Preach Melissa Kwan!

I appreciated Melissa Kwan’s post on The 10 biggest mistakes I made bootstrapping to $1M ARR. I’ve contextualized it for #EdTech companies.

1. Product Hunt. It is critical for #EdTech companies to build their brand in the EdTech community, experiment with several messages to get (MMF), and receive all types of feedback. Reaching out to educators while you are building your product is extremely helpful, and potentially creates a list of beta testers.

2. Digital Marketing. This is critical for founders and a potential pitfall as they usually prefer to work on the product. Don’t fall victim to the “built it and they will come” mentality. Have ICPs to focus your marketing efforts. An outside agency will not be much help because they know much less about the problem you are solving and your target markets. Hiring outside SEO help makes sense to assess your content’s SEO-friendliness and invest in relevant keywords. Stay under $3K per month for a 1–3 month retainer. “I learned that you can’t pay someone else to take away your pain if you don’t have a basic idea of how something works”

3. Paid Ads. Be very careful! Ads rarely have a significant ROI. They can’t jumpstart your brand-building efforts. They can, however, help grow a brand that is already getting traction organically. “Figure out a funnel where you can make $2 for every $1 in ad spend and you’re golden.” “It didn’t make sense to let someone else be responsible for our revenue.”

4. Writing Mediocre Content. Posts, whitepapers, podcasts, and videos are how you become a thought leader that powers your company’s brand. Make sure that your content is striking the desired SEO chords. Don’t have AI write any of your content. “I received a 24-hour block for self-promotion and stopped what I was doing immediately because it was too valuable of a platform for me to build a business audience through my own content”

5. Email Outreach. Don’t do it unless you have MQLs. Many things can go wrong. It will most likely be marked as spam. It is intrusive and the recipient will likely mark it as spam without reading it. You have little or no chance to target the correct buyer at the moment they are evaluating products in your market segment.

6. LinkedIn Outreach. LinkedIn is one of the few social networking platforms where individuals interact with companies. Take advantage of this and attract attention and engage prosects. This does NOT include cold outreach. Your content should be a “scroll stopper” that causes prospects to stop scrolling through their feed and engage with the content or travel to your website. Pro tip: Asking a prospect to subscribe to your newsletter is a warm type of contact. Do NOT, however, send an invitation to subscribe to a newsletter if it doesn’t have 5 or more issues. 1 issue newsletters feels like a cold outreach. See this blog post for more detailed recommendations. “I realized that I’d rather build a brand that people loved than the other way around. I’m glad I stopped because eventually, I got a lot of traction and engagement on my daily posts. I would have hated to be thought of as someone who violates someone’s private inbox.”

7. Affiliates and Partnerships. Maintain control of your brand and sales-related learnings! Potentially over time, you will find indirect channels for your product. In the meantime, focus on being a guest on podcasts and being included in relevant product segment spotlights. Many EdTech companies ignore the potential of partnering with a company in an adjacent market segment for combined marketing muscle. “Affiliates and partnerships is not a go-to-market strategy, but rather a growth strategy.”

8. Event Sponsorship. Physical and virtual events (like webinars) are tests for your brand’s strength. Don’t expect people to attend or convert if you haven’t messaged them so they have name recognition and know about your solution and UVP. Don’t do prizes or giveaways! You are building a relationship and not selling them a used car. Most administrators can’t accept gifts anyway. “We got over 200 leads and none converted to a trial sign-up.”

9. Newsletters. Content is how you build thought leadership and your brand. Do prospects appreciate tour content and look forward to more? “We ran a Black Friday deal with a partner that went out to 250,000 of their customers and got 18 trial sign-ups. No one converted because their intention for signing up was to get the deal as opposed to solving a problem.”

10. Big Design Update. Buyers are doing their own research before engaging with the company. Make sure the website has enough content to nurture consideration and intent. Track user behavior on the landing pages. Combining data from LinkedIn engagements with user data from the website will start to form a buyer journey. If you are brand-building while you are developing the product, don’t forget about a waitlist on your website.