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!