3 Marketing Strategies for Education Consultants

As an education consultant, you're passionate about helping schools and educators succeed. But if you’re anything like me, you went to school to become a teacher, not an entrepreneur and marketing and business just don’t come naturally to you and you struggle to market your services and products to others. 

Since starting my consulting business, CollaboratEd Consulting, in 2018 I’ve become obsessed with all things digital marketing and have successfully marketed my digital PD courses directly to teachers while also growing my in-person and virtual consulting services with schools and districts. 

In this post I’ll be sharing three essential marketing strategies that every education consultant should implement to attract more clients and elevate their education consultant services. Discover how these strategies can transform your education consultant business, helping you reach more educators and make a lasting impact.

Marketing Strategies for Education Consultants #1: If You Build It, They Will Not Come

Many education consultants believe that simply offering quality education consultant services will bring in clients. However, without effective marketing, your offerings may go unnoticed. It's not enough to just create your business or your digital PD courses, you must actively promote and engage your target audience. 

For traditional education consultants, administrators are the target audience because they are the ones who hire us. You need to go to where your target audience is and tell them about your services. Apply to speak at education leadership conferences, join administrator facebook groups, and network with state agencies to get in the room with administrators.

For education consultants looking to create or scale online teacher professional development courses, your target audience is teachers and you can sell your courses directly to teachers in a sales funnel. Learn what a sales funnel is and how it works to sell teacher professional development in my FREE guide, 10 Strategies for Starting & Scaling Your Digital PD Business. Just because you have a website with your PD courses listed doesn’t mean teachers are going to buy it. You have to market it effectively to them.

Marketing Strategies for Education Consultants #2: People Buy Based on Emotion, Even Teachers

Even in the education sector, purchasing decisions are driven by emotions. As an education consultant, recognizing this can give you a competitive edge. Teachers and administrators respond to emotional triggers such as the desire for student success, the need for professional growth, and the fear of falling behind. So often I see fellow education consultants marketing their services without any emotion. How will it feel when someone solves their problem once they hire you? What will change in their life and how will hiring you make their life better once they hire you?

A great way to do this is to use storytelling in your marketing efforts to connect with your audience on a deeper level. Donald Miller and his Storybrand framework is a great place to start.

If you’re seeking to digital PD products directly to teachers, this step cannot be skipped. You must highlight testimonials and success stories that demonstrate the impact of your PD on teachers' lives. Think about the transformation that your digital PD takes teachers through. For example, I could say my math programs will increase student achievement in your classroom. It’s to the point, however it is void of any emotion. Instead I choose to say that my math programs are the secret training programs helping teachers all over the country increase student engagement and finally love teaching math to students who struggle. That includes much more emotion and relates the transformation back to the teacher themselves.

To learn more about marketing your digital PD effectively, be sure you’ve downloaded my FREE guide, 10 Strategies for Starting & Scaling Your Digital PD Business.

Marketing Strategies for Education Consultants #3: Stop Selling Your Services and Digital PD Programs with Features Only

This is a big one! Many education consultants focus too much on the features of their services, rather than the benefits. However, educators want to know how your education consultant services will solve their problems. At the end of the day, educators are more interested in how your offerings will benefit them, rather than just what they do.

Here’s how many education consultants market their services:

- Professional development

- Instructional Coaching

Those are just features. What is the transformation and what are the benefits? I’ve often heard that you should add the words “so that” after your features to help explain the benefits.

- Professional development so that your math teachers have a proven path to increasing student outcomes

- Instructional coaching so that math teachers have a safe space to ask questions and thought partner around solutions

Education consultants who sell digital teacher professional development need to hear this message loud and clear. Everyday I see another website with digital courses for teachers with sales pages that talk about the principles and strategies they will learn in the course, how many modules are included, and traditional learning objectives. The problem is that that information doesn’t sell. It informs, but it doesn’t sell. This took me a long time to learn and finesse, and it’s something I need to actively work on every time I write my own sales pages. You must focus on the benefits to the teachers.

Instead of saying, “5 modules of content.” Try saying, “5 module of content so you get from ______ to ________ the quickest”

Instead of saying, “You’ll learn general principles about _________.” Try saying, “Learn _______ so that you never have to feel like you’re talking to yourself all period long again.” 

Wrap Up

By implementing these three marketing strategies, you can significantly grow your education consultant business and better serve your clients. Start applying these strategies today to make your education consultant services stand out in a competitive market. 

Subscribe to my email list only for aspiring and current education consultants for more tips on building a successful education consultant business, or download our FREE PDF guide on Starting & Scaling Your Digital PD Business