Training courses, workshops and seminars are some the most popular services promoted to the UK education sector, so being straight-up honest with you, you’ve got a battle on your hands to make sure your course stands out head and shoulders above the crowd.

Having designed and completed hundreds of marketing campaigns promoting teacher courses, training, workshops, seminars, and more to the education sector, we know what will work for you. That is what this report is all about, helping you to delve into the belly of the beast of marketing to schools, so you can make a huge difference to the number of teacher delegates attending your events.

Insight #1: Quantities of decision-makers

You lucky devils! When it comes to a target audience, you guys are pretty spoilt for choice. Pretty much every staff member will need CPD at some point in their careers, so you’ve got a whole host of teacher types that will have an interest in you depending on your own specific service.

There are over 450,000 teachers within UK educational establishments, of which we have over 400,000 named teachers across 31,000 establishments within our Education Database.

Insight #2: Pupil premium budget reaches £2.5bn

If you provide courses or tutoring for students or teachers then the great news is that (depending on the content of your course), the schools will be able to use part of their pupil premium budget to pay for your services.

The even better news is that the pupil premium budget remains at a record high of £2.5 billion, and is predicted to increase as a result of more pupils becoming eligible for pupil premium as a result of the impact of the pandemic.

Oh, and the fact that the government leaves the schools’ senior leadership team in control of this budget means you only have to try and convince the people with the school’s, staff‘s, and pupils’ best interests at heart. Some of the remaining insights will help explain how best to achieve this.

Insight #3: Don’t forget the influencers

Schools are able to link teachers’ pay to their performance. Pay awards now depend on whether teachers have been able to meet performance targets, teacher standards, and career stage expectations.

It is vital, then, that your message not only reaches the decision makers, but also targets those thousands of teaching staff that are eager to get the professional development they need in order to keep progressing up the pay scales.

Insight #4: Teachers love a video

Teachers love a video. Do you know that simply using the word “video” in your email subject increases open rates by 13% on average? And we’ve seen click-through rates improve by a staggering 96% when including a hyperlinked screengrab of a video in the email!

Utilising a video is particularly effective for companies promoting shows, courses, and workshops, because it gives teachers first-hand experience of your offer. Teachers will find a short and snappy 60-second video a lot more interesting than three paragraphs of dry descriptive text!

If you need help creating a video, get in touch with us - we can help!

Insight #5: Whet their appetites with a webinar

A webinar is a fantastic way of promoting a course or workshop that you’re running, and will instantly position you ahead of the majority of education suppliers that can’t or won’t do webinars.

They are a real luxury for teachers and give them an easy, free way of sampling your services without having to take a day out of school. For these reasons, webinars get a fantastic sign up rate, which will give you plenty of red-hot leads to follow up, and convert into paying delegates.

Don’t forget that the webinar is also a great opportunity for you to capture feedback and opinions from your audience, which you can use to fine-tune your offering in future.

Insight #6: Always come back to the curriculum

It may sound obvious but whether you’re offering a fun workshop for pupils, a CPD course for teachers, or student tutoring, it’s imperative that your marketing maintains a really strong focus on how your offering relates to the curriculum and inspection criteria of the school’s inspection board.

If you’re highlighting the benefits of a course or workshop then teachers have to be able to relate this to the curriculum or inspection criteria. This is how they are measured, so you have to show them that what you’re offering will improve performance at their school.

If you don’t or can’t, then your marketing may become an epic failure!

Insight #7: Demonstrate tangible benefits

With the government and inspection boards ramping up school accountability, course providers need to be able to demonstrate tangible improvements to teaching and learning in order to distinguish themselves from the crowd.

Avoid making bold claims about how you can improve teachers’ lives and instead demonstrate quantitative evidence of how your course has improved teaching and learning at other schools.

If possible, reference the name of a previous client, their school and, most importantly of all, quantify the impact the course had on grades, or inspection ratings. E.g. “Schools that experience this course on average increase their A-C grades by 35% within 12 months!”.

Insight #8: Don’t get put on the backburner

The danger with promoting courses or workshops a few weeks or months into the future is that, unless you’re careful, interested teachers will just put you on the backburner so that they can decide nearer the time whether they want to book or not.

You simply cannot afford to let them do that! Once you’re on the backburner, it’s far more likely that you’ll either be forgotten about or that the teacher’s diary will be taken up with other things.

Draw their attention to the limited number of bookings available, an approaching deadline, or an early-bird discount to inspire action in teachers.

Insight #9: Nurture your leads

When promoting courses and workshops, there is one major factor that you really can’t do anything about: there will inevitably be schools that want to book but can’t due to scheduling issues.

For this reason, it’s absolutely imperative that you capture leads from your email campaigns so that you can promote similar events to them in the future.

Sprint can help you in this respect by providing you with a database of qualified leads after every email campaign, giving you the direct contact details of every teacher that either downloaded images or clicked on links within your email.

Insight #10: Become a thought leader

The training landscape in schools is a potentially lucrative but highly competitive market with many new businesses vying for attention. The companies that will really see their stock soar will be those that take the time to position themselves as thought leaders.

Most training sessions or courses will require teachers to give up at least several hours of their precious time, if not more, with potentially high costs, too. Their decisions are usually not made impulsively and often only after a great deal of research. Send them an industry whitepaper to provide them with some real value and demonstrate your expertise before you start selling to them.

By doing so, you’ll take a huge leap in front of your competitors. In our recent edu-business survey, only 15.1% of companies had integrated free eBooks, whitepapers, and reports into their marketing strategy. Yet, in our accompanying teacher survey, 61.6% of schools wanted businesses to share free resources to better support and serve schools.

Don your creative caps, put together an insightful, high-quality free whitepaper, and await your stream of fresh-hot leads who now see you as one of the top dogs in your industry!

What next?

Get in touch and ask us about what we can do for you!

Our number is 01684 297374, or you can email info@sprint-education.co.uk.

That way, we can talk specifically about your training/courses and see how we can boost your marketing effort to schools quickly and effectively.

Tags
Education Marketing Marketing Selling to Schools Selling to Teachers

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