Strategy

The importance of digital marketing for schools and how to do

Private schools are companies and attracting enrollments is as important as finding customers. Even though many establishments still depend on traditional local media, such as TV, direct mail and billboards to get results, digital marketing for schools has come to stay. Just as the ways of offering education are changing (mainly after the pandemic), o [...]

November 08, 2021 · Dudu Gentil · 12 min read

The importance of digital marketing for schools and how to do

Online marketing strategies can reach your audience, are measurable and considerably cheaper and more sustainable than traditional media. Now more than ever, having a digital presence to attract these students who seek ways to learn and qualify online becomes indispensable.

And as we have already talked about other articles on specific areas, having a website is not enough, it is necessary to plan and apply structured digital marketing strategies to win your potential student to its pages, offering opportunities for interaction so that visitors become leads, in addition to relating and already participating in the decision-making process of the future student, educating him from the beginning.

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Advantages of digital marketing for schools

Improve engagement on social networks: schools with a well-established digital presence realize that the interaction with the published content is greater. In addition to the vanity metrics (liked or followers), the relationship developed from engagement in social networks impacts on the perception that people have of the institution.
Build and strengthen the brand: the digital marketing work for schools helps build authority and position the brand before the target audience. Do you want people to remember the name of the school to point out to other interested parties? Invest in strengthening the brand.
Increase revenue: with good digital strategies you will notice an increase in the demand for services and monthly earnings.
Loyalty of the client: when you take advantage of the tools available on the internet to keep close to customers and gain their trust, you have more chances to keep them true to your company.
Competition: In addition to the aforementioned benefits, digital marketing for schools allows you to differentiate your brand among competitors.

Follow below the best strategies to put into practice and use digital marketing as a success factor in your goal as an education company:

Improve user experience

Like most corporate sites, you have a great opportunity to provide a good experience for visitors, causing a positive impression. So your site needs:

Responsive: If people visit the site on their mobile devices and it is difficult to navigate and find what they want, they will probably not waste time and will be dissatisfied.
Be quick: If you intend to leave a positive impression on the visitor, make your web pages load quickly. Nothing bothers the user more than a slow site. Test the speed of your school's website constantly.
Be practical: Whether you're a visitor looking for a form, company policy or contacts for specific departments, for example, he doesn't want to spend 5 minutes finding you. Make sure your site is easy to navigate, ensuring that the user can achieve their goals with the shortest possible time and clicks.
To be professional: If your website is still displaying sounds, spinning icons or image bank images, then it is not doing you justice. It doesn't take much for someone interested in a new potential enrollment to make a connection between a bad website and the education they'll receive from the institution.

Note: your school website will be more complex than the site of a traditional small company, so if you don't have enough time, arm or knowledge for the actions, I advise you to look for a website development agency with proven experience in the industry. The Nationalvoxhas 16 years expertise in creating, designing, usability and delivering sites, also for the educational sector.

Improve visibility of your organic SEO search

People are conducting research long before they come to you to ask questions. That is why having a presence in a search engine is vital in your efforts to attract and engage those interested.

Worldwide, according to information provided by Google Keyword Tools, people search for a keyword phrase that begins with “The best school in (your locality)?”.

How does your company appear and rank on Google when parents seek the best and most prestigious school?

Is it on the front page? If not, then you have a serious job to do. Apply SEO-oriented actions across the site so that the organic reach of the school has visibility.

Get more search traffic with ads

Google Ads is where you may be the biggest and most immediate opportunity for your school. With Google ads, you can advertise at the time users are searching. An opportunity ignored when advertising in print media, billboards and direct marketing.

It's important to say: much of the money that was invested in traditional media before, migrated to digital. No one walks the streets anymore in search of schools to enroll. And if you don't advertise, whether it's on Google or social media, you won't attract interested parties.

But it's easy to lose money if you don't know what you're doing. Planning a successful online advertising campaign with Google or even Facebook requires some knowledge of the platform, as well as identifying how your audience interacts with them.

Identify your goals. It must be something simple, like getting contact details to call them back. Trust your commercial team to close the deal.

Then ask yourself a few questions, including:

Is it appropriate to announce all year round?
Who's your target audience to hit?
If it's the parents, what age group?
Parents who are researching first or who need to make a quick decision?

Each of these issues should direct their goals and approach. How will you measure conversions? Probably a form sender.

There are some essential tips to advertise on Google Ads. The main thing is that the better your ads are, the less you'll pay. Watch out for some details:

Write an ad text that uses your keywords and is attractive enough to encourage users to click on your ad.
Send the user to a landing page that speaks directly to the audience you identified for the campaign.
Understand what the father, mother or student who clicked on your ad awaits the page and displays it. Make sure it's clear what you want parents to do on the page and that there's little friction, that is, don't add a 20-question form.
Monitor the performance of your advertising. Identify which groups of ads and keywords are generating conversions and what is the ROI of each of them. So you can identify segments that drain money and can be improved or paused in favor of putting more money into high-performance ads.

Please communicate regularly by email

Email newsletters also known as newsletters are promotional and low-cost communication tools. You can take a basic approach and send a newsletter by weekly or monthly email to your contacts. So they learn about the news and actions your school is promoting.

Or you can use your website and other assets to build a database, use targeting to deliver custom, more tailor-made messages, implement marketing automation to provide a better online experience or even a relationship nutrition for opportunities in the purchase journey.

Improve your reputation online

The more traditional Public Relations tactics help you acquire online exposure on influential websites and influential people. But as a point of entry, you should seek to improve your online reviews.

Some reports highlighted that online analytics are as important as personal recommendations . So by actively encouraging online evaluations, you have the opportunity to influence the decision-making of parents or potential stakeholders before they even contact you.

Plan well where you want to publish reviews or testimonials. The first place you should look is on your website. You are probably already doing this, but know that you can mark these statements with what is called the ‘Review Scheme’. If you do this, Google can use the information to add a structured snippet to the search result – highlighting the competition.

This fantastic little feature attracts more clicks for the search result.

The next priority for your online comments is the profile of the My Business Google school. In this article here on Blog , we guide how to avoid the most common errors on the platform, which is considered the company business business card.

Use your offline communication to leverage online activity

Although I have chosen to focus on online opportunities, it is essential to integrate online and offline using your available communication tools to promote your digital efforts.

Remember:

Any significant external signage must have the address of your website
Printed materials sent by the Mail may also contain details of social networks
The communication to parents or interested parties should have the option of signing the newsletter (newsletter).

It is important to remember that the same people you are delivering the marketing material to are the same people who share your Facebook or Instagram posting. So keep that in mind whenever you produce marketing material.

Have a blog and produce valuable and engaging content

The blog is the perfect tool to establish knowledge on the market and provides a valuable tool to improve the performance of the search engine. The director or even teachers can contribute specific posts to various educational topics.

But be aware: the goal should be to provide valuable information to those interested, whether the parents who are starting to research, are ready to enroll their students or students already enrolled.

Influencers and students can be invited to write so that they can also pass on their messages or ideas. Imagine the opportunity to help develop the prospects of creating students' content and the promotional value of publishing their posts.

Understand the information that visitors look for in the Blog to fill the gap. Examples may include infographics, Slideshare presentations, checklists or more. If possible, offer humanized content or bring examples of cases achieved in your school projects.

Conclusion

Digital marketing applied to schools represents the positive transformation of a value market, which needed to reinvent itself so as not to miss the ability to do the future by the best way. Especially at this time when the pandemic closed many schools across the country and many establishments are in need of dealing with the economic crisis.

To address the challenges and face the new needs present in schools, colleges, EAD institutions or free courses, the adoption of proven effective strategies and digital marketing tools comes as facilitators.

There is no magic formula or perfect combination that can be replicated in each institution, since individual profiles differ greatly, however, investing in digital marketing for schools is a path without turning back.

Dudu Gentil · Nacionalvox

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