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Our latest posts and shares on interesting topics tied to learning, technology, customer experience, and market research.

How to Launch Your EdTech Product Fast—Without Regret

Launch Fast, Launch Right For EdTech and publishing leaders managing complex product decisions, speed often feels non-negotiable. But clarity is what makes it count. When timelines are tight and pressure is high, product teams often race toward launch with little time to spare. Yet some of the most strategic decisions are made not by going…
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Why EdTech Teams Should Validate—Even When They’re Confident

When EdTech and academic publishing teams are racing toward launch, pausing to validate what you “already know” can feel like a luxury. Especially when you’ve spent years in the space, know your users inside and out, and have internal expertise to back every strategic decision. But that confidence is exactly what makes some of the…
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Why Your Best Product Might Still Fail: Lessons From Misaligned Markets

You built something smart, elegant, and genuinely useful. But it didn’t gain traction. In EdTech, even great products can fail when they’re launched into environments they weren’t designed for—or where the surrounding dynamics block adoption. It’s not always about the quality of the product. It’s often about the context it enters. At The Boedeker Group,…
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Seeing the Whole Picture: Why Understanding Your Product’s Ecosystem Changes Everything

Even the best product can fall short when it enters the wrong environment. EdTech teams often invest significant time and resources into building strong products—refining features, polishing UX, and collecting feedback from users. But the real challenge isn’t always inside the product. It’s around it. If you want your solution to gain traction and sustain…
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Uncovering the Innovation Gap: What Customers Aren’t Saying (and How to Find Out)

In product strategy conversations, teams often ask: “What are our customers telling us?” But an equally important—and often overlooked—question is this: “What aren’t they saying?” In higher education and EdTech, product teams rely heavily on feedback. Yet some of the most valuable insights never show up in survey results or support tickets. They live in…
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How to Spot Early Signals of Market and User Behavior Shifts

In higher education, decisions often hinge on numbers: adoption rates, revenue, conversion metrics. These are useful, but they rarely tell the full story. The earliest indicators of a coming shift in user behavior or market demand aren’t loud metrics—they’re quiet clues. Things like improvised workarounds, unexpected drop-off in feature usage, or friction that users don’t…
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A Smarter Approach to Product Validation: How 10 Conversations Can Save You 6 Months

When products fail, it is rarely due to poor intentions or lack of effort. More often, they fail because the product, its positioning, or its pricing does not align with market needs. This disconnect is exactly what product validation is designed to prevent. Product validation confirms that what you are building—and how you are bringing…
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15 Minute a Day Expert

So many teams that I’ve worked with over the years think of market research and think BIG. They think it has to entail: It can be all of those things, but it doesn’t have to be. I this video I share a few tips for starting small, for big results. I hope you find it…
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Can Your List Give You the Results You Want?

There are two questions that have to be asked at the outset of every qualitative and quantitative study you conduct. In this short video I share why these questions are so important to ask, and what I learned early on my career when I didn’t do so. I hope you find this helpful!
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Common Reasons Customers Drop Their Ed Tech Products (Part 2)

Our last blog post listed 5 common reasons customers drop their ed tech products that surface when we conduct Win/Loss interviews. Below is the rest of the list we promised in the last post: Implementation and Integration: Trust and Security: Product Delivery: Market/Industry Factors: Internal Factors: Lack of Awareness/Education: There are a lot of reasons…
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Aligning Your Goals, Audience, and Tool

When you’re conducting a research study, there are a few things that must be aligned: It sounds like common sense, but we have found that the more stakeholders (from more departments) that are involved in a study, the harder it is to stay focused on the specific reason for the study. We’ve seen this time…
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Don’t waste money on unnecessary features

When creating an educational technology product there are a lot of elements to consider. There’s a lot of features that are expected in K12 and higher ed products. And that’s before you get into the content of your product that makes it unique to others on the market. So, how do you ensure that you’re…
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What You Will Learn with Win/Loss Interviews

By: Gina Boedeker In today’s competitive landscape knowing why, exactly, you won or lost an adoption is *critical* information. But win/loss interviews cannot, and should not, be considered as a one-time event. Companies that implement a win/loss market research process are able to gain crucial insights on a regular basis about customer behavior, competitive positioning, and product…
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Questions to Ask a Potential Market Research Partner

By: Gina Boedeker Questions to Ask a Potential Market Research Partner. If you are looking for a trusted market research partner and you’re not sure how to best source companies that specialize in this area, below is a list of questions to consider when interviewing potential partners.
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Can You Guarantee a Successful Product Launch?

By: Gina Boedeker Unfortunately, no. No one can say with 100% certainty that a product will succeed. But, there are ways to minimize the risk of failure and significantly increase the odds of a successful launch.
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AI in Market Research

By: Gina Boedeker If you’re using AI to analyze your data, consider implementing our best practices to verify the accuracy of your AI-generated market research results.
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Can you Really Be Objective About Your Baby?

By: Gina Boedeker Market research is critical for making informed decisions. Whether you are launching a new product, refining an existing offering, or entering a new market, gathering insights from your target audience is essential.
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Why Do you Call a Plumber?

By: Gina Boedeker In the world of business, when you have a problem you need solved or a challenge where you need support, you reach out to an expert.
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You can’t afford to *not* do market research

By: Gina Boedeker Market research is not a luxury exclusively for teams that are overflowing with cash. That scenario rarely exists. It’s also not a “nice to have” only if time and budget allow.
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How to do More with Less

By: Gina Boedeker In an ideal world, every product development project would be equipped with ample resources – a dedicated team, a generous budget, and all the tools and technologies needed.
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Thinking about design thinking

By: Gina Boedeker Gathering market insights doesn’t have to be hard and it doesn’t have to break the bank.
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Research in 15 Minutes a Day

By: Gina Boedeker The truth is, the most important part about research is…
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The Impact of Not Listening to Your Market

By: Gina Boedeker Gathering market insights doesn’t have to be hard and it doesn’t have to break the bank.
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Top Pitfalls in Planning and Executing Effective Focus Groups

By: Gina Boedeker Focus groups are one of the most effective ways to hear directly from your customers, in their voices, about what they think about the product or service your company offers.
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Five Questions That Will Make Market Research Work For You

By : Gina Boedeker Before conducting market research, you should have an idea of what you want to know from your market.
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The Importance of Participant Experience

By: Alicia Brady You’re a program manager or product developer seeking feedback on a product in development.
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Insights: Can’t Always Get What You Want

By: Gina Boedeker I recently went into a late Friday afternoon Zoom call with a company I work with and breezily said, “Happy Friday! How are you guys all doing?” To which one of the clients responded “Still recovering from what you sent me earlier.”
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The Top Three (Instructor) Pain Points in Market Development

By: Alicia Brady In September 2021, TBG deployed a survey to higher education instructors, targeting a range of institution profiles (both two and four-year, public and private) and a broad range of disciplines. Our goal was to learn more about what types of market development activities most resonate with instructors, and why. We also wanted…
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When “No” Is the Best Response

By: Gina Boedeker Today, I had a conversation with a potential client where I ended the conversation like this: “Technically, yes, you could hire our team to do this project. However, I think there are better, more efficient, and less expensive ways for you to get that
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The Summer Internship: An Intern’s Perspective

By: Lauren Cubell Every year, students of all ages must determine how to best fill their summer vacation time. This summer, as a college student, I found myself in a different position than in previous years as I considered how I wanted to spend my time. While I had
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What My Covid Recovery Revealed About TBG’s Core Values

By: Penina Braffman With summer in full swing, I still get that “school’s out, sun’s out!” sense of euphoria, even as an adult whose work schedule doesn’t vary that much in the summer months. That, combined with the feeling like the pandemic is in the rearview mirror
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Utilizing Remote Research During and Beyond COVID

As we are rounding the corner closing in on the end of 2020, this is obviously a year we will never forget. With the onset of COVID-19, our lives were thrown into a complete tailspin, and we’ve all faced challenges we never could have imagined. From working remotely, to homeschooling, to distancing from family and…
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How To Segment Your Market To Get More Customers

WHAT IS MARKET SEGMENTATION? Market segmentation is breaking down your market into smaller, more specific groups. These groups will have similar characteristics so companies can more effectively market and sell into various segments. WHY SEGMENT YOUR MARKET? Most companies do not have the resources (internal or financial) to market to everyone and they recognize that…
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How To Write A Survey (that gets the feedback you need)

Surveys are an effective way of gathering information from your target audience to help you drive product development and marketing decisions, and make decisions about necessary changes in your product or service offering. Surveys, though, are only as good as the quality of the design at the outset. The tips below will help guide you…
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We Sweat The Small Stuff (so you don’t have to)

I can’t remember exactly when I got the cute little trim-sized book of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson, but I remember always including it in moving boxes as I moved from St. Louis to Manhattan to Brooklyn back to Manhattan to Jersey City…it has an inspiring, powerful message and it has held…
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Important Yet Overlooked Hiring Requirements

Recently I posted an update on my LinkedIn profile saying “The Boedeker Group is growing and hiring new freelance market development, marketing and sales professionals” and linked to the job descriptions that listed in detail the kind of background and experience I am looking for (message me if you want more info). From the time…
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Back To School Thanks From A Parent

Today I dropped my almost-4 year old at Pre-K4 for the start of her 2017-2018 school year. I know I’m not alone. There are a lot of us going through back-to-school drop-offs and pick-ups all across the country if we haven’t already gone through it in the last couple of weeks. And while I’ve seen…
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You Only Have One Chance To Make A First Impression

That was the exact sentence I shared with one of my clients last week. “You never get a second chance to make a first impression – and I’m afraid you’re going to waste it if you move forward with this product before it’s ready. I know you want to launch in a few weeks. I…
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To Those On The Front Lines Of Education – Thank You

After 15 years working in educational publishing and ed-tech, I did something today I have never done. I was the acting principal at a public elementary and middle school in Jersey City through the “Principal for the Day” community program that pairs business owners in the area with local schools. The principal I was paired…
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What I Learned From Rookie Reps About Product Development

As a Brand Manager and then Managing Director for a large portfolio, I loved rookie reps. As soon as I would receive their in-company introductory email I would send them a welcome email to introduce myself, set up a time to speak with them to give them more detailed information about our products, and share…
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Retrospectives: Learning From Every Project

Every single project gives you the opportunity to learn. From the benefit of hindsight, you can implement ways to improve your processes for the benefit of your *next* projects by openly sharing as a team what worked, what didn’t work, and what you wish you would have known to have done things differently. Retrospectives are…
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Tough Decisions In Product Development

When you are going through the product and market development steps that need to be taken to ensure that a product is on track to hit its expected revenue goal there is a strong possibility that if you’re doing this well and critically listening to the feedback you receive from the market at some point…
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Customer-Centered Product Reviews

I’ve launched The Boedeker Group with a very simple premise; put the customer at the center of all product and marketing decisions you make. There’s one very simple reason that I’m willing to build a company around this: it works. Data, not surprisingly, supports this. McKinsey and Company published that 70% of buying experiences are…
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