After I started The EdTech Startup Show podcast, it had an unintended result:

People reach out to me often about the launch of their new EdTech product.

I'm grateful because it's awesome to learn about new tools and get inspired by the work smart people are doing to solve difficult problems in education.

A related benefit is that certain patterns emerge, which can then become the fodder for this daily newsletter. These patterns reveal common mistakes education entrepreneurs make in their marketing, which can you can use to evaluate your marketing and potentially identify and correct some of these same oversights.

These mistakes are important because they cause educators, parents, and professionals to sub-consciously "tune out" when consuming your PDF / slide deck / website / etc.

Without further ado, these are the three mistakes I see most often:

1) Leading with your product - This seem obvious, but it is surprisingly common. A website, email, or slide deck will dive directly into the name of the product and what it can do.

A simple fix? Pretend that you are on a date. Show interest in the other person. The word "you" needs to come up a lot. You need to empathize with the experiences of this educator, parent, or upskiller.

And guess what - you can be funny, entertaining, surprising, or absurd, too.

Goal number one is to get attention. Goal number two is to keep it, so you can form a connection. Talking about yourself usually cancels both of those.

2) Highlighting your technical specs - Unsurprisingly, this is most common by technical founders or people who have already had initial success getting their product out there without doing lots of direct marketing.

This trend is seen most often today with "AI" "Blockchain" or "No code" startups. A small sliver of tech nerds care about the underlying technology of your product.

The rest only care about how you can solve the problem in their school, family, or career.

A simple fix? This is actually the same fix. Stop talking about what your product does and instead talk about who it helps and how it causes change in their lives.

3) Sharing "non content" just for the sake of publishing it - I initially wrote the subject line "3 mistakes..." and then realized I only had two to share.

Then, like Archimedes running naked in the street, I said "Eurkea - this is the third mistake!"

It's incredibly often that companies share posts, emails, articles, etc filled with more information about them and their product. In some cases, especially for companies just starting out, these may not need to be published at all. This happens on social media, too.

Here's the good news.

If you want to make those changes to your marketing based on real feedback from your users (or potential users), my Lunch Time Files book includes detailed information on how to connect with educators as well as a set of questions you can ask them to un-earth massively useful insights.

Those curious to learn more can go here:

http://gum.co/LunchTime

Thanks for reading,

Gerard Dawson