Founder of Coursensu - the learning design platform, Matt Jenner shares his experience of attending Turing Fest 2024 and what he learned to further grow his EdTech startup.
As an Education Technology (EdTech) founder I’m acutely aware of the importance of learning as I build my business. But I’m not unique: all founders are learning and most businesses prioritise the value of learning. More often than not, I am driven by the stories shared from experienced others, those who have traversed the problem and shared their story.
With that in mind, this week I attended Turing Fest, an opportunity to network with, and learn from, many experts in the field of growing, building, and leading, transformative businesses. The overall theme of the event, for me, was visibility.
This can be broken down into four areas, all linked to the marketing and promotion of your business, and how you communicate its vision and solution with your audience:
- Brand - the authentic, story-rich, realistic exposition of you and your product/services
- Communication - the language you use, how it is heard, how it is repeated by others
- Positioning - how to focus, evangelise problems and show you are the solution
- Discovery - where, and how, you will be found is changing. Web search is struggling.
A reminder…
Firstly, founders are new to this. Breaking space for yourself and developing skills, knowledge and behaviours. You can consume ‘playbooks’, reflect and plan but it is hard to measure, identify blindspots and prioritise correctly. So recognise the journey (but keep at it).
That said, some things are obvious - once you hear it. Andy Budd, The Growth Equation author, states, you’ll ‘feel stupid’ as you learn. Perfect. It means it’s obvious, actionable and will improve your business. Get comfortable with the feeling but remind yourself, no-one is stupid, just learning. Discomfort is a byproduct, not the outcome.
Brand
Brand stood out many times, ahead of anything you can pin a metric to. A lot of brand development is a lagging indicator, which means results are indirect or slow. You can consider your brand strength by thinking of the platforms you’re visible on, the stories you tell and how they help others towards trusting you. Don’t focus just on data like click-through rates (this is a diminishing metric) but instead live your actual values. Make and share opinions and stories. Make them original, purposeful and aligned with your audience. They’ll engage with this, and therefore you.
One thing to try...
Write a short, medium and long version for your purpose or the problems you solve. Try to visualise each story as a drawing/image. What stands out? What’s missing? Petra Wille would advise you to nail this.
Comms
Consider your audience, what problem you solve and how you connect these two aspects. Focus less on what you offer, how great your product could be, or what’s possible in the future. Bring people together and align on the current, most painful, problem - that you (and only you) can fix.
Bethan Vincent helped me think through how I communicate the value of my business and shared that the traditional playbooks are not working. GenAI is changing the landscape of content, search and what people value. Emma Stratton doubled down on this with the message that you need to have ‘BBQ friendly’ ways to talk about your product. This ensures you skip the nonsense language (which never worked) and go directly to how you remove blockers and solve problems.
One thing you can try ...
Take some of your marketing content and ask yourself if you’d say it at a BBQ? It’s summer (apparently) - so go to an actual BBQ and give someone your website H1/H2 headlines. Do they synergise your transformative potential? Of course not. Rewrite it.
Positioning
April Dunford’s message is to be the ‘low risk choice’. Why? Because low risk means you’re not pushing anyone outside of their comfort zone. Starting as a single solution means you can work closely with expectations, show value quickly and build a relationship. This retains a partnership where everyone is focused on solving a problem.
Equally your brand is for now, and the future. Start small, and focused, as recommended by April, but have a plan for growing over time. April’s message is simple - you need to know your positioning and start with a clear focus for an initial audience. Then you explore where, and how, to expand. This may seem simple but it’ll become your entire marketing strategy.
One thing you can try...
Write down what the low risk option is for your ideal customer and add what value you can add over time (3,6, 12 months, maybe longer). Consider if this changes per customer segment.
Discovery
It seems that most marketing playbooks might be relics. What does this mean? Your brand can’t lead with GenAI content; you need to find, then tell, authentic stories. This builds trust which is integral and makes a clearer proposition. You can still use GenAI for broadening reach (such as test and validate copy). GenAI is also capable of supporting tasks that scale (FAQs, provide support, manage workflows) but it’s NOT OK for the core story - who you are, what you offer, the value you create - to be generated by AI.
Tom Anthony started what Rand Fishkin concluded: Google’s search dominance is over. Their 25 year old product will struggle in the future. Web search has flaws; it can’t search apps, messages, social media or AI models with success. Web search is fading as on-device search grows. Search your phone and you’ll see results beyond the web. Founders can prepare for this, embrace other channels and remain visible.
Another aspect is how platforms are moats. Social content with links is algorithmically shunned. Social networks reduce impressions of linked content because it sends users away! This is why people ‘link in the comments’, or add no link. Your brand is like a billboard; immeasurable but invaluable.
One thing you can try...
Spot direct traffic in analytics data - how much traffic comes in as ‘Direct’? This includes social media which omits a referrer. Measure it as a candidate metric for your brand visibility.
To wrap - be visible, be authentic, be patient
Developing a great company isn’t easy or fast. You’ll need to be patient while things grow. You’ll make mistakes, so be patient and consider yourself, your business and your customers as learners, all wanting to be better.
I also want to thank Techscaler for the opportunity to attend Turing Fest. As a Spring ‘24 Startup Next Steps and a Winter ‘23 Startup First Steps alumni,I have had over half a year so far of support from this amazing organisation. They offer me a community, learning experiences, events and mentorship to support the growth of my business. Anyone in the position of planning, or building, a tech business in Scotland should check them out and apply for membership.
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