Marlena Holden has worked in brand, marketing, and communications for nearly 25 years with deep roots in education and health care. Here, she details three strategies ed tech communicators should consider for the rest of 2026 to get back to your organization’s brand promise.
Online and in face-to-face conversations, confusion and uncertainty are swirling around marketing strategy, and the ed tech sector is not immune. Amid anxiety and excitement over the latest wave of AI models, communications practitioners are wondering about two things: what they need to learn themselves and how to best support their organizations with messaging. I’ve heard from colleagues that they feel behind on immediate planning, let alone staying focused on what they need for the remainder of 2026, when changes emerge so rapidly.
How can communicators in the ed tech space best position their companies amid the noise? As consumers become increasingly skeptical of AI brand promises in their personal lives, that skepticism has extended to the ed tech space.
What can we do? In the next six months, focus on three areas that grow the trust of your company externally.
This is one area some brand teams are avoiding because it feels like a retreat from the AI conversation. Removing claims you can’t support is proof you understand the technology well enough to be honest enough about how your company can support. Instead, consider it an opportunity.
The audit itself is straightforward. Review every instance of “agentic,” “algorithmic,” “AI-native,” “automation,” and related language from your website, sales decks, and campaign copy. For each instance, ask one question: Can we back this up? That might mean showing how your product or service performs well, or that a user has applied it to a problem and can speak to a result. If the answer is yes, replace the claim with the evidence. If the answer is no, cut the claim entirely.
Then, fill the gaps with precision to create a story.
Our platform reduced time-to-proficiency by 23% across a cohort of 4,000 students at three community colleges” is worth ten instances of “AI-powered learning experiences.”
The secondary benefit of this audit is internal: it forces product, marketing, and sales into alignment about what the products do. That alignment tends to sharpen messaging across every function.
Ed tech buying decisions often involve multiple stakeholders, but the balance of influence now includes people who are more vendor-savvy than ever. An informal endorsement from a trusted peer can make or break a renewal conversation in ways no amount of marketing spend can fix.
The most credible voice in these conversations isn’t always the chief technology officer or the superintendent. It’s often someone closer to the classroom — a curriculum director who sees where students are falling behind, a special education coordinator navigating multiple data systems, or a principal who has watched a tool change what a teacher is able to do in a week. These people understand the problem the technology is solving, they talk regularly with the people who hold purchasing authority, and when they believe in something, that belief travels. These are your champions.
Identify three to five people inside your existing customer base and invite them to co-create content. If you’re planning a conference, invite them as speakers. Co-author blog posts with them. Create video content where they can share what they’ve learned.
This takes longer than running a campaign with existing assets. You’ll work around busy educator schedules and navigate district reviews and approvals, but the payoff is more durable: third-party endorsements that build trust in your brand.
The gravitational pull of “we can now serve everyone” is enormous in ed tech. In trying to be all things to everyone, companies end up with messaging that speaks to no one.
Instead, in the second half of 2026, differentiate yourself by going deep. People are hungry for specifics and want to connect with a brand that understands their context — whether that’s workforce development, early literacy in Title I schools, or how dual enrollment impacts postsecondary admissions. Pick one area you can speak to and do it well.
How? Pick one audience, gather customer stories from that segment, and produce content built specifically for them over the next two quarters. That means building content from scratch — what local policies are they navigating? What staffing constraints do they face? What software environments do they work in? Dive deep and use the professional language they know.
Brands known for deep understanding of one segment can gain more trust than brands competing everywhere. Aim to become the most trusted partner.
The focus on these three action items isn’t meant to be flashy, and that’s intentional. Building and maintaining brand trust is slow and requires you to stay focused. In ed tech, that means using your products and services to enable educators to provide the best learning experiences for their students. The technology only works when we continue to center the people using it.