Vertical Marketing for Education

Positioning your products as solutions for specific industry challenges is a powerful way to win new business. Industry marketing can also be a smart way to allocate your promotional budget because it helps you zero-in on people who are more receptive to your messaging.

“A vertical strategy can open new doors to where there may be less competition.” —Olin Thompson

But to have credibility, you must speak their language and understand both high-level and granular challenges that professionals within the industry deal with each day. “Many industries have their own vocabulary that everyone in the industry uses instinctively.” —Olin Thompson

Take education, for example. Teachers, professors, administrators, and students all have issues to consider depending on whether you’re addressing K-12 grade levels or higher education colleges and universities.

Education professionals face challenges on a number of fronts. Typically, they must do more with less, yet are still held to very high standards. When school administrators consider new products or services, they must weigh a number of factors unique to their profession.

K-12 and Higher Education vertical industry content and website pages developed for Canon USA

Education vertical industry content and website pages developed for Canon USA

Developing a balanced, effective curriculum that includes compelling class materials and useful tests is important. Confidentiality of student records is also a big concern. Education professionals must also deal with numerous forms, procedures, and paperwork.

Omar Soriano

Omar Soriano

Imaging Solutions/Vertical Markets Consultant, Canon USA (former)

“James and Spark Creative delivered a vast amount of well-researched, smartly-positioned content on six different vertical/industry markets for the Imaging Solutions Group at Canon.”

Certainly, delivering a high quality education is the main activity of schools and universities. But for many institutions, the admissions process, curriculum development, and testing and grading consumes a fair amount of administrative time. So, any kind of solution that can help ease the burden of these tasks may be welcome.

School administrators and education professionals may seek ways to expedite time consuming processes like testing and grading. But they also generally appreciate advances that help ease paperwork, better serve students, and facilitate authorized use of mobile devices with university systems when appropriate.


To be sure, that’s just a sampling of key education concerns. Mainly, it’s important for your team to understand the biggest challenges that teachers, professors, and administrators face each day in relation to how your offerings might address them. Performing deeper research on K-12 and higher education institutions will help you position your solutions with more credibility.

“This is a huge opportunity for businesses to improve the quality of their leads by offering hyper-relevant content for potential customers looking for answers to their problems.” —Matt Malone

Spark Creative has developed vertical marketing for education materials – including content and sales support collateral – for many clients over the years. Common deliverables include brochures, one sheets, videos, web pages, information graphics, market primers, white papers, customizable presentations, and much more.

Here’s a video we wrote and produced for Canon USA tailored for the Education market:

Because we understand the challenges education professionals face, our team can help ensure your vertical marketing for education efforts will resonate with these more qualified industry professionals.

Spark Creative can lead you through the process of developing powerful vertical marketing for education materials in an organized, purposeful way. So, why not get started today?

Talk to us about how you want to leverage video and web videos.

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Sources may include:
Vertical Marketing Works – The Numbers Prove It, Olin Thompson, Sterling Hoffman
How to Use Vertical Marketing For Better Leads, Matt Malone, Gravitate