By Lauren Wakeling, UK Country Manager at CoursesOnline
In an industry that’s filled with providers, carving out a niche for a business in the education technology sector can be a real challenge. However, by adopting new ways of operating and paying close attention to one’s audience, there’s a lot of opportunity to be had, considering how many people are always seeking to enhance their knowledge and career prospects.
Getting the right people in place
As of late 2020, we took the decision to expand our digital marketing team to include dedicated team members who had experience in the digital PR field. Through their content campaigns and uncovering opportunities for us to provide expert commentary on topics related to our expertise, we have been able to reach thousands of potential customers who we may have otherwise missed. This approach enables us to promote the CoursesOnline brand all across the internet, from major newspapers to trade publications to personal blogs – anywhere we can engage with people who have a desire to upskill.
Our work in this regard also enables us to acquire backlinks to our website, which of course, is a major factor in determining how well our website is ranked by Google’s algorithms and subsequently affects the level of organic traffic that we can attract. By acquiring a good number of high quality links, we have pushed our website past that of many of our rivals who have neglected this key aspect of search engine optimisation and our results display above theirs for many keywords and phrases that our audience is searching for. Whilst it took some time to see our investment in this field pay off, it now is a major contributor to our year on year growth.
Having a well developed keyword strategy
Successful brands stay up to date with SEO guidelines and develop a keyword strategy which ensures that content is optimised but also entirely unique and user friendly. This delicate balance between creating keyword optimised, unique and user friendly content is a challenge for many brands, as there is a tendency to value keywords above all else due to the ability to visibly see the impact that they have on rankings. Although readability can be monitored, the experience of the reader is a difficult aspect to monitor purely through numbers. Therefore, finding a voice for one’s brand and ensuring that all content is well-written, unique and keyword optimised is key to positively standing out in this sector.
Catering articles to specific audiences
Writing engaging blog articles is a great way to keep people coming back to a website, engage new readers and stand out from the crowd. Far too often, businesses either seek to create such general blogs that most readers won’t get much out of them, or specific blogs that appeal to a niche audience who are unlikely to come across the blog article unless directly notified. Because of this, a lot of companies fail to see the value in producing good quality blog articles that handle topics that people are searching for, instead caught up in solely writing for the sake of keywords or having an up to date blog.
At CoursesOnline, we cater our blog articles to particular readers depending on where they are on their educational and career journey. Each of our article briefs includes a ‘persona’ that our writers are targeting, and the stage that the readers are likely to be at, for example an ‘Ambitious Upskiller’ might be seeking an article to help him advance his qualifications for a specific career, where as a ‘Professional Learner’ might seek courses that help them to stay on top of recent developments within their industry. This ensures that we are always producing blog content for our wide variety of users, helping them to find the information they need.
Standing out in the ed-tech sector can be challenging, as the market is full of other brands looking to do the same. However, through investing in people who have experience in developing brands, developing an up-to-date keyword strategy and ensuring that all content is useful, natural and uniquely represents the brand, businesses can stand out as a top competitor in the ed-tech sector.
