What happens when districts set budgets, educators finally breathe after back-to-school, and conferences flood the calendar—all at once? You get October, the single most important month in the education marketing cycle.

In this special solo episode, Elana shares why October is such a pivotal moment for vendors, partners, and school leaders. She breaks down how to support current users, align with budget planning, build your list, and show up at conferences with real value—not just swag. Along the way, she reflects on lessons learned from colleagues like Allison Modlin (on why success is a square, not a line) and Matt Stinson (on why most vendors should stop chasing cold RFPs).

Whether you’re leading sales, marketing, or customer success, this episode will help you focus on what actually matters before the year slips away.

What You’ll Learn

• Why October is the only “full” month left in the calendar year and how to make the most of it
• How to double down on customer success and PD to boost adoption and renewals
• Why aligning sales, marketing, product, and customer success as a “square” matters more than ever
• How budget-setting cycles give you a chance to position your product for 2026 (and beyond)
• Smart ways to use conferences for list-building and relationship-building
• The right (and wrong) way to jump on seasonal or cultural trends
• Why it’s time to prioritize ethical list-building through lead magnets, webinars, and email

Why It Matters

In education, timing is everything. October is when educators are ready to deepen usage, district leaders are finalizing budgets, and conferences create endless opportunities for connection. If you miss this window, you risk falling behind on renewals, losing visibility in the budget cycle, and scrambling to catch up in the new year.

Mentioned in this episode:

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Hi everyone. Welcome to a special episode. This isn't our normal all things marketing and education where I bring in experts and selfishly get to pick their brain on what's working in marketing and education. This is a practical and I was just talking to our producer Jordan about this. This is a brain dump and I hope you like it. It's meant to be short, bite-sized, digestible, hopefully inspiring. You know me, I say walk away with at least one thing that you can implement tomorrow.

So let's go, if you like this type of episode, please let us know. Go to LinkedIn, email us, hello at leoneconsultinggroup.com, whatever, send us smoke signals. I'd love to know if this is valuable to you so we can continue doing this. All right, I wanna talk to you about what the heck is going on in October in education and marketing. This is such a pivotal time in education that I couldn't not talk to you about it.

data that can't predict an uncertain world. would say this year is the most uncertain, I mean, uncertain in a different way. The pandemic was completely turned on its side, but this is uncertain in so many different ways. And I had to argue that it presented challenges that we haven't really figured out yet. We have just been more comfortable with uncertainty. So this year has been challenging and I want

to take a moment for us to talk about October and a little bit beyond on how you can make the most of this month going forward. So why October matters? It is the only full month of the rest of the year. We get into holiday craziness with Thanksgiving. We then pretty much only have like two-ish weeks in December, right? And it's not just the time off, it's wrangling students in terms of engagement.

Wrangling teachers really, and availability. When you have time off, everything gets compressed. When we're trying to talk to district and school administrators, how the heck do you get a hold of them, right? When they have to smush everything in to the weeks that they're actually in school too. So October is a great time. In terms of adoption, teachers are heads down. They finally have back to school behind them somewhat. I know it is a struggle.

I see it every day. I'm seeing teachers roll up their sleeves, but I also am hearing and feeling them breathe, take a sigh of like, okay, now that I've launched, what do I do? How do I use the product or service that my district has bought for me and use it in a way that really improves student learning? I might just been using it in the beginning or potentially I might not be using it at all, right? So if you're a vendor, and I even hate that word, if you were a thought partner,

Right? If you are somebody who has a product that schools and districts are using, think about how you can help the current customers, right? The educators on the ground that are using your product. I want to see professional development in variety of different ways. I love seeing some brands show up for back to school and do those bite-sized PD moments. I forget who it was and I'll put it in the comments, but I want to give the shout outs to the 60 second PD bites that I saw going around.

I also saw people show up and say, let's do some on-demand webinars. Let's do some webinars that are more bite-sized and specific to each module or feature or new thing out there. And then they also thought about, how do I make it timely for back to school? So now continue that. I want you to double down on that. And I know that that's not all marketing. But marketing has to work in concert with customer success.

and implementation and professional development if all of that belongs in your organization, right? So I actually wanted to bring up a LinkedIn and this is a shout out to Allison Modlin and I'm gonna have her on the podcast. She's so awesome. But she said, anyone who has talked to me about marketing has heard me say this, success isn't a straight line that comes just from sales and marketing. It's a square.

I've been thinking about this because even just aligned with sales and marketing is a chore. For those of you who have heard me talk to Dan O'Reilly, we'll put him in the show notes. You can see our last podcast, we've done a couple, but how do we get sales on the same page with marketing and vice versa? How do we work together as a team? That in itself is a chore, but she's saying it's a square. It's sales and marketing and product and customer success all being aligned. And I'm just talking to you right now about customer success.

and marketing, but we need to be aligned to sales and vice versa. And then your product also needs to be innovating and getting that feedback because this is where you're getting that active usage too, right? So it's that beautiful square. And I love that she created a diagram around that. So again, this is the time to really show up for your users, really make sure that they've got the support they need, the implementation support.

but then ongoing professional development in a diverse type of way, because this is what's gonna separate you from people that may sell similar things, is are you setting up the users for success? And when people are actively using your product, they are more likely to enjoy your product, they're more likely to improve student outcomes, and all of those things lead to renewals too. So I know that I'm saying things and preaching to the choir a little bit.

We all know in K-12, that sales cycle is a very long sales cycle. And now that we've got the first couple of months or month-ish in the school year, are now looking, schools and districts are looking at, okay, let's set our budget for next year. It's a little hard now with the uncertainty of funding and you never know what grants will pop up and states and like where the funding will go from the federal to the state. But in general, they are tasked to craft a budget and that budget has to be line-lined to categories.

And that has to be informed by whatever you choose in there, the vendors, right? What do we think we need? What are we missing right now? Because I can bet you right now they have launched a school year and say, gosh, we don't have this tool. Our LMS is not, know, sync to our SIS and you know, it's throwing some more acronyms, but there are holes when you start launching and they do have meetings to really look at that. know, school boards talk about what the priorities are.

on a monthly basis at times too. So they're looking and this is that exploratory phase that's aligning with the budget. So it's really important that you are also keeping that in mind. So not only do you have educator focus on the mind that could fuel product innovation and can also fuel customer success and all of the things I talked about, but you're also thinking about how do I keep top of mind when buyers are thinking about budgets?

The thing you need to do is say, Hey, hey, we're here. Hey, we have value. Let's start talking about the topic that your organization cares about and consistently showing up. If you've got something that relates to project-based learning, I want you to talk about the power of project-based learning. And I don't want you to talk about it in a touchy feely way that doesn't directly align with academic outcomes and things that your stakeholder cares about. You always have to connect the dots. You always have to think about what budget line item and.

How can I make the case? And not only how can I make the case, can I show beautiful testimonials? Can I show any research? And research does not have to be huge longitudinal studies that take years and six figures to do. There's a whole different gradient of type of research that you can do. So I want you to show up consistently this time, not only helping educators, but making the case a little bit too, helping people, always showing up with a value mindset, but then like,

All right, let's sprinkle in some case studies. Let's sprinkle in to show that we really do have academic outcomes, that the teachers love us and students love us. So I want you to kind of balance those two. And again, this is your month. This is your full month to like double down. I think this is also a really fun month because October we start seeing changing seasons. As a marketer, you can play around with pumpkin spice and you you've got candy and all of the festivities too. So

Don't be shy around, do I make this timely as much as possible? You want to make sure that you're monitoring trends, but never trend jack for the sake of jumping on a trend. Always ask yourself, does this relate to my brand? Does this position my brand in a way that makes sense? And I've had, have I had conversations with my executive team to make sure that they're comfortable with what we align with and not? That's really important.

And even with any trend, I usually run it by somebody else and say, hey, I'm thinking about this. What do you think? And then maybe shout out to my colleague Porter. She did something. Y'all might've known that Taylor Swift, all in the news last month, but she did something before she got engaged, Taylor Swift, that she released her album or she released hints of her album. And Porter jumped on that trend. It made sense for the client that she was managing

But she kind of kicked herself and she, if you know her, she kind of does that unnecessarily because she's an inspiring human being. But she said, you know what, Alana, I jumped on the trend too quick and I did something easy. And now that I thought of it, I could have waited even just a half a day. And I found this really cool, unique way that align with the brand. And I just didn't give myself the time because I wanted to jump on the trend. So balance that time of jumping on the trend only one, if you feel it's appropriate, right?

So you don't want to jump on the trend after no one's talking about it and you've overthought it too much. But there is that beautiful balance of like really making sure it's a value add that only your brand can jump into. And that takes a little bit of time, right? So just a little bit of a side note too.

We've talked about the buying cycle. I really want to make sure that you are launching list building activities as much as possible, right? And if you don't know what that is, now is your time. Everybody as marketers regret not building their list sooner. So list building activities could be webinars, they could be lead magnets, and a lead magnet, again, is a resource that is so good that someone says, yes, I need to give you my email and I want to download that resource.

cheat sheets, blueprints, checklists, infographics, workbooks. Think about something that you can design that really aligns with what your target audience's biggest challenges and goals are, right? And if you don't know, that's a pause for you to go out and start talking to them and figure that out too. So list building like crazy right now because you're not gonna convert people in social media or any other kind of

broad awareness tools. Every tool in marketing has its own place, right? So social media exists to create some consistent relationships, but you eventually want to get their email so you can talk to them in a personal one-on-one way and ideally get them to do things like download and deepen your relationship. And if it makes sense, have them become a customer or renew or those things. And you really can only do that in email. Maybe they get to attend a demo and you take it further from there.

So list building is your key to that. So think about all the ways you can list build. I haven't even talked about October being the month of conferences. Oh my God, there are so many conferences in October. We have one client going to over 15 of them. And again, you're gonna need a bigger team to do that, but you want a conference strategy and you wanna hit it kind of running.

October is the time where it all kind of ramps up. There's state conferences, there's local conferences, there's subject specific conferences, there's stakeholder specific conferences, like if you're a principal or, you know, Latino superintendent, whatever it might be, there are conferences happening in October. You want to make sure you're making the most of them, you're going there, and that's a great way to list build. That's why I'm bringing it up. Everyone that goes to your booth, make sure that, you know, you're getting that,

those emails, but again, it's quality, not quantity. Sometimes it makes sense to sponsor some of these conferences and you can get lists of them as well.

One word of caution around email is that there is GDPR and you do want to make sure that you're being as thoughtful as possible when you're emailing people. If you decide to email people that haven't double opted in, really make sure you do a welcome email. Say, why you got on this list? And here's what I'm thinking about doing. I'm sending you a monthly newsletter or whatever it may be. And then when that monthly newsletter comes, make sure you send a little, what we call a little love note on top and say, hey,

By the way, you're new, we're adding you to this. You can easily unsubscribe. So there are ways to soften it a little bit. I'm not a GDPR expert. If you get in trouble or whatever, don't, don't come at me. But I also am a marketer trying to grow your email lists in an ethical value driven way. Right. You do need a sales outbound strategy. And again, that's where it's working in concert with what you're doing on marketing. And hopefully marketing is creating this inbound machine.

as well, right? So when sales is doing outbound, you're giving them stuff to fuel their outbound, you know? Maybe there's a webinar your team is conducting. Maybe there's a great ebook that you've done that's targeting a specific conference that they can use to say, hey, I'm not just trying to sell you something. I'm also trying to help you. So here's some great resources. Those need to be working together, right? And now I love that Allison has given us a square framework. I'm not trying to overcomplicate things. I just think it helps us think a little bit differently because

too often we operate in silos and it's just kind of like ironic because we talk about K-12 education operating in silos. So how can we all work together in concert that doesn't necessarily mean more cooks at the table or whatever you call it, too many cooks in the kitchen, but it helps, we're better together, right? So I'm gonna wrap this up, but I also wanna just tell you that

There are tons of events in October, right? We've got, and you can be fun. It really depends on what your brand wants to align to, but we've got National Custodian Day, World Smile Day, really great for selfies if you wanna do that. World Teachers Day, October 5th.

That is world teacher day, by the way. So if you're thinking from an international perspective, know, Ada Loveless Day, if you are in science, we've got Indigenous People Day, we've got Black Poetry Day, we have Week of the School Administrator, National Day of Writing is coming up on the 20th. And you know, if you're a cat person like me, we got National Cat Day towards the end of the month.

So there's a lot going on in October to play around with. There's Digital Citizenship Week to October 14th to 18th. So, I mean, that might have changed a little bit. It's that week, though. And then November, of course, you want to get ahead on there's like Family Literacy, National Author Day, there's some election stuff. So lots of stuff to be timely as well. And I think it's really fun to look into what can I plan? What are those trends that I can't plan that I want to jump on?

as well. Like maybe Robert Redford is really important to you because you have a brand around film and education and you want to do something and honor him and his legacy. That's super timely, right? So think about those things as well. I think I just want to end with one other thought and this is a shout out to Matt Stinson. I don't know Matt super well. I've met him a couple times, but hey Matt. He had a LinkedIn post that changed my mind too and he said,

stop responding to cold RFPs if you're under 10 million in revenue. And that means like, if your business itself is like not, if you're not huge and you're not making a ton of money, why are you responding to cold RFPs? And you know, you're like, well, okay, scratch head, why? And he said, by the time you see a government RFP, a vendor has already been working on that account for months. And that is so true, by the way, they're already in the vendor system, they already are establishing relationships.

And they're already positioning themselves as the go-to in there. So he said they've influenced the requirements, they've built relationships, the RFP is just the formality. And you could spend hours and hours, my God, I'm the whole separate podcast on RFPs and why LCG doesn't typically do them. But you can spend so much time on RFPs and they're so disappointing because you don't even get feedback and they potentially already chosen a vendor.

So it's really important that you get in before they issue the RFPs. And that is what this month is all about too. So I could go on about other things, but I really hope this was helpful for you. A bit of a bite-sized dose of, hey, October. I don't want you to say October's gone, what did I do? I want you to use this to really reset and prioritize and align to your goals as much as possible, knowing that you're juggling lots of things. You're juggling educators.

Right now you're also juggling budgets being restarted and then there's a whole slew of conferences and all the things. It is go time. So I hope this was helpful for you. And it's funny that my bite size podcast is only almost 20 minutes long, but please give us feedback. We want to keep doing this. I realized that I love elevating voices, but I also have some things or things or two to say. And I think that this practical line of sight.

we'll see people showing up in different ways, I hope. So thank you. Thank you for listening. I'm gonna say thank you for listening to All Things Marketing and Education, because it will be part of this podcast and give us feedback and leave some reviews. Thanks again, everyone.