EdTech startup marketing plan with Rebecca Sadwick

so when you're taking those two ideas no that's just part of your you know philosophy and your know-how and strategy for going to market if you look at I know you just to kind of verify you know only work with education companies yeah but you have experience with education and other like finance and other types of startups exactly what what are the conversations like when you're trying to let's say for the sake of our audience here with the education company how do you try to evaluate you know what the product is what their problem they're solving aids and then basically where to go from there to get it to the most people who need it so if there are existing customers we'd like to start with them what made them buy how interested are they in the product how passionately do they still feel about using it and really again what prompted them to buy it what changed for them because we want to go back to the day they decided to buy the product or solve the problem that the products serves so we can replicate that and the other people like that if there isn't existing data on that we'd want to see who is a who design board would be who's best equipped to see the value and deliver the value back so whatever the customers priorities are that's really what we want to speak to the way I often describe this is that there's no shortage of accurate ways to describe your company what we want to do is find what resonates the most and it's the same thing a veto right there's no shortage of accurately to describe yourself but whatever you read with this with a market will think you do so the category put yourself in fundamentally cap some people perceive you and so it's why we would never want to start with an association that doesn't match what we do we want to put ourselves in a category that we can win it dominate and really sort of value and then position around that and that's why the positioning is so core to or marketing strategy and where the target market segmentation comes before that because we want to position around the priorities of our target market as they see them so if our product can do can be described in five ways we internally like way to what the market likes wait for we need to pick with care about because if it's something that seems like a nice to have and maybe they can do it maybe they won't and eventually we get to the thing that care about we should have one with it because even if you eventually get to the thing they care about because we didn't lead with it it still feels secondary and it feels like a an alternative or a bathtub option versus leading with here is what we do it solves our exact problem here's how and why versus kind of dancing around for wavy intended and it's also why we're gonna be really careful about existing market association with certain turns especially if they're going to be part of the name and we would never want to say something like oh it's like a ride-sharing out but it's not at all because it does this this and this the second we say something that has an existing connotation you can't then recreate a category around it and this is actually a really common mistake that category creators make it change the wrong category and then say box or they choose a word that already has existing Association and then try to explain away explain it away you've added friction you've lost momentum we really can't scale a company if it needs an explanation exactly the value should be very clear and we should remember that word of mouth will always be the biggest driver of growth we can never scale a company just by having that direct touch points ourselves it won't be as credible and will be as effective and so if something needs explanation we've already lost so we need to have very clear very compelling positioning as the foundation of that strategy to make sure that it's distributed in ways that people care about yeah I really like the it's kind of elucidating if for me to say you can't choose a term with too much existing connotation or meaning behind it and then try to change it so this wasn't planned for any listeners but I'm just playing the role of trying to make sure I understand everything that you're Rebecca saying so an example of that could be for picky said let's say I had a no curriculum product and I said it's like Common Core but with a lot more creativity that doesn't work because everyone that's common core in their mind as whatever he said it's a literacy product but it does maths right well how does this work then or any especially it's a company name and also how a company has chosen their name tells me a lot about the challenges they may face in their market research so a company name really should be memorable and short and sticky and adaptable and have positive association to the market if anything definitely not negative or confusing and if people name their company because it was their kids mascot or it is their grandma's name or it's their initials a it's probably too long and B doesn't learn anything for market and so people who kind of name their company them centric or probably the kinds of people who won't be listening to market feedback very well will be designing a product around their personal solution and I often say that a little bit of exposure is worse than no exposure because it makes you extrapolate your own experience as the entire market and in education this is even riskier because everyone has an association with education they have a student they were a student their sister's a teacher right and so you can very quickly think that you know how parents think because you're a parent and this is a big risk in education and companies that have been named because of an amazing experience a founder had typically won't be listening to the market research as much and will be designing a product to much with with the internally driven that says yeah this is a really important point when you said that you know education glad to fall actually kind of fortunately in our country for example everyone has a experience often with you know even further at the same similar well what they think is this universal public school experience for example right and then you know forgetting about that we have 50 states with individual Department of Education we have different demographic socio-economic education trends that all coalesce to create these specific problems that need to be solved that are not necessarily just based on yeah you know the the founder or the founders children or even when it's a teacher or administrator but they are specific school were students so especially I have lesser feels if they haven't been back in a school for a while oftentimes high tech founders who aren't personally educators spend a lot more time in schools because they're aware of that weakness former educator sometimes feel like they know schools but if it's been years it's possible as schools don't look anything like the one you were

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Length: 6min 56sec (416 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 07 2020