• By michelle
• In Copywriting
• Posted Jun 23, 2015

Copywriting Strategies for the Education Industry

Image credit:Pete

Welcome to the next installment in our industry-specific Copywriting Strategies series. In case you missed the first blog on financial planning content, it’s available for you right here.

In this post, we’re revealing what our years of experience have taught us about content marketing for the education industry. Since 2012, our professional copywriting team has crafted blog content, website copy, lead magnets, email marketing, and video scripts for a wide range of educational industries.

From online tutoring to nonprofits who help families lessen the tuition burden, we’ve picked up crucial copywriting strategies that illuminate the benefits available in the educational marketplace.

If you work in this industry, you offer real solutions to parents, students, administrators, and teachers. To ensure your audience gets what they need from your marketing content, follow these guidelines.

Target your audience very well.

Education-centric businesses embody the notion of niche marketing (most of the time). To explain, it’s unlikely that your business caters to every student, teacher, politician, principal, parent, and janitor who works at a school.

Your educational solution is unique, and your audience needs to know that.

Focus your content solely on who will benefit most from it. For example, for our client SeeMyTutor, we’ve written very specific blogs that cover…

Needless to say, topics such as these are written for a clearly defined audience. In doing so, our copywriters helped SeeMyTutor gain more traction and develop a loyal following among people who were invested in individual facets of modern education.

Use statistics and facts to make your point.

Since you’re in education, your audience expects you to teach them something—even if you’re not a teacher in the traditional sense. If the educational marketplace could be classified with an umbrella term, it would fall under information marketing.

Luckily, you can deliver information easily in the form of statistics and other facts that unveil something important or helpful. With resources such as the National Center for Education statistics at your fingertips, there is a wealth of facts you can use to leverage in your content.

For example, 3% of teachers don’t have computer access in their classrooms. This fact could springboard into a blog about how teachers can persuade administrators to provide them with vital tools.

Another report for the National Center for Education focuses on poverty rates among students who attend schools in rural areas. As it turns out, 19% of these students live under the federal poverty guidelines.

With this information, your content could focus on teachers who work in these low-income areas. Try a blog that outlines action steps to give impoverished students more opportunity to gain a leg up.

In this regard, storytelling is a powerful element of your content. 

Use case studies and stories for a more emotional appeal.

Education happens when people relate to the material. This rule applies to marketing content as well. If you want your audience to engage with your website content, blogs, and reports, then it’s imperative to leverage storytelling and case studies that showcase a person’s struggles and solutions.

Try a case study that reveals how a student went from a 12 ACT score to a 32 using tutoring sessions and study techniques. In this way, you put your audience in a situation where they see solutions at work.

Give real takeaways and advice to leverage your expertise.

If your content gives your audience nothing, you won’t see many conversions, engagement, or growth. Every piece of content you construct must give the audience something to walk away with—whether it’s action steps, a guide, or simple insight.

Since our copywriting team has created such content for years now, we have a few ideas on guides, white papers, blogs, and other pieces that will give your audience tangible advice that they can use.

Feel free to steal these content ideas:

For customized action steps to improve your content and engage your audience, click here to access your personalized website conversion analysis.