Your school is under new scrutiny. If you were hoping things would go back to how they were before the pandemic, you need to forget about it. Things aren’t going to go back to “normal.” The Covid-19 pandemic wasn’t like throwing a rock into a calm lake, causing ripples that eventually disappear and the calmness returns. It was more like a storm that changes a lake’s landscape permanently.
The strategies that used to work for your school or district’s marketing and communications may not be successful anymore because the landscape has changed. Your plans need to be adapted, reimagined, or even scrapped to meet the new expectations of today’s families.
Understanding Families’ New “Liquid” Expectations
“Liquid expectations” refers to the way that customer experience expectations move from one industry to another.
Schools should focus on their online experience as much as their competitors because potential students and their families will compare it to other online experiences they’ve had, not just those of other schools.
Expectations are high for everyone to be able to do things easily online. If grandma can order grocery delivery, she should be able to pay her grandchild’s tuition online. If mom can order a new car online, she should be able to find your school’s calendar. And if dad can watch sports online, he wants to see his kids’ events live-streamed.
Your families’ expectations for online experiences, including from your school, are higher than ever. They are more difficult to impress and please than in the past, so your school’s marketing strategies must adapt to that.
As we look ahead to this year and the future, it’s important for schools and districts alike to invest time, budget, or resources into the following eight marketing strategies:
1. Evaluate Your Personas
Now that summer is here, it’s a good time to take a step back and evaluate your private school’s marketing strategy. See if there are any areas that need to be changed or improved. A good place to start is by looking at your target Parent Personas.
You and your admissions team should meet to discuss what kind of parents are enrolling your school. What do you think is attracting them to apply? What are their main concerns for their child’s education? What are their family’s priorities? What are their primary demographics (location, income, age, etc.)?
You can create a more specific target audience profile for your school by answering questions about who is applying to your school. You may find new information about what parents are looking for in a school, or an opportunity to reach a new group of parents.
If you want your marketing strategy to be successful, it is important to make sure that it is tailored to fit the needs of families who would be interested in your school. One way to do this is to develop parent personas, whichSummer is a good time to do this.
2. Redesign Your Website
If you’re thinking that we’re just going to tell you that you need to redesign your website because we’re a website company, you’re wrong. There’s a lot of research that shows that having a poorly designed website can ruin a brand.
A poor website experience can damage your reputation, result in less engagement, and cause a decline in site traffic.
Consider these stats:
- 79% of people who don’t like what they find on one site will go back and search for another site
- 52% of users say that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company
- Mobile users are 5 times more likely to abandon a task if a site isn’t optimized for mobile
- 40% of website visitors will leave if the site takes more than three seconds to load, and 47% of visitors expect your site to load in only two seconds.
- 94% of first impressions are design-related. (And as this article from ISM suggests — “website first impressions are like job interviews, you only get one.”)
It takes a lot of work to launch a website and do it right. If your school or district’s current website checks any of the following boxes, this is your top marketing strategy for this year:
- The website is 3 years old or more
- The website is responsive, but not mobile-first (Find out the difference in this blog post)
- The website “looks old” in comparison to direct competitors and big brands
- Your website is difficult to navigate
3. Follow Up on Your Leads
Often, in late spring there is a lot of activity related to admissions. With all the other issues and activities that come at the end of the school year, it’s possible that some of the admissions related tasks may have been forgotten.
Look through your database of potential customers from this year. This includes people who have visited your website, subscribed to your emails, called you, or visited your company in person. Give each of them a call to check in. You could also offer a summer discount to encourage people to take action, like $20 off an application fee if it’s submitted by June 30.
Now is a good time to ask parents with kids in the grades that the prospective families are looking at to reach out to them. This way, the staff can focus on other things and the parents can get a sense of the school from someone who has already been through it.
4. Improve Your Search Engine Strategy
Every school’s search engine strategy has three main elements:
- Search Engine Optimization
- Paid Per Click Advertising (PPC)
- Online Reviews
The number of search engine strategies you invest in will depend on your school’s short- and long-term goals.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Many school marketers don’t have the time or resources for SEO, which requires keyword research and implementation across your site’s title tags, meta descriptions, on-page content, and usually the creation of a good blog. Also, the results are often not as instantaneous as a paid ad, so many school marketers put SEO on the back-burner. Note that the implementation of an SEO strategy can take many months to reap benefits from because of how long it takes Google to crawl and recrawl site pages.
No matter what, an SEO strategy is key to your school’s success in the digital world. With research showing that 90% of all online experiences start with a search engine, and low click-through rates for results past the first page, it’s evident that if you want your school’s website to be seen, you need to allocate the time and/or resources. (This is why so many schools and districts seek out Finalsite’s team of SEO experts to help them create a search engine strategy that works.)
Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)
The use of PPC ads can help to generate awareness and website traffic for your school. If your school’s website is not ranking well in Google, you can opt for a paid ad strategy which can land you at the top of page 1 almost immediately.
Online Reviews
Online reviews are critical for school districts because they provide the first impression for potential parents. If the reviews are not good, potential parents may never click through to the website.
Even before the pandemic, reviews directly impacted a school’s website traffic. And after more than a year of relying on reviews for everything, they’re a higher priority than ever:
- 90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business.
- 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
- 65% of people see online search as the most trusted source of information about people and companies. That’s a higher level of trust than any other online or offline source.
5. Host an Event
If you’re planning any social events for your school community over the summer, invite prospective parents and encourage current families to invite their friends. Give out postcards or flyers to local churches inviting their families to join you. This is a fun, relaxed time for parents to get to know not only your school leaders, but also your families – the ones that make up the heart of your school. Their children will play with your students, the parents will chat and (hopefully) make some new friends, and they’ll walk away with some meaningful connections to your school and new reasons to consider applying!
Reach your market by adding a summer event to your calendar. Keep it simple with a free community story or craft time for your younger student market. Invest in buy t-shirts and supplies for a tie-dye day, get your science teacher to have some STEM or nature science experiments, or simply read a classic children’s story and plan a craft to accompany it. Parents are often looking for fun, free things to keep their little ones entertained over the summer, so seize the opportunity!
Just because you plan and host an event doesn’t mean the right people will come. Make sure to promote your event through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Give electronic and printed materials to your Word of Mouth team to help spread the news.
6. Focus on the Youth Pastors
If you’re looking to strengthen relationships with local churches, consider planning an event that will be appealing and helpful to youth pastors. Many youth pastors are always on the lookout for fun, educational activities to do with the kids in their church. Perhaps you could organize a multi-youth-group kickball or dodgeball tournament that would involve several churches in your area.
You must work harder than simply asking the church secretary to post an announcement in the bulletin to promote this type of program. You must reach out to the youth pastors personally to invite them and have a conversation with them on how you can help serve their needs. Listen to them, and show them you can be a partner for them in shepherding their students by hearing their concerns and helping come up with ways you can support their program. Then, give them something about which they can get excited, and then enjoy building a mutually beneficial relationship with these crucial family influencers in your area.
7. Consolidate Your Social Media Accounts
If your school is struggling to manage multiple social media accounts that are outdated or not on brand, this could be an easy way to improve your situation!
One social media profile per school or district is sufficient. Exceptions can be made for Twitter due its usefulness for sports teams and clubs to share timely updates. However, it is essential that schools and districts maintain a single profile on Facebook and Instagram, as well as other channels such as LinkedIn.
Consolidating social media accounts has numerous advantages, including:
- Increased traffic and engagement to your school or district’s primary pages
- Consistent tone, voice, brand, and content
- Streamlined access to passwords and privacy settings
- Fewer comments to manage
- Streamlined online reviews
Key Takeaway
It’s more important than ever that your school’s marketing and communications strategy keeps up with changing parent expectations. Keep the following ideas in mind as you plan your strategy for the new school year, and you’ll be prepared for whatever comes next.
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