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Telling people about Perpetual Education

Last updated: August 25, 2023

It’s a wild west out there. We have to tell people we exist, or they just wont know.

Usually, when people find us, they’ve watched some videos and read some blog posts, and maybe gone through some lessons. They might have met us on a call or talked to other students about their experiences or read their blogs. By the time people have done all that, they’re pretty clear on whether they believe in what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and why.

Perpetual Education has been operating for over three years

We must do a pretty good job of appearing “established” because people are surprised to find out just how small we are. At this time, we only take about 30 students a year. CodeSmith (for example) graduates about 700 students per year. And some schools have many many thousands per year. Our goal has always been to perpetually improve the learning materials and support our students as a priority – and to spend as little on marketing as possible. How can we really compete with marketing budgets in the millions or higher anyway?

How can you help spread the word?

By sharing your experience, you can really give people the most truthful insight into what PE is and why it’s interesting to you.

There’s already a huge marketing funnel system of paid reviews and all sorts of really whacky stuff. What people need to hear is a real human explaining what has garnered their interest or stories of how the course is going.

 

We get offered spots on the "Top Coding Schools of 2023" all the time

This type of marketing isn’t really our thing. We did do a partnership post with the LA Weekly a long time ago though (didn’t get us any new students).

Just mentioning PE places is great

Sometimes prospective students post on their social media or on places like the /codingbootcamp Reddit sub. And that’s how most people find us. The /webdev sub is also a great place to ask questions.

Here are some examples:

Somewhere

  • The post title
    • The post content

Coding BootCamp forums

  • What do you think about a program that teaches the design process in combination with development?
    • I’m considering doing the program at Perpetual Education.
  • With all the doom and gloom in these forums about jobs, it seems like a good time to expand into other parts of the field
    • I’m looking at Perpetual Education, and it seems like learning about design and more of the whole process would give me more opportunities to spin off from.

Web development or design forums

  • Web developers: How important is having a sense for the design process?
    • I’m considering the hybrid design/dev school at Perpetual Education
  • Web developers: How important is having a portfolio of work?
    • I’m considering attending the program at Perpetual Education, and they spend a lot of time folding everything into your portfolio

Any honest questions you have about the industry will help people think a little.

You can also link to any of our articles and ask questions related to your situation.

Sometimes, people find us via one of these links and then reshare it

Any links you want to share would help people find us. You can just say, “I watched this, and it helped me” – or whatever really happened. “This video is the worst!” probably works just as well.

Negative people and trolls

Sometimes, someone comes at you aggressively. they might be an angry 14-year-old kid who just got pwnd in a video game. They might be a crotchety 65-year-old man. They might be on the spectrum and just come off as really intense. It’s hard to tell. Sometimes, people are just really really sensitive to anything that might be marketing adjacent. They might claim that you’ve been paid to astroturf and make up fake stories to sell snake oil.

You might need to just ignore them. But the thing about trolls is that they will goad you into responding. The best thing you can do is just be clear and honest. “Hi. I’m just weighing my options, and after talking to the people at PE, I feel great about it. What school did you go to? What would you do differently?” And you can always just say, “If you’re curious – then you can just reach out and ask the people at PE. They’re very accessible.” But really – it’s impossible to please everyone. Most of the time, you gotta just ignore them.

At the end of the day, people are trying to pick the best schools. We’re trying to let them know PE exists (and for some people is the best school) – but it’s tough! You’re either a nobody or an evil corporation. But we will prevail with enough real word-of-mouth conversation.

Explicitly telling people about PE and why you're choosing this school over the other choices

This is another route people go.

Whether they’re just excited to have found a good match – or whether they’re deep in the course – telling people about it and why you like it helps people out! They really are actively trying to find the best school for them. So, letting them know there’s a unique option isn’t a skeezy thing to do. It’s a nice thing to do! 🙂

“I’m excited about what’s going on at PE and here’s why” is a great conversation starter.

Public updates

Some students keep a course log and share it on Reddit or LinkedIn to let people know how it’s going.

Here’s one example of Jose’s blog, but really – just an update on Reddit saying “My experience so far” and some real information about what’s working well (and even what isn’t!) – would be super helpful to people out there. It’s very hard to explain how different PE is from your average ‘bootcamp’ coding school – unless it’s from the student’s perspective. Do you wish you’d made a different choice? Were there things that surprised you? How is the part-time version of learning working out? Is there something that you’re proud of and want to share? Try and remember when you were choosing a school. What can help others avoid the bad ones and even just daily studying pitfalls.

We even set up a system to get paid for referrals, but no one has really taken us up on it. (Except maybe Jess and Burooj)

(Also – Jose later mysteriously disappeared – if you’re wondering why his blogged stopped) (We hope he’s OK!)

In other cases, like Emily’s blog – she just got too busy with the course work to keep up with her blog posts.

 

Anyway...

That’s just a brain dump of things.

Some of the students and prospective students asked for ways to help spread the word and here’s some ideas.

: )
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