I've recently been thinking about new types of verticals where Squarespace could expand its customer acquisition efforts. Squarespace clearly has a strong hold on the 'creative' market as well as small businesses and bloggers, so I've been trying to think a bit outside of the box. Today, I want to talk a bit about the huge potential for acquiring new subscribers in the world of education...

Education

The educational world is currently undergoing massive shakeups, with the emergence of open source textbooks and free online classes on services such as Coursera. These factors make this the perfect time for Squarespace to go after the large market of teachers and professors across the world. Specifically, I am referring to the opportunity for teachers to have an elegant and clean place to post syllabi, coursework, online assignments, and even lessons. While competitors/substitutes such as Blackboard control the market with large university contracts, they are also viewed as incredibly frustrating to use by teachers and students alike. This is where Squarespace can come in...

Market size

I'd segment this market into two groups- Universities and Grade Schools. Both are massive markets. There were over 3.3 MILLION grade school teachers in the US in 2013, and over 1.7 MILLION post-secondary professors. Even capturing 1% of that market would drastically expand Squarespace's annual revenue. And due to very few grade schools contracting with companies to provide software for managing syllabi and assignments, I believe that 1% is very conservative for those 3.3 Million grade school teachers.

Approach

The possibility of a teacher spending a mere $100 a year to have a centralized electronic location to post assignments, coursework, lessons, and syllabi should be incredibly attractive to teachers who are used to dealing with the nightmare of posting and collecting a majority of student work on paper. The competitive advantages we should emphasize when advertising to teachers include:

Emphasizing Squarespace's simple and elegant design that will make the experience easy and stress-free for students, and easy to use for the teacher
Showing the ability to create new pages (lessons/assignments/syllabi/etc) and post rich media from a huge number of sources
Creating interactive online lessons made possible by Squarespace's enhanced blogging/commenting/moderating functionality (students can comment and create their own stories/lessons on the teacher's page with moderator functionality)
Allowing students to upload or directly send assignments to teachers

The current functionality of Squarespace provides most of the tools that a teacher would need on a daily basis. While there is obviously room to grow on the engineering side of things (incorporating a homework widget or grouping with an online coursework company to provide ability for teachers to post homework and collect responses securely online), I believe Squarespace could acquire a large number of users with its existing functionality.

Channels

Social channels obviously provide a fantastic direct advertising channel to teachers. Targeting teachers on Facebook/Google+/LinkedIn would be incredibly easy, and then working with certain high-end education websites (publishers) to advertise directly to teachers where they spend time online would also work well. Even sponsoring education-focused podcasts targeted to teachers would serve as a great channel.

Search is another natural channel to target. I would create campaigns targeted towards people searching for new teaching methods, teaching tools, program/software to help engage students and make teacher duties such as grading and posting assignments easier.

The inherent nature of being a teacher means that you are surrounded by a huge number of other teachers in your school or university. This means that if one teacher at a school subscribes and begins using Squarespace to great effect, the chances of more teachers at that school subscribing jumps dramatically. Teachers are also wildly collaborative and, from personal experience, I know that teachers love sharing new ideas and resources with fellow teachers.

I see the education vertical as a huge potential leap forward for Squarespace. Not only is the market massive, but it also provides an opportunity to give teachers a new tool to inspire, educate, and engage students on a daily basis. The educational world, while evolving, is still in need of new ideas and ways of teaching students. I believe Squarespace could give teachers new ways of teaching and providing content to students. People under 18 spend a vast majority of their lives online. By bringing grade school (and university) education to a more online platform, teachers can engage students where they spend the most time! And Squarespace is the perfect tool to do just that!

Stay tuned next time for my thoughts on new verticals that will help make Squarespace a household name!

Ever since creating my own Pokemon card selling & trading business in the 5th grade and implementing marketing and promotional campaigns to neighborhoods far beyond my own (promotional grab bags, weekly sales, consultations with "competitors" on their sales strategies), I have been passionate about finding ways to help others discover the products and interests I love.

Squarespace is a product unlike any other because the possibilities for what users can do within their "space" are nearly endless. Luckily, many customers are taking note of this and subscribing to Squarespace. However, the constantly evolving nature of the online advertising ecosystem ensures that new ways of attracting and acquiring customers are constantly developing and changing.

I believe Squarespace's advertising strategy should mirror its overall end message to users- provide a simple, minimal, and useful experience rather than adding to the clutter and congestion of an already messy web.

When thinking about the emerging advertising strategies of 2014, I would structure my strategy by keeping several ideas in mind...

The Core Channels

I think that Search remains one of the most successful methods overall for Squarespace to continue pursuing due to the intrinsic nature of "search": when someone searches for something, it is because they are explicitly looking to achieve a goal (in this case, creating a website/brand/online presence/place to store and structure their ideas). Squarespace can continue to differentiate itself in this channel by developing more and more targeted Adwords campaigns designed to appeal to niche groups within its verticals, while also continuing to target the broader group of "anyone looking to create a website". Not only are targeted searches more effective because they appeal directly to small groups rather than casting a wide net, but they are also cheaper due to lower competition.

I would group Social advertising in this field as well. Although it is much newer than Search, the added context of social validation makes Social a valuable channel that isn't going anywhere. Social also allows users to be targeted based on extremely detailed fields such as Life Events and interests. Social is even melding with Search in situations where a user searches on Google and uses the social validation of Google+ to choose certain pages/products over others. The possibilities are endless for the added functionality of Search/Social (someone searching for Squarespace is able to see the number of their friends who have Squarespace websites on the search results page).

Recent and Emerging Trends

More than ever, companies are experimenting with different formats as technology expands what is possible with advertising. I believe that companies are finding out...

What works organically

TrueView videos on Youtube which only charge for full views and give users the power to skip ads that are irrelevant to them, thereby saving time for the user and money for the advertiser. Squarespace can leverage existing video campaigns in this channel.
Certain types of Branded and Sponsored Content. Squarespace developing video content designed to help users "develop their online brand" or "create an e-commerce store" and sponsoring it across websites such as Youtube and eHow. Note: This should only be done on websites that match Squarespace's brand image and target audience.
Additional forms of media like Podcast advertising. This channel is so great because Podcasts have loyal followings in very specific areas of content. Therefore, Squarespace can target specific podcasts (or podcast networks) such as Designer podcasts or Small business podcasts, and thereby target audiences who would actually benefit substantially from Squarespace rather than focus on broad groups of users unlikely to convert after hearing an ad.
Limited amounts of Remarketing, which allows Squarespace to follow people who have already visited the site and remind them of their interest in subsequent days. Conversions are higher for this method because you are targeting users who have already expressed interest in Squarespace through their visit.

What doesn't work (and can harm a company's brand despite acceptable conversion rates)

Certain Sponsored Posts on facebook that take advantage of the wonders of social validation but end up privacy-related controversy that overshadow the inherent benefits of advertising to friends of people who have liked your product
Native stories that are TOO sponsored (stories that show up in the feeds of content sites but come across as advertisements rather than actually useful content because they don't add anything useful for the publisher's audience)
Ugly and obtrusive banner ads that clutter a user's experience and could possibly even cause harm to the advertiser's brand image. Overall, Squarespace should limit its banner presence on most publishers due to the overall "noise" that banner ads cause on most sites where they are present
Unmonitored Affiliate programs- while affiliates can be an effective, high ROI way to acquire customers, affiliates should be monitored to ensure they are not using deceptive practices (such as forced clicks and false advertising) to draw traffic to Squarespace

The Possibilities for the Future

The online advertising industry is maturing and is still relatively in its infancy. But that newness is so exciting because there are so many untapped methods for acquiring customers that haven't even been considered yet or are just beginning to emerge. Here are a few areas I find really exciting...

Interactive advertisements that take advantage of technology advances to allow users to play around with Squarespace design tools without ever leaving the page they are on; ability to test the product before clicking essentially guarantees higher conversion once an ad is clicked
Added "targetability" in facebook/google (i.e. targeting people who have recently added a life event to their timelines, such as starting a business, getting engaged, or joining a band. These life events are prime examples of Squarespace's desire to target the right customer at the right time)
MOBILE- Mobile is where everything is going (especially for certain demographics such as teenagers, whose online presence is essentially driven by mobile rather than desktop); I think companies need to become completely agnostic of devices in their advertising strategies and should instead focus on delivering the right content to users at the right time, whatever device they are on
Leveraging data from business aggregators like Yelp to determine what types of businesses are least likely to have websites listed and then targeting those verticals directly
Targeting additional verticals directly, such as Teachers (posting syllabi and homework)

The ever-changing nature of the world of online advertising is fascinating and I would love to help Squarespace define its strategy going forward and then help manage and run its efforts across multiple channels and verticals.

Thanks for reading,

Alec

New Verticals - Education