SAM Labs: Why Did You Become an Educator?
Summary:
This was a campaign, in the most limited sense of the word, I ran at SAM Labs. The campaign was two cycles.
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First - highlighting why educators became educators in the first place and appreciating them for that.
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Second - riffing on why, why teach computer science/STEM/STEAM.
Some additional context to set the scene, from Evangelizing the Problem:
Unable to win with brand, distribution, evidence, product differentiation, cash, etc. - I chose to evangelize the problem and create a unique POV. We began by championing of the problem our customers face, fabricating differentiation, trust, and domain expertise.
The idea stemmed from an insight I gathered during customer research when I first stepped into role. One of the core motivations most humans have is the desire to be respected. I found this motivation was amplified in educators, in my mind justifiably so.
Many educators are cogs in the big public education machine (at least in the US). They rarely have a voice in educational decisions, much less autonomy in their jobs. They operate under the multi-layered bureaucracy of parents, school district administration, local government, state government, and federal government.
Many educators are highly educated themselves, not paid well, perform physically and mentally challenging work, and ultimately have one of the most important functions in our society - educating youth and preparing them to enter the world. A world that we don't and can't know, because it's yet to be created.
This campaign was meant to hit on that basic request, to feel respected, heard, and appreciated. And it was fun to do.
Cycle 1: Why did you become an educator?
We collected the answer from a bunch of our customers, some non-customers, and from industry partners or SAM Labs teammates who spent time in the classroom. In the 2 weeks before teacher appreciation week (the super bowl for edtech companies with social media accounts) we posted their answers on social channels, tagging the individual in each post. We compiled one big batch to send in our newsletter. We pulled the crème de la crème as testimonials/quotes to be used on the website, future emails, in decks, etc.
Then we had every SAM Labs employee record a short video thanking one teacher from their past, who had an outsized impact on their life. These were posted on social channels and again, aggregated in one email during teacher appreciation week. If I had to do it again, I would have fired all of them the week before and left the other edtech marketers looking tacky and tardy.
The purpose of this was to help educators remember and get back to why they became an educator. Conveniently, this was a great opportunity to highlight our prepackaged lesson plans that came with every subscription purchase. None of the educators became an educator to create lesson plans from scratch or spend hours aligning activities to standards. I called this out along the way, phrased as an FYI.
Following this campaign, the phrase - why you became an educator was an integral component of our messaging.
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'Helping you remember why you decided to become an educator'
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'If you're like customer reference XYZ, that's why you became an educator in the first place'
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'Did you become an educator so that you could spend hours aligning lessons to standards?'
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etc.
Cycle 2: Why is CS/STEM/STEAM Important?
I continued the conversation, roughly as I would have if I was having a 1-1 conversation, by shifting to talking about why CS/STEM/STEAM are important. Crucially, tying these elements back into why folks became an educator.
Most of the educator whys were related to the students or the inverse of doing admin work, which tied in very nicely with our key benefits. So those were a direct line, lay-up type ideas.
The more creative connection that was a persuasion and a leap of logic was tying the core motivations and benefits of being an educator to teaching CS/STEAM/STEM. How I went about this:
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Showing the evidence -
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Research done in the area showing student engagement and outcomes through following our pedagogical approach.
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Our products in action
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The increasing need and opportunity for those skillsets after K-12 education
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Educating the educators -
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Reminding them of things they learned in school that at the time, most folks thought would be a useful skillset, but in hindsight, these were not very useful.
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E.g. my generation spent hours and hours in typing training. What we should/could have been doing was understanding how computers work, accomplishing tasks using computers that required more than learning how to type fast.
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Prior generation, they all learned how to write cursive and were forced to get good at that. Turns out, they should have been learning typing.
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Content Examples
Articles
The Impact/Results
This all occurred in May of 2021, maybe a bit before, and some lingered a bit after. For simplicity, May results - year over year:
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432% growth in organic search impressions - 97% were branded
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184% growth in organic search clicks - 92% were branded
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341% growth in organic social impressions
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212% growth in website traffic
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105% growth in time per session
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4% growth in session to lead conversion rate
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532% growth in new contacts (aka leads)
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224% revenue YoY growth in May, June, and July.
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