How to sell products to schools
4 Ways to Succesfully Sell to Schools
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hello everyone thank you for joining us
today for our webinar four ways to sell
to schools successfully this is brought
to you by agile education marketing we
are joined here today by several members
of a JAL's leadership and they will
share with you all about the exciting
developments at agile and how they will
serve you in your marketing and sales
efforts now while there will be several
speakers we will hold a group Q&A at the
end of the presentation so please enter
your questions into the question
function of the GoToWebinar and we will
be sure to respond to them at the end of
the session and now to get us started is
our host Liz Acton liz has held senior
marketing roles at several education
companies previously including Pearson
Education and she is now the director of
marketing for agile and has a great
agenda for you today so without any
further ado I'd like to present Liz
Acton thank you very much for that and
welcome everyone and I'm so happy that
you could join us today today we have
several people who have been working for
years here at agile and throughout
education and data services industry and
they have been making it you know
they're what they do every day to ensure
that the services and products that
we're putting together and we're
bringing to you are going to help you
meet your goals and run your business
more effectively so if we can take a
look at the agenda so that everyone gets
oriented a little bit for our session
today thank you so we're going to be
covering four different areas and we put
this together because we want to make
sure that you understand everything that
agile can partner with you on work with
you on and what we can do for you and we
also felt very strongly that it was
important to give you sort of a sneak
peek into who it is that actually is
working on all of these things what they
do every day but also every single one
of them was super
excited about some of the new things
that they've been developing for the
coming year looking at now 2019 and I
can't believe that it's almost here but
in 2019 there's going to be a lot more
that you'll be able to to do with as
I'll marketing so we'll start off with
data and we're going to just look at the
backbone of all of you know modern
marketing what is the information that
you have available to you how are we
updating it and what are some of the new
things that you can take advantage of in
the new year and then we're going to
move into how you put that data and
information to use in your world
optimizing campaigns learning from
things that you've done and always
refining your work and then very excited
will be to bring this this third section
to you we're gonna actually be talking
about some of our new offerings so you
know Direct Marketing has really
expanded beyond a lot of the traditional
ways of reaching our customers and so
we're going to be talking to you about
social media and some of the new things
that we've developed in that arena and
finally we'll be sharing with you an
on-demand always available resource
center so that you can you know if
you're up late at night you need some
new ideas or you just need some fresh
thinking we actually have a new website
called fell into schools comm where you
can always go and get some of the the
latest thinking or just some basics if
you you really need to communicate in
that way with your team or if you've got
new team members we have that so I'm
really excited to wrap up with that
resource and make sure that you know
that you have that at your disposal so
let's get started with Mike LeClair and
here's our data quality and compilation
manager Mike so if I could go ahead and
hand it over to you and if you wouldn't
mind sharing with everyone what you do
you and your team does and what you've
got in store for us in the new year well
thanks for that introduction Liz like
like Liz was saying my team is
responsible for taking that cumbersome
ugly repetitive multi-source data and we
make it comprehensible and actionable
for our clients in the last couple
months
we've actually been hitting on some new
hierarchies that should help really
focus on making sure you're reaching out
to the right decision makers at
different levels the first hierarchy
that we've improved upon is our library
set up in the past we just had Mane or
branch libraries and now we have systems
and what that really entails is the
system is very similar to the district
in the school district relationship and
the system for the library oversees the
main and branch libraries the exciting
part about that is that we also get a
lot of new metrics with this system data
stuff like operating expenditures and
revenue expenditures how many libraries
they oversee how much staff they oversee
and what it really comes down to is that
now you have access to higher-level
decision makers that make those
decisions for main and branches and such
the next hierarchy that we've created is
the EA mo CMO and what that is that's
the education or charter management
organization and they're responsible for
really making the decisions that oversee
their entire charter network a good
example of this is Kipp and what we've
done is we created that hierarchy so
that all these schools whether they're
in different states or different
districts wherever they may be we make
sure they they map back up have that
parent-child relationship to their
respective EML CMO right now we have
about 200 but that list is constantly
expanding the point that makes this a
little more interesting is that we
really focus on the management
organizations and these people again
have that decision-making ability they
decide on curriculum they decide on
staff they decide on school expansion
this is opposed to the service providers
we did not focus on making sure we
collected people that provide payroll or
other services to schools we wanted to
make sure we're collecting the people
that make the decisions for their
charter management organizations the
last one is we've also created a risa or
our OE hierarchy that's the Regional
Education
service agencies or the regional office
of education and in a nutshell what
those are is when smaller districts pull
together to ensure they can get better
contracts or better services great
examples if a small district doesn't
have a budget for their own bus well
maybe they can pull together and go in
with another district and get a bus that
you know they share between the two and
they have similar setups with technology
food contracts even special education
teachers select I was saying the last
couple months we've created those new
hierarchies to really help our clients
dial into the right decision makers at
that higher level but it's not just
about the new hierarchies we're creating
throughout the year we're also hitting
data quality with data quality is really
important to remember it's not just
about getting the new stuff on the file
it's about getting the old stuff off
we're dealing with living data it's
constantly changing in any any setting
people are changing roles and jobs all
the time the education universe is no
different so what we're going to be
touching on is what we do throughout the
year
talking on about new schools close
schools personnel adjustments email
changes then some specialized metric
updates as you can see with the
infographics there in the last two
months we've created 814 new
institutions and we've closed a little
over 1,400 for the year that puts us
right around 3,000 new institutions and
we've closed a little over three and a
half thousand it's important to realize
where we get this information because it
is quite cumbersome to collect and make
the decisions on we reach out at the
federal level at the state level and at
the district level to make sure we're
keeping updated and current data we also
make hundreds of thousands close to a
million phone calls out to these
different institutions throughout the
year to ensure we're keeping the most
current data available for you guys the
reason we do this is our institution
level data is the basis for
all our other data points you can't have
personnel if they're not attached to an
institution you can't have emails if
they're not attached to the right
personnel that are attached to the right
institution and that's why we spend so
much time collecting and managing those
new and closed institutions so what this
does is it has a domino effect on our
personnel in the last two months we've
added nearly 250,000 new personnel and
we've removed about 230,000 then as with
many universes we've also created new
roles for existing people and that's
nearly 1.5 million just in the last two
months so we've adjusted on our file for
the in for the entire universe again
just moving on down the domino effect
this results in email changes we've
added nearly three hundred thousand
emails in the last two months and we've
moved about one hundred and eight
thousand we get this data from doing
those directory updates we collect
domain changes from are calling efforts
and then like I said the state and
federal directory updates as well
another one that we're pretty excited
about is we've just updated our title
one funding that federal data set was
just released for 2017 data and we've
updated our file and that affects a wide
range of metrics that we collect for
trending data and such and one we have
on the horizon is our ISA data we're
going to be starting that collection
process up in January like we do every
year and what we do is we go state to
state and we collect proficiency level
data at the school level and the
district level and we are able to report
that at a very granular level and again
that's going to be starting up in
January so we're excited to start making
sure that that gets on the file so you
can see how all these updates are
constantly changing and evolving and we
want to make sure you're keeping up on
the most relevant and current data
Lana's going to be jumping in now and
she's going to show you how easy it is
to make sure you can keep your data
updated relevant and actionable using
our data integration systems Lana
thanks Mike thanks for the intro and for
sharing that information about our
expanding datasets as well as our data
quality I'm Alana Henningsen and I
manage our account management team as
well as our development groups our
account managers work closely with our
clients to consult on their email
marketing strategies and ways in which
to use our data more effectively our
development team implements all of our
systems both those that support our
internal efforts as well as our client
facing ones next slide please
as Mike shared our data is constantly
changing in just a couple of months we
had hundreds of thousands of email
changes
needless to say keeping your data
current is critical and we've developed
a number of systems to help make this
seamless agile connects provides direct
integrations with our data in order to
utilize the most up-to-date information
in your application CRM or marketing
automation system it provides direct
real-time access to the data you license
we currently have connectors for
Salesforce Marketo and HubSpot with
Microsoft Dynamics and ellicott
integrations to follow in the first half
of next year if you have applications
other than these including your own
proprietary ones agile can help there as
well your technical team can directly
connect agile database through one of
our two ap is our data update API
provides full updates to all of your
major applications for all of your
license data and this includes for
institutions and personnel including
closed institutions and inactive
personnel which as Mike mentioned is
just as important as adding new data our
lookup API is typically used in your
application to assist with usage user
data entry presenting users selections
of up-to-date building information based
on search criteria such as you know zip
email name etc a typical use for this
would be for an online entry form where
you're asking the educator to identify
their school or district using the calls
from this API you can immediately
a new customer to the agile database and
these API is can also be customized to
return additional data fields
appropriate for your application next
slide please
when clients deploy their email
campaigns through agile they use our
analysis product to analyze the results
of those campaigns in addition to
individual metrics or metrics on
individual campaigns the analysis has
the ability to create reports that
compare campaigns by selecting multiple
campaigns you can view key metrics
across them in aggregate marketers can
then determine how variables may impact
performance from one campaign to the
next by looking at various metrics
across them so as you can see here such
as open rates that are in this example
so if you compare multiple campaigns to
each other and see how they're
performing next slide please
in addition to the compare campaigns
feature we're adding the ability to
combine campaigns we recognize the need
to build reports to look at elements and
trends across campaigns and over time in
these reports you can drill down for
more detail for example to see which for
the top performing titles or how title
one schools performed and that might
help decision making about copy or
segmenting your list in this example
might be a little difficult to tell but
in the top right graph it's the building
level titles the calc teacher physics
teachers theater teacher that are the
top responders to the campaigns but just
because the district level titles didn't
respond by click so strongly that
doesn't mean that they aren't seeing
your message and we don't recommend
removing district titles from those
campaigns because of the America where
nastain to your brand your product
offerings and services is key to them
supporting or possibly making the
purchasing decision guided by the
building level titles and then those
building level titles the one that are
engaging more are expected to inform
those decisions and get close to the
options so they're open the clicks
really are key
next slide please
by looking at different metrics across
the campaign's such as you know job
stage enrollment etc there plenty to
choose from clients can create better
segmentations of their lists and they
can adjust their creative and copy to
reach those who are engaging them
engaging the most or possibly those who
are not engaging at all and decide how
to put those campaigns out if the
clients stuck in terms of where to go
with email strategy these reports really
do provide a clear picture on what works
and highlights areas for testing you can
also utilize these combined campaigns
and compare them against any of your
other campaigns or any other combined
reports so they're useful in that
mechanism as well next please
the last thing I'd like to share with
you is our new campaign deployment
system and this is currently under
development but will be available in q1
this will allow our clients to create
email campaigns either using an existing
or using their existing HTML or an HTML
editor and we also have an integrated
drag-and-drop editor and they can also
perform initial testing so we found
there are a number of content related
issues that can negatively impact email
delivery and a few of them you can have
poorly formed HTML or links you can have
too much text too too many images images
that are too large language that's
considered spammy the list sort of goes
on and on so the ability to work through
your creative and test early will give
you plenty of time to make changes we've
also found that the internal review
process can be quite lengthy this allows
our clients to manage that time frame
the clients can also specify their
target start date and the throttling
they might like so for example they
might decide to deploy for 10 hours or
for 5 hours over two days or
24 hours over a few days so they can put
in this information and then agile will
utilize that as as a guideline but
ultimately will decide on the scheduling
based on our overall volume and our best
practices for delivery we have been you
know deploying email campaigns for our
clients for years and have fair fair
amount of experience and expertise in
that area and understand how to best get
these emails in into the inbox so we're
excited about these new systems and the
new features that we're adding to
current systems so thank you very much
I'll pass it along if you wanna thank
you Oh wine you're picking it up sure
sure a lot of great information so far
so I'll try to keep everybody interested
ok hello everyone I'm mind Fox the
director of digital cog development here
and agile because I want to leave some
time for questions let's go ahead and
jump right in so why does social media
advertising matter for selling to
schools well currently both private and
public schools are utilizing social
media such as Twitter Facebook Instagram
and others to actively engage students
and their parents I don't think this is
news to any of us but it is obviously
growing combine that with the fact the
education industry is adopting social
media for many other reasons it's easy
to understand why the graph on the
screen outlined the data that it does
and of course the numbers are only
growing well just in the last couple of
years
Facebook has grown from 60-plus percent
in the education industry to where it is
now which is almost 90 percent it's it's
amazing so yes as you can see all the
cool kids are doing it now with the high
adoption rate of social media in the
education industry many benefits to us
marketers so let's talk about a few of
them
a largely understated benefit of social
advertising is the mobile device impact
on information and use of social media
for end-users almost everyone in
education has a smartphone and they're
accustomed to being able to get
information out will at their fingertips
just like the rest of us it's because of
this instant form of information
gathering that social media advertising
is key to a business a business's
success in today's world as we already
alluded to earlier with the education
industry being highly involved with
social media and use it as a primary
tool in communication if you combine
that with the fact but almost everyone
in the US has a mobile phone uses that
mobile phone for email instant messaging
text etc and it's basically attached to
them at the hip at almost all times then
it makes sense to take advantage and
advertise in a context not only for a
channel the social media that they use
on the medium but it is designed for the
medium itself something else that some
of us take for granted in social
advertising but definitely we don't take
for granted an email is deliverability
and accessibility of contact
unlike email your social media can be
delivered a hundred percent of the time
where the image is being able to be seen
without a red X and someone has to click
on Walt familiar with that the ad won't
go to a junk folder that won't get
kicked back from a server Sam you don't
have to where the device is not being
able to display the ad properly due to
different email programs etc so these
are all things that social media can can
help with because the delivery method is
actually from the platform itself
now another large advantage to social
media advertising is of course the
ability to interact with the ad and the
ease of going viral because we all know
you can't exactly interact with the
in our ad on a website or search engine
ad on Google everyone wants to go viral
in a good way of course with social
media having hundreds of millions of
users along with the ease of sharing
liking boarding etc the potential for an
ad to grow and take flight happens every
day so if your creative message and
delivery is on point then the
possibilities are huge for your ad next
slide please
I want talk about what we do but also
why we do it so social media is
something that's relatively new to to
offer customers it's not something that
were that's a new skill set but it's a
new offering so while others are
focusing on generic social media
marketing we're taking one of agile
strong points of being able to target
and we're trying that to social media
advertising so you have social media
marketing and social media advertising
the quick difference between the two is
the ads can be distributed throughout
the various social media channels and
the ad types within those channels with
a be split testing another
performance-based ad improvement
automation for example when we develop a
social media ad we take that ad and
apply it throughout the social media
platform for maximum coverage but when
you focus just on generic marketing of
posts or boosting posts and events
things like that you're limited within
the various platforms and aren't is
flexible with the various areas for
example Facebook stories Facebook
marketplace Facebook newsfeed and all
the other areas of Facebook that you
have to have specific content for so
when you actually advertise it allows
you more visibility options and more
areas of social media than just your
basic marketing and postings something
else
in agile one of the big differentiators
is that we can target it advertising and
social not generic or profile based
advertising and when we talk about
generic advertising it is just that it's
generic it's broad and somewhat vague
while some folks might get more
impressions clicks maybe even leads we
find that the quality of the data and
leads is lacking most of the time which
of course hurts the return on investment
as it pertains to close business but
things in perspective on average
targeted advertising and social gets
over three times the conversions versus
generic advertising and also when we
talk about targeting and in things
around that I guess said that that
source we're talking about one-to-one
communication just like an email would
be and it's going to an exact confirmed
set of audience and profiles no fake
profiles or anything like that so the
data will reflect the fact that you are
being specific with your audience
rubba clicks fake profiles etc on
generic ads are something to be
concerned with and can greatly reduce
your return on investment and your data
analysis so the more targeted the better
when it comes to metrics and data
integrity and with that said something
else to consider as a big advantage to
targeting this frequency frequency is
something we'll all strive for and for
those of you that don't fully understand
frequency in this case it is how many
times an individual view the ad that
you're displaying we know that the more
often someone sees the ads more likely
they are to converge and interact with
targeted ads you can ensure a greater
level of frequency management to those
targeted individuals versus generic ads
don't targets for certain people in a
way that allows for for you to retarget
them in that channel
and while we're talking about frequency
is important to bring it that when you
combine the power of a JAL's email
marketing with its targeted social media
advertising you're ensuring the maximum
coverage for each of those targeting
individuals for a true one-to-one
communication which of course is what we
are ultimately trying to do next slide
please
in closing I'd like to say to social
media while it isn't new to the
marketing walls this is a living
changing channel that requires you to
stay up-to-date with not only the
strategies but also the changing
software regulations tools etc and
please understand we are here to help we
pride ourselves on being subject matter
experts in anything then we invest and
offering to our customers and with that
said we will be hosting a exclusive
targeted social media advertising
webinar next month we will show a bit
more and what is really behind the
curtain and offer plenty of Q&A and
interaction with you all to help get you
up to speed on social media advertising
in a targeted fashion also I'd like to
let you know about a very aggressive
promotional offering right now for a
limited time it's only through the end
of the year it can last through the rest
of the school year as long as you sign
up before the end of December so be sure
to talk to your account representative
so you don't miss out on this promotion
and lastly if you have any questions or
want to set up some time to chat with us
the more detailed please feel encouraged
to do so the more informed you are the
better your return on investment will be
for your social media dollars and I
guess with that said I'll pass it on to
Scott thank you very much Ryan
appreciate you going over that that new
that new offering that we have it's
extremely exciting and I'll just jump
right into a very exciting new offering
we have from a content and marketing
standpoint please move forward indeed
yeah thank you we've acquired and are
taking to market a new resource for
school for executives
Account Executives it created a
marketing and sales blog so that
marketing and sales executives too can
keep up with the latest practices from a
sales and marketing perspective to
attack the education market and this is
where you as marketing executives sales
executives and people that want to
understand the basic selling and
marketing to schools is where you can
connect with fellow education users from
agile you can connect with industry
peers you can connect with seasoned
executive education business leaders on
strategies resources and tools to
improve how you connect with educators
and we've organized it in such a way
that you can find articles and resources
focused on education database marketing
on marketing and sales information and
intelligence and some of the latest
research and insights from the industry
leaders and peers that we have that are
contributors to the site one thing
you'll find is this isn't just agile
education marketing employees that are
putting information out here but it's
actually a peer to peer information
gathering and information dissemination
and it's all designed to help you be
more efficient and effective in the way
you connect with educators and we like
to make sure that what we provide you
allows you to connect to the right
educators at the right time with the
right message on the right platform and
all that kind of stuff we can
continually are trying to find the best
ways for you to connect with educators
so we're very excited about selling to
schools because it really is a peer
education business professionals putting
information out there from marketing to
sales and leadership can all contribute
and share best practices from their own
experiences out here so selling to
schools is really a place to find and
connect with these professionals so that
they can help you overcome business
challenges and find innovative ways to
go to Marc
and then you can also keep up with the
latest trends with thought leaders and
where the industry is heading you can
access current trends in the education
market the latest marketing technology
marketing tactics selling tactics
strategic planning to help you grow your
business to help you be able to plan for
your business be able to help you grow
your sales be able to grow revenue and
be able to be more effective in the way
that you go after the education sector
you can even look at things like market
viability analysis targeted marketing
and sales intelligence
so overall selling to schools really was
created for marketing and sales
executives to keep up with the latest
best practices on going to the education
market that is a really quick primer on
on what selling to schools is we would
love you to go out take a look at it let
us know what you think and please give
us some feedback so that was all I was
going to talk about today so I will also
close up our conversation and do a quick
summary of what we talked about we're
really excited about some of the new
offerings that were that we're bringing
in as well as the way we continue to be
more effective in the way that we
deliver everything that we've done we're
coming up on ten years in the business
now so for example Mike he talked about
how he works on making our data sets
much more comprehensible for you how you
make sense of the education market
through the ways that he he delivers the
data because you see that the education
market is a very dynamic ever-changing
market and we constantly and it is
critical for you to think about you must
stay on top of the way this education
data is constantly changing there's as
Soompi you've probably heard there's a
little over 20 percent churn rate just
in k-12 alone staying on top of that is
absolutely critical and that's where
Mike and his team can allow you to
understand that data much better and
that lana talked about how we work with
that data more effectively with the
tools and technologies that she's bring
to the table allowing you to connect to
the systems that you may already have
within your within your company that
we're allowing - getting some more and
more integration capabilities so that
it's not as disruptive to get this
information into the hands of the
marketers and the sales folks within
your organization and how you can
leverage the results that she that she's
bringing to the table with the analytics
tools to be able to continually tweak
your marketing to make it much more
effective as as you go through your
marketing efforts week after week and
year after year and then of course Ryan
are everyone's excited about social
media but he did start to disseminate
and and help you understand why social
media advertising is something you
really want to start considering and how
that engagement is growing constantly in
the social media side there's a whole
area within within within the social
media side within the education that
educators actually are more on social
media than even the general public so
it's something you definitely want to
consider and put within your within your
marketing plan going forward because he
shows that the adoption rate just
continues to grow and it's very high the
benefits are there for it and you can
reach the educators where they are on
their mobile devices with targeted
social media advertising and now you
take that you combine it with
traditional methods like email marketing
and so on and then you've got incredible
coverage to try and connect with the
educators that you want to reach for to
grow your business and to buy your
products so with that just call you
already heard about selling to school so
point four there I don't really have to
go into that we would love to hear from
you and I'll close it off there and
thank everyone for joining us today so
we're gonna move to the Q&A and if you
can all enter your questions into the
questions function of the GoToWebinar
control panel will be happy to field
them I'll give you a minute or so to do
so
okay terrific so our first question is I
believe for Mike Mike there's a question
here how often are the data updates
provided that's a great question
what we do on our side to kind of take
you behind the curtain every day we're
making adjustments to the data whether
it's emails whether it's closing schools
whatever kind of updates we hit that
daily on our side and then a pretty
standard procedure once a week we move
that data into the production database
and that's where our clients get all
that information and are able to update
their files accordingly assuming that's
what the agreement is so really its
daily and then it gets out to the
clients on a weekly weekly basis Lana
can kind of expand a little bit on that
too I think yes I think I'd add that
this is I think most would recognize
that this is why we developed our custom
integrations with Salesforce with
different CRM marketing automation
systems etc so that you're able to get
those integrations on a much more
regular basis you know oftentimes for
example our Salesforce integration you
just need to push a button that says you
know update now essentially and
everything that has changed since the
last time you did an update is available
in other integrations it's it's
happening even without any kind of you
know direct integration or a direct
event on your side and then for folks
that get their data differently like
they we do have clients that receive
their data in files that they then take
in-house and process and for those folks
then they get that on a regular basis
that maybe weekly maybe monthly maybe
quarterly typically we don't want folks
to go longer than that because as Mike
described earlier that the change in the
data is so significant so and there's
one more corollary question Mike about
how how are the depth of the updates
done it seems like a daunting task so
the question is how do they get done it
can feel very daunting at times um you
know like we mentioned a little earlier
you know that we get the data from a lot
of different sources we we apply federal
updates we apply you know we go to the
state level for directories I you know
school directories district directories
private school directories you know and
and we we kind of have our calendar when
we're hitting certain things but in the
same breath everything is getting
touched you know we do address
verifications every 60 days to make sure
that our our data cast certifies and
such so if a school moves or if schools
temporarily closed or even close for
good it gets notified there and we just
have a enough experience on our side and
the right staff in place to make sure
the writ and all these moving parts at
the same time while still making sure
that we're focusing on important parts
you know when school starts back up
depending on where you're at in August
or so we're starting the rostering
process there and stuff so it really
comes down to having the right team
having the right processes in place and
and really knowing the data so we can
get it out to the clients okay thank you
Mike
our next question is directed to Lana
when and how do I get access to the
updates to analysis so we will be
sending an outreach to our clients and
letting them know giving them a heads up
it will become part of the existing you
know analysis when they go online once
once it's been deployed from our side
and clients have been notified they'll
just see another option in their left
hand menu and analysis and our target is
the start of of q1 so that will be
coming out here quite shortly but we
will reach out in advance and let them
know and kind of let them know what to
look for and how to utilize it via email
okay Thank You Lana Ryan this question
is directed to you how can I go about
getting started with an integrated email
and social media campaign sure it's a
very common question short answer is
call us Mesa but realistically what what
needs to happen is obviously contact
your your existing agile rep and we'll
sit down talk with you about best ways
to take email and take social media
targeting and look at developing the
best combination of the two in order to
get you the results that you're going
for not everybody has the same goals in
mind some are based around awareness
maybe from your product launch someone
based around demand gen some are just
trying to get maybe more email addresses
or more content I mean there's a whole
slew of different goals so the best
thing to do is just to contact us so we
can shut down build you that custom
solution of you know integrating email
and social media together Thank You Ryan
a question directed to Scott can we
submit requests to the selling to
schools blog yeah absolutely we we love
that as as you may have heard me
mentioned this is a peer-to-peer type
blog system we do however have you know
we have the final say on whether it
actually gets on the site or not but we
would absolutely love to hear from folks
and I know some of the people that are
on the line some of the attendees and so
on would be very beneficial to have your
thoughts knowledge and and capabilities
articulated on an article and put out
onto the site so we would love to hear
from you you can you can email me
directly you can go out to the selling
to schools comm website and contact us
from there if you wish my email address
is s Brooks at agile - edcom so we'd
love to hear from anybody that has any
ideas on how we can continue to add
value and to provide you know really
good sales and marketing expertise and
best practices on selling to schools
terrific our next question is I think
Lana for you
when will the quick lookup API be
available for Marketo
so we're in the process of queue seeing
the final aspect of that so it's going
to be before the end of the year and
December sometime very good another
question this seems like any any one of
you could field it possibly more of a
Liz / Ryan Scott question here if we are
an online based company what would be
the best way to reach our audience
besides social media of course it's a
broad question but I have a feeling that
there are a lot of good answers yeah we
can I can I'm happy to get this started
ELISA and then Scott and Ryan you can
pick up with a little bit more detail
and yeah being an online based company
definitely presents certain challenges
and you know one of the things as where
do people experience your brand and
where do people experience what you do
and how do they find out about you so
you know it's one of those things where
you want to make sure that you start
with online and that that's the hub
that's the heart of what you are and who
you are and making sure that your
website itself is super user-friendly
and easy to navigate easy for people to
do what you want them to do is it a you
know are you just trying to generate
leads and develop a contact list or is
it actually a self-serve
all-encompassing
website and you know if it is the latter
definitely giving a lot of input doing a
lot of testing to understand if your
user interface works for the people that
you're trying to serve that's kind of a
good place to start and the next layer
on your website would be SEO and you
know I'm
reveal my my age of it but I really feel
like SEO is is if you really think about
it in terms of discoverability I think
it makes it a much less daunting task to
take on and really what you're trying to
do is make sure that not only search
engines but the people who are using
those search engines are finding what
they're they're looking for and if you
are providing what they're looking for
it's super easy for them to get to that
page to get to your site to get to an
asset that can help them along the the
buying process for whatever product or
service you're offering an SEO you know
the nuts and bolts of it are just you
know some of its really basic and it's
almost like you know building a house
you want to make sure that you don't
have dead pages you want to make sure
that your navigation is all connected
and that your images for example have
words behind them and your metadata is
really important because that's all that
Google could see Google can't see the
you know if you have graphics Google
can't see that you have a really great
image it only reads text and when you
think about it that way in terms of
discoverability and only discoverability
happening through text I think that it
becomes a much easier effort on
everyone's end and I'm guessing that
probably the person access is from a
smaller perhaps and startup and I'm so
Scott I think you might be able to offer
some things there as well and you know
social is great and from my perspective
social is great because that's where
people are already spending their time
so you're meeting them at a time and
place that works for them and that's one
of the ways that social is so great so I
don't know Ryan or Scott if you want to
pick it up from there and give a little
more insight into you know if you're an
online based company how do you make
sure people are getting the right people
or getting to you
Scot Ryan I was gonna let Scott handle
that because I could talk all day yeah
you know as it pertains to like you were
saying with SEO and other things are so
many tactics out there and my personal
view for SEO is it's like a popularity
contest but you know on the internet and
you've got to make sure that your web
page and all of your online content is
tied together and there's a strategy
behind it because when we talk about
search engine optimization things like
Facebook things like other forms and ads
and things like that can actually play
into the overall SEO and we all know
that Google and other search engines
they change their algorithms and the
qualifications on a regular basis so
it's kind of a moving target but most of
the qualifications are pretty much the
same as it pertains to you know being an
online company and trying to have more
more more ways to communicate and get
out there I'll also offer this you know
there's new new tactics and new ways of
doing things that are happening all the
time and not to show my age Liz but I
remember a time before social media and
before web banners and you know there's
going to be the Internet's evolving and
we have to evolve with it as marketers
and entrepreneurs in order to take full
advantage of it as is this medium that
it's become yeah well
your pictures look like you guys are 25
so we have one last question thankful
effect it's an easy one for me to feel
does the session being recorded yes it
is and it will be sent out a link to the
session will be sent out to all our
attendees so that concludes all of our
questions and unless any of our
panelists or hosts would like to say
anything further we can close the line
anybody anyone want to throw a Hail Mary
pass before I close down here I would
just like to reiterate that we have a
social media webinar coming up in
January so and don't forget to sign up
if you can and we'll be sending out some
marketing materials about that shortly
so thank you everyone for joining us
today we hope you got a lot out of
today's webinar and again it will be
sent out via a link and a follow up with
additionally some excellent handouts
which will help guide you in decisions
about data about email marketing and
social media etc so have a wonderful
rest of day thanks so much thanks
everyone