EdTech Founder’s Guide To Branding That Works

In EdTech, your product might be smart, your team brilliant, and your mission important. But if your brand isn’t pulling its weight, it’s like pushing water uphill. 

A strong brand isn’t just a logo or a bunch of colours. It’s the difference between being remembered and merging into all the other vanilla brands. Done right, your brand pays back the investment many times over. 

If we consider Duolingo, they lead their category in the US with 53% brand awareness and an 83% conversion from awareness to consideration — compared to 73% for competitors. And it’s not just them. Research shows consistent branding across channels can lift revenue by up to 23%. In education, where purchasing decisions often involve multiple stakeholders, long lead times, and tight budgets, trust really is currency.

Common EdTech brand mistakes 

Plenty of EdTech founders start with a great product and stop there. That’s when you see the same patterns:

• Looking amateur –   the AI-built website without the right strategy or team behind it. The logo whipped up on Canva. None of this screams “credible business.
• Trying to talk to everyone – never works. The deeper you dig into your audience insights, the more your message lands.
• Inconsistency – shifting tone, mismatched visuals, mixed messages. It’s confusing, and confusion kills trust.
• Building for yourself – branding based on “my favourite colour is green” instead of what your audience needs to hear, see, and feel.
• Bland branding – endless shades of blue, stock photos of students around a laptop, and yes, the classic graduation-cap logo. (Spoiler: you’re not the only one who thought of that.)
  
  

All of the above is a brand doing the bare minimum, and it drags growth down every time.

Five principles for building a brand that works

Below is a simple framework every brand should consider when setting out. Stick to these and you won’t go too far wrong.

Focus
Know exactly who you’re for, what you stand for, and why it matters.This starts with brand strategy and should be revisited every time the business shifts or pivots.  

Differentiation
Most of the category blends into a sea of blue logos and buzzwords. Standing out doesn’t mean shouting louder, it means being memorable.

Collaboration
The best brands aren’t built in isolation. Bring your team in, talk to your users, involve your partners. When people help shape the brand, they believe in it — and that belief spreads faster than any marketing campaign.

Consistency
One look, one voice, one story. From your website to your sales calls, everything should feel like it’s coming from the same place.Your brand is already fighting for attention — at least make it easy to remember by keeping it consistent.

Innovation
The EdTech world moves fast. What made you stand out two years ago can look tired today. Keeping an eye on trends, in branding and beyond, is key to staying ahead.

The real building blocks of a brand

A fully formed brand is much more than visuals. Think of it in four layers that work together to keep you clear and consistent.

1. Foundations
This is your strategy: purpose, vision, mission, values, positioning, and audience insights. It’s what keeps everything else consistent and intentional. Skip this, and it’s like building a house on sand. 

2. Visual identity
Your brand’s visual system: logo, colour palette, typography, imagery style, and graphic devices. These are the building blocks that give your brand a recognisable look and feel. A good system is flexible enough to work everywhere without falling apart, from a favicon to a billboard.

3. Verbal identity
Your tone of voice, messaging hierarchy, and brand story. This is how you sound everywhere,  in marketing, sales, onboarding, and support.

4. Touchpoints
This is where your identity system comes to life. Your website, product interface, sales decks, ads, packaging, events — all the moments where people experience your brand in action.

Final word

When it’s done right, branding isn’t just a nice extra — it’s what sets you apart. It makes decisions easier, brings the right people on board, and gives your startup the fuel to move faster. It’s not about doing everything overnight — it’s about making a start. But making branding a priority is what helps an EdTech business grow with confidence and secure the investment to match its ambition.

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About the author

I’m Imogen Ley-Clowes, founder of Immo Studio — a branding studio in South London. I’ve spent the last ten years working with ambitious teams to cut through the messy middle and build brands that feel clear, useful, and built for what’s next. I like digging into what’s not working, pulling it apart, and putting it back together in a way that actually helps businesses grow.

Fancy a chat about where your EdTech brand is now, and where it could go? Let’s set up a time — hello@immostudio.co.uk. 

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