The lead-gen advantage most education suppliers are ignoring: Social Impact

Lead generation in education isn’t just about selling quality products and services. They’re the crucial elements of course, but your brand reputation matters too. Schools like to invest in companies with a conscience.

If you want to increase your lead generation in education and show schools that you care about more than just your products and services, it’s time to improve your social impact.

Here are some ideas you can implement, inspired by our Buzz Does strategy.

1. Get involved in Careers week and school careers programmes 💼

Your professional experience is invaluable for students. As newbies to the world of work, they benefit from speaking with professionals and accessing careers advice and insights.  

If you can deliver career talks, provide educational resources or offer training opportunities that help learners develop transferable skills, we highly recommend reaching out to schools. It’s an easy and effective way to support your local community, that doesn’t require much time or prep work. And all members of your organisation will bring different skillsets and areas of expertise, so it’s a fantastic way to get your whole team involved.

Why not run an interview skills session in your local school?

Last year, Natasha, our Operations Manager, and Lyndsay, our Marketing Manager, both delivered mock interviews in a local school for Year 12 students interested in pursuing a career in business or marketing. The interviews took place on Zoom and involved our education experts asking the students popular interview questions such as: Can you tell me about a time when you’ve had a strict deadline to meet (work or school-related) and how you ensured you met the deadline?

They also reviewed the students’ CVs, offering their professional expertise to help them optimise their future job applications and maximise their chances of securing their dream roles.

If you’d like to connect with Heads of Careers, and other relevant education staff to promote your interview sessions, let us know! Our education data covers over 130 job roles.

Why not participate in Career’s Day visits and school talks?

• Our Managing Director, Michael, visited Dixons Sixth Form Academy in Bradford for their annual Careers Day. He interviewed Sixth Form students looking to move on to university and begin their career journeys. He provided them with useful feedback on their interview technique to help them boost their chances of success in the future. Michael also participated in a talk for Year 7 students as part of a community project. During the talk, Michael spoke about his family’s roots in the local area and how his own career grew out of his father’s entrepreneurial spirit. To get involved, we recommend emailing your local schools and teachers to find out what opportunities are available. (If you need support emailing teachers, just let us know).

2. Get involved in local sponsorships and corporate partnerships to boost your lead generation 🤝

Supporting local businesses and organisations through sponsorships and partnerships is a great way to improve your company’s social impact. You’ll be able to put your businesses’ values into practice and demonstrate that you’re invested in more than your business offering. It’s also an effective way to increase your brand awareness, expand your customer network and increase your lead generation in education. 

Why not sponsor a local sports team?

We’re now a proud sponsor of 2 local football teams and recently had our Buzz Education logo printed onto the team’s football shirts. This local sponsorship allows us to support young athletes and boost our brand visibility – a win, win. 

If you’ve got a local sports team you could support, why not get involved?

3. Choose local businesses 🏪

Supporting local businesses by stocking up on their products and supplies is an effective way to increase your social impact. Not only does it reduce your environmental footprint, as you’ll be able to cut down on your online deliveries, but it’ll also help you to support your local economy.

Why not switch to sustainable supplies?

We continue to choose our local zero-waste shop for our office supplies. From kitchen roll to washing up liquid, Reed’s Refillery is our go-to shop for sustainably sourced goods. We recommend exploring your local area to see if there are any hidden gems where you can source sustainable goods

4. Support your team ❤️

Your first steps to improving your social impact don’t necessarily need to take place outside your business. Your workplace is a great place to start. You can plan team social activities, run strategy days outside your office premises to encourage fresh thinking, offer wellness days to promote a healthy work-life balance, deliver training workshops and lots more! The opportunities are endless.

Why not….?

Introduce a positive praise whiteboard?
We encourage our team members to share positive feedback about each other and how they’ve demonstrated our core business values.

Celebrate key events?
We celebrate important business milestones, team birthdays, festivities and more.

Run a culture survey to identify areas for improvement?
We run an annual culture survey to ask our team for feedback across a wide range of areas.

Offer financial support?
We use an employee engagement platform, Rewards Gateway, which offers discounts with hundreds of retailers. We also introduced a £1200 interest-free company loan where team members can anonymously access financial support when they need. These are great initiatives you could introduce to help your team reduce financial-related stress

Support your team’s mental health and wellbeing?
We introduced an employee assistance scheme where our team can access counselling services, fitness support, health resources and more through a health and wellbeing app.