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EdTech Startup: An excellent sales & marketing guide

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ARTICLE: Sales & Marketing

EdTech Startup

AN EXCELLENT
SALES & MARKETING
GUIDE

Author:
SUDHANSHU KUMAR
MS, PMP®, PMI-APL, BAPM
EdTech Startup: An excellent sales & marketing guide

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush - Merriam-Webster”

1. Dream Team for Sales and Marketing: Getting first 1 million free users and first 1000
paid users within a year.

 Marketing team - In an ideal world, the ideal marketing team would comprise
highly distinct archetypes that reflect the soft and hard talents required for
success. Individuals or a single person who exemplifies all of them at the same
time might be used.
A perfect marketing team structure for a fledgling startup firm may combine many
responsibilities into one, requiring team members to wear multiple hats. We can
have a fractional CMO who is immersed in project work, SEO, and a variety of
other areas, delegating where possible. We can have a marketing manager who
works with a C-level executive, such as the CEO, who is responsible for much of
the marketing strategy, or a VP of Marketing who collaborates with other
executives. Our team, then, could be made up of general marketing workers who
work on a range of non-specialized activities, with contractors and agencies when
needed, or fractional marketing teams.
 In general, we need a team in which we can distribute works based on talent or
skills. We do not need a huge team but a small team with skills individuals. Key
team members required for marketing are shown in the picture below:

Maketing leadership

Editorial Director Aquisition Directors

Lead Generation
Content Manager Creative Manager Analytics Manager
Manager

Front end Conversion rate opt.

Blog Writer/Media Email Specialist/Paid
Developer/Brand specialist/Data
Editor/Social Media Ads specialist/SEO
Strategist/Graphic Analyst/(A/B) testing
Manager specialist
Designer specialist

 Sales Team - Sales has traditionally been an intuition-driven profession. Today’s

businesses need to make sales decisions in response to market changes,

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EdTech Startup: An excellent sales & marketing guide

competitor activity, customer preferences, and company-wide campaigns. Plus, as

the cost of acquiring new customers and users continues to rise, sales teams need
to focus on targeted efforts to preserve resources. For this we need to start
compiling our data-driven sales strategy and extremely high motivation.
 A sales team that relies on data observes a handful of distinct practices such as:
a. They align on goals and mission statements.
b. They build and follow a sales process.
c. They use existing data to inform strategy.
d. They work with a CRM — and they make data accessible.
e. They track all prospect interactions to learn what works and what doesn’t.
f. They only engage with leads and prospects that fit certain criteria.
g. They communicate about best practices and approaches that don’t work.
 Just creating good business strategy or having a skilled sales team is not enough.
With the high-end sales team tools, a startup can not only increase their sales but
also improve internal team collaboration for offering better services to the users
which in turn will increases users exponentially.
2. Strategies to expand the top of the funnel fast using 3 growth hacks:
Usually in growth hacking, there are five funnel stages - acquisition, activation, retention,
revenue, and referral. Here we need to expand the top of the funnel fast, so we’ll focus
on acquisition because if you don't get paying customers quickly, you won't make a profit.
For the startup to scale, you must come up with a strategy to retain your new customers
that’s where the first strategy which is inbound marketing comes in to help.
 Inbound marketing is a strategy which uses highly valuable and informative
content to attract users and convert them into paying users. It also focuses on
delighting the existing customers so that they not only stay and become loyal to
the startup but also transform them into the brand ambassadors. Inbound
marketing encourages paid users to stay and invite others to join them.
 Swarmer campaigning is one of the best growth hacks for attracting users for your
startup in which every user who views a website will become a long-time or paying
user. One of the most famous examples of a company that really owned this stage
was Facebook. After you sign up, the first thing they asked (and continue to ask)
was if you wanted to invite your friends. The thought process behind this is two-
fold:
i. First, the product works much better if you have contacts onboard.
ii. It allowed the startup company to grow their user base quickly and
inexpensively.
Another classic example is Dropbox, instead of expanding to a platform to find the
most interested users, Dropbox created a platform of interested users for them
by giving people free storage to recommend Dropbox to their friends.
 Exploring all the possible channels and providing referrals is one of the fastest
ways to exponentially increase your startup customer acquisition. This is what led
Airbnb to develop what is one of the most popular growth hack success stories.

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EdTech Startup: An excellent sales & marketing guide

When Airbnb’s founders were exploring ways to get more bookings to their then
small list of properties, they asked themselves one question: “Where will I go to
look for rental properties if there was no Airbnb?”
Their quest to find the answer to this question led them to Craigslist. And the rest
was history.

That’s why every startup company should follow the formula for growth hacking
rigorously, which is: Product + Growth = Impact.
3. Leak proof funnel:
 Strategies to convert a top-of-the-funnel user to a paid user through marketing
and sales efforts. Also, the stages of the funnel and ownership of each stage (sales
or marketing):
Usually for startups, you need to nurture your users before you sell them your
products. As a marketer, you must understand their behaviors, their personalities,
and their needs to convert them into paying users. For that, rather than using a
straightforward sales funnel strategy, you need a more flexible conversion-based
funnel, which will look something like this:

There are 8 main steps involved in creating a successful conversion funnel:

i. Determine Your Ideal User Journey and Map It Out as a Funnel - To increase
your conversions, you must first identify your starting point and your end
goal. In other words, you must identify three things:
1. What your typical user’s journey looks like right now.
2. What your end goal is, or what action you want a prospect to take.
3. How you can improve your existing user’s journey to increase the
likelihood of leads becoming paying users.
ii. Set Goals for Each Stage in Your Funnel - Decide what you want from each
stage of the funnel. Here we want to increase our traffic at the top of the
funnel, boost our engagement rate in the middle, and increase our
conversions at the end.

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EdTech Startup: An excellent sales & marketing guide

Once you’ve set some concrete goals, consider using tools to track your
progress and ensure you’re meeting those objectives. For example, you
might use Google Analytics or email automation software to measure your
success rates.
Unless you’re clear on what you need from each stage in your funnel, it’s
impossible to know if you’re meeting your targets. Spend some time
reflecting on your overall goal before you build a conversion funnel.
iii. Make a Content Plan for Each Stage in the Funnel - Each part of the funnel
requires its own marketing plan to keep prospects moving from one stage
to the next.
Top - Try to generate some buzz and encourage prospects to learn more
about your company and how your products can help them. At this early
stage, use visually engaging content such as videos, short blog posts, and
social media posts to introduce your company and emphasize your brand
story.
Middle - Make yourself the most compelling option to gain user's trust and
show them why they need your product. A prospect could ultimately be in
this stage for a while, so the focus should be on creating valuable,
informative, and reliable content such as case studies, video tutorials, and
downloads.
Bottom - Give your prospects a reason to buy your product, sign up for
your service, or take any other action you desire. Marketing strategies at
this stage could include free trials, actionable emails, and CTAs, or calls to
action.
iv. Implement Strategies and Create Content to Generate Awareness - Here
are some examples of ways you might generate awareness and create
appropriate content for the first stage of a conversion funnel.
1. Consider using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads to increase traffic in the first
instance.
2. Optimize your content for SEO so it ranks high in the search engine
results. This way, people are more likely to find your company
online.
3. Get on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and
Instagram. Post regularly and interact with followers to build some
engagement.
4. Set up a referral program to reward people for recommending your
products and services to their social network.
v. Generate Interest and Desire - Generating interest, or building desire,
comes down to one key thing: creating compelling content. Here are some
ideas:
1. Craft authoritative blog posts to educate your users. If a user finds
your content valuable, they’re more likely to trust you enough to
spend money on your products.

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EdTech Startup: An excellent sales & marketing guide

2. Show your product in action by creating a YouTube video. Video

content helps people visualize how the product could benefit them,
which in turn makes them feel like they “need” the item.
3. If your startup has a prospect’s contact details, send them curated
email content such as roundups of your top blog posts, customer
testimonials, or hints and tips that could benefit your users.
vi. Encourage Users to Act - At the end of the funnel, our goal is to convert a
user into a paid user and that we can achieve by encouraging users to take
a required action. Here are some ways you might optimize your strategy
for this stage.
1. Add a Call to Action (CTA) to Relevant Resources.
2. Send Actionable Emails.
3. Incorporate Customer Testimonials.
Finally, you might offer other incentives like free trials, competitor
comparison guides, demo videos, and product samples to nurture users
into becoming paying users.
vii. Grow Users - There are a few strategies you can try for rowing the user
base:
1. Cross-sell - say someone buys a laptop from your website. As part
of your sales funnel, you might also recommend a charger or laptop
case to go along with their purchase.
2. Upsell - if someone selects a free subscription to your service, you
might highlight the cheapest paid subscription option to them.
When you’re upselling, it’s helpful to compare products or services
side-by-side.
Just remember, though, to avoid being always too pushy when
you’re upselling.
3. Sending out discounts to loyal customers.
4. Personalizing your marketing emails.
5. Issuing more voucher codes
viii. Address Funnel Problems - if your funnel is underperforming, it could be
due to common errors such as:
1. Leaving out a strong CTA.
2. Forgetting to start with a clear brand message.
3. Using too many steps in your funnel.
4. Misreading your funnel analytics data.
5. Failing to follow up with leads.
4. Market presence:
 Platform specific growth & engagement strategies for: Facebook, Instagram,
LinkedIn, YouTube & Quora.
The platform specific growth and engagement on social media can be achieved by
Social Media Marketing. There are five main pillars for Social Media Marketing:

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EdTech Startup: An excellent sales & marketing guide

i. Strategy - A good social media marketing strategy has clear goals, specific
plans to reach those goals, and must be measurable. For instance, create
valuable content, drive engagement, and increase conversions.
Finally, you need to set benchmarks to see how things are going and
whether you need to change your approach.
ii. Planning and Publish - While planning content make sure that you:
1. Know your audience: You need to know the demographic of your
users to connect with them.
2. Focus on quantity: For startups, you need to setup a huge quantity
of information for the authenticity.
3. Focus on quality: The quality of content is just as important as the
quantity.
4. Consider your brand: Keeping in line with your brand values is
crucial.
5. When it comes to publishing, there is one golden rule: Consistency.
A regular publishing schedule keeps people coming back for more.
iii. Listening and Engagement - It’s also worth mentioning that social listening
isn’t just about user experience. It can allow you to:
1. Pick up on new trends.
2. Identify new streams of income.
3. Gain industry insights.
4. Find influencers in your niche.
iv. Analytics - Analytics will inform the decisions that you make for future
campaigns and highly influence the success rate. Producing high-quality
content that your audience isn’t interested in will mean that engagement
levels tank. You need to work on making sure your posts appear in people’s
feeds before you start feeding through those insightful industry blogs.
v. Advertising - The three main types of social media advertising are:
1. Organic: Content that picks up views naturally and you don’t pay
for.
2. Paid: Content that an organization sponsors and therefore costs
money to post.
3. Earned: Content that has been given freely in the form of shares,
likes, and comments.
There are several ways you can advertise on social media. For example,
you can:
1. Create content: This includes posts and videos.
2. Promote content: Create posts that are promoted/sponsored.
3. Engage with people: Get active in groups related to your industry,
interact with influencers in your industry, etc.
4. Grow a following: Get people in your industry to follow your brand
by creating and sharing content that appeals to them.
5. Get downloads: Offer PDFs, white papers, PowerPoints, videos,
podcasts, etc. on your social channels and profiles.

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EdTech Startup: An excellent sales & marketing guide

Additionally, if you aim to enhance your brand recognition, build loyalty,

and increase conversion rates, advertising could be the way to go.
Aside from these main pillars, you should also:
1. Ensure you focus your content on a specific niche or demographic.
2. Build quality connections with influencers, brands, and customers
you can build relationships with.
3. Add value with your content and comments.
5. Marketing plan and estimation: The marketing budget for a 10,000- attendees virtual
event for study abroad aspirants.
 The main purpose of a marketing plan is to estimate event budget which should
not be solely to keep tabs on spending. Rather, the purpose should be guiding the
organizer/manager to properly allocate funds to the most valuable event
elements.
 Data from a successful past event can be great indicators of what has worked, and
what didn't. It can allow planners to make tough decisions when it comes to virtual
event budget. From the number of registrants attending each session and how
long they viewed them, to how many attendees clicked on each sponsor page,
planners will be having access to so much insight for budgeting an event. Some of
these analytics are accessible instantly allowing planners to respond to the data
and findings efficiently.
 Every piece of information relevant to a particular budget item should be included
in the “description” section within the marketing budget plan.
 Communicate key budget information with the team members who oversee
financial oversight of the event.
 Understand your audience and what will resonate with them.
 Properly allocate your spending budget, by keeping awareness of trends and
understanding which are the best investments for the virtual event overall.
 Providing the virtual event’s ROI (Rate of Interest) is critical. Having a well-
integrated event technology stack can make providing ROI simpler and less painful.
Here are some of the virtual event expenses to consider when building out a
virtual event for 10,000 attendees:
a. Event Success Platform - An event success platform that fits your event
goals will likely be the best investment you can make with your event
budget. Your event success platform equates to your virtual venue. The
amount of streamlining and insights that you will gain from the event will
help you to make decisions for not just one event, but for all future events.
From event registration to contact management, choosing the right event
management software will be a foundational piece to virtual event
planning and attendee experience.
b. Integration - For integration, we could use something like an open API
(where a tech team connects two solutions together), Webhooks (a similar
process), or an integration platform as a service (like Zapier or MuleSoft).

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EdTech Startup: An excellent sales & marketing guide

c. Virtual Event Production - We need to understand the needs of the virtual

event, what is included from our production team, and budget accordingly
for studios, virtual presenter kits, and beyond. Virtual event production
can range from a simple live stream directly using laptops/phones, to a full
studio recording experience.
 Now we’ll see the key elements of a virtual event marketing budget which is
shown in the table below in which you can find a simple event budgeting template
for 10,000 attendees that provide an overview of the main expenses for study
abroad aspirants.
Category Description Contact Estimated Actual Cost
Cost/Hr.
(Variables)
Onsite
Venue Online Link Organizer team 100-1000
Event Staffing All Team HR team 40,000-80,000
Speakers 1 speaker panel Presenter 50,000-1,00,000
Promotional
Paid Search Google, LinkedIn Key word 1000-6000
or, AdWords Consultant
PR 3rd Party Agency PR agency team 2000-15,000

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EdTech Startup: An excellent sales & marketing guide

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