elana Leoni (: 41:19

So there are so many other things that we could talk about. I think that one of the things you've alluded to is it's harder and harder to get the attention. It's harder and harder for each channel to perform the way it used to. Is that kind of what you're seeing looking ahead when we have our crystal ball in education marketing, what are the things that you are forecasting? If me and you are talking next year and we're like, geez, we were right about this or we were wrong about this. What are those trends or those shifts that you can or try to see right now? I mean the world is day to day.

Hallie Smith (: 42:01

Yeah, I think ai, the AI tools that actually help teachers are just blowing up the defenses. The magic school, ai, edge aid, I'm forgetting one of the big ones because they have a very obvious value prop. You can get to the aha moment, the wow factor within 30 seconds and administrators see that. So I think some of the more expensive, larger players, which I will not name I think are in for some real trouble. I think that because of AI and because of the lack of funding, there are some smaller players that are coming in and disrupting the larger players because they are cheaper, they are more flexible, they're out innovating basically the larger players. And that's because of AI and because of funding, I would say between AI and funding, that's where I see a lot of the changes happening. So I think districts are going to move away from products that are premium and have no immediate impact.

I'll also say that I worked for a company that had incredible results for students but was very expensive and very hard to use and it didn't matter what the results were, which was a very interesting thing to experience over and over again. You can't just have good results. It has to come with an affordable price tag and be good to implement. It's like you can't have one of those things. So not earth shattering predictions, I don't think. But funding's going to be tough. Everything's going to slow down. Districts are going to prioritize smaller players that are cheaper, more nimble, maybe don't require a multi-year deal, and they need to cover their themselves through evidence. So I think they're going to really be drilling down on what evidence do you have that your product works.

Elana Leoni (: 44:17

You also mentioned just as marketers and as people that are innovating the product itself, I see us all having to really rethink what's been working in the past and reexamine things like funding sources, reexamine, even marketing channels. How do we work more closely with sales? How does the product evolve? All of those things I see front and center that we've been talking about in this podcast. So it's just roll up your sleeves time. It's also in times like this, I actually get more excited. I know that's kind of weird, but game on, right? It's like, let's go and let's make sure that we keep in mind really the goal of what we're trying to do is why you and I love it so much, is we're really trying to improve learning outcomes. We're trying to really change lives here. And I don't want to speak super inspirational in a Rudy moment, but this is what keeps us, it's hard now, but as long as we are able to breathe the reaction and have people like you on the show to say, here's what we can expect, let's think about it critically and let's adjust and game on, right?

Yeah. Yep. Alright, so we love to ask this closing question to all of our guests. I feel like every day there's rewards, there's also challenges within our industry. Are there specific things that you do that re-energize you? It could be a podcast or something you've watched or something you binge. It could be anything like that around how do we ourselves charge up in this world of ups and downs in ed

Hallie Smith (: 45:57

Tech? It's interesting that you're asking me that question this week because earlier this week I was just like, why am I so tired? What is this sort of deep fatigue that I'm feeling? I think sometimes doing nothing is the answer. So instead of filling our brains with another piece of content or watching something, reading something, sometimes the answer is just to do nothing. To sit in stillness, to breathe, to stretch. This is a very yoga answer, but I think it was Tuesday night I was searching, seeking that what's something that can help me feel better? And everything I thought about was bad. All the shows on TV are negative. A lot of them or the good ones I've already seen the positive ones. I've already seen what's on Reddit. The news isn't great. It just felt like everywhere I turned there was something negative. And I thought, you know what? The best thing to do is probably just to shut this all down and relax and breathe.

Elana Leoni (: 47:10

And it's funny that there is a baked in assumption to this question that you need to do something right and it's very American of us. It's very like, what are you doing to professionally develop and all these things? And a lot of our guests say, Hey, no, I spend time with my family. I spend time with classroom, those things too. But again, it's another activity that you have to do. And I love that you said, well, maybe we don't do anything.

Hallie Smith (: 47:36

Yeah, I felt better not doing anything. I

Elana Leoni (: 47:39

Love. I love that so much. Well, thank you so much, Halle, for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure to be able to pick your brain. I know that even just half of this podcast will change people in terms of making the mistakes and really think differently about what our role is in marketing and what do our role in ed tech is and how are we all marching towards the same goals. So thank you for your wisdom and for those of you listening to the podcast, all of her information will be in the show notes. But I do recommend following Halle on LinkedIn. I learn a ton from her. We're always talking on LinkedIn. I'm like, yes, this and that. So join in on the conversation and thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast. Thank you,

Hallie Smith (: 48:17

Elana. I really appreciate it.

Elana Leoni (: 48:21

Thanks again for listening to all things marketing and education. If you like what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can find more episodes@leoneconsultinggroup.com slash podcast. You can also continue the conversation with us on Twitter, at Leone Group or on LinkedIn. And don't forget, if you enjoy today's show, make sure to subscribe to our podcast and leave a review. We're so appreciative of every single subscriber and review we get and it helps us reach even more people that need help. We'll see you next time on all things marketing and education. Take care.