Episode #225: Blakely Neilson — Building a high-growth EdTech brand when buyers aren't on LinkedIn

This episode is a tactical playbook for marketing to a buyer that ignores LinkedIn, retargeting, and white papers: the school district.

For operators and founders selling into education, or any relationship-first market where you can't performance-market your way to pipeline.

Blakely Neilson came from finance and joined the founding team at Parallel Learning, an EdTech company building virtual special education services for school districts in over 25 states. She built the B2B marketing function from scratch as the company pivoted from DTC to B2B, which meant trading paid social and paid search for conferences, webinars, email, and thought leadership, and shifting the message from emotion and urgency to compliance, scale, and risk mitigation. She gets concrete about what works: a lemonade-stand booth during a California heat wave, a Taylor Swift email sent the minute the engagement news broke, and using AI to track Google alerts so the message can adapt when a district like Wake County cuts $18 million from special education.

What you'll hear

• Why the DTC-to-B2B pivot meant moving from paid acquisition to an organic mix of conferences, webinars, email, and thought leadership, with messaging built around compliance, scale, and risk mitigation
• How the team pairs marketing with revenue at conferences, sets up pre-conference meetings, and uses creative on-the-ground tactics like a lemonade stand during a heat wave to drive top-of-funnel leads
• Why leading with "we're radically changing the field through AI" backfires with late-adopter special-ed buyers, and why the message instead focuses on absorbing administrative burden
• How to keep one core message constant while tailoring execution state by state, using Google alerts to flex when budgets get cut

Chapters

• 00:00 — Cold open: why most B2B EdTech marketing is boring
• 00:27 — Why EdTech marketing breaks the standard playbook
• 01:33 — Meet Blakely Neilson and Parallel Learning
• 02:32 — From finance to building marketing through a DTC-to-B2B pivot
• 03:39 — Building trust with relationship-first district buyers
• 04:44 — Making conferences a real pipeline driver
• 05:59 — The webinar formula that stands out post-COVID
• 07:17 — Marketing an AI product to AI-skeptical buyers
• 08:27 — Pop culture, the Taylor Swift email, and humanizing B2B
• 11:05 — Awareness vs. conversion in a two-sided marketplace
• 11:45 — Scaling across 25 states with Google alerts and AI
• 13:01 — Sales and marketing operating rhythm
• 13:50 — Lightning round
• 15:22 — Jason's top three takeaways

Links & resources

Guest
Blakely Neilson — Founding team, Parallel Learning
Website
LinkedIn (Blakely)
LinkedIn (Parallel Learning)
Instagram

About Frank Growth

Frank Growth is a podcast about how companies actually grow—real operators, real constraints, real decisions. Hosted by Jason Shafton.

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