Musicians, tap dancers, photographers…they all know the importance of good timing. And, good timing is key to successful marketing. Syncing your marketing efforts to the beat of the audience’s purchasing journey is the smart way to avoid off notes, missed steps, and lost opportunities.
In our upcoming webinar, Decoding the School Purchasing Cycle, we’ll be taking you inside the school buying cycle. With school purchasing over the summer as the endpoint, we’ve broken down the rest of the school year into distinct stages. Knowing these stages helps you engage educators with the right type and level of information at the right moment in their decision-making process.
You may be familiar with the graphic above. We created this timeline based on insights from our K-12 Education Landscape Report combined with data from our Digital Marketing Trends report, and it has since been one of our most requested infographics! In our upcoming webinar, we’ll be examining what is happening within school districts in each stage of the buying cycle, and why certain marketing tactics and messaging will be more successful during one stage versus another. Here’s a preview of what we’ll be talking about:
Stage One: June – October
As one school year closed, educators turn to setting goals and assessing needs for the next year. This is the perfect time to get on their radar screen by creating awareness of your brand. Do this by promoting your top-of-funnel content such as blogs, social media posts, infographics, and ebooks.
Stage Two: November – April
During this information gathering stage, educators are exploring and investigating which products and instructional approaches will address the needs they identified in Stage One. It’s time to launch your lead magnet initiatives like webinars, free educational resources, or discounts/offers.
Stage Three: April – June
It’s closing time! Most school purchasing takes place over the summer so everything’s in place for the new school year. Now’s the time to give educators the data and support they need to validate their purchase decision and convert. You’ll want to offer demos or free trials of your product, customer case studies, spec sheets, and product-specific webinars.
Now that you know the WHEN of the school buying cycle, you’ll want to know more about WHO to target at each stage and WHO makes the decisions, WHAT the right messaging is for your audience, and through WHICH channels. That’s covered and more in our webinar.
