The Situation
When AI started dominating headlines, teachers weren't excited. They were anxious. Are my students cheating? How do I even address this? What's our policy supposed to be? It was a wave of uncertainty hitting every district in the state at once, and no one had a clear answer.
Michigan Virtual had spent years positioning itself as a trusted partner to Michigan schools, not a vendor. When that anxiety peaked, schools started coming to us. Not because we had an AI product to sell, but because they trusted us enough to ask for help. That trust was the market. We just had to meet it.
The challenge: build something real, fast, before that window closed. There was no playbook. No established product. No established audience for it. Just an opportunity and a deadline that didn't exist yet.
The Strategy
I came to this informed by inbound marketing philosophy: the best way to generate qualified demand is to solve a real problem first and let the pipeline follow. I partnered with our Director of School Partnerships, our Learning Research and Innovation team (who served as subject matter experts), and my marketing specialists to build a content engine around genuine educator need.
We produced a library of free, practical resources: rubrics for evaluating AI-generated student work, district-level implementation frameworks, teacher guides, infographics, and live webinars. These weren't lead magnets dressed up as resources. They were actually useful, and educators shared them widely because of it.
Embedded throughout was a simple, low-friction form: if you want more personalized help, our AI strategists are available. That was the funnel. Curiosity led to a resource. A resource led to a conversation. A conversation led to a booked engagement.
"AI is here. We are here to help you become ready." That simple promise guided every piece of copy, every resource, every social post. It met educators exactly where they were.
What I Led
Mapped the full journey from "curious" to "booked": resource to nurture to consult form to scheduling. Simplified offers and reduced friction at every step.
Led creation of practical, high-trust resources that educators actually shared. The content did the selling by being genuinely useful first.
Built social campaigns around our strategists' voices, not the organization's. Within about a year, schools were requesting them by name based on their reputation and visibility.
Worked closely with Sales (School Partnerships) to ensure content leads translated into conversations, and with our research team to ensure accuracy and credibility.
Featured Resources
A sample of the free resources that drove awareness, search traffic, and form fills. These lived at the top of the funnel and fed everything downstream.
The Result
Within about a year of launch, something had shifted. School administrators weren't just requesting AI consulting from Michigan Virtual. They were requesting specific strategists by name, based on their social media presence and word of mouth from other district leaders. The inbound engine had done more than drive revenue. It had built individual credibility at scale.
The consulting arm crossed $500,000 in revenue in under two years, from zero, in a market that didn't exist before we helped create it. The AI 101 program became a repeatable, bookable product. Free resources continued to drive search traffic and form fills long after launch.
This is what inbound marketing looks like when it's working: you serve first, and the pipeline takes care of itself.