Partnerships 1 min read
Rent the audience.
Partnerships are the most underused channel in education marketing. Someone has usually already assembled the audience you are trying to build.
Marketers think we have to win people over one at a time. It is the most inefficient thing we do.
Say you’re a brand-new university and you want students while they’re still considering college. You could build your own SAT prep class, work hard to get students to sign up, then advertise and up-sell them. That’s not a terrible idea.
If someone already owns your target audience, rent theirs.
It becomes a terrible idea the moment you realize you can buy a list of every SAT taker in your target market from The College Board directly.
The same move, three ways
A gifted math program
→
The math olympiads
After-school curriculum
→
The Boys & Girls Clubs
A new degree program
→
The College Board’s test-taker file
You don’t need to start from square one when someone has already assembled your audience.
Building an audience one ad and one customer at a time can work. It is just the slowest version of the plan. Aim bigger.
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