This interview was originally recorded on October 14, 2022, as part of Leoni Consulting Group’s All Things Marketing and Education Podcast.
Access this episode's show notes, including links to the audio, a summary, and helpful resources.
[Start of recorded material 00:00:01]
Elana:
Hello everyone. Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. This week I'm really excited to sit down with Annie Teich. She's president of The Teich Group and she's also an ed tech industry expert, and specifically in content marketing strategy, content marketing as a whole, content creation, copywriting, and all of the things, honestly. I am really excited to have her expertise on the show telling you all the things. And specifically we are, if you didn't hear, we're going to be talking about content marketing. And that'll be exciting not only for you ed tech folks that are trying to figure out, okay, what do I do with content? How do I ensure I'm getting the biggest ROI from content, but also making it valuable to our audience? So ed tech folks, we got you. But for you educators out there that are creating content, whether you're creating content for other brands or you're just crafting blogs as well and getting the word out about what you are passionate about, we also have some great tips and best practices for you.
So back to Annie. Annie has spent her entire career, almost, in the education industry. She has marketed, promoted, and sold education magazines, books, professional development, technology, you name it, she's had her hand in it. And that's what I love, having people with so much expertise in the industry, and also diverse expertise that there isn't a lot that hasn't been seen or done with them except the pandemic, and that shook us all. But during all of those years, she was also the chief copywriter for a lot of the companies she worked for. For all of you grammar nerds out there, we've got a grammar question for her. Annie, given how long you've been in the industry, I think over 25 years, I'm surprised our paths haven't crossed earlier in our careers. Because when I first got introduced to you and you were part of our community of education entrepreneurs, you are such a selfless, empathetic, extremely smart human. You just roll up your sleeves, how can I help?
You're community oriented. You put out some of the best content I've ever read, so I am just so excited to learn from you selfishly in this episode. Annie, I know that I haven't mentioned all the things in your bio. I just want to take the time to welcome you, and you can add anything else you'd like the readers to know about you.
Annie:
Well, I appreciate that. That was quite full of lauds and excitement there. You know, you don't often think about how you're viewed from the outside, how people see you, you're just doing your thing every day. But I think the one thing, you mentioned empathy. I think there's a pair of qualities that every good marketer in ed tech has, and that is curiosity and empathy. And both of those, I think, get at what is the motivation behind people to really understand where they are, what their needs are, and again, how you can help them. I ask good questions, and I'm very curious about people, and I actually really like people a lot, and I find everybody's got a story, so I do like that.
Elana:
That's the journalist in you. Everyone's got a story, right? Yeah, I would say that of those two qualities, they are sometimes hard to foster in people. When I hire, I look for that. I look, do they have an innate curiosity? Sometimes we confuse curiosity with initiative. I think curiosity is a little bit more holistic, a little bit more authentic of like, I'm just curious, let's go. I'm not trying to take initiative, even though I do want people to do that. So I think that is such a great point, because marketers need to be curious all the time, not only on the platforms that they are on and marketing, but who are they talking to? How do they want to be approached? Who are they? How can we help them?
Annie:
The issue about how can we approach them is really important in education, because I see all the time that educators can spot marketing at 500 paces and run in the other direction. And the difference between selling to somebody and providing valuable information to them that they find helpful in their life is, that's the difference between good marketing and bad marketing.
Elana:
Yes, a hundred percent. You are speaking my language. I don't think marketing is a bad word, but I've never considered myself a marketer. I've always considered myself somebody who loves to create relationships and try to help. I, throughout the years, have been able to articulate what I do and align it with what things executive teams need, like brand awareness, engagement, bringing it down the funnel. But at the end of the day, if you're not helping them, they're not going to listen to you. If you don't see them or hear them, especially in education, they're going to run away, like you said.
Annie:
Exactly. I started in the business long ago when we were still doing direct mail for circulation management and also for direct mail for the catalog business to educators directly. The person who's receiving the mail could decide whether it was junk mail or whether it was of interest to them. And I can tell you right now, most of what comes in my mailbox stops in the garage on my way back into the house, but occasionally, a couple times a year like this year, I mean, this time of year is the perfect time to send me a catalog. If I bought from you last Christmas, I'm probably going to buy from you again. So there are things like that that are seasonal. And of course in our business, seasonal is important. And that's one of the things that people coming into our market from another industry have a real difficult time understanding, what is the product cycle of development? What is the sales cycle in this industry? And of course the sales cycle depends on what you're selling. It could be anywhere from 10 days to two years. The larger the item, the longer the sales cycle.
Elana:
Yes. And I want to get into that because I think that deserves its own discussion, especially because in ed tech that I feel like it's the biggest shock when people come into this industry and say, oh, I'm a marketer or I'm a salesperson. No, it's so different in this industry. But let's back up just a quick second. If people say, what is that term content marketing? It sounds a little jargony, and/or people have different definitions for it that kind of confuse it. Do you want to just set people straight and say, No, this is content marketing, folks.
Annie:
So content marketing is not new. It was widely adopted in business and industry long before education adopted it. I like to say that although we think we're creating new techniques to market and sell our products, we're not. We're just reiterating on what has gone before with a couple of, I would say, small but large differences. The first one is that, first of all, it's a strategy, it's a marketing and selling strategy. So the goals of content marketing are, one, to build brand awareness. Two, to use valuable information to build authenticity and relationship with the audience. And third is we use the funnel often as an analogy, but to push the prospect one step further down the funnel towards making a purchase. So I've seen different depictions of this funnel from a basic three point to an eight point funnel. But basically you're moving from, on a continuum from, you're going to make them aware of your brand and your product, you're going to move them through evaluation and justification until they make a purchase decision.
And so that process, for each stage of that process, there are kinds of content assets, what I refer to them as, that are appropriate for that stage of the buyer's journey. For example, white papers are great for building awareness. You want to build them around an issue that educators are dealing with. My primary audience is administrators and decision makers, so I have been writing for them for more than 20 years. So I understand what their challenges are. And if you listen to them, they'll tell you exactly what they need. And so putting yourself out there, you want to be not focused on yourself. It's not about, oh, we've developed this great new product and it will toast your toast and send your emails for you. But you really have to start from the perspective of, who are you talking to? What are their pain points? How do you offer them information that will be helpful to them and useful even if they end up not buying your product?
Because you're talking to them about issues and strategies, so you're putting information out there. As long as you are authentic and you've done your research and you really are talking to one of their pain points, they're going to be interested in engaging with your content. And at the end of the day, content marketing is all about qualifying leads.
Elana:
The same thing applies really to social media as well, is what we're doing is saying, Hey, we want to help you. We want to give you something valuable and timely that meets your challenges. We want to do this over and over again so we start building trust. When we start building trust, then it doesn't matter if they buy from you, they might actually be an advocate. The best thing I've ever heard from a content marketing place I went to as the test of content marketing is when people actually will refer your product to somebody else and they've never been a customer, because they trust you from your content. That is the ultimate. I've seen it happen, but it still gives me a little goose bumps when that does happen.
Annie:
Well, and a trade show equivalent to that is standing in your booth, and two educators walk up, and one of them sells your product to the other one who never heard of you before. But again, it's that same. And we know from tons of research over the years that educators don't trust marketing, they don't trust salespeople. What they trust are recommendations from other educators.
Elana:
Yes. And I think it's important to note for people that are just coming into the industry, when we think about ed tech, it is a volatile up and down industry. Even before the pandemic, we have ed tech startups come in and promise things and do something potentially really cool the educators value. And then two years later they go bust and the educator is like, oh shoot, there isn't another tool, or I'm kind of in the middle of the school year, what do I do? So there is that defensiveness that builds up over time in the world of ed tech where you know that you're coming in to educators really just wanting tools that can meet their needs. But more importantly, does it align with what they're doing in terms of accomplishing lesson plans and teaching in the way that they want to teach? So there's just a little bit of distressed rumbling around, content marketing is the perfect answer to help them, to really help them throughout their day. Whether you're targeting educators and saying, hey educators, which might be your users, here are some valuable things. Or what Annie is talking about, talking to the decision makers and the influencers as well. What do they need to make the case?
So why don't we jump into, we talked a little bit about what content marketing is, but what do you hear around that people think content marketing is but it really isn't? What are those myths of content marketing that just kind of irk you?
Annie:
Click bait. There's still many, many cases of this that marketing, like anything else in particular, anything connected with technology continues to change, and the rate of change is accelerating every day. And so there are still lots of what I would call unserious tech marketers who don't respect the customer, the prospect or the customer, and they don't listen. And so because of that, they're dealing with shallow surface indicators that don't really get to the heart of what the needs are in our community. And so they write stuff that's stuffed with keywords, or they create something with a sensational headline and you click through and it's not anything that's going to be any use to you. It's like the National Inquirer kind of approach to putting content out there. And that is the quickest way to get educators to turn you off. Whether you're the practitioners in the classroom, your coaches, instructional leaders, or administrators. I mean, they have to feel that you are authentic, you are committed to sharing information with them that will make them successful.
Elana:
And it made me think, gosh, why? It's the equivalent of you coming into the space and learning alongside them. And as soon as you join the world of education, you understand the stakeholders have zero time, they have negative time. And if you decide to waste their time, then you're disrespecting the profession and you're annoying them. Like, don't do that. I mean, I just want to emphasize or underline all the points you were making around that, like, yes. When we think about content marketing, it still is like, gosh, there's so much you can do with it. And there's, like you said, content for different funnels and different goals and all of the things. But I do see a lot of mistakes being made in education and specifically in ed tech companies. But also Annie, if there's anything you can bring into the educators listening, too. But what do you think, what are the biggest mistakes you see ed tech companies make when it comes to content marketing? And as it relates to educators, are there any tips that you can provide educators to make the most of their time to create content? Because time is an issue. I know those are kind of separate questions.
Annie:
Well, they are, but let's address the marketing perspective first. I think that something that I see all the time, and this is borne out in national B2B content marketing studies. And ed tech is an interesting, I always think of ed tech as being an institutional market. Unless you're marketing directly to teachers, you really are marketing to institutions, and it's a funded market. There are state and federal and local dollars that are the funding funnel for the market. But I'd say one of the biggest problems is people don't understand content marketing thoroughly. They have not developed a content marketing strategy. And they don't have a, yes, we're going to write this down on paper, content marketing plan, which should include a content production schedule. And of course you would merge all of that with the ebbs and flows of the cycle of education so that you are creating the right kinds of assets for the right time of year.
And so actually, first of all, most companies in our market do not have a fully staffed marketing department. So that's why people like me are in business, because they'll have a junior person who is anything from a coordinator to a director, and then they'll have a VP of marketing or chief marketing officer. And all the people that used to be in the middle there who actually did the work years ago, they are no longer there. And so companies have to outsource, at least part, sometimes all of their content production. So, understanding that, all the criteria around making sure that you're getting good content, the guidelines you give them, how much you should expect to pay for all of that, that is something that people don't really have a good sense of, because if you're developing marketing content, you know all about the Fiverr and the marketing blogs that you can get written for $25.
Well, most of those are content mills, and you're not going to get anybody who's informed about the market. And the thing that's different for ed marketing and tech marketing is you really need to know the market. You need to have a historical perspective, you need to understand education, you need to understand the different personas that you're talking to. So if you don't have somebody writing for you that has that background, it's almost impossible to get something that's going to touch your market prospects.
Elana:
When we talk about marketing plan, it can be as small and just like, okay, I'm going to start with a minimum viable product, or it can be as robust as you want. But regardless, what a plan does is it tells you what you're doing, and I think more importantly, what you're not doing. Because everyone under the sun, same for social media, same for content, they're like, can you push this out? And if someone ever says that to you, you have my permission just to laugh in their face because we don't push things out anymore. And that means that the person asking you has zero background in marketing or really understanding what we're trying to do to ultimately build trust with their audience. So I love the freedom when I can create a marketing plan and say, here's the type of person we're targeting, here's who we're not targeting. That's okay because you can't do it all. And when you try to do it all, you don't do anything, right?
Annie:
Right. You can't be all things to everybody. You have to be very clear about who you're talking to. And best practice is you're talking to one specific individual. And for us, that would be an assistant superintendent, a director of curriculum and instruction at the district level. Sometimes principals, and often, I know you spend a lot of time working with classroom educators.
Elana:
Yeah, let's get to them. I love the content that educators provide in our space, and I've spent a majority of my career uplifting their voices because they are so good, they are so authentic. And a lot of times educators want to hear from educators. For the educators that are in the classroom and also creating content, do you have any tips or advice for them on, I mean, not going to be a whole show in itself, but just maybe practical or strategic advice for them to help them be consistent, because that is so hard in the school year.
Annie:
Well, I would say first and foremost, there is a very vibrant channel for educator-authored blogs and articles. So one of the groups of people that helps me do my job well are the public relations, media relations, agencies in our industry. By working with them, all of them are dealing with constantly evolving family of clients, but all of their clients have champions at each of those companies. And getting connected with the champions and asking them specifically for, can you write an article on this topic? To be in a credible publication, it can't really be about the product, it's got to be about how the product was used successfully, what are the reasons around it? And you can mention it at the end, but really, again, the focus is on creating educator-vetted content about how it solved a problem.
Elana:
Yes, yes. So educators, what you're hearing from Annie is that your voice is very valuable, if not, more valuable than the content that ed tech companies are creating, too. So if there is a product that you're interested in, too, strike up a conversation with them on social media, see if they have an ambassador program, see if you want to share your story authentically of how it's truly helping you in your journey. But beyond that, if you have other passions, and you're talking about, say, you're very passionate about project-based learning, know that everyone starts somewhere with writing. I don't consider myself a great writer. I do it because it's something that I feel like I need to get out of me. I feel like educators, I do see that. I see that passion where I just needed to write this. And I think if you have that passion, please continue it and lean into, okay, I've got to reserve 30 minutes every week or whatnot just to write and get all the inner critics out of your head because we all have them. Right, Annie?
Annie:
Right. I would say also that if there is a company, say it's a literacy company that you're particularly evangelical about, contact them, because many, many, the smart companies have customer advisory boards, and they want to hear from people just like you.
Elana:
Yes. We talked a lot about the goals of content marketing, you know. You said sometimes we craft content marketing strategies that just talk, that just focus on one goal. Sometimes the content marketing strategy is a little bit more robust where we're moving them down the funnel, and we have different content for different stages. And then you complicated it more about different buying cycles and purchasing cycles in the year. Do you want to talk a little bit about, gosh, I'm a small ed tech company, I don't even have a VP of marketing, I have a head of sales, maybe if I'm lucky, how do I start? And I want to align things to the buying cycle, does that makes sense? Where do I get started?
Annie:
Well, there are various models out there that can visually show you what the cycle of the market is. But if you think of back to school, a lot of companies, particularly those that are new, think back to school, is we're going to start creating content in August. Well, your back to school campaign should be done by June at the latest, because it's not just one and done. I mean, you've got to build repetitive touches, multiple pieces of content to make sure that they're aware. And the actual decisions for buying products doesn't really happen until the winter, and it's them that they're making the buying decision. So in terms of broadcasting, which is an old term, but in terms of building awareness for your product and the problems that you solve, the best time to be putting that content out is January, February, and March. It's Q1.
Because at that point, schools and districts are moving into their planning stages, so they know by that point the products that they started with in August and September with great hopes, are they working? Are they not working? Are we going to renew our contract? Are we not going to renew our contract? Do we need to look at something else? Those decisions are being made in Q2, because their budgets are due, their final budgets are due by June 30th.
Elana:
So much good stuff. So if you are a listener right now, pause and rewind, because what Annie talked about in the beginning is, hey, back to school isn't just creating content in August. I can tell you that a majority of ed tech brands I've come into contact with and collaborated with, they all kind of start, if they're lucky, in end of July. The schools come in all throughout the year, but there's been a trend more and more that they start earlier and earlier. So I love that pause there. And then think about Q1 and your efforts, because so many people have that winter break and they start to think about the next year when it's January or the second week of January, and you're already behind the game. You should have your plans solidified, budget allocated, and hopefully having things ready to post come January one, because you talked about the decision makers, which I love.
Educators also have a new mindset. They are humans. We are all humans coming into the new year wanting to do things differently, having a fresh start. This is another opportunity for you to get in front of them where they were like, oh yeah, I thought about using that product. I'm going to have a little bit more of an open mindset and try it. So there's a little bit more emphasis on innovation and experimentation from the educator standpoint in Q1 as well.
Annie:
Well, and they are a very important influencer group. And a lot of times, what district leadership is looking for is ground-up information from their practitioners at their schools. What are you looking for that you don't have? What is a problem you're being challenged to solve? And so that information, hopefully for an individual company, the information is floating up from the classroom practitioners and it's coming down from the administration, so that they have two flows of information that are leading them to the same point, which is, hey, we need to seriously consider and evaluate this product.
Elana:
Yes. And if you are in a tech company thinking about, do I go ground-up? Do I go top-down? Do I have to pick one or the other? The answer is you probably should be doing slightly a bit of both. And if you do good marketing, you organically will hit that anyways because you're providing value. You can't just have a sales strategy that's top-down. You can't just have a sales strategy. I don't like using the bottom because there is no bottom, but more of a ground, so grassroots movement, too. So what you said was really genius there. So, lots of stuff we can accomplish with content marketing. We talked about brand awareness, we talked about engagement, building trust eventually leading to those inroads of conversations to sales. I know companies that, and you work for a lot of them, is they provide content marketing because they want to give their sales people a reason to reach out to their customers and say, hey, we have this something really great for you.
I know you have great ideas on how to make the most of each piece of content. And as a marketer, I see so many opportunities being wasted. We spend thousands of dollars on a great eBook, but we forget to promote it or we forget the myriad of ways that we can get it out in different unique ways. Do you want to talk a little bit about what you've seen to be successful about how do you make the most of the content you invest in?
Annie:
Yeah, absolutely. Because I think this is not only effective, it's efficient. And that is to start with what I call a big piece of content, whether it's a webinar or a white paper or a virtual event, something that is a large asset. And then there are myriads of ways that you can chop it up, and you can pull out bylined articles, you can pull out blog posts, you can pull out social media posts, you can do questionnaires, you can do quizzes. I mean eBooks. I mean, there's just an enormous number of additional assets you can pull out from a deep dive into something. And if we start with a white paper, maybe a lot of people come to me because white papers, while I write everything, white papers are sort of my specialty. And then I can either take the content for them and create all these additional assets. Or if they've got somebody internal, they just didn't have anybody internal they could turn to to write a white paper, but they've got somebody who can take a piece of content and create a lot of other assets around it. And you don't want to forget about infographics and visualizing data. I mean, those are the things that people really gravitate to because they're bite-sized.
Elana:
So kind of recapping all the stuff. So you can start with what I call hero content, or what do you call it?
Annie:
A big asset.
Elana:
So we got this big star of the show type of content. It might be a webinar, it might be an eBook, but how do we slice and dice it? How do we appeal to multiple types of learners in multiple different channels with multiple different experiences, and try to make it somewhat unique per channel as well? When I talk about channels, I'm not just talking about social media, we're talking about all marketing channels. So Annie mentioned infographics, and those are great. If you have different images within your eBook, which you will, you can do tons of image carousel posts, you can do image posts, you can do an ask me anything with the author. There's so many ways you can slice and dice. What I recommend brands do is think about your hero type of content and come up with a recipe to slice and dice. It can start small. We might want to say, all right, we're doing an eBook, then we're going to do this social campaign which includes, I don't know, let's just say five different posts which you would post more on social, to be clear. But these types of posts on each social channel. So we might do a short form video on TikTok, which is really quick, and I might point to a couple of the points in the eBook.
So really trying to tease out what are the things that we can learn and be okay that people are consuming information without consuming the eBook. You're raising awareness and it's all stemming from your big hero content.
Annie:
Well, and those are also what I think of as little satellites that are going to direct people when they engage whatever channel, wherever they find you. You want to attract them back to your website where they can consume the main deep content piece that you developed, as well as see what else you have available. The big shift in sales, I think in general, but in particular, ed tech sales, is that cold calls don't work. People, they know a lot about you before you find out they're even interested. They've gone to your website, they've educated themselves on whatever issue. They've looked at your competitors, they're looking at you. So by the time they first come up on your radar, they've basically pre-qualified themselves. And so those leads that are coming in through the content marketing assets are extremely valuable for the sales team. And you would be surprised how often those leads are not picked up and followed by the sales team.
In many companies, the challenge is to align the marketing and sales people. And sometimes people get so deeply enmeshed in what they're doing in marketing, they forget that, at the end of the day, the reason we have marketing is to sell things and make customers happy. And so marketing and sales have to be joined at the hip, and so often they barely talk to each other. It's like being a marketer for a company and never going to sit with customer service and listening to conversations. Educators will tell you what their problems are. All you have to do is listen. So whether you go spend some phone time in your company or you set up listening channels on Twitter and Facebook, those are really powerful ways for you to hone in on the exact issues that they're dealing with.
Elana:
Yes, when I talk to ed tech companies, I feel like they sometimes get content marketing. They have somewhat of a system in place to create content, but the thing they're always interested in and can't crack the nut on is aligning it to support the buyer's journey. We talked a little bit about how they can do that with resources, but if we were going to start there and maybe even just start small, like we talked about the focus on Q1 really coming out with type of content because they're using that information to make their purchases in Q2. What are the types of content? I think that's where people struggle with the most, right? They're like, okay, I get the buyer's cycle. If I'm in Q1 and I'm gathering information, what are the types of content you recommend people create?
Annie:
Well, I think something around the actual issues that educators are dealing with, literacy for example. The new Nation's Report Card results that came out in the last couple of months show that the decline in reading proficiency over the pandemic was much more serious than they expected. And not surprisingly, the students who were the most impacted are the ones who were most at risk in the first place before the pandemic, for lots of different reasons. But according to national statistics, only 38% of fourth graders in this country can read at grade level, 38%. I mean, that's shocking. And the percentage that are doing grade-level math is lower. So how can we be in such a bad position when we spend more on each student in this country than any other developed country in the world? So there's a lot of structural issues that we have. The challenge for educators is that when they find systems and strategies that work for effective instruction where they're really improving academic outcomes for students, it's not scalable, because we have 14,000 different school districts in the country and 14,000 different sets of criteria for making decisions.
From an ed marketer's perspective, the challenge is you can find these pockets of innovation, but you can't help schools and districts scale your product even if it is a totally digital product. So that has to do more with the structural issues of the market than anything else. But you have to be aware of that.
Elana:
Yeah, and I like what you're saying is that you're not necessarily, I don't know, for some reason I've been gravitating towards the word convince, and it's like convince type of content. But like you said, they know they have a problem. They will also be looking, but they might be looking for things that resonate with the topic you are creating. So if you are talking about that study and the unfinished learning that occurred around literacy in the pandemic, that is something that they will gravitate to.
Annie:
Exactly. So there is a bit of self-selection involved by the content that educators will engage with. But back to your original question about where do different kinds of content assets fit, newsletters, infographics, white papers, reports? Well, there are several. Let's just take a white paper. There are several places where that would be helpful in the buyer's journey. One is the awareness white paper, which is really focused on the issue. Then down in the evaluation justification part of the buyer's journey and funnel, you can have a white paper that is really more of a proof of concept in that you've got real effectiveness data to share, or you've got assessment data to share. I think of papers at that part of the process, as whoever's reading this has got a boss, and they've got to take some proof to the boss that their idea has legs. And so that's a justification kind of effort. And newsletters can be at any point, but not really awareness.
Elana:
And newsletters are kind of their own channel where, if you do it right, they are a good vehicle to send the content and aggregate it and hopefully even personalize it to your audience in a consistent fashion. And for those of you thinking about embarking in a newsletter, and you say you want to do it just once a quarter, don't even bother. We want to make sure newsletter is consistent at least once a month, but the recommendation is the minimum is twice a month. From a small business standpoint, I can barely keep up with once a month with my newsletter, but I do find it as a way to keep in touch with people in a way that is so different from other mediums as well. So I appreciate it, because so much time we talk about content for different purchasing and seasonality and ed tech, and we don't get into the nitty-gritty of what that actually means.
I thank you for getting into the specifics of you can have an eBook, and an eBook can be about building the awareness and making the case and educating them about the problem at hand to help the educators and the decision makers prioritize this above all the other things. You can have an eBook that does that, but you can also have an eBook that really jumps into and dives into the efficacy of the product and says, wow, we are making strides. Here's where they're going to bring it to the table, like you said, to say, I'm going to use this mass solution because I'm convinced with this data, it works. It will work.
Annie:
Absolutely. I think it's going to be in the show notes, but I have an infographic that is basically how to fill a content marketing funnel. And so it'll be available, it's a one page PDF, so folks can get a sense of where in this journey this funnel would I do certain kinds of assets. Once a customer or prospect engages with you, your email response to that person should improve dramatically because basically they've held up their hand and said, hey, I'm interested in what you're doing, I want to stay in touch. You don't necessarily, as long as you're bringing them something new, frequency is less important to them. Whereas if they've made the decision they're not interested in you, you're just a gnat in their face when you send those emails. And they are very good at ignoring them in their inbox.
Elana:
Yes, and that's a very big difference between sales and marketing, because as a marketer they can say, oh, that resource didn't really help me, and you might be losing trust as you continue to push out low-quality resources. But I always feel like an optimist as a marketing person. I can always get attention if I create good things, it might be harder with people that have been losing trust with us. But with sales, it's like, no, you're not giving me anything here, just go away, like you said.
Annie:
Well, and that's something for sales teams to take advantage of, is whatever the content marketing is that's being created and shared, sales should know about it. They should be using those as sales tools. There's not a lot of face-to-face visits anymore because educators just do not have time, unless they've requested a demo on something. But to be able to just not sell but share a valuable content asset, it's a different tenor of the relationship.
Elana:
It's a transition from being a vendor to a partner.
Annie:
Exactly.
Elana:
A partner actually cares and believes that all they want to do is help and have actual high-quality resources that can help them and think about them in that way rather than the desperation of, I need a sale. Like you said, educators, decision makers can smell that and they will spam you. They will put you in the spam folder, they will run away. We have talked a lot about content marketing. I believe we could have a whole podcast series about content marketing, because it is so robust. It's something I'm really passionate about. For those of you listening and say, oh, there's a good resource they are mentioning, we will have them in the show notes. So the show notes will be at leoniconsultinggroup.com/34, so leoniconsultinggroup with two Gs, and we'll put in the infographic. There are a lot of great resources from Content Marketing Institute, where I learn the basic chops of content marketing and how do we create a strategy and how do we measure ROI. All those fundamental basics we'll put in the show notes as well.
But I promised people, I said we're going to talk about grammar, we're going to talk about copyediting, and I know that you are a stickler for it, too. I constantly see content that, and I think maybe it's just like you've trained your eye in that way, because I edit and write a lot. I constantly see errors and it bothers me. And if there is an error, I don't care how good your content is, you have gone away from me. I'm no longer reading. So what are the most common grammar mistakes that you see? Which ones just keep you up at night where you're like, oh my God, I got to post this on social media so people know. And if you listen to this with Annie, rewind and say, I'm never going to do this again.
Annie:
So you're really talking about things that make my eyes twitch when I'm reading. I'm passionate about the Oxford comma. And so, for people who are not familiar with the term, it's also called the Harvard comma and the serial comma. And in the writing that we do, which can be very complex when we're talking about issues or research or whatever, I think it's a point of clarity to use that comma, so you have A, B, and C. So that's something that I just think helps the reader assimilate what they're reading. What I see most often are misused apostrophes, misuse because of word check. There's a lot of words that we think we meant, but actually used the wrong version of the word like they're, there, and their. Three different versions of that word and they mean three different things. Mismatch of verbs in different parts of the sentence. So that subject-verb alliance, and then aligning the tense of the verb as well so that it's consistent. And a lot of it is just, I mean, you can get into really complex things that make grammar nerds crazy like split infinitives and dangling participles and all of that. But I think everybody needs to do a final scan. And the best way to find problems with your grammar is to read it out loud.
Elana:
Yes. I think for those of you that are writing copy that want to engage people to click, also, it's just an easier, more concise version of our language. Always think of the active tense. We do so much, say, will be, or once you get into the future, it becomes a little bit less relatable and wordier. So I always train teams when we're thinking about try to catch attention copy, looking at what the emails that you're writing, active tense. So it's not will be, or you're switching tense in the middle of the sentence. Just focus on one active tense. If I can give people that, because that's the number one thing I correct in my team at times. It's like, no. And de-jargonify it, just because it sounds good. Like you were talking about keyword stuffers, I know this is not grammar, but boy, it should be. It feels like you're coming from a different language and you're like, gosh, my board approved the sentence and it has all the words but no one understands it.
Annie:
Well, the other thing that I think is a best practice, particularly in emails, is only ask the reader to do one thing. Your call to action should be one thing, not two or three things. And the other thing that is a best practice for me is what I call the power of three. When you read my copy, you know, will often say it's I'm giving examples or the reasons that something has happened is this, this, and this. Telling a reader that you're going to tell them these three things, then tell them, and then remind them what you just told them. That power of three is that the human brain really can organize its thinking around three things. Four is too many.
Elana:
So let's try this out really quick while we close this podcast out. I think in this podcast for the power of three, we have learned what content marketing is and what content marketing isn't, along with the benefits. We specifically dove into the buyer's cycle and how to really align your content with the seasonality, cyclicality of the buyer's cycle as well, and specific to ed tech. And then lastly, we got into how to make your copy the most effective as possible. We even got into some grammar, please don't ever do this, or you're going to make Annie's eyes start twitching. I'm trying with the power of three.
Annie, I think to close this podcast out, we always ask all of our guests this question because our industry is so challenging. It's so rewarding but so challenging at the same time. And even coming out of a pandemic and just being a human in this really crazy world, we all need time to figure out what rejuvenates us. When we have those days or we have those moments that just say, gosh, it makes you rethink what you're doing, why you're doing it, and you just feel you're a hundred percent drained. What do you do? Whether it be exercise, outdoors, reading, relationships, what gets you back to that hundred percent or hundred-ish percent battery that gets you going again?
Annie:
Well, I'd say music. I listen to music a lot. I'm a big reader. Going outside, even if you're just walking to your mailbox. There's just something about walking away from your desk and being outside in the sun that's rejuvenating. And then I've been in the industry for a long time, and I'm fortunate to have a lot of friends. It is the friendships in this industry that have been probably the biggest inspiration to me to rethink something or go at it again and encourage finding community to encourage each other on our journey. Because at the end of the day, the thing that makes our industry so different from every other industry is that whether you're an educator or in the vendor community, we're working towards the same goal, and that's to give teachers and students tools to learn more effectively. We all want the same thing, and that sets us apart.
Elana:
Yes. I can tell that Annie is not just saying that. I can be a testament that you have been so gracious and helping to me when you didn't even know me to begin with. You come in just helping. And I love that because, like you said, we're all trying to do the same thing. We're all in it for the right reasons. Sometimes I think we forget that or we reinvent things unnecessarily at times within the industry. So I thank you for that. And because you are such a big reader, is there any book that you are reading right now, or something that you've read recently that you think our audience would like to?
Annie:
Well, this is more towards the copywriting end of the scale, but there's two new books and they're going to be in the show notes. But one is called Smart Brevity, which was written by the team that started Politico and also Axios. They've developed this copywriting journalistic structure where you say less, you use fewer words, but you deepen your meaning. And so that's a really interesting book. And then I love a good pun. So the other one I'm reading is called Rebel With A Clause. She calls herself a roving grammarian. That's full of great stories as well about, she basically set up a table in every state of the union and said, ask your grammar questions. She got a lot of wonderful stories about the kinds of grammar questions people have throughout the country, so that's really interesting read.
Elana:
And that's a beautiful way to create content, too. Very smart. Well, thank you so much, Annie, for coming on the show. I have taken notes and said, wow, I didn't know this or I knew it but it helped affirm what we're doing, too. So I hope you readers that are, I keep calling you readers for some reason because we're all talking about the language here, the written language. But I hope all of you that are listening, or reading the show notes in particular, walk away with one or two things that can help you say, am I creating value when I create content? How do I measure the ROI of the content? How do I make it as efficient as possible when I'm creating content? And if you even just say, how do I create value and walk away by creating content? That is just a beautiful epiphany in itself.
So I thank you for listening to both of us. Annie, I thank you for sharing your decades of wisdom and the space with us. For those of you, we were mentioning show notes throughout, you can access this episode's show notes at leoniconsultinggroup.com/34, so tons of great resources. I feel like the show notes are a way to put these things into action. So we will be providing you resources that you can start perusing and just leveling up your content marketing game. We will see you all next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care everyone.
[End of recorded material 00:56:28]
Elana Leoni, Host
Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation, where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.
Annie Teich, Guest
Annie Galvin Teich, President of The Teich Group, is an EdTech industry expert in content marketing strategy, content creation, and copywriting. She is a regular contributor to Tech & Learning and Fierce Education. Annie focuses primarily on the needs of K-12 and higher ed administrators and decision-makers. In her work with EdTech companies, she writes compelling short- and long-form content that supports client business strategies.
About All Things Marketing and Education
What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase brand awareness, engagement, and revenue.
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