“Coding for Kids” Marketing gone Wrong !!!
Let’s assume that there is an Ed-tech firm XYZ, that follows Lean Marketing strategy via referrals rather than investing in Ads and promotional videos and is really struggling to get leads for its coding classes for age group of 6-14.
1.Current Scenario – All over the world people are going against the concept of coding classes for kids stating various reasons which are also valid from their point of view. It is obvious that this is a serious problem for the Ed-tech firms, which is affecting their business growth.
2. Current Behavior of Customers – Parents are not turning up to enroll their kids in Coding programs. They are considering it only when their kid is old enough, who is enthusiastic to pursue his/her career in the field of IT. They feel if their kid will learn coding from an early age, that will make him/her a nerd and will miss out a lot of his/her childhood days.
But in my opinion here the problem lies with the way the Ed-tech firms like White Hat Jr. are marketing it to the parents. And we can take it as an opportunity for the firm XYZ to change the audience’ perception towards the concept of “coding for kids”. Here we will have to convince not only the parents but also all other individuals who have been judging the objective behind the concept of “coding for kids” so that by doing so we can boost the brand value of XYZ.
To have a proper understanding of the problem statement and to think of an impactful solution, we need to understand how exactly the marketing by other Ed-tech firms has gone wrong and what are the factors that are actually supporting the motive of training coding/programming to the kids.
3. Where and how the marketing has gone wrong ?
Companies such as White hat Jr. aren’t just selling coding programs to the parents for their kids but they are selling expectations about how good their child will perform in academics, how good grades he/she will be scoring, developing Apps, games, creating headlines on the front page of newspapers and earning fame and money. Coding is to instruct a computer to simplify a task and act in a particular way to solve a real life problem. And the fact that kids don’t have such real life experience and have not faced such critical problems at an early age of 6-7 years it’s obviously unfair and illogical to expect such things from a child. It is very similar to training a 5th grade student for IIT-JEE/NEET exams and expecting him/her to qualify IIT-JEE/NEET after 5-7 years. Parents have been forcing their kids to pursue a career, which they don’t have any idea if their kids are really interested in pursuing their career in that particular stream or not. And the reason behind this is rising competition and inappropriate marketing that are being done by educational firms that trade expectations. These Ed-tech firms generate fear in the minds of the children and their parents that if they don’t enroll in their program, they are going to lag behind other students in academics. And those who are objecting the motive of online coding classes offered to the kids, probably they might have experienced the same issue during their childhood days. So, that is one of the reasons why this marketing strategy by the Ed-tech firms is back-firing.
4. What are the factors that are supporting “Coding For Kids”?
Next year onwards, many education boards including CBSE, are revamping their curriculum and teaching patterns and the most interesting fact is that they are including coding as a part of the curriculum. They are doing it for a reason. They are aware of its importance.
Even before these online coding classes for kids arrived in the market, we have seen kids indulging into coding and creating headlines. You might have gone through headlines such as the youngest data scientist aged 12 hired by some ABC company, youngest programmer to design and develop apps and games etc. It’s not that their parents forced them to learn coding. It was their self interest. They learnt and their parents supported them. So if a child loves coding, he/she will continue or else drop the course. And parents must be advised not to force kids to learn something rather they should motivate them to learn new things.
And as per many scientific researches, it has been found that computer programming/coding boosts brain power. And it’s as creative as playing chess. It enhances critical and analytical thinking of an individual. The fact that the kids in the age group of 6-14 have a high level of curiosity, they also need to utilize and workout their imagination and creativity in an efficient manner. And coding is one of the platforms where the kids can workout all these traits.
5. How can we reframe/change the perception of the audience ?
What if the coding classes are pictured and showcased in such a manner that they feel coding is as fun as playing any other games?
What if instead of selling expectations, Ed-tech firms sell creativity, fun, a platform to workout all kinds of imaginations, & mental well being of kids?
6. SOLUTION
Create a short promotional video, broadcast and promote it on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media handles.
Broadcasting on television channels will be 20-25 times more expensive than buying a premium account on YouTube, and other social media handles and promoting it.
Rather than promoting it across all the segments, we can do behavioral targeting which will be way more cost effective and impactful.
We can offer sponsorships to popular schools across the country, and ask them to play our promotional video on-screen during the interschool events or annual function events, where parents will also be present.
And lastly don’t forget to design the coding-program as kids friendly and entertaining as much as possible.
7. Promotional Video Planning
You might have come across various ads by different smartphone companies. One common thing in every ad is they just boast about their specs. They literally sell 54 MP cam, 5000 Mah battery life, 20 hours talk time, Snapdragon 855 specifications to the people.
If you check the iPhone Ad, you will get a hint that iPhone is the market leader for a reason.
No where in their AD, they have boasted about specs of their product. They have captured moments, feelings, emotions and showcased how special their customers are to them. They show how precious their product is, without even highlighting a single specification.
I have attached a presentation giving an insight of how a promotional video can be shot to impart the true motive of coding for kids to the whole audience. I may not be that good at picturizing the whole story but maybe if more minds are put into this, it can be improvised a lot.
Post broadcasting of promotional video, the first thing that people will do is visit XYZ’s Website. The content in the website should also sync with the message that is imparted to the audience through the promotional video.
And accordingly the sales pitch should be improvised as per the content.
Budget Distribution of the whole project
The maximum budget should be directed towards the quality promotional video creation, and minimum budget is required for promoting the same. And after getting a positive outcome of the project, the promoting budget can be increased in the later stage accordingly.
The motive behind this article is to make the people understand that they should not force their expectations on their kids and let them grow on their own pace. The educational firms should not advertise such competitive Ads that influence parents to have high self-centered expectations from their kids. Such kind of Ads may have a long-lasting negative impact on both the parents and kids. Rather they should think of innovative marketing strategies that will promote healthy learning.
Chennai DynaCity 
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