Building a Social Media Funnel for EdTech Business Growth

Let’s understand how to build an EdTech brand with Social Media Marketing.

We will be building a hypothetical data science academy called Datagrade to learn and resonate with the examples and strategies. We will see how we can build full-fledged social media marketing funnels for our audience. So let’s plan the marketing campaign. Our work starts with defining our audience.
3 core components of finding the right audience:

What age group do they belong to?
What are their demographics?
What are their interests?

Once defined, now it’s time to start approaching them via social media platforms and showing up on their social media feed. As Datagrade provides courses on data science, our TG ( Target Group) for social media strategy will be the age group 18- 26 years, engineering students who are interested in coding and data science.

( This is a high-level audience example; much detailed work would be required. Use the make my persona tool from HubSpot to do the detailed work) And our platform of choice is Instagram because Instagram is a social media platform tailor-made for millennials. According to a report, 62.7% of Instagram users fall under 18-34. This is an excellent advantage if your students fall under this age bracket.
The first stage of the funnel is starting with letting our target audience know us i.e. branding on social media.

Why Branding?

Branding is one of the most crucial parts of building recall value. At the top of any social media marketing funnel is generated lead flow. You need a solid brand recall value on social media. Moreover, having a brand recall will help get immediate attention to your ads or content on the social media marketing funnel.

How to do Branding on Social Media?

Before understanding “How”, let’s see the impact of the branding stage of the funnel. When do we look at brands like Apple on social media- What comes to our mind?

Top-notch technology product.
Very expensive.
It will perform better in any task in comparison to other brands.

These unique thoughts generate a greater sense of value and trust, which manipulates user decision-making. Moving back to how to do branding on social media platforms? Now in the digital world, the toughest job is to make people stop at our content and watch. And having great brand awareness solves this major barrier to your social media marketing funnel.
Now to solve that, we have two approaches-

Organic content marketing
Paid brand awareness ads

Let’s Start with Organic Content Marketing on Instagram:

1. Organic Content Marketing:

On Instagram, there are 3 primary types of content:

Long-form videos- IGTV - Now the problem with long-form content is your audience's attention. Fun fact - humans' attention is lower than goldfish. Now this fun fact brings us to why long-form content would cripple, and this basic issue is noticed by Instagram, and thus they no more prioritize IGTV as a great product offering and resulting in low reach.
Image-based content- post and carousal- Instagram started as an image-sharing platform. But today, there are billions of images on this social media platform. Thus getting lost in the Billion is very easy and not highly captive.
Short-form videos- reels- Let’s discuss the new age king in the content marketing funnel, i.e., the short-form video content. This phenomenon was born with the rise of TikTok and adapted by all platforms like - Instagram with reels and YouTube with shorts. The key edge is you don’t have to retain attention for a longer duration and build brand recall with the value of the social media marketing funnel content.

So now we have a winner content format i.e reels. But what is the next stage of the social media marketing funnel? What type of reel should you create?

2. Concept Simplification Reels:

This is the most popular and engaging type of content any EdTech brand can create. This reel is highly engaging and has excellent recall value. Let me explain with an example. Concept simplification reel are reels that solve a complicated problem in less than 60 sec and there are 3 core reasons why it is effective mentioned below.
The core features of these reels on social media platforms are:

Reliability- A complex concept that is causing issues to students as you simplify it for them, they instantly start a comparison between their experience with learning the content and You.
Instant satisfaction- As your video instantly reduces their pain with the concept it gives a great dopamine hit and your TG loves the experience.
High recall value- As you solve a pain the person recalls you and your content as that concept is used in his day-to-day study life.

These are the core reasons why it works. Now are some ideas for our Datagrade Academy for reels that could be

What do data scientists do?
Where is data science applied?
Data science and machine learning
Can data science predict the stock market
How data science can improve business efficiency

All these are examples of concept simplification reels.

Disclaimer : These images are actual ads run by respective companies and are used here for the spirit of education. If you have any queries in this regard, please write to enquiries@teachedison.com

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Here is a real-life example of content created by a scaler that has a similar niche. Now let’s explore the paid brand awareness ads.gdfg

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3. Paid Brand Awareness Ads:

Here is another option to build your brand awareness. You use paid media to promote your brand and create awareness.
This is quite straightforward you pay for attention and that might cost you a lot of money. Moreover, you don’t build a great connection with your audience with just paid brand awareness, which might cost you a lot in the long run.
But yes a MIX can be used. A mix of 80% organic and 20% paid media to boost your reach. Now as we are building traffic toward us now it’s time to direct the traffic toward our funnel. Moreover, as you create a social media marketing strategy you can use that to run retargeting ad campaigns with meta ads as they now support the social media integration with Instagram and Facebook pages to retarget and remarket on the criteria of engagement, visit, post, and much more which will help you build a successful social media marketing funnels. This audience who is engaging with your content on social media is highly likely to become your top-of-funnel audience.

4. Top of the Funnel (TOFU):

This is the top layer of a social media marketing funnel. The core goal of a TOFU is to start the interaction of our audience with our brand and here is how we will build it.We will start with building a classic lead magnet that solves an important problem for our customers.
(Note- Find a common pain among all stages of our target audience.)
There are 4 core stages of a TG in the EdTech scenario :

Most Aware (Cream Audience)- This group of audience who knows exactly their problem and solution and among all solutions you are trustworthy or best value.
Solution Aware- This group of your TG is aware of the solutions and is in the evolution stage looking forward to the best value solution.
Problem Aware- This Group of TG is very well aware of the problem they have and now they are trying to get the solution and learn if the solution will work or not.
Completely unaware- As the tag suggests this group is completely unaware and needs the highest level of learning and awareness to build them sales-worthy.)

Now you need to start thinking of a lead magnet that appetizes all the groups of your TG to build the initial connection from your social media to the initial interaction stage. This is one of the most important parts of the social media marketing funnel for an EdTech brand. Also remember you can't be very generic with your offer here is the game of hook and if it is not great your marketing funnel will fail.

Here are the 3 core components of building a killer lead magnet:

Know and communicate with the audience at different stages. (Use the 4 core stages of the audience mentioned above to define the communication)
Make the problem statement clear and persuasive
Build a solid solution for their pain and pitch

Here is an example of an ad that could be used at top of the funnel.

Disclaimer : These images are actual ads run by respective companies and are used here for the spirit of education. If you have any queries in this regard, please write to enquiries@teachedison.com

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So, the first thing we will do is understand our audience and identify their pain.

So, our TG is 18 to 26 years old who are into engineering or coding, and has an aspiration to get a job in MAANG companies. Now the problem they would face is what exact steps they should do to get placed in MAANG companies.
A step-by-step guide on which they can know which specialization most hiring is done. What they are expected to know. What projects they should have on their resume so one would be the perfect solution for the audience? The above example image is a real-life brand ad example in a similar niche.
Now as soon as we create this lead magnet we can promote it and we have two options to do it.

Attach it to the content and share it organically as a CTA at the end of the content shared. Create dedicated content around the lead magnet; this process can be used to distribute your lead magnet offering to your audience.
Paid website traffic ads- We can create a custom target audience and get insights from your Instagram Insights. Then target demographic and Interests. Then serve our ads with the lead magnet as shown in the given example.

Where do they visit once they interact with our lead magnet?
There are a few strategies you can use to strategize and capture your audience. The most prominent and efficient way is to build a landing page.

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In the above landing page example, we can see how this landing page efficiently complements the lead magnet ad we are running. This perfect match of ad and landing page creates a great user experience where the ad strikes his or her curiosity and the landing page is a chance to pitch the audience to opt-in. Moreover incorporating trackers, much more accurate analytics, smooth payment integration, and a better user experience come into the package.

Now there are multiple ways to build a landing page:

Use Website builders - Easy to use - Wix, Carrd, Squarespace. Need some experience- WordPress, Weebly, Zyro. Advance NO code- Webflow. Custom-coded websites. ( Useful for any small and new startup to start. But taxing on the workflow as multiple subscriptions and apps are required to automate the processes which might result in multiple breakdowns. Also, it’s a very incomplete learning environment flow)

Now you can also redirect the audience to join groups, chatbots optimized dm, community servers, and more but If you ask for recommendations any day a well-optimized landing page would work better. Now we will set some triggers to retarget the audience to the mid of the funnel or drop out who haven’t completed action on top of the funnel. We can customize and assign triggers with a custom action on Facebook pixels. This resource that will help you learn how to set up a Facebook pixel.
Now, these pixels will track assigned actions depending on the insights we will build up lead 🧲 offers to push them to mid of the funnel.
( Note- If not pixels then with forms or organic actions that you can track to create a custom list for reaching out with offers)

5. Mid of the Funnel (MOFU):

Now, this is the part social media marketing funnel where the goal is to make our top-of-the-funnel audience experience our product. As we will design their experience based on the defined actions and insights. Plan freebies at the end of the live event which will give you insight into the audience.
For example - Two freebies are shared by Datagrade one on how to build a data pipeline in Python and get started with the MongoDB database.
Now as they interact with the lead magnet we get insight into what offers to serve them. Let's suppose a lead interacts with a MongoDB freebie and thus we know that he or she is interested in learning MongoDB. So we will serve ads based on their interest 🤔. Example ads from Scaler.

Social Media Funnel Example at Mid of Funnel

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This target audience of scalers knows that today's highest packages and opportunities are available in data science and MongoDB is the language to master but how do they do it?
There comes scaler exactly solving the issue with their free boot camp lead magnet 🧲 as this guy has already interacted in the freebie they know what value will be given and they opt to learn more.
A similar strategy is used when interacting with different lead magnets and freebies.

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6. Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU):

At this part of the social media marketing funnel bottom of the funnel starts as soon as they opt for the mid-funnel offer.

Now the core goal is to find SQL (Sales qualified leads). So once the leads join the boot camps or masterclasses at the end of these live sessions they are pitched from a mastery program. Already Low motivated leads would have dropped until the end. Now those who stayed will be offered a great discount on the mastery program. We create urgency that this exclusive price is only available for ten mins until the live ends.
This strategy will bring in a conversion of 12% to 18%. Now, the visit ratio will be almost 55%+; thus you build a great audience to retarget where they are interested but due to some factors, they didn't opt-in. Now we will retarget them with offers that give them a push to opt-in.

Social Media Marketing Ad at Bootom of the funnel.

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Disclaimer :These images are actual ads run by respective companies and are used here for the spirit of education. If you have any queries in this regard, please write to enquiries@teachedison.com

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Thus the ad copy offers them an opportunity to become great data science experts not by learning and working on dummy datasets but get real-world experience that will make them job-ready. Now once people opt-in for the offer you can plan different upsells but that's a different story on LTV (lifetime value) optimization. Now again people landing on these ads not everyone will buy at once so retargeting will be required.
Retargeting ads example -

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Social Media Marketing funnel Ads for Retargeting at bottom of the funnel

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(Note - As suggested on top of the funnel, pixel action triggers and trackers are required at each and every step of the funnel to retarget. If not pixels then with forms or organic actions that you can track to create a custom list for reaching out with offers)
Now the flow will repeat and consistent clients will rush to you.

But to Execute Everything you need a Great Tech Infrastructure.

Now there are various ways to create a technology infrastructure :

Free tools and resources - If you want to test your courses, teaching style, and customer response only at this phase you should use this workflow. starting with a free website builder like Wix, Carrd, Bitrix24, and more. Free forms like Google forms to track and segment people with it. Then use Zoom or Google meet for teaching. Also, WhatsApp or Discord for the community. Host videos on YouTube. Payment Gateway like- Instamojo, Cashfree, Razorpay, and more.
Paid tools - This is useful when you have done your test run and are now building your MVP to launch the initial product to market. Here we will use the premium version of the website builders - Wix, Webflow, WordPress, Zyro, and many more. Now this will come with integrated forms and the ability to integrate trackers. Then you would need a payment gateway but now it highly depends on what integration they allow. Then you need to host your course on Vimeo or some hosting platform to provide recorded lessons or you would require products like Zoom, Airmeet, and so on to conduct classes live.
Course hosting Platforms- These platforms are workflow optimized for EdTech startups and optimize workflow. Where you get a website builder, CMS system, and content security and integrate your live classes tool with the system. Examples are Kajabi, Teachable, Learnworlds, and many more. This is useful to optimize workflow but not that great to provide a proper learning environment
LMS Solution- This is a very expensive solution where you get a full-fledged LMS or learning management system. This helps to properly create a course learning structure and integrate it with your marketing system. With this system, you need a technical team that builds and maintains your website and an admin team that maintains the LMS system. These are mostly adapted by universities that have a lot of resources to invest in such complex systems.
EdTech Infrastructure Platform- Online learning environment creation tools like EdisonOS blend the perfect learning experience with technology. From a user standpoint- EdisonOS gives full access to your learners to learn at their pace while its monitoring features keep your progress tracked and make your students accountable. Building the process around courses, setup assignments, tracking each student's progress, maintaining an e-com store to sell and collect a payment, building and maintaining schedules, admins, and more. Gives you the freedom to build the all-in-one solution to build, sell, market create a community, and provide certification all in one place for your online academy thus creating the perfect learning environment. More from a technology standpoint- EdisonOS can be used as an out-of-the-box white-labeled solution with no-code customizations. If you know to code, use our APIs/SDKs to develop new apps and custom experiences. If you have a dev team, you can host EdisonOS as a headless backend system to build/extend with your own custom front-end web/mobile applications. All of these are in one place. The world's first online learning environment creation tool.

How to Build a Social Media Marketing Funnel for EdTech Businesses

Key Takeaways

Why Branding?

How to do Branding on Social Media?