Peter
This one came about because AI has become so commonplace in our everyday lives and in the lives of schools and districts. Traditional SEO still matters, but it's on the decline, and AI overviews are changing the game. AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization: your content needs to directly answer questions, not just rank for keywords. It's a shift from "K-12 math curriculum software" to "how do I improve middle school math scores?" The tactics companies can use to rank for those queries are FAQ pages, how-to guides, comparison content (how does tool A compare to tool B), and problem-centered blog posts about solving a specific problem with your solution.
John
So the content on your website today needs to answer the range of questions buyers have. And if that information isn't available or easily found, the AI tools won't pick it up, and you won't reduce friction for buyers trying to learn about your product and your company.
Peter
Exactly. If you answer the questions your buyers are asking, you show up in AI summaries and overviews. A lot of people I talk to actually find me through ChatGPT or Claude, because in my world I show up as an edtech marketing expert. There's more to it than AEO, too: things like your search results and your online reputation. If the CEO has done podcasts and co-written and published blogs on reputable sites, their company's site gets prioritized in AI summaries, because when you ask how to improve middle school math scores, there are dozens of vendors competing for that top spot.
John
A lot of companies don't invest time in auditing their own website for the information it gives buyers, or in analyzing SEO keywords. Edtech companies would be well served to spend more time making sure the content they have today hits the mark, because if it's not gaining attention and authority today, the AI tools won't pick it up tomorrow.
Peter
You've got to keep up with the times. If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got.
John
When I'm researching a solution I'm using all the tools we just talked about, and I'm looking for vendors to bubble to the top on a few criteria: their ability to integrate with other tools, ISTE standards, single sign-on and identity management, partnerships with other edtech companies, and a community. Evaluating a product isn't linear, it's iterative, almost cyclical, so I want a rich website of content. I want demo videos of various lengths, tell me what's going on in 30 seconds, but give me the option to watch 5, 20, or 30 minutes. Those are all signals, by the way: having different-length videos is an indication of how serious I am about your product. I want webinars, panels, use cases, and success stories at other schools. When I go back, I want to be exhausted by the content. A lot of edtech companies skimp on it, and if a site isn't rich with videos, customer stories, demos, new features, and blog posts, I wonder how serious a player you are. It's about being an authority and building trust, and you can't do that with a few web pages.
Peter
That sounds like a lot of work, which is probably why so many companies aren't doing it. You really have to put in the elbow grease to create those resources and do the research for ISTE or state CTE standards alignments.
John
And founder-led growth is a really important part of edtech. Schools want to buy the person behind the company, the passion, the mission. We talked about solutions over features, and everything I just described is bigger than a feature. Founder-led growth is free content, as long as you're willing to take a little time to document your day. It may not be critical to everybody, but I like to know the person running the company.
Peter
People want to work with people, and in the age of AI search and AEO, your content strategy has to answer the specific questions your ICP and decision makers are asking. So let's talk about lead magnets. We just covered all that content, standards alignments, webinars, use cases, testimonials. It's important not to hide all of that behind a gated lead magnet on an unlinked page you only send in email campaigns. John, how often do you actually download case studies, ebooks, or white papers from vendor sites?
John
As a bit of a nerd, more than the average administrator. But I'll usually download from a company I've visited several times. The number of times I download something, or even visit a site, from a cold email is zero. Last December I put out a blog post listing all the CTAs I received in emails and identified the ones that worked and didn't. The ones that didn't were about 98, the ones that did were two. Both of the ones that worked spoke to the outcome: how will you make my life easier? Higher-level CTAs like that work for me. The others, not so much.
Peter
It's the content itself. Even if you give up your email and download something generic like "The Future of K-12 Education in 2026," then open a 10-page report full of fluff and stock images, nothing breaks trust faster. What actually works are tools and templates: standards-alignment crosswalks, implementation planning templates, pilot proposal templates, ROI calculators. Give the IT director an actual budget calculator where they plug in the number of students and teachers and see how much they'd save. The exchange has to feel fair. If someone gives up their email, and sometimes their phone number, name, school, and district, you have to give them something genuinely useful in return.
John
That reminds me of something. I'll often go to the documentation, integration, SSO, the things I care about for bolting a product into our infrastructure. I'll nerd out and read through it, look at the screenshots, see how the product is used. Rich documentation matters. So does the value prop for various stakeholders. I control my own budget and we're a relatively small school, but I still have to make a pitch to my boss, the CFO, maybe the head of school, teachers, and specialists. When a site has value-prop explanations for all those people, it makes my job of evangelizing it easier and reduces friction. I appreciate when a company doesn't just say "we sell to this type of teacher" but "we sell to this teacher and everyone around them."
Peter
The reality is that in 2026 you're not selling to one type of client, you're trying to win over a buying committee. If you can make it easy for that one champion, especially with a bottom-up approach through teachers and educators, and help them sell your tool internally, that's your key to scaling.
John
Very few websites have a micro-help feature tied to an AI. I'd rather type a question and get the information than spend 20 minutes looking things up. Edtech companies would be well served to start building that in, for two reasons: I get answers, and you get an understanding of the questions people ask about your product. Do they care about pricing? Are they looking at the competition? Are they wondering whether you'll be around in a year? How you're positioned? The ability for people to ask and get answers is something companies should really think about.
Peter
But John, that would require the vendor to do serious work, to research their customers, figure out their ICP, and figure out the real pain points people are researching.
John
In general you're exactly right, and it's a little tongue-in-cheek but not really. The vast majority of the understanding and value an edtech company can accrue happens outside their building. If most of your time as a founder is spent talking to product and salespeople inside the building and not the marketplace, you won't gain traction. It's the marketplace that matters; your own thoughts, hopes, and the things you assume are true inside the building don't.
Peter
There are also so many identification tools available today that it's unreasonable to make every demo and contact form a personality quiz. Once you have someone's name and email, you can use publicly available tools to figure out their district. If a vendor does a little legwork and enriches their data, they can build a complete customer profile without asking the customer every question imaginable.
John
Two examples I like, and everything I don't mention I don't like. One is being recognized as a repeat visitor, coming back to download another paper or watch another video and finding the form already filled out. Not hard to do, but I appreciate it. Even better is the incremental ask: instead of the same form again, ask me one new question. What other products have you seen in this area? Is the problem getting worse? I'm happy to share one or two new things. What turns me off is retyping my name and all my background information every time. I'll meet you halfway and tell you this problem's getting worse, or I just came from this conference, as long as your data collection isn't so rudimentary that it's rude.
Peter
Don't ask me the same question on our third date. Show me you've been listening, and do the legwork. To sum it up, any lead magnet you create for K-12 buyers has to provide immediate, tangible value, standards alignments, guides, implementation notes, not generic ebooks and white papers. Now, one question founders always ask: how long does it realistically take before a website starts generating meaningful inbound leads?
John
We've talked about a website that works for sales, not just a billboard, and how to qualify leads and tell prospects from suspects. So how long would you say it takes before a website starts generating meaningful inbound leads?
Peter
That's an uncomfortable truth a lot of founders don't want to hear: it might take 6 months, 12 months, 18 months. It depends on how much you invest in your website and content, optimizing for SEO and AEO, and, especially early on when the site isn't generating leads on its own, how much you tap into omnichannel, the LinkedIn, the email campaigns, the conferences, all of which feed your website. The light at the end of the tunnel is that once you turn your website into an inbound lead generation machine, it's a gift that keeps giving. Conferences always cost money and time, buying email lists always costs money and is getting less effective in 2026, but once your site generates 50, 100 inbound qualified leads a month, it compounds. At my last company it took about a year to a year and a half, but we got the commercial site to 70 or 80 inbound sales-qualified leads a month. That might not sound like much, but in edtech the average deal was $10,000 or more, so those leads contributed 40 to 50% of our annual recurring revenue. Let's finish with our lightning recap of dos and don'ts. I'll start: do lead with the problem you solve, not your product features.
John
Do make it easy for me to find proof that your solution works in schools like mine.
Peter
Do create content that answers the specific questions your ICP is Googling, or asking ChatGPT or Claude.
John
Do give me something useful in exchange for my email, trustworthiness and a knowledge nugget, not a sales pitch disguised as a resource.
Peter
Do track what matters, time on page, demo requests, qualified traffic, and ignore the vanity metrics. Now the don'ts. Don't bury your contact form behind three clicks on the About Us page.
John
Don't use jargon that only makes sense inside your company. Speak my language and empathize with my problems.
Peter
Don't expect your website to work in isolation, especially at the start. Drive traffic from other channels like email, social, and conferences.
John
Don't forget multiple ways to reach me. I'm at my desk part of the day, but I'm often mobile, browsing vendor sites between meetings or on the way home.
Peter
And don't treat your website as a set-it-and-forget-it asset. Iterate based on data, in the two-week sprints and check-ins we talked about in a previous episode. To wrap up: your website should work for you while you sleep, but it only works if you've done the hard work of understanding your buyer, their problems, and how to earn their trust. Build your website for them, not for your investors or your team.
John
That's a solid punctuation. People build the website the way they build the product, for themselves, as an afterthought, expecting the world to acknowledge it magically. I've been to plenty of sites where after scrolling five screens I still don't know what the product does.
