The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
TPT Marketing Strategies that Work in 2025
The digital marketing landscape for teacher-sellers has undergone a dramatic transformation since 2020, and those clinging to outdated strategies are watching their businesses slowly fade. This eye-opening episode pulls back the curtain on what's actually working in TPT marketing today versus what's simply wasting your precious time.
Ready for some tough love? Those static Instagram posts, random Pinterest pins linking directly to TPT, and scattered marketing efforts across multiple platforms aren't serving your business. Lauren breaks down why even established sellers are struggling when they refuse to adapt to the current competitive marketplace. The hard truth: if your marketing approach hasn't evolved since 2021, you're likely working harder while seeing diminishing returns.
But this isn't just about what to stop doing. Lauren delivers a clear, actionable framework for modern TPT marketing success: the "one platform, one funnel" approach. Discover why email marketing still delivers the highest ROI, how to strategically deploy short-form video content, when to invest in paid advertising, and why capturing customer information before sending traffic to TPT transforms your long-term profitability. She explains why a customer needs to encounter your product approximately seven times before purchasing—and how a properly structured marketing funnel makes this process both automated and efficient. Learn how to batch and repurpose content across platforms to create a harmonious marketing ecosystem where everything works together strategically rather than randomly.
Ready to transform your TPT marketing approach? Grab your ticket to the upcoming Teacher Seller Summit where Lauren will share even more game-changing strategies to help you stand out in today's competitive marketplace.
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Welcome to the Rebranded Teacher Podcast. My name is Lauren Fulton. I'm a full-time teacher, author and seller on Teachers, pay Teachers and I help other teacher entrepreneurs grow their TPT businesses in a way that's purposeful and sustainable. So if you're looking for actionable, step-by-step ways to grow your business, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Come here close. I want to let you in on a little secret those marketing strategies that you're using for 2021, they are not serving you or your business, and if you're listening to sellers who've been selling on TPT for a long time and they're using antiquated strategies, it's not serving your business, because the truth is, you have a very limited amount of time and a lot of the things that I see a lot of TPT sellers doing for marketing they're not working, and I know why they're not working. But you may not know why they're not working, and so we're going to talk about the strategies that you should be using to market your TPT business in 2025, and the strategies that you can just chunk straight into the toilet and just completely forget about doing them. Just scratch them off your to-do list. You won't have to do them anymore. We're going to be talking about that in this episode, so let's talk about the marketing landscape and how it changed in 2020 and 2021. So back in 2020, as most of you guys know, there was a flood of new teacher authors and teacher entrepreneurs who entered the arena. This is fantastic, because competition is always a good thing. But what happened was when all of this new competition entered into the marketplace whether on TPT or on social media or blogging the game changed and existing sellers were forced to either level up their marketing so that they could compete with these new entrepreneurs, or to watch their business slowly dwindle down. A lot of these teacher entrepreneurs have watched their business slowly dwindle down. If you don't believe me, just take a little visit over to the wallflowers in Facebook. You will see a lot of teacher entrepreneurs in there who have been on TPT for a long time and for the last several years they've just been complaining about how their business is dwindling down, and it's because they are not leveling up. They have not leveled up to the competition.
Speaker 1:Now I know some people who may be listening to this probably not listening to this podcast, but may hear about this. They're going to have their feelings a little bit hurt, but that's why they're where they're at is because they get their feelings hurt when someone says the truth to them. So I'm going to tell you something. If you are listening to this and you are not one of those whiners and complainers, you're somebody who's like that's actually, my business has been dwindling and I don't know what to do about it. Or I have been following all of this advice that has been longstanding advice on TPT that I've heard all of these old time sellers give me and I'm just not really seeing it happen. Well, you need to tune into this episode because I'm going to give you the skinny on what's actually working and what's not working, and how you can get your business where you want it to be, based on the current landscape of online marketing. Okay, here we go.
Speaker 1:Number one email marketing. Now, I know everybody knows email marketing, but we're going to talk in just a little bit about how all of these things work together and how you can help these things work together in order to boost your business, but email marketing is still going to be key. Now, I also love SMS marketing, but it's not cheap. In fact, just sending an emoji can cost you like several hundred dollars, but email marketing still has the highest ROI of any online marketing and you can start it for absolutely free. So email marketing still king, the real driver of conversion for your business. Whether you're selling on TPT or off TPT, you need to be doing email marketing.
Speaker 1:Another thing is short form video content. Before I get into all of this, like, you don't have to do all of these things, okay, you can pick a few of them, but TikTok, instagram reels you can still drive a lot of traffic from Instagram, tiktok to your TPT store or use it to grow your audience, like, grow your email audience. But you need to make sure that you are following best practices and sometimes this can take a lot of time to refine that skill and to figure out where you fit into the Instagram or TikTok space. Like, it takes a little while. So, for my TPT business, I do not do Instagram marketing. I do have an Instagram like lifestyle influencer type of account. Now, it ain't big, okay, I started it in December, but I feel like I'm finally hitting a place where I'm like oh, I'm seeing consistently higher views, I'm getting consistently getting new followers and things are finally starting to move in the right direction. And sometimes it just takes time, experimentation, all of that, but you'd have to do it right. This is definitely one of those things you can't do halfway.
Speaker 1:Another thing is Facebook ads and ads in general for your business. There's a reason why people have been using advertisements for years, whether that's TV advertisements through commercials, pop-up ads on a website, billboards, you name it. Businesses have been doing advertising for a long time but for some reason, a lot of TPT sellers are really hesitant to enter into this marketing space because it costs money, and I get it because you don't really know what your return on investment is going to be. But we'll talk a little bit about what you can get rid of as far as like ad spend and what you should be focusing on with ad spend. But for sure, facebook ads or ad spend in general, like whether it's Pinterest, depending on how you're doing on Pinterest, but like whether that's Pinterest, google ads, whatever you should definitely be investing in ads in your business when you get to a space where you're ready to start reinvesting. In that way, ads is a great way to go.
Speaker 1:Lead magnets you should have multiple lead magnets for your business, sending people to opt in to your email list, and you can send people to opt in to your email list through a multitude of ways. But if you're just starting out, you should have one really solid email opt-in. But over time you're going to want to expand and make sure that you have multiple ways that buyers can find you and join your email list, and you can do that through lead magnets. They're super easy, super simple. Once you've done it, once you can do it a thousand times more, although I don't necessarily recommend a thousand times. I've heard a lot of email marketing experts say anywhere between five and 10 lead magnets and I think when you start to get around five, that's when you kind of start to notice, okay, buyers tend to respond to this a little bit better. You start to get a little bit more market feedback in terms of, like, what's working for your business, what your potential buyers are responding to really well and maybe what they're not responding to so well. So if you've tried a lead magnet and you're not getting a lot of traction on it, you're not getting a lot of signups, then go ahead and create a couple more lead magnets or email opt-ins and see if something else might work a little bit better for you.
Speaker 1:Before we start talking about strategy, let's talk about the things that you can stop doing. You can stop posting without a purpose. Now I know someone somewhere is probably going to disagree with me and they may even have some good reasons for disagreeing with me. But I'm just gonna tell you like, if your strategy for pinning pins to Pinterest is just putting up a picture of your product and linking it back to TPT, you can just go ahead and stop that. I'm not saying that it can't drive any traffic. Some of these things can drive traffic to your TPT store, but the return on your time investment is very, very low in general. Same for posting static images on Instagram and doing social media marketing in that way.
Speaker 1:I would honestly rather let my Instagram die than I would just post without purpose. I want to make sure that the content that I'm posting is equal in quality to the content that my top competitors are posting. And if my top competitors are posting really engaging Instagram reels or really engaging TikToks with helpful strategies and they're connecting with the buyer and really seeing them face to face and building this know, like and trust factor, I would rather just not show up on Instagram at all than I would to post a still image with a cute caption. Do you know what I mean, it's not that it wouldn't do anything, it's just that I can find a better way to use that time to actually build that know, like and trust factor with my audience and show them that I am equally reputable and I know some people are like. Well, I run ads and so I want my Instagram to be up to date. Listen, I run ads too. My Instagram is not up to date and the ads work great.
Speaker 1:Just saying quit posting without purpose, because in my mind, it's not that it's a waste of time, it's just that there's a better way to use my time and I don't have much of it and you don't have much of it either. So if you are posting things that you have time to post versus posting things that are actually going to be effective and stand toe to toe with your competition, then just stop and market strategically somewhere else. Take that same time and use it to market strategically elsewhere or in another way that works for you and works for your business. Running ads to your TPT store. Now, again, this is one of those things that I'm not saying that you won't make money or that it can't work or that it won't be beneficial in some way, shape or form. That's not what I'm saying, but I'm saying that it's not going to give you the greatest return on your investment. I think anytime you're running ads.
Speaker 1:If you're running ads to sell a product, I would run ads to sell a product on my own website so that I can sell more effectively. And when that customer purchases from me, tpt is not getting their information. I am, so I can then retarget that customer. If I'm going to be spending money on ads to get a customer to purchase a product for me, I want to also have that customer's information so I can send them emails and I can contact them so that they can purchase from me again. That's going to give me the greater return on my time investment and make my marketing more effective. So I would rather be driving traffic to my own website and paying for that paying to gain my own customers versus paying to gain customers for TPT and me make a little bit of money off of it. Long-term, I'm going to make way more money if those customers are on my email list, if those customers are in my network and they are purchasing from my website.
Speaker 1:So if you are like dead set on driving traffic to products to get a buyer to purchase a paid product, then I think that's great. It can be a really phenomenal strategy. It can be really profitable. But go ahead and build your own website, because if you have the money to spend on ads to TPT, you have the money to create your own website, so go ahead and do that. Another option would be, instead of running ads to TPT and sending them traffic sending them the customer and them taking a percentage of your profits would be to run ads to a lead magnet so that you can grow your email list and then you can market that product to them that you ultimately want to sell them on. So I personally would not run paid ads to TPT at all. Not saying it can't be profitable, I'm just saying it's like not the best long-term strategy. And then, finally, I would not be pinning pins to Pinterest that are sending traffic to TPT.
Speaker 1:Can you sense a theme here? I'm not spending time just sending traffic straight to TPT. I want things to go through a funnel, okay, because that's going to give me the best return on my time investment. So, first of all, I focus on one platform and one funnel. So your funnel is going to involve email marketing Okay, and then one platform for marketing. Now that can be Pinterest, it can be blogging, it can be social media marketing, it can be YouTube, it can be a podcast, whatever, because email marketing only reaches the people who are on your list. So we need a way to reach people and bring them into our email list. So we want one platform and we're going to focus all of our efforts and all of our attention on mastering that platform.
Speaker 1:And I think that this is where a lot of sellers go wrong is that they throw things at the wall and see what sticks, kind of strategy of like I'm going to do everything. I want to be present in all arenas and, while there is something to be said for like, maybe having a presence in a lot of different places, if you are running low on time and you don't have a lot of time to invest in your business, your time is so much better spent really focusing on mastering one marketing platform and sending those customers to your email list. So once you have that one platform whether it's social media, pinterest, blogging again, youtube, podcast, whatever you are really going to focus on creating email opt-ins and high converting content for your email list. So you really want to focus your efforts on like okay, how do I now get those people to my email list? Like, even on this podcast, I have email opt-ins from time to time.
Speaker 1:I have a lot of opportunities for people to join my email list by becoming a customer and purchasing a workshop or signing up for a free workshop or whatever. I give people lots of opportunities to join my email list and become a workshop or signing up for a free workshop or whatever. I give people lots of opportunities to join my email list and become a part of my world there, while still giving high quality content here. And I focus on YouTube and my podcast because I can do those things simultaneously. It brings people into my world, but I really don't do anything apart from that. I don't do social media marketing. Very often used to a long time ago, still have people who follow me on social media for that, but I really don't do much marketing on there anymore and I really just focus on this.
Speaker 1:One platform is my main focus podcast and YouTube and I drive traffic to my email list in that way and then batching and repurposing to save time. So you'll notice that I do that here too. One of the things that I do is I have a podcast slash YouTube episode and we take the same conversation, the same content that I'm creating right now, and we use that to market to my email list. So people who are on my email list but don't listen to the podcast or don't watch the YouTube channel, they can still get quality content delivered to their inbox and it's serving a dual purpose. So we're batching and repurposing in order to save time and you can do the same thing with your single platform and then your email list.
Speaker 1:So if you're writing a blog post, then you write a blog post and you turn it into several emails. If you are creating content for social media, pick a topic that you want to talk about, create five videos over that topic and then create an email opt-in that goes along with that topic. So if you're talking about classroom management, that week, create a little classroom management checklist that they can get for free when they join your email list and then repurpose that same content that you're using for your social media posts, for your reels, for your TikToks. Take those same talking points, plug them into an email and it goes out to your email list. Plus. You've got an email opt-in and everything's all tied in together and that's really what you want. Is you really want all of your marketing to be tied in together? You really want this strategy for your marketing rather than just like posting randomly or creating random content, creating random videos. Everything is working together harmoniously. And same thing for ads. Rather than just driving traffic to TPT and hoping that those customers return, we're driving traffic to our email list and we're making sure that everything works together very harmoniously so that I can continue to engage with that customer and build a know, like and trust relationship with them so they will continue to want to purchase from me.
Speaker 1:So one platform, one funnel. So I mentioned before, like with social media and creating the five posts and creating the email opt-in. That's a really simple funnel. So I create five social media videos talking about classroom management. In all of those videos I say, hey, by the way, I've got a free checklist. If you want the checklist, comment down below checklist I'll send you the link to grab this checklist absolutely free and then, once they join your email list to get that checklist, then you start to market to them and be like now that you have this checklist, here are some student handouts that go along with the checklist. Here's a classroom poster so that you can post your classroom management rules or your class rules. Here's this really great activity to go over class rules on the first day of class. You start sending that traffic to your TPT store, knowing that that customer is specifically interested in classroom management strategy.
Speaker 1:So now we've built a funnel, we've got a blog post or social media or a podcast or whatever about classroom management. That's sending people to our email list to get the free classroom management checklist and then, once they join the email list, we're now sending them to our TPT store. So instead of just sending them to TPT for TPT to get the customer and us not get their information, we are now making sure we capture their information first so that we have them forever, and then we're sending them over to our TPT store. Now this does a couple of things for us. This number one allows us to retarget that same customer, but it also makes our marketing so much more effective, because most of the time a buyer has to hear about your product I think an average of like seven times before they actually consider buying it. Like, oh, I actually really do need that, that sounds really great. So if they have to hear about it seven times. I have a greater opportunity of getting them to purchase because I can send them seven emails because they're on my list.
Speaker 1:Right, I am now making my marketing strategy more effective because, instead of them just happening to scroll across that one video and going to TPT and deciding not to purchase it and then they never hear from me again, they're in my funnel and I can send them seven emails that are eventually going to convince them to go and purchase that product. So I'm making my marketing way more effective. Also, so much of this is automated, so I can cycle through my content this way. Once I have that set up with my email, then I know every single year we're using that same opt-in, we're using that same marketing strategy, we're resending them to go get that classroom management checklist. So then, once I have a year of content, I really have the next year of content pretty much created, which makes my marketing so much more effective and it is a much better use of my time all around.
Speaker 1:So the things that you can stop doing are just directly trying to drive traffic to TPT without capturing the customer. Number one quit doing the static posts on Instagram. Quit posting without a purpose. That's number two. If you don't have time to post with purpose, then use the time that you do have to be purposeful elsewhere with your marketing. And then, finally, number three, make sure that you have one marketing platform that you want to master and then your email marketing setup, and have those two things working together harmoniously so that you can build your own customer base and make your marketing work way more effectively.
Speaker 1:All right, you guys, if you have a marketing technique that is working really well for you, or if you have something in this video that you're like yes, I really need to start doing this. This was the kick in the seat of the pants that I need. Make sure and comment down below. Again. Teacher Seller Summit is happening in two and a half weeks, so you want to make sure that you have your ticket to Teacher Seller Summit. You do not want to miss it. You can grab your free ticket down below, or I recommend going ahead and purchasing your pro pass. If you're interested in going pro and getting access to all the things at teacher seller summit, go ahead and grab it now, because the price will go up as soon as the conference starts and you want to get it at the lowest price possible. So go grab your ticket to teacher seller summit. I'm going to see you there with even more incredible strategies, and I'm going to see you right back here next week.