Episode 8: Catherine Lane | THE INTERROGATORS

Catherine Lane has been doing EdTech PR and marketing for over twenty years, which means she's watched every flavour of hype arrive, plateau and get replaced. She runs one of the UK's most credible agencies in the sector — and she's been generous enough to come on and talk about where the line is and how often it gets crossed.

Catherine Lane is founder of The Influence Crowd, the UK's specialist EdTech PR and content agency. She sits on the PRCA PR and Communications Board and works with clients including Juniper Education, GL Assessment, and SIMS. Her January 2026 guide to UK teacher influencers on TikTok is one of the most read pieces in the space.

IN THIS EPISODE

·      Why the MAT leadership conversation has shifted from 'small-win' products to 'move-the-needle' products — and what that means for how you have to communicate value

·      What IMP Software has done right in how they talk to the sector — and why it's less about the product and more about the helpfulness of the surrounding content

·      The 20–40 touch points problem — why no EdTech sale happens on one channel, and why companies relying on email alone are watching their pipeline flatline

·      The single-channel plateau: why email-only marketing that worked five years ago has flatlined, and why buying another list won't fix it

·      Twinkl's 25% growth as the teacher-first benchmark — and what EdTech brands can learn from it about where influence actually travels in schools

·      TikTok teacher influencers — how to know if it's genuine advocacy or dressed-up advertising, and the contract clauses that stop you paying three times for the same content

·      Why brands need educationists on the team — and the practical alternative of paying former maths leads and classroom teachers for advice during the holidays

·      Facebook's continued role in the sector — why SENCO and primary-teacher groups are still alive even as Twitter and LinkedIn change shape

·      Instagram vs TikTok as content channels — the different registers, and why selling on TikTok kills engagement

·      A mental-health campaign case study that delivered a 275% lift in sales leads for an EdTech client, the Young Minds partnership that made it possible, and why most brands won't touch this territory

·      Why EdTech marketing should learn from B2C on emotion — B2B in education has an emotion vacuum, and the campaigns that push into it are the ones that land

·      The ROI-obsession trap — why measuring every touchpoint against direct sales attribution is the wrong measurement, and what 'engagement, trust, visits' looks like instead

·      The TikTok age demographic that keeps surprising clients — hint, it's not teenagers

·      Why journalism is leading with case studies now, not data summaries — and what EdTech marketers should copy from that shift

·      The Stephen Bartlett spelling-mistakes tactic — and why small human signals are about to matter more, not less, as AI-generated content floods every feed

Episode 8 continues THE INTERROGATORS block of Series One.

LINKS

Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and everywhere via Podbean

Full episode and transcript: https://podcast.co/b2educationunpacked

EdTech Sales Mastery course: https://seventhsibling.co.uk/self-paced-courses

Website: https://seventhsibling.co.uk