Market Insights

Using Social Media to Drive Results: Lessons Learned From One Education Marketer

— Friday, August 12, 2011

When it comes to social media marketing, taking the first step can be overwhelming with so many platforms and tools to choose from. You know you need to “test and learn,” but where do you start? Read on to hear how one successful education company is incorporating social media into its marketing and how it is measuring results and lessons learned in the process.

Learning.com is a provider of web-delivered curriculum and assessment. In 2010, Paul Herman, VP Marketing & Solutions Management, decided to make social media an important part of the marketing mix. The company has learned a lot about K-12 social marketing along the way by measuring campaign results.

Herman says that an honest and open conversation between companies and customers is the currency of social marketing. He described three characteristics that make social marketing conversations unique:

  • They are person-to-person, using normal language rather than corporate speak.
  • Social conversations are true exchanges, designed not to sell goods but to enable people with different views to learn from one another.
  • Social conversations are permission-based; people can disengage and engage as they want, with multiple conversations going on all at the same time.

First a reorganization of marketing roles…and then small steps to see what works

How can traditionally structured businesses participate in today’s conversations? After doing his homework, Herman decided to restructure Learning.com’s marketing for the 21st century by regrouping staff into teams around today’s three types of media:

  • Paid media – Covering marketing like print, ads, direct mail, and trade shows. Learning.com pays for these campaigns to turn strangers into acquaintances and acquaintances into customers.
  • Owned media – Handling customer-facing marketing properties that the company owns and controls, such as its website, email, social networks and communities, and webinars.
  • Earned media – Responsible for contributing to online conversations in blogs and online communities and PR efforts with newspapers, specialty newsletters and magazines, YouTube, forums, and similar marketing efforts for making customers into advocates. Herman says “a major part of the earned media’s role is to amplify the voice of customers and be sure the company is doing everything it can to foster the development of customers into advocates.”

So where did Learning.com’s earned media efforts begin? Its social marketing began small to build on what was learned. The team started by focusing efforts where conversations were already happening—in social and professional networks as well as blogs and microblogs.

Learning.com’s marketing team paid special attention to social opportunities that enabled them to connect directly with educators, like the Educator’s PLN, Classroom 2.0, and WeAreTeachers. Why did the company get involved in these sites when it already had its own professional community on its platform? Quite simply, the company saw on these sites as dynamic groups of teachers engaged in the types of conversations they wanted to be part of—so it was the easiest, fastest way to jump into the conversation.

Taking another step into the social marketing waters and looking at the results

Working with WeAreTeachers, the Learning.com team expanded the conversation with a Teacher Grant Program. The contest included five prizes, gave teachers one month to apply and two weeks to vote, and offered participants who opted into the program a Learning.com special offer. Here are the campaign metrics they monitored:

Applications: They received 671—almost three times what they had expected!

Votes: They counted a remarkable 20,000, way beyond their goal of 700.

Opt-in rates: 11% of the teachers who participated also opted-in to get more information from Learning.com, meaning the cost of the contest turned out to be on the low end of the company’s cost-per-lead spectrum.

Web traffic: It skyrocketed at Learning.com’s WeAreTeachers page—with 36,000 unique visitors and 93,000 page views resulting from the campaign—including many teachers who didn’t know anything about the company before the contest.

The results clearly indicated that the WeAreTeachers contest was successful. But did the contest lead to the kind of conversations Learning.com wanted to have? Herman said, “Our engagement in this social contest epitomizes the give-and-take—the sharing of ideas to receive honest opinions of them. That defines the exact type of social media conversations we are striving for.”

Using what is working in K-12 social marketing to build your own programs…an expert’s perspective

Sandy Fivecoat , Founder of the WeAreTeachers online community for educators, says that marketers across industries are ramping up their social marketing and that the time is ripe for getting in the game. Fivecoat points out that getting into social marketing at this point means you have the benefit of learning from other K-12 companies’ successes and failures. Learning.com’s social program probably worked so well because the company created it after researching what others had done in the market.

Fivecoat offers a few tips about what is working in K-12 social marketing:

  • Think viral – Offers or calls-to-action that are valuable to your target audience can make your email campaigns viral. Email campaigns augmented with social programs are especially viral.
  • Use video – Video is extremely desirable content; however, sometimes it is hard to get from participants. She suggests interviews of contest winners or demos by teachers showing how they use a product in their classes. Another idea is providing contest finalists a camera that they can keep in exchange for creating a video of their submission.
  • Appeal to both the emotional and intellectual sides of people when creating social programs. She refers to them as “Heart and Head” programs and has found that combining both elements leads to more viral results. Any social program can find ways to do this, with those around the arts or special needs students being some of the most natural for making the critical heart/head connection.
  • Free works – If you can build your social program around something free, it generally will trigger positive emotions with educators and lead to higher participation rates.

Get better results this school year with an integrated marketing plan that includes social media

“Social marketing will expand on your existing traditional marketing programs in powerful ways—giving you direct access to your customers and allowing you to engage proactively with them, while generating leads all at the same time,” sums up Fivecoat. “That is why it is important to develop a social strategy that is coordinated with your company’s brand marketing and direct/web marketing so that each marketing channel works in concert for improved results across the board.”

If you have not already done so, now is the time to integrate social media into your marketing programs as you plan your campaigns for the upcoming school year.

Want to share your lessons learned with social media? Please share on our blog, MDR Forum.

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This article is based on content presented at MDR’s June 2011 webinar entitled “ Using Social Media Marketing to Drive Results.” The one-hour online event features two successful K-12 social media marketers: Sandy Fivecoat, Founder of WeAreTeachersand Paul Herman, VP Marketing & Solutions Management, Learning.com. The webinar features an update on social media trends, as well as a case study showing how a K-12 organization is leveraging social media, measuring campaign results, and the lessons they have learned from their social marketing efforts. It is part of MDR’s library of free marketing webinars and is available on demand for viewing at any time.