K-12 EdTech Go-to-Market Segmentation

Issue

An EdTech provider in hyper-growth mode sought customer segmentation and go-to-market assessment to improve sales and marketing effectiveness and productivity.

Challenge

Management needed a partner who would provide a more data and insights-based customer segmentation, linked to the needs and buying habits of schools and districts across the U.S. Specifically, the chosen team would need to provide insights on key decisionmakers within schools and school districts even as they faced a rapidly evolving education technology landscape and pedagogical split between in-person and remote learning.

HPA Solution

HPA’s lean two-person team included a former senior McKinsey consultant with over 20 years of experience across strategy and operational improvement in education, financial services, and healthcare, and a former Bain consumer and healthcare Case Team Leader with over a decade of experience driving marketing research and segmentation alongside innovative growth strategies.

The team analyzed existing customer data and sales team go-to-market approaches, including penetration by SMB, medium, and enterprise-sized customers. In parallel, the team designed and administered an educational customer survey, supplemented with in-depth customer interviews, that gauged the needs, brand awareness, and buying habits of key decisionmakers in schools and districts across the U.S. Finally, HPA rebuilt a higher value and more actionable customer segmentation, with go-to-market prioritization and tactics for competing in the rapidly evolving EdTech landscape, centered on win rate for accounts, and secondarily informing strategic M&A.

Success

Client leadership is executing a go-to-market growth strategy informed and bolstered by HPA’s findings. HPA team was retained by the client for another key initiative focusing on the firm’s overall platform strategy within the education technology space.